In this week’s 4 Phase Cycle Podcast episode, Megan is once again joined by one of the most amazing Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioners, Toréa Rodriguez.
Toréa is an expert coach, wilderness retreat leader and former professional pilot. She has been a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Practitioner for more than 9 years and she works with clients all over the world to support and help reverse autoimmune disease & chronic illness. Today, she coaches her clients through their own unique transformational experience that is based in functional medicine principles yet takes it to a whole new level to understand and support their entire being so they can live their lives to the full, no-holds-barred version of their dreams!!
In today’s episode, Toréa shared her big personal breakthroughs, what Reynaud’s syndrome is and what physical things she saw shift and were affected by it. They also discuss different coping mechanisms and subconscious reprogramming. In this episode, Torea also talks about turning to the natural world as a healing pallette and incorporating outdoor spaces.
Ready to learn more?? Let’s do this!
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Megan Blacksmith 0:02
Hi there. Welcome back to the forfait cycle podcast. Megan here with a lovely guest expert. Hi, Teresa. Hi. So Teresa, this is actually this is the second time interviewing Theresa, her first podcast interview with us. I interviewed him about EMF, it was a while back, but definitely go check that out, put in the show notes. Yeah. And then not too long ago, I was on your podcast. And we also re aired that targeting, talking all about secondary gain and limiting decisions and all the fun mindset stuff we love. So, so good. So good. So I will just reiterate his bio one more time, just in case you missed those. Two, right is an expert coach, wilderness retreat leader and former professional pilot just she has a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, just like me, so for more than nine years, and she works with clients all over the world to support and help reverse autoimmune disease and chronic illness. So today, she coaches her clients through their own unique transformation, transformational experience, that is based in functional medicine principles, yet takes it to a whole new level to understand and support their entire being so that they can live their lives to the full, no holds bar version of their dreams. I love it. Yeah, love it. So fun. So nine years, I was thinking back to when we met, which I was thinking was maybe like 2013 2014. One,
Torea Rodriguez 1:31
I was pretty close to when I finished FDN is when we first met really early in
Megan Blacksmith 1:36
our FDN journey. So early on. We have been swapping notes since way back nerdy notes.
Torea Rodriguez 1:44
Oh, lots of nerdy notes, the body and physiology.
Megan Blacksmith 1:47
And you know, what’s fun about that is it’s really been fun for me to watch the shift, which is not just happening with Theresa and Hi, but with many practitioners. So Theresa, and my belief is like she’s like an encyclopedia of health knowledge. She’s the one I call for the complex stuff. You know, she knows the there a world of Lyme disease and mold and autoimmunity. And she really knows the intricacies of the body biochemistry, master at functional labs, nutrient deficiencies, hormones, like all that goes into that. And so we love and always have love to nerd out on that. And yeah, and I have found that she and I have both found that there’s often something else and something more holding people holding people back. So when you get to that breakthrough point where you know, all this stuff, and you’re doing all the things and people are doing all the protocols, and I think she and I both went through this personally, all the right. Yeah, seems that many of us are turning to something else. Like we’re going a bit deeper. And we’re like what else and in a way, almost just coming back to basics. So one of the things that Theresa, I love that you said that you you’re doing is turning to the the natural world as a healing palette. And I love that. And I’m excited to get into what that means today. So thank you for being here.
Torea Rodriguez 3:12
I’m super excited. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
Megan Blacksmith 3:17
Okay, we’re gonna get into that topic and how Theresa works that in with her clients and how she, she’s going to be offering in person retreats around this and all the different things. But first, I did want to just share and have her have us talk about something that happened in a recent training. So many of you have heard Dr. Alex and I did our first ever in person practitioner certification training in Dallas. And it was seven long in person days with all sorts of stuff. And Trey was there. She was one of the amazing practitioners who was willing to come to the first one. And be with us through this process. And we ended up with some of the most amazing, you know, we had doctors, we had naturopaths we had nutritionists, we had many Afghans, we coaches, and all people are looking for often they’re coming looking for tools for their clients. And then many found they ended up with pretty big personal breakthroughs. So I would say that happened to you with a personal breakthrough. Yes,
Torea Rodriguez 4:19
yeah. On a number of accounts. But yes, it’s definitely it was more than I expected for sure.
Megan Blacksmith 4:26
For sure. I just I mean, you have it’s such a cool story. So I wanted to talk about just a couple of the physical things that you saw shift after that. And the first one was really the Raynaud’s So will you for one tell people what that even is, if they don’t know And sure, kind of share where you were, what you were doing and then how it shifted?
