Full-episode here
Ari Gronich
Hi, my man on edge I am here with Brianna Bragg and the vacation of the mind, we're going to be taking you on a journey. When you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. What do you do? You take a vacation of the mind. And Brianna is an expert in that field. I'm going to let her give you some of her words of wisdom and mental journeys to increase your immunity actually, during the COVID Response Unit. Brianna, why don't you talk a little bit about who you are and why you're talking to people.
Brianna Bragg
Awesome. Thank you so much Ari. It's great to be here. And glad we got the the technology to finally cooperate a little bit today. I'm Brianna Bragg, the founder of vacation of the mind. And we're passionate about oneness through wellness. We offer workplace wellness programs, certifications, and trainings as well as large mass events. And it's just a pleasure to be operating during this time. You know, a lot of people's senses are heightened, you know, our thoughts create these feedback loops that then create behavioral patterns. And when this when this all started, we all got kind of thrown into a survival mode, and survival mode. You know, it's very interesting for the body because it pumps these hormones cortisol and adrenaline throughout the body on a consistent basis, telling that telling the body that it needs to survive, and it needs to do certain things to survive. And while that's great and wonderful and short term doses, over a long span, it can cause serious health issues. It can decrease immunity, like what you were talking about. And mindfulness. And meditation is such a great tool to help combat some of that stress, relaxing the central nervous system, boosting immunity, reducing stress and anxiety, as well as improving focus and productivity. You know, everybody's working from home, we're all being faced with some additional challenges right now, with the kids screaming in the background, not wanting to do their schoolwork, or, you know, just us feeling confined in one place. And so meditation and mindfulness is a great tool to help get ourselves out of that negative thought patterns into a more positive place.
Ari Gronich
Awesome. Thank you. So what got you started in, in this field from where you started out originally?
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, you know, necessity, right? I've always been an overachiever mentality with that gogogo mindset. You know, I was able to utilize meditation and mindfulness to really change my life. And now it's my passion to help others do the same. I think I know, when I started out Ari, it was, you know, a lot of YouTube videos and researching on the internet. And while that's great and wonderful, it can be confusing at first, you know, am I doing this right? I can't get my mind to calm How the hell do I get my mind calm if it's not trained? And so I, you know, I learned some steps that helped me simplify the process helped me reduce some of the the guilt and shame over Am I doing this right. And then I formulated my own process that the more I practiced with other people or on other people, you know, if I worked every single time,
Ari Gronich
so you mentioned corporate wellness and corporate programs, what benefit would it have for, say, an HR department to have somebody on staff that's trained in your system for their employees benefit and wellness?
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, absolutely. You know, first of all, I just want to back up and say that 80% of employees feel stressed. And there's $300 billion a year that's, that's B with its billion with a B, just in the US alone, that's spent on health related costs that are associated distress. Now, that was before COVID-19. I don't even know if I want to know what that that number is going to look like, once we come out of this, right. And, you know, stress causes a lot of, of health issues it can cause insomnia can cause high blood pressure, it can cause fatigue, burnout. And the list kind of goes on, you know, headaches, upset stomachs. I mean, there's there's a lot of illnesses and that are associated with stress. And so having someone on the team to be who is trained in mindfulness and meditation is a huge benefit to employers because employers are really focused on what productivity right they want as much out of us as we can possibly get. And you know, the time that we have to work well, what happens when a body is stressed out, is we're just kind of shutting down. We're left focused, I know for myself, I've had to even during this time, pick up my own meditation because there are days where I'm just like, I sit down at my computer, and I'm like, I don't even know where to start or what to do, you know, and I've really got to dive into being a little more focused, we're less creative, we're less able to make decisions and handle problems as they come up and finding solutions for those problems. And so when you think about this from a productivity scale, employers are losing, you know, thousands of hours of productivity, because they're just they're pushing, pushing, pushing, instead of giving their employees time to reset time to pause time to calm some of those stress responses. And so having someone on the team, who's trained in a process that works to help their employees reduce stress, and anxiety ultimately leads to more productivity, creativity, and focus on the job.
????Ari Gronich
So when we look at those kinds of numbers, it really makes sense to use mindfulness and meditation and so forth in in a corporate wellness program.
