Alana Grier - Mindful Moments For Self Care

Wendy Manganaro: 0:00

Hi everyone. My name's Wendy Manganaro and I am the Host of the Wellness and Wealth podcast. I'm so happy to have you find us. And if you could take a moment and hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. This is the podcast where we believe when you show up better for yourself as a woman business owner, you show up better for your business. So sit back, relax. And learn from the practical to the woo-hoo, how to best take care of you. Have a great day. Stay blessed. And leave a review when you're done listening to the show, thanks so much.

Wendy: 0:38

Hi everyone. Welcome back. Today we're talking about mindful moments for self-care, and I have Alana Grier and Alana is a yoga and mindfulness teacher, integrative health coach, and licensed massage therapist in New Mexico. She began her studies in eastern medicine and meditation in 1987 at the New England Shiatsu Center in Boston, Massachusetts and now have more than 30 years of education experience in health and wellness. Using sound and music to bring healing and balance is central to her practice as a yogi. Musician and sound healer. Alana is the school director for the Peaceful Mind Yoga School, formerly 365 Poly Yoga Instructor School, and the lead trainer for the 200 hour Devani yoga teaching training. This well-rounded teacher training provides interested students of yoga supportive space to individualize their practice and deepen their understanding for yoga. Alana supports her clients with yoga, coaching, mindfulness and hypnotherapy in her office in Tayo and online through Zoom. Welcome Milana.

Alana Grier: 1:48

Thank you. It's so great to be here, Wendy.

Wendy: 1:50

Thank you. And I'm looking forward to this show because we're gonna talk about those small moments of self-care, because a lot of people think that self-care, it has to be this elongated. Sit for 60 hours to meditate type of thing sometimes. And so this is good to talk about like how we fit self-care into those moments during the day. Of course, my first question is what does mindful questioning mean to.

Alana Grier: 2:16

So mindfulness is being in the moment with acceptance and that key thing of being an acceptance, or we could think of it as neutrality rather than having any kind of a charge to it can be a real challenge in challenging times. So mindful questioning is really checking in with your thinking, but in a mindful way. I call it a thought audit. If we're auditing our thoughts, we're really just checking in and going, what am I thinking about right now? And there's been different studies over the last few decades about how many thoughts we have a day. It's now currently everybody's agreed upon more like 6,000 thoughts a day or six and a half thoughts a minute. And, there's other statistics going around. I really don't know how they get this, but I did read how they got the six and a half thoughts per minute. I understand that, but another statistic going around is 80% plus of our thoughts are repetitive and not remotely helpful. And that does actually sound pretty true from my perspective. So mindful questioning is looking at your thoughts, but with a mindfulness approach. So that's letting go of judgments and that can be challenging, right? Having patience, having a beginner's mind, I think of it like you're an investigator who's trying to get to the bottom of it, and, you have a neutrality with it. So you're investigating your thoughts, you're auditing your thoughts, you're noticing what you're thinking about, you're noticing how often do you feel in control of your thinking? And when you're able to just kind of stop, quiet, your thoughts, meditate, how well does your mind cooperate with you? And that's gonna fluctuate of course, depending on what's going on with you. But how often is your thinking out of control? How often is your thinking really leading to what I would call stinking thinking? There's a quote from Mark Twain that says, I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. And that is really the sum of our reality, our minds and our stinking thinking and our worrying about, what could possibly be is not actually very helpful and it's not often very true. So when it comes to your thought audit, there's just two questions I recommend you start with, and that is when you notice your thoughts, you notice the color of them. Are they neutral? Are they negative? Are they positive? And then you ask yourself, is this true? And is this helpful? Because a lot of times we come to the conclusion that we can't possibly know if it's true. I don't know that I'm gonna, lose my job tomorrow or not be able to pay the rent next month, or I don't know that this person doesn't like me. They could just be having a bad day. I'm not a mind reader. So a lot of our thoughts are not necessarily true and they're not necessarily helpful. So the more we kind of just stop with interest, curiosity, beginner's mind, no judgment, and just go, okay, what's going on with my thinking today? Am I in control of it at all? Can I stop it? Can I quiet? And if not, I'm gonna start to what I call weeding out those thoughts that aren't helpful and it is very much like weeding they will grow back. But like weeding, once you've done your diligence and once you've done quite a bit of work of weeding out those thoughts that are not helpful and not true. They grow back a lot slower and it's a lot easier for you when those weeds pop back up. You're like, oh, that's easy. One weed. Got it. Rather than a whole field getting ready to plant your garden. And then of course, that leaves room for the thoughts that are helpful and are true. And that would be, coming into gratitude and stopping into the moment and honoring what's really happening.

