7 Rituals for Self-Care Success with Dr. Dwight Chapin

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I have Dr. Dwight Chapin, who is a trusted expert on human performance and injury prevention as an award winning chiropractor, co-owner of a large multidisciplinary wellness clinic. In this episode, we talk about Dwight's book, Take Good Care, which is about seven rituals for self-care success. Dwight shares how to gradually build a ritual so it becomes common practice and that we have incredible power by stacking healthy habits.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Prioritize sleep
• Consume healthy fuel
• Metabolic health
• Quality movement
• Build muscle
• Nurture mental fitness
• Play with purpose
• Habits versus rituals 
• Stress awareness

Free access to supportive resources are available on the book website www.7wellnessrituals.com

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ABOUT GUEST:
Dr. Dwight Chapin, B.Sc(H), D.C., is a trusted expert on human performance and injury prevention as an award-winning chiropractor, co-owner of a large multi-disciplinary wellness clinic, Team Chiropractor for the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, and onsite clinician for The Globe and Mail.
Dr. Chapin has made it his life’s mission to care for, educate, and inspire others in their journey toward optimal health. In his first book, Take Good Care: 7 Wellness Rituals for Health, Strength & Hope, he brings the science of preventative medicine to life.

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.7wellnessrituals.com/
Instagram: @7wellnessrituals
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-dwight-chapin-b5569a8/
Twitter: @DC_TakeGoodCare

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

WORK WITH CHRISTA:
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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:26] Christa Biegler: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:00:45] Christa Biegler: Today on The Less Dressed Life, I have Dr. Dwight Chapin, who is a trusted expert on human performance and injury prevention as an award winning chiropractor, co owner of a large multidisciplinary wellness clinic. And he's the team chiropractor for the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts, and the on site clinician for the Globe and Mail.

[00:01:08] Christa Biegler: He's made it his life's mission to care for, educate, and inspire others in their journeys toward optimal health in his first Book take good care, seven wellness rituals for health, strength, and hope. He brings the science of preventative medicine to life. And I'm going to add with story. So we're gonna talk a little bit about those stories and try to make them kind of fun and cool and, and whatnot.

[00:01:27] Christa Biegler: So welcome Dr. Chapin. 

[00:01:29] Dwight Chapin: Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you. 

[00:01:31] Christa Biegler: Yeah. So when I was opening up all of this today and looking at how your chiropractor, I was just sharing offline, anything that falls under the triad, I don't know if I made this up or if I found this somewhere, but I think that health is often in a few different angles.

[00:01:46] Christa Biegler: And I think there's a structural component and an emotional and mental component and a nutritional component. And so any of those things are fair game here, but here you are a structural Jen, that's what we would stereotype you to right clinician kind of getting into something that doesn't necessarily feel naturally like your normal, normal thing, right? It kind of feels more lifestyle. So maybe it is structural, right? Because it's the structure of lifestyle, but it's a little bit different. So why don't you tell us about how you got interested in this? Because what it feels like it feels like this book is a compilation of like, interesting people that you interview.

[00:02:22] Christa Biegler: It feels like a book version kind of a podcast. 

[00:02:26] Dwight Chapin: Okay. So great start because this is where a lot of people, come to this topic and they see my background as a chiropractor and there's immediately a question mark. And so where I'd like to begin is as a musculoskeletal expert, like posture tells the truth.

[00:02:39] Dwight Chapin: There's just no hiding from. And I have this unique vantage point to observe the health impact of daily lifestyle choices and routines. And over the course of my career, I've had the opportunity to care for leaders and in a variety of different industries and media, sports, entertainment, health care, education, and I find that leaders are fall into one of two buckets.

[00:03:02] Dwight Chapin: They're those that just go all out and often sacrifice their own personal well being or their self care practices in pursuit of a goal and pay a dear price for that. And they'll end up in my office looking for me to fix something that the physical or the mental stress often manifests as back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, headaches, and those are things that fall into my scope of practice.

[00:03:25] Dwight Chapin: And then the other group are those that pursue. excellence and pursue a goal, and are able to maintain their commitment to health and well being and not just for themselves, but also their teams and those within their communities. And those are the people that in my 25 years of practice that have just always fascinated me.

[00:03:43] Dwight Chapin: And in supporting their musculoskeletal health, I've had the opportunity to study their practices and those are the folks, those are the stories that I wanted to focus on in this book to bring the evidence to life and show people better is not just possible, but it's within their grasp. 

[00:03:59] Christa Biegler: And this is how it's actually happening.

[00:04:00] Christa Biegler: You know, this reminds me of, I often say, I love common denominators and it feels like you like pattern recognition as well. 

[00:04:07] Dwight Chapin: So I do, 

[00:04:08] Christa Biegler: Looking at these high performance, like how come they get better and they stay better. And then you start asking them questions about their life. And you came up with, I guess you distilled this, right?

[00:04:19] Christa Biegler: Cause there's a lot of overlap in maybe, Points or facets of maybe what these people did, right? So you kind of distilled this down to what you called seven rituals. Is that correct? 

[00:04:29] Dwight Chapin: Yeah. So to bring the evidence to life, I wanted to tell these powerful stories of these individuals.

[00:04:35] Dwight Chapin: And, I just, in practice that works, right. When you can get a patient to understand a story, it's motivating and it shows them that, even top performers can sometimes struggle in the creation of their formula. And an approach to self care. It's not a set it and forget it strategy. You have to constantly be nurturing that approach.

