This week I talk to Kole Whitty who is a powerhouse of a woman who completely changed her life — from watching her body run down at 26 years old to now teaching health and wellness with her husband — and now helps people release stress and trauma from their bodies.
If you’re listening to this, you’re a doer who feels guilty when you’re not getting “all the things” done in your practice, your business, or in your personal life.
THIS is the episode you need to hear to start getting your life back on track.
She’s going to share how at 26 her body was rebelling against her, and she had to figure out what was going on. We had a fascinating conversation of how the body can be used to change the mind, how we can improve our performance at work, one of the FIRST signs to notice whether you’re in your body in the present moment and a quick trick to gain more energy during your day.
Now, if you’re feelings pretty good about where you’re at physically, then you’ll still want to listen to our conversation because we dive into flow state and how you can make the practices you’re already doing that much more powerful.
During our conversation, my guest explains HOW you to optimize your body to make the realities of your day easier.
Kole Whitty is a Bio Integration Specialist and Trauma Release Expert who teaches the importance of understanding the unique language your body speaks.
Your body experiences everything you’ve ever gone through, and it remembers those experiences just like our brain does.
Kole helps you listen to those subtle cues our body is giving us. Then she teaches you what your body trying to tell you, so you can optimize it for the performance you need.
Whether at one of her live weekend intensives or two week transformational experiences in Peru, Kole loves talking about the limitlessness of your body’s intelligence and combining the animal instinct of it with our evolutionary brain power.
Listen in…
I want to share with you something that’s coming up…
One of the most popular coaching topics I have is how to make your work life and your personal life easier.
So for the next couple months, I’m going to be doing some special free videos JUST on making your life smoother. These will be strategies to make your busy life simpler….and they’re all free.
If you’re overwhelmed with your inbox, your clients, or you feel pulled in a million directions, you’ll want to watch these videos and implement the strategies that will help you. I’ll be giving you some free tools along the way to help you out as well.
To make sure you don’t miss these awesome videos, go to the homepage and sign up for any of my free coaching guides. Then you’ll be signed up for my emails and won’t miss a single video.
You can click below to grab your free (and short) guided meditations, and you'll be placed on the list!
LINKS MENTIONED
Learn more about bio-integration here: TahKole.com
Warrior Women with a Purpose Podcast with Kole Whitty
Follow Kole on Instagam – She and her husband Tah are so freaking cute!
Wim Hoff – The breath master himself.
Salt Water Floats ~ Also known as sensory deprivation tanks. If you haven't tried one of these in your area, I HIGHLY suggest you do. It's a chamber of quiet in a noisy world. I was a bit anxious the first time because I'm not used to floating on water. ???? Probably most of us aren't. The place I go has the option for lights, or no lights. It also allows you to have music on or silence.
If you're in the Sacramento area and want to try the place I go (Capitol Floats), I have a referral code that will give you a discount when you book.
To get a discount at Capitol Floats use Referral Code: mv-229146
Somadome ~ This is a another great resource. Somadome is a meditation pod for people who may not be accustomed to meditating. My friend Sarah Attia invented it. Genius! She's put her heart and soul into it, and it shows. Click here to learn more about it.
If you're in the Sacramento area, you can book a Somadome experience by clicking here.
THE TRANSCRIPT
Dina Cataldo: (00:01)
Well. Hello, how are you doing today?
Kole Whitty: (00:04)
I'm incredible actually. How are you?
Dina Cataldo: (00:06)
I'm fantastic. Thank you for asking. So I just want you to introduce yourself to our listeners because I think you've got some amazing stuff going on.
Kole Whitty: (00:17)
So my name is Kole Whitty. I'm a part of TahKole Bio-Integration and I'm a bio integration specialist and I work in helping people release stress and trauma from their physiology. So ultimately what we do is we help people get their body into alignment with their business. A lot of times with long hours, lack of sleep, uh, longe periods for many professionals or big projects or selling a business or whatever, the body gets very stressed, the mind gets very stressed and it starts to take a toll on the body and the body starts to show signs of stress and there's obviously distressed, right when you get distressed and it's overwhelmed. So our goal is to work from a mental capacity, a physiological capacity to get the nervous system to down-regulate so people can think clearly, uh, prolonged states of stress, make people sick. So that's ultimately what we do. We do it by measuring different metrics from heart rate variability to sleep patterns and looking for signs of stress even if someone doesn't feel mentally stressed. So we speak a lot at conventions, wellness summits. Uh, my husband is my business partner and he was in emergency medicine for 25 years and I come from a background of, uh, addiction, uh, personal training and a little bit different side as him, but it really comes together and we love, love what we do.
