215-SYNCPodcast_CalieCalabrese

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the sync your life podcast today. I’m being joined by Kaylee Calabrese I feel like this is a really long time coming We were joking when we met before this about how many times our paths have crossed without officially crossing so we have mutual friends and this past summer we were both featured as hormone health experts through our mutual friend Elise Joan on her Instagram and I learned of Kaylee then, and then now we’ve both joined the same company to align with, with Hugh and grace.

[00:01:28] Jenny Swisher: And so here we are again, we’re both teaching in a hormone health master class for them as well. So it was about time that we sat down and met, um, that we, we talked about each other’s journeys and what we’ve created and what we’re looking forward to as far as our visions. And it’s interesting, cause I always feel like.

[00:01:45] Jenny Swisher: Especially in our case, I feel like we’ve kind of been living in parallel worlds, like we’ve both experienced differing degrees of whether it’s gut imbalances or hormone imbalances. And we’re trying to navigate that on our own in a world that doesn’t talk a lot about women’s hormone health.

[00:02:00] Jenny Swisher: Or gut health. And then we’ve just kind of seen this need individually to take those stories and turn them into ways to help other people through our courses. And so we’re kind of like sisters from another mister. We’re kind of like doing our thing very similarly. And like I said, uh, in parallel universes.

[00:02:16] Jenny Swisher: So it was about time that we met. It was about time to bring her on the podcast. I’m excited for you guys to learn from her today. We’re, we’re going to probably just totally nerd out to be completely honest. This is a topic that we’re going to cover today that I really think most women need to hear.

[00:02:30] Jenny Swisher: This isn’t the first time that I’ve talked about the nervous system on the show. I have other episodes that I’ll link up for you guys about the autonomic nervous system, about this parasympathetic versus sympathetic state, really dialing in your nervous system to help you with your hormone health.

[00:02:44] Jenny Swisher: Because in the end, we can do all the things we can exercise. We can. clean up our nutrition. We can focus on our sleep. We can supplement well, but if we’re not addressing our nervous system, our traumas are the way that we’re really truly feeling from a cortisol perspective. It can keep everything out of out of whack.

[00:03:03] Jenny Swisher: So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We were like, which topic should we go with? There’s about a million that we could talk about, but that’s what we’re going to go with today. And I’m excited for it because I think starting off the new year, this is the perfect way to do that. So Kaylee, welcome to the show.

[00:03:15] Jenny Swisher: That was a longer introduction than I wanted, but I’d love for you to just share with our listeners more about. Who you are. I know you’re a certified holistic health coach with a focus in hormone and gut health. Like I said, sister from another mister. She’s got 15 years of experience on this topic, but I would love for you to just share with us.

[00:03:32] Jenny Swisher: How did you get to doing what you’re doing?

[00:03:34] Calie Calabrese: Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me, Jenny. It was about time for you and I to get to team up and to talk more. And I’m really excited, uh, for this episode today. So a little bit more about me and my background. I think like a lot of coaches in our space, my journey started as a personal one.

[00:03:52] Calie Calabrese: I had my first identifiable panic attack when I was in college at the age of 20. And I really, for the next 10 years, was on a downward trajectory. By the time I was 24, I’d had my first abnormal pap smear. I was having pretty regular panic attacks. By 25, I think I’d been to the emergency room. three times for what turned out to be anxiety and panic, but felt like a genuine heart attack.

[00:04:21] Calie Calabrese: Um, at the time I really thought that I was a healthy individual. I thought I was health conscious, but a lot of the information that I was basing my healthy lifestyle on was actually based on. Weight and appearance and not actual health from the inside out. And so by the time I was married and had my second son, I was just turned 30.

[00:04:51] Calie Calabrese: I was not sleeping hardly at all at night. I had developed 11 food sensitivities. I wouldn’t eat if I was alone because I didn’t truly understand what that meant. I just knew that a lot of times when I ate, I would have a reaction and I was concerned for it to become severe and something to happen while I was home alone with my kids, I would break out in rashes.

[00:05:13] Calie Calabrese: I was allergic and sensitive to colognes, perfumes, detergents, cleaning products, you name it. It could cause a rash for me. Um, I hated to be alone. I lived in constant, debilitating fear. And when I had a panic attack at a girl’s night out dinner in front of about 30 women. That was when I finally drew a line in the sand, and I actually ended up seeing a chiropractor who had listed in a coupon book, which I randomly was looking at one Monday morning, all the things that she treated, and anxiety was at the top of the list, and I had been to every doctor at this point.

[00:05:50] Calie Calabrese: I was carrying around multiple prescriptions for anxiety medication in my purse, like a little security blanket, but I was afraid to take them because I didn’t know how I would react to them, so I actually never would. Used it. I just carried it around in case of emergency. So I walked into her office with my two boys in tow for the first appointment, and she never adjusted me.

[00:06:12] Calie Calabrese: She actually never touched me. She spent over an hour listening to me. And at the end of our meeting, she said, I’m going to teach you how to eat and it’s going to change your life. And that’s exactly what happened by the time I finished her 16 week program, I was no longer having panic attacks within three months.

[00:06:31] Calie Calabrese: My boys and I were off all of our allergy medications. I was taken off of them by our allergists, not just on our own. And I was starting to feel hope and joy in my life again. And that’s when I started my journey to become a health coach. And it’s just continued to evolve since then. I learned the power of nutrition and I thought this is something that people need to know about.

[00:06:56] Calie Calabrese: I can’t keep this to myself. So that’s really how it all started.

[00:06:59] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I love that you said that about feeling like someone finally listened to you with that functional, you know, with that chiropractor. I mean, I had a similar experience and I hear that every day. I just, I do consults with women, um, as you do as well.

