Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Create Yourself Anew: Breaking Down 2022 with Mayim and Jonathan!

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Mayim and Jonathan are breaking down 2022 for our final episode of the year! They chat about what went right in 2022 - from the news stories that made us laugh and articles tied to important topics we cover here at MBB, to what the year has taught them. Mayim reveals a highlight from this year and a few practical tips she has personally put into action. MBB on IG: https://www.instagram.com/bialikbreakdown/?hl=en Mayim's IG: https://www.instagram.com/missmayim/ Jonathan's IG: https://www.instagram.com/jonathancohenofficial/?hl=en BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm exactly where the universe has led me. And every mistake that I made got me here. And it's very, you know, it's very humbling. You know, that's a humbling experience. And I know that I'm not, like, fixed. I'm not perfect. That has to be part of my life plan, is that it's not always going to be perfect.

It's my and be allics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because, you know, she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. Hi, I'm I'm Biolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so that you don't have to. And what we're going to do today is we're just going to break down the whole year. Well, not really.

This is our end of year party, as it were. It's a party for two and all of you. I'd like to introduce you to the other half of the party, Jonathan Cohen. Some people call me the life of the party. No one's ever called me that actually. I'll be honest. Jonathan, I'm sorry that we couldn't be in person for this end of the year partay, but it's kind of fun, just the two of us hanging out on our headphones.

Zoom party with all of our friends. How come when you say that it doesn't sound fun? People are already having fun. Look, if you're thinking, where's the guest? Don't worry. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming up. musings. We don't regularly do news stories, but we're going to because there's a special twist. Tell them. Well, the special twist is along with Valerie, our fantastic producer. We've kind of

gathered some things that we feel touch on some of the aspects of our podcast that we enjoy highlighting really kind of as a through line. We hope that you notice that there's sometimes a theme to even guests that seem so different, you know, on the surface. Jonathan's usually really the threadkeeper, as it were. He really finds the thread that kind of connects a lot of stories and a lot of different types of things. So we've kind of curated some stories that we feel touch on certain aspects of mental wellness or mental health or breaking down.

You have spoken about not reading the news on purpose because it impacts your stress level, your impacts your sleep, it made your heart race. And part of breaking things down is making sure that we're looking at all the story and, you know, all the aspects, not just what is the salacious news or that's getting headlines because it's known that agitation and anger and upset drives clicks and makes things more sticky. So part of what we're doing is we're going to do a little review and say, look, a lot of things went right. One of the reasons news makes me so anxious is because I'm one of those brains that makes everything connect, meaning I want everything to connect. So when I read a story in the news

about something sad, something, I link it to like systemic racism, like constitutional, like homophobia, like everything feels so interconnected that I want that like solution to everything. So I think one of the nice things about being able to highlight some of these stories is to show, that your brain can still make those connections, but it doesn't always have to be devastating. So what we're doing in this episode is we're going to talk about some of the news stories that have either tickled us or that relate to things that we talk about here on the breakdown or relate to larger issues of the breakdown. And this is going to culminate also in sort of our own personal recap of the news of me in particular, but sort of the journey that we've been

on this year in the breakdown, specifically really since Gabour Mata. episode. So we've got we've got some fun stuff ahead but make sure to to stay tuned through the bitter end for my I'm wrestling with her shadow self. Break it down. I want to talk about Scotland. I'm not trying to make you feel not bright, but what do you know what's got on? No, I know Mike Myers played an amazing Scottish character in what was it, the second or third Austin Powers movie? Well, if it's not Scottish, it's crap was a was a skit on SNL. Well, Scotland, as NPR reported, just a few months ago, became the first, I'm obsessed with this, to offer tampons and sanitary pads for free. The Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison in a statement said, providing access to free period products is fundamental to equality and dignity and removes the financial barriers to accessing them.

