Mood Lighting for Addiction and Mental Health Recovery (Ep. 161)

Speaker 1 (00:01): For me, it's, I've always known, it just affected my mood. I used to hate going to like brightly lit hospitals and even malls. When I was a little kid, I just hated it. I wanted, it could also be because I was an introvert. I want it to be in my cave, den waiting, and I was always comfortable like that. Highly sensitive people tend to be very sensitive, to light, very bright light.

Speaker 2 (00:23): Now that I have this cosmic meditation, essential oils, diffuser, this lighting in the bedroom is going to be awesome. We do candle light a lot too. There's a candles appear in the bedroom. It's just a very gym in canvas and light in the living room. We've got a dimmer too. I think light's very important. Thanks for tuning into the elevation recovery podcast. Your hub for addiction recovery strategies hosted by Chris Scott today's episode is brought to you by the elevation recovery course collection, which you can access@elevationrecovery.com forward slash courses. The two flagship courses are ultimate opioid detox, 5.0 as well as total alcohol recovery. 2.0 again, you can access these@elevationrecovery.com forward slash courses. Thanks for joining us, everyone. My name is Matt Finch and I'm here with my cohost Chris Scott. This is episode one 61 and the S now we're into season nine here. Uh, dude, Chris, you were just telling me before about this light therapy, which I don't think I've heard of before. We should start with that.

Speaker 1 (01:38): Yeah, unfortunately I'm not well versed on the topic. It was just something that I had, I had seen it could easily have been a marketing ploy by my, the company that made my sauna, but it's either chromotherapy or chromatin therapy or something like that. And it would seem there's something to it. Cause we know on the extreme end, like bright fluorescent lights are not good to be under all the time. It can be carcinogenic. Uh, for me it's, I've always known, it just affected my mood. I used to hate going to like brightly lit, uh, hospitals and even malls. When I was a little kid, I just hated it. I wanted, it could also be, cause I was an introvert. I want it to be in my cave with like Dem Whiting and I was always comfortable like that highly sensitive people tend to be very sensitive to like very bright lights or, or sharp pitch sounds or loud sounds.

Speaker 1 (02:26): And I fell into that category, but I've yeah, I've gotten into, uh, definitely mood lighting ever since I quit drinking and people in my course and my clients know that I'm a fan of Himalayan salt lamps when it's time to, uh, to meditate or maybe even just take like a 10 to 15 minute time out. I found it very beneficial to turn on the Himalayan salt lamp, turn on a diffuser that has a light in it. Usually those lights aren't too drastic. They're kind of calming and, you know, turn off the bright light. The first room that I stayed in after I moved out of my, my, uh, I guess overly posh apartment that I'd been in during finance, I moved into a tiny one bedroom room in Atlanta with several at the time acquaintances. And they're now still all good friends. And I, my room was the smallest by far.

Speaker 1 (03:22): I was basically supplementing the tiny amount of rent I could afford as like a, a personal trainer in training, not making much money at all and not making any for awhile by like cooking for everyone and designing everyone else's workouts. But when I opened the door to my room, my room was so small that my door would get about 28% open and that hit my bed. So now I had to like, you know, squeeze into my own room and then I had a, uh, but I had this, the steel bar that I had gotten for alcohol reasons long ago and I decided to repurpose it. I put it right in front of my bed. I had a Himalayan salt lamp, a diffuser, uh, and somewhat calming incense sticks and kind of became a shrine of sorts to me, trying to have peace of mind after quitting drinking.

Speaker 1 (04:16): And, you know, the alternative to the salt lamp was just a really bright light. Uh, there was attached to a fan right above my bed and I couldn't even concentrate when that thing was on. And if I didn't have anything, it was pitch dark, but I started just getting in the routine of turning that Hamill and salt lamp on taking a time out of my bed. And, you know, there's something too, there could be some health benefits associated with red light. Maybe it's just the absence of blue light or bright light. And I definitely got something from that. So then now, you know, fast forward six years or however long it's been since I was in that apartment, I have, I have some lights that, uh, that change colors that kind of rotate between mood lights. You were showing me your new, uh, dragon herbs or diffuser, which is really awesome.

Speaker 1 (05:09): And again, I, I can't do a deep dive into the science of this. I don't even know if it's there, but subjectively speaking from talking to people in my course and clients, there does seem to be, uh, some something relevant to recovery or a peace of mind or optimization to modulating the quality and type of light that you get. And who knows, maybe there's a benefit associated with different types of light. I don't want to go too to woo, but I like it even if it's just a subjective preference. Um, the, the white that I got to kind of looks like a party line, which is, you know, it's a interesting thing it's called [inaudible], it's a little bit more intense than say a Himalayan salt lamp, but you can, you can get it to the setting and desired or Denis that you want and then pause it.