[00:04:54] Dwight Chapin: So as I started to bring together this group of individuals, I call them mentors in the book, and they started interviewing and working with the mentors and studying their lifestyle practices. There are 21 featured in the book and I got to about the sixth individual and I started to recognize those patterns and within the book there are senior executives who are in their mid to late 70s and there are Olympians that are in their mid to late 20s and there was a common ground to their excellence and that common ground is what I refer to as the seven wellness rituals.

[00:05:25] Dwight Chapin: So we can talk about those if you'd like, but each of them incorporates those seven rituals within their formula. And they all do so differently, which is what I found fascinating. So while they're all present in their formula, there are times in their lives, where they'll lean a little harder in one direction more so than another.

[00:05:43] Dwight Chapin: And so that unique approach is I think one of the real cool features that came out of this research. 

[00:05:48] Christa Biegler: Well, let's walk through those rituals and I'll take notes and reiterate things, but if possible, if you can kind of incorporate some of their stories as we go to help us remember their rituals, it would be so appreciated.

[00:05:59] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, sure. So the first one is prioritize sleep, rest and recovery. And if we come back to those two leaders, the leader that just pushes hard and goes until they collapse perhaps not respecting sleep like we need to sleep, we tap into our healing potential and support our cellular repair and one of the individuals that I met with was Jim Tree Living and Jim is the owner of Boston Pizza and he's built his empire around that restaurant franchise and now has net assets over a billion dollars and he's involved in all kinds of different things. In an early part of his career he pushed literally to the point of collapse and it almost cost him his life and he had to take a step back take a leave and recalibrate.

[00:06:44] Dwight Chapin: And his recalibration was found in prioritizing the need for sleep and that came out of a respect for the biological power that he could tap into in sleep. And so people that struggle with sleep and roughly a third of us aren't getting enough sleep and somewhere between 50 and don't get quality, high quality sleep and that puts us on a fast track to chronic disease and burnout.

[00:07:08] Dwight Chapin: And so when we tap into sleep and we nurture that mind and allow our bodies to recalibrate and support our immune function and help our brain detoxify as we flush out some of the memory impairing proteins that accumulate in the brain. As we move through our day we just can tap into a healing potential.

[00:07:27] Dwight Chapin: So In that first ritual, it's really looking at both length and quality of sleep and it's helping individuals form a strategy around a pre sleep ritual. I find a lot of people will push hard all day and then look to sleep as almost an inconvenience, they can, all right, well now I will, I'll flip the switch and their head hits the pillow and they struggle to turn off their mind or their to do list and, That can start a downward spiral.

[00:07:54] Dwight Chapin: So insufficient sleep syndrome is linked to all kinds of chronic health problems. 

[00:08:00] Christa Biegler: I would agree with you that I have to mathematically calculate sleep with very brilliant people much more often than I would expect to because we don't always, we might know something, but we don't always do it.

[00:08:11] Christa Biegler: What would you say to that 50 to 70% of people who aren't getting good quality sleep and they want to, but they are struggling. I know that's an entire book in itself, but if you can try to offer a little bit of support for those people for, and maybe a sentence or two then what would you say to them?

[00:08:26] Christa Biegler: They want to get sleep, but they're struggling. 

[00:08:28] Dwight Chapin: Sure. One of the experts in the book is Dr. Robin Hanley DeFoch, and she's a stress resiliency expert and a bestselling author and when we're discussing sleep, and I was working with her, she said, the last thing we want to do is create more anxiety around the need for sleep and how important it is when people are struggling to sleep.

[00:08:44] Dwight Chapin: And so what she does is she moves to sleep 60 minutes before she wants to be asleep, she starts her ritual and winding down. She uses light to her advantage. She uploads all of her to dos in her journal, and then she'll do a calming activity. And one of the things that I really like about her approach is that she looks to get the average amount of sleep that she needs, which is about eight hours a night.

[00:09:07] Dwight Chapin: And she tries to achieve that average in three day windows. So if life goes sideways one day with a busy day in her practice or with needs of her kids or something, she doesn't get anxious about it. She just placed a three day average. And by locking in her pre bed ritual to wind her nervous system down, she's able to fall into sleep easier.

[00:09:27] Dwight Chapin: And that ritual for her involves, as I said, dimming lights. She uses a headspace app and does a sleep story. And just, is selected with who she's spending her time with in that 

[00:09:37] Dwight Chapin: hour. 

[00:09:38] Christa Biegler: I think that's reasonable stuff that anyone could leverage. 

[00:09:42] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:09:43] Christa Biegler: What's the next ritual? 

[00:09:45] Dwight Chapin: The ritual to falls right into your expertise, and that's consume healthy fuel.

[00:09:49] Dwight Chapin: And that's really looking at what is our relationship with food? What I was really struck with and working with these individuals is they all look to food and their diet as a strategic therapeutic tool. And that has a direct influence on health and performance, and not one of these individuals actively dieted.

[00:10:10] Dwight Chapin: Some have a very healthy relationship with food. Some do not. Some have to really work hard at the choices that they do make, but the ritual is really centered around, all right, how can we minimize chronic inflammation in our body and gain access to the body's healing potential through making healthy choices in our diet and the beverages that we consume.

[00:10:31] Christa Biegler: You said they all focused on food, but is it correct to say that they all had a little bit different approach or where their common denominator.

[00:10:39] Dwight Chapin: Was using food as a therapeutic tool. And so they all would if they were on this call with us, they don't talk about how they don't deprive themselves, how they enjoy food as a part of celebration of life. And I think that's a really important strategy, but at the same time, the choices that they make in the discipline that they bring to the food that they eat and when they eat there definitely was a common denominator there.

