Navigating Burnout Using Holistic Healing with Maria Cristina Guzman

In this episode, I'm joined by Maria Cristina Guzman, MSN, PMHNP-BC, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Holistic Coach, who supports first-gens in healing burnout and unresolved trauma. She approaches healing in a holistic manner combining western medicine and ancestral, mesoamerican wisdom.

Tune in to learn:

• What can culturally resonate healing approaches look like beyond traditional healthcare spaces?
• What does EMDR (a therapy modality) have in common with dancing, running, and drum playing (and what that means for healing things like burnout and trauma)?
• A drop about the Aztec philosophical framework and its parallels with many of our modern understandings of health and healing.

Want to dive even deeper? You can connect with and/or work with Cristina through:

• Website
• Calendly

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Life can sometimes feel like a lot, but you don't have to do it alone. I strongly believe that we're stronger together. Here we're going to slow down, have real talks, mix of things together, and explore ways to intentionally grow the life you love. We're going to talk about mental and physical health relationships, money, work, and community. Welcome to Writed in Attention with me, Ganina Gomez. Hi everyone. Thank you for joining for another episode. And this one, we're going to be diving into burnout and how to get to the other side of burnout using holistic healing approaches. And I'm joined by a special guest, Maria Christina Guzman, who's a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a holistic coach. So Maria, thank you so much for joining me today. And to get us started, can you share a little bit about your story and what brought you into the work that you're doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Thank you for having me, Karina. I really appreciate it. So, as you mentioned, I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner and I decided to specialize in psychiatry because I saw the need in my community. And um, when I was doing my residency up north in Santa Rosa, California, I found myself uh with a different population in different resources because I'm you I was used to working in Southern California, mostly border towns like San Isidro, Chulavista, Nacional City. And we had a lot of resources for our population, for our community. Particularly, I love serving monolingual Spanish-speaking patients because you know I am bilingual in Spanish and so I can communicate with them. And so when I was up there, the resources were limited. And I found myself in a new role. I've been a nurse for 18 plus years. And in this new role as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I was actually, you know, in the exam room, uh, so to speak, diagnosing and treating, you know, coming up with a treatment plan with the patients. And so I noticed that a lot of our community, I knew that we don't like taking medications, uh, that we like kind of holistic approaches, but I just did not know the percentage of my community that does not like taking medications. It was a big chunk, it was it was a big percentage. And so when I found myself asking, you know, what are we gonna do with this, right? Because in the particular organization I worked for, you know, the the goal was to diagnose and treat with psychotropic medications, you know, coming up with a new way of serving this community who does not want medications was not part of the goals at the time, as far as I was aware. And so to me that was frustrating, you know, it was frustrating because this is why I went to school. This is why I decided to specialize in psychiatry to help them because I saw the need. And so when I found myself telling them, um, you know, you have to go back to your primary care provider as I was instructed to do, to me, it just it just seemed like we were not serving them the way they want to be served. And also the idea of them receiving quality care was unattainable. Because I don't know if many people know this, but I I think it's important for them to know that a primary care provider in a community clinic setting is expected to see four patients in an hour. That is four patients to assess, diagnose, treat, write the note, not to mention any coordination of care, you know, to ensure quality of care, right? So when it comes to serving uh those patients in need of psychiatric services, when they go back to the primary care provider, to me seems like an unattainable goal. And so that's when I realized, okay, I need to do something else because I don't feel like I am doing uh the best I can in this role. And so I need to do something that will help my community heal in a culturally resonant manner. Because you see, in in school and even in organizations that I work, they talk a lot about culturally sensitive care, but they don't really teach us or give us an actionable to-do list. This is how you provide culturally sensitive care. So to me, it just seems rhetoric versus you know actionable to-do, and I am a person who likes actionables. And so that's why I decided to embark on this journey, and I ended up focusing on burnout. So that's the that's kind of like a the summary of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, and I imagine that that was super frustrating of being in those environments where like I could see the pain, I could see the need, and I don't have the right resources, or or we can't function in, like you said, that culturally resonant manner that's actually going to click with people. And can you share a little bit of those general things that people were coming in for and that were being prescribed medication? I'm imagining it's things like depression, anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah, so I saw um a lot of patients with trauma, anxiety, depression. Those are like the major diagnoses that I would document. But as far as those that did not want medications, it's like all of the above, you know. Um, particularly, I want to mention what really struck my heartstrings was trauma. Because you see, trauma, I would see a lot of female Latinas, Hispanas, not to mention that men don't have trauma, right? Uh not to say that they don't have trauma because I I believe they do, but they just are less likely to ask for help. And so when I found myself in the provider's room, um diagnosing them and coming up with a plan of care when it comes to trauma, there's no medication to treat trauma. You see, there's medications to treat those comorbid conditions that typically come associated with trauma, such as depression, anxiety, sleeping problems, uh, ADHD, but there is no actual medication to fix trauma. The evidence-based treatment for trauma is something called EMDR, i.e., movement desensitization and reprocessing. And the frustrating part on my end was that I did not have a provider in-house to refer the patients to. There were no providers even outside of the organization I worked for. And another layer or another barrier to access to care is the fact that the patients that have built a trusting relationship with me did not want to go out and see another provider. And so they don't train us to be EMDR specialists. Typically, it's a psychologist or a therapist that is trained on this. And so I took it upon myself to further my education and enroll in and become EMDR trained.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

