095: Beating Busy Woman Syndrome: Transform Your Health with Hypnotherapy

Unlock the Power of Your Mind: Discover How to Go From from Busy Woman Syndrome to Therapeutic Freedom

In this transformative episode, Brooke Ansley, a leading hypnotherapist for female entrepreneurs and women in tech, shares her personal journey from living under the weight of anxiety and high blood pressure to finding liberation through hypnotherapy. Learn how she went from being a contestant in the Miss America competition and working in high-stress event planning to embracing and teaching the powerful techniques of therapeutic hypnosis.

This episode is crafted for anyone struggling with anxiety, feeling overwhelmed by their daily routines, or looking for alternative ways to manage stress and health without medication. If you're curious about the neuroscience behind hypnosis or seeking ways to reprogram your mind for peace and productivity, this discussion is for you.

Topics covered:
- Harnessing the Power of the Subconscious: Discover how therapeutic hypnosis can unlock your mind's potential for self-healing and profound relaxation.
- Overcoming Busy Woman Syndrome: Hear about Brooke's transition from a high-stress job to embracing a life where peace and health take precedence.
- Empowerment Through Self-Awareness: Learn how gaining a deeper understanding of your subconscious can lead to significant life changes and personal empowerment.
- Personal Transformation Stories: Be inspired by Brooke's narrative on how changing her mindset and embracing hypnotherapy helped her ditch medications and live fully.
- Expert Advice and Practical Tips: Get actionable tips on integrating hypnotherapy into your daily routine to manage stress, anxiety, and health.

Let's break free from the busy woman syndrome together. If Brooke can do it, so can you!

Xx
Katie

Links/ Resources:
Complimentary 30 minute consultation with Brooke:
https://brookeansleywellness.com/freeconsultation

Free sleep hypnosis download:

https://brookeansleywellness.ck.page/2d85c336f2

The Calm Edge Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calm-edge-podcast/id1686664414

Transcript

Brooke: 0:00

Welcome back to the show. I'm so excited about today's guest I know how much you guys are gonna find tremendous value from talking to Brooke Ansley I got connected to her through a woman's entrepreneur mentorship group and have been absolutely floored by every conversation we've had so, a little bit about Brooke, she is a leading hypnotherapist for female entrepreneurs women in tech. As a former division three collegiate athlete. also a contestant in the Miss American competition and an events director in the non profit space. She was on anxiety, blood pressure, and sleep medication for years, and she unconsciously operated in what she calls Busy Woman Syndrome. After taking her brain to thrive medication free with therapeutic hypnosis, Brooke was inspired to go back to school and develop a program to share the powerful neuroscience backed technique with millions of women who feel stuck in an overactive brain. Through her personalized, one on one hypnotherapy program, The Calm Edge, Brooke guides female leaders To get control of anxious thoughts, reprogram limiting beliefs, and tap into their intuition to improve mental wellness and maximize their impact. Brooke is also the creator of Happy Body Blueprint, an audio hypnosis kit designed to help women rewire their subconscious relationship to food, exercise, and stress so that they can get healthy for life. Brooke, thank you for being on the show. It's such an honor to have you here today. Thanks for having me. So, I mean, just reading your intro, I'm sure people are like, yes, I can relate and resonate to all of this. And so much of what the work I do is actually on the mind because we are subconscious and psychologically driven humans. And so a healthy body starts in a healthy mind. I'd love to have you doc, Us through a little bit more of your journey on how you actually like this is a loaded bio here Where were you in your life that led you? To probably like I know I kind of a very diverse background. Everyone's always like what what miss america? What? It's amazing. I'd love to build hockey and Yeah, the whole thing so tell us a little bit about how you got to probably your state of saying I want to get off medication where you were at in your life You Maybe physical symptoms that were showing up for you and what led you to lead to alternatives like hip hypnosis. Yeah, so, so first of all, I'm originally from the East coast. I live in California now, but when I moved to California, I started working for a cancer research foundation and I was doing events and fundraising in the nonprofit world. But what was cool about that job is I actually was exposed to alternative programs that they were offering at the nonprofit I was working for, for people who are going through treatment for cancer. And for the first time in my life, I was like, huh, hypnotherapy, Reiki, like all of these, like energy, energy healing. And, and, but it was, you know, it was, It was exposed to me in like a research setting. So coming from the East coast, I mean, we never, I didn't do yoga. I never, no one ever talked about meditation. No one ever talked about growth mindset, really a whole lot growing up. Or at least not in my family, not in my school. And so I wasn't really exposed to that stuff. So I remember thinking like, what is this like new age stuff? Right. But in my time in that. I was doing events in Beverly Hills and it was really high stress and I was a people pleaser. I wasn't setting any boundaries. I was saying yes to everything and just feeling really burnt out. And at 31 years old, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and I was physically in really good shape. I was, you know, a pretty avid, I've always been an exercise, like, you know, I've always exercised a lot. I was an athlete. So I was doing hot yoga and bar classes and eating my protein smoothies. And I considered myself pretty healthy. And all of a sudden I go to a primary care, my primary care physician. And it, My blood pressure was, I forget what it was that particular day, but I mean, at one point, I think it was the diastolic number was like in the nineties. So he was like, this is not good. We got to put you on a medication. They put me on a medication and I was, I hated the way I felt on that medication. It made me tired. It made me lethargic. I ended