Thriving: Recent Episodes
Doris Hasslocher
We're in charge! Our health, how we look, what we're good at, what we do with our lives, we are the creators of that!
All sorts of things assail us daily: viruses, sales messages, crappy snacks, vapid conversations, noise, silly ideas, our own circular thoughts, diesel fumes... It’s not good or bad, it’s just how it is. In recognising this I can both avoid some of the things and strengthen myself against those I can’t avoid.
I’ve been too impatient, wanting all the changes in my health, wealth, love and happiness to happen yesterday. My hurry has led me to be less effective and to daily chastise myself for not doing enough and not improving fast enough. I’m adjusting my time frame to something much longer. With the pressure off I reckon my progress will be smoother, I perform best with some pressure but not with unreasonable pressure.
Hypothesis, experiment, observations, analysis, peer review - that’s performing an experiment and gauging the effects on your life and health. Then repeat. It’s a good way to progress and not get stuck
Both take very little time or energy and are incredibly powerful as tools for reducing pain
Musculoskeletal pain is so common. Like most things, there isn’t ONE cause or ONE solution. Here are a few basic steps that helped me immensely. Warning: it’s not a quick fix, but it is very simple.
It’s not the getting it right and it’s not the huge visible changes, it’s the commitment to keep chipping away a little bit each day. Even when a few days get missed, getting back to it and chipping away some more to create our work of art
There’s a happy medium between flip flopping on what behaviours and actions take me forward in my quest for full capabilities and being too dogmatic and inflexible. I never suspected that the simple act of keeping a health journal would be so impactful in allowing me to walk the tightrope between those two states
After a long search I’m now working with a professional on my remaining health issues. I’m excited and grateful. Overcoming mould illness is the first step.
I started 3 months ago and my adherence has been pitiful. A Clarifying Conversation leads me to refocus and recommit
Clues from inside us tell us how we are doing and whether there’s a health problem. Their intensity and our ability or willingness to detect them varies depending on the state and situation we are in. Well, at least that’s true for me. I’m monitoring my clue-detection skills and aiming to refine them. I want to do this so as to get better at knowing when to take an action that will lead to better health, ie to thriving!
It requires patience, embracing confusion, looking for sensory clues, having no preconceived ideas of being naturally “good” at something and priming oneself to believe we are as capable of skills acquisition as the next person.
I’ve been an over-preparer all my life, spending time thinking of all the things I need to learn and do before I take an action. By recording myself without all that preparation I’m aiming to learn by doing, as opposed to learn by over-thinking. I’m aiming to build a skill over time by doing the thing I wish to become skilled at.
A personal training session highlights how weak and unprepared I am in my legs. Good to know. I can do something about that
Opportunities and emergencies will pass through our environment. We can be caught unawares or we can set our system to ready for action
In order to perceive something subtle there needs to be a degree of peace and quiet in the environment. This is the Weber Fechner law. A flame is bright in a dark cave and imperceptible on a bright sunny day. Our internal signals are clear when our system and habits are more still and imperceptible when we busy ourselves and buzz around with a multitude of inputs. Becoming a skilled noticer and quietening our life enables us to detect important signals. From there we can build and test hypotheses as to what foods and habits affect us in what ways
Using bloodcalculator.com and some routine blood tests I’m allegedly 10 years older health wise than my actual age! AND filled with toxins! Well I’m partially deflated and partially thrilled because it’s all fixable and I’m already doing a lot of the things required to fix it and I’ve already dialled in patience and perseverance
I learned this in 2015 and layer by layer have been deepening the understanding that was instinctual. So ridiculously simple. Moving around on the floor using conscious awareness to direct attention to the contact or interface with the ground. Harnessing ground forces, polarisation of muscles, ground as anchor, trust in my nervous system getting what it needs. The result has been clear gradual reduction in pain and dysfunction
I discovered it in 2015 and then entered the training program in 2017, I’m currently teaching classes once a week and make it a daily practice to do some for myself. It’s a series of eurekas, not so much one big dramatic one as I had hoped, but numerous important ones I had to learn to notice and celebrate. Now they come thick and fast as long as I keep my awareness awake
There are the practical active habits I gave 4 examples of lat time, and there are the attitudinal habits, the mindset ways to approach habit creation. Then there are the things I removed, which I’m calling the non- habits
I recap and recommit to my purpose and intention with this podcast. Of all the practical implementable habits, the core four I’ve found most powerful are here. Food, movement, circadian cycle, feet
The police called me a victim of an offence because my car’s plates were stolen. I wonder about the subliminal effect of that word and similar words, how they convey a disempowering message that slips in under the radar
Have been realising that all these seemingly small habits over time add up to much more when they all start coming together
I learned a valuable concept from a documentary about horses and how stress builds up and can be spat out
I have found these two things to be mutually synergistic, and feel pretty happy about that!