And for those people that might not be familiar with EMDR, can you share a little bit more about EMDR? And I know before this podcast, we talked a little bit about the schooling that you did and some of the holistic approaches. Can you share a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, it was in New Mexico. In New Mexico, they offer a course in curanderismo, which I am gonna go in person this summer, June 1st to 3rd, to uh take those courses in person. But I took a course online, it's facilitated through Coursera. And so it was in the process that I was taking uh the curanderismo course, and then I enrolled in EMDR that I realized the tool that is used for both of them is the same. It's something called bilateral stimulation. And there was even in this handbook that I had for EMDR that they provided us with, it stated something about the tool being used, you know, for for hundreds of years uh by Native Americans um through their singing, their dancing, drum playing. And so that's why that's why I became intrigued. And then having learned the kind of ritual practice for treating susto, you know, what we call susto in curanderismo, um, I realized, oh my gosh, you know, it's it's the same. And this is something that our ancestors have been practicing, you know, um probably for millennia. And so I decided to to just go and learn more, uh, more about ancestral healing techniques, more about my heritage, about my lineage, you know, my ancestors. And and what I found was just mind-blowing, you know, the Aztecs and the Toltecs. And so that's how that kind of became, you know, from just focusing on trauma, but rather doing coaching for burnout. Because burnout can become can become exhaustion if it's not treated, you know. And and I just recently did some additional reading, you know, those who who reach the point of exhaustion where you can't control your body, right? Because your body tells you, this is it, you know, this is how far I've gone, you've abusing my body, so I'm not getting at work no more. And you know, they could lose four to six months of work, you know. They go, they go on disability, they go on uh leave of absence. On average, the average American loses $60,000 a year for an episode of burnout. Sorry, I went on a tangent. I don't know if I answered your question.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