This is enormous because it touches on a few aspects that we talk about here a lot. We talk about some of the damage that is done in our culture in general, in culture in general, when people do not have free access to things that they need. And establishing equality and dignity is something we talk about in terms of how we treat people who are struggling with mental health challenges, people who are in prison, people who learn differently, the notions of equality and dignity are extremely important. And I'm just extremely, I was very, very impressed with Scotland. One of the things that I love about what we do here is we often talk about things that people

don't want to talk about. And I'm going to go ahead and say that the way that we have encouraged each other to speak and hopefully our listeners as well is the same kind of motivation I have behind bringing something like this up with a male person who has likely never had to. to need a tampon or a pad. I haven't had to need it personally, but I have been around people who have needed it. I've also been around people who have talked about

how it is more expensive just to exist needing feminine products. And it's almost an unequal level. Like I can exist without that and it's much harder if I needed them to afford them to buy them to make sure that I have them. So I think it's a really interesting move. I do want to add that, you know,

you know, for many, many decades and decades and decades, I'm really big on like what the hippies tried to warn us about that we didn't listen to as a society. And for many, many decades, I have known women who did not want to give in to the system, as it were, and the way we were told to manage this aspect of our health. I'm just being totally honest. Women who, obviously, this is a part of our hygiene that we need to take care of and it's very significant and important. It's nothing shameful, but the vast emphasis, and I would go ahead and say that there might be parallels here to mental health. The vast emphasis in this arena is like, don't talk about it. Like hide it. How do you make it so that no one knows? Don't tell them. You don't have to change your life for anything

that's different. Like you can wear your white jeans year round, like, you know, like, as if everyone needed to wear like white linen pants every day. But I think it's important to note that. that there's been a lot of trendiness around this. Like they have these like fancy undies that like absorb and like this, that, which have much higher upfront costs. And also I've been around people who do the reusable pads. And the notion of consumerism that like everything has to be disposable, everything has to be super easy in that regard.

A lot of people are rethinking it. Yeah, well, I mean, I think we're in many ways. We're afraid of our, we are. We're afraid of our bodies. We're afraid of when things are wrong, right? We're afraid when things aren't ideal. And I think that's true of mental health as well. And yeah, I can't say that I do it perfectly, like this life thing.

But I will say that, like, I'm grateful my friend Jasmine was the first person who introduced me to the notion of like, why would you use products that just literally fill up the landfill every month for decades and decades when you don't have to. Also, there's a lot of toxic chemicals on some of these products, fragrances, and all sorts of things that can be irritants. What makes things, thank you for caring about that. I do appreciate that, Jonathan. But when people wonder why, you know, diapers are absorbant, it's because there's a chemical in them that absorbs urine and makes it so that it's not on your skin, which is very important. But there's, everything comes with, you know, a tradeoff. We tried the cloth diapers for. a while when my son was big enough to be in cloth diapers and they're a little bit cumbersome. They come with their own, you know, issues.

However, they also are like really bulky. So the pants that you put on him, they like wrap, wrap around and like he's so waddly. It's kind of cute, though. It's a little tangent. All right, moving on. No, it's fine because there's a very specific look and twinkle in your eye you get when you talk about your kid and it's very sweet. He's so cute when he was little.

Here's another lovely one that I think is right up our alley. From National Parks Traveler, doctors in four Canadian provinces were approved to begin prescribing, prescribing a year-long pass to national parks. Jonathan, why? Why would they do that, those Canadians? Look, it's not a mystery. Go outside. We are animals. We belong in nature. We belong in relationship to nature. As you said, we're afraid of our bodies. We are very disconnected from our bodies. There's like a whole movement of putting your feet in the soil to ground and not wearing all the clothes that we wear all the time, going out and having your skin exposed to the elements and having your skin exposed to sunlight and actually getting closer to our animal nature, moving, being, having different planes of view where you're not just staring at things right in front of you,

but you're able to see in multiple planes and have your eyes process. You want to keep going? Let's end this podcast right now and go outside. I'd like to slow it down a little bit because we somehow got naked real quick in this explanation. I used to hear people talk about like, I feel closest to God when I'm in nature. And honestly, I would like roll my eyes really hard at those people. I'd be like, what does that even mean? but if you are the kind of person who like has one thing that you like about like the outdoors meaning

