Learning To Become Gentle With Ourselves

Beth Claxton, MD

Thank you so much, Keesha. I’m really happy to be here.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

So, the title of your talk is “Learning to be Gentle with Ourselves,” which is just so necessary in this day and age, I think. What made you, drew you to this idea of learning how to be gentle with ourselves? I always think our own personal stories bring us to where we are and I would love to hear yours.

Beth Claxton, MD

Well, I was going through life kind of like the Hulk where I thought I was a Tin Man, and I was like, I had all this armor on and it didn’t matter how hard anything was or what I felt, I had this shell and I could just get through it. So I went to medical school. I did, of course the hardest residency that you could do, as I understood it, because OB/GYNs never got to sleep, they were always running around, they were the hardest-working people and then I decided to get married and it wasn’t a great fit and I just thought, I’d like, go do it and then I thought I’d have children at an advanced maternal age and just get through that. I was doing and then the clinic where I was working, they offered a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Course for the providers. It was an abbreviated course and we went in and just sat and it was absolutely profound for me and I started listening to the other providers that were taking that class with me. 

And a friend of mine said, “My mother-in-law’s in town and she’s not annoying me.” And so as I started, I realized at that moment that I had to teach this, that this was too profound to not, it was a basic vital part of healthcare that was being missed. So I decided I was going to train and that’s been a long journey and one of the biggest, the most important pieces of guiding those meditations is you sit, you follow the breath, watch the thoughts, follow the breath, thoughts come, you follow the breath, you let the thoughts go and this is the key part, you’re gentle with yourself. You don’t give yourself a hard time. This is what happens. This is how, this is what everybody does. This is what the mind is supposed to do, take the judgment out, just be loving and bring yourself back. So that’s my journey to being gentle with myself.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Self-compassion is, I think, a primary missing ingredient in the autoimmune community where I always say there are four Ps to autoimmunity. One is perfectionism. One is people pleasing. One is the pitta dosha in Ayurvedic medicine. And one is the poison of past pain that’s being held onto. And in all of those, all four of those Ps come with an automatic gridwork of non-gentleness so I really loved that we were going to talk about this because these four Ps I always think have to be healed before autoimmunity can be reversed and appreciation, gratitude, curious compassion, and collaboration with all the systems of your own body, these are all necessary if autoimmunity is going to be reversed and that self-compassion is such a key ingredient so I appreciate this very, very much.

Beth Claxton, MD

Oh, thanks, and I’ll say just a little bit about my journey to self-compassion. I was, you know, that was, self-compassion was something I was trying to check off, check the box and I had been studying mindfulness for a while, and one of the prerequisites to being able to teach is to do a handful of five-day silent retreats and then 10-day silent retreats and I went to a 10-day silent retreat on self-compassion and I still hadn’t gotten it. And we sat down and every day, every afternoon, we practiced meta, which is self-compassion, meta for ourselves and at first it was like, “Really? Like, I have to do this so I can go to lunch.” It just felt so cheesy. And then like I might start crying, but by maybe day four, five, six, like I realized that was the gateway end. There was like my, there was something soft and tender in my belly that opened up and then let everything else happen.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I remember on day three at my first 10-day silent meditation, the Vipassana Retreat, and practicing meta and getting really angry and going out for a walk between meditation sessions, ’cause you know, you can’t talk to anybody, and talking to a bird that I would, in this sort of area outside that was kind of set up like a circle where you could go for a walk and the bird would be perched on the branch and every time I’d loop back around, I would mutter to the bird about all the things they didn’t tell you about this retreat that should be known and I was just so angry and then all of a sudden it gave way and I just started sobbing, you know, and like, “Okay, there it is.” There’s the soft belly. There’s the vulnerability. And then from that point forward, it was just this beautiful willingness to engage in self-compassion that had not been there before. There was all this doingness and right. If I get this done, then I can relax, you know, and if I just do this, then I’ll feel worthwhile and there’s just so much of that and deeply ingrained into our culture.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, and I was actually reminded, I had my own bit of defiance with it too in that I was reading Kristin Neff’s book “Self-compassion,” right when it had come out and I was not making it through the book at home. It was just sitting there. So I picked it up and I threw it in my bag and I went to the silent retreat and I think I read it on the plane or something, but when I got to that retreat, I realized like, I think that that book is important and even though we weren’t supposed to be reading.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

You rebel, you.