No, you did. It was so good. And I have so many questions come up, and I'm just like, okay, how do I focus on one thing? I think one of the things that would be helpful is can you share a little bit more of what the connection be between burnout and trauma?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Let me pre-face by saying that there's not a lot of research done, particularly on the niche that I am focusing on, which is first gen. And I decided to do that because being first gen graduate myself, I can empathize with the challenges that we face, right? We don't have a roadmap, we don't have a blueprint, we have to figure everything ourselves, right? It's like um like going into battle to any new situation that we face, right? Whether that's navigating college, navigating your first job, you know, navigating healthcare for your parents at a young age, you know. So all of that can influence, can exacerbate trauma. Trauma, there's this whole field of epigenetics that talks about how trauma is not just it does not start the day you are born, you know, trauma can be passed down from generation through gene expression. And um, you know, trauma sometimes you don't remember it. And so I'll tell you what I found, right? This is no formal research whatsoever, but this is what I found because prior to embarking on this journey, I decided to to take a marketing course. And in this marketing course, the consultant told me, you you need to do a survey of the people that you're gonna serve because you know that way you'll learn to speak their language, right? Because I I I speak, you know, the medical terminology, but then you know, people who are not trained in medicine or don't have that medical background verbalize the things differently, right? And so one of the first things I did was I asked patients who face trauma in my private practice, which I have in in Arizona, but that became something totally new as soon as I got the information back from the survey. And so this is the question I asked. The question was when undersolved trauma or susto shows up in your professional or personal life today, how does it most commonly manifest? And I surveyed a hundred people, and the findings to me were pretty mind-blowing because it was something that I had not learned in school, right? I didn't learn this in nursing school, I didn't learn this in psych and pea school. And so this is what I learned. This was an open-ended question, by the way. And so they could write a paragraph, and I summarized it and synthesized it and came up with a total of five categories. Those were the most common answers, and one of them being hyper-independence. Hyperindependence is the person who feels like they have to do everything themselves because they can't truly trust others to do it right. I also noticed a pattern, by the way. This typically tends to be in our population the firstborn female or the only female, right? Because the roles we have in our culture, the Latino culture, are different, right? For men versus female. And then also we tend to be pleasing. But you see, it's not because we truly like that person, you know, we want them to like us, we want to be best friends, but there's this underlying inability to say no or set boundaries, which inevitably leads to resentment and burnout. And what I hear over and over again with people, you know, someone I spoke with told me that, you know, she's like, I became a token Latina, I became the person my boss would come to because I would always say yes. But you see, this I think this is also because our only point of reference for us first gen prior to going into the workforce is our family. And in our family, we are taught to respect our elders, right? If you say no, sometimes it's considered disrespectful. And so you find yourself doing the same thing when you go into the workforce as the first gen, right? That's your only point of reference. And so you don't know how to say no, or you think it's disrespectful to say no and set boundaries. And so then, fast forward three months or a year later, you find yourself with all these items on your plate and you look around, and your co-workers don't have as much as you do. Inevitably, that leads to resentment and of course burnout, right? Because by the time you get back home, and I hear this over and over again from single young ladies, they're like dating what dating, right? They don't even have any desire to date. If they're married, couples, you know, male or female, they're like, by the time I get home, I'm exhausted, you know. I just want to like pass out on the couch, you know, and so there's no quality time that you spend you with your family, and you see this is a vicious cycle because we need to rest, right? We need to enjoy our life, even if it's a couple of minutes, you know, some quality time with your family. So that's the other um category. And then the third one is the always on mode. This always on mode, I also call it the biggest thief of our joy, because you see, people find themselves first gen, we find ourselves uh feeling always on alert, always anxious and tense, even when things are going well. You know, I hear this particularly from from parents. By the time they get home, or when there's like a little event, a little win to celebrate, or a big win, they don't celebrate it because they're so focused on the past, right? Things that happened in the past, they they ruminate on it, and then they're fearful of the future, that the same thing that happened in the past that is unresolved will happen in the future. And so they don't celebrate or live the day by day, the today, the now, the present, right? The other category is the success as a shield. That success as a shield is, for example, uh using productivity and busyness to avoid sitting with difficult emotions or memories. I can also identify with this when it comes to just like adding degrees to your name. You know, I feel like for the longest time I just kept adding degrees, but uh but there was no clear finality to it. There was no objectivity to it. It was the object was so that I could get a higher degree because it was almost like a sign of worthiness, right? The the higher the degree I have, the more worthy I become, you know, not knowing that I am just unworthy just just by being, you know. Or also other people do this, they add to their list because they avoid silence. They avoid silence because you see, silence is soothing, silence is healing because it forces you when it's just you and your thoughts, it forces you to process those memories, those painful memories, right? And so if you're not ready to face them, you're just okay, like I'm just gonna go in and you know go get the next degree or go add to my to-do list. And then finally, is the impatience reactivity. That one, you know, also ties to burnout because you're the one at work, right, who has all these things under plate, you become frustrated, you become burned out. And then by the time you get home, you get easily triggered by small