I really like the beach like I'm just that person I enjoy going to the beach by myself which is unusual because I hardly do anything by myself I don't really like to do things by myself but the beach is that place and what I realized is what I feel at the beach is that there's less noise and I feel this even when there's noise at the beach there's something about when we are experiencing the actual elements and we are experiencing a part of the universe, right, a part of the world that we did not create. We have no control over. You can't change the tides. Like there's the sand. You know, I think there's more stars in the sky than grains of sand on all the collective beaches, like something like that boggles my mind. So what I've tried to do, and actually

you've been very helpful, Jonathan, in this, is trying to find. find that wonder in a variety of different settings. And I will say there is an element of extreme privilege if you live in a place that is gorgeous that has trees and forests and trails and all those things. But the fact is, you know, I grew up in a city. You know, I am a, I was raised in Los Angeles. Like I grew up where there was a couple trees at the park, you know. If you were lucky something grew in like your yard or your neighbor's yard, but we did not have any lush, beautiful nature. You know, my my backyard was about three feet from the next house, you know, but there is still beauty that we can find in nature, even if we can't be kind of fully immersed. And, you know,

whenever I see a tree breaking through concrete, you know, because its roots were there first, it always thrills me. And when you see a little, weed, you know, that grows up, like, through two cracks where it's just like a con, like, a tree grows in Brooklyn. Like, that's what I always think. Like, there's always life. There's an entire core of the earth beneath us. And that's true, no matter what, what class you were born into, what color your skin is,

what religion you are or aren't. Like, that, we're on the same earth. So I've really tried to introduce that. And so this program, it's called Park Prescription, P-A-R-X, doctors, nurses, and other licensed healthcare professionals register with the program can prescribe nature and even a Parks Canada discovery pass to their patients. This is really, really awesome. Miami-Bi-Lx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

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They also have nutritional guidance, tips for lifestyle and behavioral adjustments. You even get your true biological age that you can track over time. Superpower used to cost $499.99. Right now, it's $199 for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotics breakdown to help support the show. Jonathan, are you ready for the next one?

I'm ready. Here's another one from the Good News Network, kind of related. Living near water as a child is linked to better mental health and well-being in adulthood. Using research from 18 countries, new study concludes adults with better mental health are more likely to report having spent time playing in and around coastal and inland waters such as rivers and lakes as children. Now, Jonathan, I'm going to do this annoying thing that I do. what might that be attributed to besides simply living near water? Well, living near water changes the demographic or the landscape that you're around. So often it's not as easy to live near water in a big city,

although in Toronto, Toronto is built on the water. So I really am curious if this is... I think rivers and lakes is what they're talking about. You live in a rural environment and it's a more small town environment versus you're a on a big city near water. Also, I think if you're by water and they're talking about swimming in this article, then you're getting more outdoor time, more physical exercise, potentially more socialization and recreation than you are if you're not.

Great. And this is something not to disparage the Good News Network. But one of the things that I think we've also really tried to do is try and help our listeners, and I hope we've been able to help, give people a critical lens with which to view kind of all the information coming in. at us. So Jonathan, I don't know if you would attribute this to me, but when Jonathan and I started working on a lot of statistics and a lot of the things for this podcast, but I often would push back. And what I've seen is that I think Jonathan has kind of opened up a little bit to a little more

of the skepticism that, you know, for example, I was trained to have. So this is a great example of a study that might have you say, like, I need to live by a river or lake, right? But what we also know is that it's likely that people who live around rivers and lakes are from a higher financial demographic. So what we could actually be looking at is better mental health and well-being often comes from being in a community where you may already have more support, more resources, an education system that's not adding additional stress or challenges. So just something to mention. And Jonathan, as you mentioned also, if we're talking about recreation, in terms of the people who can afford those things, that's another place where I think we have to remember

so much of access to mental health is stratified. And really one of the reasons that we specifically started this podcast was we believe that it's a human right to have access to information about mental health. Everything from definitions to treatment options to alternatives. That's something that a lot of people don't have. So consider us like living near a river or a lake. Researchers suggest that laughter in the animal kingdom may help creatures let each other know when it's playtime so that playfights don't escalate. Was this study in Smithsonian, Jonathan? It was in Smithsonian, as our producer Valerie has pointed out. I think that's fascinating.