Speaker 1 (05:59): And, uh, I'll, I have it in the corner here and it kind of balances out my room with the Himalayan salt lamp and it's fun. And for me, it's, it's I guess if I had to say, if someone said, why did you get that? I'd say it helps me, uh, remember it's kind of a fun light and kind of symbolizes the fact that the fun doesn't end in the sense of, uh, Oh, are you going to have like a, a glamorous little shrine that, that that's, that symbolizes your optimization now? And, uh, or even like a, have a bit of a party vibe. I have a pool table in this room. So when I have friends over, I'll have all my mood lighting stuff on as well. It kind of increases the, the, I guess, enhances the vibe a little bit. So again, I can't go too far into that.

Speaker 1 (06:46): The health benefits of, and I'm going to have to Google this chromotherapy chromatic therapy, whatever it is, but, but it's nice. I've done sauna sessions. My son has a light too on the top. Uh, I'm trying to remember the brand of sun. I think it was like Maxus with two or three Xs in it and on Amazon. And it has a light on the top that changes colors, like kind of in a soothing way, and I've done it without that light and with that light. And for some reason I feel better when I have that light. It does something to me, subconsciously

Speaker 2 (07:18): I've always noticed from very early on in life that I was very susceptible to like negative moods from heavy duty fluorescent lights. And I was like, why is that? I learned much later on from my dad actually. And I can't, I can't recall the science because it's been years since he taught me about it. But when he used to teach at colleges, he'd teach herbology and nutrition classes at trade schools like, uh, Chinese herbology, uh, trade schools, acupuncture, trade schools, massage therapy, trade schools. And one of the trade schools he taught at was Mueller college, which is where I was going to become a certified drug and alcohol counselor. And so he was teaching there while I was studying there. And he came in to our drug and alcohol counseling class and did a guest, um, I guess it was probably around three and a half to four hours.

Speaker 2 (08:15): And it was on nutrition and herbs and even lighting. First thing he did when he came into the classroom was he turned off all the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. He turned all of them off and, you know, there was tons of sunlight coming in. So you didn't actually need the fluorescent lights on to be able to see. You could see great. You could see everything you're writing. Great. And I, I forget this, but something about the fluorescent lights, they flicker so many times in like the span of a millisecond that it actually to your brain, your brain interprets it. Like it's making you go crazy. The post office that I go to, uh, that's the closest one to where I live. It's like maybe a mile away and it's a few blocks away from the ocean. So there's hardly ever any parking. Then when I go in there, they've got, it's a small post office and they've got tons of fluorescent lights and they have the ceiling fan that's going.

Speaker 2 (09:16): And so it's not only all the fluorescent lights flickering and everything, but like the fan is like kind of broken a little bit. So I go in there, there's, it's hot in there. There's no air flow. There's a big line almost always. And you got these huge fluorescent lights, just beaming down, like way brighter than anybody needs to be able to read even the smallest print and the fan that's broken. And it's so unpleasant that I load having to go ship things at the post office or get a money order or something, uh, because of those fluorescent lights. And one thing that I've never been interested in though, is mood lights, right? I'm like, Oh, those are kind of cool. Ashley moved in with me maybe 14 months ago now. And she is like a brilliant artist, really creative, amazing at interior design. And she works at Ross too, which is like tons of cool stuff to interior design with.

Speaker 2 (10:14): And she gets 20% off. So since she has moved in, I went from having a single dad bachelor pad. That was like, if you came in to my old place, when she first moved in, it was like, there was no pictures on the wall. It place was pretty messy. Um, it looked kinda like just like this bland high class prison. It was kind of like this. And so now we moved in this new place, which is smaller, but much more beautiful, much better. And she has gone in this huge craze of mood lighting. One of the things is there's this led light, like a racing strip led light that she put that she Velcroed to the TV. Stan, she put another one of those led mood lights. That's kind of like racing strips on the top half of the TV, which we use. Sometimes there's an led light, kind of like the one that you were showing me before this call on the back of the couch, but it's only just barely light at all.

