the Be Inspired Mama podcast and creator of a movement that’s transforming how women approach self-care.
After battling Lyme disease and mold toxicity while juggling motherhood, a chiropractic practice, and the pressure to “do it all,” Dr. Sonners discovered that traditional self-care wasn’t the answer—it was self-CONNECTION. Her practical approach helps busy women transform their relationship with themselves without adding more to their overflowing plates.
This conversation is essential for any woman feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. Sonners and I discuss:
- The critical distinction between “self-care” and “self-connection” that completely transformed Dr. Sonners’ approach to wellbeing
- Why the little “whispers” your body sends are crucial warning signals, and what happens when you ignore them until they become “screams”
- The uncomfortable truth about why most women can’t relax…even during a massage or vacation (and how to actually fix it)
- A neurological explanation for why 2 minutes with a book beats 2 minutes on your phone
- The powerful concept of “brain syncing” that allows you to accomplish more while feeling calmer throughout your day
- How our obsession with productivity has created a generation of women who don’t know what lights them up anymore
- The surprising cultural insights Dr. Sonners gained from traveling to places where people prioritize “human beings” over “human doings”
- A beautiful parenting approach that focuses on modeling self-connection rather than just accomplishment
- Simple, free “anchor tools” anyone can implement in minutes, even with a packed schedule
- The counterintuitive reason why most self-care efforts fail
- How Dr. Sonners’ book club creates the village women desperately need but struggle to find
- The healing brainwave states most of us skip over in our rush to be productive
- Why even the most advanced biohacking tools won’t help if we remain disconnected from ourselves
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Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint podcast. With me in this episode is Dr. Melissa Sonners, who is the host of the Be Inspired Mama podcast, a community for women seeking a deeper connection with themselves and each other. Known for her authentic and practical approach, she offers advice that resonates with the soul’s desire for self-synchronization and fulfillment. Melissa’s mission is to help women rediscover a love for their lives, focusing on who they are rather than defining themselves by a to-do list.
She’s also a distinguished chiropractor specializing in prenatal, postpartum, and pediatric care, and she’s expanded her work from the treatment room to the global platform. Her passion for empowering women to reconnect with themselves has led her to create Best Friends Book Nook, an online book club that cultivates personal growth and meaningful discussions, and The Beehive, a supportive community for women on their journey of self-discovery. Through Be Inspired Mama, she shares free, easily applicable tools via her podcast and YouTube channel, fostering community and reminding women of the power found in collective support and self-reconnection.
Now let’s get into this conversation with Dr. Sonners. This is one that I enjoyed personally a lot. I think the work that she does is absolutely wonderful. If you are a woman, and if you are a mother especially, I think that you’re going to get a lot of value from this conversation. Enjoy, and if you’re a man, share it with the women in your life that you love. Dr. Sonners welcome to the show.
Melissa Sonners: Thank you, Ari. Pleasure to be here.
Dr. Sonner’s story
Ari: First of all, tell people a little about your background and how you came to do the work that you now do.
Melissa: Sure. So many layers to that, and I’ll keep it as simple as possible, and then we can dive into whatever you feel is best, but I’m trained as a chiropractor. I have a very holistic lens on the body. I trust the body and the miracles that the body performs. I’m a mom of three. My husband is a chiropractor, so very holistic family. I’m naturally a busy body. I think a lot of typical women, we’re doing all the things these days, and I got really sick.
I got really sick and it completely changed the trajectory of my life. We can definitely talk about that, but it basically pivoted my lines on self-care. I think this is such an important conversation for any woman out there who is, maybe, doing all the things, has the epically long to-do list and maybe anchors herself within that sense of productivity. Self-care tends to be just another to-do item on our list.
When I got sick, I felt like I was doing everything right. I come from a biohacking family. It’s like now we can say that and everyone knows what we’re talking about. I felt like I was doing everything right. I was fasting. I was working out. I was flipping tires at CrossFit at 5:00 AM. I had a power hour every morning, raising our three kids, homeschooling our three kids, running the practice, and I got sick with Lyme and mold toxicity. My co-infections were meningitis and encephalitis.
I think looking back, if it wasn’t Lyme and mold toxicity, it was going to be some other form of disease. My body had been giving me these signals for a long time that what I was doing wasn’t working. I think a lot of us women get those signals, and they come in whispers. It’s that little whisper that’s like, “I’m tired. I can’t do this,” but we feel we have to, so we keep pushing, or, “I just need a break. I need to put my feet up. I can’t. People need me.”
Then what happens is if we don’t listen to the whispers, they turn into the scream. For me, my scream was Lyme and mold, but I think for a lot of people, the scream can be a variety of things. It can be chronic fatigue. It can be brain fog. It can be burnout, fried, snapping at your family. I always want to make sure to keep my story general enough that it doesn’t weed out someone who maybe didn’t have Lyme or mold because I think this story really speaks to every woman and the challenge that we all experience.
It’s like, we hear these mantras, these well-meaning mantras of, “Put your oxygen mask on first before serving others,” or, “You’ve got to fill your bucket first before you take care of your loved ones,” or my favorite, “It takes a village and ask for help.” It’s like, one, where do we find our village? We’re all separated. We’re all busy. Who do we ask for help? All of our sisters are drowning as well.