up gaining weight because I didn't want to do the movement that I usually, you know, I didn't have the energy to go exercise. As much as I used to. So I didn't love that. And so I was on it for about a year and I'm like, I got to do something about this. And I have to say it was that I am very lucky that primary care physician said to me, you know, at that time I also was on anxiety medications. I was not a great sleeper. I didn't know how to relax. I was not much of a meditator at all. Like the idea of meditation was like awful. I was like, sit down, sit still. No, thank you. So, but my primary care physician actually said to me like, Hey, I know you're on these anxiety medications and you're, you know, dealing with high blood pressure. There are things you can do like meditation. And we can work together and we can get you off the anxiety medication and maybe you don't have to be on the blood pressure medication forever, even just planning that seed it from like, in like a medical setting, I have to, I have to give him credit. And it was around that time that I went to a hip therapist and. Only because I had a friend of a friend who was going for training and she was doing an internship program and she needed hours. So I was like, Oh, let me try this. I've always been interested. I, you know, I've seen hypnotherapy around my work. I know it works for a lot of people. Like, let's just go see what this is all about. And my first session, I was like, okay, that was relaxing. And then my second session, I was like, Hmm, that was good. That was interesting. Third session, I was like, okay, that was weird. I don't understand what just happened, but that was really weird. I dropped into this, like what I now call the jacuzzi for the brain. And what's interesting about the shift that I made working. With the one on one with the hypnotherapist is it tapped me into a space that was, it felt rewarding for the first time in my life. It was like rewarding to actually slow down. Does that make sense? Like before that point, slowing down sounded like. Ugh. That's work. Unproductive. Yeah. And it, it was kind of a struggle. So it just didn't feel good. But once I tapped into that space, it was like a relief. I could, everything sort of slowed down. I started, I started listening to hypnosis tracks at night as I was falling asleep. And then my sleep started improving and then my mood started improving. And it was kind of like a domino effect. Then I started craving meditation. I started craving more like slower lifestyle. I decided to get go back and get certified to teach yoga. I actually left that. I left that job at events. Like suddenly it was just not in alignment with where I was. I mean, similar to your story, Katie, right? Like I just, I felt like I was constantly, like my body was telling me. You have to make a change. And so I remember I gave them like two months notice and everybody was like, well, what are you doing next? And they just couldn't understand that I didn't have a plan lined up. I mean, this is before I actually gone back to school for hypnotherapy. I'd just been trained to teach yoga. So I took this big leap and I left that job and I started teaching yoga and. I actually ended up working for another nonprofit for a short time that was a little less stress, but it just, my soul wasn't in it. And then COVID happened and everything shut down. And I was like, this is the perfect opportunity. I've always been fascinated by the shift that I made. I mean, ultimately hypnotherapy is what. I did eventually get off all of my anxiety medication. I got off the blood pressure medication. I sleep like a baby now with the exception of second trimester of pregnancy. There's a, there's some interruptions, but you know, I sleep way better, I couldn't believe the amount of change that I was able to make in my life. It was so inspiring to me. And it sent me down a rabbit hole of learning about the mind. And like, what happened? Why was that so powerful? Why was it that I went to so many therapists and, you know, was even on these anxiety medications, but still like have like a low grade, like, Not feeling super happy or satisfied in my life to getting off all of that stuff and working through all of it and really getting to the root cause of, you know, what truly makes me happy. And what, you know. What living more in alignment with who I am. And so I went back, I did a year long program during COVID and I took a deep dive and I launched my business and it, it's honestly been, it's not always easy as you know, to be an entrepreneur in the wellness space, but it's been the most rewarding thing I've ever done. And I've never felt more on my path. And every time I work with another. woman who discovers something about her brain and feels empowered and like she's actually in charge of her thought processes. It just reinforces what I'm doing because I think so many of us feel stuck, stuck in our anxiety, stuck in our thoughts and, and there's actually tools. nobody teaches us. There are tools to work with this and they're highly effective and they're not medication related and that's not to say that medication is bad. You know, I see, I see this a lot, like. Medication helped me for where I was at that time in my life. I wasn't ready to do the work and that I needed that help. But I think for people who are ready to really go deep and understand the root cause of what's causing their whether it's anxiety, whether it's like not feeling happy in your life, feeling overwhelmed, feeling burnt out, whatever it is, for those people who are ready to like go deeper and understand the root cause, like this work is incredibly powerful and can change your life. So fascinating. I think to the busy woman syndrome, right? It's when you think about what's actually happening when we're chronically addicted to stress. It's because living off of adrenaline feels really freaking good until it doesn't, right? Until your adrenals give out or some sort of other health ailment. And so, while you're living off of that stress, and your body can go decades, maybe, on just this, like, fight or flight driven mode of, Taking more on and adrenaline, you know, suppresses hunger. It makes us feel like we could fly. We're cognitive. We're just like we're bouncing off the walls, but we're completely disassociated from our body. And so we're just like on this path and we're running and running and running and then 1 day, most times it has to happen through some