Dr. Margaret Evanow helps her clients experience transformational growth so they can move beyond painful life circumstances to experience emotional and physical healing through the power of the human spirit. She is passionate about helping humanity “reprogram” from limiting and self-injurious beliefs to more life-giving abundant visions of self and world through connecting to their own YouNiversal Pathways of growth, becoming, and believing.

In this episode we discuss:

• The “soft science” of psychology and subjective assessment
• Exactly how our thoughts and emotions really are “energy”
• Our human desire to find answers to questions, especially the Big One.
• The Power of Perspective
• Why breathwork is a practice worth doing
• Ways to balance depression and anxiety by calming a dysregulated nervous system
• How to bypass the critical mind to build positive affect
• Overwriting the “protective” programming that can hold you back
• The connection between emotions and illness
• Benefits of preventive education and self care over recovery and healing
• Impacting future generations with the power of unlimited potential

Tools we mention in the show:

PTSD Coach app: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/appvid/mobile/ptsdcoach_app.asp

Positive Prime: http://startoffhappy.com

Connect with Dr. Evanow & learn about her upcoming programs: https://3cyouniversalpathways.org/

Susi Vine: I’m so glad to have you with us this week for my mind and human potential expanding conversation with Dr. Margaret Evanow. She combines. Insights of quantum physics and positive psychology in her traditional clinical psychology practice and supports her patients and resolving issues that arise from stress and even helping to

Other situations of disease that may have grown from prolonged stress and emotional imbalance. I know you’re going to get a lot out of this conversation. We are so happy to have you with us today.

living in a stressful world. Doesn’t mean you have to give up on happiness instead. You can shift your perspective of stress and discover how to live your life in 

flow. 

Welcome to Happified. I’m your host susie vine join me for inspiration and interviews with folks we’re shining their light in the world in the areas of positive mindset, health and wellness.

I’m so happy to have you here.

Welcome back. I am so happy to have you with me this week. For what I know is going to be a really rich conversation with Dr. Margaret Evano. She has over 30 years of experience in the fields of mental health. Training and personal development, understanding the human condition and what makes transformational growth possible.

Under often difficult life 

circumstances has led her to a unique hybrid 

of quantum psychology, blending, positive psychology, quantum physics, human potential, and the power of the human speech. Dr. Evan L connects people to their own, you know, Versal pathways of growth becoming and believing, reprogramming humanity from limiting and self-injurious beliefs to more.

Life-giving. Abundant visions of self and world is the Lifework legacy of the marvelous, Dr. Margaret Evan out. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Margaret Evanow: Thank you for having me Susi. 

Susi Vine: And so we recently connected and we will I’m sure get into this later on in the conversation, we are both very, very. I don’t think fans really is the word, but deeply convicted in the benefits of positive psychology and a totally new perspective in that approach to psychology and how we can optimize ourselves in our lives.

And I love that you have a very unique. Perspective to also looking for this juncture of the quantum perspective and psychology. Could you tell us a little bit about how these pieces clicked into place for you? 

Margaret Evanow: Wow. So how it clicked into place? 19 years old. And I have been reading about quantum physics and I’ve always been a fan of psychology and what it means to be us human

 and someone asked me, what do you think this is all about? Meaning us here on the earth and in this universe. And this are 19 years old. I sat there for a moment. And I pulled up this vision in my 

head and 

my answer was at the end of it, I, and I described, I said, I see us as, 

as little brain cells.

Susi Vine: Thinking about let me just have you recap that week. Legend for just a second. So thinking of ourself. 

Margaret Evanow: Okay. So we think about ourselves thinking about ourselves, thinking about ourselves, and that’s a mind twister, but we can do it. We can actually do it. So I described what I saw to this person and I said, I see myself climbing, climbing.

I don’t even know if I have a ladder, but I’m climbing, climbing up through the atmosphere. And I get up to the very top and I put my hands up and I pull my head. And I look around and I see a couple of other heads popped up and I realized that some of us have worked our way up to this place where we see bigger.

And then I looked out into the darkness of the universe 

Susi Vine: and although I 

Margaret Evanow: didn’t see the eyes of God, I felt them. And that is what at 19 I described as why we’re here. So the quantum has always been very important to me. I think it has information about really how we work. Traditional psychology. Doesn’t actually do much with their little pieces of psychology kind of touching on it, but they’re not necessarily considered mainstream and they don’t always speak the language of science of quantum physics.

