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847: 3 ESSENTIAL Keys to Heal Your Body & Transform Your Fitness

TMHS 458: Clinically Proven Method To Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, & Feel Empowered – With Guest Jessica Ortner

In our Western culture, it’s no secret that there’s a pill for every ill. And while there’s certainly a time and a place for conventional medicine, it’s important that we recognize the multitude of healing modalities that are available to us. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that considers holistic healing practices radical or far out, but the truth is that many healing practices are thousands of years old and have science to affirm them. 

Specifically, acupressure treatments are rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. In acupressure therapy, pressure is applied to certain meridian points to essentially turn on the body’s natural healing mechanisms. With a 2000+ year track record, this healing method is certainly something worth considering. 

Today’s guest, Jessica Ortner is a New York Times Bestselling Author, producer, and creator of the Tapping Solution Meditation App. Jessica is here to share the fascinating data on tapping and how it can be used to heal anxiety, body image, inflammation, and so much more. I hope this episode inspires you to think outside the box and to approach healing in a holistic way. Enjoy! 

In this episode you’ll discover:

  • What acupressure is, and its history. 
  • The experience that exposed Jessica to tapping.
  • How our emotions can manifest physically in our bodies. 
  • The importance of acknowledging your feelings. 
  • Why achievement and anxiety are often linked. 
  • How relaxation can help you tap into your intuition. 
  • What EFT stands for. 
  • How tapping actually works. 
  • The importance of the psychological aspect of tapping.
  • What the Subjective Units of Distress Scale is.
  • Why we don’t need stress and panic in order to change.
  • How tapping can change your emotions around cravings.
  • Why poor body image is often a generational issue.
  • How tapping can influence the expression of genes. 
  • The influence that tapping can have on immunity and inflammation.
  • Where anxiety comes from, and the importance of helping our bodies feel safe.

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Transcript:

Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show, this is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. I am so excited about this episode, we got a friend of mine on the show today, and she's somebody who's made a massive impact on the lives of millions of people. What we want to provide here on the Modern Health Show is real, evidence-based solutions, and one of the things that's overlooked is that there are so many different methodologies for getting our health from where we are to where we want to be, and oftentimes we look through the lens, this kind of programmed lens of "A pill for every ill." The lens of allopathic medicine, when there are so many different healing modalities, and also understanding that our system of health and health care here in our country, again, allopathic medicine and looking through an allopathic lens is looking at our bodies in parts, right? We've got the knee specialists, we've got the heart specialist, we got the brain specialists, we've got the toe specialists. There are specialists for everything, but we've isolated and separated our bodies into parts.

 

And we have drugs to treat every different thing as well. We've got a drug to treat cholesterol, we've got a drug to treat hypertension, we've got a drug to treat insulin resistance, we've got a drug to treat cancer, the list goes on and on, and wondering why... Because again, looking at our health through the lens of seeing ourselves in parts wondering why we have these quote "side effects" when we take a statin, we take a drug is supposed to address the cholesterol in our bodies, and then we see after years of data being compiled, that taking that statin led to a 30% increased incidence of developing diabetes. We're taking a drug to do this thing, but it's affecting this thing over here, how? We're separated into parts, right? This part doesn't talk to this part, this body part doesn't associate with that body part. That's not how life works, that's not how our bodies work, everything is integrated in this hyper-intelligent miraculous...

 

We don't even understand the depths of which our incredible minds and bodies are operating, and so when I say bringing real evidence-based modalities, again, that have signs to affirm them, that don't necessarily fit into the box of conventional medicine, and it can help people, it can help us to heal, it can help us to make progress, it can help us to make breakthroughs, I believe you deserve to know about it, and so that's what we're talking about here on this episode of the Model Health Show, and I've got the best person in the world to teach you about it. Now, I'm going to be 100, alright. Now, I was first so impressed with this data that I actually added it to my first book, Sleep Smarter, which became an international best seller because of the impact that this method has on our sleep quality, and in Sleep Smarter, I'm going to just share directly from Sleep Smarter, a comprehensive study conducted through the department of radiotherapy and oncology at San Gerardo Hospital in Monza, Italy, found that 60% of patients with sleep disorders had an improvement in their sleep quality after just two weeks of acupressure treatment. Two weeks of acupressure treatment.

 

What was even more impressive is that, again, this is a division of the hospital focused on the treatment of cancer. What was even more impressive is that 79% of cancer patients in the study had improvements in their sleep quality. Acupressure. Acupressure treatment. What is it? What is acupressure? Acupressure is a blend of the words acupuncture and pressure, and it's a form of therapy that's been used for more than 2000 years. And according to researchers, there are specific places in your body where nerves relay signals to other organs and glands of the body, if they are engaged.

 

Acupressure is essentially a method of sending a signal to the body by needle or other means to quote "turn on" its own self-healing or regulatory mechanisms. It's not really a radical idea to understand it all. We all know that every cell in our bodies is managed and governed by a force, which is our brain, and every cell, tissue and organ can give and receive data across this information superhighway, which is our body, and specifically we're talking about our nervous system. Let me share one more study with you that was in Sleep Smarter, the acupressure point used in the previous study was a point called HT-7, which is right under the palm of your hand near the edge of your wrist. Now, in another double-blind placebo-controlled study on insomnia patients, triggering, pressing, manipulating the HT-7 point, this acupressure point over the course of the study, increased their melatonin metabolites to normal levels. Alright, so it's literally changing what our bodies are doing, changing what our hormones are doing, our neurotransmitters.

 

It sounds super... Listen, when I found out about this, I was like, "Oh, this is weird. I don't get it. How can these pathways, or touching my body, tapping or needling is going to help to engage and change my state, change my health?" And again, this segues into our conversation today because there are many very specific and clinically proven methods to activate and utilize these different points, namely through EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping. And today, our special guest is somebody who really helped to bring this to popular culture and many of some of the most famous people in health and wellness have been using these strategies for many years, and so I'm really, really excited about this because again, whether or not you utilize this, it is a tool that is available that it's going... Today, you're going to find out some of the studies, that's just, it's shocking, the benefits that it can have. But it's not just the tapping alone, there's a certain methodology that our special guest has put together that is incredibly powerful and transformative and supportive, and we're actually... She's going to take us through and exercise today, all together that I'm going to do along with you guys and along with her, so I'm really looking forward to that.

 

Now, all of these things that we're going to dive into today, so much has to do with our brain and our cognitive function, our cognitive performance, we've got our programming, our software programs that we can tap into through different ways of thinking, through study, through using our body in different ways. We can do that, but also the hardware itself is critically important and this cannot be overlooked because we can have the different software programs, different software inputs, but if the hardware itself is lacking or flawed or even damaged, it's going to be incredibly difficult to get the change that we're looking for.