I realized, literally, I aim to create a movement of swapping the word “self-care” for “self-connection”, and it changes the game on everything because it switches it from a to-do to who we be, and it becomes a lot more free, literally freedom, but also it’s free, all the tools I use are free. It’s realistic in our busy lives, and life becomes so much more playful. I feel like a little kid and I’m 43. I’m having more fun in my life now than I ever have, and I’m the healthiest version I’ve ever been.
Why self-care is problematic
Ari: Beautiful. I love that. Why is self-care problematic? Why did you switch it to self-connection?
Melissa: I think self-care is problematic because in a lot of ways as women, we follow these outdated systems, and when they don’t work, we see ourselves as a failure. I think we’re really good as women at creating guilt and shame and being like, “I failed, I messed up. What’s wrong with me?” I think the traditional model of self-care is one of those systems that does that.
What I mean by that, Ari, is when I was in the thick of career and seeing patients in the office, before my day at work and at the end of my day at work, I’m with our family. I hear this phrase; every patient would tell me, “Be sure you take care of yourself or you can’t take care of your kids.” I’m like, “Okay, how do I do that?” Self-care. What is self-care? Anything I could think of that self-care is a massage, a pedicure, a workout.
They are these one-hour blocks of time that are amazing. They’re still some of my favorite things to do, but either I’m now spending an extra hour outside of the office away from my family to do something that I’m going to judge myself for being selfish for, or I don’t have time because I need to get back to my family. I’m going to judge myself for like, “Why are these other women so good at fitting it all in and I can’t?” It just becomes this added pressure because we’ve looked at self-care as a to-do. Like I said at the beginning, it’s just yet another thing to do rather than focusing on a be. There’s a lot we could go down with that.
I also just want to say, if we don’t first master the self-connection, I would finally duck out, schedule the massage or whatever at the end of the week, finally get to Sunday, I can go do my massage. If I wasn’t first working on who I’d be anyway, the reality is I lay on that massage table and I do mom math or woman math. It’s like, instead of blissing out, I’m like, “Okay, I need to go here, then I need to do this, then I need to do that.” I’m still running the same wiring and patterns.
Yes, maybe I did this one-hour escape from my life, but then I’m dropping right back into my life with perhaps a bit of a relaxed nervous system, but no tool that I have with me for the moments when I actually need the self-care the most, whether it’s, we’re running out the door and my youngest one throws a tantrum, that’s when I need the tool, or I’m late for work and there’s traffic and I spill my coffee, and someone cuts me off, that’s where I need the tool. I can’t be like, “Oh, okay, this is all a crazy week, but it’ll be fine Sunday when I get on the massage table.”
I needed those daily dips of connection so that at the end of the day, I wasn’t a frazzle dazzle, crazy woman. [chuckles] I could somehow get it all done, but have these little micro moments of peace so that at the end of the day, I was like, “Wow, I did it all. I’m pretty chill. I’m pretty good for my husband. I’m able to connect with him in present time and able to truly be with my children because I can truly be with myself.” It’s having that ability to go from, “Go, go, go,” mode to being. I think that is one of the most important skills that we, as men, women, as human beings instead of human doings, that we can acquire.
The impact of busyness
Ari: I want to go a little bit big picture, a little meta here for a second, because I think everything you’re describing needs to be understood in a context. I think that most of us don’t understand the context that we’re in appropriately. I’m going to be maybe slightly long-winded here and you can riff off it however you like.
One example of this is if you take young children, especially young boys, let’s say you take a 6 or an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old boy and you put them at a desk inside of a classroom, and you ask them to sit still for many hours of the day, you might find that it’s very, very difficult for many of them. Hence, we have the massively increasing prevalence of ADHD, and we then seek to solve this by drugging these children to resolve their “disorder.”
If we don’t understand the context where human beings weren’t evolved for young boys to sit at a desk all day, young boys especially, this is true of girls too, but ADHD is much more common in boys, if we don’t understand that context, we are inclined to see this as a disorder. If we understand the context of how we have evolved, and we give those young boys ample opportunity to run around and play and use their physical bodies, you might find that that disorder disappears.
I’ve been reading a really interesting book lately. It’s called Civilized to Death. It basically dismantles a lot of the narratives and the mythology that we all grow up with in the modern world of all of our– the story of civilizational progress and how we’re so much better off than any of the humans of the past. In fact, it basically paints a picture where modern humans are much less healthy and much less happy than our forager or hunter-gatherer ancestors tens of thousands of years ago, and that much of this mythology of progress is actually nonsense, is truly a mythology.
One of the other interesting things coinciding with reading of this book that I’ve been doing lately is listening to a lot of podcasts on AI, from AI experts talking about the future of what the world looks like essentially when humans are no longer necessary to work jobs, for governments, for economies to function and to thrive. They’re envisioning this landscape of, humans no longer have to have jobs to work. What do you do with all your time? Maybe you just hang out and you have leisure, you find what’s called artificial purpose, find things to do with your day that feel meaningful to you, but are not actually meaningful because they don’t serve any outward objective purpose.
It’s really interesting to just see these two things coinciding, this exploration of hunter-gatherer life when we didn’t have so much demands on us constantly, when there was much more leisure time, as well as this future utopia, AI-driven thing, where human work is now obsolete, and now we’re back in this state of like, “All right, we mostly can just hang out.” Right now, this phase of human life is this in-between, the peak of capitalistic free market, everybody needs to grind and hustle and work hard to make money.
