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Welcome to The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast Season 1! We’ve created this podcast as a free resource to accompany our upcoming book, The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook: A DIY Guide to Living Well with Chronic Illness.
Episode #11: Step 5: In-Depth with Jason Handler, L.Ac is an episode about managing stress with a board-certified Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicinal Herbalist. Jason discusses his approach to managing stress with a very unique approach of seeing it as simply the raw material for a journey towards reaching our greatest potential. Jason chats with us about his philosophy of “cultivating a daily practice,” approaching wellness as an investigation, and how mindset affects biology. We also get into a surprising discussion about where Jason starts when teaching his patients to manage stress, as well as his tips for managing the stress of chronic illness itself. This is a deep episode with a deep guy!
If you want to go deeper, take a look at the “What Can You Do to Manage Your Stress” section in Chapter 5. This section touches on many of the approaches raised by Jason during our discussion, specifically the steps of “practice” and “reframe.”
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Show Notes:
- 0:00 Intro
- 1:59 Introducing Jason
- 2:54 Jason’s experience with chronic illness
- Collapse of his health first year after college
- Eventually met a healer, who became his teacher, and told him, “Patients transform into students. Students transform into teachers,” which lead to his career.
- 6:40 The unique perspective illness at a young age imparts
- Jason sees it as humbling and an opportunity to understand your relationship to suffering.
- 8:26 Jason explains his philosophy of “cultivating a daily practice”
- Qigong
- Importance of repetition
- 12:10 Jason discusses keeping things simple and focusing on just starting
- 12:42 Jason’s definition of self-care and why it’s important
- He approaches it as an investigation
- 14:16 Approaching wellness without a sense of desperation
- 15:30 How our mindsets affect our biology
- 16:53 Jason talks about the Nanjing (a classical Chinese medical text) and it’s steps toward treating illness
- Intention
- Cultivation
- Technique
- Diagnosis
- 17:40 Jason’s unique approach to teaching beginner’s to manage stress
- Define the stress
- “Mindcare” (Jason’s term for focusing on the ideal frame of mind and physical feelings)
- Awareness of breath
- 20:38 Importance of placing parameters on our mind
- Talking back to our thoughts with “yes” or “no”
- Thought training
- 24:02 Mickey shares the tips Jason gave to her at her sickest point
- Concentrate on lymph flow
- Qigong standing meditation
- 24:48 Jason shares his transformative experience with “stance training”
- Stillness in the body helps create stillness in the mind.
- 26:47 Tips for managing the stress of chronic illness itself
- Seek support from inspiring people
- Eat nutrient-dense foods
- Focus on gratitude
- Frame the experience as an opportunity for growth
- 30:00 Angie shares how the depths of illness turned out to be one of the most incredible periods of personal growth she’s experienced
- 31:00 Jason discusses commitment to small steps
- 32:15 Staying in touch with Jason
- 33:08 Outro
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The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast is a complimentary resource to our forthcoming book, The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook: A DIY Guide to Living Well with Chronic Illness. Support us in our mission to revolutionize how autoimmune disease is viewed and treated by pre-ordering your copy today!
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Check out the previous episode, Episode #10: Step 5: Breathe – Our Stories, and the next episode, Episode #12: Step 6: Move – Our Stories. For the full podcast archive, click here.
3 comments
[…] out the previous episode, Episode #11: Jason Handler, Lac. on Stress Management, and the next episode, Episode #13: Noelle Tarr, NTP on Autoimmune-Friendly Movement. For the full […]
I am sure you have people of all ages listneing to your podcasts. It’s really important to keep them all in mind and to remind your speakers — and perhaps yourselves? — not to make assumptions about people’s mindsets based on age. I got angry (not so helpful when listening to a podcast on stress management, I’m aware) to hear your speaker’s condescension and dismissive attitude toward older people. He said, essentially: Old people are rigid and stuck in their ways.
Please, please, please don’t permit this kind of ageism to creep into your work. It’s so important for people of all ages to hear.
I would welome a reply from you so that I know you understand my concern. Please DON’T tell me I misunderstood him, or that it was only his personal experience. By the time he says that in the podcast he wasd discussing his work as a &practitioner.&
My suggestion to you is to give your guests a heads-up that there will be no “isms” tolerated on your pocasts, whether that is sexism, racism, ageism, etc.
If there is a point to be made that a flexible mindset is helpful, that is fair enough. Just don’t link it to a particular set of people.
Hi Kathleen! I’m sorry you took offense at what Jason talked about here, but we can’t possibly police our guests at this level. Everyone has their own experience and framework they are approaching healing, and while we do make an effort to have conversations that are not offensive to our audience, since everyone has a different definition of what that is, we can’t make that work in practice. Thanks for understanding and we wish you well.