March

Newsletter

Happy spring season! I thought it would be nice for my readers to take a moment and assess their self-care practices and perhaps learn some skills and tips to increase self-love. I interviewed Linda Tumbarello a highly experienced psychotherapist, body work practitioner and teacher who wrote the book, The Heart of Self-Care A Women's Guide to Joyful Living and Well-Being. She is a Florence Massachusetts based practitioner who I had the lovely pleasure of talking to about how we can be kinder to ourselves and learn to trust our intuition for greater health and wellness. Mindset is a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to healing chronic illness. The way we speak to ourselves can have a huge impact on our health and well-being, especially if you've encountered trauma, both the big and little traumas. She offers a wide range of self-care activities around the use of breath, rest and renewal, sleep, movement, and food that are aligned with functional nutrition core basic lifestyle skills needed to bring that body back into health. Here is the condensed version of the interview.

 

 

What inspired you to write this book? 

 

I wanted to gather my knowledge and started writing a book about movement. I took some much needed time alone, which I hardly ever had in my life to work on that. I realized the larger scope and more about the relationship I had with myself. I observed how I pushed myself, and I didn’t talk very nicely to myself. I realized how much I was focused on taking care of other people, and started asking myself, “What do I want and what do I need?” It’s a big issue. Women are basically conditioned to pay attention to other people's needs and not so much on themselves. I wanted something that would honor the wisdom of the body and women’s own wisdom, rather than relying on an expert telling you what to do. 

I wanted to focus on how to get that inner wisdom and how to get what you need. There are so many exercise books that don’t meet the needs and support all bodies, and then there’s the negative effect the diet industry has on women not feeling good about their bodies. Helping women to feel good about their bodies is a big thing for me in the book and in my work.

 

 

What did you learn while you were writing the book..what surprised you the most?

 

I learned a lot about the relationship to self, how my self talk supported me or didn’t support me, and just how big an area self-care is. I kept adding parts to the book because self care is also about breathing and moving. I wrote later chapters around food and eating. I wanted to have a different approach and use the concept of our relationship with food. What surprises me is that I don’t see many books like this. I want to get the word out because self-care is so important.

 

 

What’s one message that you most want my readers (people interested in healing chronic illness) to know about your book, The Heart of Self-Care, A Woman’s Guide to Joyful Living and Well-Being?

 

Self-care is not what you do, it’s how you do it. Cultivating is an important word. In my book, I talk about cultivating inner support, and cultivating joy. 

We expect ourselves to change and heal fast and it’s a process. Take for example in the plant world. Things take time. Healing chronic illness takes time. I think it’s one of the ways people are hard on themselves in that they think that healing should be faster or it should be a straight line up.

 

 

As a functional nutrition counselor I work with women to heal chronic illness. One issue that I feel often gets overlooked in healing from physical illness is the importance of mindset. In your book you talk about the importance of becoming mindful of one’s self-talk.  

I know that in my own healing journey, the more I became aware of my self talk, I noticed the critical unsupportive voice that often cropped up when trying to make behavioral or lifestyle modifications.

I’m wondering if you can elaborate on why it’s so important when talking about self-care to cultivate inner support and why its essential to have a supportive and encouraging inner voice for a better quality of life… And can you talk a little about what obstacles women face in this regard. Is there an abbreviated practice from your book that you’d like to share to overcome these obstacles. 

 

I think one of things to put out there is that we talk to ourselves 24-7. We need to acknowledge that we’re always talking to ourselves. Are we talking to ourselves using helpful or unhelpful words? I like using that terminology rather than positive or negative so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing something bad if using negative self-talk. It’s the foundation of looking at the relationship to ourself and that’s why I call it the heart of self-care…our heart as a model of self-care. Our heart takes the freshest oxygen that comes from the lungs and feeds the cells of the heart first. It’s the idea that my heart knows I need to take care and that it’s important because my heart works a lot. 

 

One of the things in the book I discuss is a Touchstone practice. You put your hand on your heart. It’s important to pause, stop and ask yourself, “what do I need that would be helpful right now to stop that critical thinking?” Any kind of pause is very useful especially when we are going and going, doing our patterns and we are not checking in with ourself. A pause gives us an opportunity to shift things. Maybe I don’t have to work as feverishly as I was, or maybe I can take a take a break. In the practice your hand is on the sternum. The word sternum means shield. It’s a built in shield. Many of us try to protect our hearts. Touching bone can be grounding and literally helps you feel your relationship to self. Your arms touch your chest making a circle giving you an opportunity to check in. Just ask, “what do I need now?”

 

The obstacles women face are that women are so outwardly focused and there are often false beliefs at play. For instance, “I can take care of myself and rest only when all my tasks are done.” Another is that “self-care is a chore.” There’s a false belief about deserving self-care or having self-focus. How can we get rid of our false beliefs? We can “blow them out.”

We can get rid of our false beliefs by planting a new belief like, "I deserve to feel good.” Basically to talk to ourselves the way we would talk to somebody we love. We would never talk to other people that we love the way we might talk to ourselves. 

Self talk is the whole part of cultivating inner support. It’s a process to be our own best friend. A lot of how women are brought up to be paying attention to the outer world. What’s my inner world? what do I need? what’s important to me? what do I want? Sometimes women can’t answer these questions. It’s a process. 