Speaker 2 (11:19): It's like this little kind of blue light that just comes up a little bit. It's more like purplish. Um, she's got this cool lighting section for where Willow's creeps and the bedroom here. Uh, let's see here, is there mood lighting in here? So this now that I have this cosmic meditation, essential oils, diffuser, this lighting and the bedroom's going to be awesome. We do candle light a lot too. We do candles, uh, up here in the bedroom. It's just a very dim in Candice and light in the living room. We've got a dimmer too. So I think light's very important. Um, not only avoiding certain lights, like getting too much blue light, which I have these four, which are way oversized. It makes me look like I'm on some weird Snapchat filter potato had. Yes, they didn't look that big on the website. So I'll just give these to Willow for her to do some cool stuff with them and I'll get a pair.

Speaker 2 (12:15): Cause I broke my last one yesterday when I was doing, I went on to beach walks yesterday too. We've been talking about barefoot walking for some time now, but I've been getting such Epic sleep, going to bed between like seven to maybe eight 30 at night because I'm going to the beach getting barefoot on my sand and the sand and the ocean. Uh, so we've talked a lot about this, but one thing we haven't talked about is delighting from the beach. So I noticed that when I go in the evenings, it's more blissful. So obviously I live here in Southern California, the West coast. So the sun sets in the West rises in the East. So when I go to the beach, you know, maybe around 10 30 or 11, it's nice. It's really nice when I go around one or two, it's, it's really nice when I go more towards like 3:00 PM or after in that phase where it's about two hours before sunset, you know, getting towards dusk when I go there.

Speaker 2 (13:15): And that lighting as the sun is literally, uh, at least from our eye viewpoint dipping beneath the ocean. So that sunlight is magnifying over any clouds that are in the sky. It's getting closer magnifying to the water. And so it's just creating this beautiful artistic God masterpiece right before my eyes and that kind of lighting. I'm not sure of course it makes it more aesthetically pleasing to my eye. But I'm wondering if there's also some type of greater healing aspect of that. This will have to find some, someone that knows a lot more about this topic. Like my, maybe I'll have my dad on, or maybe he knows somebody that knows a ton about this because this is really fascinating stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:06): Well, I would think the quality and type of late you would get from the sun would be different from what you were getting inside. And, you know, we found ways to kind of replicate that the sun emits, as I understand it again, not an expert in this topic, but like, um, a blend of different waves of light and infrared, uh, res and UV and all that's new VA UVB. And we evolved under the sun. So it would make sense that whatever contraption we devised and however many derivations away we are from whatever Edison came up with, it's still not going to be good enough to match what we evolved under for hundreds of thousands or more years. Uh, and I, you know, it's kind of, there's a, the tends to be a, a, I think tendency in Western medicine and, and science to kind of say, well, we haven't proven any, any difference.

Speaker 1 (14:59): So there probably isn't one, I think that's a logical fallacy that I would guarantee if they did some large-scale study when people who walk by the sunset or people who hang out inside next to a picture of the sunset, that there is some biochemical difference that could be detected, what that difference is. I'm not sure, but that's why I tend to have a bias in favor of natural things. Not a hundred percent of the time, but a, and obviously natural doesn't always mean good, but often, very often it does. It means it's more time tested because, uh, evolution has taken place under it for a lot longer, but something else along with the mood lighting, I've, I've gotten another kind of silly contraption. Well, not silly, but something I haven't done before. We'll see how it works. You know, I've, I've said a number of times that I tend to have these phases where I, if I can go to bed early for a couple of weeks in a row earlier than necessary to shut my brain down, which I can do, I can always find herbs and have routines to shut my brain down, but sometimes I just don't want to use them.

Speaker 1 (16:05): And I don't want to go to bed early because I, I like night. I think I, I think I, uh, evolved to be a night owl and I'm just one of those people, but I do feel better when I have phases where I go to bed early, wake up earlier naturally, it's there, there's something about it. And they've shown there have been studies showing that, you know, the, the earlier you get to bed before midnight, the better the quality of your sleep overall. And so what I've, what I've done is since most of the time I'm staying up, I'm not, luckily, you know, I'm not on Tik TOK or Instagram. I tend to be responding to emails. Um, they're trying to get work done. I'll get inspiration to start doing a new project, uh, that, you know, might not manifest for months down the road.

Speaker 1 (16:51): And I, I get this creative flare at that time probably cause no one's texting me, but it could be said for early in the morning, uh, I just, don't, I'm not up often enough at five or 6:00 AM to take advantage of that. I'd have to flip my, my routine. But what I got is basically a, it's a, an outlet timer, basically like a Christmas tree outlet. So, you know, the things people it's a slightly more advanced version of what, what my parents used to use. Maybe still use to have the Christmas tree turn on at a certain time, every day on a turn off at a certain time every day. So now my wifi is plugged into this outlet timer and it turns on at 7:00 AM and it turns off at, at uh, 10:00 PM. So that means no internet, which means I can't be doing work on my computer again.

