74. How to Avoid Burning Out Your Nervous System and Achieve High Performance—In Body and Mind with Tania St. Laurent

00:05 Dr. Ann Tsung Are you struggling to advance your career and sacrificing time with your loved ones because of endless to-dos, low energy, and just not enough time in the day? If so, then this podcast is for you. I am your host Dr. Ann Tsung, an ER critical care and space doctor, a peak performance coach, a real estate investor, and a mother of a toddler. I am here to guide you on mastering your mind and give you the essential skills to achieve peak performance. Welcome to Productivity MD, where you can learn to master your time and achieve the five freedoms in life.

00:52 Hello. Welcome to Productivity MD Podcast, and I am your show host Dr. Ann Tsung. Today we have Tania St-Laurent. She is huge into mind-body connection, activating your parasympathetic, knowing how to drop down—I mean, decrease your sympathetic—make very holistic way of teaching people, and how to achieve high performance. That’s the reason why I brought her on. Because I want us to be very efficient in how we actually achieve productivity in life. Right? So just a little bit about her background. She’s a certified osteopath. She is also a holistic coach for high performers. So that is high-performing individuals and also it could be teams, corporations. She had recently done a session with T-Mobile as well. She’s the author of an upcoming book on mind-body connection and the effects on the nervous system. She’s also a mother of two kids as well. I have also met her husband who have climbed the seven peaks in the world. So her whole entire family is just crazy high achievers. So thank you, Tanya, for coming on the show. Tell the audience why you started digging into this, learning more about this, going the path you’ve gone, and why people should even care about listening to this.

02:08 Tania St-Laurent Right. Well, thank you for this introduction. When you say it this way, it’s a lot. Thank you for having me. Yes, so I have dedicated my life to understanding the mind-body connection, because I’ve seen firsthand how we can transform not just our health but our performance at the highest level. My background spans from working in labs as a microbiologist, all the way to becoming an osteopath in Canada, working in clinic with patients, all the way to coaching athletes on the sport field, even in yoga studios. Now I work and train CEOs, pregnant mothers. I train anybody who has the desire to really grow and pursue and achieve their own—like you mentioned, my husband—mountain. But everybody has their own mountains and their own desires and things that they care about. And while I work with so many people from across different walks of life from all around the world, they have very different goals and different ways to get there. But there are so many rules that apply that are good for all of them. Personally, I also had a battle a couple of years ago with a health condition and chronic autoimmune condition as well. This whole journey really forced me to deeply explore what truly mean lasting health and high performance. I had to realize that it’s not just about working harder, but it’s about working smarter in aligning the body and the mind efficiently.

03:41 Dr. Ann Tsung I can attest to that because I met Tanya when I was eight weeks post-postpartum, and I was like, “Oh my God. I’m going to go back and lift.” I feel great. I started going back to my Olympic weightlifting, doing very light snatches, cleans and jerks, that live squats, all that stuff. That’s a perfect example of a high achiever wanting to just do, do, do and not wanting to rest and recover. So when we met, we did some assessments where we were able to assess what was misaligned, what wasn’t strong of in terms of my pelvic floor, my core. And finally, with doing some PT work, pelvic floor PT work, my core is now strong enough. I’m back to my pre-pregnancy baseline, but now I still have some balance work to do in terms of the, I think, adductors or abductors. Anyway, long story short, perfect example to slow down so I can speed up and have the right foundation to lift. Anyway, this is why you should care about this. But go ahead, Tanya.

04:40 Tania St-Laurent Yes, and I love it. I remember when we met, like, you’re so driven and excited. Especially coming from pregnancy, we’re finding ourself back and we’re so happy, we’re just going to go for it. I remember seeing you and being like, “Oh, okay, we can do this.” And I 100 % agree. We’re going to get you exactly where you want and beyond, but we need to do the things the right way. There’s a tendency of just being all in and kind of blind sometimes in trying to figure out as we go—which, for a lot of reason, a lot of times, that works. But also, what’s important is to have an orientation and a schedule.

