Speaker 1: Kid, Everyone, Sam here, Welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: wood Life.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've had the I don't know.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be stereo tip, but I think I've had
Speaker 1: the most early week of my life. I had Charlie's
Speaker 1: little four year old birthday party. Charlie, what would you
Speaker 1: like for your birthday Partty? I want to pink, sparkle
Speaker 1: unicorn party.
Speaker 2: So that's what we had.
Speaker 1: Pink balloons, pink unicorns, sparkly dresses, rainbow cake.
Speaker 2: It was the works.
Speaker 1: And then the very next day I surprise the girls
Speaker 1: by getting a basketball court put in at home, little
Speaker 1: basketball key.
Speaker 2: It is Barbie pink.
Speaker 1: It is the I'll put a picture of it up
Speaker 1: on my Instagram. It is the brightest pinkest basketball court
Speaker 1: you have ever said in your life. I've had pink, rainbow,
Speaker 1: sparkle birthday parties. I've had bright pink Barbie basketball courts.
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to, I don't know, balance
Speaker 1: it out in some way, shape or form. Speaking of
Speaker 1: balancing it out, we have a wonderful guest today who
Speaker 1: explains meditation perhaps the best I've ever heard it explained
Speaker 1: for those of us that struggle to find stillness or calmness.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to answer the question about how
Speaker 1: we increase our exercise exertion, or better still, how we
Speaker 1: measure our own exercise exertion without fancy heart rate monitors
Speaker 1: or machinery, because I think knowing how hard you're pushing
Speaker 1: yourself and really dialing in on that is a very
Speaker 1: powerful tool when it comes to the consistency and the
Speaker 1: quality of our workouts, and we can all benefit from that.
Speaker 1: They're both coming up in the wood Life. But first
Speaker 1: of all, the wonderful Caitlin Katie. So I feel I
Speaker 1: feel even just looking across at our guests that we
Speaker 1: have this morning, I'm already more relaxed than I was.
Speaker 2: Thirty seconds ago.
Speaker 1: We're very lucky to have Caitlin Katie, a meditation teacher,
Speaker 1: author of and I love the name of your two books,
Speaker 1: Heavily Meditated and The Hope Dealer. We'll get into both
Speaker 1: those names a little bit later. Caitlyn, welcome to the
Speaker 1: WOODLFE and thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. Sam glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So to our listeners, you'll hear Caitlyn's accent and you
Speaker 1: probably won't think we're finding her in Byron Bay, but
Speaker 1: that's where we're finding her, and there's this beautiful little
Speaker 1: outlook of her garden in the background, and that's what
Speaker 1: I mean about being instantly relaxed. And I just thought,
Speaker 1: let's there, let's start with your journey. How did you
Speaker 1: end up in Byron Bay and how did you You know,
Speaker 1: is that a metaphor for what you've sort of been
Speaker 1: through in your life, from going from a stressed life
Speaker 1: to now one where not only a you in a
Speaker 1: much more relaxed place, but you teach it and help
Speaker 1: others achieve the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that the move to Byron was
Speaker 4: not sort of an intentional move for my mental health,
Speaker 4: but it really definitely dovetailed and aligned with a shift
Speaker 4: that came for me around.
Speaker 3: That time in my life.
Speaker 2: So sure, I'm.
Speaker 4: American and moved originally to New Zealand to be with
Speaker 4: my husband. We always had sort of a long term
Speaker 4: goal to live in Byron and as it turned out,
Speaker 4: that sort of came to be a lot sooner. We
Speaker 4: started a business here together, but I was also still
Speaker 4: working in basically a sales job doing medical recruitment.
Speaker 2: Pretty fast paced tostress job from.
