Tina 00:00:00 Hey guys, as promised, I am back for part two of the Spring Reset series. It's a three part series and we are talking this week about resetting the body. Last week we talked about resetting the mind. If you haven't listened to that, I will definitely put the link in the show notes so you can go back and listen to that. You don't have to listen to this in any certain order. You can listen to any of them at any time. So no worries about that. And as I said today we're talking about how to reset the body. But before I get started, I just wanted to let you know that this Friday, which is hold on, what is Friday State, the 21st is the spring equinox, and I'm going to be doing a live free meditation breathwork journaling session. And this is kind of a little mini spring reset. It's about setting new intention intentions, like letting the old stuff wash away from winter, clearing everything up and moving into the spring ready to grow and expand.
Tina 00:01:00 So if you want to join me for that free session, it's going to be Friday. Like I said, I'll put the link in the show notes, so be sure to sign up. I'm not sure if I'm going to be doing, like, a replay. I'll, I'll I'll just think about it. it would be better if you were there live. It's going to be just a small group of people. But I would love to have you. Let's get into today's episode. You're listening to the Soul Online Self-care podcast. I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out. The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and the soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen. Let's get into it. Hello guys! I am back with part two of the Spring Reset series, which is a three part series, and this week we are going to be talking about resetting the body.
Tina 00:02:21 And this is one of my most favorite topics. So when I think about resetting the body, two things come to mind for me. First, resetting the nervous system through somatic practices. Because if we don't feel safe and comfortable in our bodies, it's hard to kind of flow through life with that ease that we all kind of want to feel. And then second, I think it's how we nourish our bodies with food. What are we using to fuel ourselves? Now, before you come out, may, about movement or physical exercise. And I am very I actually love exercise. I'm one of those annoying people who likes almost all types of exercise except lifting weights. I really don't like doing that, but I do do it sometimes. But let me clarify a little bit. I totally include, physical exercise in the category of somatic practices, because so many of my somatic practices that I use in my life are actual physical exercise. Not all of them, but some of them. And it seems to really kind of work out for me.
Tina 00:03:30 I think it's a much nicer way to frame it than saying, I have to go work out or I have to go to the gym. Unless you love doing that. Like there were times where I did, CrossFit. I also did MMA for a while, where I really did love going to the gym. But instead, you know, nowadays I think of what kind of movement does my body need today, and that's how I go about my daily workouts. Really. So let's break it down into three ways to reset the body for the spring reset. And I'm going to start with somatic Practices because it's my personal favorite. I feel like this kind of work has really, really saved my life. So a lot of, you know, in the soul line self-care community, that at 39, I had a stroke caused by stress. Now, if you're new here, you probably don't know that. But so this was a long time ago. This was about probably around 2007, I think. And that experience really shifted everything for me.
Tina 00:04:30 And I've been focused on somatic practices for almost a decade now, and I've learned what works for me and different situations. And I'm going to share with you what those things are. But the first thing I want you to consider is, you know, when you're thinking about using somatic practices to, to, to heal and calm your nervous system is what am I experiencing right now? What kind of emotions? So stress, anger, anxiety, sadness, whatever it might be. Once you identify the emotion, the next step is figuring out what helps you move through it. Because here's the thing we can't avoid emotions. And, you know, frankly, I don't think we really want to because there's some really good ones, right? They're a part of life. But emotions are definitely information. And I think that's a really good way to look at them. If you're having some kind of a strong emotion, there's information behind that. Why you know, what's going on. You need to like, acknowledge it and respect your emotions.
Tina 00:05:32 It's about looking at the emotion, understanding what it means for you and then learning how to respond to it instead of react and then move through it. Okay, you don't want to stay there. You don't want to stay in anger or stress or anxiety, but you you need those things in order for your survival. They're giving you information of what you're what you're experiencing in your life. So another thing I want to bring forward is that what works for me might not work for you. And that's okay. It's all about experimenting with different practices during different situations and seeing what resonates with you. I did a podcast episode on creating your own self-care toolbox that might help you do this, and I'm definitely going to put the link for that in the show notes so that you could check it out. If you really need to figure this out. I'll go over it a little bit in this podcast episode, but everybody's different. And like I said, what works for me might not work for you, but I'm going to share like my favorites.