Dina Cataldo: (01:45)
I think you guys are a beautiful couple too. I was just noticing pictures since we kind of happen some shared groups that were involved in, um, I just thought, Oh wow, you guys are just very handsome couple. Um, so I wanted to bring you on because I am fascinated by this topic of how stress can benefit our lives and how it can turn really bad and become chronic stress. And my experience has been in both arenas, uh, specifically with chronic stress. I had breast cancer. I don't know how much of my background, you know, but that was something that I couldn't help but associate with the chronic stress of my legal career as I was starting out and working, you know, up to 70 hours a week stressing about trials and all of that. But at the same time, I know that stress can be a good thing in our life. So why is it important for us to understand the differences? And maybe you can even dive in a little bit and explain the differences for people.
Kole Whitty: (02:58)
Sure. I mean, I think you pretty much said why it's important. You know, we ever since the industrial revolution, um, the way that we've still been functioning in school and in business and the drive and the working hard, um, there's this future projection of happiness that to have happiness, right? Especially from a lawyer perspective, you wanna make partner in the way that you make partner is to prove you're willing to work hard. Uh, you know, there's a reason why it's not how many, uh, how many times you went a case. It's billable hours there. This is part of a conditioning that we see a lot in professionals that that drive to work really hard will ultimately equal happiness. So it just, the idea of hard work, laborious work, not challenging work, you know we, we have an attachment to the word hard that also causes a bit more of a challenge in our body.
Kole Whitty: (03:52)
So obviously some stress is good. Having no stress isn't good for your physiology either. You know, if you, and it's not a matter of not caring, there's a difference between like if you're going to the gym and you're working out and you don't stress your body, your body doesn't change. On the flip side of that, if you overstress it, it creates injuries. So the same happens with your, I mean with your mental health, with in just your health in general. If you're constantly driving it as if it's the machine pumping it full of coffee so that it can keep going to have more sustainability. Inevitably once someone hits between women, it tends to be around 26 to 35 men tend to be somewhere between like 35 and 48 hit the health crisis, and this is something that we see across the board all the time. So it's finding that place where there's the stress and the energy and the excitement because even excitement, exhilaration releases hormones in your body. That does create a stress and that's exciting and it can be fun. It's when we tip into that too far, you know that that's when it becomes depleting and the easiest way to see the signs is what is your overall state? Are you tired? Too much stress? You know, if you're not getting enough sleep and you're spinning in your head all the time, it's too much stress.
Dina Cataldo: (05:13)
That's something that I definitely did not recognize when I was going into this stress zone, this overstressed zone, this chronic stress zone. I didn't recognize the signs because I had been conditioned to work my tail off so that I could prove to other people that I was worthy of being where I was, of the fact that I could get results, that, um, I was worthy of a promotion. And it took that cancer experience for me to recognize that there was more to life than this. And I wasn't actually living the, I wanted to live anyway. Like why would I put myself in this situation if I was going to be causing myself pain? And that happiness isn't, isn't even in my, my, um, my view. Like I couldn't even see that. Like how, how could that even be possible? So how do you get people who might be in that position where they're proving themselves and they don't really recognize what's happening in their body? Like how do you and your husband like, bring that awareness to people who just, they're not even in that space?
Kole Whitty: (06:33)
I mean, it does vary a little bit from person to person, right? Because everybody's body speaks a unique language in how it's manifesting stress. So quite often we're collecting data, we're looking at what's going on, you know, what, um, what symptoms do they having? Are they having headaches? Are they having sleeplessness? What medications are they on? We're looking for the underlying dysfunctions in the body that are creating symptoms. So if they're tired, we're not just saying, oh well you need more sleep. Cause they could be like, well, no, I'm getting enough sleep. You know, in most people's standards I still feel exhausted. So we're looking at hormone production. Why? Because if you're stressed out, that's changing how your hormones are producing. So that's gonna change how you feel. Right. So for us it's mostly data collection. Um, some of the across the board signs that are pretty much the case for everyone are kind of what I mentioned before, not being able to sleep, headaches, stomach aches, also very common IBS.
Kole Whitty: (07:35)
Um, it's kind of like not digesting life well. When it's stomach issues, it's too much. Um, having even just overall emotional state, you know, people are exhausted and sick and tired, um, pushing to the next vacation if they take one. Uh, we also even talk to people and it's like our process, our intake form initially with someone who about 14 pages because we're also looking from childhood trauma as well because that shows us through child development, childhood development, how or what kind of coping strategies they may have developed to have those people pleasing or that need to be validated, uh, for hard work, for doing good. Because as we start to unravel that a little bit, it brings clarity and closure because part of what we do, a one modality we work with is called T.R.E. It's Tension Release Exercise. It's literally, it's a way to down regulate your nervous system without having to get into the story.