sort of. Kind of rock bottom moment of really realizing like looking up for a moment of like, what is what is my exist? Like what's the point of my existence here? Why am I here? What actually drives me versus why am I doing this out of a fear trauma response right for acceptance or love? Also, it's like, it feels safe. Yeah. It's like the addiction to it is really more just like, this is what homeostasis is for me. I've never experienced anything else. If I were to slow down, what would happen? What would that mean about who I am? What would that mean about my level of success? If I slow down, if I'm not going 10 miles an hour in my career, am I not doing a good job, right? Like it's a safety thing. It's a homeostasis. Your body is like, this is what's normal to me. This is what's known to me. And if I slow down, that's unknown and that's not safe. Yep. It's yeah. It's, it's such a good reminder, right. To. Know that everything our body is doing is always to protect us. It's number one goal is always safety. So if something is off, it's because it doesn't feel safe. And when this actually, I resonate so much with. What you're saying, because, it's been about a little over 3 months since I left the tech world after being in it for 10 years. And so much of what I didn't even realize of my existence was ego driven based on titles and money. And though I came to a point of. really recognizing and saying that is so not what I want, it still was a part of me. And so to shed that, it actually took my nervous system, at least two and a half months to say, you are safe. You don't need to bury yourself in work for 10 hours a day in order to be productive and really reframing like what, what is success because it forever was Getting external validation from bosses and titles and money. And when you remove that, it's actually a really. Traumatic feeling at first, like, where, where do I find my worth? who am I without all of this stuff? Yeah. And it was so like the transition though. I felt so free. It was so challenging because I really questioned everything and every waking moment, I was like just doing dishes or if I had a pocket or a minute of time, it's like, let me just quick check email or let me think about a new course to create. Like just that default goes back to that trauma response of overworking and looking for validation, I think for one it's, and we can talk about it too, it's, it's empowering just to know and be aware of how our brain works between the subconscious and the conscious. It's that awareness. And recognizing how much we actually operate in the subconscious gives liberation and grace to us to say so much of our day goes through the subconscious, which is programming from a young age. And if we don't take time to heal that and recognize it and rechange the narrative, which we can do through things like hypnosis, we're going to continue operating that way. So why don't you talk a little bit about, I love your expertise, a little bit about the subconscious versus conscious and how much we're in those, those states throughout the day. Yeah, well, first too, I want to say you touched on something there and it's identity. And this is a really big one because our identities live in that subconscious and they define our behavior and our world. And again, like with homeostasis, physiologically, the body needs to keep everything at homeostasis because that's how we survive. Like if you were to go for a jog, your body temperature would heat up and without you thinking about it, your brain would send a feedback loop to say, okay, release the sweat glands. We got to lower the temperature back down. Right? It's the same thing for your sense of self and your sense of identity. So when we go to create these changes, the brain and the nervous system is like, no, no, no, no. Like. We know who we are. We know where we've been like, this is not us. It's not safe. We're going to default, right? We hit these upper limits and then we end up, you might even find your like subconsciously sabotaging things, right? Like, or your nervous system, like you get sick. Like your body gets sick. Cause it's like, this is too much for my nervous system. Like this is all, it comes into your identity and your self talk and how you relate to your sense of self, what you believe to be true about yourself, right? Your beliefs about what is success. So just to kind of touch on that, those identities live in the subconscious. And as you kind of already hinted at Katie, it's like our, our belief systems. Develop when we're little. So prior to the age of eight, we don't have a critical filter in the brain. So that's what makes our brains so sponge. Like we're just taking everything in. We're generalizing. We learn through repetition and association. We see our, we, we see things modeled in our families. We, you know, at school on TV and we develop these identities around who we are. What we're capable of, what we're capable of, what, what, what coping mechanisms get us what we need. And then around the age of eight, we develop this critical part of the mind, which is why that's the age when kids stop believing in like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy because they start questioning. So we're like, wait a second. Right? That doesn't make sense. Yeah. So around that age is when we develop this critical mind. Now part of that lot, that critical mind is it's a filtering system on our world because we're getting hit with like 11 billion bits of sensory input at any given moment. So sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, right? We're taking in all this information and our brain is organizing it and we can't consciously take it all in. Or we would be totally overloaded. So we love this filtering system. We need this filtering system. This what's, this is what allows us to survive and put things on autopilot so we can grow and expand, right? We want some things to go autopilot. Like when you first learned to drive a car, remember how scary that was? Like you were thinking about every little thing and now you probably get on the freeway and you don't even remember getting home. Right? Which is kind of great. That's because that is a trance like state similar to hypnosis. So driving on the freeway, not remember getting home, that is the state of hypnosis. You're on that, you're in autopilot essentially. So what happens is this critical filter separates your conscious from your subconscious mind. Your subconscious