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Welcome to the Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence and connection.
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I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, kids mindfulness coach and cheerleader for busy families everywhere.
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Each week, we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too.
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I'm so glad you're here.
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I'm your host, lindsay Miller, and I'm delighted that you're here today for my conversation with Najika Olatunde.
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She's a visionary and the creative energy behind Focus on Healing Wellness Institute.
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She's an accomplished naturopath and a leading authority on the cultural integration of traditional health practices with conventional medicine for mind, body and emotional wellness.
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She's an author, acclaimed thought leader, podcast host, master reflexologist, pain relief educator and consultant who has helped thousands of chronic pain sufferers relieve pain with addiction and medication-free pain relief.
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She uses the power of touch and reflexology as an alternative in addressing the opioid epidemic.
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Najika, I'm so excited that we're chatting today.
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Thank you so much for joining me and thank you for having me and I'm looking forward to sharing with your listeners.
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Yeah, we were just saying off camera that the reason that I was so excited about this conversation was that there's a bit of a gap sometimes in the work that we do with stress management and like the thoughts that we can change versus like the practices and the physical things we can do to really alleviate stress.
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And those are things I'm always curious about, and your vast experience is something we're really going to benefit from today.
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All right, okay, so first of all, as we get started, can you just give us a little glimpse of how you found yourself on this path?
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Like, how did you know that these were the things that you were called to do?
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Oh, to make a long story short, well, one of the things I can say is this really goes back to my childhood.
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As a child doctors I grew up on home remedies and the fact that doctors came to the home to do visits, and so as a child, I saw the doctors.
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To me, they were, like you know, outstanding.
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I said heal us.
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That's what I wanted to do when I grew up.
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So, like as a child, I wanted to be a doctor because of that experience.
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But when I got to college, I got a rude awakening, because what I thought doctors were is not what I was going to be trained to become.
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So I changed my career and went and became a social worker.
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But doing all of those years as a social worker, I covered the whole gambit working with infants all the way to seniors and every type of social service that exists.
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I did all of that, and so one of the things that concerned me was that everybody was going to the emergency room for their healthcare, and I said something's not right about this picture.
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So then, all of a sudden, desire came back up again oh, I want to be a doctor.
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So at that time, that's when natural health was opening up and then I went back to school and became a naturopathic practitioner, but as a practitioner I had already had the training in the reflexology, so I added the reflexology to my practice and from there which I always share is that I have to give hominage to I started my practice working with senior citizens, and working with seniors laid the foundation for the work I do today.
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So they're the ones that all of this, all the work that I do and everything, my whole life path in the field of reflexology, goes to the senior citizens that I worked on.
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Oh, I love that it's such a great story Because I think, like you explained, those early experiences you had where there was healing that happened with with home remedies or basic, you know, like basic, smaller interventions and that being kind of like your frontline thought about how healing can work and making it an empowering situation or an empowering experience for people where, like, there's so much that can happen, you know, at home or through just like understanding and creating balance within our bodies.
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Right, exactly exactly.
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And that's like the whole concept in terms of the work that I do.
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It's really based on understanding that you have the power inside of yourself to work with the body in the healing process.
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And I always say what we do is assist the healing body, assist the body in the healing process, and once we come to understand that, then you have given yourself your power back and you've given yourself your power to heal, and it's all inside of us.
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I love that.
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The way you phrase that is beautiful because I think it's easy, especially in I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this briefly like I'm in my own healing journey, having the experience of power, that it has to rebalance itself when given the right inputs.
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It was so fascinating and also comforting to me to realize you know that my body and I weren't at odds with each other, Like we were on the same team trying to do the same thing.
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And.
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I think that that sentiment of being at odds with our body is so prevalent in in modern life that I love that your, your work, goes so deeply into the area of just like cultivating that respect for the capacity and then the just wanting to be party to it, instead of trying to manipulate, change, fix, but just like to enable and empower the body to do what it's designed to do.
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That's beautiful.
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And that is so important, especially right now, in the times that we're living in, and because the number one cause of all illnesses is stress.
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And when you think about stress which I always share pain and stress go hand in hand.
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You cannot have pain without stress, which I always share.
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Pain and stress go hand in hand.