Part of what you were describing is this state where so many women are just burnt out. There’s just too much to do. Everybody’s overwhelmed. Everybody’s isolated. We’re not in communities. We’re all just drowning in our to-do lists and we don’t even have time to get a workout in or a 15-minute meditation, or things like that.
Anyway, I’m just trying to paint a context here of this phase of human history that we’re in so that people can start to understand their life in this bigger historical context of our species. Feel free to riff on that however you’d like.
Melissa: Oh my God, I love this. It’s really interesting because, I think doomsday news sells. It’s like, all the problems of AI and what’s going to happen with that, they’re going to take over our jobs and all these things. I see this opportunity that we could have there and it’s to get back to the arts, and it’s to get back to creation if we choose to. I think one of the biggest problems here that’s so relevant to this conversation and what you brought up is that, yes, we are all busy, but the problem isn’t that we are all busy. I think that’s the top of the iceberg. The real issue underneath is that we don’t know what to do with ourselves if we’re not.
I think it’s no coincidence that the word “busyness” and “business” are very similar. It can be so easy to say, “I don’t have any time,” I’ll speak from a woman’s perspective, I’m curious from a man, but the reality is we have pockets of, even if it’s a couple minutes, here and there, but we fill those with distraction, which has become really easy in the digital age. I’ve got a minute. Let me just take this opportunity to get caught up. I hop on the phone and scroll the emails, or check social media, or check the news, if people are into the news. It’s a distraction.
I think it feels like safety to a lot of people because the alternative is being with yourself. That’s the unknown, that’s the unfamiliar, because we’re not used to it. We fear what’s unfamiliar literally from a neurological perspective. Our amygdala, part of our brain, it’s survival instinct, will pull us out of the unfamiliar. That’s really important because I think in order to have this utopia that we could potentially step into on the other side of AI is we first have to be able to get to understand, what is it that we know and love? What is it that we want?
If you sit down a lot of women and you’re like, “What do you want? If you could just have some time and if you weren’t so busy, what do you desire? What do you want? What would you do? What would light you up? What would make you happy?” I’d be willing to bet probably 8 or 9 out of 10 women would have no idea. No one’s asked us that.
Ari: That’s the thing. When you meet somebody new, what’s one of the first questions you ask them? It’s like, “Well, what do you do?”
Melissa: “What do you do?”
Ari: “What do you do for a living?” Our cultural context is we’ve all been brought up in this story that what we do is of utmost importance, and we’re raised to be good little worker bees to contribute to society, so what we do every day becomes central to our identity.
Melissa: You think about the energy exchange when you ask someone that question. If we just zoomed out and only saw body language, there’s probably a slump. Whereas if you ask someone, we should change this, Ari, we’ll start this, “What lights you up?” To see someone step into that. “What lights you up?” For me, that’s one of the things I’ve gotten most clear on in the last two years, gymnastics, acro, handstands, skateboarding, nature. You have an hour? I’ll tell you all the things that light me up.
That was the biggest change for me, is spending time with myself to get to discover that again, because then we start to fill those pockets of time with those things instead of the numbness, instead of the distraction. There’s a journey there. There’s a gap that, at least for women, we need tools. I call them anchor tools, because if I ask some woman, “You don’t know what you want, sit with yourself until you figure that out,” that’s not going to work, because she’s going to sit down and sit with herself and she’s going to think about the grocery list or the laundry list or the emails. There’s a process that I walk women through.
Just getting back to your bigger conversation it’s like– I’d be curious what you would think for men in that transition. Can you see today’s man dipping into that ability to have more time and space and filling it with healthy things? I almost worry, we can look at COVID and we can look at a time where there was less going on. I feel like people either chose to go inward, go all into the pain and sit with it, “I don’t have work to distract me.”
I think a lot of relationships changed during COVID. We’re seeing a major expansion after COVID for the people that chose to go in. It’s like a heartbeat, with every contraction, with every inward, there’s an expansion. You saw a lot of people that were like, “I don’t have work to distract me. I don’t like my life. I don’t like my relationship, but I don’t know what to d, so I’m going to drink it away. I’m going to do drugs.” We saw a lot of alcohol. We saw a lot of numbness and disconnecting. I worry a little bit about people being in the same state of human doing and distraction and then stepping into the world of AI where they have more time.
Ari: There’s a really interesting cultural context to this as well, because, I’ve spent a lot of the last four years in Costa Rica. When you spend a chunk of time outside of the United States and you come back to the United States, you get a different perspective on what’s going on here.
I’m American, I was raised here, but in a way, I’ve traveled so much in my life and spent so much, especially in recent years, outside of the United States, that I’m almost coming back and looking at it with fresh eyes and seeing it more as an outsider would see it to some degree. I see this obsession with money and materialism and obsession with more. Nothing is ever enough. It’s just this constant hunger for more.
I contrast it with, sometimes you go to less developed countries or undeveloped countries, and I observe how, let’s say, guys my age are– what they do with their time and how they think there as compared to guys my age here. A lot of them are just hanging out. It’s just like, “Yes, we hang out, surf, talk to my friends, sit around, shoot the shit, have fun conversation, have some laughs. That’s a day.”
