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Ep 9: Aligning Mind, Body & Spirit for More Balanced Living with Dr. Ray Rumedi
22 Plays4 months ago
In this episode, Coach Autumn chats with Dr. Ray Rumedi, a chiropractor known for his holistic health approach, merging exercise science and kinesiology. In addition to discovering practical tips on balancing your mental, physical, and nutritional health through daily practices like meditation, exercise, and connecting with nature, you'll learn how meditation can shift your body from stress to relaxation and how sustainable habits can be the nudge you need to create a healthier, more balanced lifestyle.
Intro and Outro Music Credit: Savage by Beat Mekanik, Free Music Archive, License type: CC BY
Please visit: www.autumnswain.com
Contact: [email protected]
IG: @drautumnswain
FB: Autumn Alena Swain
Resources: https://soundchiropractic.co/
IG: sound_chiropractic
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello there. I'm Dr. Autumn, leadership consultant, wellness coach, author, and I'm incredibly grateful to be your host of the all Align Living podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm here to equip you with the tools, inspiration, and practical tips necessary to lead a life of wholeness and pursue greater Shalom in your life and that of your families, teams, and communities. My mission is to empower you to lead from a place of holistic wellbeing. It's time to say peace out to the fatigue, fog, and frustration of living in a place that lacks abundant wellbeing. Join me as we embark on a comprehensive exploration of spiritual, physical,
00:00:56
Speaker
mental, emotional, social, and economic well-being, all within the comforting embrace of one podcast.
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome, Dr. Ray, to the show. I'm just so excited to have you here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited too. Awesome. So I know we have so many things to talk about today that I'm just really excited to jump into, but I just want to give listeners just a little bit of background um about you. So ah Dr. Ray here, he did his undergrad in exercise science and kinesiology, and then obviously ah his doctorate in chiropractic care. But what I really wanted to share with you guys, and one of the reasons I value so much being under his care as well, but also ah just the way that he's helping clients is because he specifically emphasizes the neurology of the human body. And what I mean by that is just that he looks at the body as this holistic being, which those of you who've been listening to this show know how um'm passionate I am about that. So he's really able to distinguish his patients ailments. And I like how he says,
00:02:06
Speaker
disease by utilizing a special chiropractic technique called applied applied kinesiology, which I am a big nerd about. I think it's just fascinating. And so um he understands that the human body must be well balanced and well regulated in our mental physical and nutritional components in order to reach optimal health and well-being. And really, his passion is to bring chiropractic and holistic health to his community, and that's just been a lifelong endeavor. And so some of those words you heard, you could imagine why I asked him to be a guest on the show, because obviously, Align Living's all about integrated wellness and how we need to look at ourselves as holistic
00:02:51
Speaker
beings in this pursuit of wholeness, which is what the show is all about. So um that's just a little bit about him. Now, I'm going to give you like a quick little insight here um personally, and then I'm going to jump right in with my first question, which I'm really excited for y'all to hear. ah So you might be thinking that I asked him on the show because chiropractic care is all about the spine and total body alignment and whatnot. But um the show and the show's aligned living after all, and about finding alignment in our lives. but Actually, as I got to know, Dr. Ray, he's as disciplined with his daily rhythms to support total body alignment as I am. And I had mentioned in a previous episode that I was going to talk about some of my specific rhythms I've integrated into my life to support my wellness in this pursuit of wholeness. So actually, that was a big reason I wanted to have him here is to talk about some of his rhythms or practical ways
00:03:47
Speaker
You could even use just small chunks of time in your life to integrate some practices that will support your overall wellness. So um so Dr. Ray, I would love for you to share with us maybe your top three practices ah that you do on a daily basis, or at least so a pretty regular basis, um and how it impacts your overall alignment um or wellness. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Autumn. It's a pleasure being here. This is actually my first podcast ever, so super excited. ah Top three practices in my life that allows me to be in the alignment throughout the day is one, meditation. I can't go a day without meditation. I know a lot of people, whenever I talk about meditation, it's like woo woo, oh, I tried meditation. It doesn't work.
