S2-Ep2: Mind and Body Training - Practical Neuroscience Applications
Season 2, Episode 1: Introduction to Burnout and the Science of Chronic Stress
Episode 2: Mind and Body Training - Practical Neuroscience Applications
Ready to turn complex neuroscience into actionable tools you can use today? In this second episode of our transformative burnout series, Christine Dang and Ras Contractor dive deep into the practical side of resilience training, making cutting-edge science accessible to everyone.
Discover how ancient Eastern wisdom perfectly aligns with modern Western research, and why understanding your brain-body connection is the key to beating burnout. Ras reveals his revolutionary "mind and body training" approach—reverse-engineered mindfulness that combines neuroscience and biomechanics to help you become "bigger, stronger, faster, and kinder."
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why your chakras actually correspond to physical glands (and the science behind "sensing someone's energy")
The fascinating gut-brain axis and how your microbiome affects your mood
Heart Rate Variability (HRV): The game-changing metric that reveals your stress load
Ras's personal transformation: HRV in the 100s and resting heart rate in the low 40s
The Four Pillars of Performance: mindfulness, movement, nutrition, and recovery
Why nutrition is the pillar most people struggle with (and how it affects everything else)
The "minimum effective dose" approach—starting impossibly small for massive results
A complete 2-minute stress reset technique you can do anywhere
Real workplace integration strategies that don't add stress
Plus, experience a guided breathing exercise that combines multiple techniques to instantly center your nervous system and discover why simply extending your exhale can transform your physiology.
Whether you're a busy professional looking for practical wellness solutions or a leader wanting to implement resilience training without skepticism, this episode gives you the tools to start your transformation today.
Practical Takeaway: Try Ras's simple morning routine—wake up, take one deep breath in and out, then start your day. It's the minimum effective dose that can grow into life-changing habits.
Coming Up in This Series:
Episode 3: Building Resilient Teams and Cultures
Episode 4: Leadership Through Change and Transformation
Episode 5: Creating Sustainable High Performance
Resources mentioned:
Episode 32: Breaking the Cycle of Burnout - Strategies for Sustainable Self-Care
Ras Contractor: highlevelthink.com | Instagram: @RasAllahContractor
Transcript
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Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Welcome back to the Dang Good Show. I'm C Dang and this is part two of our Burnout to Resilience series with Ras Contractor. Last episode, we uncovered the science behind chronic stress and how it's literally changing our bodies at a cellular level. Today, we're getting into the solutions, specifically with Ras's mind and body training approach that makes neuroscience and biomechanics accessible to everyone.
What I love about today's conversation is that we're not just talking theory. Ras has taken complex scientific concepts and distilled them into practical tools you can actually use. We'll explore how understanding our nervous system can transform your daily experiences. And yes, we'll even connect this to those hope molecules we discussed back in episode 22.
Get ready to discover how small changes in how you approach mindfulness, sleep, nutrition, and movement can create profound shifts in your resilience. So Ras, welcome back. The first question I'm going to ask you is why is understanding our brain-body connection crucial for beating burnout?
Ras Allah Contractor
Hello, thank you for having me. This is episode two.
This wasn't always known around the world. I'd say like 10, 15 years ago you started to see some of the research come out on the western side. That being said, on the eastern side it's always been there. The body is a holistic machine that is doing things across the board.
The brain and the body are connected. We didn't always pay attention to that on this side of the world. But now that we know, let's treat it as the holistic machine that it is. So if something's blocked, we need to address it, otherwise it's going to create a problem.
Let's make this complicated. The gut-brain axis is a perfect example of how we connect it. The gut is connected to the brain. The stuff in our guts sends signals to the brain. The way our brain feels can change the way our gut behaves. And from there, let's talk about chakras and glands, because the chakras line up with some very key glands. We can share some information on that in the show notes.
Imagine that a part of the body is trying to function and it's saying, hey, help me with this, that, and the other, and we're not paying attention. So as that digresses, it gets worse and worse and then it stops functioning properly. So what we want to do is connect the brain to the body in the way that we're talking about it to start, but understand that everything is interconnected.