[00:11:04] Dwight Chapin: And that was that. Their performance and their long term health always had a priority over the immediate gratification of a snack or a cheat. And so they kept coming back to that choice point with their performance being the leading driver. 

[00:11:21] Christa Biegler: All right. What's the next one? I think that could also be a whole topic on its own, right, which is okay and I don't need to get into it, but what I appreciated about that was that in 21 people, you saw a good sampling of the population that a lot of people struggle with relationship to food, but they still considered it an important piece. 

[00:11:37] Christa Biegler: And what I appreciate for sure, not being depriving with food because I think it becomes more of an emotional control thing, except, I mean, that's all food relationship stuff.

[00:11:47] Christa Biegler: I think there's a lot of fear around food that I don't subscribe to more of like a, how do you tolerate this food? It is possible. And so I appreciate you mentioning that. All right. 

[00:11:58] Dwight Chapin: Yes. Ritual three looks at fighting for your waistline and it's all about energy management and metabolic health.

[00:12:05] Dwight Chapin: We want to look good, we want to feel good, and we're spending billions of dollars on weight loss strategy and nutritional health, and in looking at the research and working with these individuals, it's clear that we all have very unique needs in our diet and in the management of our health and weight, and one of the dieticians that was consulting with me on the book, and also one of the mentors in the book is Jennifer Zygo, and Jennifer's the dietician for the Toronto Raptors, As well as the Canadian Olympic team in gymnastics, Canada, and I just love her unique approach.

[00:12:38] Dwight Chapin: She just sits with all of her athletes and begins with understanding what it is they need out of their nutritional health. And we're looking at dietary choices and resources that are available and cultural background and emotional state and medical history and The differences in their metabolic health, their gut microbiome, their genetic predisposition, all these factors come into play in her dietary recommendations to help people manage and achieve a healthy, healthy weight.

[00:13:06] Dwight Chapin: And one of the struggles that I see in practice is that majority of adults are consuming ultra processed foods and living sedentary lifestyles. And that is a deadly combination. And as long as we continue to make those choices, then we're putting ourselves at significant risk. And so the choices that we are making and not just the foods we're eating, but when we're eating them.

[00:13:30] Dwight Chapin: And how that influences our overall emotional health and mental health has a huge overplay in weight management. 

[00:13:38] Christa Biegler: Would you say that ritual two and three feel like there's a lot of overlap or what do you think are some of the key differentiators there? 

[00:13:46] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, ritual two, we're really looking at actual choices and timing of meals, whereas in ritual three, it's trying to develop an understanding of how the body uses energy.

[00:13:57] Dwight Chapin: How can we get more through our lifestyle choices and practices? How can we influence the way in which body stores energy, uses energy and the impact that has on weight? 

[00:14:09] Christa Biegler: Would you include, is this where you would fit in muscle building, et cetera, or is that in a different ritual?

[00:14:18] Dwight Chapin: That falls a little bit later. Yeah. 

[00:14:19] Christa Biegler: Okay. 

[00:14:20] Christa Biegler: What would you say to people since I feel like this ritual, you could get pushed back from some people. So if you use, you know, the words fighting for your waistline, which this is used, for sure from longevity experts, they talk about this. But then there's a whole different camp of people, usually when there's food relationship issues.

[00:14:38] Christa Biegler: Sometimes there's a big overlap on that. And there's the whole health at every size camp. So what would you offer to those people who feel like they want to push back about this ritual? 

[00:14:47] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, this is the topic that really gets people's attention. And. It's an important conversation, so I like to start there.

[00:14:55] Dwight Chapin: If we're looking at weight management, I'm not one that subscribes to chasing a number on a scale. When I talk about fight for your waistline, in my mind, that fight is, we're up against evolutionary forces that made humans particularly good at storing fat as a great resource to energy for a rainy day down the road.

[00:15:19] Dwight Chapin: And so when we're looking at lifestyle choices and trying to influence the quality, the energy that we have access to, to be able to be all we need to be and want to be in the world, what choices are we making that will help influence that access to that energy and reduce risk of chronic disease? And that's where I think the conversation around weight management begins.

[00:15:39] Dwight Chapin: And in my mind, the fight is that fight against the evolutionary forces. It's not to chase some magazine style waistline. 

[00:15:47] Christa Biegler: I think that was a good distinction to discuss. All right.

[00:15:51] Christa Biegler: Every one of these is like a whole big topic, right? But what's the fourth ritual that you found from these mentors?

[00:15:57] Dwight Chapin: So the fourth ritual is move to stay young. And this is all about your daily routines and how we bring movement to your day when we're practicing by bringing a variety of different movements to our day and challenging our range of motion, challenging our strength, our balance, our coordination, then not only do we improve the quality of our movement, but we also change how the body ages.

[00:16:20] Dwight Chapin: So, on average, we're spending. A little less than 10 hours. In Canada, the average is 9. 6 hours a day behind a screen, and if we were to take one of those hours and replace it with a moderate walk, we could reduce all cause mortality by as much as 30% and all major depression by as much as 26%. So in the strategy of the ritual of move to stay young, the practice is really focused on two things.

[00:16:46] Dwight Chapin: One, how can we break up periods of sitting? I tell my patients within every hour, you got to get up and just change the way you're loading your body. It can be a stand to a washroom break, or it can be simply a stand in a quarter squat or a high knee or a bend. Just something to engage your core muscles and change the loaded posture of sitting.