00:04:42
Speaker
but I look at meditation and I look at the brain as sort of like a muscle. When you go to the gym for the first time, you're not gonna go to a gym and pick up a 45 pound dumbbell and start curling it, right? When I started meditation, it's just like, OK, let me start with 30 seconds of sitting here and focusing on my breath. And I'm not going to lie, at the first couple of weeks, it was the hardest thing ever. now My mind was racing, especially someone who has ADHD and OCD. That's kind of the reason why I started to get into meditation, because I'm like, OK, what can I do to focus my mind and focus my brain?
00:05:22
Speaker
instead of taking medication. So that's how I got into meditation. And, you know, living in California and in the Bay Area, there's a lot of people that got into meditation. So I surrounded myself with people who are very spiritual spiritual and people who are, you know, has been ah lifelong meditators. so I kind of learned from them. So, you know, long story short, meditation is my main practice when it comes to ah to alignment. And that's number one. That's the alignment of mind.
00:05:55
Speaker
And then number three is physical. So physically, I have a lot of practices. Like you said, I'm very disciplined when it comes to my health. If you see my schedule and my calendar, I have everything to the to the minute and to the hour. So I like to practice in blocks. So when when I look at physical, I have my physical health, but under that I have subcategories. to my physical health. So, the first one, of course, is working out, going to the gym, making sure my body is strong. The other one is nutritional. You know, ah nutition our nutrition is not only, you know, good for the mind, but it's also good for the body and good for our physical health. So, I have subcategories for for my nutrition.
00:06:45
Speaker
what What do I need to eat? um Smoothies, salads, blueberries, anything natural, any supplements that I need in order to keep my my nutritional balance, ah I guess, healthy. And then the other one is you know flexibility, yoga, Pilates, all of that. And again, I schedule this, I take every Sunday and I and i plan out my week and how I can you know, focusing my physical and mental health. And then the last one is spiritual.
00:07:18
Speaker
What can I do? People think that spiritual is just prayer, which I do, but also connecting, connecting with nature, connecting with, with your family, for me, with my wife, ah connecting with my dogs. You know, I take them out for a run or I take them out for, ah to go to the dog park, walking, for you know, going on walks. But yeah, those three are my main three categories to keep myself in alignment. Mental, physical, and spiritual. I love that. so um you know we we are um and Through past and future effort episodes, I'm you know continuing to do a deeper dive in like nutrition and fitness and spiritual formation and stuff like that. But what I would love for for you, if you don't mind, to expand on just a a little bit because you have this expertise with the nervous system. You talked about meditation, and I know we like
00:08:11
Speaker
live just and I'm actually touching this later in the interview, but just these high stress times. what What physiologically does it do for the body? If you know if some listeners are like, okay, I've heard that it's really good, but what is it physiologically doing to the body that you think is like, this is why it's like so good for us? Absolutely. um Physiologically, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the nervous system. We have two different ah two sides of the nervous system. We have sympathetic and parasympathetic. Sympathetic, of course, is fight or flight. um you know well When we're in a high stress situation, our sympathetic nervous system starts to go on overdrive, which is very important in our body. ah It allows us to be alert of everything when we're driving. um you know what When you're giving a presentation, you need to focus. And that's where the sympathetic nervous system comes.
00:09:08
Speaker
But a lot of times, especially nowadays, we're in a high stress environment where what in certain scenarios where your body needs to be on the opposite side of the nervous system, which is called parasympathetic, which is rest and relax, it's really hard to transition between sympathetic and parasympathetic. And so when you take the time to meditate, you It allows you to switch over to the other side of your brain, the other side of your nervous system, which is your parasympathetic nervous system.
00:09:43
Speaker
and i guess Long story short, um that parasympathetic nervous system allows your body to heal from a physiologic standpoint. It allows your hippocampus, which is your the memory part of your brain, to to activate a lot easier. And it allows to shut down your amygdala. Amygdala is your your stress response and in your brain. It sends out cortisol, it sends out a lot of stress chemicals throughout your body when you're in sympathetic nervous system or a sympathetic overdrive.
