Donna Stuart – Come Home to You: Body, Mind & Soul

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with Donna Stuart. Donna is.

A functional health and ancestral lifestyle coach helping you come home to you mind, body and soul. Welcome to the show, Donna. We're really glad to have you here.

Thank you, Jill. I'm happy to be here. It's exciting.

It is. so.

We were talking a little bit about.

The ancestral lifestyle before we started recording and I really love for you to share what that means to you and how you got started with it.

Kind of a fascinating term and I think I've ever heard anybody else doing that.

Well, yeah, I guess I grew up in California and I have very, very lucky to have a family lineage that was from farming and salt of the earth. And you know, you go pick a weed or an herb and do something with it and make whatever is making you unhappy.

It'll go away and you know, so it's good home cooking and down to Earth kind of attitudes. And I always have been really healthy. I've just been really lucky and thinking about how, how fortunate I am to have a gene pool like that. Then I came on, as you know, I got into junior high. Then I had to struggle with my weight.

You know a woman and I was athletic.

But it and so you begin worrying about your weight. And I got into the ancestral lifestyle. Oh, maybe 7-8 years ago when it had a name and it before then it was just eating healthy. The greatest gift I think I've ever been given is.

Just struggle with my weight because it meant everything I put in my mouth had to count. It had to me, either make me healthy or not have too many calories.

And so I was eating.

Clean because I couldn't afford the calories of a hamburger and a milkshake that all the rest of the girls in high school could, even though I was an athlete and.

Finally I stumbled across the carnivore diet.

And that was the first time it was actually Paleo. And Clovis, you know, there's keto, Paleo, Clovis. Those are all answering to how are we genetically put together to live in this world, in communion and in concert with the planet?

And everything else. Now that was my belief system that I was brought up with. And then I now hear food and all of a sudden I was able. I was given permission to get rid of my carbs because so many of the fad diets had.

Carbs. And once that happened, all of a sudden the weight just started dropping off. I felt better and I thought ohh it has a it has a name and now I can know what to do with that. So that's how I got into it and then decided to go into health coaching and my background is psychology and education, but went into the Chris.

Kresser ADAPT Program and their specialty was functional medicine, which was about how does your body function and the target is not to fix a broken body, but the target is to make your body function at its finest.

So it's more preventive and integrative on the whole lifestyle and then ancestral lifestyle is how do you live your life, try to remove contaminants and so on from your environment. And so that just all seemed like what I've been doing and.

At my age, I'm healthy and I'm not having the problems that my peers have so far it seems so good to me.

You were just mentioning that you got COVID on your way back from Hawaii and that it only took you like 3 days of really bad stuff in two weeks. You were totally over it and that's really remarkable. And most people that I talked to, it takes them. They're down for a couple weeks and then it takes them a month to.

Right.

And that's the first time I've been sick in years. I'm the only one in the family that hasn't had COVID. Whenever the family gets sick, which isn't very often either. But when they do, they call grams to come take care, everybody while they're sick and.

You know.

Well, thank you. I was happy that it worked that way too.

Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of.

It is just knowing.

Paying attention, you were talking about paying attention to what you're eating and you know what we put in it? It does affect us more than just on the physical level. It's more than just gaining weight or losing weight because those weight is actually a symptom of a larger problem. It is not the problem.

Most people are just like I just want to lose weight. But you know, there's all these other things you need to look at first.

Well, you know it. We're broken down into four bodies. There's the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body and the spiritual body. And we live in those four bodies and four worlds and trickle down. In fact, if something's not right somewhere you level up.

One, and that's usually where the problem needs to be addressed. That's why I like functional medicine so much.

Right, because it's.

It's like we're in shells, not.

Not just one. One thing and conventional medicine likes to look not only at just like the one physical body that we have, but then they chop it up into like organs and no organ connects to another one. Or you have to see somebody.

Else exactly. And they wait until it's broken.

And then when it's not working well, they either want to cover it up with a medication or cut it out so it doesn't work anymore and functional medicines is now, you know, like my numbers, I don't. I don't want to be compared to a 78 year old person.