They’ll use words like, like moving energy, but they don’t talk about what that actually means. Right? What is energy? And if we’re. What does that mean about how this works and what we’re doing here? So that has always been a fascination of mine. And I love pulling both of my, my true loves together and seeing what comes out in the mix actually, 

Susi Vine: right.

Making space for those insights and aha moments as, 

Margaret Evanow: yeah. And some scratch your head. I don’t know what to make of that. Right. Because quantum physics sometimes can stretch your imagination to limits. But I think there is something very valuable to. To know what we are at the very base of us. And if you really think about it quantum physics says that we’re all energy, everything is energy, we’re a field of energy.

And that there’s really nothing solid here, which a lot of people are like, well, I’m feeling so I don’t know how that can be. There are people that can explain that and I’ve read their work. And it’s fascinating. And I think, I think there’s some solid information that we actually need to harness and start using in psychology.

But up until this point, we haven’t quite done that. 

Susi Vine: And you’re making me think of a light bulb moment that I had. And of course, if I had paid more attention to biology, As a child, I could have had this light bulb moment and carried it with me throughout my life. But you know, all happens at the right time.

And so I made this pivot to go into holistic health, to dive deep into the really ground at the nuts and bolts of, of what helps us physically thrive. After I had studied Reiki and started working with homeopathy and flower essences. So I studied the more energetic. Influence that we can use to heal ourselves and come back into balance.

And then I thought in order to bring this conversation, I need to get grounded. And so as I’m sitting there surrounded by 18 year olds at 40 in a biology classroom at MiraCosta community college, which was a phenomenal scientific education. Researchers from the silk Institute and terrific influences there.

I’m looking at the textbook and it describes that the electrons that are, that are orbiting the nucleus of an atom. If the nucleus is contained within the period in the sentence, the electrons are outside of the building. And that was the piece, because I know that we are all connected. I know that we are energy that is resonated with me since I started those studies.

And. Here’s the science, right? There’s more space between our matter those building blocks. Then the matter that we are constructed of. And so I just found that was like a really powerful, okay. And in other regards, I do feel that science is coming to a point now where it can demonstrate some of these philosophical practices and energy practices, yoga, different ways of healing ourselves.

Thousands of years, right? Science is finding a way to validate it. So we’re in a really exciting space right 

Margaret Evanow: now. I think so I, Dr. Joe Dispenza star has started talking about science as the new spiritual movement that science has actually. Validating things that people that were spiritual or metaphysical have talked about for ever really.

And now we’re understanding how it actually works at the very smallest level. So it is a fascinating time. 

Susi Vine: Yeah. It’s very, very, very much so. And so I love that you kept. Profound vision that came to you at 19 and left that I feel like it kind of illuminated some questions that as you studied psychology, just never found an answer.

I’m interested in that, in that space, as you said earlier, 

Margaret Evanow: there’s some questions that, I mean, Psychology is really based in, they would love to be a hard science. That’s always, it’s envious of the hard sciences, because it actually is a soft science, which means it’s very difficult to actually measure certain things about how we think, how we feel, because they’re so subjective and there’s no actual ability to just go like that and then hold it in your hand and go, oh, this thought is equal to.

Three, you know, kilograms it, we can’t do that. And so, because it’s always wanted to be a hard science that the major mainstream emphasis has been on matter, the. What are neurons? How do they work? What kind of chemicals are in our brain? How do they balance themselves? How does the nervous system work?

How does stress affect the nervous system? It’s all very physical, right. And when I was coming up in the nineties in in my training going through my master’s program and things, 

Susi Vine: the. 

Margaret Evanow: Golden standard was cognitive behavioral therapy, and I would sit there and I’ve done well. Okay. It’s useful.

Yes. I know it’s useful, but where’s the emotion. Where’s the energy. And so change your thoughts, change your life. And to some degree that’s true. But if you also don’t change your emotional stance, your thoughts actually will become habitual with your emotions and your emotions will pull you towards thoughts that aren’t going to make you feel happy at happy.

They’re just not. And, and what are emotions? How do you, I mean, thoughts? We can, I can tell you what a thought is. I thought is an electrical impulse. That goes through tissue, what we call tissue and when there’s the gap between one neuronal cell and the next it changes to chemical. And then when it hits the side, the chemicals change to electrical impulse.

So thought is electricity. It’s 

Susi Vine: energy, that’s energy 

Margaret Evanow: and emotions are very much the same thing. That’s how this thing works is impulses of energy and they change how we experience ourselves in the world, how we make sense out of what’s happening to our lives. And so I often I would sit there and I’d go, well, it’s just not enough.