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's an investment into the company and an investment into your team, you know, and one thing I will say about some of the up and coming generation is they are requiring companies to provide additional tools and resources for health and wellness, because that's one of the things that's important to them. And I think, you know, not just looking at your team is what can, what can it produce, but I love that you brought in that it's a culture, it's a culture shift in terms of supporting your employees, and really caring about them as human beings and what they're going through and, and how they're dealing with certain situations. And especially during this time, it's more important than ever to make sure that the emotional and mental well being of your employees is healthy.
Ari Gronich
What is the benefit that reaches over to the rest of the population, when the employees are not coming home with having had a bad day? That's, you know, cost them their emotional state, and their adrenal date? So what's the turnover around that?
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, they have more patience with their family, more patients at home, with their kids, but their spouse, you know, being able to handle situations that come up at home, with a little more ease and a little more flow. You know, when you come when you come home, and you're in that stressed out state, your snippety you know, your shorts. I know a lot of that is happening right now, I've even had to check myself a couple of times with my partner, I was like, you know, okay, maybe I didn't need to respond that way. Right. And so when, when we're at a heightened level of stress, we do bring that home. And you know, you don't have the time that you want to dedicate sometimes to your family, because you just don't have the emotional bandwidth to.
Ari Gronich
So let's talk about that responding versus reacting. And what mindfulness does when you become more and more and more aware of what state you're in?
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, you know, I love to use the analogy here on you're on a highway and someone cuts you off on the highway, you know, most of us react, right? We're flipping on the finger, we're cursing yelling at you, bah, bah, bah, I used to have road rage, I admit, you know, I used to be one of the worst road rage people probably meat on the planet. And I drove a fast car because of it because I wanted to get the heck out of people's way in hell. But what mindfulness does is it allows you to kind of calm those reactions down and really look at things from a different perspective. And so mindfulness is really the practice of becoming aware of your present moment, your reactions, what emotional state you're in with thoughts are going through your head. So most of the time, what happens in that scenario, and most scenarios in our life, you know, is worth thinking, this jerk just cut me off because of blah, blah, blah. Well, what mindfulness teaches you to do is instead of looking at it that way, looking at it from a different perspective, maybe he or she is on the way to the hospital, because a spouse is injured, or a parent is, you know, he just had a heart attack or something or, you know, maybe they just got a call that they needed to respond to something happening at their house, right? So what mindfulness does is really helps you to switch and change your perspective, on a situation, when you look at that situation of maybe their parent is just had a heart attack, right? You're not so reactive to the situation of them cutting you off. In fact, you'll probably hit the brake and slow down a little bit to let them over and let them go.
Ari Gronich
Give me kind of like a tool that you would use.
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, absolutely. And I love these kind of scenarios, because quite honestly, I've dealt with them in my own life and had to use my own tools, which is why I know they're effective. You know. So the first the first thing to do, utilizing a mindfulness technique is just to become aware of the reaction. In itself, you know, take, take a moment to just pause. In my relationship, we call it freeze frame. And so it's like when we feel that we've been triggered by a certain something, it's like, okay, let's freeze this frame for a moment. And just take notice what's happening in your mind. What kind of thoughts are you having right now? What's happening in your body? You know, I found it very interesting through my studies that when we're in a heightened state, our heart rate is elevated. And when our heart rate is elevated above 90 beats per minute, we can't think logically, we actually cannot think logically. And so the technique that is the first go to is taking that moment to pause, recognizing becoming aware of what's going on, and then finding your breath.
Ari Gronich
My next question to you is, how does one get more self actualized? How to how do we remember to use the tools that we may be given in the moment of intensity?
Brianna Bragg
sure, that's the hardest part, right? And by the way, I just want to say thank you for the inhale and exhale through the nose, I usually say that, and I, I forgot, because it does make a difference. It's 100%. You know, that speaks directly to your nervous system. So thank you for bringing that up. I appreciate you. elaborating on that. You know, that's the practice of mindfulness, you know, that becoming aware, we all have old thought patterns, we all have old behavioral patterns. And it's the hardest to actual life change. Because those are kind of on autopilot, you know, where they're responding from a subconscious state. You know, this triggers you and boom, before you know it, you're in an explosive fight with your partner, because you got triggered by x, instead of taking that time to freeze frame. And so it's really the practice of the awareness. And I talked to myself, I have conversations with myself quite a bit of you know, okay, all right, was a really that, you know, I understand that you're triggered, let's take a moment here and just do some deep breathing. So you're not, you know, you got to drop the guilt and shame, you're not going to be perfect, the few times that it happens, you're probably still going to respond in old behavioral patterns. But it's the practice of using these kinds of practices, when you find awareness, when you find yourself in those moments, because what what's happening in the brain is, every time you tell a negative thought pattern to stop, you're actually creating a new highway in the brain. So you know, you got to give yourself some patience, you got to have, you know, a little bit of remorse for yourself in the beginning of trying, right? But the more you do, and the more you practice these techniques, the better you become in that moment. And what's going to happen eventually is your brain is going to stop going to that net old thought pattern and come into the new one because you've retrained it to do so.