And I so I want them to compare my numbers to like a 60 year old or a 55 year old.

And that's my target.

And those numbers that they have are averages and they're averages among sick people.

Primarily, and most people don't really recognize that when they go into the doctor's office, they're not feeling well. They draw blood and they say, oh, your numbers are right in the normal range, but nobody steps one step further and says, OK, So what does the normal range represent? And the answer to that question is it's.

An average.

Of all the people.

Who come in here and get their blood drawn?

Right. And I learned it really interesting piece of information from my function. One of my functional medicine docs and he was saying that it's not the same throughout the United States, that cholesterol, you know, bandwidths are different depending on what state you're in.

As well.

And blood pressure. And they don't do the tests.

Properly and I.

Mean the blood pressure test especially, and they're really free to hand out blood pressure medications which cause all kinds of side effects that most people don't take into consideration. And.

Your blood pressure is if you're a self regulating being, your body makes your blood pressure. What?

It feels it needs to be in order for it to distribute the blood around your body so it can oxygenate things when you artificially start manipulating it.

To get into some number range rather than changing your diet.

All right.

An environment to figure out you know what's causing it.

To be like this.

You're just asking for problems. So many people on blood pressure medication actually die earlier than they. They need to because of the blood pressure medication.

You're right, there's so much around it. I have an interesting story of a client exactly as you described, and she doesn't. She did not want to take blood pressure medication, and she was she had anxiety about even putting the cuff.

And so we worked through anxiety calming and so on, and the doctor had said that, you know, give me your blood pressure and make a chart daily. And I mean, she was really stressed about it. And I asked her, I said, well, how many times do you take your blood pressure? And she said, well, once, and I said.

Take it. Take it until it's the numbers that you want, and then give your doctor those numbers. And she was like, I can do that. It's like, yeah, why not? And she was able in a day to take her blood pressure sequentially. And she got it down to 130 / 80 or 120 / 80.

You know you can manipulate that with breathing.

My husband has.

Been told he has high blood pressure. For years he was a truck driver and they want you to be within this certain range and.

He's cleaned up his diet.

He's done a lot of research on how to take your blood pressure accurately, but I know every time he goes into the doctor's office and sits down and they're talking to him and he's sitting.

Up and he's.

Anxious anyway, because his blood pressure reading is always really ridiculous. It's like in the one 60s to one 70s.

Sometimes it's as.

High as 180 over. You know something and.

When he does it at home, sitting in his chair, breathing properly and he doesn't average of three blood pressures, and nobody's talking to him.

Right.

It's in the one 20s.

It's just like.

This so.

You know I.

Well, there, like you said, there are so many things you can do, breathing, being calm. My daughter had high blood pressure. My other daughter was found some really awesome electrolytes.

The daughter that had the high blood pressure start just to appease her daughter, her sister started drinking the electrolytes, the minerals in there with. She changed. Nothing else, didn't change her diet. She had a pretty good diet to begin with though, and her blood pressure dropped immediately down to.

Normal levels when so when she's drinking the electrolytes. That's what the body needs. And you know, everybody is a little different. So you've got to experiment and find out, you know? What's your answer?

Magnesium is another one of those things that most of us don't get enough of in our diet, and you just take some supplements the right kind of magnesium. It's not.

Real cheap but.

That it makes.

Huge difference, because all of the electrical signals in our bodies based on magnesium.

Right. Well, water is an incredible conductor of electricity and we are basically an electric being and the communication throughout and within the cells is magnetic as well. So you've got potassium and magnesium and then the calcium and the sodium.

And you know, so many new research studies that are coming out getting presented.

They well, how would you say that? I discovered that research is often curated not by common sense, or what we think of science, which is in search of the truth. It's who sponsored the research, who paid for it. And then there's a curation.

A you know?

Well, is this right? Is that right? So it's already pre screened for us and now we're with all the access we have, the information we're finding out a lot of new interesting stuff.

Yes, yes we are.

It is exciting.

It is exciting, but it's it may.

Is it?

People personally responsible for getting the information because it is available and you know.