 

So what are our brain cells made of? What are they running on? Well, we hear the statements all the time that your brain is mostly fat. First of all, it's mostly water, it's about 80% water. So it's the most water-dominant organ in the body next to our lungs, but the quote "dry weight," yes, it's mostly fat, but these are a special kind of fat. These are called structural fats, and they're specific fats that are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and actually nourish your brain, and there are these categories. Omega-3s, big one, but also MCTs, medium chain triglycerides. And a remarkable study published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, sought to find out if MCTs could have an impact on improving the condition of patients with Alzheimer's disease. It's well noted that Alzheimer's disease is consistently accompanied by an impairment in glucose uptake into the brain cells, so there's a form of insulin resistance that's taking place in our brains that accelerates the degradation of our cognitive ability.

 

And so the scientists discovered that since MCTs are quickly metabolized by the liver, prompting the production of ketones. Those ketones are then able to easily cross the blood-brain barrier to nourish the brain cells as an alternative fuel source to the glucose impaired cells of the Alzheimer's patients. The scientists found that the consumption of the MCTs directly led to improved cognitive function in mild to moderate forms of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive impairment. This condition is largely seen to be irreversible, there's you can do about it, just try to slow down the degradation. We now know there are things with our nutrition that can help to turn back the clock and actually make the brain work better. MCTs are one of those things.

 

Also researches at Yale University published data reporting that MCTs can readily cross the blood-brain barrier and be used directly by brain cells themselves to nourish your brain, to support the structural integrity of your brain cells and also to support something called signal transduction where your brain cells can talk to each other. They can link up. They can jump into the DMs of the other brain cells, slide into the DMs. Connect, link up, talk. It's kind of important. Alright, so just about every single day, the first thing that I have after I have my morning water, my inner bath, the first kind of nutrition that I bring in, most of the time is MCT oil, emulsified MCT oil along with a nice coffee or tea or anything like that from Onnit.

 

Alright, because it's emulsified, it's really like a coffee creamer, a nice thing to add to your teas, you can add it to smoothies, but this MCT oil, it's delicious and it easily blends and it's from a source. This company does things the right way in their sourcing, so you're not getting any nefarious things along with your MCT oil. So definitely check it out. My favorite is the almond milk latte flavor. My wife loves the vanilla, they also have a strawberry that's pretty good as well, pop over there, check 'em out, it's onnit.com/model, and you're going to get 10% off of their MCT oil and everything else that they carry, definitely well worth it, it's incredible for your brain. It's one of your brain's favorite fuels, and a thing with so many people are deficient on. So pop over there, check 'em out onnit.com/model. Now, let's get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

 

iTunes Review: Another five-star review titled "Pro Go-TO" by awarding life. “As a mental and physical health professional, even though I first fell in love with the Model Health Show for me, I quickly relayed all the magical golden nuggets to those in my wellness community clients and cohort. Shawn presents info in such an amazing way, easy to grasp, duh to implement way. I love having a stellar show like this so that people can hear what I teach them from someone else's credible voice, he does the research, so you don't have to.”

 

Shawn Stevenson: This is so incredible. That means everything to me. Thank you so much for sharing that review over on Apple Podcast and listen, if you've yet to do so, please pop over to Apple Podcast and leave a review for the show, and on that note, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.

 

Today's guest is Jessica Ortner, and she's a New York Times best-selling author of The Tapping Solution for weight loss and body confidence. She's a stress reduction expert and one of the leading voices teaching EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, a revolutionary stress relief technique that combines ancient acupressure and modern psychology. Tapping has been clinically proven to reduce stress hormones, making it a powerful and easy tool to access, to manage in times of our daily stress, and today, I really wanted to do this episode because we're experiencing an overwhelming amount of stress in our society, with our families, our communities, and really the world at large in many ways, and so especially there's a lot of psychological stress and having access to, for many people, new tools that we have access to instantly, to help us to modulate and to deal with the stressors in our life and also looking at some of these cool studies, some of this evidence is going to really trip you out that this is possible by utilizing the amazing body that we already have to help to reduce stress, to help us to make transformations even in our thinking.

 

So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. You might hear "it's Skype time," it's the time of the Skype. So you might hear special appearance by her toddler in the background a little bit, but I promise you, you're going to walk away with a new insight and a new tool to add to your superhero utility belt, so let's jump into this conversation with the incredible Jessica Ortner. My friend, I'm so happy to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

 

Jessica Ortner: Finally, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I know finally, right? I think was it like, seven years ago, maybe, we met at Jim Kwik's place. Do you remember that?

 

Jessica Ortner: It was a long time. I remember it was this big Hollywood party, I didn't know anyone, you didn't know anyone, and we just were magnets to each other, we're like, "Alright," I'm like, "I found my person."

 

Shawn Stevenson: Right. Yes.

 

Jessica Ortner: "So I'm going to have a good time. I found my person."

 

Shawn Stevenson: If you didn't say that today, I was going to say that. I literally thought that when we were going to talk today, when I found you there, I found my person because like you said, it was this incredible mastermind in so many successful people, and I definitely think... Yeah, I still lived in Ferguson-Florissant, Missouri, so even me coming there was super out of my stratosphere, but then you and I, we just, like, clicked up. And we were good. It was a good time.

 

Jessica Ortner: Oh, we had a great time. Yeah, for sure.

 

Shawn Stevenson: What do you remember? Do you remember anything from the event that really stuck out?

 

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, you want to know my memory is? It's not like enlightening. But this is the truth, I remember we were having dinner and across from us was Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V, and we were talking about podcasts and about how if you put your photo on your podcast, it does better, and you made a joke and said, "I even did mine shirtless," and then I said, "Oh, that's what I'm missing." And I remember everyone laughing, and you never know your audience when you're kind of telling a joke, but everyone laughed, I was like "Phew." That's my memory.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I didn't remember until this moment. It was there, in my database, I literally remember that. And we were all collectively like, "You know what, you'd win. You'd win with that." But yeah, Gary Vaynerchuk was sitting right next to me, it was like a wine tasting, and I'm not the wine guy, but it was just like a really cool experience. That's the thing about Jim too, is just getting cool people together.