Beth Claxton, MD

I know. I finish the book.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Just so everybody knows, you’re not supposed to read, journal, do yoga, nothing.

Beth Claxton, MD

Nothing, look at people in the eye, eye contact, nothing.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Smile at them, no, no, no. Hand them a Kleenex when they’re sobbing behind you, no.

Beth Claxton, MD

No, that’s oppressive.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, it’s big work.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah. And I still have to be reminded, even when things, you know, when with the pandemic and everything falling apart, it seems like in the world and I was scrolling through the news like for an hour a day during lockdown and the election. I only recently realized that’s not self-compassion.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

No.

Beth Claxton, MD

That’s not good. That is not good for me.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, I came home from that, my first Vipassana Retreat. Let’s see, my youngest child was seven and she’s now 25 so it’s that many years ago, whatever that math is. And I knew, I’ve never turned on the news since. It’s so interesting ’cause people go, “Well, how do you know what’s going on in the world?” And I always say, “My patients tell me.”

Beth Claxton, MD

That’s great.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I knew when Russia invaded Ukraine because one of my patients told me. I figure, I get my news from, you know, from being connected to other people and I don’t have to have it invade my space, you know? And it really is an act I got immediately that that was self-compassion for me. And everyone’s going to be a little bit different, you know, in how they create that boundary for themselves and what compassion means for them.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, exactly, it is individualized and it takes definite checking in to know what’s right for you.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah.

Beth Claxton, MD

Which is hard. Just show me how to do it.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah and I think, you know, one of the things, the mind is always considered master in our culture and mind is the one that gets us in trouble and starts going off and so body has a lot of wisdom, heart has a lot of wisdom and you know, so for our viewers, my encouragement is check in with body and heart and ask yes and no questions and see what body and heart have to say instead of like turning it over to mind all the time. That’s what I discovered. It’s like, “Okay, I need to be checking in with my whole system, not just the mind.”

Beth Claxton, MD

Absolutely, and that was my journey to Ayurveda was learning to trust the body.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. Yeah, so in your daily life, how do you see mindfulness as an important tool?

Beth Claxton, MD

Well, meditation’s a stable part of my morning and there are days that there’s a lot of brain activity. There is nothing but brain activity and realizing that like, “Wow, I am really wound up,” and it’s been really helpful to take a step back to create that space where something happens. You can stop. You notice, you can stop, you can take a breath and you can decide what comes next. And you know, you’ve had teenagers, I have teenagers and it’s so nice to be able to like just stop and go. And they’re going, “Mom! Why aren’t you saying anything?” There’s nothing that needs to be said right now. I’m gonna think about that. Yeah, I’d say that’s a big one and just noticing, noticing what’s happening in my body, noticing what’s happening outside. I’d say I’m a pretty careful driver. I don’t really get in accidents or cut my fingers or anything chopping ’cause I know. I tell myself, “I’m chopping something and I have a really sharp knife in my hand and I’m gonna make this an exercise of mindfulness,” and yeah, it gets done. I don’t think it’s any slower than it needs to be ’cause I certainly don’t have to stop and find a Band-Aid.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah. Those are the ways, I say some examples, but it’s everywhere, once we learn to slow down and it’s everywhere.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And it’s interesting because as you just noted, it’s not really slowing down how fast something gets done. It’s slowing down the crowding of one thought over the top of the next one.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, exactly. That multitasking where we think that we can get more done and really, as I’m learning, the laser focus actually expands the concept of time so we could potentially even get more done.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. Hmm. So letting go of clinging to an outcome I think is another place where this plays out for me where, you know, if I consciously, like if my mind is a fist and I can let it go just really consciously open it up and expand my view, bring it like this, then there’s a lot more peace. And the clinging to whatever it is that I think is supposed to be happening now or should be happening or my expectations, you know, I always say all unhappiness comes from unmet expectations, but every time you’re unhappy, you’re the one present, so.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