We always wonder what the communication between animals is and how it differs from ours. you can often see that like dogs are, you know, they know when it's an attack versus when it's a fight or when it's playing and I'm going to buy. I don't know when I play with dogs. I have no idea. The original article was published in the journal Bioacoustics, which is kind of interesting because that tells you a little bit about, I don't know, measurements or methodology. So most of the 65 species identified were mammals, right, such as primates. That's us. Foxes. I'm just trying to picture a fox laughing and that sounds adorable. Now, I have to say the next two shocked me, killer whales and seals. Yeah, I think a seal could tell a joke. So there's all those images of seals looking like they're laughing, but I always thought like, oh, that's just like the face that they make.

Here's my favorite part of this. Three bird species made the list. Like, what does it sound like when a bird laughs? Like a mocking bird? Like, ha, ha, ha. Do they tell jokes? What do they laugh at? Do they just start laughing and like that's just a sign that someone else should laugh?

Are they laughing at something specific? Do they share laughter? Is it just a signal to someone else? Is there a communal aspect of this? Do they do laughing yoga as a community? What is laughing? I think that would make me cry. So laughing yoga,

and I only know this because we did it on a company Zoom one time, someone starts laughing and it becomes contagious and you kind of have to force yourself to laugh. laugh and then you kind of lose yourself in the laughing process. And yeah, it's a practice. Jonathan, the British Journal of Sports Medicine reports that being able to stand on one leg, you just wait. I'm going right now.

For 10 seconds. Okay, fine. 10 seconds. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. You're holding onto your desk. You're holding onto your desk. I'm getting.

changing my camera angle. What, okay, say what it is. Well, basically, if you cannot stand on one leg for 10 seconds, it's a death sentence for you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Okay, you win. The other leg, I'm a little more shaky from the hip surgery. We'll do it again.

We're on the other leg now. All right, my turn? Let's see it, everyone. Myam is standing up. Here, I'll go over here. She's starting to balance. One, two, I can be here forever.

Three. I can be here forever. Four. Five. She's got her foot out. That's a seven probably. Eight. Nine.

She's got the balance of a ballerina. No problem. She's basically. a mountain goat, just sticker on a ledge? Well, roughly one in five, roughly one in five of 1,700 middle-aged participants failed to pass. That's not good. A lack of balance is associated with health problems.

Poor balance can be a byproduct of more serious problems. So, all joking aside, if you do have trouble balancing at any age, it is something to look into. Sometimes it's as simple as, you know, a minor thing with your ear. We're not trying to be what's it called morose here about your lack of balance. It's also something that you can work on. It does get better if you practice it. Absolutely.

I remember when I was starting rehab after my surgery and I was starting to do more balance exercises. It was very difficult. And actually, when you turn your head while balancing or look up or down or to either side, your proprioception gets disturbed. And it's very hard to orient where you are in space and your brain. is constantly trying to find that equilibrium. And so a lack of balance can be an indication of other things going on.

There's a little challenge that goes around, which I can't do. It's called the old person challenge. And you have a sock and a shoe, two socks and both of your shoes in front of you. And you have to balance on one foot while bending down, picking up the sock, putting the sock on, then bending down, picking up the shoe, and tying the shoe, then switching. legs and doing it again. No, there's another one where if you start sitting cross-legged, can you get up without using your hands?

The answer is no. Dinosaurs have belly buttons. I just want everyone to know that. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about that? Well, I mean, you wouldn't think that a dinosaur has a belly button because they're in an like in an egg separate from the mom, right? Like an umbilical cord is what the belly button is indicating. Like, this is where you were connected to your mom, right?

Apparently, dinosaurs had this membrane that would detach, you know, when it would become separate. It's like a belly button, but it's not. There's no placenta. They've never seen an umbilicus in any pre-Cenozoic amniote. It's a very exciting thing. It's a 130 million-year-old early branching. serotopsian dinosaur called psidococerous.

That's unbelievable. A row of paired scales on the abdomen. Sometimes I get super freaked out that like we exist and things exist. And this is like one of those like, what? These insanely large, enormous creatures used to just roam around before buildings. and Instagram and sunglasses.

And they, like, that was the world. What? Like with ferns everywhere. Like the plants must have been gorgeous. It's just, it blows my mind. And they had belly buttons. CBS reported that this dog went missing in 2010. Twelve years later, she was found just miles from her family and reconnected

with them. What was she doing that whole time? Can you even imagine? No, I can't. I just like, she was adopted from a local pound. 12 years later, then she went missing.