things, right? And I always give the example to my clients. It's like by the time you get home, because you're so exhausted, your patience is like this big, right? Like tiny, tiny. And so you get upset at little things like you know, the children fighting, but they're children, you know, like that's that's what they do. Siblings do that, or the dog barking. Well, the dog is a dog and it barks, right? Or your partner's tone of voice, you know. Um, and so those are the five items that I noticed. And so when you look at one specifically, right? Like, let's take, for example, hyperindependence, right? You would think, oh, well, this that's just kind of like a um character trait, right? That's their personality. They feel like they have to do everything themselves because they can't truly trust others to do it right. But you see, the underlying, the root cause of that is the trauma. Because if we go back, you know, just to remind the audience of the question, the question that I asked was when unresolved trauma or susto shows up in your professional life or personal life today, how does it most commonly manifest? And the people that answered this survey, the majority of them were actually people that had already been diagnosed by trauma. They had tried or uh work currently uh with a therapist or taking medications. And so I'm very glad that I did this because this led me to decide, you know what, I'm gonna focus on burnout. Because all of these categories, you know, if you continue doing them long enough, right, you will inevitably burn out. That burnout, if you don't treat it, it will inevitably lead to exhaustion. I talk with a lot of young women in their 20s. Sometimes, you know, a lot have been affected by something called Bell's palsy, which looks like they had a stroke. In fact, I've talked with a couple that like half of their face is like crooked, you know? But there's remnants of the bell's palsy, you know. And it's because they were burnt out for such a long time. And they are they admitted this to me, right? Because when I meet with people, sometimes I have cafecito with people, and I would like to invite anyone to have cafecito with me. And I just love to learn about their experience with burnout. And this is what people have been telling me because I want to learn how to better serve this community to help them heal in a culturally resonant manner, and that's what I've learned thus far. I'm sure there's a lot that I still don't know, but I am committed to this.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, I think the work that you did with the survey to really hear from people what their experience felt like to them, I think it's such important work because I think that's one of the things that still makes mental health a little bit inaccessible to people. It's just the language of Western medicine on mental health field, it just doesn't quite click. And it's interesting because I went down my own learning of attachment theory. And then once I started talking to my mom, so my mom only speaks Spanish, so I really had to digest the information and talk about like upages and the like the experiences of the different attachment theories. And when I broke things down to her, like immediately she knew she's like, oh, I resonate like with this affigal. And it wasn't until I broke that down, she probably wasn't gonna learn about attachment theory beforehand. But when I shared in a manner that was more digestible and in her language, she was just like, oh yes, that's definitely something that that I resonate with. And that's why I think the survey that you did is gonna be so helpful for people to see themselves of like, oh yes, this could be something that I might be struggling with because what you were saying around burnout and underlying trauma, I think that was definitely my experience. And for me, it took having extreme exhaustion where I was just like, I need help. Like I don't know how to carry all of this. And then once I started working with a therapist, it was just a lot of unresolved trauma, childhood trauma, right? In addition to current things that are happening as well that are just kind of piling one on top of another.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can also resonate as you were talking about your personal experience. I I remembered, you know, one of the most challenging times of my life was when my husband was diagnosed with uh cancer, melanoma, it's skin cancer, and just helping him navigate, you know, even as a healthcare provider, right? Navigating. Healthcare system, it is so upsetting, you know. It's like my husband is a very smart man, he has a PhD. Okay, and sometimes he goes to the pharmacy and they talk to him in this like foreign language, and he calls me and he's like, I don't know what they said. What do you mean you don't know what they said? He's like, They said this, you know, and so I'm like going back and forth, and then he finally he goes, Well, you just talk to them because I don't know, you you guys speak a different language, and it's so true. It's just navigating this healthcare system is exhausting, and you add to that, you know, you have a a loved one who is seriously ill, right? So I was strong enough during that process as I was, you know, being his support system, you know, through the healing process, through his treatments. And then finally, once he got out of the woods, so to speak, it was almost like then I allow myself to relax, you know, and it was then that just like my body was just like feeling very tired, exhausted, you know, borderline depressed because I felt like so empty, you know, like I could not feel any feelings, you know, and that's your brain. There's this theory called triune brain theory that talks about your reptilian brain, the brain that evolved like 500 years ago. This reptilian brain is sometimes in order to protect you, it thinks it's protecting you, so it numbs you. You know, so sometimes I hear clients talk about me siento uh entumida, I feel numb, uh, me siento congelada, I feel frozen, me siento como zombie. I feel like a zombie. You know, those are phrases that remind me, oh, this patient's reptilian brain has decided that you know it's gonna numb because it thinks that it's in danger. And that's a hard place to be in. Yeah, it is definitely a hard place to be in, you know, because you just don't feel at all. And sometimes it lasts longer than two weeks. And you know, you wanna like for example, me, I I called my my primary care provider, and I have an HMO. And HMOs are notorious for you, first have to see your primary care provider so that you can see the specialist, and then it was like, Well, I eRequest Spanish because I feel comfortable with Spanish. I speak English fairly well, but I would rather meet with someone who speaks Spanish, and so they're like, Oh yeah, um, the appointment will be in six months from now. Yeah, and I'm like, Okay, well, good thing. I I don't think I'm that sick, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