The messages that we receive aren't good or bad. They're just information and using the information that we perceive through our holistic machine, we move forward and we address. And from there we go into dealing with burnout because if our brain and our body are interconnected and sending messages back and forth, we'll consider it the brain and the body falling back in love, the mind and the body falling back in love. And so if burnout means that we can't keep up, then addressing the mind-body connection allows us to not only keep up, but become more resilient and thrive.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I just need you to help me paint a picture for our listeners because you just connected five different dimensions of wellness here. So let me see if I'm following. You're saying our chakras, those energy centers that ancient traditions have talked about for thousands of years, actually correspond to our physical glands. Like, are we talking about throat chakra connecting to thyroid and crown chakra connecting to the pineal gland? And then you're also taking it even deeper to the microbiome level. So we're zooming in from these energy centers to the trillions of microbes living in and on us, right?
But here's where you actually got my attention. You mentioned quantum theory in the past and sensing emotions as well. Are you saying there's actually a scientific explanation for why we feel someone's energy when they walk into a room and why certain people just give off certain vibes? Is that hocus pocus?
Ras Allah Contractor
No, I don't think so in my opinion. So thank you for bringing that up. Let's go right to the deepest root of it. Everything in matter is kind of boiled down to electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, right? And I had to go Google that piece because sometimes you got to dig deep, but if that's the case then our microbes are influencing how we feel and then how we act and vice versa. But also imagine the hormonal changes that are created as a result of the microbes responding in different ways.
So when I am stressed, my body is going to emanate stress. And if you picture us sitting across from each other, we're exchanging microbes because the air from inside my lungs is coming out and the air from inside your lungs is coming out. Dialing into maybe the root causes of why the coronavirus epidemic spread was because of super spreaders who had a lot more spittle coming out as they were talking. So there's a transfer of fluids, of energy, of air and that can be explained through a combination of microbes and atoms and quantum theory and then the energy from our brains and let's go even deeper, the interconnectedness of the world as we know it, right?
So if we consider ourselves energy centers in this vessel that is a body, which is very esoteric but kind of bridges what I think is a gap between spirituality and religion. So we're all interconnected and so we're all connected which means we can sense each other. And if we stop paying attention to it, which happens in childhood, then we're not as aware of it. But if we go back and train, then I can be more aware of your state and you can be more aware of my state and we can pay less attention to our own state and more attention to the other state, balance it out so that we're paying attention to ourselves and the person in front of us or people around us. And from there, we just have a more gentle society that's a little more aware than maybe the self-absorbed natural state that we tend to move into.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love that. I love all of that. Awareness is key, basically. So with that in mind, how does mind and body training differ from typical wellness programs then?
Ras Allah Contractor
Hopefully this conversation is exciting to your viewers as well because I know we're having a great time talking through this. Let's talk about what I've developed as mind and body training. Mind and body training is applying the neuroscience and the biomechanics, which is really mindfulness reverse engineered. So there's my engineering brain coming into the whole thing. I had to solve a problem. I deconstructed mindfulness into its core components. And because neuroscience is mind and biomechanics is body, mind and body training.
Mind and body training is geared towards developing resilience in the human being by using acute or hormetic stress to adapt the body, to then become my tagline, bigger, stronger, faster, and kinder. So if that is my approach, I'd love for it to be the general approach, but most wellness programs are either prescribing things or giving access to tools. But I think most programs aren't going to do the deep dive and, we'll call it bespoke analysis of the individual in order to really be effective.
You could say mind and body training and I've had this come back to me. Yeah, but everybody's different. Okay, that's fair. We all are. Neuroscience applies to everybody. Nobody breaks the mold of neuroscience and nobody breaks the mold of biomechanics. Our bodies move and do the same things and our brain responds and has similar functions. Where we differ is tendencies and filters and likes and dislikes. So if I share with a team the simple, unarguable facts of the way that their brain responds to stimulus and the way their body moves, then that is the base for developing resilience.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
So you're basically saying there's no magic pills, there's no quick fixes. What you're describing reminds me of the difference between following a recipe and actually understanding how cooking works, right? Like imagine if you only knew that exercise was good for you, but had no idea why. You might force yourself to run every day, hate it, and eventually quit. But if you understood that movement releases those hope molecules I've talked about in episode 22 for listeners out there, that it literally changes your brain chemistry. Suddenly you're not exercising, you're consciously creating your own natural antidepressants, for example.