is like 90 percent of your behavior and your mind. This is in alignment with what a lot of psychologists say about your habits, right? I'm sure you talk a lot with your clients about, you know, health is a behavior, right? It's an accumulation of behaviors. But your behavior 90 percent of the time is completely automatic. It's part of that subconscious, so we want to build some awareness around that. Your conscious mind is 10 percent logic, reasoning, and willpower live in the conscious. So you might logically be like, I'm going to stop. I want to cut back on sugar, right? But if you have a subconscious relationship, like sugar is the friend that's always there for me when I was little. Mom brought me sugar when I had a hard day. Mom brought me cupcakes when I had a hard day at school or right. We have, a lot of us have. A relationship to share like this is the reward. I deserve this, right? So we'll default to that subconscious relationship. You're from like an entrepreneur's standpoint, your identity and belief, like you were sharing earlier, these belief systems program, the critical filter. So it's like the, it's like the Facebook algorithm. It's going to give you more of what you believe. So that filtering system deletes, distorts, and generalizes our experience based on our belief systems, most of which were established in childhood. And then we end up playing out these patterns throughout our entire lives. If we're not conscious, if we go through life on autopilot, which many of us do, and when you're in that busy woman syndrome, right? When you're in that place of I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. You're just floating. Functioning on autopilot. And so you're living your life based on these old identities that the six year old within you needed, like some of these coding mechanisms were developed because at one point they helped you feel safe or feel loved, right? But maybe they're not working for you anymore. Maybe they're keeping you stuck. Maybe they're keeping you in a job. That's not actually what you ever wanted, but conditioning told you, you should have that job. But it's a beautiful opportunity to actually ask yourself like what. Do I really feel in my gut, in my intuition that I want? So what's cool about hypnosis and where this all comes into play is when we get into the state of hypnosis, we get into alpha theta brainwave state. It's really just a calm, focused state of attention. We actually go through this state naturally every day because it's between awake and asleep. So Delta brainwave state is when you're in deep sleep, beta is when you're alert and awake. Alpha theta is in between. So in the morning as you wake up, you're moving through alpha theta, you're kind of in a hypnotic state first thing in the morning. When you're in that state, the left brain is less active. That's where the critical filter, that logic and reason, that filtering system is not firing. So you have access to subconscious. To create new knowns, new beliefs, and we do that through imagery. So this is why like having a vision or goals or having a gratitude journal that you're checking in every single morning at the top of your day, you're aligning your subconscious mind with a new outcome. And it's also why it's really important not to wake up and check your emails first thing in the morning or check the news because you don't, you know, we want the critical filter firing when we're watching the news because we want to decide what beliefs and what information is working for me because this is going to dictate my experience and my behavior and my perception of the world. Yeah, no phones in the morning because we are so impressionable, but added layer of information is so helpful to have that context because I didn't even realize how the left brain, right brain are either activated or not at certain times of the day. And that makes sense because we're going through a big family life transition in the next month and a half or so, and we're moving across the country and it's been this. Kind of looming big thing for the last six months that we go up and down and in the mornings in the day, we're so inspired. We're like, yes, let's do it. And we're ideating and we're planning. And then at nighttime, for whatever reason, we start to become scared and we say, let's shut it down. This is too much. This is, this is stupid. We shouldn't be doing that. Yeah. Is that why it's that messaging you're getting, you know, it could be the messaging you're getting throughout the day because like what happens is the critical filter is that that's that voice that of conditioning. So like the voice that's like, you know, it's good for you. You know, what can, what, what culture says you should be doing. It's active throughout the day. And so that voice can get really loud sometimes. And it wants to keep you at homeostasis. So that's the subconscious sabotage coming in saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not going to change. This is a danger to the whole system. It's. It's that upper limit. I don't know if you've ever read Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap, he calls it the upper limit problem. Oh, but it's, it's really just subconscious wanting to keep you at homeostasis. So just being aware and kind of observing that and noticing, okay, the fear is coming in and there's going to be a lot of that left brain is going to take things that have happened in the past and it's going to apply it to the future. Okay. But that's really just a story and we don't know, we don't know how the future is going to turn out. What if it's the op, right? It's like Byron Katie, like, what if the opposite were true? Right? So it's something to keep in mind. And just to kind of throw out there though, to just so that there's no confusion, you also move through right before bed. You move back through it. So like you're in beta during the day in the evening, your brain is kind of coming back down and relaxing. So you're moving through alpha theta before sleep again. So right before sleep, I would say, revisit the, that those goals or affirmations or. You know, sometimes I like to what some of the home play I give my clients is to done list. Like, what are the things I did today that were great that I'm proud of, you know, just cultivating positive emotion. But if you have like a specific goal coming up, you want to read like the big, like the move. And there's a lot of fear around it. Checking back