Becoming An Energy Billionaire

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you husband Tom McCarthy. Great to be here.

Tom McCarthy

So talk to us. What does the concept of an energy billionaire? We hear billionaire millionaire in terms of money but you’re talking about it in terms of energy. So what does this mean to you and to all the people that are listening right now to be an energy billionaire.

Stacy McCarthy

Well anything in your life that has any real value is going to require a certain amount of energy and the challenges is most people run out of energetic gas while they’re climbing that mountain of success. So if you have all the wealth in the world, but you don’t have the energy to enjoy it, you’re gonna end up spending all that wealth, you accumulate it to get back your and get back your health. So all of us deserve vibrant health. And these are techniques that are going to help you have just extraordinary energy and health.

Tom McCarthy

Great. And so you talk about the one of the ways or the primary tools that you use to our system, you help people to become energy billionaires is through the big three and mastering the big three. What are the big three? Tell us all three of them and then we’ll start going into each one and you can start showing people how to start to claim their status as an energy billionaire.

Stacy McCarthy

Well, first of all I believe that everyone should be able to have a body that is vibrant and full of life and energy. But what happens is most people don’t adopt the right habits and then they don’t take action on those habits. So mastering the Big three is really about mastering how you move how you eat and how you think. So the number one thing that we need to really take control of is our physical body in order to truly be an energy billionaire. So step one is take control of your physical body through these three areas of your life. Because if we look at our life, most of our habits, both good and bad fall under these three categories. 

And so if we first figure out how to move intelligently move appropriately, move consistently, then we know how to eat, to fuel that and we know how to master our mind and really stand guard of our mind for those negative thoughts and emotions that are constantly coming in, then we’re going to be increasing what in yoga we call our prana or our life force energy. And these three areas, I work from the ancient science of yoga to increase our prana, our qi our life force energy through these three areas.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, great. So rather than thinking, it’s a million different things, you’ve broken it down into three areas and let’s start with how you move. So you talked about needing to move, I think you said intelligently and you need to move consistently. One of the biggest issues I think for people is, you know, they sit at a desk all day or they’re sedentary. So take us through some concepts we can start to adopt around movement.

Stacy McCarthy

Great. Well, first of all, you’re right, our daily habits these days is around a lot of slumping and slouching and research has shown that just slumping and slouching on a consistent basis can take up to seven years off your life. And also when we slump in our slough out and we slouch, it starts to really change our psychology. So when our shoulders are drawing down, when our eyes are down, when our chest is collapsed, our lungs are collapsed, we’re not going to be breathing fully. We are creating again this energy of all going downward rather than upward. And we’re also almost guarding our hearts as we go downward. So one of the very first things that I teach and I teach this in every single class that I teach is proper posture. How do we align our bones? How do we stabilize our muscles? How do we bring our musculoskeletal system back into balance and cemetery? So one not only do you stand taller, Not only do you feel better, but most importantly, so that your energy flows freely through the body because in addition to our musculoskeletal system, which is our most superficial layer of the body, we also have an energy system. In fact, within our body. 

It’s something that you can’t necessarily see, but we have thousands of energy channels running through our body. The number one energy channel runs up through the spinal cord inside the spinal cord so we want to make sure that our spine is aligned, that our posture is good, so that we really don’t have any kinks in our, in our hose. So if our spinal cord, if we look at that as a hose and were slumped and we’re slouching and we’re pulling down, we’ve got a kink in our hose and we’re not fully fueling our energy. So step number one is master your physiology through your posture and that’s what I say, moving intelligently because if we just start moving but our posture is off or we’re not aligned properly, it will lead to injuries, it will lead to less energy. And so number one is really master your posture first.