Kole Whitty: (08:41)
So if you're stressed out in using a somatic modality, somatic means body, right? Then that can help someone's body to relax by getting to your nervous system. We do six movements and then when you lay in certain position, it actually, what it does is your body will start to tremor or shake. It's similar to with animals, right after a dog hits its head or first good laying down, it shakes. It's relaxing the body a bit. You have all this tissue inside your body called Fascia and even the Fascia gets tense and tight. So when you're stressed, your body and your musculature is contracting. So even if you are working out, if your body's contracted, you have a much higher risk of injury. So as simple as it sounds, having things like TRE, which once you do it, once, you learn it from a practitioner once you can use it forever. Um, Yoga, movement practices like that can be helpful. It depends on the person. Uh, breathing exercises is one of the first ways to, one of the best ways as a starting point, um, that and changing diet because Diet and inflammation impact your physiological stress. And that's something that's quite often easier to control. And that might mean for some people hiring some of these food delivery services, you know, or uh, heck doing meal prep, a chef, something like that.
Dina Cataldo: (10:08)
Yeah. You know, I've had those experiences where, and this isn't, not all yoga teachers teach it this way. So if you go to a yoga studio where you're going to like, I dunno like your standard gym, they're probably not going to teach you yoga that will get you so deep into your Fascia that you will be able to shake, that you're going to be able to hold a position so long and then release it in a way that you will be able to release some of that tension. Uh, it takes a really special yoga practitioner and I was just very fortunate enough to find that yoga teacher the first time out. Um, but when you do start to release this tension, like I definitely noticed a difference. Like it is something that you don't even know what you're holding onto in your body until you start doing these practices. What got you into this area? What really drove you to start practicing this? Because this is a really special area. Not very many people can get into the body in a way that can release what we're talking about here.
Kole Whitty: (11:18)
Yeah. That is starting to change. You know, I think that two, three years from now, that'll be a different story. I think it'll be a much more sought after modality because talk therapy alone does not help someone process stress. It might help them with the emotional stress, but not the way that they're holding the stress in their body. So like most people that get into different types of work that's around health or wellness or sustainability. I was my, my own path, uh, my own health. I had a health crisis to 26. I'm working long hours. You know, I was working in the motor generator sales field, so I was helping people get motors and generators for oil fields. Um, which was a very interesting time, a little, not a lot in alignment with me. That's a different story and that's partially why it was stressful for me, um, because I'm actually really mindful and conscious in how I conduct my life.
Kole Whitty: (12:14)
So that was emotionally a little strange too. Um, but w I was also in a male dominated field, so I was on a, you know, really high-performing, competitive, uh, just the way that I was. So My, at 26 I had hypothyroidism, endometriosis, I'd had ovarian torsions. I had a 40 degree curvature of scoliosis that was muscular in my spine. I had fibromyalgia, arthritis in my knees. I was about 40 pounds heavier than I am right now. Um, I was sick. I was taking Ambien to sleep, caffeine to wake up a caffeine throughout the day, fast food because they didn't have time. Right. So I'm just driving home through the suburbs, that's what's available, stop and eat whatever. And then a huge, like one of the huge bottles of wine, not like a traditional,
Dina Cataldo: (13:05)
Like a magnum.
Kole Whitty: (13:07)
That's what I, yeah, that's what I say, a magnum bottle of wine.
Kole Whitty: (13:10)
So, you know, it's just, I pushed my body to, to a breaking point. And for years before that I was a bartender in New York City, so my shifts were 4:00 PM to 6:00 AM, um, and I was drinking all night to doze, and then caffeine to wake up. And you know, I had had a solid, um, seven-ish years of being really hard on my body and I had 26 bones break growing up. So there was just a lot of physical pain all the time. So I didn't know what pain-free could feel like. I didn't know what not being stressed would feel like. Uh, the first I tell people, the first 26 years of my life I was stressed and impacting. So I didn't set down this path thinking I would ever be pain free. I was looking for less pain. Everything kind of came to a head one day as it usually does.