in with all your why, like right before bed and putting that into your subconscious before you go to sleep. It's natural for those fears to come up. That's the, yeah, it's the, I like, it's just the primitive brain. It's the cave woman. She's like, no, no, no, no, we can't do this. This is scary. This is, this is a threat, and that only you can decide what's right for you ultimately at the end of the day. And that's when we get most in touch with our intuition is when we get into. When we're in that really deep state of relaxation, which is hypnosis, or even a deep meditation, what happens is you float below the noise of the critical mind and you get in touch with the intuition, the wisdom of the body, the subconscious. And it's that knowing that's where you want to want to take action out of that knowing. So when that voice is becoming really noisy, I would say, maybe come back to like, what is my evening ritual right before bed? And what can we do to kind of get realigned with that knowing the part of you, the gut part of you moved you in the direction of that decision originally. Resonating with so much of this, because it feels as though also right before bed. I'm like, ready to have another, like, heart to heart conversation about it and like, inspire my husband on all the reasons why this is good and why we decided to go and he's ready to sleep and he's, yeah, he's like, no. And there is. So much of the the narratives of what, yes, other people are saying, but also, you know, for him and his childhood, a lot of trauma comes up around. The fear of losing it all. Yeah, the uncertainty of if this is going to be right or wrong. And I love that reframe of just like, what if it all goes right? And, you know, what's the worst that's going to happen? You're going to learn from it. And then you have solidification and you make a different decision. It's like, there isn't. We, we, we tend to internalize things as such big deals when in the reality is it's just a decision you make it and then you learn and you, it's it, you know, it's, it's really not that big of a deal to actually put a notice in at a job. We just make it up to be this huge thing. And it's just a conversation 2 minutes and it's done. Like, that's it, you know, yeah, one of my favorite belief systems that I don't know at what point I adopted this, but I think probably at some point while doing this work is there are no wrong choices. I so deeply believe that there are no wrong choices. Whatever choice you make. You will, it's like a GPS system. You get, maybe you get a little off course, but you learn something from it. And, and you, you adjust. And I, in my experience, all of those quote wrong choices that seemed like they were wrong at the time. Always end up coming back into play. They always do. You know, my undergraduate degree was in psychology and I laughed because for years I was like, I was in events and, and nonprofit and I was like, what does my psychology degree have to do with this? And now I do. And it used to, I used to think that that was a wrong move. Like I should have gone into, you know, I also, Miss America. I was a musician. I didn't put that in my bio. I was a singer songwriter and country music for a while. Like, why didn't I go into entertainment? Why didn't I? And then I laughed because now that I'm on my path, I'm like, Oh no, it was always the right decision. Like that degree come it, you know, full circle, it's contributing to my career now. But okay. I'm going to give you a little practice. This is my wise guide. Practice. So this is something you can do. When those, the, I call them the scaries that come in. Okay. So on the, I want you to open a journal and on the left hand side, you'll, you'll make a list of those scaries. Like, what is the voice in your head saying about in your, in this situation for you? It's like, okay, this big decision, this move, do we, do we not? What is it saying? Like, what if this happens? I'm scared that like, what if it falls through? What if we can't find a place to live? Right? Some of those like fears that come up around it, list them out. And then this is a little self hypnosis practice, but I want you to count yourself in. So you're just going to say 10, like a little meditation, 10. I'm going deeper and deeper. Nine, I'm going deeper and deeper, eight, I'm going deeper and deeper. And you can imagine running a color through the top of your head, through your body, just a little progressive relaxation, go all the way down to zero. And I want you to tap in with the wise self within the intuitive self. So you're just floating below the surface on the surface is all the noise. The conditioning, the fears underneath that is your intuition. And I want you to tap into your wise guide. There's a part of you that's lived a thousand lifetimes in the past and future, right? The part of you that is all knowing and all loving. And then I want you to open your eyes. And on the other side, the right side of your journal, I want you to write wise guide. And I want you to go through every single one of those scaries. If you numbered them, that's great. And I want you to respond from the perspective of the wise guide with the pure positive opposite. I appreciate it. Writing to yourself from the perspective of your wise move through that at the end of the day. And you'll find like, that is the process of taking those belief systems and asking the question, like, well, what if everything is actually okay? What if this is the best decision we ever made? See what the wise self says about it. Yeah, and then take that to sleep with you at night as you're drifting into sleep, that kind of embeds into the subconscious, this feeling of self trust that there's a part of me within that knows, and then you adjust accordingly. Maybe there's a way to, to make the decision that feels a little safer, right? It's so, it's so good because really, they're just stories. Right. It's, it's, I do a similar practice of like limiting beliefs, but then on the other side, writing down that validate that limiting belief. A lot of times you come up with nothing, like there's no, it hasn't either happened, you're just making it up or you're fearing it. And it's like, there's no facts to support your belief that you're, incapable at having a successful career or whatever it is, I don't deserve love. Yeah. You know, I love that. Thank you. I'm going to do that tonight and I will report. Yeah, well, and I think what's, what I love