Here it’s like, “Go, go, go. I got to have every minute of my day grinding and hustling so that I can scale my business and make more money, buy my house, buy this car, and buy this thing and get the new iPhone.” When I originally witnessed that going to a lot of those countries, I saw it as an American with a lot of judgment and was like, “Oh, what are you guys doing with your time? Really, you’re going to waste your whole day like that?”
Now I’m actually having somewhat of a different take on it where I’m like, “Actually, these people are, in general, a lot happier.” If I can get over a lot of my cultural narratives about hustling to make a contribution and make money, all this stuff, doesn’t it make sense to, at the end of the day, have spent your life actually being happy with other human beings having fun and with leisure time, as opposed to just in this constant pursuit of working and busyness to get more?
Melissa: Yes. We travel a lot, too, and I hear exactly what you’re saying. We’ve spent some time in Costa Rica, a lot of time in Hawaii. Those people are human beings. They’re being, they’re not building their day on what they do. There’s a few common elements that I saw in any of those areas where we were spending time, and it’s connection, it’s community, it’s nature, and it’s being really tapped into having fun and playing.
I was curious if you would say surfing, because that’s, in my mind, what I picture in these areas. If you look at the Blue Zone studies, where these cultures– there’s pockets of high numbers of people who live to at least 100 years old. Of course, we put the US stamp on that, and we’re like, “Okay, what are they doing? What are all these people doing so that we can recreate that?” They’re being. They have a high sense of community and gathering and conversation. Some of these people are smoking and drinking. They’re all living a super healthy life. They’re in moderation. They’re taking time to do what they love, and they’re being with people.
When I talk about these anchor tools, they’re gateways to getting back to that place, because the reality is here in the US, we’re very much on this hamster wheel of doing. For the people who don’t get to maybe travel and spend time in these pockets and almost absorb it through osmosis, what is the system? What is the action step? Because I feel like that’s what humans in our country need like, “How do I get from here to there? What do I do?” It’s those pillars. It’s self-connection. It’s community. It’s getting in nature. It’s the ultimate tool.
I think this is a really important conversation, at least in the circles I hang out. I don’t know if you do, but just going back to the biohacking thing, the pendulum is swinging so far one way, and there’s these tools that are all coming up that are incredible health tools like the red light, obviously a huge fan, hyperbarics, methylene blue, all the things I use and love. Let’s not now just put these external tools, these other devices and these other things outside of us at more of a power than what we have inside. It’s who we be and it’s how we spend that time.
What I’m seeing is when you take these biohack tools that replicate nature, have the ability to change us, and you expose it to someone who’s a human doing, now it’s like, “I’ve got the tracker on and the Oura. I know I didn’t sleep good because that’s what my tracker says and so I’m going to do all these things.” How about we just get back to listening to our bodies and listening to that voice? Because that voice will guide you. It’ll be like, “This isn’t working. I don’t feel good around this circle of people. I feel really amazing around these people.” I feel great when I take five minutes between Zooms and get outside. I don’t know why, but it feels great, so we do it.
The impact of negative thoughts
Ari: You just reminded me of a book that I read when I was in my PhD program in clinical psychology. I read a book that ironically led to me not wanting to pursue a career in clinical psychology. It’s ironic because the book was prescribed as part of the reading for the curriculum of the school. It was a book called Constructing America, Constructing the Self by Philip Cushman and it’s not a well-known book. It’s a more scholarly book, but it’s absolutely profound and it basically traces the history of the entire field of clinical psychology. Where did this idea of psychotherapy even come from? Why did it originate? What were the conditions that led to the emergence of this?
Basically, he traces this to post-World War I, post-World War II in particular. There were some rumblings of it prior to that, but the original thing that led to the origins of this was essentially the loss of tribe, the loss of community among humans. As a result of this fundamental loss of being connected to a family, a tribe around us, we’ve had many shifts in the modern world and technological shifts. Even the advent of airplanes has facilitated a situation where immediate family members, parents and children, brothers and sisters are no longer together like they were for most of human evolution. It’s very common for people to live in different cities. Not only the dissolution of community and tribe, but even immediate nuclear families are no longer even living in the same city.
We have this massive loss of community and social connection. What came out of that was this hole in all of us, this void where we constantly feel like something is missing from our lives. We’re not complete. There’s some sort of vague sense of lack. What has emerged from that is, the whole field of materialism, of consumerism feeds on that void. It’s meant to leverage this sense of lack in us that, “Oh, if only you buy this new iPhone, if you get the latest technology, if you get the latest car, this new thing, that new thing, this fancy house and two Ferraris, then you’ll finally feel wonderful and happy and complete.”
Actually, the origins of psychotherapy itself formed as a result of this core wound in all of us living in the modern world, that psychotherapy emerged to deal with the mental health problems that emerge from this fundamental loss of community and tribe. Anyway, I thought that connects with everything that you were describing there.
Melissa: It’s really interesting, I think, when we get down to most people’s most negative thought. It’s like, “I’m not a good chiropractor.” What does that mean? Why is that scary? “I’m not a good mom.” The thoughts that come up in the night. What does that mean? What’s the threat of that? Whatever your most negative thoughts are in the day, or in general in your life, we can boil those down to a fear of being separate, right? That separation from oneness that we all experienced at one point, whether we remember it or not, in the womb, or before we came here in human form.