[00:07:11] Jenny Swisher: And I work alongside an osteopathic physician who’s very holistic minded and into women’s hormone health. And just this morning we heard this very thing, like we had a two hour consult with someone and she was like, wow, I can’t believe you read my entire intake form and that you have. You know, um, empathy and compassion for what I’ve gone through.

[00:07:29] Jenny Swisher: She’s like, I feel like most doctors don’t even look at my, my paperwork. Um, and the fact that we spent two hours with her to talk about things that really are simple things like nutrition and sleep and supplementation that people we get away from, because we’re so caught up in this society of like, you go to a doctor, you get a prescription and this is the way we are, and we just live in this constant state of low energy or in your case.

[00:07:52] Jenny Swisher: Really suffering with whether it’s panic and anxiety or feeling like, I don’t even know if I can eat without a reaction, you know, and so, yeah, um, I think it really starts with people. I always say this. I feel like a broken record, like for people to understand that taking a functional wellness approach to your health.

[00:08:10] Jenny Swisher: Is, you know, I think a lot of people think like, oh, it’s going to be expensive or am I really, you know, what is it going to look like? It is a totally different approach, right? It’s really about root cause as opposed to just band aiding the issue. Right. And so I love that. That’s your story because that’s my story too.

[00:08:25] Jenny Swisher: I mean, mine was with migraines, but it was very similar to finding like, okay, I have sat in 14 neurologist offices and I’m getting nowhere in my first appointment with a functional doctor. It was a solid hour and a half. We did functional testing that no one had done on me before. I also had food sensitivities.

[00:08:40] Jenny Swisher: I also had different things that we learned about where we’re contributing to the migraines that no one had taken the time to do that. They were willing to send me to the Mayo clinic or the Cleveland clinic or all these things. Nobody had ever sat down with me to say, what’s your life like, you know?

[00:08:55] Jenny Swisher: And so that really is the first step. So I want to talk, I want to get into our topic today of nervous system control. Um, for my listeners, they know that we talk about the four fundamentals of hormone balance, sleep, supplementation, fitness, nutrition. And I always say my, my, my fifth wheel on that is nervous system control, right?

[00:09:12] Jenny Swisher: Like regulating the nervous system, dealing with your traumas. So, um, you yourself have experienced sort of this, what I’ll say is, um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like lack of control of the nervous system, right? Where you really feel like it’s a common source. Tell us more about that. And let’s kind of, you know, go down the pigeonhole of the nervous system.

[00:09:31] Calie Calabrese: Yeah. So, you know, it’s fascinating to me because in all my years of seeing doctors and, you know, going to nutrition school and all the things that I worked on, the nervous system wasn’t talked about very much in the beginning, you know, 15 years ago when I first started. And so I experienced an enormous amount of healing from shifting my nutrition, from healing my gut, from starting to.

[00:09:57] Calie Calabrese: work on things like sleep, but it wasn’t until really just about four or five years ago that I really started to educate myself on the nervous system. And as someone who had dealt with anxiety for such a large part of my life, um, Just before the pandemic around 2018, I started to feel anxiety creeping back in for me, and I started to read books on breath work and I started to look at just different aspects and just start incorporating into my own life.

[00:10:27] Calie Calabrese: So every morning when I would get up, I started practicing deep breathing. And I realized some things about my physiology in that I would get stuck. My breath would get stuck right around the diaphragm. And it was hard for me to actually expand my abdomen from years of improperly breathing. And I have found that to be, I started incorporating it into my private coaching and working with clients who had.

[00:10:53] Calie Calabrese: You know, leaky gut syndrome clients with various autoimmune diseases. And when I started helping them to see how to move breath through their body, they started to feel like a weight was lifted off them was often the word that I would hear, like that there had been an elephant sitting on their chest, and suddenly They were able to breathe again and opening up that area and allowing for things to move for our blood to flow, our oxygen to flow, our lymphatic fluid to be able to flow.

[00:11:24] Calie Calabrese: Is part of the detox process. It’s part of the nourishing process. And so not only are we regulating our nervous system when we do things like breath work, but we’re also creating healing within our body by moving stagnant energy by, you know, moving stagnant list by helping our bodies to detox. And as we know, all of those things support a healthy gut, they support healthy hormones.

[00:11:49] Calie Calabrese: So it became a real interest of mine. And I started to take some additional somatic Certifications and started trying to learn new ways to regulate the nervous system, and it really came into play the last three years. I’ll be 47 in March, and I started going through perimenopause at 43, but this is hindsight.

[00:12:12] Calie Calabrese: So at the time, I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I knew I had felt vibrantly healthy up till that point, and it felt like overnight All of a sudden my vitality drained out of my body. I literally feel like I woke up one morning, I looked in the mirror, I looked tired, I looked old, my skin didn’t look healthy, it looked sort of gray.

[00:12:37] Calie Calabrese: I never felt rested. I started waking up throughout the night. I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep and my anxiety started coming back. So I went to the doctor. I asked for hormone testing. I was told I was too young for perimenopause and my hormones were normal. So fast forward about a year of dealing with this, trying to put all of my health coaching skills into play for myself, playing with my nutrition, playing with my supplementation.

[00:13:05] Calie Calabrese: I don’t know how much money I spent trialing different supplements on myself. I went back to the doctor for another checkup and they said, Oh, like things are a little low, but not enough to say that you’re in perimenopause. So I was told over the course of three years, twice that I wasn’t in perimenopause, twice that I was at the beginning and once that I was definitely in full blown perimenopause.

[00:13:31] Jenny Swisher: That’s not confusing at all.

[00:13:32] Calie Calabrese: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as someone who’s educated on these topics, I’m like, how is somebody who doesn’t study this supposed to have any idea of what’s going on with their body? And what I realized was, you know what? Is it as helpful as tests can be, and I do believe that they are important tool.