Torea Rodriguez 4:44
Sure so Raynaud’s syndrome is something that happens with the blood vessels in the hands and the feet. And so, what will happen either through cold exposure, or for in my case, it was after cold exposure and then getting warm again, was when the blood vessels will inappropriately constrict, so much so that there is no blood flow to the extremities. So anybody who’s watching on video, you can see what I’m doing with my hand, but basically the very base of my fingers here, the blood vessels would construct so much that there would be no blood flow and numbness and it was complete, like cadaver hands. And that used to come up a lot through cold exposure, vibration, like, I do a lot of cycling and riding. And so holding the hands on the handlebars, that kind of vibration, and we’ll do it squeezing the hands, sometimes we’ll do it, but me specifically being in cold, and then going back into a warm environment where our hands are supposed to, like, you’re supposed to, they’re, they’re not supposed to constrict, they’re supposed to dilate, to keep your extremities warm, what would happen is mine would actually construct when I was getting warm, and then it would happen after the cold. So I got really confused, but definitely new cold was a trigger. And so I would avoid getting into cold situations or you know, being too cold because I didn’t want cadaver hands for a number of hours.
Megan Blacksmith 6:12
And you had done a bunch of different things to work on this right?
Torea Rodriguez 6:15
I had, um, I had, you know, done. A lot of I would say coping mechanism type stuff, right. So every time I would go outside and make sure that I have either hand warmers or gloves or whatever, I would avoid certain scenarios. So there were a lot of like coping mechanisms stuff. But there was never like any practitioner that I would talk to about ran ons. Nobody really understood like, is this associated with autoimmunity? Is it an actual autoimmune condition? itself? Like, is it a disease? Or hey, do you know of any cure of any kind? And everybody’s answer was no, no, it’s just the way things are. And yes, it has something to do with autoimmunity. And that’s all we know. Like, that’s kind of where I had gotten with it. I didn’t really get very far.
Megan Blacksmith 7:07
Right? And then I know so right, you went home. And then what happened? I know you
Torea Rodriguez 7:12
test. So here’s what was really fascinating. So probably about a month leading up to the training that I did with you and Alex, I had started getting into cold exposure or cold plunge. Right. So getting intentionally getting into icy water. And one of the things that I would do as a coping mechanism is just keep my hands and feet out of the ice water so that I could have the experience of the cold plunge. And it would happen almost every single time. Right. So that started to happen, it started to happen even more, before I went to the train with you guys. And then what ended up happening at the end of the training was really, really fascinating. I stopped expecting the cold fingers to happen. So you know, it’s like I had become so obsessed with Oh, my gosh, this is going to happen, I gotta prepare and make sure that it doesn’t happen. And all of those things, I stopped kind of expecting it to happen. And through the work that we did, it’s actually changed the neural pathway for how these blood vessels are constricting. And since then, I did come across an article where a doctor, an Army doctor, actually in the 80s, declared that they came up with a cure for this. And what he used was operant conditioning. And so operant conditioning for people who don’t know what operant conditioning is, that’s the Pavlov’s dog, right? So you feed the dog, a steak ring, a bell, dog, salivates, right, ring, a bell, feed steak salivates ring the bell, no steak salivate. That’s operant conditioning. All that is is neural pathway training, right? That’s just training neural pathways. And so it was really fascinating that the work that we did in your training was enough neural pathway, rebuilding of a new neural pathway, right? Not having that fear of oh my gosh, this is going to happen all the time. It doesn’t happen anymore. And I’m still doing cold plunges all the time. So it’s been a really interesting experience. If it does happen, it’s like micro happening. Not cadaver hands like fingertip. Right? So it’s a completely different biological experience. And that kind of blew my mind, because we didn’t do any, like, specific supplements or protocols at the training or anything like that. So yeah, it was awesome.
Megan Blacksmith 9:44
Well, honestly, I like 100% believe in all the subconscious reprogramming and this kind of stuff still blows me away every time because it can be so fast. And I think when you’re when you step into an environment like that, you’re there seven days and you’re fully in it. So you’re, you’re safe meaning your subconscious is like, Oh, I don’t have to like go back to my house, you know, my family after an hour on Zoom, I can like really get into it. Many of us don’t allow ourselves, you know, we don’t do that very often we’re actually separate. So, so cool. How many changes can happen in a seven day period when Yeah, fully stepping up? Yeah. And then, and then the other really cool one was, tell me how you used to feel about snakes?