Wendy: 6:25

That's incredible. I have a follow up question cuz you said key things in the beginning, especially in all of it, but, this idea of acceptance and neutrality. I think a lot of people struggle, especially in an ever-changing world, cuz everything changes constantly for us and so it's this, okay, I accept this, and then something else changes. I accept this, and then something else changes. And I think that there's something about this neutrality. Do you do in your experience as you're talking about all of this, is that the hardest thing for us to do as people do you think is that acceptance? And when we start looking at this, when, especially when we're talking about all of those thoughts all at once, which is a lot by the way, and I concur probably most of them not useful. This idea of things that really aren't happening and true. Do you think it's base fear that we're dealing with? I always feel like I'm like, okay. Especially your example of I'm not gonna be able to pay the rent next month. That's not really what the fear is behind it. It's usually I'm gonna be homeless, but we don't think that at first we think, I'm not gonna be able to pay the rent. I'm gonna lose my job. And then we just start down this trail.

Alana Grier: 7:30

We start down that stinking thinking rabbit hole that, Mark Twain says, I've worried about a lot of things. A few of which have happened. And how many gray hairs do I have from worrying about things that were not really even remotely, something I needed to worry about if I had, come back to that place of for one, it's a lot of falling into what's within my control, what can I do about it? And those two questions really help you to arrive there. Is it helpful? Is it true? Is two very good places to start and then you know, next is there anything I can do about it? So if there's something I can do about it and I can shift to feeling empowered, then great. If there's nothing I can do about it, I have to come to a place of trust. I have to really do my work to calm my own nervous system down. Because we are surrounded by triggers and they're getting worse and worse and worse. The world feels like spinning faster. And the information age has just taken over and AI. Amazon's telling us what we need to order before we know we're out of it. This world is feeling a lot faster and I'm personally noticing how much I'm having to deal with technology and there's this resonance factor, of technology, all of this stuff around me in my house, and there's just so much refrigerators and things that are buzzing at this 60 Hertz and that resonance that's at the top of our thinking. That's at a very hyper arousal state for our mind. Our mind actually works, from kind of four hertz to 60 hertz they say, and I'm sure that they'll discover more. But, we can't always be at this accomplishing doing. Place with our nervous system. Our nervous system. Our mind is designed to go all the way down to this four hertz deep sleep state, and then this trance-like state. And then the alpha range is when we're in this meditative, enjoyable state. That's for everybody. It's really just how fast is your brain waves going and when they're at eight to 13 hertz, you're in a beautiful sublime state. You're present, you're here, you're alert, and yet you're fully relaxed. And that's the alpha zone. So the problem is it's hard for us to get into alpha. Because of this resonance factor of, I think the electric grid and the EMFs and all of this is very much affecting us and our nervous system, but also just the stressors of how am I gonna pay my bills and oh my gosh, I have these deadlines and social stressors of having to deal with difficult people at work or in the family. There are just so many stressors, What I've done with mindfulness over the last, 15 years of my life since I really delve deep and discovered it, because I am a single mom. My kids are all adults now, but there was a period of 18 years where I was raising my five children without any child support or any support of any kind. And all I had was seconds. So these mindful moments is taking a moment to reset my nervous system to notice that I'm getting stressed, to notice those indicators that I'm getting stressed, and then to do what I can to counter that and come out of that and not let myself be triggered left and right. So, Insulating yourself from those stressful people, insulating yourself from the news for a period of time that you need, a respite from the world, that kind of thing

Wendy: 11:23

it's so interesting you were talking about the stressors and info, especially info technology age that we live in, and it's very interesting. Me and I started to say this probably. In the start of my marketing career is, especially when I used to do free courses for parents. The internet and safety and all of that. And I was like, the fact of the matter is all of the information's always been there. How we used to get it was so slowed down. When you think about it, we had people riding on horses to give the news at one point in time. And then we went to newspapers where people had it right in front of them and they, but they still had it in a 24 hour lag. And then we were watching the five 30 news at night. There was times for it. And it had a beginning and an end. And now we're living in a time, there's no end to it. Unless we shut it off. And it takes the responsibility of us to be like, okay, how much of this do I really want in my world? So it's our responsibility to shut it off, but it's not that it's not there. And I think that has done something to us to make us feel like we always have to be on.

Alana Grier: 12:29

Yep. Yeah, do, do, do. Accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. It's, but the rest and the rest is absolutely critical.