Coaches are really on the cutting edge of helping people to be aware of the.

Right.

The discoveries that are happening and then there's anecdotal.

You know.

Things that come up because you know your clients do stuff like just talking about your daughter and the electrolytes, you know, somebody listening to this may it might like trigger something in them that says, hey, maybe I should look at electrolytes, maybe that would bring my blood pressure down and maybe it won't. Maybe it will.

That, you know, it's kind of a big deal. I think I've known about that before.

Well, the freedom.

Yeah, it's kind of the freedom of that one client that took away her anxiety by knowing she could take the blood pressure several times and then pick.

The one she liked.

And like you said, that's what coaches are about. Depending on who they're trained and how well they're trained, we're trained. The ADAPT program was motivational interviewing, which is all client cantered and the coaches there as like a funnel to information and resources. And it's the idea to help the client.

Get out of a stuck perspective.

And go, I can take that. Take it three or four times. Why not? I didn't think about that, you know.

And you know what are you interested in? And then steer them well, try. You know, here's the place you can look. Here's a place you can look. Here's an article. And here's another article you decide for yourself. How does that fit with your vision of who you want to be and why? Why do you want to be the person?

You want to be.

And a lot of coaching is around deciding where you want to be, who you want to be, how you want to feel and.

Right.

And starting there rather than what's wrong and let's focus on the broken stuff, which is just going to make more broken stuff appear in your life anyway.

Well, you know what's really interesting is that research has found, you know, you have the conscious mind, the unconscious mind, and then the higher self. And so talking in the world of what you and I are most of the time, you know, spiritual self is another whole discussion. But the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is the unconscious.

Mine is like a 5 year old and its task is to keep us healthy and functioning and why?

Working and so it works on keeps our heart beating, it keeps us breathing. It makes our eyes blink and yawn, and so it. It responds and we don't have to consciously worry about it. The unconscious mind does not process the word not.

So when we say I don't want to be fat, the unconscious mind says, oh, want to be fat, OK?

And it's how many times have I heard we're going on a diet and then your actions contradict what you told your unconscious mind. So actions speak louder than words. So the idea is, you know, working with the mind. And that's where part of my coaching is Neurolinguistic programming is also ancient Hawaiian.

Belief systems around how did they stay? They were healthy until the white people showed.

And so it's about how do you you're languaging. So you focus on what do you want to be and then you can focus on and prioritize. What do I need to do today and why am I doing it? I'm doing it because it's a move toward.

They were.

Yes, much easier to move towards, something to embrace, something to.

Thank you.

Aspire to something than to say I'm not ever going to.

That's just a recipe for disaster.

We all know that one, don't we, we.

All know that one and as you move forward and you move toward that goal, you get to experiment. There's, you know it's we always I my clients always talk about. Well, what's this week's experiment. It's not. What's your goal because goals are often.

You miss the goal and often you learn the most valuable lesson by missing the goal.

And goals can shift as you start getting closer to it. You may realize that, oh, it's really over here, not straight in front of me.

That's not what I wanted. I wanted this thing.

Well, it's like I always talk about, you know, the map you map out where you want to go and then along the way you've got the map. So you know you're.

Never lost, but you go.

Oh, that looks.

Like a side excursion, the mic kind of be fun for today or this afternoon, but you can always get back on track as long as you know that map. And that's the kind of a security.

That when you feel lost.

Freedom and grace in that having a.

A road map.

To where you want to go.

To reach your vision to reach the.

The being that you aspire to embody.

But having the grace for yourself.

To be able to.

Explore other options like you know the gallon, the three blood pressure readings, or the six or 12 whatever she wants to do it. There's freedom in.

Right.

In knowing that.

You can.

It's not. It's not an only this.

You can enjoy things like if you're.

If you're deciding that you're going to eat.

A certain way.

Right.

Which is rather than going on a.

Diet that you?

Right.

You have some parameters that you'd like to stay within. You're embracing a style of eating, but it doesn't mean that everything that's not in that style of eating you can never have.

Right.

You can choose.

To do something.

That's outside of that. You can give yourself room.