Torea Rodriguez 10:31
Oh, yeah, sure. Okay, so Megan had asked me before the training, like, Do you have any phobias, like, true phobias. I was like, ah, yeah, I have this thing with snakes. And I used to say that snakes were the only animal that I couldn’t, like, get along with or something. And I had had, for as long as I could remember, like, my earliest memories, I would have a fear of snakes. And it didn’t matter. Like I could do all the logical reasoning. It’s a garter snake. It’s not poisonous. It’s not going to attack you like all of these things. And every time I would see a snake from little girl to adult version of me, would induce involuntary screaming, like, top of the lung screaming like I’m being murdered, scoot screaming. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it. I even tried to do exposure therapy. With snakes. Yep, that didn’t do it. Like it was ever. It was like full on screamfest every single time. Thankfully, not a lot of people are around when you typically see a snake. But yes, that would be my response. So that’s what it was before the training. Yep. Okay, so then now let’s
Megan Blacksmith 11:56
what happened. And I’ve, if I remember correctly, you only did one exercise on snakes specifically?
Torea Rodriguez 12:01
Yeah, we did one exercise on phobias. And I decided to bring my phobia to this exercise. And I went all in. And doing that one exercise, I was at the end, right? Because some of this work is subtle in a way like you can’t tell like I wasn’t going to run out and try and find a snake where we were doing training. But I got the opportunity. I think that weekend after I got home, I think is when it happened. I was out mountain biking with some friends and we came across a snake. And for the first time, I didn’t go run up and touch it. Although I think I might have been able to. For the first time I was able to view said Snake not start screaming. And in fact, I noticed my heart rate didn’t even accelerate. Like I didn’t even flinch or anything. I just calmly saw it. It went across the trail. We continued on our bike ride and it was a non issue. And to have that experience with a snake and it be a non issue. Felt a little otherworldly. I kind of felt like what planet Am I on? Because the planet I’ve been on, has been terrified of snakes. And, and that didn’t happen so. And I can even like watch them on TV now. Which is strange, because I used to not be able to watch them on TV, I’d have to hide my face, you know, and I can see them. People post them on social media when they see them in the desert or whatever. I can actually watch it instead of skip it. Yeah. So it’s it’s been quite remarkable that that phobia. Man, I wish I had known about this before having to do exposure therapy, because that was awful.
Megan Blacksmith 13:55
Yeah, it came when it was meant to come. So what is so interesting is that because I you know, I can hear people thinking like, well, really you do one exercise and this like huge fear phobia is gone. And so yes, and the thing about doing this kind of work and you being there seven days is that it’s a huge layering process. Right. So it’s a process, there might be other there could have been other beliefs that we worked on. We do. We did limiting beliefs and decisions throughout the work week. So for example, you work on Raynaud’s and one thing but maybe you also go through a limiting limiting decision that my body is powerful and can heal. And so then you’re right, your brain is starting to get all of this, combine it together, then you’re picturing and imagining, like the new identity you want and like where you do want to go. And as that all meshes together then that’s kind of that’s
Torea Rodriguez 14:45
yeah, I really think you’re right, like it’s not a it. It’s it’s very similar to a lot of things in you know, functional medicine and natural medicine. Oftentimes, I’m asked like, well, what is the root cause? That’s right, because that’s kind of what we’re told to look for is the root cause as if there’s one. And there’s never one, right? It’s it’s a complex mash of things coming together to cause healing to happen. And it’s the very same thing. I think it’s, you know, it’s probably a combo of those things. But in thinking about my snake phobia, I only did one particular exercise on that. It’s not like I worked on it all weekend. And that was my only focus. A week. That was a full week. On a weekend.
Megan Blacksmith 15:31
It was sure what was cool about it was interesting. And I was kind of looking at through the three wins. The third one is about wild, fat flat wildfires. And I was like, Oh, interesting. So here Tara is and like, what she’s what we’re going to talk about today is like getting into natural outdoor space and all of your things right? Like the rain was was really like you wanted to be out in the cold and exposure and on your bike. And then the snakes is because you love to be out on the trails, right? And then wildfires, I’m like, Okay, well, we could we could see a theme here as to what your brain was like, Okay, let’s just clear all this stuff. Because this would be the last thing that maybe would be stopping you from just really being within getting into the natural space. So tell me a little bit about what happened with the wildfires.