Speaker 4: Everything that he Yeah, and I'm a natural competitor, so
Speaker 4: it was taking a toll on my health. And sort
Speaker 4: of the background behind that was that I had had
Speaker 4: Lyme disease, which is a bloodborne disease from a tick,
Speaker 4: and I'd had it since I was twenty one, and
Speaker 4: it had really wrecked havoc on my well being. And
Speaker 4: I'd done all the things, you know, made dietary changes
Speaker 4: and sort of a lot of lifestyle changes and you know,
Speaker 4: Chinese medicine and neutropathy and IV injections, like I did
Speaker 4: it all, and I think really I was confronted with
Speaker 4: the reality of needing to make a mental shift and
Speaker 4: it wasn't just a physical issue, and that there wasn't
Speaker 4: a separation between my body and my mental state my mind.
Speaker 4: And so with a great deal of resistance and skepticism,
Speaker 4: I set out to learn how to meditate. And as
Speaker 4: anybody who has tried that, like as a DIY project
Speaker 4: can tell you that it's not at least at that time,
Speaker 4: it wasn't that easy to figure it out, right, Like
Speaker 4: you had to kind of filter through a lot of
Speaker 4: nonsense or things that just didn't resonate. So I managed
Speaker 4: to figure it out and started meditating every day, and
Speaker 4: within a relatively short period of time I had created
Speaker 4: a really positive shift.
Speaker 2: And what I think.
Speaker 4: Happened is that because I was able to slow down
Speaker 4: and really be and focus on my breath and unknowingly,
Speaker 4: I was shaping the breath, which was then impacting the
Speaker 4: nervous system. And I think that that shift from being
Speaker 4: in sympathetic dominance so that you know, fight or flight
Speaker 4: that we all hear about, to being in parasympathetic dominance,
Speaker 4: which is the rest, digest, hair reproduce, which are the
Speaker 4: two sort of categories that we don't always hear about,
Speaker 4: but those I think those categories are super important for
Speaker 4: people to be aware of in terms of like what
Speaker 4: functions happen optimally.
Speaker 3: In the parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 4: And so I think that shift really allowed my body
Speaker 4: to reset and heal. And so I have been free
Speaker 4: of lime disease for over a decade.
Speaker 2: Now, what an incredible story? Can I just ask Caitlen? How? Yeah,
Speaker 2: how long did it take?
Speaker 1: Because I've actually, if I'm being honest, I've tried a
Speaker 1: number of times and never never cracked the nut. How
Speaker 1: long did it take for you? To feel the benefits,
Speaker 1: and how long did it take for you to, I
Speaker 1: don't know, start doing it almost autonomously rather than rather
Speaker 1: being this forced feeling.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a couple of interesting sort of
Speaker 4: threads I'd love to pull, Like the first one is
Speaker 4: just to answer your question directly, how long did it take?
Speaker 4: I mean, the thing about meditation is that we have
Speaker 4: to look at it like in a broader picture, right,
Speaker 4: So you might sit down and do the practice and
Speaker 4: like not feel better at that moment, right, especially in
Speaker 4: the beginning, because it's there's a huge amount of resistance
Speaker 4: that you're going to encounter if you're someone who has
Speaker 4: been conditioned like all of us have to be producing
Speaker 4: and achieving at all times. And I think that's a
Speaker 4: really important thing for people to notice, because this is
Speaker 4: not a you problem. This is a cultural systemic problem.
Speaker 4: It's not your fault that you find it hard to
Speaker 4: sit still. And I just want to name that because
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that, and that was one of the
Speaker 4: sort of insights that I garnered through sort of working
Speaker 4: through the resistance to why it was so hard for
Speaker 4: me to get still.
Speaker 3: So I think that's really natural.
Speaker 4: But you know, it doesn't necessarily happen on the first day,
Speaker 4: but I think if you meditate regularly, I always say,
Speaker 4: the benefits show up if you do so, I would
Speaker 4: say if you meditated regularly for seven days and you
Speaker 4: actually sort of included time for reflection in that, and
Speaker 4: what I mean by that is maybe journaling and maybe
Speaker 4: letting people in your life know, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 4: try this, and I would love to just have you
Speaker 4: give me feedback on any shifts that you might notice,
Speaker 4: because people can be people that are close to you
Speaker 4: can be a really powerful mirror for things, subtle changes
Speaker 4: you might not see straight away.