05:19 So high performers, they do have a lot of consistency. They’re very rigorous, but they have a system. This is that path that will get you from A to B. Like a GPS, you need to know where you’re starting from to the final destination, so you can put the coordinates and the GPS gives you the best way to get there. So it’s true and same thing in life, but we really need to understand where we start from. And after pregnancy, after injury, starting a new job, having kids or changing neighborhoods, whatever it is, there’s always a different start A, a new opportunity in that start A. And that could have an impact also on the B—the final destination, or the goal, or whatever you’re working on. It’s important to plan as much as we can but also elevate our game mentally and physically, so we can take these little challenges and things that can come up our way that we didn’t plan.

06:15 The productivity and the elite performance, to explain a little bit that why people should care. Because it’s not about doing more; it’s about doing the right things the right way. We’re burning out. I’ve been there so many times. You think I would not, right? But I’ve been burning out so many times. Because I had great intention, a lot of energy, but not always the right strategy for managing my energy. Over time, we become so good with tools to have a perfect calendar, a perfect to-do list. We manage our time to the tee, but we do not manage our energy. Health span, when we think longevity, I would like to even funnel it down to health span. Now, what does it mean? It’s the quality of life you have—not just how long you can live for. That, for me, is the real metric of what’s success. I personally don’t see the point of living longer if it’s not better. So we want to optimize our body and our mind, so we have sustainable performance. I always say I will take you to the game. I will take you to the finish line of the marathon while we do that together. But that peak, that in performance as well, we talk about sports a little bit but it’s also in mindset or just a goal in our health. I want to have all these blood markers better. I want to have these stress marker in my body better. So these are also goals. We’re going to get you there. But the goal is that not just we get to that peak, that summit, and then we crash; I want you to reach that peak, that goal in your life, but to be able to maintain it over and over. That becomes your new norm, and it’s not just a stop and go that you feel that you have to start over again and again.

08:07 In overachiever, high-performance people, it’s the accumulation. It’s the consistent adding of skill over and over. It’s not just run the marathon and then do nothing for two years, and then run the marathon again and do nothing for two years. It’s always, there’s ups and downs, but they’re building up on top of each other. I think that is really important. Where a lot of pissed people are missing out is that they focus on the goal, they go for it. They don’t pay attention to anything else. Then, unfortunately, even when they reach, they pay the price.

08:41 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I think I heard this saying. I don’t know if it’s from the Dalai Lama. But when people are young, they let go of their health to make more money. Then when they get older, they let go of their money for their health.

08:54 Tania St-Laurent Yes. Yes. Yes. I heard so many versions of this, and it’s so well said and sad.

08:59 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I know. I know. And I wonder, for people who are so deep into it, they don’t actually realize that they’re doing that. So in this podcast, we always talk about the why and then we talk about our end result, what we’re aiming for, then we go to the tactics at the end. Now, what does life look like when they’re sympathetic-driven, not caring about active recovery, has that constant drip of cortisol, the stress hormone in their life? What does that actually look like? How do you know you’re like that? What you’re talking about, sustainable performance, what does that feel like? What does that look like?

09:38 Tania St-Laurent Yes. So let’s talk about health in general to get started. I think there’s three main categories that have many subcategories. Sometimes subcategories can be placed in different, right? So it’s not pure ruled. But there’s three main pillars in health: the movement that you get your body in, the nutrition—how you feed yourself and how you absorb as well—and the recovery. Recovery is how you recover to your body. It could be recovering from the day, recovering from a workout. It could be recovering from an injury or an illness. Or it could be also recovering the mind, the stress response, and how we process just how everything going through our day in our lives. So these three main pillars—the movement, the nutrition, the regeneration—are a bit like a stool, a three-legged stool. You sit on it. We all know if one of these legs is not really solid, or cracky, or shaky, you’re going to fall. Unfortunately, we are really good. Usually, we kind of focus on one or maybe two, where we kind of neglect the third one. We’re being like, “I’ll take care of that later.” Right? We go to the gym really hard. We eat very well. But sleep, what’s sleep? I’ll sleep later, or whatever it is.