You know, it’s like what is it that I’m clinging to right now that I could let go of? And it might be that there’s less mobility in a wrist, you know, or pain in a knuckle and in an idea that that should not be there, right? And so letting go of that contracted, “Oh no, that shouldn’t be there,” or that fear around mobility might be deteriorating right now, you know, and that then brings a whole different biochemistry to the joints.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

To relax that, right?

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, exactly. Yeah, the neuroinflammatory cascade with cortisol and ACTH and the vagus nerve and nuclear factor kappa B, which just triggers like this highly inflammatory cascade in the brain and all over the body. If we can self-regulate that, like how powerful is that? It just blows me away. And the times that I find, you were talking about mobility and I was thinking the times that I really like dig in and use the mindfulness is when I have to go to the grocery store and it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and it’s bumper to bumper traffic. I get on and it’s, “Okay, take a deep breath. I’m not gonna be super mobile. This is gonna take a while and I’m just gonna breathe and do the best I can. I’ll make it there eventually.”

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Beth Claxton, MD

I could get wound up and get into an accident.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Exactly.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

So how does mindfulness play a part in your functional medicine practice?

Beth Claxton, MD

When I took that class, I just knew that it was a vital part and I’ve offered classes throughout the years where I live and sometimes they’re filled, sometimes they tend to be small, and then just recently as my functional medicine practice has grown, I’ve made my membership package include the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Course. So if they want to be a member, they’re taking that class. I just love it. Like there was one woman, so powerful. She has a lot of pain. She just said, it was so profound, class number seven and there are eight classes, she said, “I just didn’t realize there was any other way to look at things.”

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, and that’s gonna affect her physiology extensively.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Mm-hmm.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, so everyone gets to take it.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And how do you see a connection between mindfulness and Ayurvedic medicine?

Beth Claxton, MD

So Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, the mindfulness practice is part of the Ayurveda. It’s slowing down. It’s welcoming the day with meditation or just being aware of what’s happening and that is what I see Ayurveda as like the daily, the dinacharya, the daily practices are slowing down, getting in touch with nature, noticing that we are an animal in nature, noticing have my bowels moved today, instead of, you know, the next day when you’re feeling really bad and you haven’t even realized that you didn’t have a bowel moment that day, the day before. And I can really tell there are times that I get really wound up and then there are days that I start to slow down and I say, “Oh yeah, I can hear the birds today and I can feel that the rain’s coming and I can make wise choices with what I’m eating.” And I can say, “I’m getting hungry right now and I know that if I don’t do something about this in the next 30 minutes, I’m gonna get hangry and I’m gonna like just eat whatever food my teenagers have in the cabinet and, you know, satisfy this itch.” So yeah, it’s really, I think it really helps make the whole process, the practice of Ayurveda possible is that grounded meditation.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I gave a talk for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association when I was on the board years ago and I was pulling the link between trauma and autoimmunity forward from the Ayurvedic perspective and one of the Ayurvedic perspectives that isn’t really embedded in our cultural paradigm is that the body is the canvas of the mind and whatever it is that we’re bringing in, there are these three energies to it, ojas, tejas and prana, right, and prana’s the communication between the cells and tejas is the metabolism and the ojas is that building life force vitality. And if any of those in an autoimmune disease, tejas burns up ojas, right? This fire is too high and it just, and then there’s miscommunication between the cells of the immune system and the rest of the tissues and all of that happens and because of a lack of mindfulness around whatever, what you’re eating, what you’re thinking about, how you are replenishing your energy, like coffee or energy drink, versus listening to the body and giving it what it really wants. Eating against your genetics, you know, like just, that’s a lack of mindfulness, all of it, right?