00:10:21
Speaker
So allowing our body to switch to parasympathetic through meditation really helps you to relax and really helps you to go through day without being so nervous all the time. Yeah, that's so important because one one thing I realized just through, you know, my more stressful seasons of life is sometimes we don't even realize we don't even realize our body is in that like kind of like high stress state and what's actually happening. And so I think every single person could benefit from these types of ah practices. so And then it probably goes without saying, but um I'll just add that deep breathing and meditation to be just like go hand in hand because the values of deep breathing are very much in line with what you're talking about. So um just to kind of expand there though, um I want to ask you about some common symptoms I hear about and just get some of your recommendations, right? Because a lot of this is connected, right? And and one thing that you say in your bio,
00:11:18
Speaker
is you love getting to the root cause of things. Like that was one of the things that set you down in your path. And that's something I'm so passionate about too. So I kind of wanted to ah dig in a little bit there. So I heard some crazy stat that like 90% of health issues are in some way connected to toxic stress. When I heard that, I'm like, Oh my goodness. It's not like the only cause, but it's connected in some ways. So Um, obviously that's connected to our nervous system. And, and then, you know, you probably hear and see things all the time, like people talking about like muscle tension or headaches or, you know, chronic pain of some sort. So in, in addition to meditation, what would you say are some like practical ways or some like daily practices that people could do just to manage stress well, because I, I'm, I'm convicted now in this season of my life, we don't avoid stress. We learn how to manage it.
00:12:09
Speaker
and healthy ways and that will better impact your well-being. So what are some other things that people could do, let's say, that might be complaining about about some of those other symptoms? um This might be a little, I don't know if you would say woo-wee, but I don't know if you guys are familiar with ah Dr. Joe Dispenza. He's a neuroscientist who really focuses on the neurology of our health. So he he, again, he's really into meditation, but he takes it a step further where he focuses ah on business visualization.
00:12:46
Speaker
visualizing your health where you know your optimal health like let's say if you have lupus or let's say if you have asthma understanding that these organs in our body whether it's our lungs or our autoimmune system it's all controlled by nervous system But if you can visualize yourself, again, sitting down meditating, first you got to learn the skill of meditation. Once you learn the skill of meditation, you implement visualization to allow your body or to allow your mind, it's kind of like a brain body connection. So to allow your your. your mind to see yourself in a optimal state of health, if that makes sense. So I'm putting into practice, sorry, I'm sitting in my balcony, there's some UPS just sitting there. Hey, that's fine. Yeah. So visualizing yourself, this is what I do as well. So when I meditate, I visualize myself, you're like, okay, what's the strongest form of health?
00:13:53
Speaker
that I can do throughout my day in order to keep myself healthy. So that's where you know exercising, going on walks, nutrition, all of that plays into account in order to get myself to that optimal state of health. Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes too, like, i you know, I would add that when we're, when we're stressed, sometimes we don't feel like doing all the other things. And that's when it's like most important to like, you know, drink water and get that smoothie in or do
00:14:25
Speaker
Whatever else um so I remember when you first told me about dr. Joe and I'm actually a big fan of dr. Anita Phillips as well and um And I'm like totally nerding out on this whole concept of vagal tone and I know that you talked about the parasympathetic nervous system already but what is so cool to me about kind of how you're talking about things is is, you know, people say, okay, I want to get healthier. I want to be toned, like physically. Let's say they want their arms summertime. They want their arms, their legs to like muscular, be more toned. But you had mentioned at the beginning about your brain being a muscle and we, you know, and you know, when we talk about vagal tone, this is like improving our
00:15:06
Speaker
are the well being like the fitness, if you will, of our of some of these essential parts of our nervous system. So I think, you know, it's almost like instead of and what you've also continued to help me realize is, you know, it's so easy to look on the outside. But remembering like we have all of these pieces on the inside that we need to be intentional about their quote unquote, like fitness fitness fitness level of like how, how things are internally. And so um
00:15:37
Speaker
