Anne: Hello, everyone. It's Anne Duffy and welcome to the Just DeW It podcast. I am so happy that you're with me today. And I have a dear friend. She comes on all our coffees on Wednesday mornings, especially, and helps us get our minds and our bodies and our spirits aligned. I'm going to introduce you in a second, but I want to tell you about her before I do.
Caitlin Parsons, a seasoned dental hygienist and chronic pain survivor is a certified yoga therapist and ergonomic consultant. She empowers dental professionals to thrive through her wellness programs and the aligned hygienist podcast. Please help me welcome my favorite yogi, Caitlin Parsons. Hi, Caitlin.
Caitlin: Hello, I'm so
Anne: excited
Caitlin: to be
Anne: here.
I just love when you come on, you and Lori Bullock come on take turns of giving us all a little bit of breath work on Wednesday mornings before we start our coffee chats. it's just such a delight for all of us because we don't realize how stressed we are until we start to breathe and realize how beneficial it is.
so much.
Caitlin: Yeah, and how simple it can be. We take sometimes 30 seconds and it can make a big difference.
Anne: It really does. 30 seconds. people think they have to do an hour yoga class to get there. I'm telling you, you guys do 30 seconds. I absolutely love it. Maybe we should, do one breath before we get started?
Let's do it.
Caitlin: I'm sure wherever you're at, probably racing somewhere on a walk or in your car. So just taking a moment if you can, and it's safe to close your eyes, you can close your eyes, if not keep your eyes where you're going and on the road. And just take a moment to maybe even scan your body starting to relax your shoulders, letting them slide away from the ears.
And relaxing all the way down your arms just slowly beginning to become aware of your breath in and out through the nose or gently parted lips and just slow the breath down. So let each inhale get a little bit longer and more full and each exhale is longer and slower. And this just really easy.
We'll do this a couple of times. Inhale long and slow, filling the belly, the ribs, the chest, and then a long, slow exhale all the way out. And one more time at your own pace, maybe even an open mouth exhale for this one. So when you're ready, maybe opening the mouth, even sighing the breath out. Yeah. And then when you're ready, if you closed your eyes, opening them back up. Simple. Like, that's just a diaphragmatic breath, just being aware of it. And I don't know about you, but I feel like maybe Anna and I just needed that.
Anne: I feel a hundred percent better and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. There we are. Because I was telling Caitlin, I was rushing around and jumping from call to call.
We land on this podcast and, I feel a hundred percent better. Thank you for that. And
Caitlin: I feel like that's how most of us live our life, whether we're in dentistry or we're owning our business or we're a mom, whatever it is, we're constantly going, going, going. we've never been taught to slow down, to pause, to take breaks and to breathe.
Anne: We haven't been taught that. I didn't even know about it until I met you. I I started yoga during the pandemic and I fell in love with it. And then I met you and I met Lori and I was like, Oh my God, I just adore it, but I never take it out of the studio.
you were saying, Oh, you can do this anytime. Oh I guess I can. And so then that 30 seconds, my heart rate went down. I'm feeling relaxed. My shoulders feel relaxed. I'm not like, talking a mile a minute, which I can do. So how do you see stress and the emotional demands of how we feel and show up?
How do you see that in the people that you meet every day?
Caitlin: We see it everywhere. We have our phones, our devices. We're constantly getting messages and emails, and we are in fight or flight for the most part. We are rushing. Our schedules are filled. Again, this is like anyone. This is dentistry, entrepreneur, anyone, and It adds up over time.
uh, most of us are in chronic state unless we're taking these moments to slow down, to take care of ourselves to pay attention. it affects everything. It affects, you said how we show up. Even when we jumped on this call, if we're rushing to get here and it's like we're all discombobulated, that's a very different way of showing up than if we're grounded or centered, we're present, we're focused, we're more clear, right?
We are more effective and I think there's definitely an energetic difference too of being present or not.
Anne: the thing that strikes me is we, can be in control of that. we have a lot of our members in the Duke community they're practicing or they're calling on an office or they're coaching an office or they're speaking in front of a big group or even a small group.
And. It again, never occurred to me to sit in my car with the air conditioner on because it's summer right now.
Caitlin: Yes. And
Anne: just to take 30 seconds to calm down. Usually I'm running out. I've got a million things in my hands. just remember back in the day when I used to do a lot of office calls, I never took the time for myself to just Get calm I guess is the word I'm looking for because I think that takes our power away when we walk in and we are discombobulated, own it.
it takes us a minute to calm down We do that in front of our customers or in front of our patients or in front of our audience Instead of doing it before we get there.
Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. Or taking breaks throughout and checking in. And I'm queen of these small little checkpoints or little things that we can do for our health throughout the day, like getting up and doing simple chair side stretches, whether you're in an op or out of the op, just at a desk or traveling a lot, these moments of just breaks of getting into our body especially and out of our head is So important.