Tina 00:06:32 And I'll give you a few examples of what works in some situations and doesn't work in other. So some of the somatic practices that I use sometimes every day are meditation, breathwork, walking, hiking, Running, shaking or dancing yoga nidra, which is really like a form of meditation. it's a little bit different. It could go a little longer. But yoga nidra has been like magical to me. And I think it's really interesting because my clients introduced this to me and now I am probably sometime this year going to do a certification and start making yoga Nidra recordings, along with my meditations and my breathwork. I love it so much. hanging out and cuddling with my dog. And I would include my my family members to my kids. that's very healing for me. And support of and gardening has been absolutely magical, those things. Now there's so many more somatic practices. so if you're just starting to kind of like step into this, you really want to reduce your stress and anxiety and be able to build your resilience and also, heal your nervous system, get out of fight or flight, fight and flight and get into that like, rest and digest.
Tina 00:07:49 and you're just starting. Just try different things out and see what works for you. So with these different things that I use in my life, for example, I've learned that running helps me when I'm angry because I have a lot of energy to release. But if I'm anxious about something, running actually makes it worse because it puts me into that fight or flight mode and it doesn't not feel good for me. It actually exhausts me and it kind of like breaks me down. On the other hand, breathwork works for me in almost every situation, and that's one of the reasons why I'm going through a breathwork certification right now. I have one certification and I'm doing another one that's a little bit different. because it's been that has one thing that's been life changing for me and has worked instantaneously. It's something that you could do, like right now and you could just change a lot of the things in your body. You could lower your blood pressure, it could reduce anxiety. You could reduce stress, you could relax.
Tina 00:08:51 You can energize yourself with breathwork. So it's so instantaneous. It's free. And I love it so much because it's really made a big difference in my life. And as I talked about at the beginning of the podcast and the intro, I'm doing a free session this Friday that's going to include, a meditation with a short breathwork session, and then a journaling session if you want to join me. It's completely free. And I'm probably going to be doing these sessions once a month. So once you sign up, you'll get notified every single month when I'm going to hold one of these sessions. So I would love to have you this Friday. I think it's at 530, but I'll put the link in the show notes so that you could sign up. And as I said, once you sign up, you'll get notified every single time I do one of these sessions with which I think I'm going to do like once a month. I really enjoy doing it. And so if you like breathwork, if you like meditation, if you like journaling.
Tina 00:09:53 we're going to be doing a spring reset meditation and setting intentions. So I would love to have you once again. but breathwork, the one place that doesn't usually work for me is when I'm sad. When I'm sad, I kind of just want to cry because it's like a release, and then I really just want to spend time with my favorite people for support, you know? Or just cuddle with my dog, you know? So I've learned over time the things that work for me. And so the key for you is to ask yourself what works for you? What works for you? So to get started, I think the best way would be to like try one of these practices that works for a lot of people, like some of the really more common ones, like breathwork, meditation, walking, walking in nature is very healing. And then take note of how it helps or how it maybe doesn't help. So like, I loved tapping for a while, but tapping really only helped me with like focus and stuff like that.
Tina 00:10:52 It didn't really help me reduce stress. And so I don't use that for reducing stress. And I and I don't really use tapping a lot anymore because I don't really have trouble focusing too much. But some people use tapping. It's also called EFT Emotional Freedom Technique tapping. a lot of people use that very, very often to reduce stress and anxiety, and it's very helpful to a lot of people. so that might be something that would work for you. That doesn't always work for me. that's a perfect example. so you try to try one of those more common practices. And as I said, take note and see if it helps. And I really do recommend keeping like a physical journal to create your own self-care toolbox. Like I said, I have that other episode that I talked about where the link will be in the show notes, where you could learn how to create your self-care toolbox and until it becomes second nature, and then all of a sudden you're going to be doing these things, for yourself as like, almost like a reflex.
Tina 00:11:57 Like, I know when I get anxious, like, for example, if I wake up anxious in the morning, I'll do a breathwork session before I even get out of bed. You know, I'll, I will try to walk early in the morning and even do a yoga class. And sometimes I'll even add yoga nidra after my yoga class. That's one of my favorite things to do. and it doesn't have to. You don't have to do an hour of breathwork, an hour of yoga, and then, you know, then a 30 minutes of yoga nidra, like, who has the time to do that? You could do five minutes of breathwork. You could do a quick 20, 30 minute yoga class, which you could find for free on YouTube. You don't have to leave your house and then just do a record, a recording of a yoga nidra. And those tend to be like somewhat long, but they do have 15 minute ones. But anyway, you don't have to do all three of those things.