 

 

 

 Activities:

 

I have activities in the book called 5 minute helpers.You can do simple things quickly to help you relax or help energize you when you have to be working and you’re tired.  Blowing out-letting go is one. Another is pausing, just stopping. Walking away if in a difficult situation. Go to the bathroom, drink water, get fresh air, or just moving.

 

I have a fun thing I call the “curse dance”. When having a hard time, if angry or upset I let myself shake out, curse out, or just say, “no, that’s not okay.”

5 minute helpers have a child like quality and when things are more playful we will remember them. They are things that can be done fast. Even if you meditate stressors come up during the day. What can you do right then and there to shake it out, blow it out, or pause so you don’t keep accumulating more stress as the day goes on. 

 

There's also quick shower: Imagine you're wiping something off of you like powder. If you were in a difficult situation that you want to leave it behind imagine wiping something off of your body. You can say, “that was hard!”  How do I release it?” shaking it out, blow it out, wash it out. Pat your body, tapping to wake up to revive self.  

 

 

 Healing chronic illness through functional nutrition is about so much more than just nutrition.  The name of the counseling approach almost seems like a misnomer. This healing modality also includes how we nurture ourselves, our relationships and how we move our body. Sometimes people can be in toxic or unhealthy relationships and may need to restrict time with that person or setting boundaries, that can be difficult to do.  Others may feel they need to push themselves to exercise in a way that worked when they were younger or healthier, but is not conducive to healing a chronic health condition. 

 

I have certain guidelines in the book of how to make self-care sustainable. One that is important is to find what you are going to like. If you hate a certain type of exercise like using exercise machine or going to the gym for example, it's not going to happen or be sustainable. If you’re going to be walking, ask yourself where do you want to walk? How can you make it more enjoyable? Maybe you can listen to music, walk with a friend or maybe you'd like to dance instead. Ask yourself, “What inspires me to move?” I like to use the term physical activity rather than exercise because people have a thing about exercise. Keeping it small and build it up. Especially if you haven’t been moving much. Take a 15 min walk, not a hike. Appreciate any self care activities that you’ve done rather then saying, “I only walked 15 minutes.” Even finding the times of day that works best. I have a chapter on walking which is one of the best physical activities. It’s easy to do and it doesn’t take any special equipment. 

 

 

Getting into a parasympathetic state more often than not is critical when healing chronic illness. Given modern societies propensity to be in constant sympathetic overdrive state and the stress it brings makes me think a paradigm shift is needed in our perspective on how to be our own healers. You have a chapter, "Turn to Your Breath." Can you explain the importance of breath, how you use it in your embodied approach and maybe explain a quick exercise or practice my readers could try to cultivate well-being. 

 

One of the things about breathing that I like is that we breath about 18,000 times a day. Each breath is an opportunity to connect with ourselves and to release stale air, unhelpful thoughts, and unhelpful feelings. Inhaling is an opportunity to bring in calmness or connections. Breath is a friend. It’s always with you your whole life and you have lots of opportunities to do that. 

 

One of the simplest way to connect with breath is to start with blowing out. Sighing, blowing air out. Feel the process that as we exhale we can release other things with it like tension and unhelpful thoughts. If feeling aggravated just let it out with your breath. It’s a flow. Things can come out. Then we Inhale and we bring in nourishment. Working with the breath is a good foundation for helping with digestive issues because it’s nourishment. I believe for most people focusing on releasing first is helpful. I call them breathing activities not breathing exercises. Focus on releasing, then allowing nurturance to come in.

 

I like to do a meditative activity that helps us feel connected to the earth. The plant world is creating oxygen and our exhale is feeding the plant world. Particularly when you are tired and you’re healing, allow yourself to take in the energy of the plant world not only the oxygen but the energy and life force to support your own. Allow that in, then send it out. Your exhale is a gift. That tree creating oxygen is a gift. It’s a simple way to connect. It’s all really happening. Exhaling your body is really releasing. When we are doing something that is happening in the body it makes it more powerful. 

 

 

Do you currently have openings in your practice? Can you explain a little about the work you do in your mind body approach. How can people get in touch with you if they wanted to learn more about you, purchase your book and possibly work with you.

 

I have openings in my practice for those interested in an integrative body mind approach. We would talk about issues. I do hands on work so my clients would have a chance to feel more deeply what was going on in their body, and recognize patterns of how they are feeling, what happened to them, how it may have affected their body, and how to make new choices around that. Things may have been stuck like grief. I have been doing a lot of grief work with people. Allowing the body to relate to it, feel connected and not feel so disconnected. To feel your whole body as much as you can and not just be in your head. It seems like important work. 

 

I wanted to find tools for women who read the book and for my clients to use to support and help themselves. I believe therapy and education are together. It is important to allow the body to have a voice and that to heal from trauma you have to work with the body. I work directly with people specifically using their breath. I’ve helped clients with digestive issues. I guide clients through their digestive system. Sometimes I help client's feel the quality of how an organ moves, its’ slowness. Digestion process is slow. I help clients feel their different organs and let them speak. If there is trauma there or tightness ask, "what does this part of me need?" Sometimes it’s tapping into inner wisdom. 

 

Linda can be reached at (413) 586-5971. You can also find out more about her by visiting her website at www.lindatumbarello.com. If you wish to purchase her book, which I highly recommend, contact her directly and she can send you a copy. 

 

Get in Touch

Reach out and get in touch if you'd like to learn about the systems and tools I use in my functional nutrition counseling practice to help you heal chronic health issues.

 
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