Bothered by stress? Discover transformative stress management strategies like Dr. Annie White’s unconventional breathing technique that will leave you feeling relaxed and ready to take on the world.
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Show Notes | Transcript“Stress triggers us to always consider worst case scenarios, which is fabulous if there’s a bear chasing us, but for everyday fears, you don’t need it.” – Dr. Annie White
Dr. Annie White is a trailblazer in the health industry. Her background in traditional Chinese medicine and her extensive study in the realm of neuroplasticity have allowed her to develop a revolutionary approach to stress management. Dr. White’s ability to treat patients holistically and delve into the root of the issues has played an instrumental role in her success. Her book, “The Calm Code: Transform Your Mind and Change Your Life,” provides tangible solutions to the problems many grapple with daily.
In this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast, Dr. White shares her journey into traditional Chinese medicine and how she discovered the connection between stress and overall well-being. She explains that every thought, action, and emotion wires the mind along corresponding pathways, and she researched and developed techniques to wire the brain for calmness and happiness.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Cultivate tools for managing stress and fostering inner calmness.
- Embrace the profound impacts of heeding your gut-instincts.
- Experience the ripple effect of channeling positivity through affirmations and gratitude.
- Grasp the pivotal role that conscious thought plays in constructing your reality.
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Resources:
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. I am Gloria Grace, the Light Messenger and creator of the L.O.V.E. Method. And for those of you who might be joining us for the first time and haven’t heard of me, let me tell you who I am a little bit more about what I do. So women entrepreneurs hire me to clear the inner blocks, keeping you stuck so you can put yourself first and live the life you want now. And I am so delighted to have with us a guest today that I’m going to be bringing on who has developed a revolutionary step by step method to minimize stress and maximize happiness based on the science of neuroplasticity. And she holds a doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine and is the author of The Calm Code – Transform Your Mind and Change Your Life. So I’m going to bring her on right now, and I want to welcome you officially Dr. Annie White to Live, Love, Engage.
Dr. Annie White
Well, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here. I love your show.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, thank you so much. I know we I believe we met through a publicity summit not too long ago, and I was intrigued by what you have to offer and about this book. And I thought, though, before we get into this method that you developed to really help people, to minimize stress, which is something we all need to do from time to time, is just share a little bit about your background. And certainly, what got you interested in, number one, traditional Chinese medicine, and then eventually, what led you to even write a book?
Dr. Annie White
That’s a great question. Traditional Chinese medicine came about because I was making a huge career change, and I knew I wanted to help people. I just didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. And at the time, I was working for a nonprofit, and I loved the idea of the job and I didn’t like the logistics, the day to day of the job. They wanted me to run it for them, and it was constantly fundraising and it just didn’t resonate with me. And at the same time, I took an overview class in traditional Chinese medicine and how it worked. And it was at the school that I went and eventually got my master’s degree, and it just resonated with me because we were treating people on the mind, body, spirit level, and it was all intertwined and I loved that. And we were also treating the root cause of things instead of symptoms. It made so much sense to me, and I fell in love and I signed up for a four year master’s degree program and then went on to do a two year doctorate on top of it. So that’s how I got into Chinese medicine. And as I was treating patients and I was seeing that high stress and anxiety was affecting my patients and their health so much, and I knew if I didn’t find a way to dramatically decrease their stress and anxiety, no one would ever be happy or, quite frankly, healthy. So I did a deep dive into the science of the brain and the root cause of why we get stressed. And it’s based on our thoughts. And most people don’t realize this, but according to the science of neuroplasticity, every thought, action and emotion wires your mind, trains your mind along those corresponding pathways. So after a stressful period, if you’ve had a lot of stressful thoughts, you’ve inadvertently been building that stress area of your mind so that your thoughts tend to go there more quickly. So after I figured that out, then I researched ways to have the reverse happen. So how do we build a relaxed and happy mind? And that’s what I figured out.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wow. And it’s so true because I know from my experience in the past when, let’s say, just something happens that disappoints you, and you can, I’ve had, shall we say, not healthy crutches to lean on, like overeating is one in particular. And it just has been my default for so long that it took me quite a while to be able to not go to those old methods of being able to handle things and to be able to come up with new and more empowering ways to go. And sometimes I still kind of slip back into old patterns. So can you talk a little bit about maybe just talk a little bit more about why, say, the experience that I’ve had of sometimes I can kind of get over it, but sometimes I don’t? Is that something maybe that you’ve seen a lot of it and then we can talk a little bit more about how you’ve been able to help people to kind of rewire the brain in a more positive manner?