It doesn’t really grab. All of us and how we really work. And if you ignore the emotions, they’re going to derail, you’re trying to change those thoughts. You have to work with them and you have to identify them and then help yourself choose the emotional state that you want. So I think it’s It has moved away from just being cognitive behavioral at this point, but that’s still the golden standard.

So when I work with insurance companies, you have to use an evidence-based practice, which means kind of behavioral is the number one, 

Susi Vine: number one, 

Margaret Evanow: although recently some more what we would call energy work. So Matic therapies where you work with feelings in the body, That’s 

Susi Vine: energy work, 

Margaret Evanow: Have also become 

Susi Vine: evidence-based.

Yeah. 

Margaret Evanow: So they’re, they’re also, they’re also very much well accepted because they’re, the research 

Susi Vine: shows me work. They actually work. So I 

Margaret Evanow: love psychology, but I think there’s another step beyond that we still haven’t done. And that is what would it mean if we actually. Acknowledged dealt with faced, brought into the forefront that there is nothing here, but energy and we are, are an inner cells energy.

How would that change? How psychology actually approaches something called mental health, depression, anxiety. How would it change? How we, how we are optimistic or pessimistic? How would it change? What that all means?

Susi Vine: Hmm. There’s some really juicy things to ponder there. And I think it’s exciting to, to be in a space where. It’s okay. To bring questions and make space for them, as opposed to feeling like, you know, we have to wedge them into channels or answers things that don’t fully address it and don’t apply to everyone.

You know, I think maybe a bit of human nature, you know, we love to find answers. Those outstanding questions could be dangerous. So we love to put a bow on it and say, okay, it’s resolved. Okay. Next and 

Margaret Evanow: yet, how do we resolve the question of, why are we here? There is no one answer that really is something that each of us has to, has to make peace with and figure out for ourselves.

Why are you here? I do that sometimes when I used to see people in person before this wonderful pandemic. And I could tell that there was a lack of really embracing a reason for being here. I would say, so why are you here? And most of the time they’d say, well, I came to see you. And I said, yeah, I get that, but why are you here?

Susi Vine: Here 

Margaret Evanow: and then they’d sit back and they think, well, 

Susi Vine: I don’t 

Margaret Evanow: know. And we’d have sometimes a kind of a very tentative conversation about the fact that most of us, most of us have a drive. Towards finding a meaning about why we’re here. And that is a question that I don’t think science as it is right now can answer.

What does that mean? Why do we want to know what our meaning is? What purpose do we have? How would we function in the big scheme of thing? 

Susi Vine: Exactly. That’s where my mind goes. Next is why is it that having an answer to that of mission or a purpose makes such a 

Margaret Evanow: difference? Yeah. Ooh, 

Susi Vine: Ooh. That’s some good fluffy talk.

We’ve got some open-ended questions we can come back to. And so, in your experience, when is, is that an aspect to some of the struggles that you see your patients coming to you with is without that. Or compass, does that underlie some of the issues that they then see manifesting emotionally and physically?

Margaret Evanow: Absolutely. Absolutely. If you think about it the major reasons, I mean, there. Actually quite a few, but the majority of people come to counseling, have some form of anxiety, has some form of depression have both, or have had some kind of a, a life trauma that has left them stuck. So to speak in an emotional place that doesn’t feel safe anymore in the world has made them question.

Is this world safe? What am I about is life, you know, meaningful when some bad things happen to us. And so the work is to actually help them find a way. To not just see the troubles, the negative, the stress makers in, in our lives understand that process and then make a choice to see the whole picture.

And the whole picture is we all have some negative things in our life. We also have some beautiful things in our life. If we really 

Susi Vine: choose to work. Perspective as 

Margaret Evanow: powerful. It, it is, it can be the difference between seeing our life as a tragedy or seeing her life as a training period. And now, because we’re trained now, we get to do the fun stuff.

Susi Vine: Ooh and see that’s an empowering shift. And that’s what I really love to, to bring to people is ways in which we can take back our power. There are so many aspects of the way we do life health and whatnot. We’ve been trained. It’s okay. To give our power to practitioners, to a medical system, which is great at intervention medicine, not great at healing, 

Margaret Evanow: the root cause or even prevention.

Right? That’s not, it doesn’t put that. Miami says it does, but it doesn’t put a lot of effort into prevention. Into actually intervening at a very pivotal level and putting a lot of energy and prevention. So I know you do a lot of really good work with stress and trying to help people to find a way to not just manage it, but to not live in it.