about this idea of the wise self, the intuitive self is like, It's really this muscle. I remember when I was first discovering my intuition or the voice within. And I, you know, you read these, you read like meditation books and everyone's like, and then this voice said, go in this direction. And I'm like, I don't get it. Like I don't hear a voice. What are they talking about? This voice, you know, like, and then I heard in my head. You should call this person. Right. And it never made sense to me. And then realized that this is this process of like getting in touch with your intuition is very personal and everyone's different. Like I'm actually very kinesthetic. I get a sensation of feeling and knowing. So for me, like tapping into my intuition is like all of a sudden I have this like, Oh yeah, I should do that. Right. And I think it's really about. The more you tap into that part of you and ask your gut those questions and then, and then lean back and wait for guidance what you're on, you know, if you want to think of him, think about it from a neuroscientific perspective, like when we think about that critical filter, which is like the Facebook algorithm. You're basically giving that critical filter, like this is a value to me. So now I'm open to receiving a new possibility or a new direction. And then your brain decides not to filter out something that might actually help you. Does that make sense? Like you might see a billboard, you might get a phone call, something you might have like passed over had you not asked the question. It's like what you focus on, but it's really like in hit. Yes. So this idea of having a wise self, you know, with my clients, we do an imagery journey where we actually go, you get into the state of hypnosis and we. Ask the wise self to join us, and it might show up in the form of a higher version of you. It might be the feeling you get. It might be Oprah, right? It can show up however you want it to show up. It might show up different every time creating some, an image around this idea that there's a part of me that does know. And I can tap into it. It's a resource part of me. It's a resource state that I can actually utilize in my life. And I can trust that part of me. And again, to kind of take it back to the science, which I think is really interesting when you think about our bodies and our brains and all those 11 billion bits of sensory input we're getting at any given moment. Our brains can't consciously, like, we can't take all that in, but our bodies do. So like instinct, like if you've ever been walking down a dark alley and you felt like someone was following you and you turn around and they are, it's not because your brain registered it. It's because your body did and you trusted your gut, the same system. You're tapping into that same system. If you could just get out of the 10%. This is like, you've got this whole other. Depth of like guidance within that, the more you practice it, I think of that as kind of like a muscle. It's that, and now I, you know, now it's like, is it a voice for me now? I mean, I'm definitely more now that I do this work, I'm more like. I in tune with images and now I like to think of like when I get guidance from my wise guide, sometimes it's the universe. I feel like there's this little bell that goes off, like, ding, it's like a, a feeling I get in my stomach. And it's like the universe sending me like a signal that you're on your path when something magical happens, or when something shows up that you've been asking for, and it's like, ding, you're on your path. I'm like, yeah, that's my wise telling me I'm good. Right. So. Yeah, in terms of our thoughts and and we get stuck in these feedback loops, I'm assuming there's implications on the physical body to that can manifest as. Whether, of course, their cravings, right? I talk a lot about emotional deficiencies and how that can lead to cravings or, you know, as a child, right? You talked about sugar being a reward, but are there other ways that our thoughts can impact our physical health? Oh, yeah, I love this question. So. Our brain learns in images. And every thought we have in a split second creates an image in the brain. And then that runs a neuropathway and it tells the body to release certain hormone. So it's the example, it's the lemon example. And I don't know, Katie, if you've ever used this in your practice, but I, I recently learned that I know like a lot of nutritionists will use a lemon visualization to get, like, if they're getting saliva samples from their clients, they'll have them visualize biting into a lemon. And this is actually a beautiful example of the mind body connection and hypnosis. When you visualize the lemon, and I'm not going to take you, I could take you through the whole visualization now, but I don't know if we have time. So I'm just going to explain it. When you visualize biting into a lemon, I don't know about you, but for me, like I get the sour, like one eye closes and this, like my, my body responds like sour and your body, body actually starts to salivate. So, at the most basic level, the brain is running in neuroscience. They call it procedural memory. Even the brain doesn't know the difference between a visualization and an actual experience. So, when you have thoughts, if you're talking to yourself unkind, if you're like, Oh, I can't believe you did this again, Brooke. What were you thinking? I can't believe you ate that slice of pizza, like the shame, the guilt. If you're having negative thoughts and negative self talk, it's creating images in the brain that are lowering your motivation. It's, it could be sending cortisol on the body. It's like, if we have a stressful thought, the body experiences that stress in the moment by releasing cortisol. I mean, that's the biggest one. This is when I've talked about this on my podcast, like. This idea that like when we're constantly stressing out our bodies experiencing cortisol, and so that's going to cause our body to it's going to cause hormonal imbalances. It's going to cause weight gain. It's like going to our bodies and fight or flight. Blood flow is going to hands and feet. It's leaving the digestive system. So how you talk to yourself every single day, like when it comes to your physical health, like it starts with your relationship to yourself. And also if you're talking to yourself in a way that's unkind or not loving, and you're not loving yourself, then it's going to be really hard to make