[00:17:06] Dwight Chapin: So move every hour. And then the second ritual, or goal within this practice is to try to accumulate up to 150 minutes of moderate activity every week. Now that is a lot for some people. And so just start by bringing movement to the day by breaking up periods of sitting is a great place to start.

[00:17:26] Dwight Chapin: And then gradually increasing in 10 minute increments, trying to get your heart rate elevated. And when we do, we significantly reduce the risk of chronic disease. 

[00:17:37] Christa Biegler: So you are a structural expert. You see how people are handling things. So I have some questions about movement.

[00:17:43] Christa Biegler: Let's say people start lifting heavy weights, and then they start to get, all kinds of pain, I guess I'm kind of wondering about, let's talk about maybe quality movement. You brought up. Quality movement, and I think sometimes for me, like you work in structure, I work in nutrition, that kind of, you know, we both I'm sure overlap into a lot of other areas.

[00:18:05] Christa Biegler: And so maybe our areas don't feel foreign to us. But neither, and I don't know, maybe you consider yourself a movement expert as well, but I think sometimes people like what you said was really simple, but when we're talking about quality movement and beyond that, what would you maybe offer for that as well?

[00:18:21] Christa Biegler: I feel like this can get complicated. Like, even when I come up with, standing, creating, like, these things take some effort and work for people to get done, right? I think that they do. They do. 

[00:18:30] Dwight Chapin: They do. And so if we step back from this ritual just for a second and I think one of the important distinctions that I try to bring out in this book is the whole idea that there's a difference between healthy habits and wellness rituals.

[00:18:43] Dwight Chapin: Like, habits are regular settled tendencies, right? And a tendency that we tap into when we've got enough time, isn't going to be enough to command And change biology, whereas when we begin to stack healthy choices, one of those being, I'm just going to move more in my day, I'm going to look for opportunities to move like the needle really starts to shift sleep quality improves energy improves the quality of movement that you were just asking about also improves.

[00:19:11] Dwight Chapin: So what does that mean? Well, that means like you're moving your two year old out of the backseat of the car in and out of their car seat is different. The way you're loading or unloading groceries is different. The way you feel when you get out of bed is different. So I encourage all my patients to just look for opportunities to just get a little bit more creative.

[00:19:30] Dwight Chapin: I'm 50 years old. I start every day now with a movement practice, and it's about depending on how I feel in the morning. It's 5 to 7 minutes long, and that's just how I feel. I start the day and that gets my body moving better, but it's also me investing in my self care at the beginning of my day. That sort of gives me a little bit of a mojo to get going in the day.

[00:19:48] Dwight Chapin: I feel like. Okay, I'm ready for the day. So it's just looking for opportunities to practice movement. And we are not going to be able to move well as we age, if we're not practicing. And that, that's a concept that's really foreign to a lot of people. They take their movement for granted until all of a sudden it's not there.

[00:20:10] Dwight Chapin: And I had a gentleman in the clinic two days ago, and he's 45 years old. He's been sedentary for most of the winter as the spring came and he started golfing and getting active in the backyard. He's hurt his back. And now he's two days into his treatment and frustrated with his inability to move.

[00:20:31] Dwight Chapin: Well, He's got weeks of rehab coming his way, and he just wasn't aware of how gradually he was losing his functional range of motion. It was just not on his radar and the lack of mobility was really in his mind, just sort of part of the aging process. 

[00:20:46] Christa Biegler: I mean it happens when you're not using, these functional movements, your lack of ability or your muscle starts to atrophy in as little as a couple of days, right?

[00:20:55] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, absolutely. And that goes right into the next wellness ritual, and that's to protect your strength. And this is another one that really catches patients off guard and our muscle strength builds until we're about the age of 30 years old, at which point it starts to decline. And that rate of decline is anywhere between five and 8% per decade.

[00:21:15] Dwight Chapin: It's a little faster, a little slower in some cases, depending on the individual. loss of muscle strength and function that's a part of aging, which is called sarcopenia, it doesn't have to be the way it is. We have some control over it. The research is showing us that it's not necessarily an inevitable consequence of aging.

[00:21:36] Dwight Chapin: It has more to do with disuse and as we're not using our body, then there are other biological ripple effects that come from that. So by investing, again, a bit of time in some resistance training, really light movements, it doesn't have to be a gym membership. It doesn't have to be heavy weightlifting, it could be body weight.

[00:21:56] Dwight Chapin: Just simple movements where you're challenging your physical strength. Not only does movement quality again improve, but the research shows us that we also can improve sleep, energy, weight management, the amount of visceral fat we have, our insulin sensitivity improves, our brain health, bone health, cognitive function all improve.

[00:22:15] Dwight Chapin: And this is with a really small investment of time. 15, 20 minutes, twice a week with some light weights and a yoga mat, you can really hold off some of the lots of strength that too. Many people do experience as they age. 

[00:22:28] Christa Biegler: You know, I've heard some people I respect say that variety is the enemy of a beginner in training.

[00:22:36] Christa Biegler: And I would wonder if you have any comment about that and, or what I was trying to say earlier, and I think people have this issue in any time they're trying to create a new ritual or a new thing, or they want to change their diet. They're like, they struggle with what's inside themselves. So they kind of look for resources outside of themselves, which is okay.

[00:22:54] Christa Biegler: But what I'd like you to offer is, can you offer some examples of literally here's what you could do today to get started? Like just, this is what you could do. That would be really smart. 

[00:23:07] Dwight Chapin: Right. so thank you for that because I'll see people that will come into the office that go from zero to 100 in a two week span.