Because that had, that has an impact on every aspect of our life, our relationships, the way we see ourselves, our bodies, actually, most of the major disorders of the physical body that we experience are highly correlated with too much. So we have to understand that and then find a way to do something different, find a way to do something different.

And there’s lots of things we 

Susi Vine: can do. Thank goodness. Once we start looking for solutions. And 

Margaret Evanow: this missions are changing are our energy, right? Our impulses in our brain. The thoughts that we have, they’re energetic impulses for good or for bad. Right. So we could have a thought of the day that says that this is, this is awful.

Traffic’s awful again, you know, now that the pandemic started to, you know, ease up a bit ah, it’s all back to how it used to be. And we could see our day that way, or we could see our day as well. It’s beautiful day. The sun’s out. I’m going to get a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, right? It’s all good.

Susi Vine: And one. 

Margaret Evanow: Will lead us to better health 

Susi Vine: and one month. And I do think again, to reiterate this place where we are, that there’s so much more scientific evidence and research demonstrating that, that shift in perspective in nurturing that positive perspective. Profoundly affects our health, our wellbeing, and then trickles over into our success, better relationships.

And so that starts to come from evidence from the field of positive psychology and the research that’s happening there. And so I think it’s, it’s really powerful to flip the script or to recognize that, that we have that ability to flip the script and why it’s worth training ourselves to think differently.

Recognize our emotions and choose there might be a different emotion we want to operate with. 

Margaret Evanow: Right. Right. And, and emotions have an impact on what kind of chemicals come into our body. So stress hormones cortisol adrenaline. There’s actually the last number that I saw 1,400 other stress ones that get released when, where we’re very stressed and very activated in our nervous system in a fear or stress-related way that has an impact on how we function and how, what we’re going to have down the road, as far as our, our health and our longevity.

So, you know, there’s a lot of things we can. There are some simple things that we can do. Our nervous system can be regulated and surprisingly, they’re, they’re really simple. So breath work. I mean, all of us do it all day long, so, but we do it in a different way. So if you do recall maybe the last time you were really stressed or really angry and upset, you do not breathe the same way.

As you do when you’re calm or relaxed or just having a good day, you know, having an outing at the beach or something like that. And those days you breathe in a much slower manner, it’s more centered, has a nice cadence to it. And so we call that paced, breathing, where you kind of breathe in kind of stop in the top and then breathe out.

Now it works phenomenally well to get your brain’s attention and say, Hey, we’re not stressed, relaxed now. However, most people aren’t willing to put the elbow grease in of practicing it and practicing it and practicing it until it becomes almost second nature. When we start to feel that tinge, you know, that we’ll eat in the middle of our stomach where we’re going, oh, I’m nervous about that.

Or, oh, I’m going to talk to Susie today. Most people don’t want to put the amount of effort that is required to actually make that a conditioned response. When we start to pace our breathing, that the brain goes, oh, nevermind. We’re okay. Right. Susie’s a nice lady. We got this. 

Susi Vine: So there are things that are faster though.

Margaret Evanow: I truly, that’s where I start with people. I started with breathwork and some people will come back and they’ll say it didn’t work. It just didn’t work. And I will say, okay, how, how many times did you practice? When did you use it? And I said, well, I only use it at that time that I felt like I was going to have a 

panic 

Susi Vine: attack.

Right. 

Margaret Evanow: That’s not enough because it’s sort of like, it’s, it’s like. Lifting a dumbbell once and expecting to have a nice, you know, muscle here. If it’s not going to be toned after one time. So it’s almost like building muscle, but one of the things that I, I have loved, I also found this app that’s free and it’s called the PTSD coach app put out by the VA.

Now not everyone that comes to me has PTSD, but if you think about it, The skills in there are for someone whose nervous system is somewhat dysregulated. And what most people don’t understand is anxiety is fight or flight, right? It’s, it’s a dysregulated nervous system and depression is free. So the three top things, anxiety, depression, and trauma can all be as actually somewhat successfully addressed just by controlling our breath and intentionally doing that on a regular basis.

It pulls us down or it pulls us up into that baseline where we do really well, but that app. Hundreds of different kinds of skills that you could use too. So it’s not just breath work. It has a visualization, it has mindfulness activities. It has adios. It has a thought for the day, right? A thought that changes your, your focus.

So it’s, it’s the best collection of different skills and teaching those skills for people that I’ve ever found. And yet there’s another app that I just love. And this one is different because what it does is it bypasses our critical brains. So with a lot of those, those skills that, you know, are taught to people to manage their nervous system, managing anxiety, manage their, their distress.