10:54 When we pay attention in each of these three different categories, there is sympathetic-driven and parasympathetic. So sympathetic, parasympathetic, it’s really the response of the nervous system. We want to pay attention of how we do things in each three category that will up-regulate our nervous system response or down-regulate our nervous system response. As we know—we had this conversation before together—the sympathetic is not a bad thing, right? We sometimes see the fight-or-flight. The other one is rest-and-digest, which is great, you know. Fight-or-flight is basically how the body will react in a state of danger. But it’s so much more than that. Sympathetic is not a bad thing. We need sympathetic. When we laugh really loud, that’s sympathetic. Our blood pressure increases. Our face gets contracted, and we get pretty excited. If something is about to fall out of the counter and you grab it, you feel like a ninja for a couple of seconds. That is sympathetic. Or if you go to work and somebody cuts you really fast, you put the brake or steer the wheel and you avoid this accident. That is sympathetic. That is fantastic. We need it. There’s also a lot of biochemical reactions in our body that are a balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic.

12:12 The problem: when it takes over drive. You just said it so beautifully, that IV drip of cortisol and all the other stress hormones. There’s also adrenaline. But there’s such a cocktail of hormone that will be burst and come out when we have one of these reactions. And that’s okay. The problem is that we keep the finger on the switch. We keep getting that up regulation. That can be coming, for example, of going to the gym. That’s great. Exercise. Wonderful. But it’s always crushing it, crushing it, crushing it, combined with, “I don’t have time for this. I’m tired. I’ll drink more coffee.” Combined with, “I’m going to eat in front of my computer, whatever, and just inhale my food. It’s in my stomach. Now, your turn. Deal with it. I did my part.” Then we’re so exhausted and moody and having on so much in our mind that we start watching Netflix. We play on our phones, and we end up finishing email really late at night. We do things that unpack our sleep, and then we do it over and over again. So we walk in that hyper state of sympathetic response. And if you add the micro insults—I’m going to call them like that, the micro insults. Looking at Instagram or Facebook, “I can’t believe she just said that. Oh, have you heard this thing?” Or, “I don’t like what this person is saying on the news.” Or something happened in the world, and it makes you feel a certain way. Nothing we need to hide ahead in the stand. But you just need to be aware that we get these microaggression, microinsults. Sometimes we do that to ourselves. At the end of the day, we have trouble with digestion. We have trouble breathing. Because we’re so shallow all the time that it feels, it impacts our heart rate or our heart rate variability. It impacts our sleep. And down the road, it impacts your mood. You’re stressed out, irritated, add on top of foggy brain, all of these things. Not to make it simple saying, “Well, it’s just stress response.” It’s so much more than that. But it’s stress response.

14:20 We have so much science now. We’re such in a beautiful era that we can find study, peer review studies, about technique, breath work, yoga, meditation, exercises in general, that can help bring a little bit of buffer on these hormones that are up-regulated and help buffer the cortisol, the adrenaline itself, but also enhance the other one—the oxytocin, the serotonin, leading to melatonin, all these yummy hormones that are bringing youth in our body—that are helping for regeneration, recovery, making you just thrive and grow out throughout your day. So it’s important to have the balance, but we need to spend more time. Just because of the world that we’re in—you have kids. You’re a mom. You have a career. You have aging parents. You have a stressful job. You’re stuck in traffic, or somebody you love is healing, whatever it is—it’s easy to stay on the sympathetic response with the gas pedal down to the metal. We have to actively be mindful and take action, and turn ourselves toward more parasympathetic stimulation or down stimulation, when you think it this way, that will help us bring the needle down but also elevate all the other things that we need for our body to feel healthy and our minds.