Tom McCarthy

Talk about some ways people can master the posture even if they are ceded, which a lot of people spend a lot of time in a chair. What are some things they should be doing? So to keep that energy channel open?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, since it’s hard to see me here, I’ll stand up and show you very quickly. So even if you’re seated in a chair and I want you to see my full body, we’re here in my yoga studio at home. But step number one is start with your feet start with what’s touching the ground. So the very first thing is the foundation and we start with the feet. So look if our feet, if we don’t realize it. But a lot of times we stand like this, a lot of times we stand like this with our toes turned in, it’s going to affect our needs, our knees are going to collapse, it’s gonna come up into the low back. So already just by our feet being misaligned on a regular basis, We’re already starting this cascade of issues coming up through the knee joints, coming up through the hip joints coming into the low back. So we start with the feet bringing the feet parallel pointing straight ahead, pressing into all four corners of the feet. So we’re not rolling out on the feet were not collapsed in but we’re actually starting to work with our feet and just fun fact, a third of all your bones are in your feet. So we’ve got to align these feet properly. So the feet are pointing straight ahead where in all four corners the big toe, little toe, inner outer heel and then the knees are stacked right over our ankles. Because if our feet again are misaligned it’s going to affect the knee joint. We move up a little higher into the pelvic girdle. Sometimes we don’t even realize this, but some people stand like this, they don’t even, it’s just become a visual pattern. Some people stand like this and it’s just from especially sitting a lot that we end up like this, so we need to lift up through the lower belly, release down the tailbone and find neutral in our pelvis. 

So we’re no longer tilted forward, we’re no longer moving forward but from the sides, the front and back we’re neutral and this protects your low back so that you don’t have the low back pain. The next area we look at is the shoulder girdle. So sometimes again when we talk about slumping and slouching, we end up like this right? And we all slept over and over over time. This can create infosys or this rounding in our low back. And this is why we start to take years off our lives because we’ve all seen it. We’ve all seen someone getting further in their years and we start to see them start here than here and maybe all the way to here as they aged. And again, as I mentioned, your physiology affects your psychology. When you start drawing down there goes, your breath becomes shallow, there goes your eyes, you’re always looking down and this can create depression and less than a joyful energetic attitude. 

So our shoulder girdle, we need to make sure that our shoulders are stacked over the hips and that our arms sometimes we stand like this but that our arms are in line with the side waist. So now we’ve stacked the joints, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, ears and now the crown of the head rises up towards the ceiling. Sometimes as we move to the neck because your shoulder girl affects the neck. Your head. Another fun fact you can tell I’m a kinesiology professor and my degrees are in exercise physiology but your head. Whereas anyway from anywhere from 12 to £15. So just a small part if you’re reaching out here with your chin, you don’t even realize it or you’re pulling back. Or maybe you tend to stand with your head a little to the side. 

Guess what? Just that small, even half an inch starts to throw the neck off, starts to throw the shoulder girdle off. So we need to pay practice keeping the ears right over the shoulder. So when we stack the bones properly, we stabilize the muscles properly. They start to hug to the bone. It gives us a stability. And this is what’s bringing our musculoskeletal system back into balance and cemetery. But this takes practice, as I mentioned, sometimes we have the information but we don’t practice it. So my suggestion is every day, take a moment with your posture and align your posture so that you start the day again noticing when you’re slumping and slouching, it’s a lot of times, you know, it’s unconscious, it’s at a subconscious level that we can start changing things. You start to be really noticing when we’re starting to slump forward. So that’s step number one align your posture

Tom McCarthy

And starting to notice when you’re slumping forward and then making that adjustment really then is teaching the nervous system to automatically kind of keep that adjustment. So the if you find yourself something over, don’t get frustrated, don’t get, you know, beat yourself up just corrected Now you’ve done something good and the more you do that, the more natural become that’s great, great job. And by the way you can see she’s got a lot of energy and do you want to tell people your age?

Stacy McCarthy

Sure, yeah, I have no problem talking about age at all. So and a lot of times with age, you know, I say I’m chronologically enhanced and but my spirit is super young and this is what I talk about energy billionaire as I don’t really look at people’s age, I’m really looking at their spirit. Do they have that young spirit? So I’ll be 62 this year. And but my spirit is really I have this energy because I actually practice what I teach and I have for a long time, but it starts again with noticing our posture. Starting to open up those energy pathways would be step number one.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, good. And then we’ll talk just a little bit about movement too because breathing actually as part of your movement and what are some just simple keys around breathing that people can do to make sure that the energy is flowing through their body, one of them obviously talked about, which is proper posture that allows us to take fuller breasts, but what would be one more thing they can do?