Wendy: 12:37

Yeah. I always teach that too, is, and I've done some other things like, being responsible for your own social media, and that's part of it is you are responsible for going on, shutting it off, seeing what's in your newsfeed, hiding what you don't wanna see, because. It. Nobody's forcing that on you. And then, so it's all of these things that you learned how to take this respite so that you can be healthier. I am curious as you're starting to talk about your story a little bit is, you're talking about these one minute check-ins. I have a feeling it's to put the questions you were asking, but what exactly is that and how did you start doing them?

Alana Grier: 13:08

Well, I've been teaching yoga for 30 years now. Thankfully, I discovered at a very young age. And, I was teaching in a Montessori school, so, a teacher's aide, and just started with the kids then, and I took off and I've always taught yoga. I'm grateful for that. But I fell into mindfulness about 15 years ago when I was working at the University of New Mexico. And teaching an evidence-based stress management program that opened up the door to mindfulness-based stress reduction, developed by John Capen and his colleagues at UMass. And so I stuck to that evidence-based system for about little over seven years and worked within that system, which is very profound and very valuable. But about seven years ago, I fell into the addiction recovery niche because one of my kids, one of my five children, was struggling with addiction at the time and I was raised by a father who's an alcoholic, and I'd always wanted to get involved with Al-Anon, and explore that kind of support a little bit more. But when my son fell into it, that's when I was like, okay, this is what time it is. I have to address this and in that I just found myself on this path of offering mindfulness to addiction recovery. There was every possible scenario. I was in a, 30 day rehab doing a weekly group with them. They were paying somewhere upwards of $30,000 for their 30 days of rehab. And they were getting mindfulness groups as part of that. And that was, one group that I worked with. I was also working with people who were caught in the system and had gotten in trouble, who'd gotten in a D W I and had to do my mindfulness class as part of it. And a few other nonprofits, and then also high school. So with that niche, there wasn't a lot of patience. There wasn't the amount of patience I saw in my groups that were doing the mindfulness-based stress reduction, and I knew I had to meet them where they were. And so I started to just do quicker things with them One minute, type of things that all they needed to do was commit to, if they remembered to do it, take a minute to do it. So the one minute check-in is something I developed and it's first you check in physically. And so what that looks like is, closing your eyes or relaxing your gaze so your attention can go inward. And almost if you can imagine an M R I from your feet to the crown of your head, you're scanning your attention with that neutrality, with no judgment, with that interest and curiosity beginner's mind exploring, okay, what's happening in my body today? How do my feet feel? Oh, they're cold. Okay. How are my shins and calves, or nothing's really going on there. How's my sits bones? Okay. My glutes are really holding, so as you're just going through and noticing, oh, my shoulders are tense. Oh, there's pain here whatever's going on, there's no judgment. You're just checking in. And we take that a little further as we go and we work on things that we can do physically. When after doing that quick check-in, we notice that there is a lot of buildup or a lot of tension or a lot of stagnant energy. There's one minute things we can do to move it. So that's the physical check-in. The mental check-in. As we pointed out with the first topic, we address is that it's going okay, what am I thinking? Is it helpful? Is it true? How active is my mind right now? There's no judgment. Your mind is going to fluctuate throughout the day, sometimes you just need to space out and not think about anything, and sometimes it's racing, so you're just checking in how busy. What am I working with here and what are the color of my thoughts? Are they neutral? Are they negative and are they helpful or are they true? And there's deeper processes we can go there. Then the emotional check-in. That's a big aha, because, emotions are so mysterious, especially, it's a cultural thing. It's a gender thing. Women can't be angry, men can't cry, everybody has like their own relationship with emotions, but emotions are a part of. And we in the West often have this attitude of, if we're not living happily ever after, there's something wrong with us and reality check is we are going to be sad, we are going to be mad, we are going to feel ashamed or guilty. We are going to feel fear and anxiety. There we're going to feel the full gamut of feelings. And so just making space for that. Even if it's for one minute a day, just checking in and going, what am I feeling? Where are those feelings in my body? Where do they live? What are the sensations that they create? Exploring them again with interest and curiosity. And then lastly, And each one of these, obviously it can be one minute or longer check-ins in and of themselves, but we get good at just like doing all four of them in a moment. And the environment you wanna pay attention to how that affects you. How are those fluorescent lights affecting you when you walk into Walmart? How is the wind affecting you when you go outside? The environment can really stress us out. People around us in the environment, noises around us in the environment smells. Different things can really affect our nervous system and stress us. So this information is telling us a lot if we are willing to do this on even a daily basis for one minute, just checking in, physically, checking in, mentally, checking in with our emotions, checking in environmentally, because it gives us that feedback of how different environments affect us. If I do that check-in at Walmart versus by the sitting by the stream. When I'm going along for a hike, it's a very different experience and it starts to tell me that if I really need an environmental support with my nervous system, I should go out by the spring and not go to Walmart today.