15:49 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, and so you don’t react to your kids. You don’t react to your husband or your wife so easily.

15:54 Tania St-Laurent Yes, exactly.

15:55 Dr. Ann Tsung You don’t get reactive to an email. Sometimes you interpret a text or an email, the wording, as they’re being aggressive or negative. But actually, it’s just you.

16:06 Tania St-Laurent Yes, and you know that saying. You don’t see things as they are; you see things as you are.

16:12 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I completely agree with, like, if I don’t sleep well or if some routine is off, then I am definitely more reactive with my husband. Whatever he doesn’t do, I’m like, “Why is he not doing it?” It’s all like the gap, the gap. Like, why is it not done? Why is it not done? Why is the laundry—? Anyway, another thing I wanted to really emphasize to people—how important the stress response is. Because I’ve done a test with true age, looking at DNA methylation, my cellular age. It was postpartum. So right now, I don’t know. I don’t have a pre-partum one. So who knows? I’ve done two. One was postpartum six months. One was postpartum almost 10 months. Both show that I was older than my biological age. My nutrition is definitely super dialed, and my Oura ring score is usually high 80s to 90s.

17:04 Tania St-Laurent No, that’s impressive. That’s impressive. Congrats, because that’s hard.

17:09 Dr. Ann Tsung Thank you, thank you. And I’m still. I’m still because of all the stressors, maybe the postpartum age. I mean, stage played a role in it. But because I’m still on the go, I have active recovery. I have sauna. I have sensory deprivation, so I have massage. But I think the stress I place on myself is like way more. So I got to really slow down. So people who are listening, just because you’re good in two parts, it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the third part. Okay?

17:38 Tania St-Laurent Yes, that’s very important.

17:39 Dr. Ann Tsung And so now we’re going to dive in then — what’s that?

17:41 Tania St-Laurent That’s very important.

17:42 Dr. Ann Tsung Yes. And for people, maybe we can talk a little bit about activating the parasympathetic and the three pillars. But everybody is going to be a little different. What is the general principle of must-do maybe for each of the actions that they can take, the pillars that they can take?

18:00 Tania St-Laurent Yeah, that’s a beautiful question. Because we are in a world of biohacking. I’m guilty. I love this. I think there are so many great tools. Just the test you did is a form of biohacking because you’re asking yourself. You’re inquiring, so then you have more information. Then you can take action. So there’s just so many tools and so many information out there. A lot of them are great. They’re not a bad thing, but they make a promise that they will fix something without having you to do anything. Right? See what I am saying here? I think that is a big problem because we’re not thinking about supplements. I take supplements. My kids take supplements. It’s not a problem at all. Again, I think they’re great. But the problem is, we take supplements. We do the infrared because we have back pain, and then we’re going to do that thing because it’s going to help, right? But in the end, that becomes the first line of defense or the first line of attack for a lot of people. Because they don’t have time, so they will go with the shiny object. “Oh, I read this thing,” or, “I’m just going to take that pill.” While it can be supportive, it’s not going to fix the problem. Not fix in the sense that you’re broken. Fix in the sense that it’s a trajectory. You’re either going in a direction that you’re thriving, helping, growing, regenerating, or not. It’s either or, right? Even if you do surpass, if you stay and you’re not doing much, it makes your body age. Because there are so many things coming from the outside world, that we need to be active—actively paying attention.

19:39 Everybody I met—from professional athletes to very busy CEOs, or lawyers, or doctors. I’ve worked with so many inspiring people—there’s always one thing that I’m like, okay, what do you care about? What do you want to do? Where are we going? What is going to happen? When we reach that, who are you going to become? Right? Who is this person that have attained all these physical, mental, professional, health goals, whatever it is? We need to look back and be like, okay, how does this person move? How is this person moving? How is this person eating? How is this person recovering? How is this person thinking? How can you embody this persona? This person is not highly-stressed, always late, all over the place, but take their supplements in the morning. Right? It needs to be so much more than that. Sorry. It’s a long answer for a short question, but it comes with so much passion. I think that if there’s one takeaway for all the community, our listeners, is there are so much things that you can do to yourself, for yourself, that are not expensive, not difficult. It just needs to be planned and organized in your schedule that you can achieve. You can achieve so much more than all the expensive biohacks you put together when you dial down your personal health. It starts with movement, nutrition, and regeneration.