[00:23:13] Dwight Chapin: Yeah. And then they end up, right, then they're injured, right? And not only are they now injured and in pain, but now they're even more frustrated in their bodies and ability to move. And that can start a mental health downward spiral that's... Really toxic. 

[00:23:26] Christa Biegler: That's what I was trying to articulate before, but could not 

[00:23:30] Dwight Chapin: you're bang on.

[00:23:32] Dwight Chapin: So, okay. like just talk about just simple human movements. Like, can we talk about a push, a pull, a squat, a hinge, a lunge? These are just simple movements that we do every day. So many people will spend a good part of their day behind a screen. And so just simply a wall angel where you're just pulling your shoulders down and back and feeling a stretch across your chest as you bring your elbows down, almost like you're trying to tuck your elbows into your back pockets.

[00:23:57] Dwight Chapin: And you want to stack your posture so that your ears are lined up over your shoulders and your shoulders over your hips. And then after three or four of those wall angels, then just rolling through some shoulder rolls in both directions just to bring a little bit more blood and oxygen circulating through our upper back muscles.

[00:24:13] Dwight Chapin: That's enough in that one hour that you've been sitting to sort of break up that loaded position or posture. So when it comes to exercises, like people will go on Instagram and they'll come in and they're doing like all kinds of crazy pistol squats and things that they have no business doing. And it's the new exercise that they're focusing on or they've just come out of the gate too hot.

[00:24:34] Dwight Chapin: And so I say let's just get a baseline level of physical activity and starting with just a walking program is the best place to start. It's just a fantastic exercise. It's great for mental health as well as physical health. And after four to six weeks of a walking program where you're achieving that 150 minutes a week, then we've got something that we can build a strengthening program on.

[00:24:57] Dwight Chapin: And I'll usually start with just really simple movements on a yoga mat with a patient doing planks, bridges. There's a exercise called a bird dog or a cross crawl. And on the book website, seven wellness rituals. com I've partnered with McLeod Bethel Thompson, who is the quarterback of Toronto's football team.

[00:25:15] Dwight Chapin: And Rob. There's a variety of videos showing all these basic human movements and exercise programs that's free and available for anybody to use. And listeners can go to that for some suggestions on how to bring just basic humans movements into their day with simple exercise and not a lot of equipment.

[00:25:32] Christa Biegler: Yeah. One thing I have gotten stuck on over the years is being in a program where I have so many weights and then I travel and then I get off of it. And so it's, I think as I assessed that not so long ago, I thought, Oh, I need to have a core regimen that I do. And so I like when you brought up push, pull.

[00:25:50] Christa Biegler: Squat hinge lunge. If you cannot use these biomechanical or functional movements of your body, well, then maybe there needs to be some strength brought to that area, or maybe I need to work on it differently. And I want to just offer also, when you mentioned the fourth ritual that you started a movement practice, that's five to seven minutes in the morning.

[00:26:07] Christa Biegler: I appreciate the emphasis on the time there because so often, and as we talk about this, it's like, You know, these are all very important things, but they fall apart, right? Like, as you said, so people either let their self care stuff go, or they feel like it's too much. So I always love to hear things that are 1 to 3 to 5 to less than 10 minutes and don't feel like a huge time set because 5 minutes feels pretty, doable, honestly.

[00:26:35] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, for real. And even, when people look at the 150 minutes and they're at zero minutes, it can be intimidating. It can be upsetting. And I said, okay, so we have 10, 000 minutes in our week. And if we're getting enough sleep, we're practicing ritual number one, we've got roughly 700 minutes that we're awake every week.

[00:26:53] Dwight Chapin: And so we're looking for 150 of those minutes. That's 2. 5% of your week, right? So when you chop it down. And we examine in the creation of a formula that involves these seven rituals. And we're looking at what, like, what's your motivation? What's your why? Why are you going to want to get up in the morning and do that ritual or that practice?

[00:27:12] Dwight Chapin: And it's linked to something bigger than just, oh, I have to do this because then, it sticks, right? That's when it starts to convert from a habit to a ritual. So, the suggestions made are all meant to be very easy to implement and easy to access.

[00:27:27] Christa Biegler: Ritual does have a different tone to it, doesn't it? It's not a habit. Habit's been used a lot, but ritual is something you come to with reverence and more respect because you want it. 

[00:27:36] Dwight Chapin: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's a distinct difference. When you're investing in your self care with that intention and that discipline, and that's what these 21 individuals really impressed me with, right?

[00:27:49] Dwight Chapin: Is it when things get hard, when life gets difficult, like they lean in even harder to their self care practices, because that's what they know will bring them through it. There's a confidence in the investment that they've made in creating that approach, which I think is fantastic. 

[00:28:05] Christa Biegler: Well, you brought this up from the guy who owned, I think his name was Jim, who owned Boston Pizza.

[00:28:11] Christa Biegler: He had quite a crash that brought him back to where he realized he needed to really embrace. You said all 21 of these people used all seven of the rituals, right? Is that correct? 

[00:28:20] Dwight Chapin: Correct. Correct. Yeah. 

[00:28:22] Christa Biegler: So How many of these mentors, these 21 people that you interviewed, how many of them had a crash before they came to where they are now?

[00:28:30] Christa Biegler: Did they arrive at perfection earlier? Or was there something like Jim's story in a lot of their own histories? 

[00:28:37] Dwight Chapin: You know, they all of their formulas were born out of adversity and difficulty what I found interesting, Kamika Bingham, who's a world class sprinter, one of Canada's fastest women. She's the youngest of the mentors.