It's like the difference between driving a car and understanding how it works. Most of us can drive without knowing what's under the hood, and that's fine for getting from A to B. But when things start making weird noises, wouldn't you rather have some basic understanding instead of just hoping it goes away?
So I think what you're getting at is understanding the why behind wellness gives us the power to actually customize what works in our unique vessels.
Ras Allah Contractor
Bingo. Maybe we can have one overarching message that we want to reinforce time over time for your viewers and listeners and audience community is that you have a mind and body and again, a holistic machine that is yours for life and how you treat it and what you know about it changes the way that you experience life moving forward. So let's say you don't have the capacity to know everything about your body. But if you knew these core principles, then things would be better.
For example, let's go back to driving. If you start to hear a sound, you kind of know where it's coming from, then you can go to an expert, say a mechanic or a shop, and they'll help you assess based on what you've shared. They'll take it for a test drive, obviously. If you know that your tires are supposed to be inflated and your oil is supposed to be changed every 10,000 kilometers, then at least you know enough to keep the car working within the duration within which an expert will then look at it.
So if I told you that when you inhale your heart rate goes up and when you exhale your heart rate goes down, that's information that would help you function better between appointments with specialists. So consider it like that. At the same time, why wouldn't you want to learn about this body of yours? Because it's yours and again I'll try to convince you that if you do learn about it and you become kind of an expert in your own body, then you can just handle things better, quicker.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Yeah, because that's honestly, I think for a lot of people and this is me years ago thinking this way, it's the fear, the fear of knowing what's wrong with you. I think people just kind of want to be like, I don't want to know, so I'm just not going to learn about it. But I think that's where magic happens is when we get into that fear and learn more about it, that fear goes away. It's the reason why we're fearful of things is because we don't know.
And so what's the fix to that? Learn more and know more about it. When that perception came into mind, I was like, I was fearful of not understanding a lot of things. So what fights it is knowledge. Knowledge is really literally powerful.
Ras Allah Contractor
Absolutely. And at the same time, a lot of knowledge can be overwhelming. And so it's very important to take everything in bite-sized chunks. In the previous episode, we talked about taking baby steps in changing our routines or changing culture. And so even from a learning perspective, learn something, understand it, start to apply it, and then go for the additional knowledge. Because if you consume a whole bunch, it's going to be overwhelming.
Pay attention to the signals and then use the signals to influence what you do next. And then don't try to do too much. Take one step, figure it out, assess, take the next step, figure it out, assess. And in that, you run less of a risk of putting yourself in a compromising position.
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Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love how you break that down, which just kind of goes into our next segment, which is neuroscience made simple. So let's break down the complex science into actionable insights, as you said, like let's start small, right? So can you explain what happens to our nervous system during chronic stress?
Ras Allah Contractor
Right, our nervous system during chronic stress is in a state of stress which induces either a fight, flight, or freeze mechanism. And so if you imagine being stuck in a mild version of that for an extended period of time, then you're going to not be in an ideal state. And so in the first episode, we talked about flexing that muscle and keeping it flexed for a long period of time, not listening to the signals to let it go, refresh, stretch it out, shake it out, and then start to flex again.
Imagine if your whole body was flexed, and we'll get into this later on the biomechanics side, but because it's flexed and it's likely imbalanced and it's going to be flexed and twisted up at the same time, so now you're sticking points which then lead to inflammation, which then lead to chronic disease of some sort, we don't want to go there. But everybody's heading in that direction and I'm no different. There's always constant stressors around us and we just have to do what we can to assess and try to relax and then try to recover and then take it on again.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I think that's the hard part is catching yourself in that downward spiral. So let's go back to that muscle analogy. You perfectly describe my burnout experience looking back. I normalized living in crisis mode, the exhaustion, the tension and the 3 a.m. racing thoughts. Like my body was constantly flexed muscle as you described, and my nervous system had been stuck in panic mode for so long that I'd been driving on the emergency brake for years without realizing it. So is that what you see with your clients too? Like this normalization of chronic stress until the body literally forces us to stop?
Ras Allah Contractor
Okay, so yeah, what I will say is that chronic stress is well documented as the sort of latent situation that ends up leading to burnout in some form or fashion. So chronic stress leads to chronic disease. And that's not something we want. So even if we scale it back, burnout's a condition as a result of things going on. Like our body is going to be diseased and we want to try to dial that back. Put it this way, if you don't deal with the stress then your body will shut down or your mind will.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I find that for me, exercise does really help.