Never heard of it? Made known by Mike Mew, British orthodontist. Placement of the tongue, mechanics of the swallow. Extraordinarily simple and huge in its ramifications. Posture, strength, face shape, airway, snoring, sleep apnoea, neck and back pain, dental alignment and probably much more besides. I’ve just found it and am loving it
I have patterns of emotions, of movement, of thoughts. I’m learning to catch myself when I fall into them and practicing the art of creating better alternatives, over time, incrementally
At times I’m buffered by contradictory self critical thoughts or outside stressors and feel distracted from what it is I’m wanting to do. Here are 5 things I’ve found that bring me back to a quieter clearer state
Common sense, your intelligence, your choices are the tools to avoid sunburn and increased risk of skin (and other) cancers. Blanket indiscriminate use of chemical sunscreens is not necessary or helpful and doesn’t build your best self
The current wave I’m in is confusion/chaos. In it, I’m riding some sneaky demons that car-selling exposed.
This is a story that’s quite well known and illustrates beautifully the clear effects of an inadequate diet on the individual AND their progeny and future generations. We are not cats but we’re not so different from cats either
Our environment in the early years is key and has a huge impact on our future AND can always be mitigated in later life with good habits
Thought conundrums, oxalates and how we dump them, thiamine and polyvagal and all the other ways to explain how we feel and function. Trying to make sense of how it all ties in together. Does it?
The phrase gets used a lot . What does it really mean? How do we reconcile our aversions to certain people?
I did a 4 hour intro to WHM we did 5 rounds of the breathing and then some ice bathing!
Short ep on fight flight freeze and changing the state of stress I was in to something a lot calmer through self talk
Tips, information and guidelines on how to be healthy and thrive can cause confusion, overwhelm and a form of freeze where we shut down or give up. It’s a fine line. I wonder what the best course is
Lots of toxic things abound in food, in homes, in cosmetics and skin care. All are pretty easy to avoid exposure to
Just don't eat any, ever. Unless you enjoy being chemically castrated, pacified, manipulated by religious and corporate agendas.
Just as important as food, whole body movement is much more than exercise and has all the benefits for a long luxurious wonderful life
What we take on as a new thing we are bound to question, doubt, and then either abandon or recommit to. This is natural. Don’t worry about it.
My first health intervention was food, back in 2013, with dramatic results. Summarising the general principles and ideas behind an ideal human diet for health
In my book about what habits I cultivate that lead me to the life I want the first one is to work on a project of creating a certain way of perceiving our world. This sets the ground for building the more practical habits such as what foods and physical actions to dial in
Being “judgemental “ is commonly judged as bad, immature, evil, etc. But what’s at the root of that impulse, is there something there that is actually a necessary self protective mechanism which we then overlay with invented meanings?
Reflecting on the secret lives of lucky cows with high IQs and active social lives as well as on my long car trip through large scale industrial monocrop agriculture in Brazil, death on a grand scale, poisoning the earth and other cheerful topics.
The first 4 foods I stopped eating back in 2014 and have never missed. Very soon after giving them up my health took a dramatic turn for the better. Sugar, gluten, seed oils and soy.
I got a biofeedback device for watching my heart rate variability go up and down and learning to control that, pretty awesome. And the polyvagal model to explain fight, flight and freeze
Starting this fledgling work-in-progress podcast has been of huge therapeutic value as well as giving me as much gold as have the real live coaches, mentors and trainers I’ve had so far. Gold in a different form.
Borrowing Katy Bowman’s excellent analogy from her book Move Your DNA to illustrate how the paucity of our movement repertoire creates our aches and pains
Slaves in chains invented the salsa because their ankles were bound together. Joy can be found even when things look dark
An advantage I’ve found so far is I’m going to save not only quite a bit of money but also a lot of time and mental space by eating only animal foods
A DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation) session clarifies the difference between a clear purpose and a conflicted mix of purposes
Also first day back at work feeling powerless and determined to get better at helping my patients thrive through changing habits and reclaim power over their health
After hearing a fascinating interview with Szofia Clemens on Paul Saladino’s podcast Fundamental Health, I decided to dive into a new dietary experiment, animal foods, nose to tail
We use the word diet a lot, but do we mean a diet we are on for a reason or the diet that is “best” for us long term? The distinction and the details are important
Our beliefs about ourselves started forming in early childhood. Some are no longer useful to us now. We can identify them, recognise they helped us survive at the time then move forward with creating new ones that make for sense for today. We can do all that without railing at ourselves, our beliefs or our parents and others whose words and actions were the stimulus that led to the beliefs.