Speaker 3: So it could.
Speaker 4: Be seven days, right, but then you're going to notice
Speaker 4: more and more and more shifts. It's almost like the
Speaker 4: broader and the deeper that your practice becomes, the broader
Speaker 4: and the deeper the effects on your life. So for me,
Speaker 4: I mean maybe within a couple of months, yeah, like
Speaker 4: really started to feel a shift within myself, but you know,
Speaker 4: a year for it to be like, oh, this is
Speaker 4: who I am now, And at that point the practice
Speaker 4: becomes sort of self perpetuating, Like I don't have to
Speaker 4: convince myself to meditate every day, I just do it.
Speaker 2: It makes complete sense to me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I didn't want to, you know, like there's
Speaker 1: a magic number or a magic time, but I get that.
Speaker 2: I totally get it's going to be very different for everybody.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you hear it so much now from people
Speaker 1: that you respect. They say similar things to you. This
Speaker 1: is who I am now. I absolutely don't feel like
Speaker 1: I've got less time. I feel like I've got more time.
Speaker 1: You know, my clarity of thought, my organization, the way
Speaker 1: I prioritize that was so powerful.
Speaker 2: What you said about what.
Speaker 1: Happens in the parasympathetic nervous system, which what did you say?
Speaker 4: Repair, restore, rest digest, repair, reproduced.
Speaker 1: I mean, so important are those four things. And I
Speaker 1: know myself included. I'm not spending anywhere near enough.
Speaker 2: Time in that state.
Speaker 1: It's because I gauge it on productivity only. And it's
Speaker 1: a really and it's really interesting to hear that that
Speaker 1: was you and that is probably naturally who you are,
Speaker 1: because I tell myself that too.
Speaker 2: I justify it by going, this is just who I.
Speaker 1: Am, And it doesn't necessarily mean it's good for me.
Speaker 2: But it's a weird. It's a weird sort.
Speaker 4: Of that's true.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, okay, yeah, probably, but it's a weird justification
Speaker 1: or it's a weird thing that I tell myself, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot of our listeners that can
Speaker 1: relate to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: And that's why I wanted to sort of mention that
Speaker 4: earlier when you because I think that people think it's
Speaker 4: some kind of personal failing or like or something on
Speaker 4: the other side, something that congratulate themselves on. I certainly
Speaker 4: fell into that category of like, oh, this is what
Speaker 4: makes me special. It's like I just smashed things out.
Speaker 4: I'm so efficient, I'm so productive, you know, I'm prolific.
Speaker 4: I was so identified with that thought that the idea
Speaker 4: of laying that aside was terrifying to me. So in
Speaker 4: some ways, it's like you have to have this really
Speaker 4: honest conversation with yourself about the ego.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean that in terms of like being egotistical.
Speaker 4: I mean like the part of the self that is
Speaker 4: identifying with you know, your personality or like who you
Speaker 4: present yourself as to the world, right, Like we have
Speaker 4: to look at that and go like at my essence
Speaker 4: at my core, like who really am I and what
Speaker 4: really matters? And is that really who I am, right like?
Speaker 4: Or is that just sort of who I'm afraid not
Speaker 4: to be because everybody's told you how great you are
Speaker 4: for being that way.
Speaker 2: What a great question to challenge.
Speaker 4: And so there's a couple things there, right, Like, the
Speaker 4: one thing is that most of us are who or
Speaker 4: who are overachievers. We're looking for validation from outside of us.
Speaker 4: It feels really good because you get a sort of
Speaker 4: a hit of worthiness every time that you achieve something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: The other path towards a sense of worthiness and wholeness
Speaker 4: is it feels less tangible, right, because it involves getting
Speaker 4: still and quiet and actually connecting with that part of
Speaker 4: you that is already whole, already worthy, already wise, already complete,
Speaker 4: and doesn't need the external validation.
