In this episode, we talk to Gina Ryan about training our minds, the power of a body scan, how breathing calms the body and the mind, and how nutrition and diet is an important but overlooked part of the conversation.
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Gina Ryan is the host and head coach of the top 50 Mental Health show on Apple Podcast -The Anxiety Coaches Podcast. Gina also struggled with stress, anxiety, and panic for over 20 years. Before the internet, she was able to climb out of her fear and panic to peace, calm, and wellbeing by finding what did and what didn’t work. She now teaches thousands of others how to do the same in a fraction of the time. After moving to Maui in 2005, Gina spent 12 years as a nutritionist/consultant for both the Intensive Outpatient Eating Disorder Center and the only Residential ED Facility in Hawaii sharing her compassion along with her knowledge and wisdom of the mind-body and spirit connection helping clients clear their food-related anxiety, obsessions, and compulsions. Gina is currently dedicated full-time to anxiety-clearing coaching, writing, and teaching clients around the world. She considers her work her calling and lives a mindful and compassionate life.
Memorable Moments:
8:08: Unless we can cultivate that [gratitude and meditation] in our relationship, that understanding that we are with our mind 24/7 and we have to build a relationship with it, not just keep pushing it away or not just keep adding things to it or being afraid of it. Because as we cultivate that, we begin to realize that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts.
15:34: Exercise is so important and it gets left out a lot, when we're talking about mental health. A lot of times people just think it's about thinking, and again, we bring the body in. A healthy body is where a healthy mind can reside and we have to pay attention to ourselves as a whole.
18:04: And we don't need to go into perfection with our food either. Doesn’t need to go one way or the other, but we can begin to make friends with our eating and to take things out such as sugar.
18:53: But when you are struggling with your nervous system being jacked up all day because of what you are thinking, the last thing you want to do is sip on something that releases those same stress hormones.
22:32: It's not about the food, but it's not not about the food.
25:12: I think women were much more, at least in my experience, much more open to talking about it and getting help for it. So I think there's a lot of men out there not receiving the help that they need.
Dear Mind, You Matter is brought to you by NOBU, a new mental health, and wellness app. To download NOBU, visit the app store or Google Play.
This podcast is hosted by Allison Walsh and Dr. Angela Phillips. It is produced by Allison Walsh, Ashley Tate, and Nicole LaNeve. For more information or if you’re interested in being a guest on this podcast, please visit www.therecoveryvillage.com/dearmindyoumatter.
Allison: Hello and welcome to the Dear Mind, You Matter Podcast. My name is Allison Walsh, I am a long time mental health advocate and Vice President at Advanced Recovery Systems. On each episode I will be joined by my colleague and clinical expert, Dr. Angela Phillips. This show along with our mental health and wellness app Nobu, are just some of the ways we are working to provide you with some actionable tips to take really good care of yourself each and every day.
So sit back, relax, and grab your favorite note taking device. It's time to fill your mind with things that matter
Allison: Okay, well, Gina, thank you so much for being on the show today. Would you mind telling us a little bit more about you and what you're doing today?
Gina Ryan: Oh, certainly. So I'm Gina Ryan. I'm currently the host and coach at ‘Anxiety Coaches’ podcast. It was a bit of a long journey to get there, but it's been a delightful way to work with a much larger population.
I'm a nutritionist by trade, so to speak, and have had a private practice since like 1993. So I have gone through many iterations with that, with private practice, working in clinical, with eating disorders and even working as a wellness consultant at Spa Mirbeau. Currently I am totally working with the anxious. I'm happy to be here today.
Angela: Awesome. Yes, Gina, we're so excited to have you here. And I just, I love the huge variety of topics that you talk about on the podcast and how I just really feel like, you know, and I've talked to other people about this too, it's like such a genuine connection that I think people feel with you and how you just make everything so relatable.
We're just so, so glad to have you and I have so many questions, but I'm going to jump in. And actually one of the things that I was reading a little bit more about you that caught my eye essentially, is that I, I can personally relate to and appreciate sort of this trial and error that you described going through on your journey.
So I'm curious, do you draw on any parallels or what are your thoughts around, you know, the way you describe having gone from like no internet when you're trying to navigate this space to then now, people have so much thrown at them or there's just so much out there, right? Whether it's Instagram, blogs, online therapy, in-person therapy, you know, all of these things like that.