People look at the thing, right? Can breathing really do that for you? Right. The critical brain is like I breathe all day long. So how has breathing going to help me? The critical brain sometimes cancels things out and says, now that’s not for me. Positive prime is a program on app where you are it’s brain science at its best because our brain works in visual images.

So if I say red apple, you don’t see usually the words red and then apple, a P P L E. You actually see like a red delicious app. Maybe a little stem on it, right. You see the apple itself and that is how our brain works. And so it collects in what they call a session about a thousand different pictures, images that.

R R containing things that are positive psychology. So there’s research on beautiful green nature scenes. I mean, one of the things I tell people to do is get outside, get out in nature, hear the birds, feel the sun on you. See the green, because research has shown that that shifts our emotion. In a positive way.

It relaxes us. We are part of the earth. We respond to it, vibrant colors, kind of give us more energy and alive in us. Pictures of people smiling in a certain way. I do sheen smile, which is one of those nice ones, you know, where you’re like, 

Susi Vine: huh? You 

Margaret Evanow: know, it’s that excited. That kind of smile is actually contagious.

You see it, you do it. They do it more. I do it more right. It’s contagious. And some research has, has in suggested that we have specific neurons that are, are about looking at. And mirroring what we see, like responding to it. And so it has those images in a session, it has images of families and people do in love and beautiful houses and relaxing, safe environments.

And so all of those different images go at a very high speed. Right? And you can’t this critical brain can’t keep up. It’s kind of slow, actually. It’s, it’s amazing, but it’s kind of slow. It does not necessarily, 

Have the ability to process that amount of information. It’s more of a strategy kind of thing.

Well, is over there. Let me move it over there, but there’s a part of our brain that just glams onto every piece of information. And so as you watch one of those scenes and positive prime, you are bypassing anything that would say, no, not me. I couldn’t feel that way. I feel depressed. I RF my life’s not like that.

And it goes to the part of our brain, the subconscious part of our brain, that automates things right. Takes in that information. And the more repetition, the more automated it becomes. The research on positive prime is, is scandalous. It’s really scandalous because what they found is that if you watch only three minutes of a session, you’re moving.

Increases in positive app effect. So you feel better if you’re depressed, it lifts, it lifts someone. If you’re anxious, it relaxes you. So you feel calm and at peace. And that for three minutes, you can get up to six to eight hours of that kind of sustained emotional. Now that is an energy work. I 

Susi Vine: don’t know what is right.

It’s pretty, it’s pretty amazing. Yes. And when you think about how many, you know, Images of negative media, we’re exposed to it. It makes sense that when we make the choice to change that, to make it a positive influence, positive images, and these types of images with bright color, with engaged social groups, with just authentic smiles, that it starts to overwrite.

The other influences that we pick up for the rest of our day. And. There 

Margaret Evanow: is, there is a lot of research on cognitive behavioral therapy. And one of the things that they talk about is that we have thoughts. We have feelings, so we have behavior and that you can intervene at any one of these and you can shift what the person is experiencing.

So change your thoughts, change your life, right. But change your effect and your feelings. And your thoughts will follow and your behaviors will file. So if I’m watching something and all I see is people that are, are really vibrantly living life and they’re having beautiful relationships and they get to do fun things and, and, and, and, and 

Susi Vine: then 

Margaret Evanow: that’s going to be me.

At some point, right? I’m going to start seeing myself that way. And the things I think about myself will match how that makes me feel the feelings actually lead. It’s not just cognitively thinking about something like that. It’s actually shifting our emotional state and that changes our thoughts and what we think we’re capable of and what we’re willing to try and what we believe.

Just might be possible for us now. Imagine how, how much that could impact the world.

Susi Vine: Yeah. Talk about a collective upwelling or potential that could 

Margaret Evanow: start to shift. Yeah, definitely. So the neat thing about positive prime is that in one of its offerings, it allows you to 

Susi Vine: actually put pictures of yourself and that intensifies 

Margaret Evanow: you, making the connection between those wonderful. States 

Susi Vine: being 

Margaret Evanow: love each other smiles, just wonderful, gorgeous, fun things to do with people and yourself.

Right. You start to see yourself as someone who’s already doing that. And that from a quantum physics perspective, let’s bring this back home would be called entanglement. Right. So if I see myself as the one that can, the one that is, and I feel like I already have those beautiful things in my life, then entanglement from quantum physics is that all those things that actually kind of are similar or is simpatico to that feeling state, they moved towards me as I move towards.