Speaker 3: You know. It's sort of ironic, right because, like all of.
Speaker 4: The stuff that we're out there doing, the feeling that
Speaker 4: we're looking for is actually available to us when we
Speaker 4: allow ourselves to just be.
Speaker 2: It's a really really powerful point.
Speaker 1: I think about the people that I know that practice
Speaker 1: meditation or even and there's a few people I know
Speaker 1: like this. They're the most comfortable paper in their own
Speaker 1: skin that I know too. You know they're not chasing
Speaker 1: any outside validation. I couldn't care if you love them
Speaker 1: hate them, couldn't care less what you say, because they
Speaker 1: love themselves. And it's it's really interesting you say that.
Speaker 1: I absolutely say the correlation.
Speaker 4: Well, and I think it's important because all the people
Speaker 4: who are like yeah, cool, but I don't want to
Speaker 4: go live in an astrom and like shave my head
Speaker 4: and eat doll and rice for the rest of my life,
Speaker 4: like don't worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's this stigma attached.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think that you also, like when you
Speaker 4: think about those people, Sam, like, can you also say
Speaker 4: that they're living purposeful lives?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: And do they have a sense of satisfaction and direction
Speaker 4: and focus? Like we lean into binaries, right, it's like
Speaker 4: I'm either fully motivated and achieving or I'm like a
Speaker 4: good for nothing. It's finding that there's this middle path
Speaker 4: where you can actually use your gifts more fully when
Speaker 4: you're doing when you're out, you know, out in the world,
Speaker 4: doing things from a police of wholeness. It's a totally
Speaker 4: different motivation than when you're chasing something outside of you.
Speaker 1: Right, So just on that you know that we do
Speaker 1: have this stigma attached to what perhaps, yeah, meditating in
Speaker 1: that stereotypical form looks like, what forms can meditation be
Speaker 1: for people?
Speaker 2: How do you do it personally?
Speaker 1: And how are other ways that perhaps you've seen people
Speaker 1: do it that our listeners might not think of when
Speaker 1: they think of meditation or finding stillness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question.
Speaker 4: The first step is taking responsibility right for your steat
Speaker 4: and going like, oh, I don't actually living this way
Speaker 4: isn't serving me? Then creating a shift in the nervous system.
Speaker 4: That's actually a really great place to start, rather than
Speaker 4: going like street to the mind and trying to like
Speaker 4: just sit with your thoughts, which I think is how
Speaker 4: many people try meditation. The first time, it was how
Speaker 4: I tried it that didn't That wasn't really a great
Speaker 4: inroad for me. But what was really helpful was first
Speaker 4: creating a shift in the nervous system. And the best
Speaker 4: way to do that is the breath. So if I
Speaker 4: were someone who had a total resistance to meditation, now
Speaker 4: knowing what I know, I would say that's fine, do
Speaker 4: five or ten minutes of shaping the breath in a
Speaker 4: particular way, because that step alone is going to create
Speaker 4: a shift in your nervous system, and that's going to
Speaker 4: create an on flow effect into your mind as well.
Speaker 3: Right, the traditional progression in the yoga tradition at least
Speaker 3: is awesome enough.
Speaker 4: And then pronayama, which is we think of it as breathwork,
Speaker 4: but it's much more complex than that, and then meditation,
Speaker 4: and so each step is preparing for the step that follows, right,
Speaker 4: and so most of us are jumping straight into meditation,
Speaker 4: and it's like, well, we haven't actually like you know,
Speaker 4: I call it meditation foreplay.
Speaker 3: It's like you got to like buy yourself at drink first.
Speaker 4: Right. For like the most efficacy and the most satisfaction
Speaker 4: in a practice, it's important to have some kind of
Speaker 4: preparation and pay attention to it as a threshold or
Speaker 4: a transition point into sort.
Speaker 3: Of where you're heading.