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You cannot have pain without stress and you can't have stress without pain.
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And so once you start understanding the pain-stress connection as it relates to who you are and what's going on with you now, you open the pathways for you to start looking at what are the ways that I need to do to heal myself mentally, physically and emotionally.
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Yes, oh, that's so powerful.
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I you know, one of the reasons I started the podcast and the brand of Stress, nanny, is because I believe what you just said is that stress is the root of so much and if we can manage it appropriately, then we're in a position that's much more whole and much more free, right, like we can be open to life's experiences instead of kind of drowning in them.
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So talk to me more about that experiences instead of kind of drowning in them.
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So talk to me more about that.
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Like, can we talk through, like, the importance of the mind, body and spirit in connection with pain and stress relief?
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Most definitely, I think one of the problems that we have when you think about pain and stress is not understanding that it is a connection.
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The two are connected and most people, when they start having health issues, they never think about the stress and all they think about is focusing on the pain.
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And what you have to understand is that stress is nothing but something that's happening outside of your body that you bring inside, and once you start internalizing it on the inside of your body, you start having problems.
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And the way we have to think about that.
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Whatever situation is going on and you focus on you, internalize it.
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Your mind has processed it.
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Now all of the systems of the body are processing it, so you're feeling this.
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But the missing piece is, say, for example, you start having a back pain, or you may have a neck pain, leg pain, or you may have a chest pain, whatever area that's in pain because of the stress, what it is, it's going to that area as a means of trying to come out of the body and that would not be the normal channels of elimination.
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So the result is you're going to experience pain and if you don't deal with the stress associated with that pain.
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It then intensifies and winds up becoming an illness or a health problem.
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And so we have to start understanding the role that stress plays in the way that we feel and experience pain.
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The two go hand in hand.
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And the other thing that we need to understand is that pain does not happen overnight.
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It's a process.
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And what happens, say, all of a sudden I'm feeling a little uncomfortable.
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Oh well, you know, that's not important.
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And then the body's going to say, okay, you didn't accept me that time, so now I'm coming back with a little more force.
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Oh, this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I'll kind of deal with it, it'll go away.
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And then the body says, okay, you didn't listen to me the first two times, so now I'm coming back full force.
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And when it comes back full force, now I need to go to the doctor to see what's wrong with me.
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And so all of that is the process of the pain-stress connection.
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And once we can kind of see that picture as it relates to what's going on now, you can better understand your body's communication with you as it relates to trying to help you heal yourself.
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Fascinating.
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I really appreciate the way you just described it because I think that it's like you said.
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So, yeah, I've never heard anyone say describe it the way you just did where the stress is you bringing something from outside of you into your body and then your body trying to move through that but not being able to, so kind of relocating it in an effort to get rid of it, but then you needing to address it.
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You know, in those stages of increasing strength of communication from the body, or you know, like you said, it gets the message gets louder and louder and louder, and it's it's such a process right of learning to tune into it at that lower level of communication right, and like the point at which it's like just starting to whisper at you before it's full-blown yelling at you right or screaming at you Exactly.
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And because of that, that's why you have the problem, because think about this you, when you are in pain to the point that you have to go to the doctor, and this is what I tell my clients when I talk to them.
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I said you got to understand that we don't take the time.
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Not only do we not listen to our bodies, but we don't even take the time to understand our body and how it operates.
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And the example I always share with my clients is that your body is a carbon copy.
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No, let me flip that up the automobile.
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You know about your automobile, which is a carbon copy of your body.
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They both operate exactly the same.
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When you buy your automobile and the salesperson say in six months you need to take your car for maintenance checkup, you will royally do that with no questions asked.
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If all of a sudden, the engine light comes on, you hear a little clunking, you go straight to the mechanic and you tell the mechanic this is what's wrong and because it's a mechanical problem, the mechanic will know what they need to do to correct the problem.
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But guess what you do your body?
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You treat your body like the car.
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You go into the doctor's office and you tell the doctor my back is hurting, my neck is hurting, and you expect the doctor to be able to operate from a mechanical standpoint to relieve that problem.
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Now, before I go further with that, I want to share this.
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Think about this when you think about the health practice from a business perspective when you go to the store, you know what it is you want to buy, so you go in and you buy.