I loved that you mentioned the tribes, and I apologize, I don’t know exactly the community that this came from, but I had read at some point, in a lot of these underdeveloped countries, they’re so beyond, they’re so much better than we are here, that, when a baby is born, there’s a song that’s played in the community, and that song becomes that person’s song.
Anytime that person in the tribe maybe falls short, and isn’t following the values of the tribe, and slips out of line, they don’t discipline them. It makes me want to cry, I think this is so beautiful. They play their song, and it reminds them of who they are. I think that’s so beautiful, because I think that’s what your family and your connection does, your community, your tribe, your village, it reminds you of who you are.
We live in a world where it’s like, we have this hole, this lack, and companies do a really good job of targeting their marketing to fill that hole, and to fill that void, and so we just accumulate. This is where my chiropractic lens comes on. As a chiropractor, I didn’t create health in anyone. I just get rid of the stuff on the outside that they’ve accumulated, to get them back to who they are.
I think that’s the game here. It’s remembering who you are before the world told you who to be, because we’re perfect, we’re whole, we’re miracles, and we just forget. There’s nothing on the outside that’s going to change that. I had a huge eye-opening the first time we spent a chunk of time in Hawaii. I was on the beach at North Shore, literally watching the world surf competition.
We had a house and we were treating all the best surfers in the world, the athletes. They’re just coming through our home. Literally, in one of the most beautiful places. It was the two-week mark. I think you can go on vacation, and escape for a week, right? It’s bliss and you’re on vacation, and you forget about your problems or whatever. I hit this point of two weeks and I was like– Some negative thoughts were coming up, some crap.
I sat on the beach and I was like, “Holy shit, I came with me on vacation.” What I realized in that place was, I got to go fix who I am. I got to go be happier being with myself, because it doesn’t matter where you drop someone. You could put them in the most beautiful place. You could take someone who has this dream of having the best car, the hottest wife, the best house, and they could get all those things. If that lack is there, it’s not going to matter, right?
You just keep going for bigger and better. It was that moment on the North shore of Oahu that I was like, “I got some work to do, because if I can’t sit in this place and be blissed out, it’s me, I got to go work on me.” It was really eye-opening. I’m so glad I chose to go inward, because it helped me fill that void. It helped me figure that out.
I will say, you got to go sit through some stuff, [chuckles] but you can’t go around it. You got to go through it. What’s on the other side is so beautiful and so worth it. It doesn’t have to be as scary as I think we make it out to be.
Ari: I’m curious to hear a little more detail on how that journey was for you. What were some of the core things that you had to deal with internally to make that transition?
Melissa: Yes, I think from a zoomed out perspective, it’s, to keep it general, shadow work. It’s like all the thoughts that come up, all the things that we experience throughout our days. Maybe it’s feelings of anger, or sadness, or resentment, or envy. I think, again, as women, we’ve done such a “good job” of learning how to stuff it back down, how to distract ourselves out.
Be like, “It’s okay, I don’t want to feel angry, so I’m going to have a good coffee, or I’m going to go for a run, or I’m going to play on social media and have a dopamine hit and distract myself out.” It was creating the awareness that I was trying to push a beach ball down under the water, and it was just going to come up and hit me at some point where I didn’t know it.
Other cultures call these samskaras. It’s these emotions hang out in our body, and they’re always there. It just started for me as a willingness. If I felt sad, having a conversation with myself, why am I sad? What is this about? In the day-to-day, it looked just anchoring some time with myself in the morning in red light, keeping the lights dim, and staying in that subconscious dream-like state. Journaling, to me, I didn’t know how to journal for so long, that I avoided it.
I just started, I was like, “Let me just– Whatever’s coming up, let me literally write, and ask myself questions, and just have stream of thought, and get to know myself again.” What was really beautiful, I give the analogy of our feelings being like a toddler. If a toddler is sad or angry or upset, they don’t need us to fix it. They just need us to provide space, to be with them, to see them, to not reject them, to love them in any state.
I just sat with these emotions, and I learned so much about what I wanted, and what I didn’t want in my life anymore. Then, I could start to take steps to create that, or get rid of it. It was a lot easier than I assumed it to be, but that was the big thing. It was just spending time in the morning without blasting myself with blue and white light first, because that pulls you right into beta brainwaves, get stuff done, and just listening, and creating a conversation with myself.
Now, it’s what I do all the time. If I’m feeling any feelings that I don’t like, I’ll literally put my hand on my heart and I’m like, “What is it about this that isn’t working? What is it that I need right now?” You start to hear your voice again. It’s the most beautiful thing, because she’s got all the answers for me. [chuckles]
Self-care vs Self-connection
Ari: What if somebody is listening to this, and they’re hearing you describe this distinction between self-care and self-connection, and they are thinking, “Well, this is just a semantic thing. She’s created some– A different term for this, but fundamentally, I still need to meditate, and journal, and go to the gym. How is this any different?”
Melissa: It’s a good question. One, I think, one of the big differences is, for me, the amount of time that I feel I need to carve out for it. I do it in minutes rather than hours. I think the biggest thing is actually tuning into– It’s tuning into ourselves in a way that, I don’t know, I think I always thought of journaling as this beautiful poetic process had to be happening.