And 12 years later, here, the San Joaquin Sheriff's Office in California got a call about a dog who seemed unwell and was left on someone's lawn. A black SUV had dumped a dog on this lady's property. They scanned the chip and they were surprised to find that the dog had been reported missing 12 years before. She was 18 miles away after more than a decade apart.

They brought 13-year-old Zoe back home. That is unbelievable to me. What's that? Like, do they remember? No, I'm speechless. I don't know. I can't get my head around that. Like, do they know?

They know their mind. mommy and their daddy and their siblings. They're human siblings. Okay, Jonathan, I have to tell you something else that's really funny. Jonathan, there's a city in Michigan. It's called hell. Okay? It's like 20 miles from Ann Aubur. The city has a program, this is reported in the week, the city has a program where anyone, and I mean anyone, can pay $100 for the honor of presiding over hell for one day. And This woman named Mia decided that she knew who needed to be the mayor of hell. It was her cat named Jinks.

I'm sorry. Jinks is a rescue animal, rescue cat from California. Jinks became the first cat to serve as the mayor of Hell, Michigan. Hell's mayors receive a proclamation certificate. Suvenere mugs. T-shirts. It's so funny. certificate of impeachment and one square inch of hell.

I'm just all about the picture of this cat jinks who just looks mad as hell. He's a black cat with a white belly, but this face is just ridiculous. I know we have a lot of people who love cats who listen to us, mostly because you love cats. there's the Call Me Cat Show, etc. But for anyone who doesn't like cats, they'd be like, that's the personality that should be the mayor and overseeing hell. I would love to know about Mia.

I want to know Jinx's owner. She's the first person who thought like, I want my cat to be like, that's amazing to me. Jonathan, in other cat-related news, and then we will move on to some more serious things besides cat news. CBS News reported that, oh, God, this is. is a heartbreaker. So one of the enormous news items of the year has been a war in Ukraine. There's a story from CBS news about a little girl, a 10-year-old girl who they fled Ukraine, and she had to leave her cat behind, which like I know that for people who are not like animal people

would be like, what's the deal? But I mean, this is so tragic to imagine, you know, imagine your beloved family pet and you have to flee. I mean, it's like a horrifying. And also one of the things we don't really talk a lot about when we talk about what it's like to grow up in a war-torn country, what it's like to grow up in a community that is ravaged by violence, like things like this become, you know, part of what you have to learn to cope with. So this little girl's family, they ended up moving to California. And the family was able to contact an animal rescue who found her cat. and brought, I'm just going to cry and just brought it home to the girl's new home. And they like waited at the airport

just makes me so sad. It's so sweet. And they met it at the airport and like, what's that like? See, this cat looks how, and the little girl's crying. I'm sorry. It's just, that's very sweet.

That's very sweet. Sorry. Okay. We can move on now. I mean, it's amazingly sweet. and I can't imagine the joy that little girl experienced when being reunited with that pet. Unbelievable. Oh, it's really, really beautiful.

We're doing a news wrap up. And often, as you said, this podcast is about experts and experts on their own experience. We've spoken to a lot of different people, some of them fairly profound in terms of their impact on you. Each one of them was profound in its own way. But we had a few that kind of, knocked your socks off and had little spiritual awakenings and realizations for you, putting you on the spot, but what were some of the summary highlights that you took away as parts of your own journey and parts of your learning this year? You know, I think the Gabor Mate episode

was a very, you know, exceptional highlight. Mostly, honestly, because he's like been on every show. Like he's like doing this huge book tour and I felt really intimidated and, you know, I read his book and it really was one of those books like, this has to stay with me. You know, like this is a life changing perspective shift. You know, not just like, ooh, it's a great book. Like it really was jarring. You know, like really jarring. Like, kind of like when you read something that's so so deep that it's upsetting, you know, that you like didn't see it before, you didn't know it before. You didn't understand it before. And what took me so long? and here I am and what do I do with it, and I just want to dedicate my life to living the way that I think I need to, you know, like that kind of thing. But yeah, that episode was really, really very powerful because of how personal he got with us. It felt like a really important connection.

I don't just mean that for me that I was like, I got to have a special experience, although as an enneagram for, everything has to be special for me all the time. But the fact that that episode touched so many people, The fact that his publisher, was it his publisher, that they reached out to us to be like, thanks. This was actually really helpful for book sales, which again, that's not why he does it. But he was putting out there what he does in a way that I just felt so moved by.