Whatever those might be. So we become self-fulfilling prophecies 

Susi Vine: really with less of that friction or resistance or critical editing that says, how can we do this? We’ve never done it before. Right? All of that inner 

Margaret Evanow: voice programming that you get as a child, right. Mine would have to work hard. And my family also added, and you’re probably not going to make it very 

Susi Vine: far.

Margaret Evanow: So, I mean, that was their message. They, they had gone through the great depression having just the little bit that they had was success in their lives, but they had to work really, really hard scrimped and saved, and it was, there was never a bum. So I came out of that with that program and reworking that program, becoming someone who could see myself as, as being the person that could create things could travel, could have fun, could enjoy life and abundant life.

That took a little work and I didn’t have positive prime and I was doing that work. So I had to do the elbow grease version, which is a lot slower and it takes a little bit longer. That’s why I love positive praise because we don’t have to wait, you know, three years before we go, oh, I think I feel better about myself now.

It can happen very quickly. 

Susi Vine: Yes. And, and with the situation that so many people are in, you know, the stresses that we have as we still remain in the pandemic situation, concerns about our health, about job security, about, you know, social connection to have something that gives us. It kind of lifts us from the starting blocks, right.

To move us in a better and more positive direction, because, because you do. Find exactly what you’re looking for. And so if you’re looking for evidence, that life is really hard, there’s plenty of evidence to be found. But if instead, you’ve got that reticular activating system, looking for people who are authentically happy, who are engaged and supportive and working towards their success.

Then that’s what resonates 

Margaret Evanow: it is. And we also get to look in the mirror and see the person. Yeah, that already, already resonates with it. Right? So we start to see ourselves innately as a, as a person that is living that beautiful life, right? Where there are good things. There are solutions to this pandemic.

There are ways we can stay connected. There are really good people. It’s not a bad world. And when we emanate that, right, we live from that place. Like-minded people, people at the same place go, Hey, I like you, right. I want to get to know you how, and they, we find each other because we are already connected.

And that’s, that’s the fun part of quantum psychology is quantum physics actually can tell you why this happened. Right. Why we find each other and in strange kind of weird ways, you know, meeting them, you know, I’m going this way, you’re going that way. We’re not even meant to stop and talk, but something happens.

We do. And we find our next best friend. Some people would say that’s coincidence. Quantum physics says it is entanglement. I pulled to me what I. Vibrationally energetically, emotionally, and that person already where I am as well, we pull each other, right. We’re entangled. 

Susi Vine: We find each other, which I think is really it, it brings a lot of.

Right. If we keep moving in the right direction, we’ll, we’ll meet with more of the same 

Margaret Evanow: or even something better or even 

Susi Vine: right. There’s always better. Now. I would love to learn a little bit, or have you share with us how you work with your patients? What kinds of things do they? So we’ve talked about having that.

Dysregulation and the things that move us into balance and put us into that emotional state where we, we need support. What other situations do you, do you work with people to resolve health issues as well? And how do you see that show up? 

Margaret Evanow: Yeah, so, well, if people are dealing with stress, they’re going to have some health issues.

A lot of times, especially if they’ve, they’ve had depression for a long time or anxiety for a long time and thought. That, that was just how they are. Right. That’s just them normal. And I’m like, no, that’s not, that’s not what you are fully capable of. Right. There’s more so a lot of times people come with health problems.

They don’t see those health problems as related to their emotional state or their dysregulation of the nervous system. They don’t see it attached to that. That those are actually the same systems, right. Kind of showing up differently, but they’re connected. I think. Dr. Sarno back in. I want to say the seventies, I may be wrong on that, but he, he was a chiropractor and he said that that really the problems, the pain in our body is really of the mind.

Right. It started. In the mind. And that doesn’t mean just the brain, but the mind being, how we function as a, I like to call it a brain system. Right? So we, our nervous system is everywhere in us. And the brain, isn’t the only thing that, that does things. Our nervous system does things. Our heart impacts how we function.

Our gut actually is called the second brain because there’s actually quite a few neuronal cells in our gut lining. And that’s actually where some of the neurotransmitters are actually created through the microbiome. It’s fascinating. Right? This is really new information that we don’t have out in the.

Public. So our health and our state of being 

Susi Vine: are the same thing. 

Margaret Evanow: They’re really the same thing. You stay not happy, miserable, depressed, anxious. You will eventually have some kind of issue in your life. Whether that’s an ulcer or, you know, you, you end up with migraines cause of the stress or tense muscles on your shoulder.