 

Jessica Ortner: And everyone was so nice. You never... You see Gary V everywhere and you never know what it's like to actually meet him, and he was so nice, and everybody was so humble and great, and it just... I think as a kid, sometimes you get this belief that successful people are going to be snotty and have a big ego, and it was great to be around these people who were just good people.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, that's a fact and one other little fun fact, because just for folks who're just like, "Who was Gary Vaynerchuk?" Gary V is, he's a big entrepreneur marketing... Just he's transferred himself into so many different domains of it too, being a big influencer, and people in the rap industry to major brands like Coca-Cola are looking to him for advice, and I remember talking with him about... Because he has that... His brand is "The hustle," and we were talking about sleep, and he was like... And we talked about this, because he's still playing the long game, he's like, "Oh, I get my sleep. I know what the framing looks like, but that still means I can get seven hours of sleep, whatever the case might be, there are times to grind, but overall, if we're going to play the long game, we really got to focus on the sleep wellness," so that's what we were convo-ing about. So everybody has their appearance out here in the world, but we keep it real, especially here on the show. And it's why I'm so grateful to have you and why we clicked up and connected because you're just a real person and so cool.

 

And I want to talk about your superhero origin story. You've created this incredible movement with tapping. The Tapping Solution, this incredible brand helped millions of people, but... How did this happen? Where did this all come from? Where did you learn about it? Let's start there.

 

Jessica Ortner: Great, thank you. So I struggled in school since I was a little kid, I stayed back in second grade, I had a speech impediment, I didn't know how to read, and even though things improved, I always felt like if I had any type of success, I was faking it. So I would work really hard, but I always felt a bit less than. And I think we all have experiences in our childhood where we just learn something, we think we discovered that we're not enough, and so then in high school, I was really struggling and I started reading self-help books, and I was like, "Wow," this concept that you can read a book, not that's assigned to you, but a book that you're interested in, and so I started reading everything from Tony Robbins to Wayne Dyer, and really realized that it wasn't that I was dumb or less than, it was that my mind... I think differently, and that I do have talents, that I am enough. I started this journey, but this voice of not being enough, and especially the anxiety, it was so physical and it was so conditioned that even though I would listen to positive things, listen to audio books, I still always had this level of anxiety that somehow I would be found out like this just impostor syndrome.

 

And I discovered this technique called tapping because I was really sick one day and my brother came over, my brother Nick, and he said, "Listen, I learned a technique for anxiety, it's a little weird, but why don't we give it a try?" And so he had me talk about what was bothering me while I began to tap on these acupressure points, and midway through... This is my older brother, he has been playing practical jokes on me since the moment I was born or could comprehend a joke, so he had me tapping on the top of the head and I was like, "Wait, what?" And he said, "No, no. Just to give it a try." And when I really began to give a voice to how I felt and tap on these acupressure points that were calming my nervous system, it was like this weight in my chest lifted, it was a physical sensation. And so the anxiety that I had a hard time talking my way out of, I could feel it leave my body. I am a real over-thinker, I can think myself into and out of problems, and the challenge with someone who is an over-thinker is that we can then kind of ignore our body or our body takes over with this anxiety. Our anxiety isn't just in our head, it is a physical sensation, so having a technique that uses the physical body to release stress is incredibly powerful.

 

So from that moment, I left school, we put a ton of money on credit cards, we ordered all of this camera equipment that showed up in my brother's little apartment, and we said we're going to make a documentary film about tapping. We knew it was getting really big in the United States, big in England, big in Germany, a lot of case studies, but nobody had filmed it before, and so... Thank God there was YouTube. So we would Google, or we would YouTube how to work a light, and we created a documentary film in 2009, and that is what catapulted everything. Then we started doing online events and writing books, and here we are with an app. And so it's kind of all evolved from then, but that's... That's the origin story.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Wow. And so many guests that have been on this show have been a part of The Tapping Solution, and even in that film, like Dr. Bruce Lipton, for example, it's been a tool so many people have used.

 

Jessica Ortner: It was interesting when I started to read more about tapping. Do you remember the movie, The Secret?

 

Shawn Stevenson: Of course, yeah.

 

Jessica Ortner: Right, so this was the best-selling film, DVD. This is back in the DVD days.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Right.

 

Jessica Ortner: I think in history. And I remember watching it, and as I began to reach out to these different experts that I liked, I realized that so many experts that I looked up to were using tapping privately, they were using it as a way to address any limiting beliefs and any anxiety and stuff that they were feeling, and so that movie really inspired us to bring in some of those experts in...

 

Shawn Stevenson: I got to point this out, because this is just so cool, you shared your story and being held back in the second grade, and my son just finished second grade, you know he's in third grade right now, and just to think about that dynamic because you are so much in your character at that point. And just the impact that that would have had, but from you growing from that place and then you come across books with Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, you literally have a New York Times best-selling book today, and also the same publisher as Wayne Dyer, the books that you were reading back in the day being with Hay House. Come on. That's so freaking amazing, Jess. That's awesome.

 

Jessica Ortner: Thank you. No, it feels like such a blessing, and I think the challenge sometimes is when we begin to start reading about personal development, we want to figure everything out at once, and so I started reading and I wanted my five-step plan, I wanted to know exactly where my future would lead, and one of the things I discovered is that sometimes even achievement comes with anxiety. Right?

 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

 

Jessica Ortner: And if we have that anxiety, what happens is we actually just can't think clearly, and I know this is something that you know, but when we're having anxiety even towards a goal, even towards good things, sometimes we get the job we want and we have overwhelming amounts of anxiety, there's a part of our brain that's firing off that fight or flight response, there's a part of our brain that's saying There's something about this that doesn't feel safe 'cause we love the familiar. And so in that place, it's not about pushing through and almost forcing positive thinking, it's actually about taking a step back and going, "Alright, what is my body feeling... What is this anxiety? And let me address this, let me take a moment to let my body know that it's safe," and the moment you do that, something amazing happens, you tap into your intuition, you get that idea, like Einstein, would always say that he would get the best ideas shaving, and I don't think it was his shaving cream. I think we have moments in our day when we're relaxed and we get those ideas, and that is what tapping helped me with because the benefit, there's so many benefits of learning these techniques at a young age and learning about self-help and personal development, but the dark side for me personally, is I also made it like if I'm not positive all the time, then I'm not enough.

 

Like if I'm not achieving, then I'm not enough. And so it was really a journey for me to kind of balance the knowledge I'm getting in about achievement, but also realizing that I have to look at my own beliefs in my own anxiety, because the best information I'm going to get is from my own intuition and you can't connect to that intuition unless you're feeling calm and feeling in control.

 

Shawn Stevenson: And when you say this, it is, like me being a very analytical, logical person, seeing is believing, it's kind of my tendency. And seeing the data on this that you guys have compiled, it is unbelievable, like the stress hormone, the cortisol study, for example, that you guys put together, can you talk about that a little bit?