Wendy: 19:28

Yeah, I'm laughing cuz I have a friend. We do like these check-ins too. And I'm laughing because it's always amazing how I check in with myself and it's so wonderful when I'm alone. When there is nobody, I'm like, I had a great day today. Huh? I didn't come across that many people. There's no problems. In other days I'm like, what happened to me today? But you're talking about environment, but it does have a difference with the people that you come across in the day of even as simple as, you were talking about the Environment show, uh, reminded me of a show that I'm doing that'll be aired on sustainability. Is even going to the store and who's in front of you in line and how are they, if you catch that conversation between them and the cashier of. How are they reacting when they're asked? How are you? Is everything great? It's just a very interesting thing that you start to like really catch what's in your environment that way. And you're like and how many people say I'm great and then go into a whole line of problems cracks me up every time. I'm like, well, that's a curious way of looking at everything's good. So for female entrepreneurs specifically, when we're talking about these things, right? And we're talking about one minute check-ins and, what being mindful really is, what are the signs they could use some centering. What are those things that are, your world is, feels a little upside down and you need something to come back to.

Alana Grier: 20:49

Yeah. So it's what you were just describing about how different people can affect you. And, you start to notice that the more you check in, so you know, step one is doing the check-in more and more often, checking in with yourself because you can catch yourself sooner when you're starting to feel stressed and the answer to that is stress, symptoms of stress. And that shows up differently for everybody, obviously. But there are some similarities of not being able to sleep well. Mind is racing, feeling anxiety even to panic attacks. We can say from zero to 10, how stressed are you right now? That's another good check-in. And if you are above a five, then doing things to counter. And that would be step one, the breathing practice. It's estimated 60 to 80% of primary care visits are due to stress. And people are going to their doctor specifically, they know that their issue is caused by stress. And we've all had that experience of that last stressor around the holiday season and then, okay, we're getting sick now. I can feel it coming. That was it. That stressor sent me over the edge and my immune system tanked, and now I'm getting sick. We know that it has to do with our physical health, and yet only 3% of patients ever received any kind of stress management support. Your breath is the fundamental key to your parasympathetic nervous system. So breathing practice is something that. Is fundamental with managing your stress. It's actually, the breath is a key, the diaphragm, as it draws down, it hits a trigger on the vagus nerve that sends the message to the nervous system. Everything is okay. We can relax. We're safe, we're not in danger. And animals have their own coping mechanism with that a deer who's in danger and gets chased by a predator is gonna shake out. In the woods, if they survive that incident, they're gonna shake off that adrenaline and that cortisol and all that stress. And we humans don't often cope, with our stressors that way. And then we have all these perceived stressors. From the news, from finances, from, the interactions with difficult people, those kind of stressors that really aren't life and death, and yet our nervous system responds the same way. We are in this sympathetic fight or flight state. We can't sleep, we can't digest our food. Our body is not set up to do these metabolic processes that we must do during our relaxation and recovery time. Half of our life should be spent in recovery. We can see that, we are made to sleep through the night and be awake through the day and, We can't really sleep very well if we aren't in relaxation mode. And these days we need help to get out of fight or flight. We need all the help we can get. And so the breath is the fundamental key that you always have at your disposal. And you know you need it. If you're experiencing any symptoms of stress, whether it's below a five to closer to a 10, you're gonna benefit from doing deep breathing practices because you're gonna get your body into relaxation mode sooner. And the more you foster that, the better.

Wendy: 24:37

Yeah, I love doing it. Recently, I learned how to do box breaths. Those are so incredible. They like work better than any other, I've been meditating for years. I don't know how, I didn't learn about that, but I'm like, that is the ultimate calm, the four in, hold four. I'm like, that's amazing. So I love that you're talking about breath, because it is one of those things, and I've said it before and I've heard it before, is thankfully humans Don't have to do this on our own accord. We would forget with all the stress in our life, so to be mindful about it and take that time to do the breath work so that you can calm yourself because it is such a natural thing. We do it. We wouldn't be here if we didn't, but to really spend time with the miracle that it is the grace of it because we completely take it for granted because we don't really think about it because it's so automatic.

Alana Grier: 25:25

Yeah. To do it with intention, even if it's just for five breaths a day, makes a lot of difference.

Wendy: 25:32

It makes a huge difference. And now I'd love to talk about, if you're female entrepreneurs and you realize you could use like an attitude adjustment, what's one, practical step that they can take?