21:05 Movement—I understand we’re busy. We don’t have a lot of time for this. We don’t have time to move. But you know what you don’t have time? It’s for a back spasm that lasts for a month. What you don’t have time is to go deal with some knee replacement or a fusion in your neck because you’ve been so tight and so stuck up in a certain position for too many years of your life in front of the computer. We don’t have time, and we definitely don’t have time for what’s coming when that’s going to come, if it comes. I’m not making a curse on anybody right now. Movement can be as simple as focusing on functional, right? So how can you improve the movement of your body? Every time I wake up in the morning, my back is tight. Okay. That’s a good place to get started. Or, when I walk, it feels creaky. Or whatever it is that you notice in your body that you would like to improve, start with that a little bit. You sit a lot; do things that are moving your body a bit like a 360 in all different angles. It can be two minutes in the morning. It could be five minutes. But you have to do it consistently. That is the secret. So it could be, “I wake up in the morning. I take care of myself. I brush my teeth. I have my breakfast, if this is what you need to do. Just before I put my clothes on, I will do five minutes of yoga stretches. I will find these three movements. No matter what, I’m doing that.” Or, “”I will do some functional exercises that my coach just prescribed me, or whatever it is. But it’s to move our body. Because your body adapts to the demand. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. That’s true for bone. That’s true for muscle mass, but it’s also true for range of motion. If you never put your arms overhead, one day, you’ll just try to reach for the open bins in the airplane and you’ll be like, “Aw, what’s going on here?” Well, when was the last time you did that? “I don’t know.” Well, that’s it. Or you have grandkids and you’re getting on the floor. You have a hard time coming back up and you’re like, “Well, I’m 60. That’s a little bit challenging.” It shouldn’t be, right? Well, when’s the last time you do it? “Well, I never go on the floor.” Good. It’s a good place to get started.

23:17 Start moving for yourself. Some people dance. They do dance parties when they do their breakfast. That’s awesome. Start moving your body. You can go for a walk and take the time, give you a path and go for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever it is. But it’s the consistency. Find something that you enjoy, that makes sense to your body, that gives you energy when you’re done doing it, and do it. And if you’re a little more advanced in that field, you love to lift weights, and you’re running a lot, or you know you’re a little bit more advanced in that conditioning—like you, lifting weights, power lifting—that’s awesome. Make sure that you have a recuperation, a recovery, also called a “cool down.” Do you do your cool down, Ann?

24:01 Dr. Ann Tsung No.

24:03 Tania St-Laurent No? You need cool down.

24:05 Dr. Ann Tsung I just go straight to back to work. I mean, my cool down today—

24:08 Tania St-Laurent Of course, you do. 

24:09 Dr. Ann Tsung Today, I ate right after. Maybe that’s my cool down, but not a stretch.

24:12 Tania St-Laurent Oh, congratulations. Yes, but that’s finished. That’s helping your body. But as we’re moving now to that nutrition aspect, your body is full of cortisol. You have higher blood sugar because you just have all the exercises. Your heart rate is a little higher. Your breathing is a little higher, and then you leave the gym in that state. That doesn’t help what’s coming your way. You’re going to be a little bit more receptive, a little more focused when things are going to happen. So that cool down doesn’t have to be just stretches. It could be lying down on your back and having long inhales and long exhales for three, four, five minutes. Really taking you from, okay, we’re super excited right now. We just did a lot of crazy shenanigans. That’s great. We’re just going to bring you here and breathe, and bring the cortisol down. Taper, buffer that cortisol. So when you go eat, eat is rest-and-digest. Sorry. Parasympathetic is rest-and-digest, recuperate, all that. But if you go start eating with your high cortisol, do you think you’re going to have an efficient digestion? I’ll let you answer that one.