Anne: see. I never even thought about that too. Caitlin. This is great. This is like getting out of our head and into our body. that makes sense because when you close your eyes and you start to do little bit of breathing, you don't think of anything else I was only thinking in my breath. Yeah. give us a couple of things that we can do throughout our day that would help us get to that state of out of our mind and into our body.
Caitlin: there's, so many things you can do. I set alarms in my phone. I have different breaks in my schedule, not when I'm clinical, but nonclinical. I create pauses and what feels good for me right now. Do I want to get up and move around? Do I want to stretch? Do I want to breathe?
Yeah. Simply just becoming aware of your breath or doing a body scan, especially if you are transitioning from intense conversation and maybe it was good, but it could have been higher energy. We carry that energy.
So taking a few moments to just either pay attention to your breath, to slow it down, to do a body scan. you don't even have to close your eyes on a lot of these things. you talked about it and that's just getting rid of one kind of sense, but you can still do these things when we're.
with a patient, right? Or we're in a stressful meeting. We can do that. One thing that I do when I'm actually clinical is when I'm cleaning my room, I take that time to just slow down, to breathe and to be present. And I usually am like. Adjusting and correcting my posture as I'm doing that just a reset between patients before going to the next instead of my old pattern was like rushing around doing all the things thinking about what I'm writing in the notes and then thinking about the next patient and what I remember about their health history or whatever it is, typically when we take that Space that moment to reconnect it allows us to actually be ready and be present not Partially with the last patient and partially in the next Yeah, so just breathing practices body scans simple stretches throughout the day
Anne: Okay, so explain exactly what a body scan is,
Caitlin: Thank you.
It's
just becoming aware of your body. So you, probably done this in breathing practices or yoga classes, but you could close your eyes or not but in the sake of closing your eyes Just become aware of, again, it could be your shoulders, noticing your head and bringing your head into alignment, relaxing your eyes, you can do it as a progressive relaxation, or just, I'm aware of my shoulders, I'm aware of my arms, my hands, my legs, and again, we're just getting ourselves in the body.
Anne: Okay. And go down to your toes. And then you're, it's more of a
Caitlin: felt sense feeling than it is looking at your arm and
Anne: Thank you. That's very good clarity for me. I really appreciate that.
Caitlin: I do that especially after a stressful patient or a meeting I'm like, okay, relax.
Where are we carrying stuff? What do we need to kind of let go of? And then let's shift quickly. And it can be, Quick 10, 15 seconds, 20 seconds. It doesn't have to be this monumental amount of time.
Anne: look, I've known you for quite some time now. I'm so excited to have this because my day to day is I have back to back calls all day long, and I can take 10 seconds to go from one to the other.
you witnessed it when I got on this call, I was like, I don't know what's happening here. Okay. take a second because I love the idea that I would be present for you present for the next patient or the next conversation.
I'm actually. Mapping this on to being a parent, you've got a hard conversation for one of children or your husband, take a second you know, just to get clarity and just your body to relax. I think you deliver. Good news and not so good news. When you're not tense and stressed out to the max because that's when things go sideways.
And so this is not just in the operatory. This is a life, practice. Yeah. That we could do. Then I'm really excited about that. And tell me a little bit more about the align because you, are the aligned hygienist.
I always feel very lucky that I didn't have any big issues doing hygiene, mainly because I didn't work full time after we had kids. We were married five years. That was full time four days a week. But then I was like a Tuesday, Thursday, so I always felt I did pretty well because I had a day in between,
video1267542481: but there's a
Anne: lot of practitioners that are listening that are working.
four or five days a week. give us some tips on how to sit. know, All that. Tell us
Caitlin: So I've done all of it. I've worked six days a week as a crazy new grad. And I've gone all the way to now I temp three to five days a month for three years. I didn't even work as a hygienist and I've shared in my story.
I had pain really early on in my career. A lot of it was. work related, but for me, I was also in a really bad car accident when I was 16. I hit a tree and flipped my car. And I came out fairly unscathed, but my skeleton was completely out of balance. So when I started hygiene, I was already literally out of alignment.
So that's my story of how I got into it. Pain was largely from hygiene, but it was also from having an injury. I say this because it's even harder for me. I've gone to chiropractic work and figured out a lot of like the skeletal stuff from my car accident and no longer experience the pain that I had, but I still live in like a pain body.
I experience aches and pains regularly. I have for most of my life. So taking care of myself has to be like, a top priority, and it's really clear when it's not. But I get people that work one to two days a week and they're still in pain and then seasoned hygienists or dentists that have worked five days a week their entire career and are not in pain.