Ras Allah Contractor
Movement is like a magic pill. If you were going to describe something as a magic pill like just moving our body and moving it better and better every day just creates so much benefit and I can't express this strongly enough. As we move we become better at it and we flush out toxins and we improve our digestion and we become stronger, we become more nimble and then our brain continues to respond to this and fires up hormones which then create the cycling of I need this, I'm enjoying it, I'm looking forward to doing it and so then you just get better and better.
For example, coming out of my 20s, I wasn't a morning person and so I realized that was a problem and tried to fix it. What I did is I just rolled out of bed, did some pushups. Within months, I went from that to getting out of bed, driving to the park, doing a sprint session, going to the gym, lifting some weights, coming back, showering, heading to work. Like that's a pretty drastic change in months. Going back to what we talked about before, baby steps. So started with pushups, not even a bunch, just a few. And it every day just try to do a little bit more, but without overtaxing myself. So to me, if we move everything gets better.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Small baby steps is everything.
So something else that I want to talk about is HRV, which is the heart rate variability. So how does understanding HRV help us?
Ras Allah Contractor
Okay, I love two ways to study, just to pay attention to some of data in our body. So, heart rate variability and the resting heart rate. Now, it's important to note that the heart rate variability isn't the same as our heart rate. So, it's the variability in the heart rate as time goes on. And so, at the beginning, I mentioned heart rate goes up when we inhale, heart rate goes down when we exhale. So, consider that. If we're functionally breathing properly, then our heart rate should go up for five, six seconds and then down for five to six seconds. And so that should create quite a high variability in the heart rate from breath to breath over time.
If we are not breathing effectively, maybe breathing shallow, holding our breath because we're stressed, then the heart rate's going to go up for like a second or two and it's going to come down for a second or two. You're not going to see much of a change. You're going to be at a pretty steady heart rate over time. So you could look at heart rate variability and it is a measure of chronic stress load on the body. And then your resting heart rate, we'll get into later, is how well we rest at night.
So if your body is able to shut down, come down, and then have your heart rate drop effectively, then that means that your body is entering a nice relaxed state. So if we consider that we want to have a high heart rate variability and a low resting heart rate, then those are two measures that we can use with a wearable, a ring or something around our wrist. I've used a whoop and an Oura ring thus far. It's just again data and you know your heart rate variability is going to vary. If you're stressed it's going to drop. If you're feeling good and resting good it's going to go high.
So on average I'm in the like 80 to 100 but I've had a 50 heart rate variability when I got sick with COVID, it dropped to like the 30s and that's actually brings up a nice point because there's actually a case study whereby the PGA tour had a golfer who knew he had something which turned out to be COVID because he had a wearable. And that was because his heart rate variability dropped and his resting heart rate spiked. And so what they ended up doing is they actually bought wearables for everybody on the PGA tour. Because you can tell that you're getting really sick sooner, it'd be better to get that person out of the situation before it infects everybody, right? So very interesting information across the board.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
My Oura ring, for example, I had this for four or five years. I had insomnia since I was a kid. For as long as I remember, I could never get sleep, but I could still function. I just kept on getting sicker and sicker over the years.
And so I took my health more seriously and meditation is one thing that completely changed my life. Exercise is a second one. Looking at it as something that I need instead of what I must do is so different. Changing that perspective. But then the Oura ring four years ago was what fixed my insomnia and I was able to sleep for eight hours now. And it's so interesting because I'm so much more aware of how I feel.
I haven't been sick for quite some time, and so with the Oura ring data, really, it's so great because you can see what you were before and how you are now, and it has been improving over time.
So let's get into your personal metrics. I know your HRV is in the hundreds and your RHR is in the low 40s. How the heck do you, like what is that number? Like why is it so good and how did you get there?
Ras Allah Contractor
Sure. So I want to talk a little bit about sleep too, because the reason is that these metrics that I recommend paying attention to are over sleep. So in your sleep data, you'll get an HRV and you'll get a resting heart rate. So I also struggled with sleep my whole life. And fast forward to today, I sleep like a baby for the most part. Like a baby that sleeps a lot, we'll say.