What comes up for you and when you hear people reach out for various reasons, I'm sure that's anxiety producing as well?
Gina Ryan: Absolutely. The overload of information. And we are none of us, even young people who don't know anything about anxiety or recovery in any way, they don't really need more information. They have so much at their fingertips, which is really different from when I started.
But now what we really need is experience. They need to actually embody what they've brought in as far as information. And so, they need to refine it down to using one or two different things and letting go of their information gathering and actually find something where they can begin to embody what they have gathered. Whether it's, you know, working one-on-one with somebody or going into treatments or using apps, whatever that is, they really need to find that one focus because focus is kind of lacking these days.
Allison: I know that was one of the reasons that we wanted to create the app that we did. We wanted like, one centralized place with everything, because I don't know if you're like me, I have like 37 apps on my phone that all do a little bit of something. When we were creating Nobu, we want one hub where everything can live.
Gina Ryan: Allison, it's so awesome because when I was looking at your app, I said, oh, I should download their app. And look, I have so many apps. My phone is so full that I had to like look around other ways and that's exactly what's happening. And what your app can do for people is incredible, the way you can bring it all together. I'm just finding, the fact that there's a place they can journal, correct?
Allison: Absolutely.
Gina Ryan: These are all things that I talk about with people. You know, Angela, you've listened to a lot, you know, these are things we talk about. But to be able to have it all together in one place and to be able to get help further from that. So I believe that's exactly what your app does, right?
Allison: It does. We're very proud of it, so thank you!
Angela: Thank you so much for that.
Gina Ryan: And the name of that app is Nobu. I love it. It's nice. It's short. It's concise. You can remember it.
Angela: Yeah and I think it's so true that because there's so much out there, it is difficult to know where to start, which is again, why we wanted to create something that's easily approachable in that sense.
So we do have a lot of that amazing content that's there, but I think also for people who just aren't quite sure where to start or you know, again, going back to the plethora of content out there, you know, I know specifically you're working in a very niche area. So when, when you say sort of start with a few things,I know that one of those approaches that you take is related to four tips on sort of moving from anxiety back to peace and calm, right? So we really wanted to talk with you a little bit more about that and what you typically might recommend for someone. Maybe not just a couple of things, but maybe these four things?
Gina Ryan: Yeah. And I actually have little notes in front of me because even one of these things, we could talk for two hours about as we unpack everything. And that's, again, just to go back to your app Nobu again, that you have things on there so that people can keep track of what they're doing and know that they are accomplishing these kinds of things that I'm going to talk about. That we can do these things on a daily basis. Because again, it's not about getting the information but embodying it and doing it every single day, building these new habits. So the four things, do you want me to jump into them and get those?
Angela & Allison: Yes, please do.
Gina Ryan: The first one that I had is meditation and gratitude, and I had to put the two together because again, I would have a list of a hundred things we could do, but they are on top of my list because unless we can cultivate that in our relationship, that understanding that we are with our mind 24/7 and we have to build a relationship with it, not just keep pushing it away or not just keep adding things to it or being afraid of it. Because as we cultivate that, we begin to realize that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts. We are not these things that go through. But if you don't pay enough attention, you think “Oh, why did I have that thought? That isn't who I am, like, something must be wrong with me.” And you become, start being afraid of your own self, your own thoughts. So I think that meditation, getting a healthy time daily where you spend some time, just you with you. And there's many different ways to do that.
There's all kinds of, here we go again, apps and things that people can listen to but I like people to find what works for them and stick with it. You know, we don't want to keep jumping around.
And one of the things, I know we talked about this, a body scan is a great way to start meditation. You can do it laying down. People are not comfortable sitting in a full Lotus position. You don't need to do that to meditate. But the body scan where you can lay down or sit down somewhere quietly for just 10 minutes and actually scan your body with awareness, including where your breath is at, can be a beautiful start to meditation. You could do that every day for the rest of your day.
I have a body scan that your listeners are welcome to go and check out. You can go to my website, anxietycoachespodcast.com/body-scan. Or just go to the website and look for body scan, it's on there. And that is just a 10 minute audio where it's a meditation. It's got ocean in the background and I'm just guiding you through your body. Which is a beautiful way for us to become aware of our breath in our body at the same time. And that's meditation. We need to build that habit.