It's really different. I think typically the more you work and the environment you work in makes a big difference, obviously. But I'd say the biggest thing is focusing on your health and your well being. Katrina Klein. We both know she's a do or an honorary do. She's a hygienist and an ergonomics consultant as well. And she talks about us being dental athletes and the idea that an athlete isn't just going to show up for game day. And that's all they're going to do. They work on their mobility, their nutrition, their strength, like all of these things especially when we're talking about in the op.
But even when we look at entrepreneurship and. Sitting all day and stress, we know our risks. So what are we doing to take care of ourselves, body, mind, and energy? the way that we sit whether we're in the op or we are sitting on a podcast interview, the way we sit even in our car, when we're standing in line at Starbucks, our posture is really important and making sure that we are aligned and focus on being physically aligned.
everyone's going to be really different. I'm a big fan of therapeutic yoga, but I also go to the gym and lift weights and like Pilates and do random stuff. So find what works for you to reduce tension, to build strength, to feel good and balanced in your body. And then I'd say, stress management.
So what are you doing to reduce manage stress better? Taking breaks throughout the day. And then how are you just filling your cup, bringing yourself joy and resting and rejuvenating your body, your nervous system, especially. That's one of the biggest things.
Anne: the other thing strikes me is, call ado.
that's another way to reduce stress. And I love how you said mind, body. I always say mind, body, spirit, but mind, body, and energy. that's very cool. Peace,
Caitlin: spirit, whatever. Yeah.
Anne: we want to give off good energy. We're in the profession of people that don't want to really see us. They come in, they say, you know, Oh, I hate seeing the dentist. I mean, we get, We get a lot of negative stuff coming in you've taken that all day long that we have to take care of ourselves, mind, body, and energy just to be able to be our best to serve in the best way possible.
And the other thing. Which I love that you just said. And, I like idea Katrina Klein with the athleticism because were a family of athletes. I mean, everybody's, the kids are all out of the house, but that really resonates with me that you have to prepare for the assignment that is given to you.
And I noticed that with our kids, especially the athletes in the family, they still work out all the time because that's something that's very important to them. not only do you have to find what You do well, or you like, you really have to commit to it I only saw results with the yoga.
Once I started going three times a week, but you have to commit, it can't just be, I'm going to do yoga today and then, maybe three weeks later I'll do yoga. That's when the, injuries start to happen I mean, It's a long life.
at my age, I see, people walking and they're all bent over and they're hunched And every time I'm just like, oh, just stand up straight, just put the shoulders back Because I think if we keep practicing those things. Throughout our life it'll bode well for us, when we're in our seventies and beyond, because God help us if we live to be a hundred.
I know my kids are scared to death that I'm going to be a hundred. But, I want to be a hundred year old standing up. Straight and walking and being able to enjoy the life that, I still have. So I think that's really important to prepare for that, to prepare for the next day or the next thing that we do.
Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. when it comes to sitting, which so many of us do so much of the day or being on our devices All of that poor posture and over time, that kind of rounding that we see as people get older, that causes a whole host of stuff in the body. And if we can prevent that by again, just on a regular basis, every day at noon, we're noticing our posture or whatever it is if we can take care of ourselves, we're just setting ourselves up for a much happier, healthier, fulfilling life.
Thank you. Let's do
Anne: it. All right. I love it. So Caitlin, how do we get in touch with you? Because I know that you do one on ones, you do seminars, you're coaching all the things that are helping our industry and beyond because this transcends dentistry for sure.
So how can we get in touch with you?
Caitlin: absolutely. I am the aligned hygienist pretty much everywhere. So I'm on Instagram at the aligned hygienist. My website is the aligned hygienist. com. And then if you wanted to email me, send me a message, ask me questions. I love connecting with you. It's hello at the aligned hygienist.
com. So pretty easy.
Anne: That is pretty easy. And that will be in the show notes. just want to say thank you. I feel so much better
video1267542481: having
Anne: this conversation with you today. And you're just a delight and thanks for all you do for the dues. Shout out to the do retreat coming up in November because Caitlin and Lori will be there you know, now that I know what you do and I can see it, you guys have been telling me these things. We'll do some breaks during the day and there's going to be yoga in the morning. We're going to have a place for you guys to show up for yoga. So bring your, workout stuff and enjoy what they're going to, pour into you.
the whole retreat. 14 through 16 in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I hope that you will join us and I hope that you will join too. We have a free newsletter and our community is, growing by leaps and bounds of women, just like you. And it's very reasonable, 139 a year to be a member with all these amazing, yummy benefits Do connect. We like to call it where we have coffee or whatever your beverages in the morning and you get a little breath work, to start your day from Caitlin and Lori. So thank you. Thank you Caitlin for being with me today. And again, if you're listening, don't forget the most important thing is to keep doing you.
Thanks everybody. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.