25:19 Dr. Ann Tsung What about—

25:22 Tania St-Laurent Maybe not so much.

25:22 Dr. Ann Tsung —the Shavasana idea? That’s great.

25:26 Tania St-Laurent Shavasana is amazing. Shavasana in yoga is the integration. It’s recalibrating your nervous system. You can shavasana everything. You can shavasana after a run. You can shavasana after lifting weights. You can even shavasana after a tough meeting or a tough email. Get on the floor and just breathe for a couple of mindful deep breaths just to rebalance things out. It’s funny. And because it’s so simple, we don’t do it. Because we rather take that pill that is going to help me sleep. No, no, no. Shavasana. Just breathe. You can also do it seated. We’re just being funny here. Little things in your movement, that help you move better, improve your overall health and your physical health, your movement health. If you do a lot, think about tapering it down.

26:15 Then in nutrition, do you eat sitting in front of the computer? I remember eating — I don’t do that anymore. That was a 2023 resolution. I don’t eat in my car. I will sit calmly and not just stuff things in my face between red lights. But what type of state are you when you’re eating? Is it always rush, rush, rush, rush, rush? Sometimes I know you cannot do it all the time. But have a meal time with the family and enjoying it. No devices. No TV. No nothing going on. Just being present. That doesn’t cost anything. I understand it cannot be done every moment of the day. But are you able to pin point some times to do that? When you eat, just being conscious of what you’re eating—the taste, the flavor, the structure of your meal. You created that or you just pick it up. So the nutrition, again, it’s rest-and-digest. That will be the parasympathetic response. So how can we make our digestion more efficient? Do you chew your food? That is the most difficult thing to do. Just for fun. Do you know how many bites, how many chew do we need to make to have an efficient digestion? Because the saliva — so the digestion starts in the mouth, right? So it’s the mechanic with saliva. There’s a lot of enzymes, and then we swallow. Then digestion level, number two. But how many chews do you think you need?

27:40 Dr. Ann Tsung 10?

27:41 Tania St-Laurent No. More.

27:44 Dr. Ann Tsung Oh, definitely don’t do more than 10.

27:47 Tania St-Laurent You’re good. I was doing 5.

27:50 Dr. Ann Tsung Not me. I don’t do 10. I’m just thinking. Should I do — maybe I need 10.

27:54 Tania St-Laurent It’s like 23, 25. I mean, there’s different studies. It’s over 20. So just for fun. Next time you take a bite, drop your fork and see how many times are you doing it. Push yourself. You’ll be like, “Oh my God. That’s almost nauseating.” But when you chew better, you digest better. And guess what? You eat less, right? Not less of the good stuff; we just eat less volume because we absorb better. So that’s one thing.