[00:13:50] Calie Calabrese: They’re not the only tool. Because I knew how I was feeling and I knew what was going on with my body. And I knew the symptoms of perimenopause and I had them all. Yeah. And it turns out I was very estrogen dominant. I was having an ovulatory cycles and I wasn’t ovulating. So I didn’t have progesterone to help balance out that estrogen.

[00:14:10] Calie Calabrese: And so of course I had insomnia and I had anxiety. And when I was working on all the healing, but nothing was working. When I started going to the chiropractor three times a week and getting adjusted, getting movement flowing through, you know, the neck through the brainstem where, you know, all of the nervous systems going down into the spine.

[00:14:35] Calie Calabrese: And I started incorporating what worked for me more than breath work was eye movement with neck stretches. And that became a really powerful healing tool for me. And that’s when I finally started to see The anxiety leave my body and Throughout this process, I really lost myself. I lost my confidence as a coach because I couldn’t help myself.

[00:14:59] Calie Calabrese: Um, I was Really dealing with depression and anxiety on a daily basis debilitating like there were days I put myself to bed in the middle of the day And it impacted my relationship. I actually called off my engagement at one point And we’re back together now, but like I went through the ringer trying to figure this thing out.

[00:15:18] Calie Calabrese: And so That’s when I decided nervous system regulation has got to be a part of what I teach because even with all the other tools that was the missing link for me.

[00:15:30] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Well, isn’t it? It’s so true. Like you said, if, if, if we are people who study this and we, we can pick up on, okay, this I think is what’s happening for me.

[00:15:39] Jenny Swisher: What about the average woman who isn’t necessarily perimenopausal experience or what that might look like? I mean, I’m seeing this. Every day in these consults with women where they don’t realize that the brain fog they’ve been experiencing for the last few years or the, the waking in the middle of the night or the anxiety or whatever, they don’t realize that it’s part of this.

[00:15:58] Jenny Swisher: perimenopausal decade. Um, and simple adjustments like progesterone or whatever the case might be for each person. I mean, even in my case can be life changing. I mean, if it hadn’t been for progesterone for me and truth be told, I started on progesterone really young. Like my progesterone was in the toilet.

[00:16:17] Jenny Swisher: It was a 0. 08 on a blood lab. I was not ovulating. Um, no wonder I had migraines because my estrogen was through the roof in my twenties. With no progesterone. So in my late 20s, I started progesterone cream and it was, it was literally life changing. I was able to come off of all those pharmaceuticals and painkillers and all these things that I was taking through modern medicine that really wasn’t serving me super well.

[00:16:40] Jenny Swisher: Um, and I was able to treat the root and I was able to feel so much better. And, and I always say like. If that helped me so much using this dime size amount of cream on my skin, like, and other women are, are constantly seeking out, like, is there a sleeping pill that can help me sleep? Or is there, they’re, they’re struggling that women, every struggling.

[00:16:57] Jenny Swisher: And there’s a reason why hormone health is trending on Instagram. It’s trending everywhere because people are starting to kind of wake up to this idea that. Normal is not optimal that in a lot of cases, there are doctors may not know, um, you know, how to look at those labs correctly or through a functional lens.

[00:17:15] Jenny Swisher: And I think it’s, it’s, it’s encouraging to see that because people are finally starting to self advocate and say, Hey, wait a minute. Like I don’t feel right. So I need to figure this out. You know, um, I definitely want to ask more about the eye movement with neck stretches, but before we get there, I also wanted to chime in on the breath work piece.

[00:17:33] Jenny Swisher: So I include a breathwork, uh, workshop in my course with my good friend, Jen Zanders, um, who is my fellow yogi, um, yoga girl. She’s been my yoga instructor for years. She’s been a huge, uh, player in my, my migraine and hormone health journey. Um, but it’s interesting. I wanted to share this with everybody because.

[00:17:52] Jenny Swisher: I had her do this workshop with my, my course takers. And what we did was this small activity at the very beginning of the workshop, which I want to share here, which was where she had us do, it was sort of like an introduction to box breathing. Um, but before we got into the box breathing, she had us time ourselves on holding an inhale.

[00:18:10] Jenny Swisher: And she told us to focus on where our brain went during that hold. And it was, that was a really enlightening experience for me because I was like, okay, piece of cake. Like, let’s do this. Let’s see. Let’s see what we could do, you know, and we inhale. And I I’m sure I was the first person to like gasp for air at the end of this activity.

[00:18:29] Jenny Swisher: But my brain, you know, we, we inhaled on a four count and held. And my brain within 10 seconds was in a fight or flight state. It was literally like looking for a way out, like looking for what was wrong. And a lot of the women that were in this workshop said the same thing. They were like, Oh my gosh, like how long do most people hold it?

[00:18:49] Jenny Swisher: And, you know, here, she’s telling us. These experienced yogis who have practiced breathwork, they can do this without entering that fight or flight state. It was really eye opening to me to really see, like, that was a visual example for me of what my nervous system is really doing. Because, truly, I think it’s such a subconscious thing.

[00:19:07] Jenny Swisher: You know, it’s just, it’s part of who we are so much that we just don’t see it. And so that allowed me to see it. Like, oh my gosh, Jenny, like, how many times throughout your day are you entering that headspace? So, I want to say that to my listeners because I think it sounds all, you know, like frou frou and awesome, like, Oh yeah, down regulate my nervous system, like turn on a five minute meditation, or like, we think it’s so simple.

[00:19:27] Jenny Swisher: We just can follow this app, but in reality it goes so much deeper. And it is about the awareness of paying attention to where your thoughts go, paying attention to where you hold on. You talked about like the diaphragm and where you were feeling your body hold on to that tension and that stress. It is such a huge player.