Maybe you’re someone listening to this is like, “All right, check done. I already have that conversation with myself in the journaling.” That’s a really good question. It’s helping me to boil it down, because it is very different. It’s tricky for me in this moment to verbalize how it’s different. It’s a matter of going inward instead of external. Self-care, in my mind, is external, and self-connection is internal.
It’s distracting ourselves out versus going into the fire and the flame. It’s feeling something and knowing their safeness, and allowing it to be felt, rather than avoiding it. It’s alchemizing our emotions. It’s sitting with them long enough to learn from them, and then moving in a way that helps transmute them. If I get really angry, I know I’m going to have a kick-ass workout, but first, I’m going to sit with it.
I’m going to sit with it, while it’s so uncomfortable and fiery and be like, “What is it here? What needs to change?” I think the difference is, is that the call and response creates a massive trajectory shift in your life that results in so much more calm, confidence, clarity, and alignment. You start to live a life that’s true to you, because you’re tapped into your desires again.
Ari: What are some of the biggest tools that you use to help women make this transition?
Melissa: One of them is this book club that I have. I think that books are the gateway to connection. I think they are one of the most powerful anchor tools for someone going from all the do-do-do into having a moment to just be, because I think if we can just– I encourage women to make two swaps, two swaps, give me two minutes on each, that’s it. That’ll make shifts and changes.
If you can do five minutes, that’s even better. If you can do 20, that’s great. One is changing your lighting in the morning at night, which we briefly talked about, because it helps you stay in a different brainwave state, which basically means, it helps you stay connected to your subconscious, and those under the water iceberg true stories. Then, the other one is swap your phone and swap scrolling with a book, because, literally from our brain when we desperately need and crave a break in our day, I’ve definitely done this subconsciously.
I go to grab my phone, because I’m like, “I just need, it’s a busy day. I just need to have a little chill moment, and grab your phone.” Your phone does the complete opposite to your brain. That’s why we actually never feel better. It completely overstimulates it. Whereas a book, literally, from a neurological perspective, when you move your eyes across a page, and then back to the beginning of the line, it’s a functional neurological exercise. It’s called pursuits and saccades.
I used to do this with the kids in my practice that were labeled ADHD. It literally activates part of your brain. It’s called the corpus callosum. Doesn’t really matter. What it means, is it balances out both hemispheres of your brain, and it gets you back into your body. That’s why if we pick up a book for two minutes versus picking up our phone, we’re in a completely different state after that two minutes.
Our nervous system is relaxed. We literally feel like we just had a little bit of a snip of a spa day, and then we can go back into our day. It also– I do a lot with this brain flow resource I have, where I call it brain syncing, or regulating your rhythm. We live so much of our day in go-go-go mode. That’s your beta brain waves. I talk about your beta brain waves like a person. She’s like a marathon runner.
What happens is, if we run our marathon runner from the time we wake up, until the time we go to bed, things aren’t going to feel so good. [chuckles] We need to take these water breaks, and we also need to let her warm up before her day, and we need to let her wind down after her day. I have these other resources on the importance of theta and alpha. They’re these beautiful brainwave states that we skip over first thing in the morning, because we think we’re not doing anything, and we’re not being effective.
When in reality, people meditate for years to try to achieve alpha. It’s a flow state, and we can literally train that in the morning. We’re already in it. If we just maximize that time for even five minutes by sitting, or journaling, or lighting a candle, it’s going to hardwire us for peak performance later in our day. It’s going to allow us to get stuff done, check off the to-do list, but then feel calm and regulated by the time we’re done.
I know that’s a lot of information. There’s a lot of tools, [chuckles] but just going back, I think the book in hand is one of the greatest tools for men and women, but especially for my ladies, pack one in your purse, have it with you all the time, because you will start to realize all the pockets of time you actually do have, you’re just spending it on your phone. You can get through a book a month by reading five pages a day.
Ari: This is, as I understand it, a book club, a women’s book club where you guys are having meetings and discussions about the books. Is that accurate?
Melissa: Yes. Each month, I pick a transformational nonfiction book. These are all self-empowerment, self-help. I don’t like that word. I literature of possibility books. Then, I actually bring in the author as well. I do a podcast with the author, and I invite the community in, they’re in the recording studio on Zoom or wherever. Then, they get to ask their questions for the last 15 minutes of the call.
Then, we’ll often pair it with an experience during the month. One month I did a journaling journey, and we journaled together in the morning, and reported back to each other how it was going. What challenges did you experience. It becomes this village and tribe that we’re told that we need, but maybe we don’t have. Maybe we’ve got girlfriends, but maybe we don’t have these kinds of girlfriends in our lives. It’s just this beautiful way to create that collaboration between women who want to grow and expand, and evolve and change.
Ari: There is a– I love what you just said, and there’s a concept. It was coined by Daniel Lieberman, who is an evolutionary biologist from Harvard. I think he’s the head of the evolutionary biology department there. He wrote a phenomenal book. He’s written a few great books, a phenomenal book maybe about 10 years ago called The Story of the Human Body.
There’s a lot of great stuff in the book. One of them is pointing out in a very compelling way that most of the modern chronic disease burden in us westernized humans living in developed countries, are diseases of civilization, or diseases of evolutionary mismatch. They are diseases driven by the mismatch between our biological design, and our modern environment and way of life. He coins another concept in the book that is a really important concept in my view, and rarely gets talked about, and it’s called dysevolution.