 

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, so there's been so many studies recently. When I started the film, there wasn't a lot of studies at all, it was spreading because it was working, but studies take a lot of money, right?

 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. A lot.

 

Jessica Ortner: And as tapping began to spread, then it started to get into more universities and people becoming curious because of this movement, and so the research has been amazing. There was a study, which this is actually the second study on this, so it was replicating a study from 2012. Now, in 2020, they did this study on cortisol. Cortisol, we often know it as the stress hormone, it's easy to measure, you can measure it within your saliva, and they had a group that was using tapping, they had a group that was reading about stress relief, so they were opening the book and they were reading about strategies, and then the third group was the control group, and they were just reading a magazine, and after an hour, what they found is that the control group, the cortisol actually went up by 2%, I think. Which I find funny, I think nowadays you open any magazine and you see stressful news, so they got actually more stressed, the people who read about stress relief did have a reduction, it was 19%, so that's a pretty big number. The people who were using the tapping, the reduction was 43%. So here we're seeing how the body is reacting, 43% reduction in cortisol.

 

Shawn Stevenson: That is so powerful because again, this isn't... First of all, this is... We need to talk about this because objective measurement has been the tendency, right? If we could see the numbers, we could see you got the monitors and all these things, but how important subjective measurements are and how we feel, there's not another metric that's more important than that. But to have both, it's just for... It hits on all those notes of our minds of like, this is actually a really valuable tool that we all have access to today, because we have a body that's the only pre-requisite and just learning some of the techniques, and so if you could, let's dive in a little bit more right now and talk about... Okay, so tapping. What is tapping? You've been saying this term, acupressure points, and maybe we can do a little bit of it.

 

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, absolutely. So it's called tapping or EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, because you're tapping on these acupressure points, you're using two or three fingers and you're gently tapping on spots that are on your face and your torso. There's nine spots, you have acupressure points all over your body, but they found that these nine points really help you relax, they're easily accessible and they're easy to remember, which is key because it means anyone who learns these nine points can use it any time they're feeling stressed. The key with tapping is actually getting clear on the thought that's creating the physical response. So we touched on this before, you have a stressful thought, it could be about a new job, it could be about something good, it could be about something bad, financial uncertainty, that thought doesn't just live in your head. You suddenly feel it like a pressure in your chest or a knot in your stomach, so it's getting clear on the thought that's creating the physical response, and we really want to bring that up. And as you start tapping, you always start with the setup statement, which you tap on the side of the hand, and this statement just sets you up for the process, it's what you do before you go fully into the tapping and it's simple, you say, "even though" and you state how you feel.

 

So, "even though I feel all of this anxiety around my finances, I accept how I feel." Tapping is this beautiful combination of these ancient acupressure points and modern psychology and the psychological aspect of it is that often times, we fight our feelings. We just want to push it down, we just want to move on, our feelings want to be felt, so if we don't feel our feelings in a productive way, we get the headache we get the stomach ache, we get the sleepless nights. Our body, if we're not feeling these feelings will begin to feel for us, and so by saying to yourself, even though I'm anxious, I accept how I feel as you tap, you stop fighting the feeling, you stop the resistance, and then you can have a real honest conversation with yourself as you tap. And then you tap on the rest of the points and you give a voice to how you feel.

 

So it's as simple as saying, "this anxiety in my chest, all this pressure, all of this overwhelm," you're tapping, and one of the things that we do, actually to back up a little bit is before we tap, we like to measure 0-10, how intense you feel, so 10, very intense. Zero, you feel fine. It's called the subjective units of distress. We do it for two reasons, One, because sometimes people go from a 10 to a two and then they're like, "I wasn't even that angry," and you're like, "your face was red and steam was coming out of your ears." It's nice to be able to see the difference, but also because it's encouraging to see, "Oh, I went from a nine to a seven, okay, can I do a little more tapping, how can I move this number down?" When we're above a five in particular, we really want to stay with how we're feeling, but if we get to the point where we're feeling better, we can begin to bring in more positive statements, we can move towards how we want to feel, but the key is the body, because if you suddenly say to yourself, I'm okay and everything will work out and your whole body is like, "That's BS." Your whole body feels stressed and it's like you're a liar, you're moving too fast, you're not honoring the reality of how you're feeling, so you only want to bring positive things in when they have a place to land. You have to weed before you plant that seed.

 

So as much as we had these great ways of reframing our problems, especially people who listen to this show and read, you know in your head how to logically talk to yourself to change your mind, but now let's get the body involved. And to do that, we have to have that honest conversation, so that explains it a little bit, but we can have an experience, so people can get a better understanding of what it looks like and what it feels like.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, there are so many different things, of course, that we could be addressing that we're experiencing right now, like you said. This was so powerful, I wrote it down: "Our feelings want to be felt." Oh my goodness, and there's so many feels, like it's all the feels that people might be experiencing right now, which is... That can be good, but it might be anger, it might be anxiety, it might be sadness, there's a lot of different emotions that everybody listening, you might be experiencing, but I think there's an overriding feeling right now with anxiety, so I think... And of course, you guys got data on helping to reduce symptoms of anxiety, so I would love if you can walk us through a tapping session and we'll target anxiety.

 

Jessica Ortner: Let's do it, let's do it. So let's just check in with ourselves, so for those who are listening, if you can find a place to sit down, a place that you won't be disturbed or you can know what time this is at and come back to it, but you really want to give yourself the space to tap. Let's check in and notice any anxiety that you're feeling and how it might be showing up in your body. Maybe it's tension in your shoulders, pressure in your chest, or a tightness in your stomach, take a nice deep breath in and notice if your breath feels a little restricted and give a number to that anxiety, that tension. On a scale from 0-10, it's not about having a perfect number, it's all subjective, so just what number comes to mind when you think about how you're feeling, and we're going to do it quick in general, we'll just have a quick experience, let's tap on the side of the hand, and this is right underneath the pinky, so I'm using my left hand to tap on my right hand. It doesn't matter what side of the body you tap on, Okay, so this is the karate chop point, also known as the side of the hand.

 

And as we go through this, I'll talk you through where the points are, if you're listening to this and not watching it, so side of the hand, just... Shawn, if you can repeat after me, and for those who are listening, repeat out loud or in your mind, "even though I'm feeling this tension in my body... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Even though I'm feeling this tension in my body...

 

Jessica Ortner: I accept these feelings...

 

Shawn Stevenson: I accept these feelings...

 

Jessica Ortner: And I give my body, permission to relax.