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So when you go to the doctor, you're going to the doctor to do what?
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Buy pain relief, and that's what you expect to get.
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But instead what you will get is the doctor will say we need to take some tests to find out what's going on, and after we do the test, then we can tell you what's going on.
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But in the meantime, here's a prescription for what's in pain, but I don't know what's paining you.
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So now you're taking medication.
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Your body's already dealing with your stress that's causing the pain.
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Now the body has to deal with a foreign substance coming down into the body.
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I don't even know what this is.
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So now I got to deal with this and so you've caused havoc inside your body, all because you did not pay attention to the stress that's now turning into something else.
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And to add to that I always say we've got to learn how to be in charge of our bodies, even when we go to our physicians.
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We have to understand that when you go to your physician, your physician's job is to assist you and your body in the healing process, and it's a two-way street you assist the doctor, the doctor assists you and together you and the doctor are assisting the body in the healing process.
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That's such a powerful concept too, because I think that when we can go to the doctor with that mindset that you just described and say, like I'm here, this is my body, I understand it, I know it's cues, I know it's triggers, I know, you know, I understand the things that, like the balance that it takes on a day-to-day basis to keep my stress levels in check or to keep my you know have enough sleep that I can function, we have a whole different conversation, right, like when we go to a practitioner with that mindset.
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But when we go to the practitioner without that awareness of our body, it's so challenging to receive the kind of help you're describing.
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Right, because we see ourselves as just kind of at the mercy of it instead of, as the like you said, facilitator of wellness.
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Like how can I assist the body in what it's trying to do?
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What are some of the small signs that you see that are like the you know, those little whispers that people can learn to pay attention to, that like early, early stage listening?
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What do you see as as some of those signs?
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OK, we can look at, say, a prime example of All that we're going through right now.
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I mean this country is operating on a big S.
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I mean everybody is stressed out about something and that's the media.
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And by being connected to the media we don't know how to turn stuff off.
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Everything that we see, we accept, and when you start, when what your eyes see becomes disturbing or upsetting to you, that means it's time to turn it off, let it go.
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You know, like it's all right to say I can't deal with this or I don't want to deal with this.
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Turn it off, because the minute you do that, you're now giving yourself some space, you're now giving yourself recognition.
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Another example I like to use is we've got to look at our bodies from the standpoint is it a temple or is it a warehouse?
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If it's a temple, it's something sacred and special and you're not gonna let anything come into your temple.
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If it's a warehouse, that means it's a storage facility.
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I put anything in there, anything goes.
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So if you're operating from that perspective, you're setting yourself up to be in stress 24-7, all the time.
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So we've got to start saying am I sacred enough to know that I'm not going to allow this in my space.
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I mean, I'm just not going to accept it, regardless of what it is.
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I choose not to, and it's all right because you have to accept it, because you're in control.
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It's your mind, it's your body, it's your spirit.
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Oh my gosh, I have never heard that definition before and I love it so much.
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I love it.
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Let's talk a little bit more about that, because, because I think that, like, if you said, if we're like, I'm not actually sure what she's struggling with right now, if we treat our body as a temple and you said, like a sacred space, where we're so intentional about the care that we give it, what goes into it and how we just maintain it, that really does go.
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That metaphor is so powerful because, you're right, like in a warehouse, you're kind of just like let stuff sit, it doesn't matter, and you know stuff might be moving in and out and you may have an idea of what's moving in and out, but it's not nearly as intentional as like a temple environment would be.
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What do you find are some of the practices that help people?
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Like when you just described having a moment where you know maybe you're feeling a sense of overwhelm, Maybe you're feeling really overstimulated and you have like media coming in.
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You know you've been maybe scrolling, or you just had a long day, the kids are saying a lot of different things, or you've got, you know you're juggling all the things, you're starting to feel that overwhelm and what I'm hearing you say is like that's the early whisper.
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That's the early whisper to say hold on, take a minute, even if it's like a deep breath in the car while kids are fighting in the back right, or even if it's just a simple tool.
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But I know you have more tools, like with your reflexology experience tool.
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But I know you have more tools, like with your reflexology experience.