Speaker 1 (17:42): You know, if I were, if, if, if social media on my phone where my problem, it wouldn't really prevent that because I always have the, uh, although it might, if I were worried about my data use, you know, cause it's much more efficient and cost-effective to be connected to your wifi generally. So maybe it, maybe it would, but I basically can't do anything on my computer and I can't watch Netflix, which isn't a huge problem. But once in a blue moon, you know, they'd designed, you watch one Netflix show and then at the end, someone's about to fall off a cliff. And then that goes to the credit. So you're like, what the? I haven't watched the next one now. So that can't happen. Uh, and we'll see I'm on, um, I, I plugged it in yesterday and I was really tired yesterday. So I did go to bed at a reasonable time, but it'll be an interesting little experiment.

Speaker 1 (18:30): I generally, I don't, I don't like things that generally speaking act as like parental guardians in the form of technology. However, I think this could be an interesting thing just for the sake of helping me get into, into the routine. And I also liked the idea of not sleeping with wifi on at night, just in the event that there's something going on with wifi. Uh, I, I'm not a tin hat, conspiracy theorist, but I feel like all else, all things considered, if it's easy to have wifi off at night, I may as well not subject my, the cells in my body to whatever wavelength that is to whatever types of res might be, you know, possibly doing something. Um, and you know, you can't fully get away from cell phone stuff. And, and of course the neighbors have wifi there's could be reaching in here as well.

Speaker 1 (19:23): I live in a condo, but, um, I guess ideally I'd be out in a farm with bad cell phone service. I'd have like a cell phone signal booster that I could turn on and off or connect to that outlet. We're not quite there yet, but I think it's a good start. And, uh, you know, I was talking to a friend about that and I, I didn't know if he thought the idea was silly, but, um, you know, we kind of came to the conclusion that even if there's, there's no proof that wifi is doing anything bad to you while you're asleep, you may as well turn it off at night anyway, like there's always a chance. And if it is doing anything, it's, it's highly unlikely that it's some, you know, brand new vitamin that we haven't discovered. And it's doing awesome things to your brain,

Speaker 2 (20:05): My chief instructor, and he was also my high phytochemicals diet, food healing instructor, uh, Jeff prime, Mack of Supreme science. She gone, dude is a wealth of information about, uh, health and about chigong and about Taoism. But, uh, I remember, yeah, it was seven or eight years ago. And it was at a seminar here in San Diego at the downtown convention center, which I think they have like a bunch of homeless people staying there now, which is, sounds pretty cool that they're at least putting it to good use, but there, it was a four-day chigong seminar and food healing. And one of the talks he gave was on a study. I believe it was a study where they had a plant, they put plants next to the internet router in the place, and then plants way, way far away from it turned off. You know, the ones that weren't close to were fine.

Speaker 2 (21:04): The ones that were right next to the router, I think it got, I think it would have like horrible degradation and, and Def I can't remember the specifics, but he, he, he did a lot of research on this. Now he's one of those very pure people. He won't even put anything unpure in his body. I went through a phase like that and it was the most unhealthiest. One of the most unhealthy things I've ever done is to be that militant. It works good for him, but he went even like, so I don't have my, um, my internet on at night. I turn that off before I go to bed. Same as on my phone. And I won't let Ashley put the blue light, um, chargers in here. It's like those have to be in the living room. Uh, but he was saying that, well, look at a lot, at least guys, we carry those cell phones with our wifi on, in our pockets right next to, you know, our, our unit.

Speaker 2 (22:00): And so he was like, I don't care if there's an emergency. He's like, I'm only turning on my wifi like a few times a day because he was afraid that his, you know, he's going to get cancer of the genitals or something like that. And so I'm definitely not that worried about it, but still there's easy precautions. I can take like such as turning off the wifi at night, no blue lights in the bedroom. I need the fan on, not so much because I need the fresh air hitting me, but that white noise that, so everyone has their good sleep rituals. And, you know, I think that the power of sleep is probably the most important thing. Uh, I was watching someone else on YouTube a few days ago. I think it was a TEDx talk. And they were saying how they did study. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (22:51): It was a lady from, uh, as a lady that did a huge PowerPoint on resilience that was from maybe five, six years ago, 2014, 2015. And then the thing on resilience, she was saying that there was research that showed all these different predictors of resilience, health, and wellness, et cetera. And one of the core findings was that for people that got good sleep and were in a healthy relationship, um, they were a lot and didn't eat good. D didn't have a good diet. Didn't exercise much if at all, but they slept really good. And they had a lot of love and their relationship. Well, they were really healthy and live long lives for the most part versus people that ate really well and had a good diet, but they were like alone for a long time in their life, like 20, 30, you know, just never found a partner either that, and, or didn't get good sleep. So it's like, I'm like thinking, man, this is so sleeping really good, could be more important than even diet. Like if you eat the best diet in the world, but your sleep sucks. And if you just eat kind of a below average diet, but your sleep really good, and you're just really playful and having fun during the day, you know, that person might even be healthier in the long run.