Ari Gronich
Awesome. How can people get a hold of you?
Brianna Bragg
We're all over the place as vacation of the mind. So we're we have a Facebook group as well as a page. In our Facebook group, we are offering mindfulness discussions on different topics every week, three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, as well as a 10 minute meditation. We're also on YouTube, we have a ton of discussions on YouTube, as well as pre recorded meditations that you can go and listen to anytime you want. Some of them are around some of the challenges we're currently facing. Others are for stress reduction, visualization for protecting productive days at work. We're on insight timer, and SoundCloud and Instagram, you name it, you can find us and then you know, if you want to contact me directly, you can just go to our website, fill out a contact form or us info@ acationofthemind.com.
Ari Gronich
Awesome. I was thinking about this while you were while you were talking earlier. And I think for some of the people who are out of work right now, and not really sure what prospect they'll have at going being able to go back to the same job that they've had. One of the things that they might think about is becoming a vacation of the mind practitioner and taking that into their corporations and their places of business and their families. So maybe we'll figure out getting a link for them. When when we air it. And so that somebody can if they're interested in exploring a possibility of a new career, they can become vacation of the mind practitioners.
Brianna Bragg
Yeah, thank you so much for saying that. Ari. I appreciate that. We are offering our course at 50% off right now to help given you know the landscape of everything the COVID challenge. I really like that I'm going to adopt that into my language. We're offering 50% off, I'll certainly provide a link. And it's a self paced online course. So we've had a few teachers take the course, we've had some people in the health and wellness space, take the course. And we're in talks with a couple of organizations to launch it through their organization as a way for people to earn an additional certification or switch careers right now or just earn CEC credits for those people who might need additional credits for the year. Now's a great time, we have the extra time on our hands. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.
Ari Gronich
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think even for nurses and doctors that are going through this, it was, it would be a great opportunity for them. There, a lot of nurses and doctors are being furloughed right now. So being able to use this with your patients, you know, it lowers the, you know, the stress response, cortisol levels, and raises the immune system. So might be a good, you know, a good place for for people to be able to do that is inside the hospitals. And, and like said, I'm an outside of the box thinker. And I think very strangely about different things. But, you know, I also like to put pieces together. And I think that what you're doing can be so valuable for the community at large for teachers, like you mentioned, teachers who are taking them, when they come back, they're going to have this skill set that they'll be able to translate to their, to their students. Yeah, especially kindergarten, and, you know, kindergarten on up preschool teachers, nannies daycare workers, you know, this is something that police officers, this is something that they can use in order to not only calm themselves, but help calm situations and problem solve and so on. So Well, we'll see if we can get a link out at the bottom of of the video when we're done with the technological, technological devices and, and thank you so much. And if you'd like to get a hold of me, you can reach me at Ari Gronich, at basically anything calm. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, I'm Ari Gronich, on all of those. Or you can go to Amazon and check out my new book, a new tomorrow, activating your vision for a better world, which is all about creating the world that we want to live in. Might one of my favorite sayings is we made all this up, we can make it up different, it doesn't have to be the way that we made it up. I love that in always, like, you know, like Legos, we could tear them apart and create something new. And obviously, you know, we've got a system that isn't quite working. So let's just take it apart, you know, brick by brick, and rebuild it in a way that makes what we want more easily and readily available. So you know, if if you'd like more information about that, please do get ahold of me and I look forward to chatting with you. And thank you so much, Brianna for your time, your energy, your wisdom and knowledge.
Brianna Bragg
Thank you, Ari. It was a pleasure being here with you and really excited to partner with you.
Ari Gronich
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
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