[00:28:50] Dwight Chapin: When we met, she was 27. And the rest are there's a couple in their 40s and the rest are over 50 and those over 50 sort of believed you needed to be over 50 to have any sense of what needed to be in your formula and what worked just to get to know yourself. Jan Arden is one of the other mentors and she's an award winning musician and TV personality.

[00:29:11] Dwight Chapin: And she's quite funny about like, you don't know yourself. You got to fall into a ditch enough times. Pick yourself up to have any sense of what works, right? So, another one of the mentors is Herbie Coon and Herbie is the chaplain for the Toronto Argonauts as well as, Athletics Canada and the Toronto Raptors.

[00:29:28] Dwight Chapin: And in his practice with athletes, he really focuses on what he calls the, 2020.

[00:29:41] Dwight Chapin: Herbie found himself the furthest he'd ever been personally from that version of the total athlete and he couldn't look his athletes in the eye with any sense of purpose or integrity and hold them accountable when he himself couldn't like he couldn't walk to the end of the block with his dog and his son without being winded.

[00:29:59] Dwight Chapin: And it was an embarrassing moment for him, and he tells his story in this book about how he used that as leverage to gradually build himself back. Robin Hanley Defoe, who's the stress resiliency expert, had a very fractured relationship with food, eating disorder, and mental health issues that she brought herself back with incredible resiliency, and now is literally a resiliency, world renowned resiliency expert.

[00:30:23] Dwight Chapin: So, I think it's important that the human experience is difficult and challenging. And these individuals have learned to embrace those challenges. And in doing so, they're constantly, as I said, fine tuning modifying their approach, looking to stay on top of the research and tweak their approach as necessary.

[00:30:42] Christa Biegler: Yeah. All right. Two rituals left. What's number six? 

[00:30:47] Dwight Chapin: That's nurture mental fitness. And this is all about looking at the practices of stress resiliency with getting stuck in chronic stress, we get locked into that fight or flight response and research shows that can amplify centers of the brain, more primitive centers of the brain that are emotional centers that are They're tied into the stress response, and can limit activity in our prefrontal cortex, where we're doing more creative and strategic thinking.

[00:31:15] Dwight Chapin: And as we get locked into that fight or flight response, that stress response, we start looking at our world, looking for threats. It changes our perspective. And the research clearly shows that stress is enhancing versus stress is debilitating mindset has a huge impact on our physiology. So, I've worked with mental health experts in designing a stress resiliency strategy to bring this ritual and focus of getting proactive in support of our mental health.

[00:31:46] Christa Biegler: I'm going to have to have you unpack this on because this is a area I like to spend a lot of time talking about neuroplasticity. So talk to me about, stress resiliency for you or for these mentors. 

[00:31:58] Dwight Chapin: Right. So, as I met with these individuals, I had just come through the first year of COVID. In Canada, the restrictions were quite profound, and so our practice was shut down to urgent care only.

[00:32:12] Dwight Chapin: The restrictions were, very intense and controlled, and as people came out of 2020 into 2021 and restrictions gradually started to change and lift, there was a real shift in mindset. Patients were frustrated and wanting to determine to come out of the pandemic with it meaning something right. 

[00:32:31] Dwight Chapin: There was a determination there that really struck me as a difference. And frankly, it was one of the motivators for me to write this book. I said, now is the time to bring these stories to life because there was that determination , that felt very different. And as I was starting the book, I was also coming through a period of time where I had been stuck in that stress response.

[00:32:52] Dwight Chapin: For a long time myself and I had let go of some of my resiliency habits. And so it was a great experience. My personal journey was in understanding how I needed to regulate my sleep and my nutrition practices to be able to be who I needed to be in my life, with my patients and, recognize the emotional tool that being a healthcare practitioner on the front lines had through the pandemic.

[00:33:18] Dwight Chapin: So Robin Hanley, Dafoe and Dr. Ian Daw, both mental health resiliency experts in the book talk about the importance of belonging, acceptance, perspective, hope and humor. And we dive into those five pillars in the book ways to create a resiliency strategy. And that begins with understanding where you move in the course of your day or week on your stress curve.

[00:33:45] Dwight Chapin: And if you can understand that stress can be a huge advantage and we can use that stress to call on our best performance on demand when we understand how was stress increases performance increases, but we get to a point where we hit our plateau and that peak, if we look to establish that peak is our norm as where we need to be every day to survive a day, well, it's just not sustainable.

[00:34:10] Dwight Chapin: And that's where chronic stress gets ugly and starts to have a significant impact on health and performance. So the mentors do an extraordinary job of always knowing where they are on their stress response curve, and they use their formula and their life, their lifestyle practices, their daily rituals of self care to strategically pull themselves back to the left side of the peak of that curve so that demand on demand, they can go back to that peak performance as need be.

[00:34:37] Dwight Chapin: And that journey starts with understanding, okay, where am I on the curve? What are my triggers? And what voice in my head, what track is playing when I am triggered? Because those thoughts have a huge impact on, again, on physiology and how quickly you ramp up into that stress response curve. 

[00:34:56] Christa Biegler: This is a kind of a common theme I see sometimes in high performers. What would you say to high performers that say they don't feel stressed, even though there's clear biomarkers? It's very obvious to everyone else that there's stress, maybe because their whole life has had some stressful chaotic elements.

[00:35:13] Christa Biegler: So we tend to seek that if we've always had that. So, really, like, what would you say to a high performer that is struggling with their own awareness around stress?

[00:35:21] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, and you can get addicted to that fast paced life, right? And that just sort of feels where you need and want to be. And so you'll seek those experiences out.

