Human connection is the key to healing humanity. Listen in to hear what’s on my heart and how I recently leaned in for support.
As I was preparing to pack up and leave Miami Beach to spend the summer with my family in Chicago, I felt a lot of fear and anxiety bubbling up. When I was riding my bike the other day, I came to a breaking point and did something out of my norm that inspired me to think deeper about our human experience and the damage we do by trying to protect ourselves.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I have my go-to tools: HeartMath breathing techniques, movement, and grounding. Those are meaningful and essential tools but they are primarily done in isolation. This time, I leaned in and shared my anxiety, thoughts, and fears with my husband. His support, kindness, and compassion lifted the heaviness that I was feeling and put this summer relocation into perspective. I was reminded that nothing substitutes for the human touch of sharing what feels burdensome.
Human to human and human to nature will solve the current drug, loneliness, and suicide epidemics. By removing our layers of protection, which is nothing more than a false sense of security, we can help each other heal and thrive. So, are you going to lean into and share how you're really feeling with one chosen confidant? Listen in to hear more about what’s on my heart.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality.
[00:00:24] And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
[00:00:41] We won. This is Dana, your host of the Vitaliy you podcast. I am coming to you this week from Chicago with another solo episode. Hey going forward. I am going to refer to my solo episodes as heartbeat episodes, because they are literally topics that are pulsating from my heart. And you know me, I know it's a little bit corny, but I am all about the heart this week.
[00:01:07] I want to talk to you about armoring down and leaning in. Last week I left our Miami beach condo after having been there for seven months to return to Chicago for the summer. And I must admit, I felt a significant amount of anxiety and fear about leaving well, in today's episode, my intention is to share about this experience and how I believe it relates to our current.
[00:01:35] Human experience and saving ourselves. It's a tall order. I know, and I hope I don't disappoint. So here we go. On my last day in Miami beach, I was riding my bike and running errands and I couldn't stop thinking about and actually experiencing my anxiety, all my feelings and my fear. They were right there on the surface.
[00:02:01] My breath felt shallow. I could feel my body constricting. I'm sure you've been there before. I don't know. Can you recall the last time you felt anxious and fearful? You know, it doesn't matter if my leaving Miami for Chicago, it's definitely a privileged position, but you know, it really doesn't matter.
[00:02:21] The reason why we feel anxiety or fear because the body doesn't know the difference. The body doesn't know where we are. In the socioeconomic strata, the body doesn't know if we have a family or we don't, if we have resources or we don't, the nervous system is just reading the feelings and the energy. So, as I said, I felt constricted, my breath felt shallow.
[00:02:48] And this time I actually decided to do something different now, normally. I would use my tools and I would be on a very solo journey and by my tools, I mean, my breath deep, slow, quiet, regular. You've heard this before. If you're familiar with me, heart math, breathing techniques, inhaling and exhaling through the heart center.
[00:03:11] Visualizing. The feeling of inner ease, really experiencing the feeling of inner ease, that heart focused breathing, where the breath flows to and from the heart center. And, you know, from there I go, wherever I feel led, and that really varies. Sometimes it's being quiet. Sometimes it's getting sun on my body.
[00:03:32] Sometimes it's Irving. It might be movement Chi yoga. It might be. Exploring my thoughts and really determining where the feeling states are coming from. So this time, well, every time naturally I'm using that breath, it's just automatic. Honestly, the HeartMath and the, and the breath it's automatic after so much time of using these tools.
[00:03:58] But I added this pivotal detail. I'm on my bike, just so you visualize I'm actually on my bike, riding my bike and I call my husband. That's the difference. I actually reached out to someone and I choose my husband. I'm riding my bike. He answered the phone and I said, look, I feel real. I wasn't going to minimize anything.
[00:04:22] I decided I wouldn't minimize my feelings. And I just said, Hey, I feel really anxious right now. Like my whole body feels anxious. I feel fearful. And I go into the kind of what's going on. Like, I really love Miami beach. I felt great here. I've been in this bubble and it feels scary to leave and I don't know what to expect.
[00:04:47] I've got this groove going, I'm in this nice routine and all that. It's going to be appended, look, living in Miami. I've got the sunshine and the heat, and that just feels so good to me. I really thrive in the sunshine and the heat. Chicago always feels cold and gray and I go on so on and so forth. I let him know exactly how I'm feeling.
[00:05:08] I feel nervous as I'm talking and sharing this, he listened and he responded. That makes a lot of sense. It's okay to feel that way. And he just, he accepted what I was feeling. He didn't try to fix it, but he did say, Hey, by the way, I'm really excited. You're coming back. And so are the. You know what right away, I felt a little bit of that heaviness lift.
[00:05:36] I felt the anxiety just dispel. Some, it didn't have as much of a grip on it. If you haven't listened to my solo episode, about our 32 years of marriage, which was in April, you might want to go back and check it out because you know what we've learned, it's never, never, ever too late to rewire intimate relationships or relationships.
[00:05:58] That mean a lot to. We have been two strong individuals. We are pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and that means I'm pulling myself up. He's pulling himself up. We've armored up when things get tough, we've spent years dividing and conquering our work. Our five kids and life in general, I can tell you armoring up is easier than leaning in.
[00:06:24] But armoring up. Doesn't require being seen, being vulnerable, confessing, true feelings, weaknesses, and asking for help. So when I found myself on my bike contemplating and feeling all my anxiety and nervousness and fear, I knew that I had to lean in and ask for help. I knew in order to come back and reunite, I had to be honest with where I was.
[00:06:51] The old way, just wasn't going to work. Flying solo just simply produces loneliness. It prohibits deeper intimacy. It leaves room for others to assume that you're okay when you're, you really might not be. And I must've met, it felt weird to just like call and boom, let it all out my uneasiness, my wobble, my plea for support.