I just stay in this little pit by myself until then.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

I know, but yeah, it's ridiculous um how long that has to be. But just kind of going back to this burnout, this unresolved burnout, it could eventually become more serious things like you know, depression, anxiety, panic attacks. And so I am a strong believer in preventative care. And so that's why when I saw that data, I said, well, you know what? This is the way that I can help my people, first gen, you know, which are the community that I uh identify with a lot because I think we have a lot of stressors, right? Where this um I hear this very common from other first gens. They're like, No me siento ni de qui ni de allá. I don't feel like I I belong here or over there, right? Meaning sometimes you are too corporate for your family, right? They think that, you know, te crees mucho, you're showing off, you know, you think you're too good for us. We never say that, but that's the way they feel, right? It's not about us, it's about what they're thinking. And then also when we go in the work setting, you know, being Latina in healthcare, I don't know if you can identify, but not just healthcare, being Latina for me in psychiatry, I found myself many times being the only one. And therefore, since I'm the only one who speaks Spanish, I would see a lot of the Spanish-speaking uh patients. And so I would see trends that my other colleagues wouldn't see, right? I'm very glad that the things that I witnessed led me to this path because I feel in the way treating this burnout is preventative care to the exhaustion, number one, right? But number two, also like this worsening anxiety, which could lead to panic, right? And so I I really love the work that I'm doing. I'm in the you know, beginning phases, I would call it like the neonatal a neonatal phase, but I'm really loving it, and that's how I know that's what I'm meant to do. Because when you truly feel it deep in your bones, in every cell of your body, that this is what you're supposed to be doing, and you're truly enjoying it, you can truly make a difference because you're doing it with passion and with love, of course, for my community.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