Torea Rodriguez 16:14
Sure. So I’m back in August of 2020. This is when California had a bunch of their devastating wildfires that were caused by a freak dry lightning storm. That was the most beautiful phenomenon I’ve ever seen, by the way, that lightning storm, but right behind our house in California is a whole open space State Park, lots of forested land, and that area caught on fire. And so our wildfire complex was called the CCU wildfire complex. And we got evacuation orders that were extremely urgent. And they were at 1030. At night, they were unexpected. So we had been on a morning for probably a day. But something had happened with the winds, they shifted direction, they were super strong, and they were pushing the fire at an alarming rate. And we got extremely urgent evacuation orders in the middle of the night. And so we had to evacuate. And that whole experience of evacuating in the middle of the night kicked up some kind of fear of me burning alive in the middle of the night or something like it just kicked up a really interesting fear. And I didn’t notice how deeply traumatic that experience was for me at the time until two nights later. So here, we’re now displaced. We found a campground in way Northern California because of course, there were no hotels or any this is in the middle of like locked down. Right. So there’s not a lot of places for evacuees to go. We ended way far north in Northern California. And we were at a camp site or the campground and the neighbors next to us had started a small little campfire in their little sight, right? Totally safe, totally contained. But it woke me up in the middle of the night in a complete panic, because I thought it was another wildfire. And so that experience, right going through that trauma and that PTSD type experience. Every time I would smell would smoke. I would go into that, like, oh my god, where’s the fire, I would literally start searching on Twitter. Where’s the fire near me like fires in Santa Cruz or fires wherever I happen to be. I thought that it was another wildfire. And so I was having a hard time getting rid of that like smoke trigger for that experience. And so we did our exercise on the wildfire stuff and that’s been really interesting because I’ve been able to be in the presence of smoke I think it happened like a week later or something that we smelled smoke and I didn’t know where it was from but I didn’t like I didn’t immediately go try and find it and I didn’t get panicky and smelling like just normal wood smoke from somebody’s you know, wood burning stove is is a non issue now. I don’t know how else to describe it other than it’s a non issue
Megan Blacksmith 19:30
right because I mean I remember you saying like my your whole body would shoot into fight or flight when oh
Torea Rodriguez 19:36
yes full on like is like killing of the extremities like adrenaline surge like yeah, it would definitely be a I would have to do some serious like deep breathing to calm myself down to try and figure it out.
Megan Blacksmith 19:52
Cool. So that’s so cool. So that that specifically remember we one of the process that we were teaching was collapsing anchors so He got to actually claps and a lot of people do have whether it’s like, you know, cigarette smoke was one that was super triggering for me, or, actually, we had some people do air fresheners, because you go into an air b&b. And there’s our branches. And at the same time, we’re never getting rid of your, you’re still gonna have your fight or flight, like, you’re still going to have your danger signal and you still don’t want to be like breathing it in. It’s just not that level of fight or flight where you’re, you’re useless essentially.
Torea Rodriguez 20:30
Yeah, yeah. If anybody’s ever experienced a panic attack, right, it’s, it’s that level, like you’re in such a panic that you can’t really think straight, you can’t really function very well, it takes a little while to come down from that. And it’s not good for your nervous system to hang out in that space for a long time.
Megan Blacksmith 20:52
Amen. Okay, so let’s move on to talking about one of the magical ways of, you know, getting into that getting out of that fight or flight space. And I, you said, you said something, or you wrote it in in the forum. And we were talking about this episode that just really stuck with me said, using the natural world as a healing palette. And I just love that I love everything about that. And so I would love to just start talking about the idea of natural outdoor spaces and incorporating them. And let’s just start actually Terraria with what got you interested into that specifically, you know, to expand into that outside of FDN was there was there anything that happened is just always
Torea Rodriguez 21:36
well, it kind of to two different things really kind of spurred it for me. One is, you know, I grew up kind of in the natural world, I grew up on a ranch that was surrounded by BLM land or Bureau of Land Management land, so public land, National Forest. So I’ve always kind of had that as, like the natural way of me being so I would have categorized myself as an outdoorsy person, right? So there’s part of it was, it’s just the thing that I love, it’s being outside and being in nature. So that was one. But number two, what really got me to, I guess collide, both worlds, the Functional Medicine and the natural world in this way, was I remembered about a book that I had read as a child, Heidi, I don’t know if you’ve read that book. But there’s a story about Heidi, and she is a girl in Switzerland that moves to the city and gets very sick. And you know, she’s not able to do anything, she’s fatigued, this that and the other in the story goes on, she moves back to the country, and she gets better and happy, good luck in you know, everybody’s happy at the end of the book. That was a terrible paraphrasing of the book. So it’s just a story that I remember from when I was little, but that just reminded me remembering that book reminded me that if I really like distilled these things down in terms of healing, like what causes healing to occur, and it’s the times that we are in and around nature, and because being in and around nature, allows us to get into parasympathetic state, like it allows us to do a lot of these things, to get the body back into synchronization with its own circadian rhythms, and blueprint and all of those things. And so that’s really, when I did occurred to me that I needed to collapse these two worlds, and really start focusing on bringing nature to the forefront as a way that we heal ourselves.