I think it might be cool because I found it fascinating for for listeners to hear a little bit more on like what that what vagal tone is and some things that people could do to intentionally improve in that space since it's literally I feel like connected to so many things. So polyvagal tone is, your your vagus nervous system is the longest nerve that connects from your brain all the way down to your organ. And poly means multiple, right? So these nerves coming from your brain goes to multiple areas in your organ, whether it's your heart, whether it's your lungs, whether it's your your intestines. So we need those organs to work properly. But when we're in a hypersympathetic state,
00:16:26
Speaker
ah That vagus nerve causes a cascade of internal ah reaction throughout our body, whether it's a faster heartbeat, whether it's shallow breathing, whether it's indigestion. That's all controlled by our vagus nervous system. right? Which is why it's connected to chiropratic because um, the most impo spine. It's our, is our atlas our c one and our vagus nerve is c
00:16:59
Speaker
to our outlet ah very top vertebrae or spine So when imagine if when your spine or when your atlas shifts out of place, that can cause a cascade of sympathetic ah reaction throughout our body. So there's there's a lot of technologies out there within chiropractic that and that can measure your sympathetic nervous system. Specifically, it's called a been since I've used this technology. ah heart rate variability. So it's called the heart rate variability. So you, yo sympathetic nervous system use a heart rate variab you're in the green, whic
00:17:44
Speaker
or if you're in the red, where you're more in the sympathetic state. So what we do in chiropractic is we measure that. So after an adjustment in your atlas, ah you check your your nervous system. And it shows that before you get adjusted, you're at that sympathetic state. But after you get edit adjusted, you're closer to the parasympathetic, the green area. So essentially the goal of, going back to your question, Donald, the goal of getting you know, allowing for a healthier ah polyvagal tone is pretty much trying to get more towards that parasympath parasympathetic state. Because if you're in the parasympathetic state in your nervous system, then your organs can work properly, your your heart can slow down, you can breathe a little bit better, and your entire body can function better.
00:18:36
Speaker
That's okay. that This alone is so fascinating to me. And if you're listening, you're like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting. Like literally you could Google how to improve your vagal tone and you'll get this like long list of things that are not that hard to do. They're things that you could just integrate into like, you know, you get in your car, remember to do some like really like deep breathing. And actually I think I saw, I might have to correct myself in the show notes, but even like singing there's like certain things that could like improve your vehicle tone like even if you're a horrible singer like me if I'm in the kitchen cooking I'm listening to some positive music and singing along like it's it's so fascinating to me that you know
00:19:20
Speaker
there the way sorry i don't mean to i don't know yeah nature hikes going on hikes i love going on hikes uh being in nature connecting with nature uh just doing that on the weekends like that helps with polyvagal tonality uh exercise going for runs there's a there's a myriad of uh things you can do in order to optimize your your vagal tone yeah yeah it's just it's so crazy to me that it impacts so many things and yet there's like some simple solutions that bring us joy like Oh, like, you know, I'm my face really important to me. So I just love thinking about like how our bodies were created even in this way to counter the stress in the world with some simple things to like heal ourselves. So it's just fascinating. So anyways, just ah so kind of switching gears a little bit though, because I feel like you know, if someone's trying to live a quality, like a good life, but
00:20:13
Speaker
they're They're feeling all this like tightness and and chronic pain. I feel like almost everyone has some sort of imbalances muscularly and whatnot. like And truth be told, this is why I'm a fan of functional training, because we're mobile people, right? We're we're mobile. We have to use our bodies to function, to do just daily activities. And and so many people are often so imbalanced. And you know what's the negative impact on our bodies? um when we're doing these day-to-day tasks while so imbalanced. and then you know what are Because I think sometimes there's not a sense of urgency around it because people are like, oh, I could just live with that. I'm just used to waking up feeling a certain way, or I'm used to like having to compensate to do simple tasks. so you know What are maybe some of the long-term negative impacts of living with your body imbalanced, and then what are some things we can do just to create better balance in our bodies. However you want to answer this, whether it's like simple like exercises or other things that people could do just to bring more balance to their bodies. And feel free to touch on posture as well. That's a good question. We'll answer your first question. um One, if your body's in balance, whether it's mental, physically, spiritually, I think deterioration.
