Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart, discusses scientific techniques for more discipline, inner peace, and clarity.
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00:00 Overhauling your health as a leader to achieve peak mental and physical resilience
00:05 starts with a really deep and different understanding of the mind-body connection
00:10 and how all the systems of our body are interconnected.
00:13 Here's how to overhaul your health to achieve peak mental and physical resilience as a leader.
00:19 We've all heard of the five senses - touch, taste, sight, sound and smell.
00:28 Did you know that there's a sixth sense called interoception?
00:31 And it's the sense that you have of the physiological state of the inside of your body.
00:36 And that includes things like your temperature, pain levels,
00:40 all the way up to things like, are you feeling well?
00:43 And so it's a really good idea to start paying attention to those things and noticing them more
00:48 because that sense has a lot more to it.
00:51 You can really start to use it to understand, am I confident? Am I stressed?
00:56 Am I maybe becoming unwell and do I need to do something to stave that off?
01:00 As a leader, this can be your new superpower.
01:03 So really understanding the brain-body connection and the power that you hold in your brain
01:08 for mind over matter can revolutionise not just your leadership style, but also your health in general.
01:14 So the gut-brain connection is an area of huge research which has exploded with new information recently.
01:21 We always knew that the gut and the brain were connected through the vagus nerve,
01:25 but we now know that the gut and the brain are connected through other nerves,
01:29 through hormones, through chemical messages that go through the blood,
01:33 and the fact that this relationship is bidirectional.
01:36 So if your gut is not in good condition, that can have an effect on your sleep,
01:41 your mood and your stress levels.
01:44 Equally, if you're feeling stressed, then that has an impact on the quality and quantity of your gut microbiome.
01:50 Another such example is the connection between your mental state and your skin.
01:55 It's called psychodermatology and it also goes both ways.
02:00 The skin is essentially the boundary of our bodies physically,
02:04 but it also shows up a lot of psychological issues if we have boundary transgressions.
02:08 So if someone gets into your space or behaves in a certain way,
02:12 that really impacts on how you feel emotionally safe and secure.
02:17 So often when we're feeling threatened in that way, we may come out with a skin rash or eczema
02:23 or other skin issues that manifest because we're actually feeling stressed mentally.
02:29 So those are two examples of how the mind and the body interact,
02:34 but it's becoming increasingly important to understand as a leader that
02:38 there is no cutoff at the neck between psychology and physiology.
02:41 They're intimately connected.
02:43 There are even connections between our gut microbiome and our immunity,
02:47 and this contributes so strongly to our ability to stay resilient against stress.
02:51 So as the world gets more complex,
02:54 it becomes more and more important to understand the power of the brain-body connection.
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