So that's the piece with meditation and the gratitude can come out of your meditation. It can be a part of your meditation. We want to begin to set ourselves up to see the world in a different way. I call it giving the monkey of the mind, the monkey mind, a banana. Give it something to do, which is to look for the things that bring you joy or peace or happiness or awe throughout the day. And the way we train our mind to do that is to write it down. At the end of the day, writing down three to five gratitudes, then our mind starts to look throughout the day: “what will I be able to put on that list today?,” instead of scanning the horizon for danger, which is what the untrained mind will do. We all do it. But the less we do it, the better we feel.
So that's why I put gratitude and meditation together. I often have people, when they don't want to do the body scan, to just sit and feel, that they can remember their three gratitudes for the day and sit with those and let those feelings come up, rather than the untrained mind [that] will just go to all the possible problems that will happen throughout the day.
So that's meditation and gratitude, number one. And the second one is tied in, of course as things are, is our breath. I remember when I struggled with anxiety for like 20 years, you know, back in the seventies and eighties. And when I learned that you could breathe in a way that would relax your body, and that affected my mind. Like I kind of stumbled on this; there was no internet in those days, no way to Google. But through all my reading and research, I found that I could breathe in a way that would calm my body down enough so that my mind calmed down. And so, it's the body first. So we don't always have to change our thinking, but we can physiologically enter a more calm state in our mind by using our body.
And the breath is always with us. We can't say we forgot it or I didn't have it with me so I couldn’t do it. Learning to breathe, whether that is through very simple things I teach my people, is to just extend your exhale. Let it be longer and slower. Not a lot of numbers for counting or anything, because some people with anxiety that's just too much. Like, was it four or five, six? They just, and often when you teach people to breathe in a certain way, they begin to feel different and that frightens them.
So we want it to just be, just let your exhale be a little bit longer and a little bit slower. And that sends the message to your nervous system that everything's okay. You couldn't be breathing like that if you were running for your life. So bringing that breath in over and over again, and we can do it all day long. Do you find that that's helpful with your people? Are you using the breath work?
Allison: Breath work is very helpful and I have to reflect back on a previous podcast guest that we had, who informed me that I was breathing wrong all this time.
And so I've had to learn how to breathe properly, but it's so powerful and it does help to just reset and calm because it's so easy to get in this fight or flight mode or just our primitive minds just want to default to like, what you said, to the things that are going on that are wrong or the danger that we could be in.
And so just getting calm and being at ease and at peace is so helpful throughout the day, too. Like making it a part of the day to day, not just when you're in a heightened state is so powerful.
Angela: Yeah, and I love how you also add, you know, I agree that sometimes the counting or just sort of the over-complication that, you know, for some people that may be exactly what they need, but for others, it's just, I love just elongating our breathing out and that sort of being a really simple way to come back to the present and focus on your breath.
So I absolutely love that approach. Thanks for bringing that up.
Gina Ryan: A good point is that these are lifelong practices. We don't just, get it once in our head, try it a couple of times and then we're done. These are things that we develop and have to do throughout our whole life, which is wonderful to have such simple things, that can keep us calm.
And when we can begin to bring that body down a little bit, we realize the boss yelling at us is really uncomfortable. And we, and it's not something that we want to spend a lot of time with, but we're not in danger. Because we've equated in this current culture, all discomfort begins to feel like danger and I think that's why there's so much anxiety present. We have to start teasing those things out a little bit more.
Yeah, got a couple more on here. I probably should move them along. Exercise is so important and it gets left out a lot, when we're talking about mental health. A lot of times people just think it's about thinking, and again, we bring the body in. A healthy body is where a healthy mind can reside and we have to pay attention to ourselves as a whole.
And as a nutritionist, of course that's something I would put a lot of emphasis on and it was a way that I brought myself out of my anxiety too, was to become more physical. You know, I took up yoga back in the late seventies and I was running then and it would feel so good because then my body was doing what it needed. Right? And I was having blood flow throughout my whole body. So I have a lot of older clients, along with the young people I deal with. And so when people can't run or maybe they don't want to even start a yoga practice, because they're afraid of getting on the floor. We can do everything in a more simple fashion. You can do yoga from a chair. I have yoga teachers I know, that teach to the elderly, yoga in their bed. There are so many things that we can do, and we can even do aerobic kind of exercises in chairs where you're moving your legs and arms. If you can't walk, but walking, doing things that are just natural to our bodies, such as walking and or gardening and being out in the fresh air as much as we can is super important.