I played in pubs as an eight to 10 year old up to about 13, 14. And then I discovered instant messaging when I moved to Canada at 15. So I was up all night and then partying and studying in university and then partying after university. And so by time I got to my 30s, I had sleep. I was terrified because I didn't like going to sleep and I would wake up and feel like I never slept. And it was just a bad situation. Routines, key.
Breathing, learning to breathe effectively and opening up the body and relaxing before you sleep. But what the sleep tracking did for me is it kind of showed me that actually I don't think I slept but I slept okay. And so you just stop paying attention to when you wake up and you fall asleep again easier because it is normal to wake up through the night but not knowing that you're just panicking every time you wake up.
The way that we train our HRV is to breathe effectively. So, learn to exhale longer. HRV breath training is actually four counts in and six counts out, which is not extended, but that's a good place to start. Let's scale this up. In the practice of yoga, you're trained to take a breath in for a minute and a breath out for a minute. And so I can do maybe 30, 40 seconds, and I might be able to get to a minute with a little more practice. So it's just learning to breathe slowly.
And if you breathe slowly and deeply, then your heart rate variability will increase and your resting heart rate will decrease. It's that simple.
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Christine "C-DANG" Dang
So next I want to talk about the four pillars of performance, which I know is all about what you do. So exploring mindfulness, sleep, nutrition, and movement, and then switching this to mindfulness, movement, nutrition, and recovery, I believe. So now my first question is, which pillar do people struggle with most?
Ras Allah Contractor
It's very normal for people to assume that they want to have a lower heart rate variability. I'd say most people who start using a wearable kind of assume that. So it's a good distinction for your community is you want to head towards a high heart rate variability and a low resting heart rate. Now moving into what pillar, in my opinion, do people struggle the most? This is going to surprise you, but it is the nourishment and nutrition pillar because we as a society don't eat ideally, right? Like the people who pay close attention to it probably still don't even eat perfectly.
And so if you're eating in a way that doesn't serve your body in the long run, then you're creating problems. You could be eating too much of something, too little of something. I've even had instances where I've been under eating. And for someone who loves to eat, and I do, it was surprising, right? So to some degree paying attention to what we eat and really understanding that we need a lot of protein, we need to eat a lot of healthy fat, we need to eat a decent amount of carbs, and then we need to have whole foods and all that kind of good stuff.
So I think that most people aren't eating well, so it's really the nourishment piece. And so if you address that, a lot of things change because what we eat influences our microbiome, which influences the way that we process food and our regularity going to the bathroom and ultimately how we feel, brain fog versus being clear minded, etc. And so, yeah, let's just say, hey guys, how are you eating?
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Yeah, you know, I'm still on this nutrition journey myself. And it's wild how true the old saying is, you are what you eat. Really, when I finally cut out a lot of processed food and sugar from my diet, the changes were almost shocking. Like I had better sleep one. That was the first thing I noticed. And like actually deep sleep, like REM and all that stuff, like in the highs, instead of that restless tossing and turning, and then the brain fog lifted. It was like someone cleaned my mental windshield and suddenly I could think clearly again.
But what really struck me was how it affected everything else. Like my energy became more stable throughout the day instead of going through those crazy spikes and crashes. Even my mood improved. I was less irritable and less stressed and anxious. That was the biggest thing is being anxious. And you're right about it being like a chronic stressor that you mentioned in the past as well. When our body is constantly trying to process junk food, for example, and searching for nutrients that aren't there, of course it's stressed. Like it makes sense.
It's like trying to run a car on a wrong type of fuel like diesel or gasoline, right? Like the convenience factor is real though. Like I still struggle with meal prep and making good choices when life gets busy. And is that something you help people navigate in your program? Like finding the sweet spot between ideal nutrition and real life practicality?
Ras Allah Contractor
So I love how you connected nutrition to how it affected everything else. So you eat better, you're going to see benefits in sleep, movement, and focus and everything around that. So the way I see it is like it's the easiest thing to deal with because you choose what you eat. And so you don't need to change behaviors other than the choices you make. So you mentioned struggling a little bit in terms of getting busy, et cetera.
You know, like a nutritionist would be the right person to support someone on a very intense nutritional journey. I like to consider myself like I got everything here to start your average person on a journey to move in a good direction. And so the most important thing that I recommend everybody start with and I'm sounding repetitive, but it's where you are now. So what are you consuming on a day-to-day basis today, tomorrow, the next day?