Beth Claxton, MD

Mm-hmm.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And it tends to be in our culture that we see food as a way of satisfying, you know, we’ve got our six tastes and we do a lot of trying to satisfy emotional dysregulation through food and, you know, with your patients, I’m sure you hear it just like I do, “You’re taking away,” that’s a quote, right, “You’re taking away the only thing that brings me joy right now.” It’s like, well, no, I’m not taking it away, actually. I’m inviting you into a space of mindful, compassionate, curious communication with yourself, right? Ask your body what it’s asking for and it’s telling you very loudly what it needs right now. And so that idea that, I guess, we’re not responsible for the circumstances that we’re living in in our body, that somebody on the outside tells us what to do or is taking something away or we’re being deprived, I believe that mindfulness changes that and shifts it in a really powerful way.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, I agree. It’s the way that we see it. It’s like stopping, taking a breath, “What’s another way to look at this?” And there is-

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Very empowering.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, I talked with someone just the other day who wasn’t getting better because they couldn’t follow the diet and you know, “Oh, okay, well I’ll deprive myself of this and this and this.” And I said, “Well, the first step is to change the mindset about that, that you’re making a compassionate decision for your body and for your health.” And they said, “Oh, okay.”

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, and not even a compassionate decision for, but you’re collaborating with the wisdom of the body that it’s telling you, right? It’s like it’s already made its decision, it knows what it needs and it’s trying to give you that information. This is just a matter of listening to it, right?

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, and finding that sense of that awareness, that communication, that ability to communicate with the body because it’s hard, it’s hard because tasting good is very different than how am I gonna feel 15 minutes later?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Beth Claxton, MD

And having that patience and that wisdom to make the decision for something that’s gonna make us feel better 15 minutes later.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. I was in a grocery store when I was first learning Ayurveda probably 20 years ago and I remember being in the frozen food section with the berries, the frozen berries and looking in my cart and seeing that I had some frozen berries and I had some unsalted organic butter to make ghee with, and I had, you know, I had some legumes in there. I had a bunch of different things to make kitchari and realizing that everything in there actually was hitting the sweet taste, even though it all looked very healthy.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yes.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And I thought to myself, “That is so interesting.” And you know, the six tastes of course in Ayurveda are sweet and salty and sour and pungent and bitter and astringent and I started making those emotional correlatives to each of those tastes and realizing that yeah, when I have like an experience that leaves a sour taste in my mouth with another person, or I feel bitter about something that happened, or I’m feeling kind of angry, like astringent, you know, that, or pungent, that, ah, I reach for sweet to make that feel better. Even if it’s in Ayurveda, you know, like sweet, it’s healthy, but Basmati rice is sweet so are split mung beans, and so I thought, “Oh, this is so fascinating.” And I looked around at other grocery carts that were around me and I thought sweet and salty is pretty much the largest part of what show up in grocery carts and then I started thinking about a research article I had read just recently prior to that that had said the happiest people on the planet are in Bangladesh and thinking, “What’s in Bangladesh that makes people so happy?” You know, these monsoons sweep through there, they get their homes destroyed all the time and then I thought, “Oh, that’s it.” They actually don’t count on things being permanent. They don’t have any illusion that whatever they have as expectations are going to remain permanently fixed and they’ve developed resilience and they can find happiness and joy and all of the change and the transitions ’cause they’re mindful of it. And you know, that was a big aha moment in that freezer section in that grocery store.