Tina 00:12:49 This is just something I do. And when I do this, when I do that little trifecta, sometimes, sometimes I'll even add in a little workout. Like if I don't have a lot of appointments that day or something like that. And I do realize that I am very privileged to be able to make my own schedule and work around that. but when I do this routine, it sets me up for an absolutely fabulous day. As a matter of fact, I did that this morning because I have no appointments today. I don't have a lot of responsibilities as far as work goes, and I had the time to do it, so why not do it? Why not start my day in a very relaxing day instead of trying to squeeze in more work or something like that? and if I don't have a lot of time and I really know I need to get like, maybe that yoga class in. Or maybe I know I need to get that breath work in. I'm willing to wake up a little bit earlier just to make it happen, you know? So if this is new to you, I would suggest that you start small, like try a five minute guided meditation or five minutes of breathwork once a day.
Tina 00:13:53 Trust me, we all have five minutes to spare for our self-care. Like, I really would encourage you to try to do a little bit more than five minutes. But as I said, start small. And another thing that's very important is don't stop when you feel better, okay? Just because you start to feel better, you're doing like say you're doing the breathwork or the meditation every day for five minutes. You're like, oh my God, I feel great, right? Don't stop. Keep doing these practices because it helps you build that resilience. It almost it's almost like you're filling your cup. Filling your cup. more and more and more. So then when you know, life throws some, like, Curveballs at you. You have that resilience to respond to life's ups and downs instead of constantly reacting to them. So daily self-care is very important even if you're not experiencing a, you know, dysregulated nervous system or stress anxiety, whatever you're experiencing, it's still important to take care of yourself and do these things for yourself.
Tina 00:14:55 Now moving into the second way to reset your body, I'm going to go into movement a little bit and how I kind of manage this. So it's not like some kind of a chore. Okay. Now, as I admitted earlier, I do love to work out, so it's never really usually a chore for me. Like I really like it. But, many of the somatic practices as you that I just talked about, those are, those are workouts, right? Running, walking, even like dancing in your living room, but, I, I use those somatic practices to calm and support my nervous system, but they very, very conveniently double as exercise. The important thing is to listen to your body and give it what it needs that day. For example, this morning. actually, this was yesterday because, this morning I actually did a pretty hard, like, yoga class. But yesterday morning when I woke up, it was a workout day for me. Monday is a workout day and it was raining outside, so I'm probably not going to go for a walk.
Tina 00:16:06 my body was very, very sore because I did some heavy duty garden work. I was lifting a lot of very heavy rocks, and I always tend to overdo it when I'm lifting heavy rocks, because I want to get whatever project I'm working on done. So I asked myself, what do I need today? Even though, like, I know it was a workout day, but what does my body need today? Like I'm not gonna push it to do a hard workout when I'm already tired and very sore. So I decided to do like a gentle stretching yoga class. It's really about just stretching and keeping my body healthy. And later I decided to walk on my walking pad because I wasn't going to walk outside, right? And when I walk on my walking pad, I usually like listen to my favorite podcasts. I actually go to YouTube sometimes, and I go to like those little walking tours, which is so much fun. Like you could like go to Japan or Italy or wherever you want to go.
Tina 00:17:00 And sometimes I do all of them, like I'm walking. I'm walking in Japan and I'm listening to my favorite podcast. Okay. So, the time goes by like, like so quickly, and I usually do just about three miles and I actually enjoy it. I'd much rather walk outside, but it's a good substitute for that. so now today I was feeling pretty relaxed. I didn't work out too hard yesterday. I didn't work in the garden, so I decided I'm going to do like a challenging yoga class and just want to give a shout out to cat and muffin. So I think it's spelled well. It's Kat, MF, MF I think it's in or I am, I'm not sure. But you you'll find her. She's pretty popular. She she does some pretty challenging yoga classes. So whenever I want to challenge I go to her. So, you know, I did that. I lifted a little bit of weights and I walked this morning and I, you know, what I did was I listened to my body and I gave it what it needs is I needed something like energizing to get me going.
Tina 00:18:10 I have the time today, as I said. So I didn't really have a lot that I need to do, so I definitely could spend the time to do the longer yoga class, to lift the weights, to take a long walk. So I had that time today, so that's what I gave myself. That's what I needed. Movement doesn't have to mean hitting the gym all the time. Even if hitting the gym is something you like. It could be dancing in your living room, cleaning your house, taking a walk, working in the garden. It could be so many different things. So work movement into your life in a way that feels fun and enjoyable. It feels good to your body and take the time to ask yourself, what do I need today? Let's move on to number three nutrition fueling your body with lots and lots of love, right? So when it comes to resetting the body, nutrition is a big piece of the puzzle. It's not like the whole thing, but it's a it's a big piece and I'm totally into nutrition.