That's the start of your journey. Then what you do is you dive into what you need to change. You look at what you're eating, you understand the macronutrients and fitness apps and AI makes this very easy. You literally just put it in there and it'll tell you what you're doing. So once you understand you need more protein or you might need to reduce your carbs or you might need to increase your fat. So you might need to increase your vegetable count or your fruit count or your fiber count.
Doing that slowly is going to allow you not to feel burdened by the change. So you eat how you eat normally, but you add some vegetables and you add some protein and then that's it for the next week. And then you, you know, next thing you drop out some of the stuff you shouldn't be eating. And, you know, again, the benefits that come over time are going to influence your choices. I have a cool example on this front. There was a window where I was heavy, put on about 15 pounds actually, just when we had our son and we were eating ice cream a lot and we'd had to move out of the house and so there was some frustration around that.
That being said, when I recognized it and sort of changed the routine, then what ends up happening is my body starts to crave different things. So ice cream didn't taste as good and it was too sweet. Just think about that. We currently are in a state where we crave ice cream and chips and pop and donuts and high rich foods which shouldn't be consumed on regular basis and if you pull it out of the diet for long enough then you know blueberries and raspberries and blackberries and bananas are almost too sweet when you consider it right?
So that's what we're talking about changing our body at a microbial level at a cellular level so that the brain starts to shift and doesn't say I want that sugar high, can you get that again? It's actually more like I got things to do. We're going to focus on that. Hey, by the way, it's time to eat. And so let's eat some good stuff.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love that and this actually goes into my next question. Like how do these pillars work together to create resilience?
Ras Allah Contractor
So consider this. If we breathe effectively, through the lens of being mindful in our breathing, then our body is expanding and contracting and holding itself strong and rebalancing according to the behaviors, whether you're sitting. I'm going to digress a little bit, but out there is some messaging. Sitting is the new smoking. No, actually it's the way we breathe and hold ourselves when we sit.
So if you breathe effectively while you're sitting, then you're not going to get pins and needles and you're not going to collapse in yourself. You're going to be continually pushing through the diaphragm, through the pelvic floor, expanding into the hips, keeping the shoulders down, keeping the rib cage expanding. That's the benefit of being mindful.
Then the movement piece, right? So in itself, breathing is movement, but then we start to walk. We start to move things around, we start to stretch ourselves on the ground. We start to hang off things, we start to again move a little faster. So the breathing influences the moving, then we move to the nourishment. The way we eat is going to influence the way we sleep, the way we move, the way we feel, the way we act. And then at the very end is the recovery piece. So the way we recover it's going to regenerate us to be able to do the next day the same or better. And technically we want to be 1% better every day.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love that. Basically recovery is a superpower because if we're not doing that well, then we will start lagging on the next day and the next day. So what's the minimum effective dose for each?
Ras Allah Contractor
I love the way you phrased that. There is one rule to follow when you're thinking like that. You start where you are and you just add a little bit. So one, the minimum effective dose is just a little bit better than what you're doing right now. If you're waking up in the morning and you're just rolling out of bed and drinking coffee and checking your phone, then the minimum effective dose to move yourself in a better state waking up is to wake up, breathe once, deep in, deep out, and then roll out of bed, drink coffee, check your phone.
I mean, I'm going to say roll out of bed, drink two glasses of water, wait half an hour, then check your phone, but get there in baby steps. So the minimum effective dose is, again, just a little bit better, a little change in the right direction compared to the previous behavior.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love what you said, because it's so refreshing. Because you're right. When we see a massive list we should be doing, it's paralyzing. It's like, OK, I need to meditate for 20 minutes, exercise for an hour, meal prep on Sundays, sleep eight hours a day, journal, do breath work. And then suddenly we're doing nothing because it's too overwhelming. I love that you're giving people permission to start small because let's be real we've all been there where we go from zero to trying to be a wellness guru overnight and by day three we're back on the couch eating chips and feeling like a failure. That's me by the way.
But when you start with something tiny, maybe it's just conscious breath before you check your phone in the morning or drink the two glasses of water as you said. That's doable. And more importantly, it's sustainable. So what I've noticed in my own journey is that these micro habits are like seeds. You plant them thinking it's so small, it can't possibly matter, but then they start to grow and connect.