loving decisions about food. This is a big one in my happy body hypnosis kit. It's like self love developing a relationship with your inner child to change the language that you're using every day when talking to yourself. Because when you start talking to yourself differently, it shifts your belief systems about what you deserve and how you treat your body. And then a decision about food all becomes like little acts of self love. It's no longer about restriction. It's like, how can I love myself with the food that I'm putting in my body today? And sometimes that might be loving yourself by allowing yourself to have some ice cream without guilt and shame. And then also maybe going for a walk to make sure it doesn't spike your blood sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Provides some physiological implications to what I talk about and how food and nutrition, you can look up. You don't need to hire me to figure out what, generally speaking, Are going to keep inflammation down your blood sugar balanced and keep you satiated like we know we have so much too much information at our fingertips. It's almost overstimulating the answer is why you're having even so much of my practice is actually people coming in to restrictive. They're having digestive issues because they're too restrictive. They don't eat carbs. The stress is causing their SIBO to continue to perpetuate and keep coming back because the gut brain connection, the gut literally sits and listens to your thoughts 24 7, right? So you can't separate them through the vagus nerve. And I love how you touched on self love cultivating. It starts here because if we don't love ourselves, everything. trickles out as a result of that. And if we use food as a source of anything other than nourishment for fueling this temple, it's going to be this, Yo yo this binge restrict very unhappy, unpleasant place to live. And then it actually ends up causing, you know, I always say eating the pizza or the ice cream in a state of joy. And if it's around community. You're going to be fine. Your body will know how to digest it. You're going to move on, but stressing about it, or stressing about not eating, like that is causing so much more harm in terms of the physiological than actually just enjoying it. And so It's just, it's great that you touched on that. Cause it's, yeah, speak that a lot. Yeah. And it really you know, it also comes back to this, this intuition because it's connecting with your body again and letting your, trusting your body's wisdom. You know, when we're in that busy woman, we're disconnected, dissociated, and we can't feel our bodies. And we've also been taught conditionally to, that we shouldn't trust our bodies to tell us when we're hungry or to tell us what we need to eat. We need to trust the diet. We need to trust the body. Like this brand, we need to go by what this TikTok says is right for us. Right. And so we're pulling it all back in and being like, you are actually the expert in your own body and you can trust that. And you can trust that gut instinct and you can listen to that. And also that means loving all aspects of you and having full like unconditional self compassion. I mean, self compassion is really, it all comes back to that because when we can let go and say, Hey, It's okay that, you know, wherever you're at today, be where you're at. I, I, I say, I use this one phrase, where do I get, where do I get into the trance of not okay? It's a trance and you're judging yourself and anytime we're in the trance of not okay. That's typically like when we're unhappy or we're struggling with something. It's because we're judging wherever we are at. We're judging the fact we just had the pizza. We're judging the fact that our body looks a certain way. We're judging the fact that we're having a hard day, right? And what if we just said, it's okay. I'm having a hard time today. Yeah. And that's where the self love piece comes. Like, how do I talk to myself in those moments? Yeah, and I think I wasn't and that really impacts our food choices. Yes, I wasn't really able to tap into self love at all. I was so critical on myself and even still struggle, but I'm better only because I became a mom and that Reframe of how you talk to your kids. Why wouldn't you ever be able to talk to yourself that way? We're viewing little Katie and the eyes of my daughter who's just this perfect innocent beautiful being and I've never loved something the way I love my children, and it's, I never wanted kids, actually, and I Even to this day if they're not my own kids, I'm not like super excited about them So but with your own, it's just as I feel the same way. I'm so glad you said that Yeah, I saw your post about it actually and I resonated. I was always like I'm gonna have a career. I'm gonna own the business I'm gonna maybe get married in my 30s kids might come but I actually think it was a defense mechanism because I wasn't You Ready to get my body ready for pregnancy. I liked the control. I wanted the chiseled abs, you know, and you just can't to have healthy hormones and have a healthy menstrual cycle. You just can't have the chiseled body. And that's, we need to normalize that. I love myself more knowing how I see also my kids when I'm like ragged and look, you know, just like they just they see such purity in you and they don't even know when you're getting ready for the day or not. They don't. Yeah. They just love you and they want your heart. And that is a love that. You know, I can now teach myself through experiencing it. And I'm so excited for you to become a mom I was just going to say it's. Interesting because, you know, I don't know if I mentioned on this podcast since we started recording, but I'm currently pregnant. So I did mention that, I guess it's sleep, but so I don't know yet what it feels like to have a little one running around. But it's funny because so much of my own healing journey and what I infused into my work is inner child work and. What you just shared, you're right. It's like, it's really healing because you start to realize like that, what is unconditional love and can I apply that to myself and can I talk to myself with the same level of compassion that I would talk to my three or four year old, like they're three or four years old. They don't know any better. Just hold space for them, you know, and. It's so interesting because I've actually seen, I've seen some friends of mine go through this too, with having kids and like