The third episode of Broken covers a lot. Hope, yoga, grounding techniques to reduce anxiety, body image, food, intuitive eating, mindfulness and breath.
Hannah and Alexa share their own stories and talk about how their beliefs and thoughts about food, their bodies, yoga and exercise have changed.
Hannah and Alexa begin this episode by reading a comment sent by a listener about finding hope from the podcast.
Hannah and Alexa talk about hope, and about the importance and usefulness of finding hope when things feel broken.
They talk about yoga and about how each found yoga. Alexa shares about her journey training to become a yoga teacher. They both share their initial judgments and doubts about yoga and how they now think differently.
Hannah explains grounding and teaches about using grounding techniques such as yoga and breathing to decrease anxiety. Alexa demonstrates a technique called "square breathing". They also talk about meditation and suggest resources including an app called the Insight Timer.
They share examples of mindfulness, grounding and breathing techniques to teach children.
Alexa talks about the mind-body connection and how our feelings about our bodies impact our thoughts and mental health.
The two then shift into discussing body image. They discuss the evolution that occurs for many people leading to disconnection from body awareness.
Hannah and Alexa share their personal struggles with food, weight gain, dieting, and losing weight. They discuss what food, eating, and body awareness was like in their respective childhoods, when they went to college and joined sororities, and then post-college.
They talk about binge eating, college weight gain, restricting and denying food, dieting, guilt inducing diet fails, rules about food, stress eating, tracking calories, eating kid-food highchair leftovers, eating and using alcohol to numb and ignore the problem, beating ourselves up about weight loss failure, yoyo dieting, food choices, and about how they learned about food and to listen to their bodies.
Hannah and Alexa both examine the journeys that led them to find intuitive eating and achieve their ideal body weight, which they've each maintained now for more than a year.
They discuss the importance of prioritizing self-care, the connection between self-worth and self-care, and the opportunity to use healthy eating and exercise as a way to gain some control in life, in a healthy way--to empower yourself and to optimize mental and physical health.
Hannah and Alexa circle back to discussing yoga and provide information about how to apply yoga to life.
Listeners are reminded to acknowledge themselves after surviving hard things.
Hannah teases an upcoming episode about sex. She asks for listeners to reach out to the show with their thoughts and concerns about sex.
Connect with Broken Podcast (@brokenpodcast) on Facebook and on Instagram (@broken.podcast). Check out the website at brokenpodcast.com. Email hmirmiran@gmail.com .
Join Hannah Mirmiran and Alexa Theisen every Monday for Broken.
Resources:
Lotus House of Yoga (Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska: lotushouseofyoga.com)
Insight Timer, Headspace, Calm: Meditation apps available on your device's App Store.
Website: www.brokenpodcast.com
Instagram: @broken.podcast
Facebook: @brokenpodcast