00:21:28
Speaker
in your body. um you know Let's say one week, you're like, oh, I'm just going to live with this. Your body is fine. Imagine you're doing that for a whole year or years, deterioration, not only physically, but mentally, too. And I'm definitely trying to do better with my parents because my parents have that same excuse. It's like, oh, I'm just old. I'm just going to live with it. And I just get so pissed off whenever they tell me that. I'm like, no, here's an 80-year-old a woman who's doing burpees and pull-ups. And she's 20 years older than you. like You have no excuse.
00:22:06
Speaker
sure yeah i mean one thing is uh Take it easy on yourself if you really want to get back into a more aligned state of living. Understand that every everyone starts somewhere, right? If you're starting from scratch, just focus on one thing. I read a book called The One Thing. I forgot who the author is, but The One Thing really resonated with me ah because before I was all over the place. i doing You know, when you when you own your own practice on your own business, you're doing everything all at once and that can cause you to be super overwhelmed, put you in that sympathetic state. So just recently, actually, when I read the book, the one thing I just focused on one thing when it comes to alignment.
00:22:58
Speaker
I tell myself, what's one thing I could do today to improve my mental health? Whether it's breathing, whether it's going for a walk, whatever it is, and then reward yourself. You're like, all right, I did this today. Let's try tomorrow. And then what's one thing I could do in order to improve my physical health? All right, let's go to the gym. Doesn't even have to be a crazy hard workout. Do 10 pushups. That's it. So that's, that's I mean, For an easy answer for that, just do one thing in order to get yourself balanced. And that will create a habit throughout your life. the The goal here is not to do everything all at once. The goal here is to try to create a habit in your life so that it's more of a lifestyle to living more aligned instead of a chore.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So when you give me a packet of 75 exercises to do, I shouldn't do them all. I should look and pick the top three that I'm actually going to actually put into practice and do those consistently and form those habits. I tell my patients all the time, I pick those exercise packets, especially my older patients. I'm like, look, I know you don't work out that much. So Let's make a deal. Just do one page a day and then get into the habit of doing those exercises. Yeah. and of Just like throwing the packet underneath the bed and like, you know, like, Oh, what exercise? Yeah, absolutely. And actually that's such a good life practice because how many times do we have like something thrown at us and we're completely overwhelmed. And I think we go into this like paralysis state of like,
00:24:36
Speaker
feeling just so wildly overwhelmed if we could step back and just like do one thing, whether it's like a a life goal, like a business goal or something you're trying to accomplish with your kids or like a relationship thing, whatever it might be. I think it's just such a good life practice. So we'll try to find that title of or the author of that book and I'll put it in the show notes. But anyways, um so I wanted to wrap up with one last question. Um, I ah literally, I feel like, uh, what's so funny is, you know, Dr. Ray's a chiropractor, but like, I, I feel like I could probably randomly ask him about anything related to health and I'll know stuff about it. So that's why I like, I, we went off on all these directions, but it's really great. Um, so I know speaking of people being overwhelmed, I just with the work that I've done in leadership development and health coaching, I feel like,
00:25:29
Speaker
folks are are feeling like I have so much going on and they're trying to prioritize like what to do and feeling like they just don't have enough time for it all. I would love to hear just, you know, what's a word of encouragement or a life lesson besides like the one thing that was a really good. I didn't know you were going there with that, but what's something else? If you had just like a word of of encouragement or a life lesson that you could leave listeners with who are like, you know, I want to do better. I want to feel better.