Speaker 1 (24:12): Yeah. It seems in the, as far as the basics go, like the most important thing would have to be breathing right? Cause that you can't go very long without breathing. The second most important thing might be sleep. Right. And if, at least if we go in terms of not that you can do anything without any of these basics for that long, but I'm thinking like, you know, breathing, sleep food, water. If we measure, you know, how, how long you can go without these things without sleeping well with having a good diet, it's not particularly long. Uh, and you know, obviously what you die after three, four days without water five, maybe something like that. Just a couple of days, you can go a long time without food, especially if you have excess body fat. Um, although I, I actually, I saw a study once where someone went on a starvation diet, they didn't eat for maybe almost a year. Wow. They were, I think four or 500 pounds. Like they were, they have breath area. What's that

Speaker 2 (25:15): Where they have breadth area, they live off just breathing and oxygen. I've never heard of something like that in water.

Speaker 1 (25:22): Well, they took vitamin and mineral supplements and water, uh, and, but no calories and ended up losing weight. And you know, so you need food though. Most people need food after a couple of weeks. Uh, and, but sleep, you know, in that book, why we sleep, which is one of my favorite books. I talked about it all the time by Matthew Walker, he talks about a rare and very unfortunate genetic condition. That it's, it afflicts one in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It's not common, but it basically results in the inability to sleep. The progressive inability to sleep until sleep is physically physiologically impossible. And people go crazy and die. Uh, various, you know, obviously inflammation shoots up, they start having hallucinations. Uh, and, and it, the progression of that genetic disease reminded me a bit of some of the symptoms reminded me of alcoholism, which also in the same book, he says, if you're up one, drink close to bedtime, that's going to disrupt your REM sleep, which is our inbuilt, evolutionary, emotional therapy.

Speaker 1 (26:31): And without that, you can't be balanced, you know, you're you get to the point of being basically schizophrenia pretty soon or having similar symptoms. And, uh, you know, that's a scary thing I experienced that I didn't trust my own mind. I didn't trust my own thoughts, you know, is that narrator in your head there that we've talked about before, when that becomes deranged? It's scary. So like, um, there were times at the end of my drinking career, when I thought I'd probably belonged in a straight jacket, you know, I didn't want to cause harm to myself or to other people. I wasn't like a violent person, but I had this voice in my head screaming all the time and I felt like I was going to lose it. You know, I didn't know if I'd end up losing my mind and running out in the middle of the street in my underwear or something, and I didn't actually do it.

Speaker 1 (27:18): But when you have a lot of chaos, I'm sure a lot of people understand what I'm saying. When you have a, when your brain chemicals are severely imbalanced, which can result as which can result from lack of sleep can also result from poor diet over time. That's why we talk about these basics. I think in the event that anyone's listening to this episode is the first episode ever podcast. We're not saying that the solution to quitting addiction is to figure out which rich led or Democrat or, you know, to turn off your wifi at night. These are some of the, I'd say icing on the cake optimization tips that some people might appreciate. Uh, we have episodes on that go in depth into nutrient repair, biochemical rebalancing. All of that, part of the fun of this podcast is that you and I, we don't play.

Speaker 1 (28:11): We never know what we're going to talk about. And we found that to be actually better than coming, coming to the podcast with a strict outline, making it sound like a, like, uh, a class, uh, presentation. And those tend to be, I think buyer, in my opinion, yeah, we both between the two of us, we'd probably written what like four, 500 articles, you know, that they can be found on our websites and even more information in our courses and on our YouTube channels. But it's, it's always fun to try to speculate. I feel like this is a good platform to think about, like, what are the things we might be missing because there's always something that we might be missing. And there are always little things that, that end up making a big difference for different people. So I got an email this morning from a member of my course has been in there for several years.