Stacy McCarthy

Yes. So in the practice of yoga for the whole person to be an energy billionaire, we really need to address the whole person, not just the musculoskeletal system, but we need to go a layer deeper and in the practice of yoga we have five layers of the whole person in the second layer layer number one musculoskeletal system, layer number two is our energy body and the energy body. The way we increase our energy is through the vehicle of our breath through proper breathing. So when we breathe properly it brings a greater clarity and vitality to our mind. So as I mentioned, if our muscular skeletal system is not aligned, if we’re slumping and slouching, then again the breath cannot move freely. Our breath when we’re collapsed is a little more shallow when we’re open, the chest is open, the heart is open now the breath is moving a little more freely and I suggest to bring more of a steady energy. There’s many different types of breath and you know that we have many different types of breath. Some are designed to calm the body, Some are designed to energize the body, but the simplest of them all is to start practicing breathing in and out through your nose with your mouth closed steady and smooth because mouth breathers overall, especially if your breathing with your mouth open at night, tend to not sleep as well. So begin to train yourself to breathe in and out through the nose and keep it very steady. It does a few things, it balances your nervous system, it helps you get out of the sympathy, pathetic fight or flight and into more parasympathetic rest digest and starting to bring us back into balance. So being conscious of our breath, noticing when we’re breathing rapidly, noticing when we’re breathing too much out through the mouth and bringing it back into balance. So breath would be the next area to increase the energy body.

Tom McCarthy

A lot of people breathe into their chest, which is not good either. Right?

Stacy McCarthy

Yes. So and again, I don’t like to say good or bad because there is a time and a place for all types of breath and for all types of breathing. What I prefer to share is really become a student of your breath, learn about what kind of breather you are and learn how to adapt that into being a more flexible breather. So for example, if you’re always breathing into the chest and that is your natural way of always breathing. Let me share a little exercise for you to learn how to take a full body breath. So I’d like everyone to just sit up tall, gently draw the belly in. You’ll have both your feet flat to the ground. And as you sit up tall, I’d like you to take your hands on your chest and just press into the chest. And now I’d like you to consciously think was you press into the chest about only breathing in the belly. So inhale, let your belly inflate and as you exhale, draw your belly down up and in and you’re pressing your chest, try not to bring it into the chest. 

Try that again. Inhale the belly starts to inflate. You’ll feel the low back arch just slightly. And when you exhale the belly draws down up and in good. So that would be breathing into the belly. Now let’s switch it. Take your hands onto your belly. Now gently press into the belly, consciously start to think about breathing into your chest. So inhale, let your chest expand. Keep pressing into the belly. You’ll notice the shoulders may roll back and down. And as you exhale there’s a small contraction and perhaps the shoulders draw slightly in. Try that again. Inhale breathing into the chest. There’s almost as micro back and as the heart lifts. And as you exhale there’s a micro contraction good. And now release that. Now let’s work on breathing full body. So I’d like you to take one hand into the center of the chest and one hand into the center of your body. Your belly inhale. See if you can start the inhale from the belly, it starts to expand. Bring the inhale right up through the diaphragm through the rib cage, right up into the lungs into the chest. And now, as you exhale, feel it go from your lungs all the way back down to the belly. Let’s try it one more time inhale. Let the belly inflate, Draw it up into the chest, feel the chest expand. And then as you exhale start to feel it drop from the chest all the way back down to the belly. Well done. So that’s something you can practice that as well. And as we increase the energy flow through the vehicle of our breath, it starts to again draw into the next layer of the body, which is our mind. So steady breathing alignment of the body helps to bring more clarity, more vitality to your mind.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, awesome. Great job. So we’ve got movement in terms of posture and then also, now we have breathing. Let’s go to the second big idea. And what is the second big idea is that that’s how you eat, right? And so what you eat will determine a lot of your energy also.

Stacy McCarthy

Yes. So I think I’m probably preaching to the choir at this because almost everybody knows now that some foods are going to give you greater health and some foods are going to give you less health or even poor health. So learning to eat foods that are as energetically powerful as possible and those are whole foods, those are foods that have nothing at it. And so the more we can eat close to nature, the more energy we’re going to have. And so just as simple as that, I have a rule that if it’s advertised on television too, it’s probably not something you should be eating and keep it really simple, go to your farmers market as much as possible, choose foods that have that high vibration that are close to the earth. And that’s probably the easiest thing with how you eat without going into a lot of deep detail on it.