[00:19:44] Jenny Swisher: So you can

[00:19:46] Calie Calabrese: touch it. I have to share a short story related to that because I think you hit the nail right on the head about like finding how does your body react in that moment. So when I first started practicing breath work, I actually got anxiety from box breathing from the part where I had to hold my breath or had to blow out.

[00:20:05] Calie Calabrese: And I often couldn’t even get through the four seconds of holding it because I would feel like. Just this immense fidgetiness just this like need to get out almost like I was crying out of my skin But in practicing just a couple minutes a day About eight months into my journey of trying to incorporate breath work into my daily morning routine I found out I had some abnormal cells in my cervix and I needed to have a leap surgery But I have MTHFR so my body does not process out anesthesia very well, and I’ve had three We can say near death experiences.

[00:20:44] Calie Calabrese: I’ve been told I almost died. So I was pretty against going under anesthesia for this procedure. And I found a doctor at UCLA who agreed to perform the procedure with only a local anesthetic. And I went into this surgery and they had the oxygen mask. They were like very prepared thinking this is a very serious thing that she’s going to do this surgery.

[00:21:08] Calie Calabrese: Without anesthesia, and I put my headphones on and I started my breathing and I asked to have a couple minutes to find my zone with my breath work and to call like my heart rate and everything. So my heart rates on the screen. We can all see it. They do this hour long surgery, and I just breathe the whole time.

[00:21:29] Calie Calabrese: I really felt nothing except a small pinch when they administered anesthesia and a little bit of pressure. And afterwards, the doctor came to my room, and she said, I had to come here and tell you that what you just did Was one of the most miraculous things I have ever seen. She said, your heart rate in your breath stayed so steady and so healthy.

[00:21:50] Calie Calabrese: So the entire surgery, it never spiked. And she said, I’ve never seen anything like it. Where did you learn to do that? And I told her I practiced one to three minutes of breath breathing every morning at home. And that was it. And she was like, send me the books you read. I want to learn more. And so you really can learn this and it doesn’t take hours of meditation and practice.

[00:22:11] Calie Calabrese: One to three minutes a day is all I was doing. Yeah.

[00:22:15] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So good. When I, when I first started doing, um, meditations and whatnot, well, I should start by saying in my yoga experience, which was my first experience in that sort of meditative state, right. It was Shavasana at the end of a yoga class in my twenties.

[00:22:28] Jenny Swisher: And my yoga instructor would, she would always, if she were sitting here right now, she would laugh because I was always looking at her, um, for a way out, like in the class. Like, I remember I would ask her before class, like, how long is the Shabbos not going to be today? Like, is this going to be a long one?

[00:22:43] Jenny Swisher: Like, how long am I going to have to hold still? I can’t imagine doing surgery, um, in that, that, that, that takes such. Nervous system control. Um, that’s such a powerful story, but I, you know, when I used to talk to Jen after classes, I would just be like, why does it have to be so long? Like, why do we have to lay there?

[00:23:00] Jenny Swisher: So still, and she was like, Jenny, this is your challenge. Like, this is your life challenge. Like you need to see how. You saying this is like, look in a mirror, like this, hear what you’re saying. You know, this, you’re saying that you can’t hold yourself still, that you can’t control relaxation, that you have to work so hard in order to be able to relax.

[00:23:19] Jenny Swisher: And it was so telling of just my personality, you know, and in the beginning I was resistant to it. Of course, I was like, whatever, like, okay. In my mind, I’m laying there in Shabbos and I create my grocery list. I’m like, well, I’m going to do something productive in this 10 minutes. But. As time has gone on, you know, from there, it evolved into, you know, I have an aura ring.

[00:23:37] Jenny Swisher: So aura has an app that has five minute breath work. And I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes it’s a struggle for me to do the whole five minutes. Like sometimes it’s like, okay, I’m going to bed. I’m going to do this five minute thing. And next thing I know, I’m wanting to either pick up my phone or my brain has totally left the room and it’s thinking about something else, but it’s that awareness, that first step of just creating that awareness.

[00:23:58] Jenny Swisher: That I think is the key, right? Like understanding like, okay, why is my brain doing this? Let’s just bring it back, bring it back. And that’s one thing that Jen is constantly saying is let your mind wander and then bring it back, let it wander and bring it back. Right. And so I imagine that in that moment for you, like.

[00:24:14] Jenny Swisher: In the surgical procedure, you know, you were really just not only controlling the breath, but the breath then controls the thoughts and then the thoughts sort of just, and everything just sort of calms. Right. So there’s so many different angles, so many different questions I have here, but I do want to make sure that before we get too far that we talk about this.

[00:24:31] Jenny Swisher: Eye movement with neck stretches piece. This is something new that I’ve not heard of. So I’d love for you to share that. Okay.

[00:24:36] Calie Calabrese: Okay. So. In one of my somatic certification courses, we learned a lot about the fluid that needs to flow between the spinal cord and the brain, and this is an area that gets very blocked up.

[00:24:50] Calie Calabrese: So if you think about it, driving in our cars, carrying heavy bags, children on our phones, the way we hunch and the way we, we create all of this tension. Most people’s shoulders are raised up towards their ears if they’re not thinking about it and consciously relaxing. So this area has all this muscle tension.

[00:25:12] Calie Calabrese: So if you’re, you know, anyone who’s listening right now, if you just slowly lower your chin towards your chest, I bet you feel a pull or a strain in the back of your neck, maybe kind of going out on diagonals towards your two shoulders, you might. feel it pull all the way down back behind your shoulder blades.

[00:25:29] Calie Calabrese: So these knots, this tension in the muscle, it blocks that flow of the cerebral spinal fluid and everything that the signals that need to be sent from the brain to the nervous system. So when we can open up this area, We allow that fluid to flow more freely. It helps with bringing nutrients and things to the brain.