Kole Whitty: (14:01)
I was at Disneyland with my ex in-laws and after walking around for three hours, my knees were so swollen, I couldn't walk anymore. And I was just like, I am only 26. I can't live like this, you know, this is not, this is not gonna work. Um, and I made the decision that I would buy a treadmill so that I could at least walk every day. And I had been really in shape in my early twenties. So from like 19 to 21 I did pageants. And you know, I had, I've had a very active life. Um, I overdosed at 17 into a coma from a substances, so from drugs, from GHB specifically. So I had had, I had put my body through the ringer at this point already. So that was the turning point. I decided to buy a treadmill, moving the treadmill into our house. It fell on my foot, split my big toe in half, and then I had to get surgery for two years on this phone. No, people even had these things. I'd be more than my mother in law.
Dina Cataldo: (15:16)
So it actually dropped on your toe. I mean, at that point, did you feel like it was a sign? I mean, what was going on through your head?
Kole Whitty: (15:27)
Well, you know, it was one of those moments that you're looking up into the sky and you're like, what did I do? Like what did I do in another life or to someone in this life for there to be this much calamity, like I don't understand because now not only can I not work out, I can't stand, I couldn't work, I couldn't do anything. It was 10 days before I could even just like be on crutches because it was so painful having to lower my foot. And the clear message that I got was you have to change your diet. You know, like you're going to have to really do the work to learn how to get rid of that inflammation and learn your body. So I dove, my first step actually was a book I had bought at the airport. Um, it was in New York bestseller 10 years ago, give or take, it was called Clean by Alejandro Junger.
Kole Whitty: (16:16)
Now in this book he talks, he walks you through an elimination diet and in the elimination diet you go from solid food to clear soups to just juice and water. And then you come back on adding foods so that you can see what your body's reactive to. So it's about a six week process or so. So as I'm going through this process myself, when I get to about the second week, I'm not even recognizable as far as my inflammation has cleared out so much. That swelling on my face, the color of my skin. And I was like, wow, there's really something to this thing, you know? Um, and I started to not be in so much pain and the fibromyalgia started to lighten up and back then. Right. So we're talking 10, 11 years ago, nobody talked about fibromyalgia. Most doctors wouldn't even honor that as a diagnosis because ultimately it's symptoms.
Kole Whitty: (17:13)
They can't explain, you know, it's not like it's a condition. Um, as far as like something they can put a pin in and know what it is, it's something that they know that you're in physical pain. They don't know why. Basically. Um, so for some people that could be shoulder pain in a certain area or it could be full body. Mine was full body aches and pains and it felt like I was already in my eighties or nineties as far as the experience of my body. So as this started to clear out and I was like, wow, there's really something to this nutrition thing. I had no idea. I grew up with the traditional American, you know, I was raised on cereal, peanut butter and jelly, milk, Mac and cheese and frozen burritos. Like, that's what I knew. And once I was a teenager, I was eating fast food.
Dina Cataldo: (18:01)
Wow. Yeah. That is the typical American diet, isn't it? Um, you know, I just want to step back a second and look at your thought processes when you entered this area because you began with what would a lot of us would consider a traditional method of trying to get healthy, which is get a treadmill and just start walking. And the fact that your treadmill basically turned against you as soon as you got it.
Kole Whitty: (18:33)
And then there's the very expensive one.
Dina Cataldo: (18:36)
No, right. Cause you want to get the best one. So then you were forced to find a less traditional method to get your health in order. I mean, have you given that any thought about like just came together?
Kole Whitty: (18:53)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've, I've always flipped flopped on what I feel as far as like divine interventions or if there's a purpose to things. And yet I find purpose in things because as humans we are meaning makers. That's what we do. We create stories and we find meaning. And for me that my meaning was that my problem wasn't only lack of movement, it was what I was putting in my body that was causing stress. Because if your body is constantly having to detoxify and clear itself out, it cannot heal because the first thing the body does is detoxify. If it's constantly having to deep toxify, then it's not able to go to fixing things. Right? So in doing this diet and learning about the impacts of what's in our direct environment, what's in our house, uh, where we live, I started to become very attuned to things, impacted my body. And what I needed at the time was I was like, I've got to get 20 pounds off me at any cost. And it wasn't because of an aesthetic, it was because the pressure on my knees. So it was just like, okay, the fastest way to get results, right? Cause I'm results driven. I was competitor.
Dina Cataldo: (20:05)
Okay,
Kole Whitty: (20:06)
if I can't walk then I've got to find some other way because this weight has to go. I can't, it's not even that I look to that heavy, but my body could not sustain the weight that it was. And so for me it was like, all right, where's the path of the fastest results so that I can see if this is going to help? Because the truth was I had a sense of urgency because if my life was going to continue in that much pain, I wasn't interested in living it. So it was more of a, almost a desperation to find answers because nobody had answers for me. And that's usually where what it comes to, you know, is these holes that we have to dig ourselves out. And I've always watched for synchronicities or not, not that I intentionally have. I've seen them in such ways that it can make it hard to ignore where I'm just like, treadmill happens.