That's the best motivator, like that love for the community. Like, what are you wanting to be doing? Can you share a little bit more of what can those holistic healing practices can look like?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah, so I learned a lot about the Aztec tripartite philosophical framework as well as the Toltec philosophical framework. They also hold the same belief as the Aztecs because you know the Toltecs lived before the Aztecs, they're like ancestors of the Aztecs. So let me put it to you this way. This is why I loved when I started reading about the Aztec tripartite soul, a lot of theories that I read about, including the triunal brain theory, there's a polyvagal theory, there's affective theories that talk exactly about what the Aztecs wrote about in the codices that remained. So when I was reading about this triunal brain theory, it reminded me a lot of these other theories, you know, and I realized that they were so smart, they had their blueprint down. And also I want to share this story because I think it's important. When I was reading about particularly this Aztec tripartite soul uh philosophical framework, my husband, who is a college professor, he teaches uh political science. And this particular day that I happened to be reading, he had a book out there on Plato. And when I was reading this particular book, it was talking about how the Aztecs and Plato had the similar framework. Well, it's different. The Aztecs is it's more like science-based, and Plato is more like ethical, and so he's teaching this philosophical framework to his students, his college students. Plato was like 300 years AD, and I think the Aztecs came up with it a couple thousand years before that, and so to me that was amazing. It's like, hey, wow, you know, the Aztecs came up with this way before Plato, but it's more focused on science, and and so, like I said, as I think back on the theories that I learned through Western medicine theory, I realized because I know that language, right, that the Aztecs were talking about the same thing, it's just different names, different terminology, of course, different uh language, but it's the same. And so this is what the tripartite soul framework entails. They believe that we have three souls, one that resides in our head, the tonali. And that one is you know, the critical thinking one, the one that receives light through our you know, the top of our head, what we call la muyera, you know, when we're little, that's open. And then there's another soul that resides in our heart, and that's the tejolia. And so that tejolia is all about connection, right? This love, the sense of belonging, and then we have the soul that resides in our gut, in our liver, gut and liver, and that's the icholot, and that soul is the instinctual soul, you know, the protector, right? And so the healing that we do, you know, that I do, that I practice with those that join me, is a lot of somatic work. Uh, we use uh bilateral stimulation that we have been using for many, many thousands of years, uh, through singing, dancing, bilateral tapping, breath work, mindfulness exercises, and it's work in progress, you know. I come up with like modern uh uh activities that we can do to practice those rituals that our ancestors did in the past, but maybe in the present they might not be a pickle, but we can do something something more modern, and so that's what I do with people. It's all about awareness, you know, it's all about being here in the present because we are so busy staying in the past, you know. It's almost like whatever happened in the past, if it was if it was susto, right? Um it's frozen, right? And you relive it over and over and over again. And so the somatic exercises help you get unstuck, help warm up that freeze, the frozen, and you bring it to the present, you work on it, and then you release this energy, this negative energy that no longer serves you, but but rather it's it's on the way, it's keeping you from becoming that version of yourself that you're supposed to become because you know our ancestors believe that everything is written in the stars, you know, that you already have a destiny, you have a gift that you're supposed to fulfill, you know. And so that's kind of what I worked on. That's kind of like a session would look like.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

And I think as you're sharing all of this, two big things come to mind. One is I really appreciate you finding that intersection between what you know within the Western medicine and our old practices of healing, of finding that connection, of being in love. And as I was hearing you talk about some of the things, I definitely see that piece of the cultural resonance because hearing you talk about like the moyera and the susto, those were definitely things that I grew up hearing, like, oh, don't do this, like se les va a caer la moyler. I'm curious if you could share a little bit more about, I don't know if you grew up with this too, of like cuidando la moyera.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