[00:35:31] Dwight Chapin: So that's a difficult case, right? For sure. I like to start with. Let's talk about how rest and recovery impacts mental health and physical performance. And if I'm working with a professional athlete, then I'll go to their stats and their performance and their injury management. And this is where as a musculoskeletal expert.

[00:35:53] Dwight Chapin: Quite often, I'll work with a patient who has a recurrent hamstring injury or lower back injury, and as we fix those issues, like, there's an underlying issue, right? They're not sleeping enough, or their nutrition's not on point, or there's something else going on in their life emotionally that's creating issues in their recovery.

[00:36:11] Dwight Chapin: And so there's a natural opportunity to then have a conversation. And I lean towards explaining the biology and the physiology as a gain access to understanding the why you need to do something. And so that's that would be my approach there because you're not going to get someone to slow down that just wants to go 100%.

[00:36:30] Dwight Chapin: Usually they have to be forced to slow down. And I suppose in some respects that the pandemic gave clinicians that opportunity because people were forced to slow down. And it's in that time that, that suddenly we all had that people decided they wanted to invest more in self care and that's created an opportunity for these types of conversations, which I think is a powerful, outcome.

[00:36:51] Christa Biegler: Yeah. I definitely did see that more emphasis in whole health. I think post that, I would say I'm been slowly generating a mental list of what does it look like to have stress, but to not feel stressed. But I mean, it's really. You know, some tricky ones for me, and maybe you, when you go from client to client to client, mouth breathing all day because you're talking right, instead of nose breathing, what a sneaky 1, right? 

[00:37:15] Christa Biegler: It's like, oh, well, I don't think I'm stressed doing my job, but it's like, when you talk all day, you can't breathe diaphragmatically. I would like to it's such a sneaky 1, you know, or more common ones that more people might resonate with also, or it'd be.

[00:37:28] Christa Biegler: Just ones I've noticed from people who say that they don't have stress, but they do, you know, the chronic need to respond to something or feel like they need a response to something right away. People who struggle to sit in peace. They might say, like, well, I can't meditate. I used to say that all the time.

[00:37:44] Christa Biegler: Sometimes there's just some, sometimes there's just some other pieces around it, or, there's just a cooler way to do it. You know, that can work for those brains, but it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing. 

[00:37:54] Dwight Chapin: One of the mentors, Francois Olivier, senior executive, and he travels the world to many different plants and is constantly on point and entertaining and go, go, go.

[00:38:06] Dwight Chapin: And I asked him this very question, like, you know, you're in all these different cities, you're constantly on the move, like, how do you recognize the need to slow down and get off that track? And it's difficult for him because he enjoys that pace, right? So he's predisposed to want to be the life of the party.

[00:38:23] Dwight Chapin: And when he gets home from travel or he gets back to his hotel, he has a ritual or deliberate practice every night. And that's that he recognizes that I brought my best effort today. I've done all I can do. I'll be better tomorrow. If I sleep now and sleep now, we'll give me a fresher perspective tomorrow.

[00:38:42] Dwight Chapin: And it's as easy as that for him. He does that and he just disconnects from the need to be going. He sees the value in the recovery because he knows how it's going to impact his performance. So that's his hook. So for some, it's a bit more of a struggle. It's that pre bed ritual. It's that time spent in quiet meditation.

[00:39:02] Dwight Chapin: I like the calm app. I think that's, I have a 10 minute calm meditation that I do at the end of the day. And that meditation at the end of my day and then the movement practice, the beginning of my day or my book ends that really sort of keep me grounded. 

[00:39:15] Christa Biegler: Yeah. And sometimes there's just, I think this is the reality for a lot of people.

[00:39:18] Christa Biegler: There's some kind of wake up call that helps them understand like, Oh, I'm actually not managing this as well as I thought I was. That's usually fallen in the ditch. So seventh ritual laid on us. 

[00:39:30] Dwight Chapin: That's play with purpose. And this one's probably my favorite. Somewhere along the way, adults forget about the importance of play and play invigorates us and it, stimulates our creativity.

[00:39:41] Dwight Chapin: It helps enhance our relationships. It eases the burden of stress. And, it's such a vital piece to good health. And the research is showing us that. Playful adults also happen to be happier and happier. Adults are healthier, and they have healthier relationships, and they're more likely to participate in some of the strategies that we talked about today.

[00:40:01] Dwight Chapin: But we're also seeing from happiness experts that happiness is actually a choice. And yeah, nature versus nurture may establish a baseline happiness to begin with, but Through practices like those promoted by Shawn Achor, the author of Happiness Advantage, the happiness expert, there are ways to amplify and elevate happiness by shifting perspective.

[00:40:25] Christa Biegler: Yeah, I think this is easily It goes by the wayside sometimes, and it can be hard if you've been in a chronic stress pattern for a long time to like open up to doing something like this. One of my favorite things to do is accidentally end up out of, not even accidentally, but intentionally end up out of like phone service away from things where you don't have those distractions.

[00:40:45] Christa Biegler: It always seems to like reset my neural pathways and my, all the things that come back with that pressure perspective, kind of like the example you used where the guy said, if I just sleep tonight, I have that feeling a lot. I'm like. I will be better tomorrow. I will be a better clinician. If I will be a better clinician, if I take this break during this time.

[00:41:02] Dwight Chapin: I had an experience when I was literally writing this chapter on play with purpose. I went to a friend's barbecue that afternoon and I walked away from the writing. It was a day that I was struggling with it and my friend's son, he's three years old. Came up to the group of adults in the backyard and he took my hand and he said, let me show you the potato bugs. His son's name's Gavin.