Tina 00:19:09 I find it so interesting how you could change so many things in your body, and what you're experiencing by the things that you eat. I mean, it makes sense, really. It's like what you like if you put really shitty, dirty gas in your car. Your car is not going to look, run and look, run well, and then over time, it's probably going to need some work, right? It's probably going to poop out. so I would say that it's really important what we put into our body. And I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm a certified culinary nutrition educator, and I focused on plant based nutrition when I was doing the certification. so while it's hard to give personalized advice in a blog or on a podcast, I do have some really basic tips that can help everyone, right? I think one of the most important things is to be mindful about what you use to fuel your body. So like eating real food. Now that sounds kind of funny when you say it out loud.
Tina 00:20:08 Eat real food because you're probably like, I eat real food. What? What the heck do you think I eat? But I want you to, like, start looking at the ingredient lists on the things that you eat, especially if you have children. If you're listening to this and you have children or grandchildren. This is so important because the only person right now that's going to look out for you and and pay attention and protect you from the things that are being put in your food, is you. Nobody else is paying attention to this. Nobody else cares. I think I don't know if you listened to my podcast about some of the books that I read every day, every year, but one of them was salt, sugar, fat. And so if you want to learn more about how much these food companies don't care about your health, read that book. It's a really good book. It's it's, it'll change the way you think about food. but you, you know, a lot of the things that are being presented to you in the food store, you know, all the processed foods, and we have a lot of processed foods are filled with things that are just really just not good for us.
Tina 00:21:13 So look at the ingredient lists and ask yourself the question, do you know what these are? What are these things in there? Because some of them may look like terrible, terrible chemicals and they might turn out to be like, maybe vitamins or being some kind of a supplement. Right? So look it up and see what it is and then figure out how it affects your body. We all have Google. We all have AI now, so it's easier than ever and totally free to figure this out. And it's absolutely something you should really consider, because what we put in our body affects the way our body runs, and it affects how our body responds, and it affects the experience of disease that we will experience in our life. So here's a simple rule if you wouldn't give it to a small child, you probably shouldn't eat it either. So when you start eating real whole foods so like apples, bananas, potatoes, things that don't have ingredient lists, those are the best things for us. And then minimally processed foods, things with five ingredients or less that you know what they are.
Tina 00:22:19 You naturally cut out a lot of chemicals and sugar, and you'll automatically be adding in more nutrients and fiber into your diet. Which fiber is? I wrote a blog post like years ago called fibers in a New Black, and it's because fiber helps us with so many things. It helps us lose weight. It helps us control our blood sugar. It just helps with so many things. it's great for digestion, obviously. so you're just automatically going to do those with do those things without even thinking about it. So it's really, really that simple, right? You don't need a special diet. You don't need all these special things. Just focus on eating real whole food. Now I could talk about I could do a whole podcast on that. just that alone, because there's so many nuances to it. Like, I, I choose to eat all organic. I don't care how expensive it is. I choose to grow my own food, but not everybody has that available to them, you know? so as I said, it's really simple to do this, but it's not easy.
Tina 00:23:27 So like when I go to an actual food store, I don't go up and down all the aisles. Most of the time I'm just buying some. Like in the winter, I'm buying some vegetables. You know, I buy there's certain things I buy processed, like I buy tofu, I buy bread from the food store. Sometimes I buy chips, sometimes tortilla chips. It's like one of my favorites. There are things I buy buy peanut butter, but I buy, like, all natural peanut butter. So there's things I buy from the food store. But like the peanut butter I buy has two ingredients peanuts and salt. That's it. Right. So that's what I'm talking about. So let me get back on track here because I'm starting to like, ramble, which is something that I do. I know food can be pricey and probably getting even more pricier. So if you're and if you're like me, you don't want to live on rice and beans. Although I do love rice and beans. I am, I love just sticking, you know, rice and beans in a pot at such an easy dinner with some veggies in there.
Tina 00:24:26 I love it, but I don't want to eat that all the time. So that's why I did start growing my own food years ago. And even if you have a small space, even if you just have like a porch or an apartment and you just have that porch, I highly recommend growing something, even if it's just herbs. because you will save money and you will add nutrition into your life and it's so much fun growing stuff. Okay. I'm actually starting a series on my YouTube channel and on my Patreon. I'm sharing a lot of these things that I'm doing just for free. so you could follow me for free on Patreon, or you can go over to YouTube. It's soul line self-care. and I'm doing a series called Seed to Table, and I think I'm just starting this week. I still have to edit the the video that I created for this week. But I'm starting with the seeds, planting seeds, and I'm teaching you how to do that. So if you're interested, go over there and watch that and you could start your own little mini garden.