Tom McCarthy

Okay, great. So foods that have life in them that have energy in them that are still alive are are much much better. And then you do, you do a couple of things in the morning. 11 thing you do is is lemon and hot water. What’s the impact of that?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, that’s just a very simple ritual conscious habit that I do every morning when, when we go to bed, a couple of things happen when we become quite dehydrated and the first thing in the morning we shouldn’t be putting something that’s highly acidic or you know, the first thing shouldn’t be grab a cup of coffee into your system because that artificial energy is probably not the best thing for you. So having a little bit of warm water with lemon is very alcon eyes. It helps to detox my body a little bit longer from the actual detox that’s happening as we sleep. And it’s helping me just ease into my day with hydration and again, more alkali zing to start my day. And then if you want to have your coffee or your tea or whatever, you’re having fine, but maybe ease into your day with something that isn’t so artificial and energy.

Tom McCarthy

So I know you teach a lot more on how to eat and how to move. But let’s go to the third big idea and that is how you think. So how you move determines your energy, how you eat determines your energy level, whether you’re an energy billionaire or you’re lacking energy and then how you think, how does, how you think impact your energy.

Stacy McCarthy

Thinking is the biggest one. I mean quite honestly you can move perfectly, you can eat perfectly. But if your thoughts are toxic, if you’re fueled with a lot of negativity that is going to affect your energy more than anything. So honestly working on thoughts is something I do every single day, I do it in my classes as well. I consciously lead my students through canceling negative thoughts. Being aware of those negative thought, they accumulate very quickly every single day. And we need to let those go and then we can replace them with more optimum positive thoughts. 

And it’s something that we really should be doing every day because the negative thoughts and emotions seep in so easily. But if we just kind of follow this pattern, I’ll just do a pleasant affirmation and it will be fine. It doesn’t always work because we really need to cleanse our thoughts away from the negative before we layer on those more optimum thoughts. And so that’s a practice that I teach every single class along with the posture and the breath I’m always teaching also cancel the negative thoughts, learn how to release those and replace them with more positive thoughts and emotions.

Tom McCarthy

Awesome. And you’ve got a meditation that helps with thinking called the loving kindness meditation before we close out and let people know how to access all the great things you have. Why don’t you lead us through the loving kindness meditation?

Stacy McCarthy

Oh yeah, I would love to do that. So the loving kindness meditation is called Metta meditation. It’s actually a Buddhist practice. It’s the type of meditation. I do it every single day twice a day in the morning and the evening as part of my ritual. And the loving kindness meditation is really again, to help us, I would suggest maybe doing a little bit of forgiveness before you do it and also maybe releasing some negative thoughts and then doing loving kindness. So it’s for myself, typically before I lead into Metta or loving kindness, I’m doing a forgiveness practice, I’m letting go of my negative thoughts and emotions and now I can start to move into loving kindness. So I teach it in three parts Part one. This will be a lead meditation, But it does require some participation from you. So part one is we look at bringing loving kindness into ourselves. We start with ourselves, we become a better person through our thoughts and our emotions the second time we spread loving kindness a little bit wider to someone in our life that we’d like to send loving kindness to and part three we collect our consciousness and we spread loving kindness to really our global community. So part one, I just like you to sit in your comfortable position. And so this is part of the reason that the movement is so important because the movement when we align the body, when we feel a little more freedom in the body, we can sit comfortably for longer periods of time. 

So whatever that comfortable position is for you, I suggest your legs be uncrossed your feet flat on the ground, gently draw up your lower belly, just a slight lift to release down the tailbone, bring your shoulders over your hips. You may choose any hand position you’d like, you can have your one hand on top of the other hands flat on your thighs or maybe palms up. It’s really up to you when you found that comfortable position, you can gently close your eyes and now as you close your eyes, I’ll be leading you on call and response, which means I’m going to say these words to you and then you will repeat them back out loud. But we begin by drawing our awareness inward. So I’d like you to take a moment and I’d like you to scroll through your pictures of yourself. Maybe it’s on your phone, maybe it’s in a photo album. But I’d like you to scroll through those images of yourself and now I’d like to challenge you and I’d like you to find an image of yourself that maybe you don’t like much. 