28:17 Then when we go to the third category—that is the regeneration. Regeneration means taking care of our body. So we go through life all day doing things in ourselves or reproducing and dying. We have the cycle of life inside us, inside of each of ourselves. We need to feed that body, but we also need to give it space for it to recover. And when we go to bed, when we sleep, there’s three main phases of sleep to have different also ramification. It’s light sleep, REM, and deep. Each of them are as important. They have different roles and happen at different moments through the night. When you mentioned you have a cellular fatigue and your cells are a little tired, it could be so many things. But one thing, the first thing, that came to mind is even if you had a good quality sleep right away after that postpartum, the recovery is not the same. Especially if you’re breastfeeding your kid, I mean, it’s hard enough no matter what. But when you’re breastfeeding, you’re literally taking your life source, your life. You’re putting it outside of you to give it to that child. The recovery in the cellular fatigue is so impressive. If we don’t take care of that after child bearing, childbirth, but also just in general, it’s the first thing that goes away. So you would think because I’m tired, I will sleep better. No, that’s not working. Think about a child who needs to do a nap. Okay, you need to go now. They can’t fall asleep because they missed the previous nap. It’s like that vicious cycle. When we’re too tired, too exhausted, the body gets in that survival state even when you sleep. And it doesn’t feel safe. It doesn’t feel that you can relax because there’s always things coming your way. So when you monitor your sleep, then you’re high stressed. You notice that you spend very little in each of these categories. And while you should be about 25% of your time in REM, 25% in deep, and 50% in everything else, we barely hit that. So in a cycle of eight hours, an hour and a half plus, and we barely get there. So while we’re being in bed—sometimes we use wine to get there on the weekend. Sometimes we take different things, or sometimes we catch up with Netflix or our phones to really calm ourselves down—in the end, when you look at how it impacts the sleep, it is absolutely not efficient. We need to come up with regulations. That can be breath work. There are so many flavors of them. It could be gentle stretching before bed to help the body ease and relax. It could be meditation music to something that’s top 40. We don’t do that because it’s too exciting. But things that are helping just the brain ease. So, again, finding what works for you and sticking to it.

31:11 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I think in terms of the active recovery, I know a lot of people — so what I’m saying is you can be efficient with your active recovery, right? We bought a pop-up sauna at home. It’s not expensive, a pop-up sauna on Amazon. So after the kids go to bed, I plug it in. I turn it on. I play like theta-wave type music to drop down the brain waves a little bit. I do a little bit of reading and planning and the breath work in there. So you can do sauna. You can breathe in the sauna, and then you can listen to the music that calms you down. That sometimes helps me get into bed easier. I made the mistake first two times doing a cold shower right after a sauna. I was like, oh, that’s for morning only. Morning only. But yes, thank you.

31:58 Just to summarize, the first thing is movement—for people to take any action no matter where you’re at. For example, I’m standing right now in my standing desk, and there’s a way to buy a treadmill under your desk right now. There’s a kettlebell here. There’s a rebounder here. Just have things around your workspace, so it inspires you to do something. At night, if you’re going to Netflix, then maybe do it with, like, while you’re in the yoga pose, do it foam rolling. Have the foam roller by your sofa or something like that. And nutrition—I’m going to start chewing my food more, and I’m going to stop responding to people on my phone. Because I tend to do that to be efficient. That’s when I do my communication batching. Stop doing that. I’d chew my food more. I think the last pillar you’re talking about, the breathing. I think, for me, I will do probably more. I do it once, maybe twice a day, but I probably will do more Shavasana and just lay down the floor and do it maybe twice, maybe three times a day. So that’s what I’ve learned so far. Anything else to add for the audience. If they must focus on one action item, is there something that they must do after this episode?

33:13 Tania St-Laurent I would say find something that works for you and that makes sense and that you can commit to, that will be consistent, that you can do every day. So we have this thinking of, “There are so many things to do. There are so many aspects. I have to do all of this.” Start with one thing and do it well over and over and over. It could be like, I know I’m dehydrated. I need to drink more water. So tomorrow morning, I’m going to start drinking at eight ounce that I pour the night before on the counter. So when I go in the kitchen or in my bathroom, it’s the first thing I see and the first thing I do. Oh, it’s just a glass of water. Great. Do it again, and again, and again, to the point that you cannot not do it anymore. Then add one more small habit. But just keep them. Instead of, I’m going to do all these 10 things and then set up yourself for — not for failure. You set up yourself for frustration. Because it’s too much. So pick one, simple, that you’re like, yeah, that’s so easy. Great. Do it again and again and again.

34:19 Dr. Ann Tsung Would you say though, if they were to pick one pillar or one aspect though as a foundation, it’s got to be like sleep?