That one breath becomes five minutes in the morning mindfulness. The extra water leads to better food choices. And then suddenly, like you said, months later, you look back and you think, wait, when did I become this person? Like, how did I actually start taking care of myself? It kind of sneaks up on you and these small wins are like the best. Is that what you see with your clients too? That the people who start the smallest often ended up making the biggest transformations?
Ras Allah Contractor
So I think in general, the tortoise and the hare, right? Let's look at that story. The tortoise just keeps moving, ends up winning the race because the hare kind of gets cocky and passes out halfway through. It's an exacerbated tale, but across the board, a human being who is taking steps every single day to improve is going to end up further along in the long run than someone who sprints until they break and then has to recover and sort of start from scratch, right?
And that being said, if you find yourself sprinting and you haven't broken yet, then take an assessment, maybe take a break, stop, breathe, reset, and then go ahead and sprint. Cause again, we're not talking about, I'm not saying you have to be the tortoise. I'm saying if the hare didn't take a nap, he would have won.
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Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love that analogy with the tortoise and the hare. I think that's the one thing that everyone will understand because who did not grow up listening to that, right? Now let's move into the real world application, like workplace integration and strategies. So how can busy professionals implement this without adding stress?
Ras Allah Contractor
Let's go back to the last segment. If we start small and continue on a journey, then it doesn't feel like something additional, but we're just slowly kind of bringing in the good stuff so that we can handle the powerful stuff later on. So it starts with journaling your life's natural cadence. Just take an assessment of how your life is now. Don't lie to yourself, because then you're just going to create a problem. From there, you decide, OK, we've got to move in the direction of mindfulness, movement, nourishment, recovery in some form or fashion. And so let's add a little bit of that to start.
A little bit of mindfulness. Let's just do that for a week. Then let's study our movement patterns a little bit. Okay, let's study our food a little bit. And so we're not trying to overnight shift everything to the perfect. We are starting where we are and we're taking steps in the right direction. And over the course of three, six weeks, two months, three months. Again, it's a long game. You get to a state where you're functioning at a much higher level than you were before.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
The next question that I have for you is what benefits would you typically see?
Ras Allah Contractor
So imagine taking everybody at the organization or, you know, again, it doesn't have to be corporate. It doesn't have to be SMEs. It's just a team. It could be a group of humans. But if everybody is moving into a state where they're higher performing and healthier moving forward, then you're just going to have a stronger group of human beings together. And so once you do that, now you're making better decisions as a group. You're getting more done as a group. You're not buried by the responses that aren't favorable when they come up. So put it this way, in my opinion, resilience training is the way to have the most high performing organization.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I love that. So how do you handle skeptics in corporate settings?
Ras Allah Contractor
If you consider that everybody's going to be a skeptic to new information, then they don't become a skeptic. They just become someone that you need to continue to have conversations with. And so, you know, on the one hand, you could be like, okay, this isn't working for... if it's not working for everybody then like say you install some breathing as part of a pre-meeting process and some people have their eyes open. Some people won't do it, but you do it long enough, everybody will give it a chance and I haven't met a human being who if they do the breathing doesn't feel the difference.
So it's not really about treating them as skeptics and it's not really about letting it change your perspective. It's really just, you take the information and you share and you ask questions and you answer questions and you give them an opportunity to share their life and experience. And once you have trust, at least you have a place to start experimenting together.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I definitely agree with you on that. And that kind of brings us back to that conversation of that leaders lead, right? If people see leaders doing it, then they will follow, which is just so natural.
Ras Allah Contractor
If you think about it, everybody wants to be in a better state. But like you said, changing what we do now is scary and difficult and like, you know, the devil we know is often the safer choice. So again, one on one hand, baby steps, right? So just do this little thing and then let me know how it goes. Right? So that could be one way. And the other side of it is, what is it that's making you uncomfortable with this? Okay, sounds good. So what if I was to say that that thing that you're worried about is less likely and if it does happen, then we'll talk about it right away.
So yeah, for anybody, then change management, right? Understand that the person is not always going to be amenable to change. And so, just assume that it's going to be the hard road. Now when you get to that point, you don't get flustered, you don't get frustrated, you don't get sharper, you don't try to be more powerful, you actually soften.