Beth Claxton, MD

I love this.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I know. And it’s like this is bringing mindfulness to our tastes, our emotional correlations to how things hit us on our tongue, literally, you know, and I don’t think we, in my Vipassana Retreat, the very first one, you know, in the evening, they give you, well, at least mine, an apple and some tea as your dinner and I remember being so mindful in my meditation after that, of just that apple going through its entire processing, its digestive process in my body and thinking I’ve never been so tuned in to the process of digestion ever in my life, you know. And I think that this is something that is so illuminating for a very rushed achievement-oriented, productivity-oriented society.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah and you look at processed food, like it is, it’s just sweet and salty and I find myself like looking for tubs of arugula to bring home. My teenagers say, “Let’s get this a little bitter.”

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, I mean, I eat bitter greens like they’re going outta style now.

Beth Claxton, MD

Something to oppose the sweet salty.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, exactly.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And I’ve come over the last 20 years to just love bitters, you know, ’cause I have kapha in me and that’s the thing that helps to get it so that it’s balanced.

Beth Claxton, MD

That’s funny. I have a lot of pitta and I remember making a smoothie with collared greens, which are like, you really can’t get much better than that and I threw them in the smoothie and I made it and I could feel like something behind my eyeballs, like some gland just squeezing, and I thought, “I know this is good for my brain.”

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, yeah, I’m definitely, I’m pitta kapha and, you know, the pita and the kapha, it’s so good for us to be eating all those greens, so yeah. So this is a really interesting conversation and what are, I mean, along the lines of small things that people can do? Sometimes my patients will burst into tears when I give them little daily routine things to do and say, “If you only knew how busy I was, you wouldn’t ask me to do this.” Of course that’s the reason they’re sitting in front of me in the first place, but yeah.

Beth Claxton, MD

It’s not even that they’re busy and they have to add one more thing, they just have to add awareness.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Beth Claxton, MD

That’s free and it doesn’t take any time. The first week of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Class, everyone chooses an activity to bring mindfulness to in their daily life, flossing teeth, brushing teeth, starting with a different side of your mouth, taking out the groceries, doing the dishes, and people come back and report like, “I had so much fun doing the dishes.” It’s usually just something to get done and move on. Embracing that time, it’s like a gift. I get to be here with the water. I get to feel the soap. It’s like a bubble bath for my hands and I get to, you know, if we have the luxury of having a dishwasher, we can be grateful for the dishwasher as we put them in, arrange them and know they’re gonna come out beautiful and clean and like.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, I just went through that process this morning. Thank you, dishwasher. Yeah, yeah.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah and making the bed, any, for me, any choice, any chore is I can turn into, “Am I gonna have fun with this or am I not?” And it’s so much more fun and healthier and more enriching to just enjoy it, choose to enjoy it. Take your time.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

There’s another one that’s kind of fun in that if you get out of bed and normally you step your right foot on the ground first, then try doing it with the left. Or if you reach to open up your car door with your right hand, try it with the left instead so that you’re mindfully switching up the way that you would normally do things and then bring awareness to that, like how does that feel? What comes up in that process? It’s kind of a fun one.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, and one of the other exercises that we do in the class is, it’s towards the end of the eight weeks. We all come in, sit down and people have a place that they normally sit and we sit down and talk a little bit and we talk about how we come in and we sit every week and we’re comfortable in this place, we’re comfortable in our lives, and we’re comfortable with our surroundings and find a place that you don’t, that, you know, in the room, pick out a place that you don’t wanna be. Like there might have even been a reason that you didn’t want to be there and then go move there and take in the perspective of that and people say, “Oh, this wasn’t, why did I think this was a bad place to sit, or I actually like this better than where I was.” It’s so good for the brain.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yes, it is. I remember reading some instructions on the centering prayer one time and she encouraged if you normally sit in lotus or half Lotus or even cross-legged, not to do it and see what happens and notice the attitude that’s present when you achieve that sitting posture. I thought, “Oh, that’s fascinating.” What does it mean to go from being able to floor sit with an erect posture and to move to a chair, right? And what can you be mindful of in that transition and how it looks from the outside in terms of what you think people are thinking, you know, and I loved that. I thought, “Oh yeah, every single little thing, right, just bringing that mindfulness to it.”