Yeah, I made some really big shifts in sleep, made some really big shifts in diet. I made some really big shifts in, gosh, I kind of had, you know, a really big battle with my shadow. self, you know, this second part of, I believe, of the fourth quarter, as you call it, in your business world, Jonathan, like really since Labor Day. It's been, every day has been a labor, you know, but very much worth it. But yeah, definitely doing a lot of wrestling with the Angel, as it were. Gabor's core message was that the way in which we're living, which we think is normal, is actually causing us to break down and fall apart. And that then we see that breaking down and falling apart as just a normal part of life.

He also had a very big message about trauma and the past trauma we carry having very significant impact on our health and well-being. Can you talk a little bit about sort of as you struggle with that dark side that you were mentioning, what has that been like? And what was the realization that you had while listening to that episode?

Because in many ways, the ideas in that episode were not like, you've never heard them before. But you heard them in a way from him that was different than the way that you have processed them in the past. And it also coincided with a very significant and deliberate choice that you made to start implementing and having very focused change. Well, Jonathan, I appreciate the question. But I do, you know, want to respond in, I think, a way that is not going to be the neat

you know, the neat and well-packaged answer that I think many people want it to be. And that's exactly the point. We often don't hear the message when we get it the first time. And, you know, I'm a stubborn, stubborn person. I am a slow learner. And what that means is, you know, it took a lot. it continues to take a lot to really wake me up. And, you know, I'm very envious of people who are very, very disciplined, you know, because there's certain things I am disciplined about, but this arena is very hard for me. And, you know, as someone who has, you know, experienced many challenges with disordered eating of a variety,

it, whatever it is, it kind of just moves around. And I found that a lot of my stubbornness about food and making changes was because I'm still holding on to, you know, food and that kind of like comfort and, you know, all those things. And so it's been, it's a process. And hearing Gabor only worked because of all the. the times I've heard it different ways from different people from my Chinese medicine, from my acupuncture. It's like that's the notion of like I'm exactly where the universe has led me. And every mistake that I made got me here. And it's very, you know, it's very humbling. You know,

that's a humbling experience. And I know that I'm not like fixed. I'm not perfect. I know that if I go to sleep every night at, you know, I'm serious at 8.30. I will get consistent good sleep every, I mean, I give myself a better probability of having actual good restful sleep. But I also know that sometimes I'm going to live my life where I'm out past, you know, 8.30 p.m. because my kids have a performance or whatever. And I, I just, that has to be part of my life plan is that it's not always going to be perfect. You say this all the time. It's not always going to be perfect. And I want to clarify that when you say go to bed at 830, it's starting a process of sleep hygiene, having a routine, having a wind down, having a transition from the activity of the day,

the mental activity and the speed of that day into settling into your body, starting to stretch, starting to transition to night, which is something that you used to, how would you respond previously before you started implementing that routine at the suggestion of this? It made me throw up in my mouth and want to smack. you in the face. That's the most honest answer, I think, I've heard from you on this subject. Yeah, I really, I mean, even now when you talk about it, it's like, it's like, you're a person who's like, I've discovered sleep hygiene and you do you.

Like, you do it cheerfully. You're like, we didn't get to talk today, but see ya. Got to start my bedtime routine. Like, you're much better about it. Because I enjoy it. I just do it because when I don't, I feel. the consequences of it. The reason I'm annoyed with you is because listen to what you just said to me. You said, I don't do it because I want to. I do it because, would you say? The results of not doing it

are worse. Yeah. So I currently have a horrendous rash on my nose, which I've done my best to cover up here. I have a disgusting rash that I've had for three days on my nose. I ate way too late, two nights this week. One night I had heartburn all night. The second night, I literally, I got 15 minutes of deep sleep, which is not enough. And I woke up feeling like, ugh, eh, blah, right? So I think it's, I mean, this is why a lot of people, Jonathan, what you said is why a lot of people won't go to the doctor. Because what they say is things like, if you do this, you're going to feel better. So stop doing it. But the reasons, that I put myself through what I did are very, very, they're complicated.