We watch people do seemingly impossible feats. We may think “oh I could never do that”. The truth is we all could do that IF we made the conscious decision to do what’s necessary to acquire the skill over time and IF that skill is important to us
We may expect all or none magic wand changes in ourselves. If we focus on that we miss the gradual non-linear changes that occur. Those are we need to celebrate and recognise if we are to keep up morale and enthusiasm
Practicing the art of expressing what it is that I want to do. I want self-responsibility to spread like a virus across the world as a force for good
If we make changes to our habits and do things people aren’t expecting it helps to spend some time refining our responses to their reactions
Crafting your future can be a lonely confusing journey but there is plenty of help out there, if you are willing to put in the work required to access it and to make best use of it.
Becoming a type 2 diabetic is not a mysterious unexplained piece of bad luck, it’s a clear path consisting of ingesting an amount of sugar and ultraprocessed grains above your personal threshold for handling them and doing so over a period of decades. Entirely avoidable.
Feet and armpits can smell differently in different conditions. When is this a bad thing and when isn’t it, and why is it?
Drawers full of skin products encased in plastics all ending up in the oceans and waterways, time and mental energy squandered, and the perfected-over-eons skin protective layer we all have stripped off and sent down the plug hole.... NOT a recipe for thriving!
Musings on different aspects of how learning occurs, barriers and limitations to it, ways it occurs and the need for proof of learning especially in the presence of negative self-talk
They were the next two steps along the path to building a future me that I did want to head towards, one without physical pains and stiffness, one with agility, strength, capability
Just a small expression of gladness that I did the Clickfunnels OFA challenge because it got me on my way
It’s tempting to label yourself and others as quitters when a change of direction takes place, is it really that simple? Or it actually decisiveness in action?
We can shape ourselves through carefully attending to what we think about and generating thoughts that take us forward. We all have this capacity but it’s not a quick fix, it takes commitment, time, patience
The next paradigm shift I had after food, movement and going barefoot was courtesy of the wonderful podcast Rewild Yourself. Then I talk about doing what is hard, but not that hard, to create a future me that is the one I want, not the one I end up with through inaction
A Buddy Practice and this podcast, how expressing myself imperfectly is the road to service and contribution
Feet are meant to walk naked on all kinds of different surfaces and terrains. Transitioning methodically is important. The entire body is influenced by the health and condition of our feet so it’s worth taking the time to make changes
After food I discovered the importance of movement, by which I mean natural movement, what we evolved to do. And I can't believe I forgot to mention Katy Bowman's book Move Your DNA which totally rocked my world and has opened my eyes to a wonderful world.
For me it started with changing what I ate. A lot of research time came first and then action. The effects were nothing short of miraculous and turned my life around. That was my first step in this path to change and learning to write myself a better future
When we make nourishing choices and create better habits for the long term there are bound to be hiccups along the way, especially at times of stress. Don’t beat yourself up! Just make a plan and move forward
Maybe you find yourself saying the same things about yourself and you don't even know you are doing it. What do those things reveal about your hidden assumptions, and do those assumptions serve you, do they help make you more or less in control of your own destiny? If you want to be the creator or your own life story and the architect of your own health instead of the passive recipient of events and circumstances that shape how you are, then a simple start is to catch yourself saying those little things that sublty disempower, and replace them with different words.
If course we want to pay attention to our inner impulses and desires but what if our body tells us to eat chocolate cake all day, should we believe it?
Many writers have referred to this concept of a mismatch between how we currently live and the environment that created us through our evolution. Here's where I spell out what is meant by that.
I had an impulse to help people suffer less and I sat on it for years and did nothing. This podcast is firstly about me getting over my inertia, making myself start SOMETHING however imperfect, and oh yes it's certainly that alright. Well, gotta start somewhere, this will be a way to document the process of going from totally inexpert to ..... we shall see! If I improve not one iota over the next 365 days I shall retire in ignominy to the halls of obscurity
There's a lot written about the importance of sleep and all the detrimental things that happen when we don't sleep enough. There's a lot written about habits that help to create good regular sleep habits. But what if you know all that, and you did all the things, and you still are lying there in bed, awake? What do you do then?
To build the future YOU that you want, you need to know what it is you do want in your future. Get clarity by letting all those thoughts OUT of your head. That way they will start to make more sense and little by little will lead you to clarity, which leads to moving forwards and building the future that you want. Better than passively waiting for that future to arrive by itself - it may not be one you like.