 

Shawn Stevenson: And I give my body permission to relax.

 

Jessica Ortner: Even though there's a lot going on in my life...

 

Shawn Stevenson: Even though there's a lot going on in my life...

 

Jessica Ortner: And there's a lot of uncertainty...

 

Shawn Stevenson: And there's a lot of uncertainty...

 

Jessica Ortner: I acknowledge all of these feelings.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I acknowledge all of these feelings.

 

Jessica Ortner: Even though I'm holding on to this anxiety in my body...

 

Shawn Stevenson: Even though I'm holding on to this anxiety in my body...

 

Jessica Ortner: I accept myself and how I feel.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I accept myself and how I feel.

 

Jessica Ortner: So that is the setup part of the process, now we're going to tap on the eyebrow point, it's where the hair of your eyebrow begins, I use my two hands, so tap, tap, tap and repeat after me, "This tension in my body... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: This tension in my body.

 

Jessica Ortner: Now, follow your eyebrows until you're on the side of the eye, right on the bone, "There's so much going on."

 

Shawn Stevenson: There's so much going on.

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the eye on the bone, "I feel this uncertainty in my body... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: I feel this uncertainty in my body...

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the nose between the nose and upper lip, "and I'm so used to the stress... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: And I'm so used to the stress...

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the mouth, it's the crease between the lower lip and the chin, "because part of me believes... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Because part of me believes...

 

Jessica Ortner: That in order to change...

 

Shawn Stevenson: That in order to change.

 

Jessica Ortner: I need to feel this stress.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I need to feel this stress.

 

Jessica Ortner: Then the collarbone point. If you feel your collarbone, you go down an inch on either side, you're going to hit it. Got it, Shawn. "I've been holding on to the stress... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: I've been holding on to this stress...

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the arm, it's an arm width from your armpit, for women, it's where your bra strap lies. "Because part of me believes... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Because part of me believes...

 

Jessica Ortner: It would be irresponsible to not feel stressed.

 

Shawn Stevenson: It would be irresponsible to not feel stressed.

 

Jessica Ortner: Right on the top of the head, "Holding on to all this anxiety... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Holding on to all this anxiety...

 

Jessica Ortner: We're going to do another round. Now that you know the points, back to the eyebrow point, "Because part of me believes... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Because part of me believes...

 

Jessica Ortner: Side of the eye. "That I have to feel this stress."

 

Shawn Stevenson: That I have to feel this stress.

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the eye, "But what if I can be responsible... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: But what if I can be responsible...

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the nose. "And let the stress go."

 

Shawn Stevenson: And let the stress go.

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the mouth. "Right now and right here... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Right now and right here...

 

Jessica Ortner: I am okay.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I am okay.

 

Jessica Ortner: Collarbone. "Right now and right here... "

 

Shawn Stevenson: Right now and right here...

 

Jessica Ortner: It's safe to release this stress.

 

Shawn Stevenson: It's safe to release this stress.

 

Jessica Ortner: Under the arm. "I trust that I'm where I'm meant to be."

 

Shawn Stevenson: I trust that I'm where I'm meant to be.

 

Jessica Ortner: Top of the head. "And I'm open to new possibilities."

 

Shawn Stevenson: I'm open to new possibilities.

 

Jessica Ortner: Alright, take a nice deep breath in, and exhale. Now, what we just did there, usually when we tap, we do maybe 10 minutes, six rounds, but we just did two to get comfortable with the process, and we started again with acknowledging how we're feeling, and it's helpful to look at why might you be holding on to that feeling subconsciously. A lot of us believe, Well, if I'm not stressing about my finances, it means I'm not taking it seriously, if I'm not stressing about my weight, it means I really don't want to change. I need this panic. And what we're beginning to understand is that we don't need panic to change. That if we can give ourselves permission to feel good before anything changes, we can better access our creative thinking or resourcefulness and navigate whatever we have in front of us in a better way.

 

Shawn Stevenson: So good. So I want everybody to check in and see where they go on that number scale from 1-10, where did you start, and where're you at right now?

 

Jessica Ortner: Perfect, and I'll mention too is if you're ever tapping and suddenly the number goes up, it's actually a great sign. Sometimes we're so disconnected by how we feel that the moment we let ourselves sit down and check into that anxiety, that number can go up 'cause finally it's like, "Okay, you're paying attention to me. This is the feeling." And that's actually a good thing that means that you're really on point, it's not about saying the perfect words, it's about tuning into the physical sensation and the feeling so that you're tapping. 'Cause what we're doing with tapping, we didn't really touch on this yet, but what you're doing is that you're sending this calming signal to your brain, your brain is saying, "You're not safe, you're not safe," now your body is relaxing, sending that calming signal, so you're able to have that disempowering thought, but feel more relaxed in your body and when you can have a disempowering thought, but feel relaxed, that thought doesn't have control over you, that's when you can decide, "Is this really true?" And you can try to think differently when thoughts get stuck, is when they come with a physical sensation and we just can't move past it. Does that make sense?

 

Shawn Stevenson: Of course. Oh my goodness, but our feelings want to be felt.

 

Jessica Ortner: Our feelings want to be felt...

 

Shawn Stevenson: I think, again, that we tend to package up our feelings as right and wrong, we label them, we don't want to feel these things, but our feelings are giving us valuable feedback, maybe some potential action we need to take, or just like to be able to know where we are in reality. But I think, again, we tend to suppress those feelings or emotions with busyness, with maybe food, with alcohol, with distraction and social media, Netflix till you die. Is there somebody out there trying to complete Netflix? It's their goal to get to the very end of every content piece on there, and that's the thing, we live in such a time that we are often not feeling the feelings and really paying attention to what our body's... Because our body is infinitely intelligent, it's trying to direct us towards action. Right?

 

Jessica Ortner: Yes. I have to share something that I find fascinating about the research, a study that came out last year, which was showing brain scans before and after tapping when it came to cravings. So, cravings are a physical sensation. You feel like you can't help it, you really want it, but there is an emotional component to craving almost every time, and if we can start to notice when we're craving the food, it's usually when we're craving pleasure, we're craving a break, we're craving some relief. Food is sometimes the only thing that we have to make ourselves feel good because we're not prioritizing self-care, so suddenly you tell someone to eat healthy and go on a diet, you're taking away the one thing that's making them feel good, which is food. So you have to look at other ways to feel good or else what's going to happen is every time you see that food, your brain is going to fire off like, "Pleasure, I need that, I'm craving that." And so in the study, they took women who were obese, clinically obese, and they put them in an MRI scan and they showed them photos of those foods that they crave, so they showed them the chocolate, the salty foods, and you can see these images of their brains lighting up like fireworks.