Speaker 4: So I just want to preface it with, like, if
Speaker 4: you only have five or ten minutes, maybe just do
Speaker 4: something to shape the breath because that's going to have
Speaker 4: an impact that you feel in the moment, and cumulatively
Speaker 4: done over time, you can shift yourself out of sympathetic
Speaker 4: dominance into parasympathetic dominance just by doing that. And so
Speaker 4: examples of that would be ujai breathing. It's a really
Speaker 4: powerful one. It's super simple. So you're basically just creating
Speaker 4: a valve that the throat sounds like Darth Vader or
Speaker 4: the subtle sound of the ocean, depending on how you
Speaker 4: want to frame it. But that has this whole incredible
Speaker 4: biological sort of effect. And so if you did that
Speaker 4: for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, in six weeks, you could
Speaker 4: expect a shift. And that's like been clinically shown to
Speaker 4: create a shift in nervous system dominance. So I just
Speaker 4: want to name that because meditation maybe isn't the rate
Speaker 4: starting police for everyone at every moment.
Speaker 3: Of their life.
Speaker 1: I've never heard it explained like that before, but I
Speaker 1: love it because those baby steps to bridge that gap
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense to me, and I think
Speaker 1: it would a lot of other people who have either
Speaker 1: thought about it and it's too big a canyon to cross,
Speaker 1: or have tried it and fallen down somewhere along the
Speaker 1: line like me. So I love that you're actually breaking
Speaker 1: it down like that. You know, it's funny. It's so
Speaker 1: often how i'd work with people with nutrition or exercise,
Speaker 1: you know, just go for a ten minute walk or
Speaker 1: just start with your breakfasts, you.
Speaker 2: Know whatever, Start where you are exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I've never heard it explain from a stillness perspective, but
Speaker 1: it really does make complete sense. What was that type
Speaker 1: of breathing called again? Just just say it slowly OJA huge?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Huge y I Okay.
Speaker 4: It's super easy and you can kind of do it
Speaker 4: in any positions. You could do it laying down, you
Speaker 4: can do it sitting up, you can do it in
Speaker 4: the car on an airplane.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 4: It's very simple to learn, and it's like deceptively simple,
Speaker 4: as in it can create a really powerful change in
Speaker 4: the moment but also over time. JA means victorious, okay,
Speaker 4: victorious breath victorious okay. So when we think about agency,
Speaker 4: it's offering us a pathway towards victory over our mind
Speaker 4: right or over our sort of state.
Speaker 1: So I've heard you say, and it put a big
Speaker 1: smile on my face. Meditation doesn't have to be and
Speaker 1: I quote boring as shit?
Speaker 2: What weighs beyond the breath step? Yes? Do you like to?
Speaker 1: I don't know, either practice it or teach it where
Speaker 1: it isn't in people's minds boring as shit because I
Speaker 1: can tell by your personality that you do make it fun,
Speaker 1: you know, like even the terminology to use, you know,
Speaker 1: let's have some for play first.
Speaker 2: It makes sense, and.
Speaker 1: It makes it relatable to people. If this is not
Speaker 1: a space you've ever been in, yeah, or ever even researched,
Speaker 1: it feels completely foreign to you totally. It's really nice
Speaker 1: to make these philosophies relatable to people.
Speaker 2: And I love how you do that.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, that's so kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I always say like meditation has a pr problem, right,
Speaker 4: Like on a lot of levels, people have all these
Speaker 4: like misconceptions about like what it is and like how
Speaker 4: long they need to do it and what it needs
Speaker 4: to look like. And it's not helpful because if you
Speaker 4: have all those barriers and you think it's not for you,
Speaker 4: then like it has no opportunity to be of service
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: So, first of.
Speaker 4: All, I think that it's a mistake to offer people
Speaker 4: one meditation technique. In my first book, Heavily Meditated, I
Speaker 4: sort of laid it out as like five different gateways,
Speaker 4: so you have the breath, sound, sensation, visualization, and mantra.
Speaker 4: That's not like a comprehensive sort of categorization of every
Speaker 4: technique known to man. But those are five really common
Speaker 4: focal points, and often they're combined. You might have two together.