Dr. Annie White
Yeah. Habits are also a wiring of sorts, and I think it’s going to depend on your trigger. You might notice that if it’s a more stressful thing setting you off, it’s harder to resist that barrier. It’s harder because it’s really been ingrained in you over the years. And everybody I mean, we’re all human. We all have our ways of coping. So it shows itself in so many different ways and so many different people. And I think you’ll notice that it does correspond with the level of stress, the level of disappointment, the level of unsatisfaction that you’re feeling. Right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Yes.
Dr. Annie White
It’s true. And it’s rewiring those pathways so that that stress doesn’t hit you as hard. Right. Once your mind has been trained to be more calm and happy, stressful things hit us in a different way. It’s more balanced. It doesn’t set us on like a stress, anxiety or worry pattern right away.
Gloria Grace Rand
So can you share with us maybe at least one or two things that you discovered that would help people to be able to minimize stress?
Dr. Annie White
Absolutely. And what I did was so I went through all of the research and things like looking at pictures, especially pictures of nature, but also pictures that make you smile, that make you laugh. Imagining your best possible self. So imagining future scenarios where you’re your best possible self. Gratitude has been proven to make people 25% happier. But why is that? It’s because it has wired their mind to be 25% happier. Visualization is another one. Visualization can really trigger those calm and happy parts of the brain. So what I did is I uncovered these and then I combined them into tools that use more than one at a time, usually three plus at a time together.
Gloria Grace Rand
Very cool. So one of the things that I know that I have used tremendously that are a couple of my go-to’s are like meditation and journaling because as a matter of fact, it was like yesterday I had a disappointing event happen. And so I really consciously worked hard at like, okay, what can I do today that’s going to be better? Let me journal for a little while. Okay. And then I felt better. And then it kind of got sad again and was like, okay, what else can I do? Let’s see, let me see. I can maybe meditate. So are those things some of the things that you recommend to do or what other things that you recommend folks do?
Dr. Annie White
Yeah, I mean, definitely meditation has been proven to train your mind to be more relaxed. I love the journaling. I love affirmations. I’m trying to recall all of the tools that I included in the book because there are a lot of them. There are so many ways to ignite those pathways, those calm, those relaxed, those happy pathways in your mind. And that’s what you’re trying to do. You could watch a funny YouTube video. I mean, that could do it too. Or a comedian that could help.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I definitely… laughter goes a long way towards helping you to improve your mood. What’s been the maybe biggest challenge that you faced in your own journey, maybe even with, possibly even with writing the book?
Dr. Annie White
Well, I’m happy to talk about writing the book, and I think my challenge came before I wrote the book because I had been studying this for over a decade. I had been using these tools with patients. I had been studying it. I knew this stuff, right? But then I went through a period, it was over about two years, where I became the person who needed this more than 95% of my patients. And I didn’t realize it for a long time because I always had it in my head, oh, well, I mean, I don’t need this. This is for other people. This is for my patients. I developed it for them. It couldn’t possibly be for me. And the universe is just laughing at me, saying, “ha, ha, ha,” throw something else at her, see if she’ll get it yet. And it was a lot. And it culminated with me sobbing on the floor in my living room because my husband had just walked out on me. Because all of these stressful thoughts and anxious thoughts and worrisome thoughts had wired my mind to be so stressed and negative. And we can get into why those are hand in hand in a second that I wasn’t myself anymore. I wasn’t any fun to be around. But not only that, I was biting his head off for crazy things, and I was a complete stress mess. I just really was. I wasn’t myself, and it wasn’t fun. And in that moment, I felt like a double failure, I’ll tell you, because not only was my marriage dissolving, I didn’t follow my own advice. I hadn’t even done any of this yet. So that was not my best day. But what it did was the universe said, okay, now she got it. And I started using my tools that I had developed. And for the first couple of weeks, they felt good, but I didn’t see a whole ton of difference. Natural methods take time, so I stuck with it. And about four to six weeks later, things really started to shift for me. And my mind in four to six weeks is probably around the amount of time that you want to really see a shift that you notice. And for me, it took about three months to really get to a place where I was happy with how relaxed and happy I was. But that’s not to say I don’t still use these tools because like you were saying, we’re going to have days that are stressful. We’re going to have things that come up that are going to disappoint us or make us sad, and people are going to pass away, and we just even could be simple, like getting into a traffic jam and someone just being really rude and setting us off for a minute, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, yeah. Oh, goodness. I can relate to so much of what you’ve been talking about because I went through the same thing with my own book, why it took me so long to write. It was because I finally realized, oh, it was because I had to learn the lessons I was writing about first.