Speaker 1 (29:01): He's awesome. He's a prolific poster of really useful information, keeps us finger on the pulse of the recovery, uh, cyber space. And he was saying that, uh, I'm sure he'd be cool with me sharing this. But he said that the tip on weighted blankets, I had a random post, I suppose, at one point, or maybe we mentioned it in the podcast, but on how weighted blankets can help people to sleep. And he had been, he was a self-described life-long insomniac until recently. And he said, I think the combination for him was like passionflower glycine and the weighted blanket. And now he sleeps like a baby. Apparently that's not verbatim, but he sleeps well. And, uh, so yeah, something as simple as a, as a weighted blanket is, has helped someone. He said, he said that was worth the, you know, the, the fee of the course alone.

Speaker 1 (29:58): And I, I don't think I even mentioned it in the actual course itself. It must've been just something in a comment. I'm trying to remember when I said that, I know we've mentioned it, but you know, you never know what it is. That might be a missing link for someone as trivial as it sounds to someone else. You know, it could be the case that, that someone is struggling because they are in their apartment languishing under fluorescent lights all the time, and they just haven't gone outside. Maybe they live right next to the ocean. They haven't gone on a beach walk in barefoot beach, walk in a year. I'm sure there are people like that. And just fixing that could be even more important potentially then, you know, whatever, the big commitment they were about to make some new, maybe they were about to go get hypnosis or maybe they were about to go keto. Not that those things are a bad idea, but it's always good to have a comprehensive plan to really take advantage of everything at your disposal, especially because so many people are suffering and early recovery. If nothing else, these things can be a worthy distraction and give people practice in the art of self optimization.

Speaker 2 (31:06): No, no I'm looking for, do you hear that?

Speaker 1 (31:10): So, yeah, I was echoing a little bit, hopefully. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:13): I'm always looking for low hanging fruit as far as optimizations. Um, and that's what we're talking about. Low hanging fruit, easy changes. Like not everybody can go walk on the beach and I know it's winter and most people don't live by the coast, but there's lots of parks shoot. If I lived in the snow, I'd go walk barefoot in the snow. Wim Hoff does it. And he takes people into much colder situations. So, uh, something that I thought of earlier, and then I forgot and it just came up. I really wanted to make sure I said this. There are a lot of people that just, no matter what they they're either afraid to go outside the pandemic has created a Gore phobia or it's exacerbated it if they already had it. Um, or they're just literally so messed up and so afraid to go outside when they're going through detox.

Speaker 2 (32:04): But at the beginning, at least of their journey, it's, it's either not feasible or they're just not going to commit to doing it. That's okay, because on your TV, uh, I do 4k nature videos and they're coming out with amazing new ones all the time in the evenings. Now I'll put on, you know, once I'm back from doing my nature stuff and work and everything, I'll put on a 4k video of a fireplace, a fire pit, like on a cliff, overlooking the ocean next to a VW bus. Uh, there's so many different cool ones, different fireplaces outside fireplaces, inside nature trail walks with GoPro camera footage. And so what I've found at least for myself and Ashley and Willow too, as well as papaya, even when we've got on the 55 inch TV for nature, we're not in nature at all. We're looking at nature even that has a very relaxing effect.

Speaker 2 (33:05): So videos of nature, pictures of nature are good too, but video footage of nature, especially with the ambiance music and I'll kick back and I'll play some guitar or I'll play Ashley's bass. So these are all just low-hanging fruit. Like you can put nature stuff on your TV or your computer. You can get rid of obnoxious lights in the house and trade them out for some, some lower mood, some better mood ones that are not so crazy on your brain. You can do grounding things. And if people don't want to go walk barefoot, like a bunch of hippies, I totally get that you can purchase a grounding map or even grounding sheets, which I think are probably the best. I saw a pair of grounding sheets recently for around maybe two 50 or $350.

Speaker 1 (33:54): I have a grounding mat right here, and I'm just, I'm resting my forearms on it while we do this. And when I'm working, I'm like this, I could use it as a mousepad if I want. I think I mentioned it in the last episode, but we didn't have video. And, uh, it is, I feel subjective difference and the reviews are really good for it on Amazon. I kind of doubt they're fake reviews, but it's technically the stand on, but I'm almost, I like to walk around. I'm never standing in one place. And when I'm sitting, I have socks on which could probably reduce the conductivity. So I find it useful even just to have this mat here, I have a client who had some like amethysts, uh, studied. Well, that makes it sound like a fashion design. Then there was some functional purpose for the amethyst in this mat is like a grounding mat. And she swore by it, she said she would lay down. It was a full body thing. She would lay down on it and it would help her feel centered. She would feel a tremendous difference.