Kole Whitty: (20:59)
I realize I have this book. That's kind of weird timing. Let me see what, what's to this and it. It's like with any else, once you step into a world, then it mentions one thing in a book. So you're like, oh well what's that? So you go read another book and then you go read another book and you go read another book and it wasn't, you know, it changed my diet. Then when I moved to New York City, I became a personal trainer and a fitness instructor. So then I started being an an in the world even deeper because I was like, what? What career can I do that's gonna keep me on track with my health because I can't keep working in these corporate environments. It's not like it's not healthy for me. So what can I do to keep myself in alignment to staying healthy?
Kole Whitty: (21:42)
So I decided to become a personal trainer and a fitness instructor. And from doing that and meeting different people in classes all over New York City, I started getting exposed to other modalities, other things. So it was like one step, one thing led to another, and I was getting in less pain constantly. It was like when I first started this path, the Diet change just took me from a stress, physiological, emotional, mental, all of it, of a nine out of 10 all the time to like six. But as six you can get out of bed, a six, you can function a six, you can work. And then I would find out about something else. Then I was able to go to yoga and I ended up going to the yoga first because with my foot healing, there's a lot they couldn't do. I couldn't run. I couldn't put that much pressure on my toe. So that forced me into yoga because initially I was like, I'd never do yoga. It's boring. I've always been active. I'm not interested. And I ended up trying yoga because it was the only thing that I could do when after about two years of surgeries and healing, um, it was recommended by my doctor and I was like, they just sit there and like breathe.
Dina Cataldo: (23:00)
It's funny, I went to yoga out of desperation too. I didn't, I did not want to do yoga. I thought, you know, a certain kind of person goes to yoga and mark, that person going to fit in. I mean there's all these preconceptions that we have about different modalities including yoga, whatever it is for, for uh, you know, you, it's,really makes a difference in being mentally flexible so that you can pivot and go to things like you are open, you were like, this isn't working. What might work?
Kole Whitty: (23:46)
Desperation will get you to try all sorts of things you know, that you wouldn't have been open to before. And even with something like Yoga and, and now understanding trauma and just somatic work in general, knowing that in doing something that brings flexibility to your body helps bring flexibility to your mind. You can use the body to help change the mind actually. And a lot of times, especially if you're a professional that uses their mind for all of their work, we're constantly doing the opposite. We want to know why. We didn't want to know what happened so that we know how it won't happen in the future. In most cases. So if we're trying to figure out why we're so stressed, we're just causing more stress actually, because then you're spinning more possibilities, more stories, more variations. So you're using more brain power, which uses tons of resources and a lot of people don't understand that when you're in a very brain heavy job that requires constant processing, your brain will take the majority of your resources, your water, your food, your carbohydrates. And if you're not eating to fuel your brain, then that's impacting your performance. And it's also heightening your stress. And we often have compartmentalized our brain and our body and we mind over matter everything. The truth is you cannot mind over matter with your body without having some serious ramifications if not now later. And the further you push it, the longer the recovery. So unfortunately most people don't take it seriously until they have no choice.
Dina Cataldo: (25:26)
Preach. You're saying is just so spot on and things that you know, I hope if you're listening to this, if you are feeling that stress in your body and it could manifest in different ways, like it could be a tight job. Maybe you grind your teeth. Absolutely. You know, maybe like I do, I still do. And I, and I still do the meditation. I do all the body work. I do everything that I can to maintain that, you know, present ness, you know, so that your mind isn't spinning but you, it's work. It's not as if it, it just, you know, comes to you. And a lot of people that I talk to are discouraged from entering this work because they think it should be overnight. That this is something that should impact them immediately. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't work or they need to be perfect at it and they need to be doing it, quote unquote right in order for them to do it at all. And there's so many entry points into this, like there's so many baby steps you take into this world that I hope that if you're hearing this, that you're not letting perfectionism discourage you. Do you come across that a lot with the people that you work with?