Megan Blacksmith 23:42
Cool. So what let’s talk about somebody who’s not outdoorsy, and also, so what I want to do is get down a little bit more detail, because I know I am one of the people who here is like get in nature, it’s good for you. And we’re like yeah, yeah, yeah, like, we know that. Right? Like, there’s a lot of things we know, and maybe we don’t do. I mean, I love nature. And it’s like, if it isn’t a part of your identity, and your patterns and your habits, like you maybe aren’t going to go as often. But what about the person who’s like, the outdoors is actually scary to them? And or, you know, how can somebody get started or what’s a good entry point to just get in touch with the natural world?
Torea Rodriguez 24:25
I’m glad you brought that up. Because I think a lot of times you know, we’re, we’re so I want to say impressionable, that’s not necessarily the word that I mean, but we see people doing outdoor things and it’s extreme sports. It’s like wearing the wingsuit and jumping off the cliff or it’s, you know, climbing with climbing ropes on this cliff or it’s doing like rafting down class five rapids. That’s what it means to be outdoors, and wild. Those are some things that people do And it also happens to be outdoors, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what what needs to take place to be outdoorsy. And I think that there’s a whole industry for the outdoor industry. And I think for a long time, that has been the narrative that’s been played out of, you need to have the right gear, and you need to be prepared. And you need to do all these things, so that you can experience the outdoors. And really, at the very basic of it, if we are just surrounding ourselves with the natural environment by going to a park and sitting on a park bench, that’s being outdoorsy, right. And so redefining that definition of what it means to be outdoors, I think is part of my passion. And something that I talk a lot about on the podcast is, it can be as simple as standing on grass without your shoes on. And that is getting some of the benefit of being outdoors. And you can do that on the front lawn or at a park. So if you live in an apartment building that can be at a park, it does not mean that you have to live next to a national forest, it does not mean that you need a backpack from REI, it does not mean any of those things, it’s really just can we start taking advantage of the things that are part of our natural world, like being in the sunshine, and listening to birds and grounding on the grass. Like that’s really what I mean by using nature as a palette.
Megan Blacksmith 26:30
I love it. So I know when you got to Dallas, I want to talk through like what you do, because I know you had found green space before we had gotten too far into it. So what are the things you look to to get okay, you know, to get to that space? And what is your what are your patterns and habits, especially when traveling?
Torea Rodriguez 26:48
Yeah, so when I’m traveling, and I’m pretty much anywhere, I will pull up a Google map, right? I think this is Apple Maps, but Google Map, and I literally will look for the green spaces. So anything that is green, and chances are if you zoom on it, so I’m zooming in on this one, that’s Pine Ridge Park, I don’t know where Pine Ridge Park is, it’s closest to me. So that is a place that I know that I can go. So that’s what’s beautiful about, you know, some of our technology that we have today, almost every single one of us has a device in our pocket that can show us where the nearest green space is. And so when we were in Dallas, we were in like a residential area. And I’m just made the assumption that while there’s got to be a park somewhere, so I looked for green space, and then just walked myself to the green space and eventually found you know, this nice place that had a river going through it and trails by the river, and I was able to watch the wildlife and walk outside and get some movement and some fresh air. And that’s why I love it so much. And then
Megan Blacksmith 27:53
what do you what do you do once you’re there? That would be the next question. All right, okay, found the green spot on the map.