Dr. Annie White
I’ll have to tell you. Yeah. And I wasn’t set on writing a book. I wasn’t. But once I learned how well this worked, I was like, oh, I’ve got to get this into the hands of as many people as I can. So I wrote it.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Now, you mentioned something about and I apologize because I got so engrossed in your story about wanting to go back to go dive a little deeper, I think, into stress and anger, I think you were talking about. Yeah.
Dr. Annie White
Thank you. Okay, so why are stress and negativity hand in hand in the brain? Like, if you’re wiring your stress pathways, you’re also wiring your negative pathways. And here’s why. Because stress triggers us to always consider worst case scenarios, which is fabulous if there’s a bear chasing us because it’s structured to help us survive life or death situations. But for everyday fears, you don’t need it. And worst-case scenarios are always what? They are always negative. So these stressful thoughts are also wiring us to be more and more negative. And then we get what I had what I call Debbie Downer syndrome. And Debbie Downer, I don’t know if you remember her, but she was a character from Saturday Night Live and everything people would say to her, she would just go to the darkest place and then there would be this, “wowp, womp” sound behind her. I promise you. I thought somebody was going to start following me around with the “wowp, womp” sound. I got it. I got to that place.
Gloria Grace Rand
Glad you did. Yes. For all of us. Absolutely. I’m going to ask you something because if someone is listening to this and maybe they’re having issues with stress or whatnot, is there some way that somebody wants to execute, like say they get your book and they want to start following this, maybe some of the steps in there, is there any way that they could get it wrong?
Dr. Annie White
No, because I outline this step by step. I am really specific. You start with three minutes twice a day. You work up to eight minutes twice a day. I give you very specific tools. And even Jack Canfield. He’s the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He read the book and he was like, Annie, I love the fact that you leave nothing to chance. You get into exactly how to do these tools so you can’t get it wrong.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, that’s reassuring. I’m sure that everyone will be very happy to know that. So I want to ask you something else since we’re talking about all of these different things, talking about rewiring the brain and handling stress, what is a commonly held belief, let’s say, about stress, maybe that you passionately disagree with?
Dr. Annie White
Okay, so you’re getting me on a little bit of a soapbox, but I’m going to go there. Okay?
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
Dr. Annie White
The prevalent tips for stress, i.e. get better, sleep, eat more healthy, exercise more. If you’re truly stressed, will only make you more stressed. Why? Because stress actually causes insomnia. It causes us to crave yummy foods. It causes us to be exhausted and we don’t want to exercise. So that when these tips come to us and we literally cannot follow them because it’s impossible, we get more stressed and then we feel like a failure because if everybody else is doing it, they’re not doing it. If you’re truly stressed, somebody is going to go eat an entire box of cookies or they’re not going to feel like working out or they’re going to wake up during the night or have trouble getting to sleep. I’m sorry. Stress causes these things. That’s why it makes me absolutely crazy when people keep pushing these tips because it’s just not possible.
Gloria Grace Rand
So what do you do instead? Because, again, I can relate to this, and I’ve done these things in the past. Absolutely. So if you are that stressed where you can’t do the things that theoretically would help you, what can you do instead?