To enjoy it and there's.

A lot of evidence that if you enjoy.

What you're eating?

It's not as likely to be.

Turned into fat immediately, as if you're eating it and you're thinking, oh God, I shouldn't be eating this. I shouldn't be eating this. That will immediately turn to fat on your thighs.

Yeah, I think I can identify with.

That well, but what it makes me think of is this time of year, we've made a lot of promises to ourselves, and by this time, we're maybe not.

Following all of them, so every plan you have, the vision of what's the end product that you're hoping for and.

You. I always encourage all of my clients. I'm going to you know that there's a workshop on doing your goals and setting your course for the year and it's still early enough in the year to.

Do that and it's like don't forget to build in grace and resiliency.

If I go off the path.

Then how do I get back on the path? What are my strengths that I can rely on? What's in my environment that I can rely on to help me so you build that resiliency?

And I always I always call them recovery strategies that I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and I've had so many opportunities to develop good recovery strategies.

Frees up your life. Kind of. It's like, well, if this falls apart, I know I can recover.

Yeah, the old plot twist.

Yeah, exactly. That's what's the spice in life, right.

And it builds momentum for you and it also builds confidence knowing that you know you got this and if you don't.

Right.

Find your way back. You're not lost forever.

Exactly. Yeah. With that little list of strengths that you have posted as posted notes on the inside of your medicine cabinet or on your mirror or whatever, and that's another place where coaching can be helpful no matter what kind of coaching you're getting. Is that the coach can reflect back when you're in the middle of your stuff.

You can't always see it, the coach goes. But remember, when you did, or how in the past have you conquered this and you go Oh yeah, you.

Don't you know when you're middle of the stuff, you're not always looking for? I could do this.

At least I'm not.

Yeah, I don't think very many people are able to do that and that's why.

Coaches are so powerful.

What kind of people do you help? I mean, what? What kinds of things would people be struggling with that they would say, hey, I'm going to give Donna a.

I get a broad spectrum of clients and it's usually something that's more surface. I need to lose 5 lbs. My doctor told me I need to follow this protocol and I don't want to do it.

I have trouble focusing. I have trouble staying motivated on my diet and those kinds of things. And when you get down into what it's really all about, it has to do with belief systems they have about themselves.

And it has to do with. Oftentimes the failure to recognize that you have all the power in the world to create and determine your own life, and you just need a few hints. And somebody as a guide on the side to ask the right question at the right time.

Like my client just say. Well, how you know how many times do you think you'd?

Need to take your blood pressure.

And get the one you want. I don't know if they ever done it. OK, well, you want to try that this week? Is that your experiment? What are you going to look for? And so it's just someone to kind of maybe pull back the curtain and see something that they aren't seeing in themselves. I've gotten a career coaching.

I've gotten anxiety.

Blood pressure, medical issues.

And then one was similar to that, but we ended up to the work setting. How do I get along in my work setting? How do I get along with my colleagues? How do I get myself out of bed and go to work and feel confident there?

And I've had several people graduate from coaching. You know, it's like, wow, I feel so good. I just want to go out and test drive this new attitude that I have. I'm still curious about this particular thing we talked about, and I'm coming back, but I want to test drive just to be sure.

That I believe.

I can do it and I want to know I can on my own.

So that's that is mixed emotions. When you have a client that graduates, it's like I could. I never could imagine that I'm the person that I am.

That's amazing. I love that. See. So you do.

Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.

All one-on-one coaching.

Is that what I'm hearing?

The coaching is one-on-one I certainly have run groups. I do. I do a lot of teaching and that tends to be more.

Maybe more in the Hawaiian.

Belief system side of it.

Is this the anano?

Ho Mona Loa is to make mana is energy and power and lower forever. And you put that all together homana. Lola is empowerment that goes for you forever. So it's self empowerment is the. That's the name of the Halal Omaha.

That's what.

And again, it's realizing what a beautiful, perfect being you are and then practicing different skills on how to become that being and know that you are that being.