And then that will bring me along to number four, is diet. Of course, that would be important to me. And it was a big way that I moved out of anxiety myself. Now, at the time, I had health food stores. So I had every supplement available to me. I had every expert that I could call and talk about these things with, but it actually was not those supplements that helped me. It really, I mean, they had their place, believe me. I still to this day have a lovely supplement regime but it is the diet. It just seems to not be paid attention to as much as it should.
This is where we begin, who we are, is what we are putting into our bodies. And we don't need to seek perfection. As I know, you guys know that I worked in eating disorders clinically for a long time. And we don't need to go into perfection with our food either. Doesn’t need to go one way or the other, but we can begin to make friends with our eating and to take things out such as sugar. Processed foods are really harming people because it replaces so many calories of where we could be getting just basic good food. We want to watch out for the additives and the colors and the sugars and the big two are alcohol and caffeine.
So many people don't want to give up the caffeine and I try to tell them, if you're struggling with anxiety, you don't have to give it up forever. I could drink regular coffee now; I still choose to drink decaf because to me it tastes awesome. Still. And I was going for the flavor. But when you are struggling with your nervous system being jacked up all day because of what you are thinking, the last thing you want to do is sip on something that releases those same stress hormones. And that's exactly what the caffeine does, right?
Angela: Yeah. So glad you brought up both exercise and diet because Allison and I are such big proponents of both, but I think also this, this whole idea behind, and getting into sort of diet and nutrition, you know, something we've really started transitioning more into is really educating people on what sort of, you know, what are, what's in a label. What does this mean? What am I looking at? Where should I be? You know, what are prebiotics? What are probiotics? Do I care? So all of these components of what I think people may see and hear, but they don't really just have that, you know, sort of foundational understanding of. And so that's where I think we've really tried to come in and focus on that, not to plug our app again, but we're trying to really, transition toward, you know, like you're saying really getting at all aspects of the mind and body, so that we're really maintaining that in a way that's going to be, you know, good long-term and, and keep us functioning as long as we can in a healthy way. But I think these are great, great points that you're bringing up and so many types of things, just for people to be thinking about.
I know one of the things that's really helped me a lot is keeping a diary, a journal of some sort, if I am struggling and really looking at how is this food making me feel, or how has this change in my diet potentially impacting my overall mood or, you know, my wellbeing over this whatever course of time. So I know that's been really helpful for me, but Allison, what else are you thinking?
Allison: I noticed that during COVID, I felt like people swung one of two ways, right? Either they took a look at themselves and they said, I should be taking better care of all these areas. And I'm home now, so I can eat healthier or I can, you know, kind of get this piece in check. Or I saw the other, right? Maybe the food and alcohol and other substances were becoming that much more prevalent. Maybe exercise went out the window, maybe stress and anxiety and all these other things were causing, you know, just disruption. And so it's so interesting now, I mean, I really appreciate being home and being able to cook a lot more of my meals and having a really consistent morning routine.
Like I am rooted in stability and consistency, like when those things go out the door...Even now, just like being back out eating at restaurants or grabbing, you know, my old, my go-to lunch from where I used to grab at the office, I noticed that I don't feel as good because it is processed. You know, it's just so crazy how, you know, once you've kind of detoxed your body off of certain things and you've got a different, healthy routine working and you kind of integrate some of the older like, oh actually I like my new one better.
So it's fascinating, but I'm so excited that you're on the show today. Selfishly, my passion is in eating disorder recovery. And so, I'm so glad that we get to talk a little bit more. I know we're kind of coming up, limited on time here, but I want to talk about nutrition and food and eating disorders and what you found to be the most effective towards really clearing up any like food related anxiety or compulsion, because they're going to be a lot of anxiety that comes up around this topic in particular.
Gina Ryan: Absolutely. I know we used to say, or I used to say to the therapist that it's not about the food, but it's not not about the food. Like, because we have to eat. There's so much of it that's not about the food, but the food has become the place where it is all manifest. And so we do have to deal with all that.