 

And then, they had a few weeks later, they did tapping for the cravings, they brought them in, again, they showed them the same photos, and the women were saying, I don't have that craving anymore, it's... And the thing about craving, it's not that you never want to have chocolate again, it's that you don't have the physical impulse that makes you feel like it's not a decision anymore. You want to be able to decide you want chocolate, you don't want your body and your emotions to hijack you to get that chocolate. And so they were saying, I feel in control again. That craving is not so strong, and you see it in the brain scans, they put them back in the MRI, and you see that those parts that were lighting up are no longer lighting up as they're seeing that food, and so that... It's amazing to see that people have been saying, "Oh, it helps so much with cravings," it's super exciting to actually see the brain scans, and I can share that for your show notes as well, but all of these things... I love the work that you do, and I think it's so important to eat smarter, and we need the knowledge and we also need the emotional support to help make those decisions easier. And it goes both ways. Food impacts emotions, emotions impacts food. So we have to look at it at both ends.

 

Shawn Stevenson: This is so good, this is talking about real healing, right? And so I... So many things I want to talk with you about, and next up, we're going to talk about body image, and we're also going to talk about how tapping can positively influence our genetic expression, and we're going to do that right after this quick break, sit tight, be right back.

 

One of the biggest issues facing our world today is the health of our immune system, and our immune system has many different dynamic parts. We have an innate immune system, and we also have an adaptive immune system. Our adaptive immune system has an intelligence that helps us to adapt to any pathogen that we are faced with, and our nutrition is a big part of this equation because our immune cells are made from the foods and nutrients that we consume. And one of the most powerful nutritive sources, proven to help fortify our immune system is highlighted in a study published in Mediators of Inflammation. They discovered that the polysaccharides in Reishi medicinal mushroom were found to enhance the proliferation of T cells and B cells of our adaptive immune system. These were found to have the capacity to be immunomodulators, helping to up-level the function and intelligence of our immune system, or if our immune system is overactive to help to reduce and bring down that immune activity.

 

Again, this is called immunomodulation, and also inflammation of many different viruses that we might be exposed to is one of the big issues, and one of the viruses that we're facing right now is a tropism or target towards inflammation of our lungs. In another study published in Patents on Inflammation and Drug Discovery revealed that the renowned medicinal mushroom Reishi has potent anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic action, plus again, it possesses immunomodulating capabilities, super remarkable.

 

It's one of the things that's been utilized for centuries that we have access to today, but we want to make sure that it is dual extracted, meaning that it's a hot water extract and alcohol extract, so we're getting all of these benefits that are noted in studies like these. And the place that I get my Reishi from, that does it the right way, organic, high quality, Reishi without any nefarious substances coming along from these random companies that are putting these formulas together, is from Four Sigmatic. Go to foursigmatic.com/model. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/model. And you're going to get 10-15% off all of the medicinal mushrooms that they carry, and by the way, Reishi is great for your sleep as well. This is another peer-reviewed study published in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, found that the renowned medicinal mushroom Reishi was able to significantly decrease sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster and increase your overall sleep time and also increase your sleep efficiency. So much good stuff. And this is one of the things about real foods that have a storied history, is that they're not just good for one thing, they're good for many things.

 

Alright, it's why I'm a big fan of Reishi and I have a cup many nights of the week before bed, about 30-45 minutes before bed, definitely helps with improving sleep quality, but also beneficial for our immune system. Maybe have it with a little bit of whole, natural-source high quality fats like MCT oil, coconut oil, maybe a little bit of ghee, whatever it is that you're into, it helps to cut the bitterness, maybe a little bit, couple little drops of some stevia, some English toffee stevia, chocolate Stevia, just to make it nice and palatable, or some folks have their Reishi tea all by itself. Either way, it's one of the most effective things right now, when immune health is a top priority, check it out foursigmatic.com/model, and now back to the show.

 

Alright, we're back and we're talking with New York Times best-selling author and all around superhero, Jessica Ortner. And before the break, I mentioned that we would talk about body image. Our perception of ourselves and our bodies, and this is obviously, is such a big issue today, more so than it's ever been in history, because you have infinite ability to compare ourselves to others, we have infinite ability to completely be inundated by images of what we think we should be or supposed to be, and this actually, this particular thing affected you early on, it really had a big impact on your life, so can you talk about that a little bit?

 

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, so I started struggling with my weight when I hit puberty, but bigger than that was just my own body confidence, my own self-worth, and I realized later on that it wasn't just me. My mother struggled with it, and my grandmother struggled with it. So when I started to learn about tapping, I would not use it to address my emotions and feelings about my body because I didn't want to address body confidence, I just wanted weight loss. I just was so committed to that story that if I could look a certain way, then I could feel good enough, and so I avoided it and I avoided it, and a lot of really tough things happened along the way. I had a mentor who I really looked up to say to me, "You know you're fat, right? And no one's going to listen to what you have to say until you lose weight." I was 20 years old, and as shocking as that sounds, Shawn...

 

Shawn Stevenson: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

 

Jessica Ortner: I have to be honest. Unbelievable, but I said that to myself every single day, I literally attracted... I outwardly manifested the person who was reflecting what I was saying over and over and over again, "I won't be enough until I lose weight. I won't be able to speak up until I lose weight," and I would run this pattern where I would panic myself to eat healthy, so I would read all the health books and I'd buy all the things, and I would push and force myself to eat a certain way, and for a short time it works, you lose a few pounds and you're like, "Okay, I got this," but then something stressful happens or just life takes over, and all of a sudden you're back to the binge eating, you're back to using food as the only way to relax, and you run this pattern, and then you get back to the panic and then it works for a little bit, and then you just fall off again, and I really had to look at my emotions around my self-worth, and my emotions around my body.

 

It is very easy to take care of something that you value. There are people who love their cars and they're always freaking washing their car, right? You like to take care of that thing that you love. If you hate your body, it's going to be very hard to take care of it. I hated my body, so exercising and taking care of it was like punishment. It was constant reminder that I wasn't enough, and so I really had to look at my beliefs around my self-worth and my weight, and breaking it down to seeing, "Okay, well, what's happening when I'm binge eating? What's the emotional aspect of that? What's the emotional aspect of actually losing weight and still not feeling good enough?" That's a tricky thing, right? You kind of get to that goal for a little bit and you still don't feel good, what do you do? Well, you're just kind of... You're holding your breath waiting for the next shoe to drop because you know you're going to gain the weight again, and so I had to look at how I was treating myself and the beliefs I had about my body, because I have this body for the rest of my life until I die.