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What are some of the ways that you encourage people to just take a reset physically at that point of like starting to feel overwhelmed?
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I'll share an example, one of the things.
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So I can kind of give an intro.
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Reflexology is something that everybody has done and do not know that they've done.
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Reflexology Reflexology is also something that everybody knows how to do and they don't know that.
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They know how to do it and for those of you who may not know what reflexology is, it's the art and science of working specific nerve ending points on the hands, feet and ears that relax, relieve stress and pain, improve circulation and reduces toxins and impurities from the system.
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And the way it operates is that if you ever look at a chart of the nervous system, you'll see how all the nerve endings begin in your head and run straight through your body, ending in your hands, feet and ears.
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Now everybody said, okay, I don't know anything about that.
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That doesn't ring a bell.
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Well, let me give you a little example.
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Think about when you were a child, or if you are a parent and you're working with a child, one of the things that you did, or one of the things that you received, there's a little thing called this little piggy.
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And if you remember this little piggy, that is reflexology, because all of the nerve endings in your head are in your fingers and your toes.
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And so when you were circling those toes and moving them backward and forward, you were stimulating the nerve rings in the brain to release the body's natural pain relievers or natural relaxation techniques.
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And so what will the baby do?
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They'll start giggling or they'll start relaxing, and some may even go to sleep behind, but all of this was a stimulation.
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May even go to sleep behind, but all of this was a stimulation.
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And I say that to say it's like.
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Think about the power of your hands.
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Your hands are very powerful in helping you relieve stress and pain.
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In the book that I wrote, reflexology, today it's a family affair day.
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It's a family affair.
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It's all about the family being involved in helping each other heal using the power of touch.
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An example is if you take the, in reflexology we use what we call our thumbs and we do like a bending technique on the thumbs.
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You're bending your thumb up and down.
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So if you take the palm of your hand and just starting at your wrist, and take your thumb and walk across the palm of your hand all the way to the fingers and then just walk backward and keep doing that, you can also do it on the back of your hand and while doing that, you don't know where the specific reflex points are.
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But what you're doing is you're sending a message to the brain I need to relax, I need to calm down.
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You do that, take a deep breath and also remember to drink some water.
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And these are things that you can do, using the power of your hands to bring about relief for stress, for pain, for whatever that you need to get in that space of oneness with yourself.
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I love that and I, as I was doing that, as you described it, I was like oh, I do feel.
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I mean I I feel like one of the things about reflexology, at least in my experience, is the immediacy almost of it, like it's, like you said, I mean it's, it's not like a 12 hours later.
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I mean you probably will be benefiting still 12 hours later.
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But the immediacy is so cool to me because I think a lot of times we're, as parents, like we're playing the long game.
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Right, like so much of child development and parenting is the long game.
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But if we can give kids like self-soothing tools, that they can just use in the moment when they're really stressed and need to calm down.
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They're so powerful and, even if it doesn't completely change the moment, it's going to help it simmer down and the accumulated stress is going to be much, much less.
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Right Then, if we just try to power through and like use words or thoughts only to work through the situation, but like we bring the body online and then we're in a point where we're like, okay, the all of me physical, emotional and mental is, you know, like working toward more stress relief and more, you know, resilience to this moment.
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So I love that.
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Thank you for sharing that tool and one of the things I would share about that to help people understand that is.
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What you're talking about is the nerve endings.
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The nerve endings are the command center connected to the brain and that's why reflexology is so valuable because we work the nerve endings and open the lines of communication for the brain to go to whatever area of the body.
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We have 11 systems of the body so it can go to whatever area of the body.
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We have 11 systems of the body so it can go to whatever area of the body that's in need of stress because of the nerve endings are opening up those communication channels.
00:26:20.903 --> 00:26:21.423
I love that.
00:26:21.423 --> 00:26:26.461
Thank you for clarifying it and making it easier to understand.
00:26:26.461 --> 00:26:43.983
What do you find so and this is like an everyday moment, right, Like we were just talking about overwhelm but I know in your practice, you, you know you see a range of people you have, you, you address a range of issues and, like the pain may not be just like a little bit of annoyance because you're feeling overstimulated.
00:26:43.983 --> 00:26:46.319
The pain may be more significant.