ultimately experiencing like the deepest form of healing. And I think inadvertently it's really inner child work that that's happened. That's that you're, you're doing inner child work, but through the lens of your Your kids, which is so powerful and it's a reframe because like you, I had a lot of, I think I had a lot of fear and coping mechanisms around like what my reasons for not having kids that I've had to kind of unravel. And what does it mean to be a mom and like identities around that? And who am I going to be when I'm a mom? And, and But to view like having a child as like, actually one of the most like spiritual things you can do and way to really get connected with yourself is actually, it's such a, it's a, it's a completely different way of looking at it that I never thought of before. But it's like, now that I'm going through it, I'm feeling that I'm experiencing for the 1st time. Yeah, it's So for the listeners who don't know, I got into hypnobirthing actually kind of by accident of wanting to have a natural birth. And then my doula introduced me to hypnobirthing and I was like, this sounds like some weird thing that I don't know who could ever get into state of hypnosis as you're naturally pushing out a child, but I'll go through it and through the experience, it, all tracks even on the first session because of how much I learned of birth emulates what I talk about in fight or flight versus rest and digest and what the body basically to have a quick and, relatively pain free birth. It's all about the mindset of the mom and keeping her calm. And so much that comes up also through hypnobirthing is limiting beliefs about how. You are going to parent. So whether that's fears of, you mentioned I had fears of being a mom, I have fears of being a mom. I didn't want to turn into my mom as a, as a parent. And so it's, there's so much that you can learn on, whether it's a, you're becoming a parent or you have you're in your career, right? And you're, you're hitting a wall and you need a breakthrough, right? Nothing works unless we work on ourselves and everything really comes back to inner child and we can change. The, the narrative and. Everything comes up at its own perfect time. So whether you're in your teens, twenties, thirties, fifties, sixties, and you're like, wow, I missed the mark. I've been on autopilot. I think it's exceptionally important to just give yourself grace and know that you've come to this episode and maybe you're now interested and open to learning at the perfect time. So I'd love for you to leave our listeners with just. Like, as they're hearing, you say, listening to that intuition and that voice or being aware of those negative thoughts, and they're like, I don't even know where you would hear those, or I don't even know the negative thoughts I have about myself. They've been so ingrained that they're my talk track. Like, how do we start to just simple and simple, like, 5 to 10 minutes a day? How do we start to come to this? Kind of rebirthing experience of learning these critical thoughts, silencing them and creating a new narrative. Yeah, so I think the first step is slowing everything down for a few minutes a day, right? And whether that is your two minute meditation in the morning, or it's a walk without your cell phone. Just slowing everything down is the first step. The other thing I'm going to share with you guys is my free sleep hypnosis download so you can listen as you're falling asleep, but you train the brain to go from that busy mind into a deep state of sleep. Very quickly, you're training the brain, how to access calm when you slow down the thought processes, and you can start to build awareness. It's really an awareness muscle is what it is, but we're not aware when we're moving through life super fast. So, I really think the 1st step is. integrating more calm into your life. Think of it as the, I jokingly call it the calm gym. So if it's like five minutes here of like going for a walk, just being on the walk, barefoot, feeling your feet on the ground. I mean, I know depending on where you are, like if you're in the Midwest and it's winter, obviously not barefoot, but Being present or actually sitting and doing a gratitude journal or like five minutes of meditation with a lovely song where you just sit and you get still that's the first step. That's when you're going to start to just observe your thoughts and a lot of people think like meditation means turning thoughts off and that's not really what it is. I mean, I. There's different types of meditation, but mindfulness is observe observation, just actually being present and noticing what thoughts come up. And then the next step is I call it thought labeling. So actually being like in a meditation where you're and you have a, you notice when you go down a thought train and you say, ah, I'm thinking, and you take a deep breath and you label it thinking, and then you blow it away and got to the sensation in your body, your breath. And you just do that for five minutes and you build some awareness around it. But this is also where hypnosis really comes in because I know that if you haven't been meditating, it can feel really hard to do on your own. And hypnosis is kind of like, I call it the gateway drug to meditation because it teaches your brain how to slow down very quickly. So I've got that free sleep hypnosis download. I'll give you guys a link so you can, you can try it tonight. And yeah. And anybody who's interested in chatting. With me, you know, I, I offer a free collegian, so just reach out and we can chat and find out where you're at. Amazing. Brooke, thank you so much. I will be sure to put all of the links for consultations and the free download in the show notes and how to contact Brooke as well to follow along on what she is doing. It's life changing work. Thank you so much for being on the show for graciously giving us your time. This has been like a little mini session for me as well. I have loved every single second of it. I'm going to go back and re listen to it as well to get the beta alpha science that you talked about. It kind of went over my brain. I'm just like, I can't even believe of how much power we have to just change. It's all just a decision. Thought away and that's exciting. Oh, I love that. It's all just a decision thought away It is so we can just decide something. Yeah, it's all just a decision thought away Yeah, so thank you so much. I really appreciate well, thank you for having me