No, not particularly about cuidando la moyera, but I do recall, you know, a lot of talk amongst our elders, you know, my mom, my grandma talk about the importance of yeah, you know, like nah se le cayó la muyera, and then they would tilt the child back and shake it. I mean, I don't recommend that. That's that's not there's nothing scientific about that, but there may be, you know, some cultural beliefs that they used to practice certain things back in the past. But just kind of thinking back, something that I do have experience in, and that's actually why I got really interested into this ancestral work, is because you see, I grew up in a little town in the middle of nowhere where my community and my family faced every barrier to access to care that you can think of, you know, uh lack of resources, lack of money, lack of transportation, and uh safety issues, right? You don't go out. And so um because of that, and just because of, you know, I think COVID just facilitated this virtual learning, virtual teaching, virtual practicing, my services are are all virtual right now. I am working uh on something in person where I can actually incorporate all those other things, like like you know, even eating herbs para la limpia, what they call la barriday because that in itself is bilateral stimulation, you know. Like I remember going to the curandero, because again, that was the only provider, you know, the only health care that we had. And my mom would take me there, and and I used to believe that you know, it was a miracle that I'm alive, right? I have memories of me being so, so sick that I was hallucinating because I had such a high fever, and all my mom could do at that time was you know put some cabbage on my forehead because there was no money, there was no pharmacy in the town, you know, and so she put some cabbage on my forehead, and then uh she took me to the curandero, and the curandero did his you know his his ritual, and I think there is definitely more to it than just what people think is folk medicine, because I think when people hear folk medicine, they think, oh, you know, it's it's I don't know, maybe witchcraft or something like that, but definitely not something that is evidence-based. But I think just because it's not evidence-based, it doesn't mean that there is no healing power in it. Um, it's not evidence-based because no one has studied it yet, you know, that's what that means. And so, in kind of honoring my ancestors, honoring my mom, right? Um, I decided to learn more about it. And and as I learned more about it when I took the EMDR course, and then also when I took the courses in curanderismo, I'm very glad that that I did because it is through that that I'm learning more on how to incorporate culturally resonant practices in my holistic coaching.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Hearing you share all of this, it feels like even learning about like ancestral practices and the things that you grew up knowing as medicine, like getting a limpia, having that cabbage on your head. It's almost a healing experience of like reconnecting with ourselves and like reconnecting with the past. Wondering, given all of that, given all of the learning that you've done and all of those aha moments, what have been some of the most powerful things that just really stuck with you?

SPEAKER_01 36:49

I think it was the bilateral stimulation. Different cultures, you know, practice it differently, but at the end of the day, it's like the same outcome, right? You know, healing. Healing is healing, and wherever you receive your healing from, it is okay, right? If it works for you, it's okay. In Western medicine, I I was taught to always practice using evidence-based research. And I do that in my private practice, but in coaching, I am a little more open on the practices that I integrate because I feel those that I serve are more open, you know, to those limpias, right? And to the power of smudging or the power of drum playing, the power of singing, the power of dancing, you know, all of those are healing, and all of those are natural, you know, bilateral stimulation that we do, you know. I once read a book that stated, and I mind you, this is not evidence-based, right? It was just a book I read somewhere that was talking about how back in the old days there was no such thing as trauma. You know, I'm talking about like, you know, when we lived in caves, uh, because like you would go out, right? You would go hunting or whatnot, and and if you are being chased by, I don't know, uh saber-toothed tiger, you know, you're running. And it's this the running itself is natural, right? By lateral stimulation. And so if you made it, great, right? You're not gonna have trauma because you turned it yourself. If you're not made it, well, your genes are not happy. You are dead. Exactly. And so, um, so yeah, that that was that was something that that made me laugh, but it is it's true, right? Also, our modern lifestyle, right, is different. And so if we don't stay active, if we don't exercise, exercise itself is is a great, you know, natural bilateral stimulation, right? Whether you're hitting the treadmill, whether you're going out running at a park, whether you're an um, what is it called, stepmaster? Yeah, I personally don't like going to the gym. I'd rather do some work in nature, you know. Nature itself is healing, you know. Going to hug a tree is so grounding, you know, it could be a great grounding exercise. That is evidence-based, hugging a tree.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

I was just talking to someone about how being out in nature can be so grounding, and I live in close proximity to the beach. So I love walking to the beach, taking my shoes off, and just like letting my feet sink into the sand, and that's such a grounding experience. So thank you, Christina, so much for sharing all of your insights and kind of marrying those two things together: Western medicine with ancestral practices. And for people today, what's what do you think is one thing that they can do that they can practice to do some healing?