Alana Grier: 25:44

So a couple of attitude adjustments that I find really helpful is step one, judgment. I think it is our default to go into judgment and it works well for us. You can think about it and go, yeah, sure. Whether or not I wanna eat this thing. Is it a quality? Is it that I wanna eat and put in my body that's judging or assessing? I think of it more of assessing and I'd rather personally, the more mindful I've become through my life, the more I'd rather assess situations with neutrality than judge. I don't see judging, it has its positive place, but I think we all need to take a vacation from it. And I put it that way, especially with my addiction recovery folks, because they feel like they need to hang on to some judgment, which I get. But we can always check in with our judgements and go, Hey, is this true? Is this helpful? Those two simple questions, all you need to remember for your attitude adjustment. Trying to come into gratitude real quick. Heart math is 35 plus years of science to prove that placing your hands over your heart for a moment and dropping into the breath and what you're grateful for is an instant attitude adjustment that can literally raise your frequency. And put you, if you were on the edge of immune system tanking cuz you're so feeling so stressed. Just a moment of touching base with the heart and what you're grateful for is a very powerful attitude adjustment. So checking in with judgements, are they true? Are they helpful right now? If not, I'm taking a vacation from that judgment. And yeah, that takes practice. It's a lot easier set than done. Absolutely. The more triggered you are, the harder it is but also coming to gratitude can give us a reality check of all that we have to be grateful for because we all can fall into catastrophizing. We all can fall into, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. This one thing didn't work out. And the attitude adjustment for that is coming back to a beginner's mind. I don't know. Who knows? This is the very first breath I'm having. In this moment like this, on this day, this is the last time I will experience this day, this moment. Having that kind of beginner's mind and interest in life and acceptance. And I think as entrepreneurs, it's really essential to come back to. Is my life, are the actions I'm taking today value driven? Are they in line with my values? What are my values now? Do I know what my values are? Because sure they tend to stay pretty close to the same through life. But I'm in a really different place at an empty nest than I was 30 years ago with a baby. So, my values have changed some as life progresses and as your circumstance changes, it's really good to reassess your values and make sure that what you're doing in life is aligned with them. Because if we're just goal driven, we aren't happy until that goal is accomplished. If we're value driven, every step we take is an action toward our values. Every step we take feels like an empowerment because we are going in the direction of what we believe in. So I think those kinda, attitude check-ins of what are my values? Is this in line with my values? Letting go of judgment. Especially taking a little mini vacation from it if it's not true, but it's not helpful and coming back to the beginner's mind and gratitude is really a quick attitude shift.

Wendy: 29:49

Thank you for that. I couldn't agree more with many of the things you talked about today because I really, especially when you're talking about alignment and you're talking about your value systems, cuz one of the things that's important to me is when I work with people is always does your value system match what you were saying out in the community and the world with your business? Because a lot of times, whether it we take on clients that we know we shouldn't, whatever it is, it has to be aligned because if it's not, somebody's gonna feel it and you're not gonna attract the right people. And I think that when you're more mindful and you're more value driven, you attract the things in your life that really are where you're at as opposed to. Sitting there going, this is not what I want. This is not what I want. And now I'm getting more of what I don't want. And learning how to align, yourself and then your business and that, I think even with that goes to aligning yourself. Then your family becomes more aligned and not that we're gonna do that perfectly, but it's more congruent when we're saying and doing, What we're aligned with and what our value system is. So I couldn't agree more. This has been a lovely chat. I know you have an offer for our audience, so I'd love for you to share what that is with everybody right now.

Alana Grier: 30:58

So I'm excited to share free 20 minute initial coaching session and it's a mindfulness session to touch base with what's going on with you and what mindfulness tools I may have to support you with that. I do lead mindfulness groups and launching a constant mindfulness course that will always be accessible. So finally the work I've been doing for the last 15 years, I'm getting it into a program. Online accessible to more people, which has been a long-term goal of mine. And I would love to meet with you for 25 minutes and work with you on what your goals are and hopefully we can find some tools that really work for you to support you with, living a value centered life. So you can go to my website, 365 well.net. And there's a lot of different places where you can click on to register for a free 15 minute session. And when you do that, you will get a 25 minute session with me. It's the simplest way to go, so we're gonna keep it that.

Wendy: 32:16

Thank you so much again for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time and talking about mindfulness.

Alana Grier: 32:22

Thank you, Wendy.

Wendy: 32:24

And to my listeners, if you love what you heard today, please subscribe for other self-care shows that will be coming out. Also, if you love what you heard from Alana today, make sure that you leave a review. In the meantime, have a blessed day.