00:26:00
Speaker
but I'm feeling a bit like overwhelmed. like i'm I'm drowning a little bit, like just coming up for some air here and there. like what What would you say? I'll say give yourself a break. Don't be so hard on yourself. For me specifically, I used to be really hard on myself. um you know If I don't accomplish one thing in the morning or in the week, I used to be myself so much to a point where it gave me a lot of anxiety and depression. um but Of course, has set goals when it comes to your health and everything in life, but don't be so hard on yourself if you don't accomplish that at the timeframe that you wanted it to be, right? um Because the main thing when it comes to your health is, again, try to be in balance
00:26:51
Speaker
with, again, mind, body, spirit. And you can't do that if you're in a high stress environment, whether internally or externally. So really consciously tell yourself, be like, hey, this is OK. Like on Sundays, my wife always gets ah you know gets upset at me on this. But I would tell myself, OK, let me just relax on Sunday. I don't need to do any work. I just need to relax, whether it's go out with the dogs, hang out, or just watch TV. because you know throughout the week you have so much going on. You need to you know be aware that you know this is i guess be aware that you're putting so much on your plate that you need to have time for yourself and you need to forgive yourself for not
00:27:43
Speaker
or like trying to come back, sorry. You need to be aware that you're doing so much for your in your life that forgiving yourself for not accomplishing a certain aspect in your life is not the end of the world. And you can come back and reset and try to do something different. That makes sense. Yeah, for sure. Like basically, I feel like what you're saying is like move forward, but with grace because I have an intense self critic. And so I can relate to what you're saying. Like everyone's personality is different. People kind of got to navigate like where they feel like their weaknesses might be. But yeah, if you're feeling overwhelmed, like, you know, you got to keep moving forward, but with grace and and be mindful of that self critic because it can be harsh. And I think you mentioned this about earlier on about the importance of connection. I think this is why it's good to have
00:28:35
Speaker
people in your life who could support you on your journey. And so I always end each episode, um, with coach autumn's practice of the day, because practice does not make perfect practice makes permanent. And so I actually wasn't sure what tip I wanted to leave because there were so many like practical nuggets throughout this is kind of wanted to leave listeners to challenge themselves maybe on how they might want to improve their vehicle tone or what they might want to do. but Actually, my tip for the day is to make sure you're engaging community on this journey, to be honest. it's It feels a little unexpected, but I feel like um I was just telling someone the other day, I had embarked down this, like I wanted to start doing the storytelling practice to capture things, um and it was this homework for life, and you're supposed to just take like
00:29:25
Speaker
one or two minutes a day to jot down something interesting that happened that day. It could be mundane, but with like some aha moment that you had or something. And I was doing it so consistently when I had an accountability partner. And then I'm like, no, we're good now. I think we could do it. We don't have to check in every day. And then sure enough, like within like a week, I was wasn't doing it consistently. And so maybe there is a practice from what you learned, like a rhythm you want to integrate to help with your stress management or something, I encourage you to find an accountability partner, do it in community because it is amazing how powerful that is. And community itself is good for our stress management and good for our overall wellness. And so that is my tip for you all. And I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I wanted to wrap up
00:30:17
Speaker
um Dr. Ray, by asking you to share with us where, and I'll put this in the show notes so you know for listeners, but where can people find you? like you know Instagram, your website, where where do you want people to find you? Well, we do have a website. It's called soundchiropractic.co, not dot .com, .co. That's our chiropractic, the one on this website. But if you'd like to see the silly side of me or of our office, our Instagram page is called sound underscore chiro.
00:30:51
Speaker
Sound underscore Cairo. That's our Instagram page. We have educational stuff on those on our Instagram and we also have i funny stuff that we do in our office as well. So definitely check us out. Perfect. That's awesome. Okay. I'll put that website and your Instagram, both in the show notes, and I'm really active on Instagram. I can't believe I'm not following you. So as soon as we finish up here, I know as soon as we finish here, I'm going to go on and give you a follow and um thank you so much for sharing, um, taking some time with us and and sharing with us some of your personal rhythms and just convictions of, you know, where this is coming from. And for people who just kind of are curious about, you know, chiropractic care in general, like,
00:31:32
Speaker
my recommendation, depending on where you live, I mean, Dr. Ray's in Northern Virginia, but like, ah it's always good to find somebody who values the whole body and how it works together, ah you know, as a system, because um I think like, as you can see, so many things that are going on are like have multiple, ah you know, multiple causes or multiple things that are affecting that that goal. So anyways, well, I hope you all have an amazing day. And thank you, Dr. Reagan for being on the show. Thank you again for having me, Autumn. Take care.
00:32:09
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to the Aligned Living Podcast. I'm Dr. Autumn, your guide on this journey to Shalom or wholeness. Ready to embark on this journey of self-discovery and transformation? Head over to autumnswain.com to learn more and to dive deeper into the world of Aligned Living. Until next time, stay Aligned.