34:26 Tania St-Laurent I mean, I would say knowing our community, knowing our listeners, I would probably say that is the most common. Right? They are all important. But the thing that I see the most is the quality sleep. Yes, that would be one of the most important. Because, usually, we kind of do pretty good at the other things. But it’s the one that is neglected, and it’s the one that is praised. Oh, I just slept three hours yesterday. Oh, you’re such a hard worker. Have you seen? He just sent an email last midnight. He’s still on this computer. This is great. So we even reward sleep deprivation. So, naturally, culturally, we’re sleep-deprived. So let’s change that.

35:13 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, and I would say one action maybe is to measure what you want to change. So if you don’t have an Oura ring, I would get one, or something similar to track your sleep. I don’t get anything money back from that, okay?

35:24 Tania St-Laurent Yes, there are so many. Even Fitbit. So simple. There are so many. Whoop, the Oura ring. There are just so many tools. Even Apple Watch, a lot of people have an Apple Watch, or even Garmin. Like anything that has a little bit of that health monitor will have a section that will look at sleep. You can see the tendency of your sleep. You can see the quality of it, and you can see the pattern. And when you can learn a little bit more about your pattern, you can definitely learn about what’s going on.

35:52 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, and look for devices that tracks your REM and your deep. And I will say one hack maybe is, like, I used to not eat two, three hours before bed. I’ve lengthened it to maybe three, four hours. My deep sleep have increased 30 minutes.

36:05 Tania St-Laurent Oh, easily. That’s a third of what you need. That’s huge. 30 minutes is great. Some people don’t even have that.

36:12 Dr. Ann Tsung Oh, it’s scary.

36:14 Tania St-Laurent Oh, that’s great. It is. It is.

36:15 Dr. Ann Tsung That’s scary. I know we talked about so much here. I’m sure people will have more questions. And if they want your guidance and your coaching, or training, how can people find you, and what are your current offers right now?

36:31 Tania St-Laurent Thank you for that. Yes, I’m currently working as I’m coaching people, individual, but I’m also coaching team in a corporate environment or private practices. So the same way we look at goals for physical mental health or just achieving something as a team, we always need to come back down to: what is going on in our health? Right? What is going on in our team? Are people tired, burnout? What’s going on? So as I coach individual, I also coach in team environment. I have a website, tanyastl.com. So we can find more information there. You can reach me as well there. I have a little presence on social media. I need to be a little bit. That’s the goal, right? It’s something I need to work on. That gives me a lot of sympathetic response, being a little bit more present on social media. But yes, traveling and meeting with people and helping, I would say, high achiever. I have a 93-year-old, a high-achiever. And it’s wonderful. Everybody comes with different shapes and desires, and I’m here for them.

37:37 Dr. Ann Tsung Do they have to be virtual, in person?

37:40 Tania St-Laurent Mostly virtual right now, in the sense that because I am in Maryland, in the United States. I do travel. I have a couple in Canada. So if I’m invited, I will definitely show up. But we can do a lot of work virtual without a problem. That’s not an issue at all.

37:58 Dr. Ann Tsung Okay. So for everybody who wants to learn more, go to tanyastl.com. Correct? Then the social media handle is?

38:07 Tania St-Laurent It’s tania. So my name is spelled in French with an I. So @tania_stlaurent_.

38:14 Dr. Ann Tsung Okay. Got it. Yes, so people who are listening, just take one action. Don’t just blow this, like, you listen to it passively but did not commit on anything, right? Commit to something after this so you can make that two millimeter shift for exponential gain, say, 5, 10 years down the line. Thank you again, Tanya. I think we could do talk about a ton. I appreciate your expertise. I appreciate you helping me getting my core pelvic straight, telling me to say, “No. Stop. Rest.” That’s great. That’s what I needed.

38:49 Tania St-Laurent Calm down. You got this.

38:52 Dr. Ann Tsung Thank you. Thank you.

38:54 Tania St-Laurent Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. Always amazing spending time with you.

38:59 Dr. Ann Tsung Thank you. Same here as well. I learned so much. For the people, the audience who’s listening to this, just remember that everything is within you now. Thank you.

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