Speaker 2 (34:53): Have you heard of the Beamer mat? No, I haven't like B E a M E R. No, it is a mat that you lay on. So I guess it kind of looks like a yoga mat, but perhaps smaller. It's all black and it plugs in to, you know, plugs into an outlet, very expensive thousands and thousands of dollars. But what it does is that you lay on the mat and there's different cycles and different settings. Uh, it increases your body's micro circulation. So it increases it boosts your nitric oxide and it helps to open up all of your blood tubes. And we talked about this on the last episode, but I tried it a few times. I borrowed it from someone for a week and I got to say 20 minutes laying down on that thing. And I just got up and I noticed it felt noticeably more relaxed.

Speaker 2 (35:46): I felt that was drained. Is that the first time I used it, I felt much less drained. And then the reviews on these BEMER mats are incredible. It's one of those direct sales companies. So the only way to get it is to find someone that sells it, or maybe you can get them off the website. Maybe there's used one, but so that people can do all these different things from home mom. I'm there probably. There's probably some people thinking, well, God, you guys always talk about the beach. I don't live by the beach. Don't be a victim. Don't make, that's a rational line. That's an excuse. Oh, well, well, okay. Let's, here's a better question. The question is, well, I can't go walk on the beach hurts for freezing snow here. And I live in the city, like, how am I supposed to go do this stuff?

Speaker 2 (36:32): Here's a better question. How can I get the same benefits these guys are talking? Yeah. About in a different way. So for one of the walking ones, so, Oh, I can't go for walks because there's just people with COVID everywhere, something. Well, I have a pretty small apartment. I think it's 1200 square feet, but the amount of steps that I do in here, cause I'm hardly ever sitting still, if I'm working, I'm usually sitting down, but when I'm home and not working, I'm rarely on the couch. I'm like pacing back and forth, like doing rampages of gratitude to where I'm just walking around my apartment and just noticing everything that I'm super grateful for looking out the window, doing the same, or just pacing back and forth, watching a movie at night time with my family. Sometimes I'll sit down. So the amount of things you can do at your home that would give some similar or identical benefits, probably not identical, but you know, 4k nature on TV while you're also getting exercise by walking around in your home, while you also have one of those sun lamps to where you're not out in the sun, but at least you have a sun lamp.

Speaker 2 (37:39): So you're getting that good lighting where you're having essential oil diffuser with some cool lighting to make the mood just more relaxing. There's a lot of creative, uh, tactics that are all low hanging fruit. Most of them that are either free or affordable or at least semi affordable. You come getting into those BEMER mats. I know that's not for everyone. I still haven't purchased one, but I just want to remind people of just how many things they can do during the day that they're not doing now because of that just habits. They're just, they're just going on autopilot or a lot of the day autopilot doing the same habits, the same thought processes, eating the same types of things on a regular basis. Now that's not a bad thing unless you're foods and actions and thought processes, et cetera, are creating a worst life off. If so, just trying to inspire people to get going. If you're not going get going huge, just do one of these little things, just one simple thing. Um, and grounding, we've been talking about grounding a lot and I noticed a huge difference. I think it's been eight days or nine days in a row, perhaps where I've done at least a half hour a day, most days, 45 minutes to an hour barefoot walking at the beach. And so again, I know, you know, not everybody can do it, but that's why, that's why there's grounding technology.

Speaker 1 (39:10): I went for a beach walk yesterday. I think there was like 49 degrees or something. It's been pretty cold and barefoot beach walk the air or the butter or the air. I don't know what the water was. I didn't go in there probably cold, but it was also cloudy and raining a bit. And um, yeah, if you were there, I would've jumped in the water, but I think I, they probably would've sent me, uh, put me in a straight jacket if I had, if I had gone in the water, everyone else had mittens and scarves and hats and boots on. Um, but I was, I was barefoot and I definitely felt a benefit. I'll do an hour and a half round trip drive once a week just to get to the beach. It's funny cause I'm by the coast here, but there's no real beach.

Speaker 1 (39:51): And so it's mostly Marsh out here, but you know, now with everyone working remotely or not everyone, but a lot of people working remotely, it's not a bad idea to look into like Airbnbs to go somewhere out of the way. If you can work there from a week or two, I found a, a farm in, in South Florida that I could drive to it's dog friendly. So I could bring both of my dogs. It was like 80 or $90 a night. You have multiple acres, all fenced in with like an eight foot fence and they have animals there. They have a caretaker who comes and takes care of like the horses and the donkeys. And you just, you're all alone in this big. Yeah. It's like a little barn style house, but it's cool. It's like well-appointed with like a barn door to go into the bathroom and a little like a queen size bed and like nice cabinets.