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Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I don't know about you guys who's listening, but a lot of things that Ras has been saying has validated what I've been thinking. And so let's talk about mini exercises that you listeners can do. And so I have two questions for you, Ras. One, can you walk us through a two minute stress reset technique?
Ras Allah Contractor
I'd love to. Let's do it. So here's the thing. What I'm going to do is I'm actually just going to throw the kitchen sink, but in a very simple way. So we're going to cycle through a few different breath tactics that are all geared towards the same thing, which is bringing the energy to a more centered place. Now we can get very specific and do specific things to ramp up our energy, to bring down our energy, to neutralize but what I'm going to do is we're just going to experience some stuff and you'll just feel something.
Okay, so how about this? Everybody that's listening if you're able to, if you're driving you can't, you can do some of this but not all of it. But if you're sitting somewhere then let's just start by putting our feet on the ground. Make sure that we are feeling the whole foot on the ground specifically the tripod, big toe, little toe and heel. From there put your hands on your knees and then feel your hips sink into the chair. And then from there, relax your shoulders and relax your jaw, lick your lips.
Swallow, relax, close your eyes really tight and open them and just relax them again. Now what we're going to do is we're going to drop our eyelids down and we're just going to breathe in gently through our nose for one, two, three, four and then exhale two, three, four, five, six and now inhale two, three, four and then exhale two three four five six.
Going to do a different one. Inhale two three four and then hold two three four and then exhale two three four and then hold two three four and then breathe in two three four, and then hold two, three, four, and now exhale all the air out for as long as you possibly can. Try to keep pushing it out. And then now at the bottom, hold. And now you feel like you really got to breathe, so go ahead and take a slow breath through the nose. And we're done.
And so if you went through that, you would have noticed that the breath through the nose would have helped your body kind of extend and expand. And then the hold would have given your body a time to settle. And then the exhale longer would have given your body time to relax more. You would have felt things kind of settle more. The hold at the bottom. Now at the very end, I threw something interesting at everybody where we did a full exhale and then held at the bottom.
You might have lasted for as long as we went. You might have had to breathe in sooner, which is totally fine. But that leads us to information that we'll share later. So when we exhale all the way out, we are now forcing our body to, in a good way, become comfortable with that high state of carbon dioxide. And that, again, is a self-reinforcing mechanism whereby the body then doesn't panic under those circumstances. Yeah, hopefully your community enjoyed that. If you have questions about what you were doing specifically, reach out and I'm happy to talk you through any of that.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
I was doing it while you're describing it. I definitely feel a lot more calm. I feel like I do a lot of box breathing myself, but that extra bit definitely helped.
Ras Allah Contractor
So yeah, I mean if everybody that is listening and that will listen and watch this wants to do one thing that would change the way that their breathing mechanism influences their physiology and neurology is just extend your exhale. Because by doing that, you're slowing your heart rate down. And if you want to add one more thing, it's just breathe through your nose.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Ras, I have to say, the way you've made neuroscience so practical and accessible is incredible. And I love that you're not asking people to become experts, just to understand their own vessel well enough to take care of it. And for our listeners, I hope you're feeling empowered by what we've discussed today. Remember, you don't need to implement everything at once.
Pick one area, maybe it's adding a five minute morning meditation or taking a short walk and start there or just breathing as well. So the next episode, we're shifting from individual wellness to team dynamics. We'll explore how to build cultures that support resilience rather than create burnout. And if you want to dive deeper into the hope molecules we've mentioned today, check out episode 22 in season one, where I go into details about how exercise literally creates molecules that boost your mood and mental resilience.
You can find Ras on Instagram @rasallahcontractor and at highlevelthink.com. And remember, all the show notes, full transcriptions, and links from today's episode are available at c-dang.com.
Ras Allah Contractor
Thanks for having me, and if anyone wants to reach out, I'm happy to chat with anybody. Like you've mentioned, chronic stress is something that I think is important for everybody to know about and the fact that dealing with it is powerful. So, don't be shy. I'm happy to have a conversation.
Christine "C-DANG" Dang
Amazing. So again, thank you again for being here, Ras. And thank you listeners for being here with us. Now keep taking those small steps towards wellness and remember progress over perfection. Much love, C-Dang signing out. Bye.