Some people clench your draws at night, right? So many things, our body is translating our emotional state. So I I have a lot of clients that have both mental health issues. With the health problems. And because I had some of my own kind of chronic health issues, so I barely told you about that little, you know, you gotta work hard and you’re not going to get anywhere kind of programming.

I had a, kind of a rough start in the beginning of life and I had a lot of, of emotional state. Right. Depression had a little bit of anxiety, but most of mine was kind of depression. And I had to figure my way out, but by the time I did, I had already started the, the, you know, cascade of, of reactions in my body.

I’ve lived a long time with a lot of cortisol and adrenaline. So I had some health issues that lasted quite a while and I started to understand that. There is a way to change much of this, right? Sometimes, sometimes we catch things way too late, but way too late is, is more a seldom thing. We can change things in a shorter period of time, turn our health around if we actually look at it holistically.

And so I, I am watching towards the end of this year, maybe early January, an online coaching program for people who are dealing with. Either chronic or acute kind of health challenges or health, that’s just not quite what they would like. And they really want to reach for something better. And it’s a mix of education how we work as quantum beings and psychological beings and how those two come together and also different practices that can help us.

To attain the best emotional, physical state that we can, we can attain. I love seeing, I call them miracles, although I forget who I think it was either Dr. Bruce Lipton or Dr. Joe Dispenza. There are no miracles. Really? This is science. It’s science working its way out, but. When I experienced somebody actually making that kind of shift to me, it feels like a beautiful miracle.

Cause I know it was for me. Right. And I, I wanna, I want to be able to see other people actually achieve that for themselves too, so that I do, then I love that work. It’s truly, it’s truly beautiful to see people, even if they can’t 100% change the health bit, but improve it enough so that they can come back to life.

It’s beautiful. So yeah, I I’m, I’m kind of specializing in that and. I’m kind of the one that is working on the, the tail end of the bad results. Right. And I know you are my counterpart in the preventative. So here we are two ends of the spectrum. And I think if there were more people like you doing the kind of coaching that you do on stress, we could prevent a lot of this.

We could prevent a lot of things. 

Susi Vine: Yeah. I was really driven to take action, not only from my own personal experience and from seeing how it shows up in my own family. My mom was a labor and delivery nurse for 40 years working the night shift and night shift work now by the, who has been recognized as a percentage.

Don’t do it in some countries. They’re talking about additional compensation for for career night shift work. It’s. And, and, and to your point to you know, evidence-based therapies like the I’m so excited that you’ve turned me on to the PTSD coach app shared by the VA another area in which they’re recognizing some of the different stressors that our service members have been in, in the way that it’s showing up.

It’s really powerful when. See these large institutions acknowledging the impact of stress because we still carry it as a, you know, the way life is. And, and we’re Midwestern girls, you know, you’ve got that good Hardy work ethic and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and, and those framings, you know, that we grow up with, come from family who think they’re protecting us, you know, warning us that it’s a tough world out there that we have to work hard to get ahead.

And all of that. And now we can see how those messages set up shop and 

Margaret Evanow: affect the way we see 

Susi Vine: what we’re capable of. And so this beautiful time of synthesis and. True potential to be aware with some of these tools and to question some of this accepted wisdom, that stress means, you know, you’re devoted to your work and you deserve to win, you know, and, and I love helping people recognize we can flip the script and instead of, you know, pushing ourselves to be successful and the.

We can be happy and then we can make time and repair those 

Margaret Evanow: relationships with our family. 

Susi Vine: And then, you know, we can, we can see what’s broken and fix it. A lot of times we don’t have that opportunity. It’s heartbreaking when you hear those stories. And so that’s what really inspires me too, even though it’s not a fun conversation, we all know we’re stressed.

It’s, you know, work is a four-letter word. But when, when people open their eyes to the potential, the alternative. And that by being happier, we can reach that success more easily and we can be healthier while we’re doing it. And right. That’s social connection that we are wired to seek out and support comes more easily because we are attracting those like minded positive.

People. Exactly. So it’s, it’s, it’s really exciting. You can see, I get a little surprised by it too. And and, and like you were referring to before they positive prime app that’s available to people is one of those remarkable tools. That’s just, you know, synthesis of all of these insights and it’s fast and effective.

Yeah. Right. It gets us over. It gets us over the hump. It gets us into doing new things that serve us so that we can do more things that sort of us like using our breath to our advantage, to shift our biology, like changing our movement habits so that we move more often because even that can be enough to start to turn around healing.