And I spent a lot of time, not only I would, in the kitchen with the women, actually doing what Angela was talking about, reading the labels, talking about what these foods were, but going to the grocery stores with them, going to restaurants, we would journal about it. And then when we would go back over their week journal of their foods and feelings, we would see that those times when they ate out at the restaurant, they really weren't feeling as good the rest of that day, or even often into the next day, depending on what the foods were.
And I have found that when they could get so that they were not fearful of the foods, feeling so anxious around them, even people who acted like they were very comfortable because they knew all the latest supplements and they knew how many calories were in everything, they actually had a real deep, underlying anxiety around food and it was there, they had to control it.
And so to be able to get out of that need to control the food, it took time, but it's about getting comfortable and familiar again. And that's where spending time, we spent time together around food.
Angela: And one additional question to add on to that too, is just in the work that you've done and the experiences that you've had, have you found, you know, any specific, maybe gender related differences and any, you know, approach that you've taken or what you find that people are struggling with more or less, or do you find that that's not really been a prominent issue?
Gina Ryan: Yeah, I think that gender has been an issue. In private practice, I saw more men than we did at either of the centers. One was residential. They didn't take men in there. And the other one who would have an occasional male, but I saw men privately and there are some differences in that along with the eating disorder and the anxiety that was going on behind all of that, they also felt a lot of shame, more shame than the women.
There was, seem to be, like “this shouldn't happen to me, I'm a guy.” Like, I had big strong athletic guys and they were so amazing, to watch them be able to settle down in and to feel comfortable talking about it because it wasn't something they could open up. I think women were much more, at least in my experience, much more open to talking about it and getting help for it. So I think there's a lot of men out there not receiving the help that they need.
Allison: I appreciate you drawing attention to that too, because eating disorders impact everyone and they don't discriminate.
That's for sure. And there's a leading cause of death among all mental illnesses. So people are struggling. We need to encourage them to get help. I know that was the struggle that I battled 20 years ago, and I feel very blessed to have a second chance at life. Um, and so there are so many people that have, have lived through it and have gotten to the other side successfully.
So thank you for the work that you do. And to wrap it up, we ask every one of our guests, this is our favorite question of the whole show. At this point in your life, what matters to you most?
Gina Ryan: Right now, what matters to me most actually is family. So I have an 88 year old mom who still lives in her own home, does her own grocery shopping, cleaning, and so forth. And she is in New York. My son is in New York, in a different town. My daughter is in Seattle. I am here on Maui. It seems like we are all spread out and with COVID, it really put the emphasis on the fact that we couldn't travel so easily and see each other very easily, even though it's a big trip usually anyway.
Family has become so deeply important to me and finding new ways that we can super connect. I spent lots of time on the phone with my mom. We laugh, we bring up old memories. Just being able to find the new ways to be able to integrate the personal relationships with family is most important to me right now.
Angela: That's amazing. I'm so glad that you were, you have been able to do that and continue doing that during this time too. I know that's been such a struggle for so many of us, but Gina, thank you so much for joining us. We could just talk to you all day, but can you tell our listeners how we can follow you either on social media or elsewhere?
Gina Ryan: Sure. Just Instagram. I'm @anxiety_coach, or you can just search Gina Ryan. The website is the best place to go, Anxietycoachespodcast.com. And I want to take this opportunity to thank you guys for what you're doing. Like you are all over the country. And, when I got the message in my mind, that this app and all the different places that you are, you're giving people a chance to get used to doing some of the early work, right? Using the app, journaling, checking things out, asking questions, getting a little bit of help. And then when they are ready, they are also already in touch with people who can bring them into a larger healing opportunity.
So it’s like Duh, where has this been? This Nobu is exactly what I know the centers I've worked for would have loved to have been able to have such a thing. So congratulations on putting that together.
Angela: Thank you, Gina. Thank you again for coming and joining us today.
Gina Ryan: Thank you both. Thank you. It was so nice to meet everybody and to be working with Ashley behind the scenes.
Allison: Thank you so much. Have a great day!
Gina Ryan: Thanks guys. Aloha.
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Dear mind, You Matter is brought to you by Nobu a new mental health and wellness app. You can download it today, using the link in our show. We'll talk to you next time. And until then, remember you and your mind matter.