Kole Whitty: (26:46)
Of course. Wouldn't everyone love to take the magic pill in now and just have everything fixed? Unfortunately, we live in a society where we've been raised and conditioned to take a pill for everything. Headache, take a pill, you know, so we're often looking for this. Unfortunately with the body, it's process oriented. How long did it take your body to learn how to walk? Right? It took you months and almost a year to go from crawling to walking to, you know, being able to or to stand to walk. The is habitual and it's process oriented. So certain patterns and the way that you do things, not only is there the emotional habit, there's the habit of the body. One way I explain it to people is how often do you get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and you don't have to wake up?
Kole Whitty: (27:37)
You might have a little sense of awareness that you're getting up. I know for me, I actively am, am working to not disturb myself too much so that I can go back to sleep after. So that's your body being processed and habitual oriented because it knows how to do it. It doesn't need the conscious mind to do it, to undo. That takes time to undo some of the coping mechanisms that our bodies developed. Take some time. It's creating new habits and sticking to them and that can take time. So it isn't just, Oh, I understand it now what? Like you have to create a new ritual and I say ritual is in, you wake up in the morning, you have your cup of coffee, you know, maybe you read Facebook or turn on the news or whatever. That's a ritual. Creating new rituals to put yourself into a lower stress state.
Kole Whitty: (28:29)
So maybe that means after you leave work, you have some practice to bring you into the present moment. The other thing our mind can travel anywhere, right? It can go to the future. It can go to the past. The our heart, our love are kind of like spiritual practices can go anywhere too. It's not limited by a physical body. We can love people from across the world. Our body is never anywhere except for right here, right now. One of the ways to notice if you're in your body or not is if you're dropping things, if you're tripping, if you're hitting your head right. Clumsiness to me is the first sign that I'm not in my body. I might be thinking about where I need to be and because my mind is already there, my body's trying to catch up. Your brain doesn't know the difference between what you imagine and you're actually perceiving in front of you.
Kole Whitty: (29:21)
It doesn't know the difference. It doesn't determine it that way. So if you're future focused or stuck on the past, your body is trying to function in one of those timelines and not the present moment. And that's why sometimes when we wake up and we're like, wow, I didn't even realize I put on 50 pounds. Wow. I didn't even realize that I had severe arthritis in my knee. I knew I had pain. I didn't know it was this bad. We were not in our body. When we wake up, we realize it's that bad. And by having a practice, like say when you leave work, you've got a couple of favorite songs that you listened to and you just breathe and allow your body and your heart and your head and your ears to experience that song to get yourself in the present moment and leave work behind you.
Kole Whitty: (30:06)
Right? Another thing that helps me a ton if I'm spinning out in my head, is to take 16 deep quick breaths. It's almost an a person you can research for this type of breathing is Wim Hoff. Yeah. So this is, this is that same idea. If you hyper oxygenate your brain, not only in that breathing pattern, you can't think because it's just getting so much oxygen in your body, it kind of takes over a little bit. But getting all of that oxygen really stimulates your body. So what I do is if I notice I'm just really stressed or really tired, one of the best ways to get more energy is oxygen actually. So by taking 16 quick, you know, kind of like at this speed where it's like, so go in through the nose, out through the mouth, 16 times, trying to take breath from your, like from as low as you can in your belly, not appear in your neck.
Kole Whitty: (31:06)
If you're taking deep or short breaths all the time, you're not getting enough oxygen, which also causes stress because the one thing you cannot live more than six, seven minutes without his oxygen. If you're not getting enough of it, that's stressing out your body because it needs more. So by taking 16 deep breaths and then just close your eyes and on the final exhale, exhale all of the air out until you can't anymore. And just be with that and scan your body inside of your mind. Do you notice the buzzing or the feelings or tingling? That's the oxygen being flushed through your blood. That can help you get present. And for a lot of people, the next step from there is a gratitude journal. And it sounds silly and it sounds, you know, uh, I'm a little trivial and like a waste of time. But if you'll make a list of 10 things you're grateful for in your life or things that are working or you know, maybe you're stuck working because you have a child that's not well and you need the insurance and you can't just quit, your job is shifting. There's two things you have to either shift your perspective or shift your environment, both of those things, at least one of those you can control. So which isn't going to be shift your perspective or change your environment. Because if you know you can't leave a job because of insurance for a spouse or your kid, find the gratitude of what that job is providing you in this moment. And I have to remind yourself every day.