So the Hawaiian practices are practice of opponent. A lot of people have heard of that. The practice of forgiveness which frees you more than anyone else. And then there's like releasing negative emotions. Anger, sadness, fear, guilt, limiting beliefs. There's that goes more into.

The Hawaiian practices and Neurolinguistic programming and the belief systems about you are the creator of your universe.

We are absolutely the creators of our own universe.

In so many ways, make the decisions we make.

But by the perceptions that we create that your perception, my perception of this interview is very different. And because we're pulling in different senses.

You're worrying about a bigger picture because you're producing this and I have no idea of all of what's going on that side of, you know, the screen.

And I'm just worrying about, you know, am I going to say the right thing? Am I going to, you know, do I look OK? You.

Know you look gorgeous.

They think between my teeth.

You know, I mean, you got to be realistic and you know, just that kind of thing. Hopefully the cat doesn't start meowing in the background, you know, so my world, my hundred, we have 2 billion bits of information that are impacting us every.

28 depends on who you read.

But that's a microcosm to everything that comes in. And so we develop patterns to filter out and filter in what's important. And there's, like, you've heard negative bias and there's, you know, all kinds of ways. We filter it that we look for something.

And so through how we filter the input and ignore the other stuff is how we create our perception of what's the experience is.

And then you know, you've heard perception is projection. Well, that's projecting your baggage onto somebody else.

Perception is interpretation. How you interpret it. So that's how we create our environment.

Along with our choices.

And we can change it.

It's as simple as telling yourself a different story about what happened, and it doesn't matter if it's.

Ohh yeah.

Quote UN quote true or not because.

The only truth that you can honestly know is your own experience. What you're telling yourself.

About the event.

And no two people, as you just said, experience anything exactly the same.

And if truth is?

A quantifiable, measurable, repeatable.

Evidence based fact.

Then there is no truth.

When it comes to.

Creating a reality or changing a reality.

I think.

Or changing your mind.

It was Ken.

Ken Wilber that wrote the book. There's no such thing as free will.

It kind of taps on to that idea, and The thing is that it phobia to me is the best example of that you have.

I have a phobia of I don't it. Let's assume I have a phobia of bees. You don't have a phobia of bees. I do. We go to lunch and this beautiful little bee to you comes flying around and lands on a flower that's sitting right behind you. And we're outside in this cafe, I jump up and panic at that bee.

Dump over the table. The water goes everywhere. My heart is beating and you're going ohh. Such a cute little bee and I'm yeah.

Hi Mabel and.

Call all bees Mabel.

Yeah. And so.

Two reactions. Our blood pressures are different. Our physiological reaction, our Physiology changes, and I am harmed by just seeing that will be because I panic because that's how I interpret the threat.

And that's what stress is. It's just sustained, sustained stress.

Is overtime is what's negative, stress is good for you. If you don't stress your muscles, they don't grow.

If you don't make a mistake once in a while and stress your, you know coping skills, you don't develop resiliency and you know, and we're put together enough that we make enough stress for ourselves. We don't need to go out.

And do it.

Right. And we don't have to sit in it.

And so by changing that perception that filter that way you choose to experience it like you said, you create your own reality, you create your experience.

Exactly. And people can find out more about this on a personal level by reaching out to you and having a call where you will help them kind of.

Tell us what you do with the call.

Put words in your mouth.

You tell you. Is that what you.

Said tell us.

Yeah. Tell us what you do with the call.

What you do with the call?

Well, all of my clients will say the first thing she says is, well, what's on the front burner this week or how you doing or what the idea of a call is?

OK, you've had a couple weeks or you've had a week and tell me about you. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Where are we? What's most important on your mind today? And then the rest of the call is about whatever that is and it's going over well. Have you? Have you dealt with this in the past?

And what are your strengths that you can bring to this and?

What would you like? What? Let's go back and talk about that vision we created the first time. Let's talk about values. What's important to you? And then how does this apply to that? And what do you want instead based on your values and your long term goals and your short term goal?

And then usually we'll also talk about strengths. Remember 3 weeks ago when you told me, well, what about this strength that you have, will you have this kind of support? So we go through.

Those and then.