Tina 00:25:24 You can even grow herbs right in your kitchen if you want. You don't need a space, but you should definitely check that out. And it's definitely something I started growing vegetables, I don't know, maybe like ten years ago. And, I've lived in a lot of different houses since then. I've had apartments, but I've always had something, you know, I actually rented a house once where I wasn't allowed to plant anything, but I still did, because, you know, that's how I am, and but I, I kind of hid it like I grew like a zucchini plant in between two shrubs, like I did stuff like that. So there's so many things that you could do. I actually thought of, I saw this bit on, I think it was TikTok, where it was a young, I think it was a young guy, and he went around. He lived in like a very residential neighborhood, and he planted pumpkin seeds and people's, like, landscaping. And I just thought it was so hilarious.
Tina 00:26:20 And they came up and a lot of the people just, like, left them there. And I thought it would be really fun to just go around town. And I guess you could call it like seed graffiti, you know, just plant seeds randomly and just see if it comes up and see if, like, you just start growing food all over town, like, people can have, like, free zucchinis. anyway, even if you have a small space, you can grow some food. One last thing. Don't get too strict or serious about your diet, right? That's the worst thing that you could do. You're just adding it. It will stress you out. And we're trying to reduce stress here, so eating should be fun and enjoyable. I freaking love eating. Anybody who knows me knows I love to eat. just aim to eat whole, nourishing foods 80% of the time and you'll be totally golden. Okay, you don't have to be perfect all the time. You have to have some fun.
Tina 00:27:17 You know, I junk processed crap every once in a while. you know, I love sweets. Everybody knows that. So, you don't have to be perfect. You could also start reading. Another thing that you could do that is really helpful, that doesn't take a lot of time, is you could start reading the labels of all the staples that you have, like in your fridge and your pantry. And as you run out of something. So say like, I don't know, a salsa or a salad dressing. Salad dressing has some of the worst ingredients in it. if you can make one thing at home, make your own salad dressing because it tastes so much better and it's so much healthier. But anyway, as you run out of something, you replace it with a healthier options. And there are some healthier options. Sometimes, like Newman's can be healthy. or I should say, I think making your own is the best bet, but anyway, replacing it with a healthier option so it doesn't have to be like this.
Tina 00:28:16 Big deal. Just take it one little step at a time. As you run out of things, read the label on that thing that you continuously buy over and over and over again and see if you could find a better option. Like if you see that there's something in there that's just terrible, like a lot of condiments, a lot of things, a lot of processed foods, even some baby foods have maltodextrin in it, which I think is like a flavor enhancer. I'm not sure if it's a I don't know if it has any other purpose, but it spikes your blood sugar, right? It's not good for your blood sugar. And if you are, pre-diabetic or diabetic, that's an ingredient you should avoid. But most people don't know that. And it's in, like, everything maltodextrin. So it's good to learn about these things that are in our food and how it affects us. I would have never guessed at that is like having something loaded with sugar. It's just not good for your blood sugar.
Tina 00:29:13 So just take it one step at a time. Slow and steady wins the race so you don't have to do it all at once. so if you try some of these things that I've shared in the second step of the reset. So resetting your body, you'll feel more relaxed, you'll feel healthier, you'll feel energized, you'll feel stronger. Okay. And just remember, take the small steps. Pay attention to how your body feels, and don't take anything too seriously. Okay, so, I saw this quote. It was in a candy shop in New York City, and I think it was like a Swiss candy shop, but they use, actually, they don't use any of like the dyes and stuff like that that they put in candy. So there's like no red dye number 40, whatever it is. so it's like, I'm using quote marks with my fingers right now. Healthy candy. And I went there with my daughter, and they have, like, all these gummies and stuff like that, and they were like these little postcard thingies that they had at the cash register.
Tina 00:30:16 And it said growing up as a trap. And I and I thought, that is just like the funniest, best thing I ever heard. And I don't know who said it. I don't know if it was just that company, and I can't even remember the name of the candy company. It was in Brooklyn. but growing up is a trap, so don't be too serious. And if you want more personalized support, you could reset with me privately. and I'll put a link in the show notes so that you could schedule a call to get all the details if you're interested in that. Also, as I said, that free monthly meditation slash breathwork slash journaling reset session that's going to be on Friday at 530. If you want to sign up for that, I would love to have you. Okay guys, I'll see you next week. Bye.