Margaret Evanow: So, yeah. And, and esteem. That was lots of clients over the years is meant to be after you have problem, right after you come back from deployment was what it was created for. And you’re having some PTSD. You’re having a hard time adjusting it. Could you imagine if they put it up from. And new soldiers as they came in to you know, go to bootcamp and learn how to be a soldier would also learn how to use those skills and maybe actually had access to positive prime, right.

As they were even deployed because it’s easy and it’s accessible and how that might prevent them needing to come home. Injured really injured actually. Right. I love preventative preventative efforts because really we don’t need to, to have these consequences. We don’t meet them. We can live a life that is healthy in all ways.

And we just need to, to get ourselves in the right 

Susi Vine: mindset. Yes. And, and just like self care is not, or should not be relegated to a marketing term mindset. Shouldn’t be, you know, painted with this broad brush that it’s. Tactics that don’t work exercises. You know, that don’t bring you what you want, affirmations that don’t have effect the intention that you bring to it is everything.

So recognizing the power of mindset, the power of our perspective and how that shift can shift everything. Yes. Yes. Israeli. Yeah, really marvelous. Thank you for your point. I really appreciate what you’re saying too about. We are, we are setting ourselves. I love the analogy. Why keep mopping up the bathroom floor if we’re not going to turn off the sink.

Right. Right. And so it is exciting as these tools gain more evidence and more belief in the communities, right. In, in these larger government organizations to see. The potential to see that truly optimizing our forces. I’m a military brat. I’m a Navy brat. My brother was in the army. So this is as close to home for me.

Completely different ballgame. And what if we don’t have to look for ways to heal? What if we look for ways that 

Margaret Evanow: everyone gets to be healthier going in? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So another. Thing that I’ve had a vision of us and I really, I see myself as helping humanity reprogram, right? So we start with some programming that is suboptimal and it takes us to a suboptimal place, but that can be reprogrammed.

And I envision. Some of the native tribes would have this decision-making process where they would consider seven generations out and how, what they did right now would affect. And that’s kind of how I see my work is that I can see generations. Raised by parents that have already reprogrammed. So they’re giving something so much more rich, so much more maintaining a good, healthy level of, of happiness, of positivity of I can, I have abundance in me and around me.

And then those next generations, I, this is going to be fun. Yes. Oh, 

Susi Vine: I love that. I love that vision. I think that’s really powerful. Thank you for that, that I idea. And goal, and I hope that people really take it to heart because it’s so true. The effort that we put in right now, isn’t only for our own benefit.

Happiness, isn’t selfish. We are given the opportunity to make an example of emotional awareness and empowerment for our kids. 

Margaret Evanow: That is a completely 

Susi Vine: different. Set of opportunities for them. Definitely. Yeah. Whew, good. This was good. We had some topics we wanted to cover and we just floated around someday.

We’ll come back together and, and, and knock things off the list. But this is, as, as I said before, we came online. Exactly the conversation that we’re meant to have. Is there anything else off the top of your mind that you want to leave us with while we’re still together today? 

Margaret Evanow: Before we wrap. 

Susi Vine: We covered some 

Margaret Evanow: juicy stuff.

We had some juicy conversation. It is possible. It is possible to live a vibrant, beautiful health field, happy, fulfilled life. And we just need to start to do.

Susi Vine: Beautiful. Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing. We’re going to have all of Dr. Evernote links in the show notes. If you want to learn more about positive prime, there’s a button on my website. If you go over to Happify. Life.com or you can go right to start off happy.com and learn more. Take a look and reach out to either one of us.

Her contact information will be in the show notes. And of course my contact is on the website too. If we can answer any questions, because if this speaks to you, if you feel moved to share this with someone again, there, I believe there are no coincidences. So let that synchronicity take this where it falls on the most.

The most open ears. And I hope that one thing sticks with you today and inspires you to, to look at where you can find the power in the situation.

Thank you so much for making this time. I appreciate being a part of your busy schedule and this was a joy. I appreciate your conversation. 

Margaret Evanow: Well, I, I love being able to at least get that message out there that there is. And thanks for having me. It was fun, actually. It’s not everyday. I get to talk about when I was 19 and crawled up as a brain cell.

I enjoyed it. Thank you so 

Susi Vine: much. My pleasure. Take good care of yourself and talk to you soon.

Thank you for tuning in today. Check out the show notes for any links. We mentioned to learn more 

Margaret Evanow: about living life with less stress and more flow. Visit Shopify live.com.