Dr. Annie White
Yeah, so this is prior to training your mind, and it is one of the techniques I use, but it’s a breathing technique that I totally love that I want to teach you right now. Okay. And it’s a little bit different than the other ones you may have tried. So your first step, take your left hand, you put it on your chest, and you say to yourself the entire time you’re doing this breathing exercise, I am safe. I’m not in a life or death situation right now. I am safe. I’m not in a life or death situation right now. And the reason I added, I’m not in a life or death situation right now, is because your mind can’t fight that. I mean, you either are or you’re not. And if you really are, you’re not doing this breathing exercise. Step two, I want you to move that hand, that left hand, down to your lower belly, and as you breathe in, I want you to feel that hand extend toward the opposite wall. Step three. Now this is the secret weapon. I want you to use your right index finger and cover your right nostril. You’re going to breathe in and out only through your left nostril as you’re doing this exercise, this breathing exercise. So you have the first step. I am safe. I’m not in a life or death threatening situation right now. You have your lower belly coming out. You know, you’re doing that deep breathing, and you’re breathing in and out only through your left nostril because studies have shown that activates your calm or your parasympathetic nervous system, and it calms you down faster.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wow. That is very cool. I’ve never heard that before. So yay.
Dr. Annie White
I’m not here to give you old stuff today.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right. I love it. Very good. Yeah. That is so cool. All right, now obviously, you have this in your book, right, so that people can.
Dr. Annie White
I do yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, excellent.
Dr. Annie White
The breathing is we, I do a whole week, and there’s more steps and things like that. But the reason I don’t like to give people too many steps just when we’re talking is because let’s just remember three key ones.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, cool.
Dr. Annie White
Those three can shift. The next time you’re stressed, try it. Let me know what happens.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, definitely. I will do that. For sure, I will. And I encourage everyone else who’s either listening to this or watching, let me know. Definitely. And you can connect with Dr. Annie as well. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and put your contact info up there. So for those of you who are watching on YouTube, you’ll have it. So your website is Dr. Annie White and Doctor is spelled out D-O-C-T-O-R. Cool. Let’s see. What do you wish you had known when you started out on this adventure we call life?
Dr. Annie White
I wish I would have known that my intuition, my guidepost, my internal voice is right and to follow it and not to worry about what other people think about it. Even today I’m trying to help people and I’m trying to get word out about this book. And so I’ve gotten the advice that I need to do videos and put them on the social medias, right. And I find myself sometimes getting into questioning, oh, what if people hate this? What if this is stupid? My human stuff comes up and I just am working really hard on not letting that dictate any of my decisions. And I wish my young self would have known all of that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I can relate to that as well. It’s interesting. And I wish that there was a way well, and maybe actually, I think perhaps there is a way because I hear a lot of the fact that in some schools now they’re teaching kids about meditation. Because I think that helps you, or at least it seems like in my case anyway. I feel that the more that I’ve meditated, the easier it’s been to start following my intuition because I’m really because meditating allows me to connect to my higher self. But I know that when certainly I was younger, when I didn’t follow my intuition, that I would regret it. Have you experienced that as well? The times where you sort of had a feeling and you’re like Ehhh…
Dr. Annie White
I love that you brought up meditation as part of that because I really didn’t start meditating for real and concerted effort probably until my early thirties. And when I didn’t follow, like you’re saying when I didn’t follow that advice was before that. So you’re right. I love that you brought that up.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, well, and I started meditating even later than you, but that’s a lesson. It’s never too late to start. So I want everyone hearing that because, yeah, I didn’t start until late 40s. Yeah, it’s been a while, but I’ve done it ever since then. I think I started in 2009. So I really swear by that practice. Actually. That leads me to a next question. What is your? Or do you even have a favorite go to for yourself to help you when you are stressed? Other than probably that breathing exercise you showed us? But what’s maybe your favorite way that you say, oh, I need to do this?