Why is this important to you, and what do you want instead? So we work through that. Lots of interesting things come up.

As they talk about, they go wow. I never realized I have secondary gain from anxiety because it motivates me and I go researching and I read and I learn.

So much you know, it's like, well, could you get that secondary game without the stress, you know, of the anxiety? And then, well, what experiment do you want to do this week? What would you like to focus on?

And so we talk about, well, what do you want to find out? Can I get my blood pressure down? Well, then how do you want to do that? So we.

Lay out some steps and.

It's an experiment with the goal in mind, and then we will usually ask something like, well, what shifted for you today and then go away. I. Wow, I never realize that. And then there'll be something.

That they'll come up with that boy. That's something new about me that I really can.

Do this or.

Whatever. And we, you know, bring it to a close. Any questions and that's kind of how.

A coaching call.

Goes and then the next week. It's like I never ask about. What did you get your goal? Well, how the experiment. Sometimes they do because I'm just so curious.

I'm really curious, can I ask?

But it's like if they come in and they've been working on one thing, they could come in in a week and go ohh my week. My week was a train wreck. Last week I my sister came into town and this and all this I didn't and so the conversation is nothing about what we've talked about in three months. So I'm not the gatekeeper of what the topics are.

It's about, you know, what's on your mind today. How can I help you?

That's great. And it helps people to kind of get an idea of what coaching would look like. And you do offer a free introductory call where you.

Right. I call it a discovery call and so you can go to the website and you can sign up for Discovery Call. They're free. They usually last maybe an anywhere from 1/2 hour to an hour. They tend to be more closer to an hour. And the idea of a discovery call is to.

Get a sense of are we going to be a good fit?

That is my strategy is my sense of humor, or lack of it. If you think I'm not funny, you know, do our styles match and that'll be important. And we'll talk about what your vision. You'll get a little experience of how that goes, how to create a vision and what are the things that you value in life that you hold near and dear.

That contribute to that vision of who you want to be in the future and be doing.

In the future so that you are having in the future what it is, so you create that image of be do have because we run through those cycles and then every three to six months we go back and revisit and like you know the client that kind of graduated said I I've reached my vision.

Of who? I thought I wanted to be, and I am that person and I can't.

Believe it and I know I can be more.

And so, you know, it's time to revisit those things. I had another client that set a goal to earn a certain amount of money, and I get this little text. We need to go back. I need to set that goal higher.

Those kinds of calls make you feel so good, don't they?

They do. There's so much fun and.

She will text me occasionally and say still it's I'm changing the words because she's very graphic. She's a fun gal and it says this blank, blank still works. This stuff still works and it just be like every eight and maybe a year it'll be. Hi, Donna. Things are going great. This stuff still works, you know.

Use whatever you want for stuff, but meaning the techniques and strategies that she's learned and the habits and practice that she developed are still working for her.

That is awesome.

And so, yeah, so that's the discovery call and then you can decide for yourself, is that for me, you might have a protocol from a doctor that says you've got to start this diet and lose this much weight. And we may then we talk about that and begin, you know, picking that apart and then it may evolve into something different.

And you realize, oh, wait, I can do so much more.

Than just this.

Yeah. So.

People can get a hold of you on.

Your website which is.

DonnaStuart.com, spelled with a Scottish spelling Stuart and.

Then there's they're eventually, they'll be connected to their other Facebook once you get to that, it'll give you other links to Facebook pages. And so I I'm on Instagram, Donna Stuart coaching, I think I need to double check that, but it's not something or Donna Stuart.

I think that's what it.

Is we think.

Watching would be Instagram and but if you go to the website www.donnaStuart.com, the other links will be there. You'll find those.

Perfect. And we'll make sure we put those in the show notes.

OK.

So what's the one thing you want to leave the audience with today, Donna?

You know, I guess would be the thing that I have on all of my stationary is to.

Every day live positively and purposefully.

And that can be emphasized differently, live positively and purpose fully. Everything you have at your disposal, but live positively and purposefully.

I love that. We'll leave it right there. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for asking me.

On I just so enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for what you do.