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Okay, I will finish with this. The Aztecs had this philosophical point of view of the purpose of life being something they would call uh the flower the song. In Sochitl in Quikatl in Nawatl. And so the flower being anything that l that has a life cycle, right? Anything beautiful, anything that is alive is beautiful. It is born and then it dies, right? But the beautiful thing, or like our legacy is any art that we create, that's the song in Quikatl. And you see, you can only create something when you are in that state where your souls are aligned, where what you think is what you feel in your heart, right? And what your gut feeling is telling you. And I think we have forgotten to feel our feelings, to trust that gut instinct. And uh a place where we can begin is number one awareness, you know, being here in the present and now. So I would say just three times a day, practice this. The first thing you do when you wake up, you know, just put your palm or your hand to your chest and ask yourself, how am I feeling right now? Because a feeling is something you don't need to learn, it's something that you are born with, you know. And then in the afternoon, same thing. How am I feeling? What do I need? Do I need to take a deep breath? Sometimes even just doing that. And so I'll leave you with this the double sigh. So this hopefully it makes sense. Let's do it together. Um, okay. So the double sight, when you're feeling really stressed, right? And I don't know, you have to do a presentation, someone make you mad, you're stressed, you're you're feeling anxious. The double side, see, our body is so so uh wise that it knows. You know, when you'll be crying for a long time and then you're relaxing, you do this like a double sight. Yeah, so the goal of the double side breath work is to breathe in 80% of total lung capacity, so that's one long breath, then hold that breath for a second, then breathe the remaining 20%, and then exhale in a long seven to eight count. Okay, so I'll demonstrate. So, first I'm gonna exhale all the air out of my lungs. Then I'm gonna breathe 80% lung capacity. Hold for a second. Breathe in the remaining 20 for a couple seconds and then exhibit like you know it. Sometimes it takes pretty breath. So you can do it up to three times and uh what I hear people who are not used to this is sometimes I hear them say things like, Oh, I feel this tingling on my head. Um it just and it just truly relaxes you. Uh, with that breath work, I've been able to relax some of my clients that come in like all stressed out, you know, because of the the burnout they feel from work. And if you keep up practicing that for like a month, you will notice a difference. And then practice it for 60 days, it becomes part of your daily life. Because sometimes that's all you need to help you calm, relax, and ground you in the here and now. Enjoy those beautiful moments. Even like to me, just waking up is such a blessing, you know. So grateful that I I get to live one more day in this beautiful earth. Hug your loved ones by the way. Hugging, hugging is also therapeutic. Hugging creates that love hormone oxytocin. So you love it's hug your loved one three times today.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah, I love that. And thank you so much for doing that demonstration. I think this is actually the first time that we do a demonstration on an episode. And even as I did that breath work with you, I already feel like more grounded and more centered into what you're saying, that power of the pause and the breathing and just being like so present right now.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yes. Yes, that's the key. Being in the here and now. But it's also important to take into consideration that there's a lot of generational trauma in our communities. And so our ancestors, our parents have been living in this survival mode for hundreds of years. Chances are, if our ancestors were living here in the Americas, they faced all of this colonization atrocities that happened. And so they had to our ancestors had to work ten times as hard, right? Because guess what? If they didn't, they might, they probably would not be alive. And so we are we are descendants of survivors, we are descendants of warriors, you know. They had to work ten times as hard. And I think something that we could do to honor them is live our life, enjoy, enjoy those little moments because we are good enough. We have been and we will always be.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

That's such a beautiful message, and thank you for sharing that. Like you said, we're not being chased by that tiger necessarily. I was gonna say colonization, but we still have a lot of systems that continue to perpetuate colonization, but that's another podcast episode where you have a lot of opportunity to do healing and choose differently now. So, with that said, Christina, for folks that are interested in working with you, learning more about the healing work that you do, how can people connect with you and find you?

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Well, they can connect with me through my LinkedIn. Also, I'll share with you my calendar link so that anyone that wants to have a conversation with me can schedule a 30-minute cafecito. I would love to know about your journey with burnout and tell you about the work that I'm doing and see if it's something that resonates with you and something that you would let me help you with.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Well, wonderful. Christina, thank you for joining me. And thank you also for listening, for tuning in. If you haven't left a review, please go ahead and leave a review. Let us know what you thought of this episode and other episodes that you've been listening to as well. And that's it. Okay, bye. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Rooted Intention. Until next time. And remember to keep showing up for the life, relationship, and community you want. Now go.