Dr. Annie White
Okay, this is my favorite, my current favorite. So when I’m stressed about something, let’s say I was really nervous about this interview today, okay? And I was like, oh my gosh, what if I screw it up? Or even if it’s those social media things that I was telling you about, I switch that and I flip the worry. And I go for what I want instead. And I do it with a little dance, and I say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I’ll show you. So if I was worried about this interview, and I do this before every interview anyway, but thank you. Thank you, thank you that I rock this interview. Thank you, thank you, thank you that I rock this interview. Or if it’s the social media stuff, I’m like, thank you, thank you, thank you. People love this video. Thank, thank you. And I do the thank you, thank you, thank you. And I do like this little boogie. And the boogie seems silly, but I’ve tried it with it and without it, and it totally works. And saying thank you three times is the magic number. For some reason, it just works, and it makes me feel so much better.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love that. And for those of you listening, she was actually kind of like moving her hands back and forth in front of her, just this little boogie move. And I think that is so cute. I like that because it really does it sort of gets your adrenaline going, gets you out of your head, I think, and into your body, which then I think probably and I know there’s some science behind that, probably where it relaxes you.
Dr. Annie White
I’m like, oh, jumping on the science. Yeah. So what it does is, you know how if you’re thinking those other thoughts, you’re on those stressed and negative pathways and you’re actually strengthening them. If you switch this, you’re strengthening and activating the calm and happy ones, and it makes you feel better in the moment, but every time you do it, you are strengthening those parts of your mind, which is just so key.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Because I know I’ve read some books about how the brain works and about neuroplasticity and the fact that we are able to rewire, we can do this. It’s absolutely possible. And to be able to rewire things in a positive way is so much better. Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t like when I’m feeling miserable and when I’m feeling sad. And this was what I was going through yesterday. I want to feel better, but I feel like I do need to give myself grace to at least kind of wallow for a few more minutes and then I want to do something and change my state again.
Dr. Annie White
Well, that’s just it. I mean, no one is ever going to live in nothing ever bothers me land. That’s not a place. And negative emotions aren’t wrong. I’m not trying to purport that there’s anything wrong. They are information. There are messengers. They’re our friend. If we get angry about something or upset about something, we need to look at it and listen to it. Yeah, and if we feel sad, guess what? Just like you said, we’re human. We need to feel sad for a minute. Because those tears will process out those emotions for us. You’re right. We need to give ourselves the grace to be human.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. No, I’m going to ask you this because we are starting to get close to the end of our time here. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about related to stress or being happy? Actually, let’s stop talking about stress. Maybe how to be happy that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to share.
Dr. Annie White
Just think about thoughts during the day right. And be conscious of what’s going through your mind. Because we all have control over it, and a lot of times we don’t think about that. When I went through those two years of really high stress and I knew all of this stuff. Right. So I’m not saying that, oh, I’m all this high and mighty. I know the, no, I did it too. I get it. But if you’re more conscious about it because if my thoughts start getting more negative again or stressed again, I think, what have I been thinking about lately? Where have I been putting my focus? And it makes a huge difference. It really does.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. So if someone wants to be able to get a copy of your book or actually, no, before I even go there, let’s talk just briefly about besides the book. You work with clients as well because obviously you’re a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. So tell me a little bit about what kind of work you do when you’re not promoting the book.
Dr. Annie White
Well, I am working on a program, like a virtual program that’s not finished yet, but I’m also seeing patients in my office. So when I see patients, traditional Chinese medicine is acupuncture. It’s herbs. I’m also certified did functional Medicine, a two-year program for that. So that’s also what I’m doing at the same time.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, awesome. Well, if someone would like to learn more about you, maybe get on your list.
Dr. Annie White
The website is great. Also the book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Audible and Indiebound.
Gloria Grace Rand
So, yeah, all those wonderful places. So that’s good. So thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your experience and so much good tips. You really did share a lot of wonderful information that I’m going to make sure that I remember to try out. And actually, I’ll probably have to go grab a copy of your book because you said how many different tips you have in there. You’ve got a lot.
Dr. Annie White
Oh, gosh, there are tons and tons. But I have six weeks of tools that you get new tools of a certain type every week. So there are lots in there.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, thank you again and yeah, I’m so glad to have had you on the show.
Dr. Annie White
Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for your show. I know your show helps so many people. So thank you.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I also want to thank all of you for watching and for listening. And I so appreciate you taking the time. And whether you’re someone new who’s just found us or you’re a long-time subscriber, I so appreciate you. If you’re not subscribed, please do. And you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, as well as on my YouTube channel, which is at Gloria Grace Rand. So, until next time, as always, to encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