 

So it's not a 30-day plan, right? This is a life commitment, this is a relationship, so I had to look at that relationship and those beliefs that I had, and I brought up earlier that I saw that my mother had these challenges and my grandmother had these challenges, and the reason I bring this up is I'm six months pregnant right now, and I found out it's a baby girl.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Oh, my goodness.

 

Jessica Ortner: When I was in this journey of saying I got to look at things differently, I kept thinking... I was completely single, I wasn't in a relationship, there wasn't a baby on the horizon, but I realized that the way, especially women, torture themselves, it's often generational, and even though my mother would always tell me I was beautiful and she would always tell me I'm enough, I never felt it because I... You don't listen to what your parents say, you watch what your parents do, and so by seeing the way my mother would treat herself and how my grandmother would treat herself and all the negative self-talk, all the pressure, always needing to be the martyr, all these responsibilities, I took that on, and I realized that me working on my relationship with my body wasn't just about me, it was about breaking this generations of pain.

 

It's about changing the conversation women in particular are having in this culture. And it's more than just my body, it's this movement of saying, I want to be able to see my value no matter what shape and size, and the irony is that when you focus more on the process of loving, finding pleasurable ways to take care of yourself, like I often say, "If it's not pleasurable, it's not sustainable," if you focus on how to love yourself and how to address those negative voices, it is more than just about you. It has a ripple effect on the world. And the irony is, often times you do lose the weight, but you don't even care because it's not even about that anymore, because your self-worth isn't tied to a number on the scale.

 

It wasn't something that happened overnight. I had to commit to saying, "Alright, I'm going to look at my relationship with myself and my body," and that led me to write a book called The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence, where I really break up... I break it up, the journey that I went on, but if we're... We can't criticize ourselves thin, and we can't hate ourselves happy, and that's the biggest thing I had to get into my head, is that real change comes with self-love and self-care, that's the only way that you have sustainable change.

 

Shawn Stevenson: There's so much should be common sense here, not trying to hate ourselves into health. Those two just don't even match up. They don't even resonate. Pleasure is a big driving force. That sounds healthy, that sounds like something sustainable and beautiful, expansive versus depriving yourself and abusing yourself into wellness, it just doesn't make sense. So thank you so much for sharing that. Also, you brought up seeing the behavior pattern, even if you're not conscious of it, for folks that are listening, from our parents, and this gets into the conversation about this genetic determinism. You've got a certain... Once we discovered that we have these genes, these genes create our personality, these genes create our levels of health and disease.

 

But one of the people, again, I mentioned him earlier, Dr. Bruce Lipton, really pioneer in epigenetics and how our environment controls our genetic expression, internal and external environment, and especially... And he wrote the book, The Biology of Belief. Our thoughts influence our biology immensely and have that, so we would see our mother having this behavior and we'd replicate and just like, "it's in my genes. We're all angry. We're just angry. It's in my genes." That out-picturing of even happiness is found to be the genetic component, it's going to be like a hard, maybe five or 10% at the most, the rest of it is all depending upon your choices in your environment, and so another one of the studies that you guys put together looked at how tapping actually positively influences the expression of 72 of our genes. Can you talk about that?

 

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, after one hour. So this was a pilot study and it compared an hour-long EFT tapping session with a placebo session, and they found that it changed 72 genes. Now, this is all new to me. This is, I'm not an... We can call Bruce Lipton, I'm not an expert in this, but what's fascinating, what I discovered about genes is that genes are turned on and off, so just because you have a certain gene or something runs in your family doesn't mean that that gene's going to express itself. And so things that kind of... If you have certain genes, certain things from your family that could be negative, well, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have that experience, it's going to depend on stress and diet and the environment that Bruce Lipton talks about. So here we're seeing that when you change the environment, you change the stress level in your body, that it actually shows up in your genes, it suppresses, genes that associated with cancer tumors. It regulates type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance and anti-viral activity. I'm going to give you the paper to share with everybody, but you're able to see 72 genes are impacted, and it really goes back to what Bruce talks about, which is the environment and stress creates the environment in your body. Your beliefs create that environment in your body.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Yes, so we're going to put this compilation of studies for everybody in the show notes along with this episode, which you can access on most podcast apps, or if you need to go to themodelhealthshow.com, check out the podcast section. And you'll see this incredible episode with Jessica Ortner, and this is super important to me because again, we're living at a time right now where we've never been so inundated with the belief that we are not enough, that we're not capable, that we're victims. You're a victim of everything that's going on, you have no power, and even if we have a strong sense of self and strength, it could start to really chip away at you. And especially this idea that kind of my life is determined, my immune system is incapable of doing a job. And one of the... In this particular study found that actually helped to increase immunity and immune cell parameters and also decreasing inflammation, and right now, a lot of people, what's on their mind is a pro-inflammatory issue that has a tropism towards our lung tissue and inflammation there. We can decrease inflammation, decrease our susceptibility to all manner of chronic diseases, infectious diseases, by really learning how our minds and bodies work because truly our mind, as you've been alluding to, it is the most powerful pharmacy in the universe, it's creating...

 

Every thought we have has correlating Chemistry, and all of our feelings, this is all based on all of these things and our perception and giving us techniques to allow us to feel the feelings, bring them up, address them, but also create a positive template of what direction we want to go and clarity. Doing the exercise with you earlier, I wasn't really feeling a high level of it, but I felt better, even just during... I actually kind of wanted to just snuggle up a little bit, I was just feeling really... So much so, much better, so yeah.

 

Jessica Ortner: We're facing incredibly uncertain times more than ever before, and anxiety comes from uncertainty and a lack of control... Let's talk about this pandemic, talking about uncertainty and a lack of control. So now we're feeling the stress, and oftentimes, there's this belief of, well, if I'm not stressed, I'm not taking it seriously, or... There's crazy stuff happening, I should be stressed. But the challenge is right now, more than ever, we need resourcefulness, we need creativity, we need innovation, and none of those things we can access from that state of stress and panic, and so we have to make this a priority now more than ever before, like humanity depends on us being able to think clearly, so we can think our way out of these problems and we can't think clearly unless our body is feeling safe so that our brain is fully online.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I love that online, get tapped in. That just made me think of The Matrix. So can you let everybody know I've got the app. Can you let everybody know about the app and of course, where they could get it, and what they're going to get when they get the app.