Everybody has a different profile. Okay. A hundred percent, and I want to acknowledge that. I want to give a shout out to you and hope to other people who are at the beginning or middle of implementing some practical change. And they may be like, it's so hard. Got it. I don't know how to do it.

Copy. It's not going to work. So, Maim being a self-described extremely southern, southern, I meant stubborn. That's a little slip there. A very stubborn person, by your own regards, your description of your reaction to being told that you should go to bed early was literally to throw up in your mouth and wanting to smack someone. because of what that would entail for you, people change when it's harder to keep going the way they are than it is to change. And you hit that point and I watched you.

And you had all of that reaction and hesitancy to the change. And within two weeks, you had a massive shift. Yeah. You started tracking your sleep, which you didn't want to do. Didn't want to do that. But in so doing, we had some metrics to help see what change. change was happening. Even within two weeks, there started to be substantial change from just small things that you had started to implement. Here's what I did. I turned off any overhead lights

starting at 9 p.m. So meaning anything that was overhead, I turned it off. What did that mean? I can have a floor lamp because I have a floor lamp in my bedroom. And then I had like, you know, I had like a salt lamp, right? Because every trendy person has one. And I was like, wait a second, these are really bright. So I put one in each corner of the bedroom. So now I'm like, oh, there's enough light in here to like move about. And guess what people? If you don't have an overhead light, you can't work. Because the work day is over is what you're trying to signal to your body. I stopped watching television to go to sleep. I did. Like I stopped using that as my drug and I basically stopped having stimulation like at least a half hour like a half hour to an hour

an hour is very hard especially as a mom and like I just a single like a divorced mom meaning I don't have another partner here but at least for a half hour I wasn't texting not even you not even friends I had to be alone it indicated to my body that there something different was happening I did also start listening to a short meditation just like you deserve sleep. Sleep is okay. It's okay to go to sleep. It's like time for your body to rest. And I also did start getting down on the floor and just doing some like very small, slow movements.

Like if you lay on your back, try and take five minutes to roll over to your front, meaning you have to move so slowly. And all of this stuff is like teaching your parasympathetic nervous system to like help you calm down. It's vagus nerve. And you're not like yelling at your kids. Like I would, my kids are old enough that I could start saying good night to them. Like mama's going to go downstairs. If you need me come downstairs, you know. Within two weeks, I had gone from less than six hours on average of sleep to close to six and a half, which is a big difference.

If you're not used to even getting six to get six and a half. and now it's been a couple months. It's not like an exponential curve. It's not even linear. You know, it's going to go differently. I'm averaging closer to seven hours of sleep, which is really, really good. And I used to wake up, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say, I would often wake up every two hours, like a newborn, like as if it was like time to nurse. I now wake up sometimes once, maybe twice.

And a lot of that was also about, you know, not eating dead. dinner essentially right before I went to bed. I had already cut out alcohol, so that's not an issue, but that's another thing that can disrupt sleep. I also cut out a large amount of sugar that I was ingesting. Apparently that matters. And apparently you can go through 12 years of undergraduate and graduate school with a scientific degree, including biochemistry and like advanced things, and still not realize that, you know, even if you're ingesting non-caffeinated beverages that have sugar, it does something to your body very different than what your body really needs to do. So I don't have to do this elaborate thing every night, but I have to do part of this

every night. Meaning, if I don't do the stretching, you know, the lights has become like an every night. Every night the lights go off at nine. And I've started to become like Jonathan, very sensitive to the lights being on. If I go into the boys' room, I've become that person. And I, I cringe a little bit Because I think that's part of what the resistance is, what the fear is with change, is like not wanting to be more removed from the world, not wanting to be more different in ways that I'm not choosing. There's certain aspects of this that do. Making these changes feels a little bit like a punishment. But then like I do. I get to reap the benefits of not feeling like I'm going to fall down every day at 1 p.m. Like I literally don't need to nap anymore. That's another huge thing. I love napping. It's fun to nap. But now I'm choosing it. It's not like choosing me. And I don't believe you need to have caffeine in order to stay awake because I don't drink caffeine. And I am now able to stay awake without feeling like I'm crashing anymore. And that's amazing. Yes, change can be scary. But small things that we can do make a big difference. And if someone's listening and they're like, well, you got half an hour more of sleep, it's that you actually started to get almost an hour more of sleep, which is extremely significant.