Speaker 4: You might use the breath and visualization, for example. But
Speaker 4: the reason that I like to frame it that way
Speaker 4: is to say, like, here's a menu of options for you,
Speaker 4: and so try them all and see what resonates for you,
Speaker 4: like what feels most easeful. Because for some people, if
Speaker 4: I say, okay, we're going to sit down and focus
Speaker 4: on the breath, they're like that lady, that is going
Speaker 4: to spin me out, Like that's the last thing that's
Speaker 4: going to make me feel calm. Where other people don't visualize,
Speaker 4: they actually have something in their brain that doesn't allow
Speaker 4: them to visualize, and that's fine too. So it's like,
Speaker 4: if you just offer one thing, it's not going to
Speaker 4: sort of be a connection point for every single person.
Speaker 3: So I think first have like go to the buffet,
Speaker 3: the meditation, the.
Speaker 4: Fey and like dabble and try and taste different things,
Speaker 4: and then when you find one that you feel is
Speaker 4: easeful or bring some sense of delight, go down that
Speaker 4: path for a while. Right. So you could do the
Speaker 4: same practice, or you could explore different practices that use
Speaker 4: that technique. But what I don't love is like people
Speaker 4: having this experience of meditation that it has to be
Speaker 4: this one way and they have to do it for
Speaker 4: the specific amount of time, and it has to be
Speaker 4: done it this time of day. Like I think that's
Speaker 4: very restrictive, and it takes this aspect of flexibility, prescriptiveness,
Speaker 4: and delight out of the equation.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 1: And I know I relate things back to exercise because
Speaker 1: that's my background, But people do that naturally with exercise
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, sometimes I just go to
Speaker 1: escape and go for a round. Other times the whites
Speaker 1: or the boxing. I get the frustration there because I
Speaker 1: box or I do some strength.
Speaker 2: You know, we all do that. You know, if we
Speaker 2: train often and we train with variety, we know.
Speaker 1: What particular exercise works for what particular mood or solution.
Speaker 2: That we're trying to trying to find or solve.
Speaker 1: But we could chat all day about all of the
Speaker 1: different things our body goes through when it's stressed and
Speaker 1: the different ways we can do with that. But actually
Speaker 1: love that we've spoken so specifically about the meditation, about
Speaker 1: those stepping stones, and about the different ways that people
Speaker 1: can interpret it.
Speaker 2: What's your app called?
Speaker 1: And if people did want to work with you online,
Speaker 1: how do they do that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Thank you, that's so generous.
Speaker 4: You can find me at kaitlindkeaty dot com and at
Speaker 4: kaitlind keaty on Instagram. And the app is also called
Speaker 4: Heavily Meditated, So you can download that for iPhone or
Speaker 4: Android and you can do a free trial and give
Speaker 4: it a shut.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us and enjoy the beautiful sunshine and
Speaker 1: By and Bay really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 4: Oh likewise, thanks Sam.
Speaker 1: I love learning about things that aren't my sweet spot
Speaker 1: and meditation, stillness, breath work, even just slowing down in general.
Speaker 1: If I'm being really honest, I'm definitely not my sweet spot.
Speaker 1: So I love that chat with Kaitlyn. She had a
Speaker 1: couple of things that even wrote down. She said, the
Speaker 1: benefits show up if you do. And I just thought,
Speaker 1: what a mantra for life when it comes to getting
Speaker 1: into a good routine or a good habit.
Speaker 2: The benefits show up if you do.
Speaker 1: Love that chat. We're now going to speed things up
Speaker 1: a little bit. We're gonna explain how you increase the
Speaker 1: intensity or understand the intensity of your workouts with no expensive,
Speaker 1: fancy equipment needed. So I want to talk about how
Speaker 1: hard you're actually working when you work out. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of us who aren't really sure how
Speaker 1: hard we're pushing ourselves.
Speaker 2: And a couple of examples.