[00:25:51] Calie Calabrese: It helps with carrying toxins out of the brain, out of the body. It helps with signaling, signaling being sent throughout our nervous system. That’s going to our lungs. That’s going to our heart. That’s traveling the vagus nerve. You know, the vagus nerve runs from your gut to your brain. It’s traveling right through that path.

[00:26:10] Calie Calabrese: So it’s all these. Important life giving signals. And when that area is locked up, it’s very hard to truly regulate your nervous system because things can’t flow. So one of the ways we learned to open it up is when you move your eyes, it actually creates stretching. So there’s three ways to do it. And the first one you want to interlace your fingers and you want to bring them behind your head and cradle the base of your head.

[00:26:41] Calie Calabrese: And then try to open up your elbows as much as you can. And your hands are there for the purpose of keeping your head straight ahead. So you don’t want to turn your head. Take your gaze straight in front of you. And then take your eyes only and look to the right. So while you’re doing this, just keep looking to the right.

[00:27:00] Calie Calabrese: Try to relax your shoulders down your back. Try to breathe. And as you’re looking to the right, just keep your head straight forward, but your eyes to the right. What you’re waiting to feel is some kind of release. So you’ll often feel the need to yawn. You might swallow, that’s the nervous system letting go.

[00:27:22] Calie Calabrese: Or you might feel a sigh, which is when you take, you’re taking an inhale and you feel the need to almost double inhale. It’s not forced, but it’s kind of like a, like an extra breath, and then bring your eyes back to center, and then you take ’em to the opposite side. So you always wanna be even. So then you’re gonna look to the left.

[00:27:42] Calie Calabrese: And generally you want to hold this for about 30 to 60 seconds and you just try to breathe and relax. Your nervous system might not let go. Maybe you’re already in a very relaxed state. Maybe you’re just holding on and you can’t quite find the release. But usually in 30 to 60 seconds, you’ll either yawn, swallow or sigh.

[00:28:04] Calie Calabrese: And that’s when you get the release. So then you always bring your eyes back to center. The other two add ons to this are, you can take your right ear towards your right shoulder, and then you take your eye gaze up to the top left corner. And it’s the same thing, you’re just sitting up nice and straight, your right ear is towards your right shoulder, and your eye gaze is up to the top left corner.

[00:28:30] Calie Calabrese: And again, you just breathe. Since I’ve started practicing this, it used to take me about a minute, sometimes more, to find that release. Often I’ll get it in less than 20 seconds. Now, then you always bring your eyes back to center before you raise your head. And then you do the other side. So the left ear goes to the left shoulder.

[00:28:52] Calie Calabrese: This is always my tighter side. And then I look up to the right. When I look to the right, I feel the stretch intensify. So if you’re conscious of it, you might notice. It moves the stretch out of just my neck and into my jaw. Sometimes I feel my ear open up and

[00:29:16] Calie Calabrese: then bring your eyes back to center and your chin back to neutral. And the third option is essentially the same, but when you take your right ear to your right shoulder, now you’ll actually look down towards that shoulder. So your eye gaze would go down to the right corner. And then when you take it to the left, you’ll look down to the left corner.

[00:29:36] Calie Calabrese: So it’s either head straight ahead, look right and left, drop your ear and look towards that shoulder or to the opposite corner, and then just do both sides.

[00:29:46] Jenny Swisher: That’s so cool. So one thing that I, it makes me think of is. So with these migraines recurring for me, I’ve been dealing with random episodes of vertigo, which is honestly worse than the migraine sometimes, because you, you literally feel like you can’t function.

[00:29:59] Jenny Swisher: Um, and I started going to the balance Institute here locally, just for some like vestibular therapy to see if I could, what I could help myself with when I have those episodes. And it’s interesting because the first, I would say three weeks of that therapy was focused on just eye gaze. Like literally, I think the first thing they did with me was they sent me home with an index card that just had a black dot in the center of it.

[00:30:22] Jenny Swisher: And it was like, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you’re very disoriented from being flat on your back and you have the vertigo when you, when you wake up. You know, sit yourself up on the side of the bed and you’re going to like your eye gaze is going to stay on that dot. Right. And then it slowly became moving the dot and moving the eye gaze with the dot.

[00:30:39] Jenny Swisher: Right. So it’s really interesting how all of it works and how it’s all connected. How the ears and the eyes and the neck are all part of it. Um, but for anyone out there who’s ever dealt with vertigo, I’m, I’m gonna, just so you know, I’m going to give this a try. I’ll report back on if it helps, but it makes sense, right?

[00:30:56] Jenny Swisher: Because I know for me, just an example of like my mornings where I’m waking up with vertigo, it’s a really, you talk about nervous system overload, I really sometimes feel like I’m having a panic attack because I can’t get grounded. Um, in those moments. And so this will be my first thought now will be like, okay, how can I just breathe, focus my eye gaze and let it, it doesn’t really pass, but like, let it calm down to where I can function.

[00:31:22] Jenny Swisher: Right? Because sometimes I know in the very beginning when this first started happening to me, um, and I think it was October. It was literally fight or flight, like, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, like, what’s happening, and, well, that’s not helping, right, because now I’ve just amplified my nervous system to the point where I don’t know if I’m dizzy because of something else or dizzy because I’ve made myself dizzy from the anxiety, so I totally will try this for sure, and I’ll report back to you guys, but, so what would you say, and what do you teach when it comes to maybe like the top two to three things that people should be mindful Doing as, as it pertains to awareness about nervous system or different techniques aside from this, maybe that might help with helping people understand that they need that down regulation.

[00:32:05] Calie Calabrese: Yeah, so when we work on like actual nervous system regulation, the 1st thing I always teach is to find your breath because I think most of us don’t realize that when we’re in a state of stress, anxiety, overwhelm. Even that busyness, because I think a lot of times when I say.