[00:07:16] But as soon as I did, I was met with kindness and compassion and that's usual. What happens in relationships? I knew when I was on that bike and the way he received me, that I was striking gold in our relationship. I felt this automatic connection and bond that felt priceless. I no longer felt alone on my bike.
[00:07:37] And I know that most of my listeners are strong. You are accomplished and competent and you can do most things. You can probably do everything on your own, but do you have. Where's the sweetness in the solo journey after decades of armoring up and flying solo, we almost lost our marriage. Let's take this beyond marriage to friendships.
[00:08:03] I'll depersonalize it from myself, although it applies to my friendships as well, because I'm also thinking about the pandemic. I'm thinking about what I see on the headline, the suicide crisis. We have at least in the U S along with the drug overdose crisis we have and the loneliness crisis. I'm sure you're reading the same news that I'm reading.
[00:08:25] The human condition is suffering. Lockdowns and isolation are contrary to the soul of a human they're in congruent with one another. Isolation and human, the human soul. It's in congruent and isolated. Human is a weekend human because we are literally designed for one another. If an infant doesn't get contact with other humans, they have failure to thrive.
[00:09:01] I can tell you that my two adopted children's bodies were underdeveloped from the lack of attention. Their little mind, body systems were not thriving because they lacked stimulation interaction. Well, they didn't maybe necessarily lack agitated stimulation. So if the stimulation and interaction are agitated, the nervous system.
[00:09:25] Differently. It actually develops in sympathetic mode, which is survival load it's it's the mode of, Hey, I'm on alert. If you combine isolation with agitation, the human fails to thrive. Unlike, if you think of a baby that comes into this world and there's at least one human giving it attention, tenderly caring for it, making sure its needs are met, touching it, holding it.
[00:09:53] The nervous system is relaxed. If you think of a baby, when they start crying and their human comes and comfort them, the nervous system automatically slows down. So what's been happening to the humans since the onset of the pandemic is this isolation and agitation. And as I said, agitation and isolation produces what we have a loneliness epidemic, a drug epidemic, and a suicide epidemic.
[00:10:23] It produces feelings of being lost and having no clear path for. So let's go back to my Miami bubble and I know that it's a privileged. While I was in my bubble. I had the opportunity to take a psychedelic mushroom journey with a very, very dear friend. One of my best friends. We were assured through our journey by her son.
[00:10:50] I will tell you it was precious. Just the three of us in a park under huge ancient trees. I think some of the more ancient trees in the United. It was truly amazing and it confirmed what I knew to be true, that we humans, humanity and nature. And when I say nature, heaven, earth, the moon, the stars, the. The oceans though, all the waterways were interconnected.
[00:11:22] There are threads, there are physical threads, vibrational threads that connect all of us together. During my three to four hour journey, I literally lay on the earth. I will tell you I laid on the earth for three to four hours, and I truly felt envelops by her. There were sounds and visions. I was taken behind the curtain.
[00:11:46] If you will, of how nature I literally saw in earth, this big factory and the mission of the factory was to save the human and reunite the human with their true soul and purpose. Do you know what it is? The true soul and human it's inter dependence enter dependence. That goes contrary to the American way, but I want to just say y'all and I feel like I'm a fraud as a Midwestern.
[00:12:18] Just use that word, but it feels so endearing. Y'all attempting to do life on our own doesn't work. It's not working, it doesn't work on a macro level or a micro level. It certainly doesn't work on a planetary level. We need more leaning in more community, more connection, more confession of true feelings, more sharing of our fears, our anxieties, our hopes, our dreams.
[00:12:49] We save ourselves and our planet. One person at a time by leaning into our relationships, leaning into one another. This is our way out of the current pandemic and all of the epidemics we're reading about in the headlines. So my invitation to you today are you with me? This is a very short episode. Some messages don't need to be long.
[00:13:17] Are you with me? Are you going to lean into and share how you're really feeling with one chosen conference? First you'll have to remove your armor. And that's actually what my husband and I have been doing since we had our marriage crisis. We've been removing our armor. It's heavy, it's burdensome, it's isolating.
[00:13:36] And that protection you feel it's a false sense of security. So I'd love to hear from you. I want to know, are you willing to lean in, let me know how you're feeling. Even if you don't know me and you're listening to this podcast, I would love to hear from you drop me an email because together we heal together is how we feel younger while growing older, remember feeling younger, growing older, it's not, it's actually not necessarily biohacking.
[00:14:06] I was on a conversation today. I'm trying to get myself on other podcasts to expose my podcast to a broader audience. And I was being. Pre-interviewed to see if somebody would have me on their podcast. And, you know, there was this feeling that it's all about biohacking. And, and I was saying, well, actually, in the essence of feeling younger, growing older, yeah.
[00:14:28] You might want to biohack. I mean, that's definitely a thing, but really in the heart feeling younger, growing older, we should not necessarily need one other device. Apart from our human us. We don't need, we actually need other people. We need this interconnectedness to feel younger. Growing older, we need soul on soul flesh on flesh skin, on skin and that skin and that flesh and that soul needs to be bound together with nature, with the cosmos, with the.
[00:15:05] With the waterway. So together we heal together. We feel younger growing older. Thank you for joining me on today's heartbeat episode and thank you to Casey J double O one for her review and important life goal of mine is to age well and stay young and mind, body and heart Dana's advice and expertise coupled with amazing guests.
[00:15:31] Make this a top podcast. Thank you so much. If you like the show, please lean in and leave a review and rate the show. If you need inspiration for daily self care, be sure to download my checklist for daily vitality. I created this checklist in the heart and experience of my own health journey. The link is in the show notes and as always, I am streaming love from my heart to your.