 

Jessica Ortner: Alright, friends. Listen, you have to download this app. It is phenomenal. It is free. It's a free download, and there's free tapping meditations to help you get started. It's called The Tapping Solution app. You can find it on iTunes or Google Play. Let me share some quick stats, we have a releasing anxiety tapping meditation, it's nine minutes and 15 seconds. So this isn't 30 minutes. This is less than 10 minutes. We've had over 540,000 people play this, and the average decrease of anxiety is 41% in 10 minutes, 41%, in 10 minutes, we have... That one is free, we have quiet my racing mind, which you do before bed, it's part of the sleep support, also free 300,000 plays. It's under 10 minutes, 43% decrease in intensity, so you can have an experience, give yourself just 10 minutes. It's completely free. If you are a healthcare provider or a teacher, we give out free memberships, so I'll give you the link for that too Shawn... Just our way to say thank you. And we have a whole section for veterans that's in the app that's free all of the time, mostly because it has spread with the veterans...

 

They are our biggest fans, our biggest advocates, because they know that when you're dealing with stress and PTSD, it's a very much a physical sensation, not just in the brain, so we have some great support within the app as well, and so the key is support. There's so many therapists as well who tell their clients, "Hey, here is a tapping meditation to do between sessions." There's room for all of this. We want to get all of the support, and if you can take 10 minutes to calm your mind and body, then amazing things will happen.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Amazing things have happened today, being able to hang out with you. Thank you so much for coming on the show and... Wow, this is just so awesome. Thank you, this is such a great opportunity in conversation and to provide some tools right now at a time when, again, we can take a little bit more ownership and responsibility of what's happening with our own world, with our own inner world. So you're the best, thank you so much for that.

 

Jessica Ortner: You are the best. Thank you.

 

Shawn Stevenson: I've got one final question for you. What is the model that you're here to create for the rest of the world for other people with how you live your life personally?

 

Jessica Ortner: So the answer that comes to mind, and I hope it's answering the question is, I've always felt like my mission is to let people's hearts know it's safe to change, and that's the mission for myself, is to let my heart know that it's safe to change because growth is change, and reaching new heights is change, and sometimes success can be just as scary as failure, but if we can feel safe making changes, speaking up, doing more, if we can feel safe in our body doing that, we're going to continue to take the next step. It's not about pushing, it's not about forcing, it's not about critiquing, is about letting our mind and body now that we are safe to change.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Jess you are indeed the best. I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

 

Jessica Ortner: Thank you.

 

Shawn Stevenson: Everybody, Jessica Ortner. Thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I hope you got a lot of value out of this. One of the biggest messages is right here at the end, that growth is change. Many of us strive to become more, strive to become more of our true self, strive to tap into our potential to have more, do more, be more. It's tap into the human spirit. But so often in our environment can suppress those inherent drives that we have, and a big part of that is the fear of not being safe, which is reasonable and logical, because when we go outside of what we call our 'comfort zone', even if we don't necessarily like ourselves, we're still very comfortable with ourselves, we're comfortable with who we are, and so so much of change is really a change in our identity and who we see ourselves as. And that change and shift in identity, it gets us into a discomfort, because again, we're comfortable with being who we are, where we are, and for some reason, we think we can get these new results by being the same person we are now. But the truth is, you can't take the old you to the new destination, you can't take the old you to the new life.

 

You can't take the old you. To the new party. Alright, that's the party that I went to, like literally when I met Jess, it was like, again, I'm driving up to Jim's house. I've been to LA maybe once before that, we're driving up in the hills, my cellphone reception is getting messed up. It's like it's too high up. Air getting different. I get to his house, the biggest door I've ever seen in my life, it's a draw bridge. It's unnecessarily big, and I walk in, my man Jim Kwik has a full body Ironman armor full like knock on it on it. This is metal. Ironman. So it's like Mak10 Ironman armor, just in this display it is full size, massive. It is incredible. He has a massive incredible hawk statue in his backyard overlooking everybody else, alright. This things... It was just like, number one, it was a level of success that I had never seen, and also it was a level of like, "Wait a minute, I can still... We all can still bring our curiosity and the things that we love and our passion, and create our environment." Jim, like myself is one of the ways that we connected, are big fans of super heroes, big fan of that genre, and that just it's because of the concept and the idea that we can become more. That we can rise to the occasion.

 

And he had this Spider-Man that was attached to like a wine cellar, and he had an elevator. What are you doing with an elevator? Seeing all of these cool things, but also seeing how grounded my friend was in all of it, still incredibly personable and grounded, and getting together a collection of people, and of course, Jim has been the most frequent guest on this show for a reason. He's been somebody who's helped a tremendous amount of people, but not just about learning what to learn, but learning how to learn, and that's really the gift that we all want to tap into, and to share with our friends and family, share with our children, is learning how to learn how to use this incredible mind that we have. And so meeting Jess literally in this party situation, for me to up level myself, I could not bring the old me to the new party. It was going to make me uncomfortable and express change and... True enough, you're going to have your own gifts and talents and capacities that will be expressed whether it's in that scenario or the one after other, one after is just getting yourself in the environment, getting outside of your comfort zone so that you can grow because sure enough, there are these incredibly successful people there that I taught a session to, that created... That created companies for people.

 

And I had no idea, I just thought it was normal. For myself, the thing that I was sharing, because I was just doing it, I was serving people in helping people to become healthier through a certain dynamic, a certain lane, a certain way of being, a certain articulation that I kind of scripted out and I took them through my process and how I see the world and companies were changed from that, millions of lives influenced. So never doubt your capacity to give, never doubt your capacity to learn, never doubt your capacity to be more. Alright, I hope you got a lot of value out of this episode, and if you did, please share it out with your friends and family on social media, and of course you could tag me, I'm @shawnmodel on Instagram and just let me know what you thought about the episode. And listen, when I tell you we've got some epic shows coming, I am not exaggerating. Alright, so make sure that you are ready because we're going to keep taking things to another level, make sure to check out Jess and all of her incredible work.

 

Check out that app, it's incredible. We've got some epic stuff coming your way very soon, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com, that's where you can find all of the show notes, you could find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.

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HEALTHY MEALS EVERYONE WILL LOVE

The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Family is Health

When you gather your family around the table to share nutritious food, you’re not only spending quality time with them - you’re setting them up for success in all areas of their lives.

The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook is filled with 100 delicious recipes, plus the latest science to support the mental, physical and social health of your loved ones.

Eat Smarter Family Cookbook

DELICIOUS MEALS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook is filled with 100 delicious recipes + the latest science to support your family’s mental, physical, and social health all in one place.

A family that eats together, thrives together.

Order the cookbook and get an amazing bonus today!