[00:41:24] Dwight Chapin: I didn't know Gavin. And so I just sort of followed his lead and he led me down this path in the back of their backyard. And he bent down and lift up this big rock that was lining that the pathway underneath this rock where these like a slug and three potato bugs and he just lit up like he was just like so excited that this world lived under this rock and he got to share it with this stranger at his house and the joy on his face left such mark on me that I came home and I killed the rest of the chapter but every time I see a potato bug I laugh or his smile and I think of Gavin and the ripple effect of Just how pure and innocent that play and pleasure was by being in the moment.

[00:42:04] Dwight Chapin: So all of the play experts, all the positive psychologists, they all talk about played being the need for play to be unscripted, right? And so when I say play with purpose, the purpose behind the play is you've got to make it a priority. We have to create times where the phone gets unplugged and you just carve out some me time to do something that makes you happy and spend time with people that make you happy.

[00:42:27] Dwight Chapin: And when you do that, the ripple effect in mental health and in risk of disease is quite profound. And of course I go through that, the research in the book. 

[00:42:36] Christa Biegler: I can't help but wonder, you've got these, a fair bit of athletes, it sounds like, that were some of the people that you interviewed in the book and when their job is to play a game, where do they find the play?

[00:42:51] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, that's a great question. Often it's completely away from the sport. Those that have Children just pour into those experiences of just being a mom or a dad. The sport become for them becomes work and so that they don't look at their sport or their profession as play. And so it's essential that there is a distraction built into their routine, well, well away from the sport.

[00:43:15] Dwight Chapin: So, I think of a number of the football players that I work with, they find joy in travel. They find joy in spending time with family or getting involved in their church community or just something clearly away from football. 

[00:43:30] Christa Biegler: You know, we mentioned a little bit about habits versus rituals, but as we kind of wrap up these 7 rituals, which I think.

[00:43:36] Christa Biegler: We danced through beautifully. What do you want people to really know or what would you want to leave them with? 

[00:43:44] Dwight Chapin: Yeah. it's the notion that we have an incredible power by stacking healthy habits. And one of the things that I've learned in working with these individuals is that every day we get to play the game again, right?

[00:43:58] Dwight Chapin: So no perfection. These people are not masters of clean living. They've developed a strategy for living that allows them to be their best. On most days, and that really resonates with me. I think that's something that there's a real easy on ramp here. And if we just start to appreciate what happens when we stack healthy habits, and then we start to convert those habits to rituals.

[00:44:23] Dwight Chapin: So that just becomes our default that we can really gain control over how the body ages and our risk of disease. And this is the way health care is moving. I mean, longevity experts are looking at Transcribed At aging, and they're saying, hold on a second, it's not genetically or biologically predetermined aging, the triggering of aging, the speed with which we age is really more a byproduct of how biological systems are declining.

[00:44:51] Dwight Chapin: And by the way, those are largely influenced by lifestyle practices. So it's the power that comes from just stacking healthy choices. That's what I'm trying to do with this book is just raise awareness. 

[00:45:02] Christa Biegler: I want to underline this last thing, even though I could have said a couple things ago, like, okay, that's good.

[00:45:08] Christa Biegler: But really with this ritual, you know, there's been a lot of talk about habits. It takes 21 days to build a habit. How do you really hardwire in a ritual, especially when you kind of get off track? What would you say about that? 

[00:45:21] Dwight Chapin: I'd say that you start, let's say that the start is okay. I'm going to, I'm going to go for a five minute walk.

[00:45:26] Dwight Chapin: Five days this week and you accomplish that and you recognize that you celebrate that win You maybe build in a reward for yourself for accomplishing that win and then the next week you do it again And by that 21 day by that third week or that fourth week when that five minute walk feels normal Some days you've pushed it to a seven minute walk or a 10 minute walk by the time you're into that fourth or fifth week Like you're not fighting to get that walk done.

[00:45:57] Dwight Chapin: It's just become a part of your day. It's like my morning ritual is just my morning ritual because that's what I do in the morning. It's like brushing my teeth. Like I don't think about doing it anymore. And so it's through practice and it's through. The success that you see when you start doing it, and this is why you raised this point earlier in our discussion, like, as we onboard some of these strategies, the pace with which we introduce the rituals is important, and where and how you introduce these rituals is also important, because if it's too much, too overwhelming, it's just too much, you don't do anything right?

[00:46:29] Dwight Chapin: So what I'm enjoying is patients are reading the book and I'm getting feedback now is that people are coming in and they're like, okay, I went ritual four because that's where I know I needed help and where I was really struggling or I'm really focusing on one because my sleep quality is terrible.

[00:46:43] Dwight Chapin: So like, let's get that done, right? Let's figure that out and then gradually build. And so as I've gone through this practice myself of Really dialing down to, to still have sort of how do I want to approach personally these seven wellness rituals? I mean, it took me close to 18 months to really get it to where I'm proud of my formula and I see the profound impact of the influence they have on one another.

[00:47:05] Christa Biegler: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for going over those today. Where can people find you online? 

[00:47:10] Dwight Chapin: So they'll find the book website 7wellnessrituals. com or on Instagram 7wellnessrituals. And, like I said, there's a ton of resources available both on the website and, you can look through that on Instagram.

[00:47:21] Christa Biegler: Perfect. 

[00:47:22] Christa Biegler: Thank you so much for coming on today. 

[00:47:23] Dwight Chapin: Yeah, real pleasure. Thanks for the chat.

[00:47:25] Dwight Chapin: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.

[00:47:47] Dwight Chapin: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.