The idea of this concept of dysevolution, if you think of dysfunction or dysregulation, dysevolution, D-Y-S is, essentially, it is a phenomenon where you have a problem, it could be a health problem, it could be a problem of human happiness, that is the result of a mismatch between our biological design, and our modern environment and way of life, and you develop a solution for it, but the solution that you develop for it, doesn’t actually address the underlying root causes of that problem, but it does accomplish some palliative effect, some ability to reduce the suffering, or the symptoms associated with it.
Let’s imagine that I have, to paint this picture in a simple way, let’s imagine that I sit down in a chair for most of my day, day after day, for many, many years or decades, and as a result of this, I develop extremely weak legs, where it’s difficult for me to get up and down from the ground, it’s difficult for me to walk up a flight of stairs, or walk up a hill and so on.
Someone says to me, “Well, I’ve got the perfect solution for you. Here are these crutches, or here is this electric wheelchair that will make it so much easier for you to get around.” Right? Maybe it does, right? It does accomplish, “Oh, wow, this is really comfortable, and it’s so much easier. I don’t have to use my legs anymore. My legs aren’t being strained.” The problem is those kinds of solutions that didn’t address the underlying root causes, actually paradoxically, not only do they not solve the problem, but they actually, over the long term, promote a worsening of the problem, not only for that individual, but for subsequent generations as well.
This problem, if you understand this concept, this concept is pervasive all across modern society, and especially in our current medical paradigm that focuses on drug solutions to health problems, rather than addressing the underlying causes, which, as I just said, most of our chronic disease burden is driven by this mismatch, evolutionary mismatch. If you don’t solve the problem at that level, you are sort of by definition creating a dysevolutionary trajectory, where we are actually worsening this problem for ourselves, and subsequent generations.
What I like about the frame that you’ve presented here, and then the approach that you’re taking, is that it is not dysevolutionary. It’s actually correcting, it’s working to correct some of the underlying root causes of these problems that modern humans, modern women are experiencing by doing something that directly fosters human connection and tribe.
Melissa: Yes, I’m glad you see it that way, because that’s exactly how big it is for me in my mind. I’m here– My calling is as a cycle breaker. I think a lot of us know that to be true for ourselves. I think that’s why we’re out here being who we’re being. I think, as women and as men today, we sit in a really interesting spot, because our dads, our moms, maybe inspired us, and taught us certain things.
Then, just like they did from their generations before them, you always want to do better for your kids. I’ll speak for the women. I know that the men have their challenges too. I think for a lot of us women, it’s like we were empowered and inspired that we could do anything. I still see this in quotes, on socials and stuff today. It’s like, it’s so important for me to role model for my daughter that she can do anything.
I see that and I’m like, “No”. That she can be anyone. That it’s– I think a lot of us are so stuck in this cycle of doing, because it’s what we learned, and what we watched. We’re in it and we’re like, “This sucks. This isn’t what I thought it was. I thought I was going to be empowered in this state of, I can go out there and do anything. I can have the career. I can have the family. It’s too much.”
I think it’s our job as women today to role model for our daughters, the beingness, right? One of the biggest things that I want my daughter to take away from our time together is to learn how to take care of her body and soul by watching me take care of mine. I shared something on Instagram Stories this morning, I come out here every morning and I sit, I call this my sit spot right behind me. I have a red light on, and I’m just in quiet, or I’m stretching, or I’m playing. She’s eight years old, and she asks me every night when I’m tucking her in to wake her up at 5.30 with me.
She can– We call it meditate, but it looks a lot of things. This morning we were trying to figure out how to play Chinese jump rope with threads and string.
Ari: [laughs]
Melissa: We’re just being. We are just being before the day starts. When I see her do that, I’m like, “God, if that’s the only thing that I pass down to her, I will feel like I did the greatest service to the next generation.”
Ari: You just made me think of something. It’s one of the interesting things that, I’m a parent as well. I have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old. I think one of the things that parents have, I think probably in a lot of countries, maybe most in– Actually, now that I think about, China may be beating us in this regard, but it’s very strong in the United States is everybody wants their child to be exceptional.
Everybody wants their child to be the best at something, or to be ahead of everybody else. There’s this tendency, and even since the time you and I were kids, compared to now, there’s this tendency to get kids knowing their letters at an earlier age than ever before, and reading earlier than ever before. To be one or two grade levels more advanced than their peers.
Of course, there’s a beautiful thing behind this, too. It’s like, “It’s, I love you. I want you to be successful in the world. I want to help you have a good life.” At the same time, there’s another element to it, which is putting so much pressure on the kid to be more, to do more. The underlying message that’s being communicated in that is, what you are is not enough, you need to be better than you are, you need to be better than everybody else.
Just what if the child isn’t exceptional at something? What if they– Even, very famous, we know famous stories of Albert Einstein doing very poorly in math, or English, or one of his classes– Flunking out of one of his classes. Michael Jordan, famously, didn’t make his high school basketball team. There’s like– What if we just ease up a little bit [chuckles] with all of that pressure on our kids to be the best, or to be more, and be exceptional in so many things? What if it needs to be counterbalanced with a communicating like you are enough, you are loved as you are?