Speaker 1 (40:47): There's it looks nice. It looks clean and it's just, you know, hanging out and there's some orange trees outside and that went around with the dogs and I I'm thinking of booking a trip there and just getting some work done, changing up the scenery, going earthing on the farm. And that's a really good deal. I mean, there are a lot of good deals right now, but I'd rather stay somewhere like that then in a hotel, especially if I were worried about COVID, um, you know, just go somewhere, find something cool. And my other option that I'm also looking at is maybe going somewhere in the smoky mountains, I miss the snow and I would love to go for a barefoot walk in the snow. I've actually never been to the smoky mountains, but there's no reason for me not to do something like that. I mean, you and I are basically been working remotely, doing our own for a long time.

Speaker 1 (41:34): You know, we could be pretty much anywhere and you know, it's good to take advantage of that. Anytime someone feels stuck, you know, try to see what's available to you. You can always change your state. You can always change. And I don't mean physical. I mean, you were your physiological state, you can change and you can also change what state you live in. Actually, if it comes down to it, I used to live in hell's kitchen in New York. I can't imagine having spent the last year in hell's kitchen so much happier and Savannah, uh, and you know, it's just kind of Olympic relatively speaking off the grid. And you know, I have friends up in New Jersey in New York who haven't even gone to the gym in a year and they're there. It's just like a different mindset, I suppose. And everyone's paranoid and it's tightly packed and densely populated up there.

Speaker 1 (42:21): So yeah, it just takes a little bit of imagination and just a little bit of being proactive and just asking the right questions. You know what, instead of saying, you know, why do I have to put up with this, which I've been stuck in FA in phases of, of asking myself that kind of question, instead, you say, what do I have to do to proactively change my mental and physical state right now? Like, Oh, maybe I should move or maybe I should, should rent an Airbnb and get some fresh air somewhere. Um, there there's, there's a myriad of options and possibilities, but if you don't put yourself in the right mind frame to explore them, then you won't find any,

Speaker 2 (43:04): Yeah, I'll end this episode with a quote that goes along with that. This is a text I got from a client a few days ago. Hi Matt, thanks so much for the information. And she listens to the podcast a lot and she's able to listen to it while she's working too. I am now officially off work for the next month. Ready to get my mind, body and spirit for a new change. You literally gave me the courage to step back from my crazy job and manager so that I can get my head straight and honestly be happy. So just from listening to the podcast, listening to our stories of leaving jobs or careers that we, that were not healthy for us any longer and, um, just kind of making those big decisions that are hard, but now she's like fired up. She wants, she's been on a, uh, taper and now all of a sudden she'll be able to focus.

Speaker 2 (44:00): Sometimes people, sometimes people just need to focus on themselves. I don't know what it is about in America. Why a lot of us have problems speaking up to our boss or a manager about taking extended time off, um, to, to take care of a health issue or so many people are very chicken to do it. And then when I was working for other people, I used to be like that too. Well, they're not going to be able to give me that time off or, um, I'm going to be putting them in a bad position. And you know,

Speaker 1 (44:32): Who's more important to you. What's more important to you, your own mental and physical, emotional, spiritual health, or making someone else happy at the expense of all of that, throwing out your health and all that stuff out the window. So I love seeing people take charge of their lives and make decisions because a lot of people will just not change or keep getting further down because they don't make the decisions that they're, that they need to make. And a lot of times they won't know what those decisions even are because they're not asking questions. Like if you want to answer to any question, anything in your life, you first have to ask a question either intentionally or it'll just, it'll just come in, but that's why I intentionally write out questions and then answer them because that's how you get the answers, the right questions lead to the right answers.

Speaker 1 (45:27): And so, yeah, this was a great episode. We talked about sleep light, uh, co empowering questions, bunch of other stuff, anything else you wanted to add to before? I think that's a good place to end now. I'm glad people are finding this to be useful. Hopefully for, for every person. That's like, what the hell am I listening to about wifi and light? Uh, you know, I think there are some people who really enjoy listening in on the conversations. And really the reason we started this podcast was just as an extension of, we're just broadcasting the phone conversations that we would have before, you know, and we used to have these mastermind calls and we talk about all sorts of stuff, which supplements you'd found that were helpful recently. You know, what detox protocol for someone has recently really worked? Uh, what, what are your diets been like? So, yeah, it's, this is why I like to do what we do because it's the fulfillment aspect is amazing. And it, it couldn't be further from times before in my life during various other things where I felt like I was counting beans and there just wasn't a, where's the benefit. And so if you don't have a spiritual connection to something you do, then it's worth, uh, it's worth looking into other options. So yeah, no, this has been a great podcast. Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 3 (46:45): Thanks. Ma'am [inaudible].