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, challenge it.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Challenge your thoughts always.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, and I’m also doing a big declutter project right now in my closet and like every little thing, like what’s, is this negative energy that like, I see this every day and is it draining me? So like my closet’s empty basically and I feel happy when I go in there and there’s a big pile of stuff I gotta figure out what to do with now, but that’s-

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I just really did that, Beth. I have a third of my closet left and there’s a heap, it’s so big, of hangers on the floor that I have to figure out what to do with and I took all of those clothes to a shelter, so it’s amazing to be able to go through all of that and feel lighter, just so much lighter, yeah. I did the same thing with my library. I have a third of my books remaining from where, yeah, I started in March doing this.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, congratulations.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, it feels so much lighter. I have to say though, I have, I was a little aggressive and I have missed a couple where I’ve gone to look for them, I’m like, “Oh, crap.” That bucket’s gone.

Beth Claxton, MD

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve definitely done that and some books I’ve had to buy again.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I know, that’s what I’m finding. I grew up in the military and so getting rid of stuff is pretty easy for me. It’s the repercussions come like afterwards and I go, “Hmm.”

Beth Claxton, MD

Well, one thing, I sometimes I have my daughters when I’m buying clothes and I’ll try something on and I’ll say, “Oh, what do you think?” And they say, “Mom, you have something just like that already.” I didn’t even know. Maybe they’re used to it.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

So true to our patterns and becoming mindful of those.

Beth Claxton, MD

Right, exactly.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Well, this is all part of that gentleness, you know, showing gentleness for yourself, everyone, and so I, is there anything that we haven’t mentioned along these lines that you would like to bring forward before we end?

Beth Claxton, MD

The only thing that I’d like to say is just the power of slowing down with your food ’cause I know we, for me, it’s very powerful and it impacts digestion, inflammation, so many things just sitting down and even eating very mindfully. I had one of the silent retreats, they asked us to stop when we were three bites from full.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Hmm.

Beth Claxton, MD

And that was, and I was like, “Well, maybe I’m three bites from full. I’m gonna keep going just to see. We can really tell and if we’re taking each bite and chewing it 30 times before we swallow it, that’s amazing for digestion right there and inflammation and all of that and it helped, I just remember having an incredibly impactful, mindful meal that everything was relaxed in my body afterwards and I don’t know when that’s happened since.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I’m just getting over COVID and for the last three days, my daughter had made me some chicken vegetable soup. My meal of the day has just been one, is that a bowl of that chicken vegetable soup that I would take like three bites of and then set it down and then come back to it four hours later and do that again and set it down, you know, and it just felt like that’s what my body was asking for and that’s it, you know, and then hydrating and I think that listening is so important, so that’s very good wisdom, yeah. Instead of eating mindlessly while you’re on the computer or driving or thinking about other things.

Beth Claxton, MD

Exactly, exactly.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Well, you have a free gift for our audience. Would you like to introduce it to them?

Beth Claxton, MD

I do. One of my, I guess it’s come out of so many branches of all of this, Ayurveda, detoxification, spending time with things in my kitchen, which Ayurveda they call it kitchen table wisdom, is making my own deodorant and I have a video where I show people how to make the deodorant that I like, and you can tweak it if you want to. It’s just, it’s so nice to every day open that up and know that it’s completely free of toxins. I know exactly where everything came from and I made it and I can put it on and it’s yeah, that’s really, that’s really sweet to me. And then another one is a face mask you can do every single day, even on the busy days as you’re making your lunch for the day.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Beautiful. All right, thank you so much. I appreciate you, thank you.

Beth Claxton, MD

You’re welcome, Keesha.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Taking time.

Beth Claxton, MD

You’re very welcome, my pleasure.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

All right, everybody, until next time, be well.