00:26:46.319 --> 00:26:59.042
So, for clients that you work with who have like lingering pain, or maybe unexplained pain, maybe stomach aches, those kinds of things, what are some of the other ways that you utilize reflexology to support wellness in those folks?
00:27:00.767 --> 00:27:03.637
What you have done now, which I like to answer that question.
00:27:03.637 --> 00:27:05.099
I'm going to answer it a different way.
00:27:05.099 --> 00:27:14.123
In my practice I created what I call relieve pain first, before treatment.
00:27:14.123 --> 00:27:26.583
And what I'm saying is that because when you think of reflexology, you're talking about using your hands to touch your hands and your feet and your ears.
00:27:26.583 --> 00:27:38.007
So what we're talking about is the first form of touch in the healing process begins with listening.
00:27:39.789 --> 00:27:45.556
Listening is the first healing tool that happens before anything else.
00:27:45.556 --> 00:28:17.421
So in my practice, when I'm seeing my clients, I'm letting them talk to me all about the pain, all about the things that they feel stressed out about, because the one thing I'm listening for what is the pain stress connection, when I can identify the pain stress connection, now we can move to what is called relieving the pain through the power of touch.
00:28:17.421 --> 00:28:19.465
First touch was listening.
00:28:19.465 --> 00:28:34.863
Now the second touch becomes the reflexology, because now I'm stimulating the nerve endings to be about sending the body's natural pain relievers, which are endorphins, from there.
00:28:34.863 --> 00:28:40.814
Now that you are calmed down, your pain is, like you know, subsiding.
00:28:41.460 --> 00:28:54.765
You're now going to be interested in what I call the integrative approaches, where we look at what other therapies will assist the body, because there's no one therapy that does it all.
00:28:54.765 --> 00:29:02.624
So, which means that is your pain, because you need to see an acupuncturist, do you need to see a chiropractor?
00:29:02.624 --> 00:29:04.905
Do you need massage therapy?
00:29:04.905 --> 00:29:07.429
Do you need to go to exercise?
00:29:07.429 --> 00:29:09.130
Do we need to look at your diet?
00:29:09.130 --> 00:29:12.212
Is there some energy work that may be needed?
00:29:12.212 --> 00:29:32.384
It's a combination of a lot of different things and we have to put all of that together so that now we can get you back on the road to optimum health, because you have a comprehensive program that deals with mind, that deals with body, that deals with emotions and deals with spirit.
00:29:40.461 --> 00:29:41.445
That's so powerful.
00:29:41.445 --> 00:29:42.080
I love that.
00:29:42.080 --> 00:29:43.644
The first touch is listening.
00:29:43.644 --> 00:29:44.667
That's.
00:29:44.667 --> 00:29:57.048
It's fantastic because I think again this you know reconnecting with the body, when, when we're doing breath work, when we're mindful, we're naturally inviting more awareness.
00:29:57.269 --> 00:30:27.207
And it's interesting because sometimes and I'm sure you've seen this in your practice, I've seen it with, like mindfulness teachers that I have taught, you know, as an educator, I've seen it with clients, I've seen it in myself, right, but sometimes once you just start listening, that feels really loud, right, and it may not be the loud going on outside of you, but like once you just tune in, sometimes it's surprising like how much is there that you know that you're working with.
00:30:27.366 --> 00:30:40.910
And so I think that the gentle guidance into that and also like doing that with some support, because sometimes when we're trying to sift through all that we're now hearing from the body, it can be overwhelming.
00:30:40.910 --> 00:30:43.520
It can feel like, ah, I don't even know where to start.
00:30:43.520 --> 00:31:00.373
But, like you said, with with support, with guidance from someone who has experience and who is in a position to kind of connect you with other folks who could be in your support circle, it really can be an empowering experience to tune in instead of just like an overwhelming.
00:31:00.373 --> 00:31:05.451
I don't even know what to do with all of this, so I'm just going to shut it back off again, because I, like listening, feels scary right now.
00:31:07.019 --> 00:31:08.784
That right what you just said.
00:31:08.784 --> 00:31:13.593
That's one of the problems with conventional medicine.
00:31:13.593 --> 00:31:16.988
It's because we don't do the integrative approach.