Torea Rodriguez 28:00
But yeah, I mean, no do not you could start as simply as just finding a bench and just sitting and listening. You know, listen to the birds or listen to squirrels chatter as they chase each other around the notice that there are squirrels in the park, right. So just noticing your environment and becoming president with the environment. You know, walking on the grass without shoes on is a great way to do some grounding and just be present. And, you know, get in contact with the planet and the earth also helps with EMF exposure. So that kind of ties into our other conversation but or taking a walk, like just simply taking a walk. We as humans are bipedal animals, meaning we’ve got two feet, two legs, that’s how we move around. We were designed to do that. So if somebody is dealing with a chronic illness, and they can’t do a workout at a gym, or they’re dealing with, you know, excessive amount of weight, and it’s painful to like, go up and down the stairs or something like that. Simply just walking, moving slowly, is a great way to enjoy the outdoor environment. If there’s water there, listen to the water. You know, yeah, you can do just about anything in those spaces. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to buy a bunch of gear or it doesn’t mean that you have to start kayaking or you know, pick, pick an outdoor sport if you want to, if that interests you. One of the ways that I encourage my clients to start getting introduced to the outdoors is to check out like a local outdoor sports equipment spot not to buy gear but to actually see are there classes do they have you know, some place where they’re teaching you different kinds of things like paddleboarding or, you know, whatever it happens to be in your area that might even be a hiking club that you can join Just start walking with them. So, yeah,
Megan Blacksmith 30:03
that’s a really great point. Because I think often, what will stop a lot of people or stop me from doing certain things is they’ll say things and words are important, as we know, like, Well, I’m not a surfer. I’m not a paddle boarder, right. And yeah, does that mean because really, you aren’t one until you do it like the difference, like you literally are one. And all you have to do is get on it. So the other people who gotten on it, they didn’t know what they’re doing first, either, right. At some point, there’s going to be a learning curve. And you do it enough times and you fail enough times and you get feedback enough times that now you are. So this the identity piece, and I know Turay, I know that your love of all the nerdy details, right? I know, you’ve gone deeply into like circadian rhythm, and that first morning sun, and what this does, right, what nature’s actually doing to the body. So for those of you who love that information, I know for me hearing those details, I’m like, Oh, this is going to positively impact my cortisol. And it does, yeah, actually, it does actually motivate me to like, get out again. Whereas you know that that data behind it can versus like, nature’s good. We all know that.
Torea Rodriguez 31:18
This is exactly why we started a podcast this year. And that’s why we invited you onto the podcast to talk about some of this stuff. But that podcast is specifically, it’s called wildly optimized wellness podcast, and it specifically goes into the nitty gritty details of why full spectrum light is a good thing for our bodies to have. Why it’s important to get out, you know, in the morning, or why, why? Why does grounding work? Like why is that important? Why should I take my shoes off? You know, all of those like nitty gritty, sciency details, you can find them over there.
Megan Blacksmith 31:53
Yeah, and when I shared one of your nitty gritty, sciency, details, posts way back, like years ago, it was like one of the, like, highest commented posts, and because it was like all the cool things that that morning some exposure, like all the cool things that’s happening in your party, because I think we are just craving some small shifts that we can make like, Okay, if I get up a little earlier, I actually go outside and let that hit my eyeballs. Because we know it feels good. I think we can prioritize it when we have a little bit of like the data of what it’s actually doing.
Torea Rodriguez 32:29
Yeah, I think it really helped me to, to solidify that, because, you know, I’ve lived around natural spaces as much as I can in my life. And there are times where, you know, I’ve lived in a coastal environment, but never visited the beach, right? And it isn’t, until I start to remind myself that oh, hey, you know, there’s an aspect to listening to the waves that soothes our nervous system and shifts it into parasympathetic. And getting some sunlight can increase your vitamin D synthesis in the skin cells, like, Wouldn’t it be a good thing to go to the beach, then then you can double dip and have both of those things happen. And I think, you know, learning those kinds of details can help somebody make that decision of, oh, if I do this, I’m going to get the benefit of x, y and z. And it’s actually kind of easy to do. So it’s free.
Megan Blacksmith 33:23
Yeah. And I know so we bought a cottage in New Hampshire I was we’re gonna be at for two months this summer, very excited about and just being there, because they’re really like self service is pretty much non existent. Like, there’s trees everywhere. You just, I just feel different lately, I feel immediately feel different. And yep, I love it. And, and I didn’t, I’m not doing anything different. I’m just in a different place with a lot of nature, a lot less
Torea Rodriguez 33:52
towers. Yeah, it feels very different to be in a natural environment, especially like 24 by seven like that, like if you can get your body out into those locations. This is why people become so outdoorsy, right? And start to do things like plan to hike the entire Appalachian Trail or the entire Pacific Crest Trail, because being in those types of situations allows us to recalibrate our body for one, but also our mental state to by taking that time. I mean, that’s what inspired men to do retreats and stuff like that, because I wanted to give people that immersive experience.