Dina Cataldo: (32:32)
One of the things that I can tell about you and I know about you from interacting with you in the, in the groups that we're in, but you mentioned this too, you are results driven. You are somebody who gets stuff done. And I know that when I speak to people that I'm coaching, when I'm talking to, you know, other lawyers, I know that one of their fears is, and one of the reasons they hold on so tightly to the habits that they have right now is that what they've done up to this point in their life has worked for them. It got them to the place they are right now and they feel really safe. And even though they feel stressed, they feel safe because this is what they know. They may not have that yet. That aha moment where you know they have breast cancer, they OD, they get, you know, a treadmill dropped on their foot. You know, they may not have had that moment. And I hope that if you're listening to this, that you don't have to have that moment. So what would you say to somebody who has worked really hard to get where they are right now and get them thinking differently about how you can reduce your stress and still reach results because you've been there. I've been there, but how would you phrase it to them? What would you say?
Kole Whitty: (34:04)
I mean, this is the most common thing, you know? Um, as much as I wish, as humans, we learned only by watching or listening, we didn't. Because if something has worked you, you know, you just said it. If something's been working, we know the discomfort of what we're experiencing. We don't know the discomfort of something else. And what I always say is you can always go back to what you're doing, right? The thing is if your body either, especially if it's already showing signs of stress right now, it's looking at what's on the line. If you don't, you know, if you're going to be fear driven, then maybe you have to scare yourself away from what's possible. If you don't shift things around, you know, you've got kids, you've got a spouse, you've got all of this. The thing is, if you've been whatever created the hyper-vigilance or this drive to work, thank it.
Kole Whitty: (34:55)
That's been a great tool. You don't lose your ability to be committed to work. It's realizing that even in just listening to this and listening to more people that have been through it, that you have the opportunity to be empowered in your life. And if you aren't actively choosing it, it's being chosen for you by your subconscious patterning. So it's what do you want to create in your life? And most people are in a survival mode, which is stress. So most people in the United States are running around as if they'd been chased by a bear their whole entire life as far as their nervous system is, uh, concerned or as far as it's aware. And so they're functioning at a seven out of 10 with stress all the time. And it is only a matter of time until your body can't do it anymore. It blows out your adrenals.
Kole Whitty: (35:45)
You're still trying to fight it with coffee. And if you don't make the choice now, you will be forced to. And the older they get, you get in, the longer you do it, the harder that is to reverse the effects, right? It doesn't mean it's impossible, the harder it gets. So how I explain it, how is if you get a flat tire on your car, if you stop at a gas station or pull over to the side of the road, there's not going to be that much damage. It's just a flat tire. If you don't stop and you're like, no, I'm just going to keep driving to work and it's going to cause more damage to the car, that's what you're doing to your body. If you're ignoring the first signs of stress, you're driving on a flat tire that's then gonna ruin your ball bearings.
Kole Whitty: (36:24)
It's gonna ruin your alignment, but then you know you didn't. Now you're talking damage that makes the car and drivable and that's what's going to happen to the body. If you don't start taking a look at it, and I know it can be really overwhelming when you're hearing all this, you need to move, you need to change your diet. The thing that I say is simplifying it. You know when it first comes to making diet changes, choosing just two meals, right? That you can change every other week or so. And I meal prep, I make it in bulk because if I have to make a meal every single meal every single day, I'm not going to do it. It's understanding your self. So a well that you know how to work with yourself, how to manage yourself and that's really the key to it. And unfortunately if you don't, you will be forced to at some point.
Kole Whitty: (37:16)
And I have plenty of times people come to me before they have a health crisis and we'll talk about it and their fear of not being able to still deliver the way that they have been is driving the bus, we'll say. And they have to kind of learn on their own. So my hope is anyone listening can not do it that way. It's understanding that the more you start to learn in particular about the human brain and how to fuel your brain, there's two books one's called how to feed a brain. The other is called genius food. If you actually care about optimization and you start to understand optimization comes from body, not from mind, the more depleted you get impacts your cognitive function. And brain fog. If you're tired, if you're not having enough carbohydrates, if you're not having enough water, you're working harder than you need to.
Kole Whitty: (38:07)
You're not working smart. You're working in accordance to fear and you're being deficit driven. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough resources, physically, monetarily, whatever, and a lot of that has to do with how hard you're pushing your mind and not giving it the fuel to do it. You know, it's like if you put water in your car, it doesn't work. If you put poor ingredients into your body, it doesn't work. It may function to a certain point. It is not going to be optimal and if you'll even give yourself 90 days to explore what's possible if you were even just to start by fueling your brain properly, you'll see that, wow, there's really something to this. I go immediately into my deep sleep and I wake up more of a fresh. I can get more done in three hours than I used to be able to in a whole day.