[00:32:24] Calie Calabrese: Do you have it? Do you experience anxiety? Do you experience overwhelmed? The knee jerk reaction is for people to say no. If they, if it’s not like clinical, but busyness is really a form of nervous system dysregulation. So people who are constantly running from one thing to the next and there’s never a moment where they slow down.

[00:32:43] Calie Calabrese: If, if I asked them to pause and to breathe. They’re not breathing fully there. It’s short breaths into their chest. It’s fast. And so just teaching them to recognize those moments. And to say, like, I have time to breathe. I have time to breathe. And a lot of times it’s, it’s, they have to set that mindset because like you shared at the end of your yoga class, it felt like I don’t have time to lay here for 10 minutes.

[00:33:14] Calie Calabrese: I could be doing other things that are more productive. And so just saying like, I have time to breathe. And I have them bring one hand to their chest and one hand to their stomach, and to just calmly breathe until they feel the air moving past their chest into their abdomen. They feel their abdomen start to rise and start to fall.

[00:33:33] Calie Calabrese: And they’ve gotten that full deep breath. And a lot of times I’ll have people say to me, like, I can’t get it. I can’t, I can’t get a deep breath. And it’s just that the muscles. It’s like a muscle atrophy condition. If you’re not using it, you forget how to do it. So when you first start learning to breathe, it might feel like your first day in the gym where nothing makes sense.

[00:33:55] Calie Calabrese: You’re trying to do things. It doesn’t look like the instructor. Just let that be okay. Let that be okay. And now that it’ll come with practice. So, you know, we start with that and I like to always have my clients habit stack it when we’re trying to learn and we’re trying to practice. So because I’m such a fan of gut health, we usually have it second on some mealtime because I think there’s no better time to take one minute to tap into your body, calm your nervous system, and just breathe five rounds of box breathing before they eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

[00:34:31] Calie Calabrese: And it just, it improves their digestion. And once they start to practice it, those three times a day, they often find themselves turning to it in moments of overwhelm. More subconsciously without even thinking about it because their body knows that that actually helps them to feel more calm. So we learned that we learned to take the time to learn, to have it stack it.

[00:34:54] Calie Calabrese: And then a lot of times when people are really struggling with the breath work, that’s when I like to introduce the eye movement because they have something to focus on that doesn’t feel like they’re doing it right or wrong. It’s just taking your eye gaze in one direction. You really can’t. Mess it up or compare yourself or judge yourself in that.

[00:35:14] Calie Calabrese: And so it feels

[00:35:16] Jenny Swisher: very available. I like that too, even as someone who struggles with the breath work and feeling like my body wants to hold on and I’m constantly trying to bring my mind back. Like the, the eye gazing was a lot more simple to, to do. Um, okay. So two things I want to make sure that we, we touch on one is I want to just say, When you were talking about busyness, I love that your habit stacking with food.

[00:35:37] Jenny Swisher: Actually, Dr. Paige and I were just talking to a client this morning about this very thing. We as women, right, we wear all the hats, we do all the things. We are mom, daughter, wife, et cetera. And I know for me, I don’t, sometimes I catch myself. I’m like, why am I standing at the counter to eat lunch? Like I need to go sit down and eat my lunch.

[00:35:55] Jenny Swisher: Right. And it’s just simple things like that. I’m Dr. Laura Brown. Who’s been on the podcast. Um, she talks about this too, like that simple act of just let your food time, be your food time. Like if it’s time to eat, just eat right. Or in your case, like do the five rounds of box breathing, eat your meal. And it’s okay.

[00:36:12] Jenny Swisher: If we’re not checking our email, if we’re not standing and doing something else, I know I can get in that habit too, where I’m like, Oh, I’ll just wash a few dishes while I’m eating. And I’ll kind of graze. Not a good plan. Like just let my nervous system have a moment. So I just wanted to chime in with that.

[00:36:26] Jenny Swisher: And then the other thing that I want to mention too is. Something we haven’t mentioned yet, but I want to make this connection. I realize we don’t have time to go super deep on it, but maybe we can do a part 2 sometime in the future. But, let’s connect this to cortisol and what helping people understand, like, what this really means in terms of it.

[00:36:42] Jenny Swisher: Bye. And then also maybe even make the connection for people to what I like to call that cortisol blood sugar, phenomenon that a lot of women will experience during perimenopause if not before. So if you could help touch on that, um, I will, we’ll kind of use it as a teaser maybe for a part two, but, um, I’d like to make sure that people understand that it’s, we’re not just doing this to do this because it’s like the fad thing to do and because we need to calm the F down, which is part of it.

[00:37:09] Jenny Swisher: But we’re doing it because. Uh, we want to regulate our hormones, right? You’re listening to this podcast because you’re like, I feel like something’s off. My energy is, is not there anymore or whatever. This is so clutch in understanding how this is really this simple activity of these eye gazes and these stretches and these, this breath work is all leading to balanced cortisol, which is then having an impact on that four legged hormone chair.

[00:37:31] Jenny Swisher: Your blood sugar rate, everything, right? So this really is, um, so, so important. So I would love for you to kind of make that scientific connection for us. Yeah.

[00:37:38] Calie Calabrese: I love this question. I love it because I would say 80 percent of the women that I work with one on one come to me and they are on some form of hormone therapy.

[00:37:50] Calie Calabrese: And yet they’re still struggling with most of the same symptoms that my clients come to me who are just at the start of their journey and they haven’t tried any hormone therapy yet. Why is it when we bring the level of estrogen, the level of progesterone, the testosterone to healthy levels that we still are symptomatic?

[00:38:14] Calie Calabrese: Well, it’s often. That’s when we trace it back to blood sugar and cortisol. Those are frequently the two biggest contributors. So when I work with those women who they’ve technically balanced or optimized their sex hormones. But they’re still having all the symptoms and we start to address cortisol and blood sugar.

[00:38:36] Calie Calabrese: That’s like the magic missing piece that suddenly the symptoms start to dissipate. And I love how you explain it like a four legged chair. I always just give my clients the analogy of like a hormone hierarchy. And I say like, we usually, most people just associate hormones with our reproductive hormones, our sex hormones.

[00:38:57] Calie Calabrese: And they don’t think about that. all the other hormones in our bodies that are helping to call the shots. And so if you kind of look at it from a hormone hierarchy, oxytocin and cortisol and insulin, if those are dysregulated, our sex hormones are going to be dysregulated. They’re kind of like more like the conductors and our sex hormones are more like, you know, The string section.

[00:39:23] Calie Calabrese: So they got it. They got to take their lead from somewhere. So we have to look up the chain to figure out, like you said earlier, root cause. Where’s the disruption really starting? Where did the dysregulation begin? And I think for a lot of women, like you said, because we’re so busy, we’re often overwhelmed.

[00:39:43] Calie Calabrese: We’re under Not getting enough sleep. You know, all the things are nervous systems. They’re, they’re just very dysregulated. Our gut health is off. It’s impacting our vagus nerve. So we can get into hours of conversation here. But this is why I find that this is, this is the missing piece when, because when the cortisol is dysregulated, then blood sugar is automatically going to be impacted, which is going to dump estrogen.

[00:40:06] Calie Calabrese: And so that’s why I didn’t get into it earlier when I said, I like to have it stack the breath work at mealtime. Okay. But in addition to the improvement to digestion, this is one of the big reasons that I like to have it stacked at mealtime because now we’re not only regulating cortisol, but we’re helping to regulate blood sugar as well.

[00:40:27] Calie Calabrese: And so it’s, it doesn’t, here’s the thing. I think we overcomplicate it so often we hear all these different things from all these different people. There’s lots of different agendas out there. We think we have to do all the things and then if it doesn’t cost a lot of money or take a lot of time, it’s probably not having a lot of value, but the truth is it really can be as simple as a minute of box breathing before you sit down to eat and then eating your nutrient dense meal in the right order.

[00:40:59] Calie Calabrese: I like to say fiber protein and healthy fats, then carbs and sugars. Those simple swaps right there. Do that consistently for 30 days and tell me you don’t feel a change. Yeah. Cause I know you will. I know you will.

[00:41:13] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, so true. I mean, I feel like I’m constantly saying the same thing over and over again, which is like, we don’t need to overcomplicate, you know, I just actually, right before this, I recorded a solo round podcast that will launch the same week as yours, and it’s all just about what I eat in a day and why it doesn’t really matter what I’m eating versus what you’re eating, but also I talk about, Making things simple, right?

[00:41:34] Jenny Swisher: When people say like, how do you eat? I’m like, I focus on protein. I make sure I’m getting enough protein for my body and making sure I’m getting enough fiber to match that protein. And I make sure that I’m eating a healthy fat at each meal. I’m really not going to over complicate it because that’s stressful in and of itself, and I have found, and I have seen that.

[00:41:50] Jenny Swisher: In working with women that it can make your stress so much more when you’re overcomplicating when you’re wanting the, you know, the perfect macros or you’re, you’re wanting to know what to follow your now you’re messing with your nervous system, which we just spent so much time talking about regulating.

[00:42:04] Jenny Swisher: So, okay, so. There was something in there that you said that I wanted to call attention to. I mean, there are so many different things that we could talk about. I’m glad that we’re touching on these things. But, um, I have found that, you know, when I talk about the four legged hormone share, people usually have an aha moment of like, Oh, it’s in the aha moment is usually, Oh, this is why hormones are so complicated because it have symptoms of something that you, you know, that you think is one thing, maybe sex hormone related, you start using HRT, like you said.

[00:42:32] Jenny Swisher: And then all of a sudden you’re like, well, it’s kind of helping, but it’s not really helping, right? Because that whole chair is wobbly. So I also love the analogy of the hierarchy because our stress and our blood sugar control so much of everything else. When I explained to my course takers that, you know, for example, cortisol can steal from progesterone.

[00:42:49] Jenny Swisher: Um, it’s like this, Oh, like I didn’t, you know, and I’ve even had that moment myself where, like I said before on this show, I’ve used bioidentical progesterone for 12 and a half years. It helped offset the migraines. I’m learning now that. Maybe it was low progesterone, but maybe it was also covering up something else for me because progesterone has sort of anti inflammatory benefit, anti pain, um, and so, But what I’m learning is, right, like, I didn’t know until 2017, so years into my own journey, I didn’t realize how shot my cortisol was.

[00:43:19] Jenny Swisher: I did a salivary panel in 2017. This was a year after my oldest was born, so I was in the thick of, like, No, no sleep. No team. No sleep. And, um, I told my doctor, I’m like, something’s wrong. I can’t hold myself up in a yoga pose. I don’t know if it’s my iron. I don’t know what it is. Like, I have no energy and turns out.

[00:43:36] Jenny Swisher: Nope. It was my cortisol. It was in the basement all day long. Wasn’t coming up at all. And. I was just going up and up and up on the progesterone cream because I was like, well, this has helped me before. Right. And it was, it was helping those symptoms, but I was also feeding the problem because now my body is like needs that cortisol and it’s going to steal it from those sex hormones.

[00:43:56] Jenny Swisher: Right. Which was causing menstrual cycle dysfunction. So all of these things are so interconnected. And I’m so glad you said that because it is so true that. So many women are open to and using hormone replacement therapy. I mean, I just met with a lady this week who was, you know, she on her own went out and found a progesterone cream, like an over the counter cream that she was using.

[00:44:15] Jenny Swisher: Not paying attention to the fact that, you know, we sit down and look at her labs and actually her thyroid is really way off. So how are we sort of band aiding the issue with that HRT, right? So I love that this is, I just, you know, if I haven’t said it enough. Everything is so connected, and when we address our stress, when we down regulate that nervous system, we’re impacting the blood sugar regulation, we’re impacting that entire four legged hormone chair, which is just helping us optimize our hormones, right?

[00:44:41] Jenny Swisher: It’s really getting to the root, root, root of it all. Yes. So, okay, so we’re running really short on time, but I want to ask you two things. One is Uh, you know, I just recently had Sarah and Ben, the, the co founders of Hugh and Grace on the podcast. So kind of made the announcement that I’ve aligned with Hugh and Grace and I’m an official advocate as I know you are as well.

[00:44:59] Jenny Swisher: And I would love to just share, you know, what ultimately made your decision for you to, um, to align with Hugh and Grace. What are you loving about the company? What are you loving about the products? If you could tell us in a nutshell before we wrap up.

[00:45:12] Calie Calabrese: Yeah, I think probably one of the main things for me was how intelligently designed their supplement line was, and as I mentioned, I was like a guinea pig trying all the supplements on myself while I was working on healing everything.

[00:45:25] Calie Calabrese: And when it comes to nervous system function and emotional regulation, like, we need vitamin D. When we don’t have adequate vitamin D, you know, we’re at risk of central nervous system dysfunction. Um, you know, magnesium, like I said, magnesium, our stress response. up magnesium. So a lot of us are mineral deficient, very deficient in, you know, magnesium and potassium, which are two very calming minerals.

[00:45:54] Calie Calabrese: And I had personally been using magnesium, but when I looked at, for example, hydrate detox, that was, that was the real kicker for me when I saw that they had, um, magnesium, potassium, you know, sodium, all the minerals, they combined it with pre and probiotics that Not only can repopulate in our digestive tract that when they’re processed, give off a byproduct that helps to heal the gut lining.

[00:46:20] Calie Calabrese: So now we’ve got the gut health with the mineral deficiency, and then they added in glutathione or master antioxidant, which works with the liver to process out all those endocrine disrupting chemicals. I was like, this is genius. They took. I was able to take seven supplements. I was using and replace them with one thing.

[00:46:37] Calie Calabrese: And then, you know, we could get into the, the AM supplement and the other supplements, but the way that everything was designed was so comprehensive, so intelligent, and it’s simplified things, not just from the standpoint of what should I take? And I’m taking all these things and I’m having to time it throughout the day, but also financially.

[00:46:56] Calie Calabrese: For me. And I knew this was something that I could offer as a foundation to my clients who needed to build a base that they could then build habit stack these lifestyle shifts and things on and truly see results on their hormone health journey. And so that was that was the kicker for me.

[00:47:16] Jenny Swisher: Same. I would say, I would repeat that exact same thing as my answer for me.

[00:47:19] Jenny Swisher: It was, this is the supplementation to the education that I offer. Right. And same thing for you. Like you’re teaching people the importance of gut health and gut cleansing and hormone balancing. And it’s like, well, here you go. Here, here’s exactly what you need to use from a product perspective for most people.

[00:47:35] Jenny Swisher: So I’m in the same boat as you. And I tell people all the time, I was. For months, I was devil’s advocate, like I was, you know, and I was using, like you said, I was using curcumin, CoQ10, vitamin D3, magnesium. So in the same way, I’ve been able to replace, I do still take more magnesium than what’s in the nighttime supplement, but I was able to replace so many things.

[00:47:56] Jenny Swisher: And it’s just so simple. Like, how can I just make these? Simpler swaps when it comes to my skin care with everything. It’s kind of an all in one, all in one shop. So I love it too. I’m, I’m loving the company, the energy in the company right now. And I’m loving, um, the supplement formulations is my favorite thing as well.

[00:48:12] Jenny Swisher: So, all right, we’ve got to wrap it up. I know we could have, I don’t know if you have four more hours or not, but I know I wish I did. I know I could talk about this stuff forever. I feel like we really just scratched the surface, but I would love for you to just share with people where they can find you, social media, whatever it is you want to share.

[00:48:27] Jenny Swisher: And we’ll also make sure that we link it up in the show notes. Thank you. The

[00:48:30] Calie Calabrese: easiest place to find me is on Instagram and I’m at Coach Kaylee. C A L L I

[00:48:36] Jenny Swisher: E. Perfect. Well, I will have it linked up. Like I said, you guys can just simply swipe up and click on it to, to land on her profile there on Instagram.

[00:48:45] Jenny Swisher: But thank you so much, Kaylee, for being here. Thank you. As our paths kept crossing, uh, it was inevitable that we would, we would land here and I’m excited to continue to work alongside you to represent human grace and just hormone health in general. I know we’re both on a mission to help women in particular, but the people understand the power of endocrine disruption, the power of.

[00:49:06] Jenny Swisher: Really living in that maximum energy. That’s what I always say. It’s really not about the number on the scale. It’s not about a before and after photo. It’s really about how you feel and how you’re showing up in your life and in your relationships and what energy you bring. So it’s refreshing. I feel like I’m sitting next to such a badass.

[00:49:21] Jenny Swisher: Like it’s so refreshing to be, um, in your presence and to be, to really feel like we are sisters in that way. So thank you so much for being here. And I’m sure this won’t be the last time that we have you on the show. Hopefully again in the future, we’ll, we’ll cover another topic, but. Thank you so much.

[00:49:35] Jenny Swisher: Thank

[00:49:35] Calie Calabrese: you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s been awesome.

[00:49:38] Jenny Swisher: All right, guys. Well, we’ll talk soon until next time. Bye bye.