Megan Blacksmith 34:36
Let’s talk more about their retreats and stuff. So how do you make this kind of shift and new identity and new habits? How do you make that more accessible and more sexy? And how are you introducing people to that? Yeah, so
Torea Rodriguez 34:51
this year, we’re doing our first wilderness reset retreat, and it’s a four day experience where they get to Be in a natural environment not. And I have to clarify, this is not Bear Grylls survival mode. Right. So you’re not being sent out into the wilderness with just a hatchet. That’s not what this is. But really getting intentionally putting somebody into a state where they can hear the river next to the cabinet night, right. And we are doing activities based off of the Sun cycles. So when the sun goes down, right, is when we’re going to start changing the way that we’re doing certain activities while we’re on this retreat. But giving somebody the space and duration of a few days, and nature is really important, because then all of these things start to happen without them really needing to do anything different except for to experience nature. But yeah, so setting that up as a four day experience, but then also building skills, right and getting to learn like, Okay, I think I can be self sufficient and build my own fire. So you sure we’re going to do some wilderness skills, too. But also, it’s a time to tap into, like some of the work that we did at your training, right? So that we can change the neurological pathways so that when they go home, they get to focus in on the new identity of the person that they want to become. And it becomes a lot easier, because they’ve been in a situation where for the past four days, they’ve been activating their parasympathetic nervous system a lot. So that’s, that’s kind of the idea behind the retreats.
Megan Blacksmith 36:38
I’m very excited about that, because I will be there with you. And so any, if anybody has a little phobia popping up, spiders takes fears, need fears of things coming up, the cool thing is, we will be in a safe space to we’re gonna do that work alongside nature. So this is super powerful duo. Because like Teresa said, getting, getting into parasympathetic and actually trusting that your body is safe to heal itself to do its natural thing. allows that to be fast. It’s fast in the last Yep. Yep. I love it. Okay, tell us a little bit more. So I know you also have another program coming up in August. So tell everybody how they were I knew how they can get on that list. And what’s cool.
Torea Rodriguez 37:30
Sure, absolutely. So August 1, is we’re launching the August cohort of the deep transformation program. So it’s a 12 week program that basically walk somebody through a lot of this type of transformation work that you and I have been talking about in terms of identity and beliefs, and, you know, building new neurological pathways. And the thing that’s really beautiful about this is that they can do that work on whatever protocol that they’re on working on whatever they’re working on already. And it amplifies what they’re working on that already. Or if this is their first for way in foray into natural healing, and they haven’t done testing yet, then they have an option to do some of the functional medicines stuff, as well. But I’m really excited because I’ve been doing a couple of different renditions of this program as pilots over the last couple of years. And I think it’s finally honing into something that is super quick and super effective. And everybody who’s gone through it is just amazed with the kinds of transformations they’re having. And we’re only a couple of weeks into the current cohort. So it’s actually been really, really beautiful to watch. And I’m super excited about that. So yes, if somebody wants to work with myself and my team directly that is coming up and they can get on the waitlist, and we’ll make sure that that gets into the shownotes
Megan Blacksmith 38:53
beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. Teresa, you’re so welcome. So make sure to go find her and all the places we’ll put her Instagram, it’s just Trey Rodriguez or is there a
Torea Rodriguez 39:05
tre Rodriguez is the one No one wants all shoved together one word, okay, you just the trick is you gotta know how to spell it.
Megan Blacksmith 39:13
We’re gonna put it all put in the show notes, the website, all the things all the places. As always, we do really appreciate when you all share with your friends, anybody who you can think of right now who would benefit from this, go ahead and take a screenshot and text them this podcast. Share this on your Instagram story. Leave us a review, go check out the wildly optimized wellness podcast with Theresa. If you want all the nerdy details, also my episodes on there. So all the things we’re so happy to have you here it helps us a ton. When you share when you like when you comment that stuff is actually real to us and to the people who take their time to research this stuff for years and then break it down into a way that it is easy to understand. So you We hope you got something awesome out of this and we’d love to hear about it