00:31:16.988 --> 00:31:19.560
That's why it's real big Now, where you're seeing everybody.
00:31:19.560 --> 00:31:27.855
A lot of practitioners are moving toward functional medicine, and that's where healing begins, when you have the integrative approach.
00:31:30.064 --> 00:31:36.702
Yeah, I 100% agree and like longtime listeners have heard me tell my Hashimoto story so many times, but when?
00:31:36.763 --> 00:31:45.848
I started trying to troubleshoot, like all these different systems in my body that seemed to be breaking down, and I was getting all these different systems in my body that seemed to be breaking down and I was getting all these different answers.
00:31:45.848 --> 00:31:52.469
You know specific to that system, and I would take my practitioner as a list and I'd be like here's what I'm dealing with.
00:31:52.469 --> 00:31:53.981
Like these things are all related.
00:31:53.981 --> 00:32:02.426
I just need you to connect the dots, and the number of people that I had to go to before someone was like, oh yeah, of course they're here, let's connect the dots this way.
00:32:02.928 --> 00:32:16.308
I mean, looking back, it was so jarring because all of it was right there, laid out, you know, and I just needed somebody, like you said, to put all the different pieces together and connect the way that my systems were out of balance.
00:32:16.308 --> 00:32:31.482
And once I had a practitioner who was able to support that mindset and bring in different modalities, it was amazing how quickly I experienced like a rebalance.
00:32:31.482 --> 00:32:47.667
And so it's so powerful what you're saying, because I think that it is work, right To listen, it's work to find the people that can support, it's work to do the practices, but, at the end of the day, the presence that you feel within this beautiful vessel that's carrying you around is just.
00:32:47.667 --> 00:32:50.015
It's just such a gift.
00:32:50.015 --> 00:32:54.205
Life feels like such a gift when you have that connection with the body, and so I love.
00:32:54.205 --> 00:32:56.571
I love the way that you described it.
00:32:57.680 --> 00:32:58.981
It's so important.
00:32:58.981 --> 00:33:08.836
And the other thing that we've got to understand that's a real missing piece is the cultural connecting to healing.
00:33:08.836 --> 00:33:14.420
We've got to understand that we have a cultural connection.
00:33:14.420 --> 00:33:22.921
All of us have a cultural connection and it's about looking at, looking at.
00:33:22.921 --> 00:33:39.465
And I always tell my clients go back and talk to some of the older members in your family and talk to them about what were the things that they did in terms of their healing process and give them the opportunity to refresh their memory so they can remember how we did this culturally and we got these results.
00:33:39.465 --> 00:33:41.029
Those things still work.
00:33:41.029 --> 00:33:42.894
It's not obsolete.
00:33:42.894 --> 00:33:56.005
What worked yesterday in the heal which is beautiful because what worked yesterday in the healing arena, will still work today because it's all connected to what the power of touch.
00:33:57.490 --> 00:34:01.691
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up and it brings us full circle here as we end.
00:34:01.691 --> 00:34:47.094
But, like our initial conversation about you and healing arts and just healing in the home and the practices and the ways that we knew to care for the body, even just like two generations removed from me, right, and I remember some of the things we would do as home remedies when I was younger and my mom would reference my great grandma, you know, or my grandma, and I think in the loud, busy, modern way that we approach anything, we have lost a connection to some of those very, very basic but very, very powerful practices that, like you said, are foundational because they've been around for ages, because people have had bodies for ages, like they have worked, you know, and that's why they've perpetuated.
00:34:47.094 --> 00:34:57.010
And so, reconnecting with those I love the idea of, yeah, like connecting with your people and figuring out like why, you know what are some of the other remedies my great grandma used.
00:34:57.010 --> 00:35:02.630
You know, my aunt the other day gave me like a little folder with some of my great grandmas.
00:35:02.731 --> 00:35:10.914
You know, like my, her, you know her recipes for different things, like that, and it's so, it's so, I don't know.
00:35:10.914 --> 00:35:28.052
It just feels like a thread of connection you know through and like that, those, those recipes are those modalities that she accessed to heal her, my grandma and then my mom, and then you know that I can, I can carry those forward, but I have to have an openness right.