Melissa: Yes, it’s so beautiful. I think we also need to open up our viewpoint of what someone can be exceptional at. Speaking for us adults, we are just little children in bigger bodies. I read somewhere, if you want to know what you’re destined to step into, what is your calling, watch a child play, or ask yourself, what did you do between the ages of three and five?
That will give you an indicator into what field you would– Again, we’re putting the mark on what work should we do. Every child is exceptional. We’re just looking at the wrong measurements. If you see a kid playing with Legos, I think a lot of people don’t value how important play is both for children, and as an adult. We don’t– It’s like we’re looking at test scores and academics, and we’re putting kids into specialized sports at the age of four, so that they’re good at five, so that when they’re six, they’re good, so that they can make it into the middle school team, and the high school team.
I watched before we had children, I had kids in my practice that were 8, 9, 10 years old with overuse injuries, because they’re specializing in a sport too young. I’ve got to be honest, I’m experimenting with our kids, and I don’t know where it’ll turn out, but I love neurology. I love functional neurology. It’s one of my favorite things to study, and just understanding the human body and how it works.
I’m like, “I just want my kids to move and play, and climb trees, and take risks,” because I think then when they go into a sport, they’re going to have all that foundation, and who knows? I might have kids that can’t get on any team because of that. My kids are very healthy. They are very natural learners. They skateboard, they play soccer, they rock climb, they snowboard, they do everything. I think that’s really important. I think we don’t put enough value on play, and we don’t put enough value on emotional IQ, right?
Can you regulate? Because that’s really more the marker for success later in life. Can you regulate yourself? Can you adapt? Because you could put someone in a room who can be the valedictorian, but maybe can’t have a conversation with anyone. What does that serve in the real world? Great, you were first chair violin, you got a 5.0, because you were in all honors classes.
Maybe when you go to sit for an interview, you don’t have the communication skills, or you can’t thrive in adaptive situations. I think we just need to broaden the options for what we can be exceptional in.
Getting out of overwhelm
Ari: Yes, I love that. What– If someone is in this state of overwhelm, and just has this endless to-do list that they feel they’re drowning in all the stuff they have to do every day, and, “Well, I don’t have time to join a book club, and start doing these different tools and journaling and all that stuff.” How would you sort of get that person to start thinking differently about managing their time, managing their day?
Melissa: Yes, that’s a great question. There’s a really good walkthrough exercise that maybe isn’t so fun, but I think it’s really important. If someone genuinely feels that way, as long as they’re not just using that as an excuse to stay stuck, right? Because I think people will and do that. For someone who legitimately feels that way, take two, three days and write down everything that you do.
I know that’s a lot to ask for someone that’s doing it all. Then, once you have that list, or maybe just create an awareness as you’re going through your day, what can someone else do that you don’t have to do? This might mean having to be really vulnerable and ask for help, which is really hard for people, but to maybe start to practice, or what can you hire out?
Maybe even if you’re not in a position to spend a lot of money, can you get creative? I don’t know, in our neighborhood, we have a neighborhood chat on WhatsApp. There’s a lot of 14, 15-year-olds just looking to make some extra cash. Could you pay a teenager to maybe help fold your laundry, or do your dishes, or free you up from the things that anybody can do? This is big for me as a mom.
If I can pay someone to fold my laundry, so that I can fully be with my 14, 12 and 8-year-old when they’re home from school, that’s really, really important to me. That’s very valuable. I think we start to see what things can we start to circle, and maybe you don’t have a solution yet, but at least then, it becomes your lens. It’s like anything we focus on, we’re going to change and shift.
Stick that paper up on your fridge. What are the things you want to get rid of? What are the things that anyone can do if you can figure out how to pay them? Look at it every day. Probably, the solution is going to start to come. Even if it’s two-minute, five-minute pockets that you gain, that’s a huge win.
Ari: Dr. Sonners, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think the work that you’re doing is wonderful. I want to ask you if there’s any last thing or two that you want to leave people with?
Melissa: Yes, thank you. I think in the age of information, podcasts– I have a podcast, you have a podcast. Obviously, I’m a huge fan of podcasts. Even books, right? In the age of the ability to access information at any time, just make sure that as you’re listening to everyone else’s voice, to make time and space for your own. You’re the most important guide in your life, you are your greatest teacher, you’ve just got to get tapped back into that. Always create that space to listen to your own self.
Ari: Beautiful. Where should people reach out to you if they want to work with you, follow you, join your club? Let people know whatever they need to know.
Melissa: Okay, my website is drmelissasonners.com. D-R, and then my first and last name.com. There’s a tab “Resources” on there. It’s got a ton of free resources. Connection Code is one that I help walk you through figuring out what is it that you want and desire again, to fill these two-minute pockets with something that actually connects you.
I’ve got a book coming out with Hay House next spring, also called The Connection Code. I’ve got a podcast called Be Inspired Mama. It’s on YouTube as well. Then, I’m always playing on the Instagram, showing the behind the scenes of our life on Be Inspired Mama as well.
Ari: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Dr. Sonners. I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you for the work that you do.
Melissa: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I’ve loved this conversation.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro
00:24 – Guest Intro
02:05 – Dr. Sonner’s story
05:45 – Why self-care is problematic
09:38 – The impact of busyness
26:33 – The impact of negative thoughts
36:57 – Self-care vs Self-connection
56:23 – Getting out of overwhelm
Links
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