Turning Inward
I love listening to podcasts, and during the week I'll usually listen to shorter episodes while I'm doing the dishes. But on the weekends I'll usually pick something long-form.
This past Sunday, I was listening to a fascinating interview with Dr Stacy Sims on the Huberman Lab podcast. Dr Sims is an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who focuses on female athlete health & performance, and is leading the paradigm shift of #womenarenotsmallmen.
In this podcasts she talks about various topics, including why she doesn’t recommend fasting for women (particularly active women), how most women aren’t fuelling enough (something I find is common in women clinicians too) and why she prefers heat exposure rather than cold & less focus on Zone 2 training for women.
[If you’d like to watch the full interview you can do so HERE.]
Sims is incredibly passionate about these topics and is a prolific researcher (she also has courses on her website on female nutrition & exercise physiology if you’re interested).
But what I found most interesting is that when asked at the end of the interview what change she would want all women to make if she could wave a magic wand, she didn’t talk about fasting or protein intake or plyometrics.
Instead, she talked about how she would want women to “understand their intrinsic selves”.
That we have so much external noise that we’ve forgotten what it means to listen to ourselves and our bodies.
For so long, women were not studied and it has just been assumed that our physiology is the same as males, so we end up living, training and fueling under that assumption too. Not to mention the endless (and confusing) social conditioning we have from a young age.
So for the women clinicians, I’d encourage you to do this too. To listen to what your body needs and to start honouring what you hear. And I think this is important for male clinicians too; even though your conditioning has been different to women, it's important to be aware of the effects of it. And to be better advocates for the women in your life (including your patients).
As clinicians - regardless of gender - we have an additional pressure to push ourselves to give more and help more, often at our own expense.
So let’s all start getting more in touch with what we actually need, and work with our physiology instead of against it. Less external measurements and instructions, more looking inward.
And even if you don't change anything for now; let the first step just be cultivating this internal awareness.
So you might be thinking, well that sounds great but HOW do we start to listen to ourselves more?
I think there are many ways to do this, but there are often similarities in the ingredients that people use. Play with it and find what works best for you.
Carving out YOU-time: dedicating even just a few minutes as often as you can to specifically tuning into your inner world without any external stimuli from conversations, podcasts etc.
Mindfulness: the practice of really being aware of what's happening, in this case awareness of your internal world. Noticing your movements and sensations such as breathing or heart rate; noticing your thoughts, emotions and internal nudges.
Regularity/practice: building the skill of accessing that state regularly so that it starts to extend into your everyday life. Getting used to checking in with yourself when you need to make a decision or access how you feel about something that is happening, particularly in higher stress situations.
Often, in order to create this kind of space, we need to believe that it's important in the first place. So I hope that Dr Sims & I have reminded you why it's worth doing.
I have found that it is incredibly important amongst the clinicians I work with, and this is why self-authorship is at the core of everything I do. YOU are the author of your life, your career and your health.
I'd love to know if you have a practice for this, or - if you don't - whether there's something you have in mind to try out. For me it's things like long walks, dancing and writing. I love to create a library of ideas for fellow clinicians, so I'd love to know yours.
Tell us in the comments!