and the sleep quality, that change in how much deep sleep you're getting, the lack of disruption in your sleep. Gabber said one thing that really stuck with me, and I'm going to paraphrase here, which is we're either part of a biological system that has understandable cause and effect, or we're a part of a chaotic system where everything is random and there's no way to understand what's happening to us. And, you know, one of the things, that I have talked about on the pot a lot as it relates to our mental health and well-being is that there is a playbook. So why I really love Huberman, why I love many of our guests, because they try to break down

the elements of this playbook that we can use to improve our well-being. Does that take care of everything? Absolutely not. Should we also look at our trauma and our stress response and our outlook? 100%. That is part of the playbook. But there are very simple things that we can do to be. more connected to nature and more connected to our mammalian core qualities that many of us

don't understand or didn't know before. So I just want to say that I see the amount of change that has happened for you in a very short amount of time. Even a couple days ago, you said, oh, it's been so long. It's like it's literally been less than six months. It's been three or four months and there's been so many significant changes and improvements in your well-being that I want to use it as a shout-out to anyone who's been listening to us, been going back to those old episodes, and is thinking about changing. We've seen a firsthand from someone who resisted, and you can do it too. And I think that's a really nice place to kind of round out what we've done here with this kind of end-of-the-year extravaganza. You know, the idea is there's a whole world going on out there.

There's fun things. There's amazing things. There's incredible things that happen on this planet. But the most incredible thing that happens is the transformation that we can undergo. And we get to be witnesses to like, we get to be witnesses to our own evolution all of the time. And there's this mystical concept in in Kabbalistic liturgy that, you know, like we're constantly being created, meaning the consciousness of something bigger than us is holding the experience of the universe. that we don't have to all the time, but even a pause in that attention and we would just not

exist anymore, right? So that notion of like, we're constantly being created. We're creating ourselves. We're creating our experience. It's unbelievable. And I'm very excited to see what the next year holds for us as a podcast community. Jonathan and I have many ideas. Valerie has many ideas. We have ways that we'd like to continue to do what we do and do more and also branch out a little bit more creatively with how we can spread some of the mental health and mental wellness love. But we really, really do appreciate the people who want to hear the way that we interact. And it really is a pleasure. It's a pleasure to do this.

For everyone who's found us on Instagram at Bialik Breakdown, we've gotten your messages. Thank you for seeing the extra content that's posted there and following us during some of the lives. We've received your messages with guest suggestions. that we've looked into, even if sometimes there's not a quick response. We're seeing them. We're reading them. We're appreciating the follows and the interaction. Really great to be a part of the community that's been built there. Also would like to say we appreciate those of you who follow both me personally and also Jonathan Cohen official, which is Jonathan's Instagram page, where we hope to be

posting more of his kind of musings and things that sometimes don't survive the cutting room floor, but still exist as wonderful little tidbits. I have a list for this episode as my musings for 2022 that we haven't even gotten to yet. I'm just going to tease them here because they may appear in another form. One of them was, are you running away from what you fear or towards what you want? And I have some thoughts on that. I actually think it relates. Running away.

You're running away? I actually think it relates quite a bit to what you were saying about your acting. right before bed, or you're running towards what you wanted or away from what you were afraid of. Also, what is motivating our behavior at any given time? I also had something that I was thinking about related to our triggers. And do we have buttons to push? How invested are we in what we know? And how much do we really know?

It's a balance between having a very strong belief which can ground and center us and being open to the fact that new information is always coming. and what we believe to be 100% accurate one day may not be 100% accurate, like your belief that you couldn't change your sleep no matter what. And all of a sudden, you're a new person, which connects to what you were saying about we're constantly inventing ourselves and creating ourselves, which if nothing else, I think, is one of the most powerful things to take into 2003.

Who we are now is not who we are going to be. And we have the opportunity to create ourselves anew. How do you want to create yourself for 2003 M? I guess we'll have to wait until the second week of January to find out. We hope everyone has a great and safe new year. We'll be taking a break for that first week of January.

Business as usual, breakdown as usual. After that, we will see you in 2023. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and be all X breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience Ph. Ph.D. or two one fix you one. And now she's going to break.