Speaker 1: Whenever I will catch up with one of my twenty
Speaker 1: eight is face to face and we'll do a workout together,
Speaker 1: I ask them this question. I say, put your hand
Speaker 1: up if you push yourself much harder just then as
Speaker 1: you do when you're in your land room by yourself,
Speaker 1: And a lot of hands go up. And the first
Speaker 1: thing is it's a good wake up call for people
Speaker 1: that I think they're pushing themselves harder than they are.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I say, and I see this
Speaker 1: in my gym, is too much talking. And that's where
Speaker 1: this little chat came from, because talking, or the inability
Speaker 1: or ability to talk while you're exercising, is a great
Speaker 1: way of us seeing where we're at. It's called a
Speaker 1: perceived exertion scale PS. So how hard am I pushing?
Speaker 1: So this is how it works. There's three categories. If
Speaker 1: you can hold a regular conversation or count so one, two,
Speaker 1: three without losing your breath, then this is low intensity
Speaker 1: exercise relative to you. As I said, so this means
Speaker 1: you're falling somewhere between three to five on the perceived
Speaker 1: exertion scale. That's category one. Category two is if you're
Speaker 1: struggling to put a full sentence together, or you're losing
Speaker 1: your breath and can't quite articulate all of your words,
Speaker 1: or you couldn't articulate numbers from one to twenty, then
Speaker 1: you're upper level. You're at moderate intensity. So we call
Speaker 1: this between levels five to seven on the perceived exertion scale.
Speaker 1: And if you can't speak at all, that shows you
Speaker 1: that you're at level eight or nine on the perceived
Speaker 1: exertion scale. So my example in the gym, these people
Speaker 1: tell themselves they're working really hard. They are literally chatting
Speaker 1: to their workout buddy the entire time, not with much difficulty,
Speaker 1: So they're not even getting above a five worst case
Speaker 1: or best case, depending on how you want to look
Speaker 1: at it. They're between a three and five for an
Speaker 1: entire forty five minute workout, barely breaking a sweat.
Speaker 2: Coming to the gym, they probably feel better, and.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely better that you're doing that than nothing at all,
Speaker 1: please don't misinterpret what I'm saying is that's a waste
Speaker 1: of time. It's not a waste of time, but you
Speaker 1: get out what you put in, and if you're unaware
Speaker 1: of how much you're putting in, this perceived exertion scale
Speaker 1: is a great way for you to just do a
Speaker 1: little self test next time you do a workout, to
Speaker 1: see if you can get yourself to.
Speaker 2: That eight or nine.
Speaker 1: Because whenever I ask someone what kind of results do
Speaker 1: you want? Do you want eight out of ten or
Speaker 1: nine out of ten results? Everyone nods their head. But
Speaker 1: part time effort gives you part time results eight out
Speaker 1: of nine effort will give you eight out of nine results.
Speaker 1: So remember some workouts are designed to be easy, but
Speaker 1: a couple of times a week, get yourself out of
Speaker 1: your comfort zone. And remember it's all relative to you.
Speaker 1: You're not comparing yourself to anyone else. This is your
Speaker 1: eight or nine out of ten, nobody else's. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's been a.
Speaker 2: Bit of a paradox of an episode we've had, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: I'm telling us to wind things down, and then I've
Speaker 1: decided to go the other direction with our exercise and
Speaker 1: really ramp things up.
Speaker 2: But I think you get the gist.
Speaker 1: There are times in life and parts of our health
Speaker 1: that we definitely need to slow down.
Speaker 2: And then from an exercise.
Speaker 1: Perspective specifically, it really is beneficial to wind things up
Speaker 1: and challenge yourself because if nothing changes, nothing changes, that's
Speaker 1: what we're striving for.
Speaker 2: So that's how we've got to train.
Speaker 1: As always, please send your questions through there's a link
Speaker 1: in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you
Speaker 1: any of your training questions like this or training considerations
Speaker 1: like this. Would love to deep dive with you, and
Speaker 1: until then, I'll see you next week.