We all have had them. Maybe it’s a picture of yourself that you immediately delete it. Perhaps it’s an image of yourself that you feel you’re too old, you’re too young, you’re too big, you’re too small, you’re too tall, you’re too short, whatever it is that’s coming up for you in that picture that you want to delete. And when you scroll through that Image and you found the one you just don’t like of yourself, The one where you feel like you’re not enough. I’d like you to hold that image warmly in your heart center and kindly in your mind’s eye. And when you have it will begin call and response. I’ll say the words, please repeat them out loud. There’s a power to this. And so we begin. May I be filled with loving kindness?

Tom McCarthy

May I be filled with loving kindness?

Stacy McCarthy

May I be well

Tom McCarthy

May I be well

Stacy McCarthy

May I peaceful and at ease.

Tom McCarthy

May I peaceful and at ease.

Stacy McCarthy

May I be truly happy.

Tom McCarthy

May I be truly happy? 

Stacy McCarthy

Take a few deep breaths and now we’ll start to spread loving kindness a little bit wider And I’d like you to find an image of someone in your life that you’d like to send loving kindness to. Now. This could be a person, it could be an animal. It could be someone in your life that’s having a challenging time. Maybe it’s a health challenge, a financial challenge. Maybe they have a child that’s gone astray. It could also be and this is a little more challenging someone you’re holding resentment towards. And again, this is a more challenging practice. 

But resentment is a poison that you take, hoping it will kill the other person and it won’t kill the other person, but it can kill you slowly. The practice is to learn to forgive, forgive whoever hurt you, abused you and betrayed you abandoned you. You’re not condoning their actions, but you’re not letting it harden your heart. Forgiveness isn’t for them. The forgiveness is for you. And so when you found that person that you’d like to send loving kindness to hold their image warmly in your heart and kindly in your mind side? And we begin, may you be filled with loving kindness,

Tom McCarthy

May you be filled with loving kindness.

Stacy McCarthy

May you be well,

Tom McCarthy

May you be well 

Stacy McCarthy

may you be peaceful and at ease.

Tom McCarthy

May you be peaceful and at ease.

Stacy McCarthy

May you be truly happy.

Tom McCarthy

May you be truly happy. 

Stacy McCarthy

Take a few deep breaths and now we’ll collect our consciousness together, and we spread love and kindness a little bit wider to our global community. And so we begin, May we be filled with love and kindness.

Tom McCarthy

May we be filled with love and kindness.

Stacy McCarthy

May we be well,

Tom McCarthy

May we be well,

Stacy McCarthy

May we be peaceful and at ease.

Tom McCarthy

May we be peaceful and at ease.

Stacy McCarthy

May we be truly happy

Tom McCarthy

May we be truly happy.

Stacy McCarthy

Take a few deep breaths and then start to bring your awareness back slowly. Just drift back towards a more outer directed focus and then gently open your eyes.

Tom McCarthy

Hey, that was awesome. Great job. Thank you. And so to be an energy billionaire. Three big ideas, how you move, how you eat, how you think you’ve given us some things to do and each of those ideas. But I know you’ve got a lot more that you can help people with. Where can they find your work? Where should they go to find your work?

Stacy McCarthy

Yes. Well as I said now you know some of the habits I call them rituals that you need to adopt. But the real key is to take action on those because the reality is there’s a lot of times we get a lot of information. I call it inf obesity. But I am a big big big big big on practice practice practice because you don’t make the change unless you practice. So I would love for you to come practice with me. You can reach me at yoganamastacy.com. It’s all one word. And Stacey is S. T. A. C. Y. So yoga Y. O. G. A. And this is a play on the word nama stay which is a Sanskrit word that means the spirit in me sees the spirit in you. 

And so it’s yoganamastacy.com And I have several things I have a gift for you here that will have a little mini e book on it. And I also have a three day master, the big 33 day detox program that has three short movement videos, yoga videos, three meditation practices, all under 10 minutes, three breathwork practice. This is recipes that are designed to help you have more energy by getting rid of all of the inflammatory foods and yet it’s delicious. So it is with food and it’s got a great workbook so that could be step one for you and then of course I’m teaching online and I would love for you to join me. There so,

Tom McCarthy

Awesome. They need to get all that information and register online if they want to take your classes there every Tuesday and Thursday but then also there recorded so you’ve got a whole library of yoga sessions that people can access. And then your new three day master, the big three detox is available there and it’s www.yoganamastacy.com. yoganamastacy.com. Thanks so much for being here.

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you. Thanks everyone.