Kole Whitty: (38:58)
I made the decision quite awhile ago that I wasn't going to work hard anymore. I was going to work smart and now by September my workdays will be three hours, four days a week. The rest is done by my teams, my virtual assistant, my executive assistant, my social media people because I've learned that I can work smarter in three hours focused and optimized and I pay for the rest because any job or any task that I don't have to do, I'm not doing it. That includes cleaning my house. That includes whatever, and it might seem like if you don't already have enough money, that's going to drain more money. That's not actually the case because when you take tasks off of your plate to remove the pressure and noise that's running in the background, if my house is a mess, I can't work well, it impacts me, but if I'm stressed out, the last thing I want to do is clean.
Kole Whitty: (39:53)
So by paying someone 100 bucks a week, which is not that much money, that actually made it more possible for me to make more money in my business because I can show up more fully. I can find more opportunities. Or maybe if you're a lawyer or a professional, I'm able to dedicate and be more specific and intentional to my personal growth in my business. So it's really looking at how can I simplify my life and how can I remove tasks from my plate that physically drain me. Like the idea of doing dishes. I hate the idea of cooking, you know, can I get meal planning or things delivered because it feels sit down and look at what drains your energy and what gives you energy and focus more on what gives you energy. It will then you shift your diet.
Kole Whitty: (40:42)
Yeah. You know, it's so great that you mentioned that because that's something that so many of us struggle with as professionals. And it's so strange to me because we're taught to do it all, that we need to be able to handle everything ourselves. There's no logic to that, but there's absolutely no logic to that. And when we do start to recognize how our brain works, we start to understand why it's so important for us to NOT do things. And I actually in my coaching program, I walk people through like exactly what you're talking about. It's like, okay we got to simplify here. And where do you feel like if you don't like doing things, if it's a drain on you emotionally, mentally you're not going to perform way you need to at the office. You don't understand how your whole life is integrated and that this is something that you have to bring some awareness to.
Dina Cataldo: (41:43)
And you could start, you know with one thing that you know, you've mentioned today, you can start with the breathing, you can start with taking a morning and not checking Facebook, not turning on the news and instead using that time to just sit there and maybe you write in a journal, maybe you write about what you want to accomplish that day and just pick three of those things. Cause you're gonna write a list of 50 cause I know that's how we roll. So just like three and understand that you get those three things done that is going to make your day. I mean any of the things that you've heard today, you could just pick one and start there. I'm going to link to the books that Kole's mentioned in the show notes. So that way if you want to pick one of those books and you want to start there, just pick something,
Kole Whitty: (42:36)
Pick something. That is the key. And you know the, some of the easiest ways to get your nervous system in check: Sensory deprivation tanks, float tanks look in your city, super helpful because it doesn't require more mind. It's about getting out of your mind. And it can be a little uncomfortable at first because you're sitting in a tank with warm water. That's the temperature of your skin and you float. However, getting rid of all those sensories helps your nervous system downregulate. There's another therapy called cranial sacral therapy and there's another therapy called somatic experiencing. I invite exploring those three if you like to see results more quickly. Um, those are great ways to access it without having to figure it out and recognizing it's a little outside of what is typical or quote unquote normal. So be curious, be curious with what is possible because what you're doing right now may not be working and it may have worked up until now and that's fantastic, but it may not work for much longer.
Dina Cataldo: (43:41)
I love that. I'm going to find some resources for them to put on the show notes because I love the sensory deprivation tanks. Those I could go, I'd go every couple of weeks. Um, that is just amazing to me. But I'm going to have to look into the cranial sacral therapy and the somatic experience cause I haven't heard of those and I want to learn more about that.
Kole Whitty: (44:02)
All. Awesome.
Dina Cataldo: (44:03)
Okay, well thank you for joining us today. Can you tell everybody where they can learn more about you and work with you if they want to because you know everything that you have shared with us today, I imagine people want to know more.
Kole Whitty: (44:17)
Sure. So the easiest way is through the website, which is TAHKOLE.com which is t a h k o l e.com. And then on all the social media channels TahKole and KoleWhitty and pretty easy to find. That's awesome. Thank you so much. I'll be sure to link to all of that in the show notes for you. And are there any parting words that you want to give our listeners? It really does come down to simplifying and knowing that you're worth it. It's worth slowing down for your kids, for your spouse, for your partner, for your body. You know, this future focus of the future and retirement when we can finally relax and live the times right now. Don't wait. The body is the experiential vehicle in the moment of right now, and it's with you in this moment your entire life. So really tuning into the experience you want to have and making one small shift into having that experience every day, every week, every month, one degree of shift a year from now as a completely different place with an entirely different trajectory and time's gonna pass anyway, so it's worth it. Thanks so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure.