Welcome back to the show my fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guests, we have Dr. Andrea Renee. She was an entrepreneur and is currently an acupuncturist and founder of the Chillax Om Foundation nonprofit. She has been a frontline healthcare worker throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2016 Doctor Andrea has been providing the auricular acupuncture NDA protocol along with teaching self-care, stress management, herbal medicine with diet therapy, and pain relief practices. She has delivered over 9000 treatments at various places, like in Los Angeles, CA facilities including LA County, USC Wellness Center, Venice Family Clinic, Pacific Coast Community Acupuncture Clinic, and her private practices in Hollywood at Pacific Palisades, CA. 

It took Dr. Andrea 20 years to completely recover her health, and financial stability and establish a new career as an acupuncturist by 2020, just in time to face a second global crisis from COVID. 

Post September 11, after her downtown New York jewelry store business closed, she moved from California from New York to California in 2003 to start a new life with limited resources. In the next four years of post-9/11 life reinvention demand took a toll on her health and family relationships, causing her own experience of PTSD with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain that lasted for three years. 

After trying allopathic methods and medications to alleviate her PTSD symptoms, she sought acupuncture and the mind-body practices of daily yoga, Qigong, Transcendental Meditation, and herbal medicine for relief. 

Doctor Andrea is what I would call an extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have her on this show, Dr. Are you there?

Yes, I am here.

Doctor Andrea, it’s an honor to have you on this show. Thank you for taking the time to do this podcast with me.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Dr. Andrea, I know that you are an acupuncturist. You have been a successful entrepreneur in the past and you are also into nonprofit. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Well, I’m the classic American dream story, so I come from a regular family in suburbia. Both of my parents came from single-mom homes, and they used the opportunity of education to build lives for themselves. So, my dad, for example, was the first person and only person of his brothers and sisters to get a college degree and become a professional. 

So, I followed in those footsteps. I got a scholarship to go to college, and that led me to New York City, where I studied at Pace University. And so, while I was there on scholarship as a student, I saw some opportunities to create my own business, really because I was hungry. There wasn’t a lot of extra money for a scholarship kid at the university. And I was living on pasta and peanut butter and Jelly and dollar cups of soup, and $1.35 was the cost of a slice of pizza back then. This is 1992. And so I went to a great high school where I had a great arts program I had learned how to make jewelry there as a Craftsman. 

And so, I had that background and then I was able to get some work making jewelry and I was able to start selling jewelry that I made at flea markets in New York to make extra money. And then I heard about it. They call it an open sea day where stores go to discover a new designer where they can have an exclusive nobody else sells them because they don’t know anybody else. They were discovered by that store, and so I was taken on as far as having the Great opportunity and mentorship by Henry Bendel. Really beautiful exclusive store. It’s inside of a mansion in Manhattan and they only had three locations. They had New York, Manhattan, and Columbus OH, and forgetting, I want to say it’s in Chicago. But I was taken on to being a designer there and selling my jewelry and Henry Bendel when I was only 19 years old going to college. So that was a tremendous experience. 

So, by the time I graduated college, I was already in my own business designing and manufacturing jewelry with the opportunity and mentorship I had. Then I was referred to a showroom. It’s like how an actor has an agent. You have a sales rep. And then I was carried in department stores and boutiques across the country and then also globally in Japan as well. 

So, all of the biggest name stores that you’ve heard of, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Fortune, Bloomingdale, some, the Bloomingdale’s of Japan, you could say Daimaru I sold to Barneys New York and Japan. Those were all of my clients from just being a kid, you know, going on scholarship. And so, I think it’s one of those classic, you know, American stories of, you know. A lot of hard work. When the opportunities came, I just really did my very best and I had a lot of great mentorships to take the opportunities and run with them as much as I could. 

And so, when we are discovered that way, you know, as an artist, doors can open, and things can grow and get bigger. And so, I had a wonderful from 1992 up through September 11, 2001, it was quite a wonderful experience with me building my business, and selling to other stores. I had my boutique store in Manhattan on Sullivan St. The company was called my First and middle name, Andrea Renee. 

And so, I had a store and I had one of the early website stores. I had my first website store for the public in 1999, which was pretty cool and innovative. At the time. I was a spokesperson for my company and so I got a lot of editorial press. I had some celebrity clients too. They purchased my jewelry… actors, musicians, some people actually, and more or Zubair more had come into my store. So that starts to get some attention. 

and so, I got some press for that. So, I was featured in magazines, and editorials. It’s not an ad, it’s when someone features you in an article so that can carry, you know, more weight. It’s like you’re being recommended the publications or you know publications in Style magazine or Entertainment Weekly or New York magazine. I was in the New York Times. You know that kind of stuff. 

So that I gave my website exposure, you know, to build my business selling direct. Mail orders to the public, then across the country outside of the people that could physically walk in my store or outside of the retail department stores that carried my jewelry. And then that went on for a while. And then September 11th was a big hit. You know, being located in Manhattan, my store was downtown in the Soho District neighborhood. So that’s South of Houston. 

And so, after September 11th, Manhattan was pretty much closed below 14th St. and it took very long actually. It was several months. The towers were burning smoke. If you were downtown, you had to show ID. It was a militarized zone, so you know, there were military soldiers and tanks on the street. It was a disaster zone from terrorism. 

The way that it worked with the wholesale markets. You have a showroom and trade show, so when things like September 11th or not happen, people come from all over the world to come to Manhattan, to shop for their department stores and boutiques. 

So, all of the clients, but also all of the tourists that would come to you know, shop in my boutique downtown, cause Soho was a popular neighborhood for tourists to come to and also the local residents. You know, people that lived on the Upper West Side, Columbus Ave. You could just take the train or a taxi, you know, to come down to Soho, and hang out for the day. But after September 11th, you could say nobody wanted to go downtown, right? 

And actually, they weren’t even allowed to go downtown. Especially in the beginning, you know immediately after that had happened and so that, you know, shuts down all of your normal life and business and it’s like the COVID-19 pandemic experience. No one had lockdowns before. People weren’t told that their business wasn’t essential and that they couldn’t open. You know, those are unprecedented, unimaginable things. And so, September 11th, for me was that same kind of unprecedented, you know, surprising, unimaginable. 

You know now people can’t even walk into your neighborhood, you know. So, nobody’s going to shop in your store. And then you know, you’re not going to have the same kind of attendance at trade shows and markets. And so, you know, just like in the COVID-19 lockdowns, if you close your business and you have no sales. How long can you keep your business afloat? Because again, it’s like. Some expenses have to be paid and also there are the cost of doing business, the investments that you have already made that you’re not going to get the return on investment on. So, within a company like mine, when you’re a designer, but then you’re manufacturing the product.

So, then you have to invest in materials and tools to make the jewelry collection that you designed, right? So, you show the samples to buyers from boutiques and apartment stores, and they give you orders. You have to finance all of the materials and tools in the assembly to make to order the product that they ordered, and so you are also working to keep your prices competitive. 

No, especially through the 90s there was the revolution of more manufacturing being done outside of the United States. And so, you know to stay competitive, what you usually do is you can use quantity discounts. So, you buy certain materials in bulk so that the actual cost price per piece, like in jewelry, you know the cost of the stones or what have you, right can be lower because you bought a whole bunch of certain products, but that’s all anticipatory that you’re going to sell that and make the return on investment. So again, based on how you’ve diversified, right? 

So, one of the mistakes that entrepreneurs can make is that they reinvest all of their profits back into the business. When we look at things like generational wealth like a financial wealth plan, then maybe you would make the right other investments to shelter some of your profits, to shelter some of your cash into assets. And then depending upon it, I mean, I had started my business so young at 19, I didn’t necessarily have the, I would say, business acumen, advisory or financial management advisory. So, I made very basic decisions that weren’t necessarily so bulletproof. In the face of something like September 11th or the COVID-19 experience.

I mean like September 11, like nobody could have ever imagined it like that. Even if you’re like the best entrepreneur or businessman and you’re in Manhattan downtown, there’s no way you could predict. That something like this could come like normally everybody has like a contingency plan, but this is like even like the…

But how big is your contingency plan is the question, because again, in an unprecedented historic event like that, how long will your resources carry you? One year, two years, three years? If you’re not making any sales, any sales? For how long? Then when you start to sell again, are you making enough sales to make up for all of the deficit that you have? And so, are you going into debt because you can blow through your cash resources? And then you can start to blow through your debt resources too. So, lines of credit. 

For example, I didn’t use any because again we have different means of financing a business and growing a business. Since my business grew literally out of the closet in my one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up cheap apartment on 26th St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave. I didn’t have a pitch deck. I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t get venture capital investors. I didn’t have Angel investors, it just came from literally earning the money myself, reinvesting in my business, and with success that I had. I had bought real estate property, so I had a condominium in New York downtown in the West Village. There are some opportunities in business, such as when you’re manufacturing retail products like jewelry. It’s called factoring. If I get an order from a department store, I can give it to a factory company. They’re going to give me the cash up front to take a percentage right of that order, but I don’t have to wait for it. 30 or 60 days after my shipment date. 

So, the way that the jewelry business worked was… I would have a trade show. Let’s say I have the holiday trade show in August. I have all of these orders now. I have a month or two to manufacture and ship those to the store and then depending on the terms that the store offers, I would get paid in 30 to 60 days. 

So, I have all of this upfront investment to make a collection to offer for sale that will be made to order in the August market. And then I have one to two months to manufacture all of that merchandise and then I’m not going to get paid. Sometimes until December or January of the next year. 

So, what that means is you have a six-month wait time to get the full return on your investment that you made. Again when you have the big markets like the holiday market in August or the spring market in January, you’re making 75% of your sales for the whole year. 

So, if you have September 11, interrupt that. Some orders are canceled, and nobody shops in the spring. You lost 75% or 100% of your entire income. And you’re sitting on thousands of dollars that you invested to be able to manufacture these orders based on what you usually sell to your clients. Now you have to wait.

So that particular event since you were in downtown Manhattan, like with your boutique and jewelry business like that had a significant effect on like the sales and all of that and it just making a downward spiral.

From there, yeah. So, I understand what happened. So, so, so in-depth as far as what the lockdown nonessential businesses experienced during COVID-19 I know what it means to have your business have no sales.

Yeah, COVID-19 was a very was pretty much like on a national and global level of businesses closing.

What is your reaction when you know when you noticed in the beginning months all the businesses closing and this having a similar effect to like what happened with 911?

Well, that’s really why I decided to create my nonprofit charity foundation, Chillax Zone Foundation, because when these types of events that we couldn’t possibly plan for when this type of trauma comes to our doorstep, it creates a post-traumatic stress disorder response. 

So, you have bigger problems that are unimaginable, that you’re overwhelmed by, and you don’t know how to face. So, it’s the highest level of stress that you can imagine because also people died on September 11. People died in COVID-19 2 people lost their loved ones, and their family members, in addition to the financial impact, too.

I mean like I had COVID in August of 2021 and there was a time in which I didn’t think I was going to make it either.

So, some people got sick. And again, this is when we get into that realm. So, what does post-traumatic stress disorder mean? Right? It means that the normal time that someone would be able to calm down and their nervous system would normally reset, which is usually if we have a stressful event, something challenging not to that scale, right, let’s say I had a flat tire, you know, a fender bender with my car or maybe I was laid off. Right. You can be, you know, stressed out and shaken up. And you might have some of those symptoms, and insomnia, lack of appetite, more appetite.

 You know the stress symptoms, you know, nausea or headaches or, you know, all those kinds of things, but. You can come back to yourself usually. And in a couple of weeks, post-traumatic is a post that trauma-shaken event. You stay triggered, so you stay emotionally reactive. You’re physical body having trouble letting go of being stuck in the fight or flight stress response. And that drives immunity down, and that affects mental clarity. It affects sleep, right? It also affects the quality of our relationships because when we’re in fight or flight, we’re emotionally reactive. We’re not logical in the forebrain being reasonable, you know, able to listen, right? We’re not being analytical, we’re being defensive and emotion reactive, and the other thing that people tend to not understand,I love the film. It’s a wonderful life. It’s a classic film in the United States about a character that has a post-traumatic stress disorder response to some challenges circumstances. And one of the things it shows too is that people can become hypersensitive to noise, to light, to sound, and then it makes them have a very hard time being out in the normal world. 

How can you get away, especially living in an urban environment? I live in Los Angeles, CA. We have 10 million people plus here. Do you think it’s a little noisy? You know, bright lights, Street lights, you know headlights. Right. 

So, if your nervous system is essentially hyperactive. It’s really hard to be in the environment where you live. Because it keeps triggering you into that heightened stress response, elevated stress chemicals. Right. You’re not making what you need. As far as the right levels of hormones or neurotransmitters that would keep you grounded and calm and well-functioning. You’re just making stress chemicals and you’re hyper-emotionally reactive. Not a good mix, you know.

So, Andrea, I wanted to ask you like so from 9/11 and that catastrophe that happened in regard to your business closing and all of that, what was the story of you transitioning from that to being in the acupuncturist that you are today? Could you tell the audience a little bit more about that?

Because I think one of the things, I want to touch on is like, you know, people talk a lot about what their purpose in life is or what their mission is. And I would invite everybody to consider what are the problems that are at your doorstep. What are the problems that are calling you? What are the problems that you had to solve that affected your family right? When you are looking for your purpose, what are your problems right? Because if we learn to solve them ourselves. Then we can search out and help other people dealing with the same problems that we had to solve for ourselves. 

So, I’ll go back one moment to 1994 because while I was growing my jewelry business and I was finishing my bachelor’s degree at Pace University. I was coming home from my retail jewelry store, and I was hit by a taxicab as a pedestrian crossing the street. 

So, the taxi was going 40 miles an hour into my body. That’s a 90% chance of death. And so, because of that accident I have some orthopedic insurance that I manage. And so when we look at that type of orthopedic physical trauma, right, certain types of work and lifestyles will make that worse or make that better. 

So, for example, when I’m a jewelry designer, I could be sitting at a desk designing pieces. It can be a stationary job. It’s like people that start their business on their laptop. They’re sitting in front of a computer all day. Now, even if you didn’t have any, orthopedic injuries, scar tissue, right, chronic pain problems, maybe you’ve noticed sitting all day without moving around isn’t necessarily healthy for anybody. But for some people with issues like chronic pain, it’s worse. 

So again, it’s we have birthdays since we get older and we’re working in certain types of careers based on what our health history is, it can be that great term like is it sustainable or not to be doing this job that requires this much sedentary work. And even if you get into the ergonomic desk and you know the sitting, or standing desk, it can still be kind of challenging, especially since certain types of jobs require repetitive movement. You know, using my hands a lot, whether it’s, you know, making samples or drawings or, you know other people, you know the typing the writing. 

So, you have to keep kind of troubleshooting how can you continue to do your job in a way. That doesn’t keep causing you greater levels of pain. So, that Increased year after year and that was making me search out some solutions for chronic pain issues that I had from my car accident. And then when you have invested in something like a hard asset like property and if it’s in a place like New York even after September 11th. Property values were still worth something.

Yeah, it’s in New York.

It’s New York, you know. It’s an international city. There are always going to be certain people there, certain industries doing business, right? It’s a small island, Manhattan Island. There’s just not that many places that are available for people to buy, and so you have opportunities, and this is something like as far as a generational wealth type of plan, so a lot of people go to urban cities with high populations that have a higher cost of living because there are some great work opportunities or great study opportunities I had a great study opportunity turned into a work opportunity. But it’s very expensive, and a high cost of living. 

And so, one of the plans is that people will invest in property there that they can sell and then you can move to a place where the cost of living is much less expensive. You get to leverage your assets. In another environment where you can make more gains and have more choices. So, what saved me gave me the lifeboat off of the Titanic was to sell my condo and then I could move to a place like Los Angeles coming from New York even after September 11th, which made property values go down about 30%. Los Angeles was still half-price for me. 

So, you’ll get a lot of people that will relocate from cities like New York, you know. Because of that reason. And then also too like looking from LA out to other states, right? In other cities in the country, you know, a lot of places I can go will be maybe half or 25% of my cost of living here. And then again, that’s going to be like 10% of the cost of living and doing business in New York, right? It’s all relative. And so that’s a good thing for people to understand, too. And then, if again, if you’re watching the real estate market, right, things are cyclical just like the economy is cyclical and so you can look for the right opportunity to buy into a market. 

So, you know, for somebody like me in 1996 when I bought my condo, it was $280,000 before September 11th. It was a $1,000,000 property after September 11th. It was still $700,000, right? And now it’s more than double that. You know, I’m talking about. You know, over 20 years ago, you know.

So, again there are unique times where you can make investments in markets. It will never be that price again, you know. And that’s the thing about, you know, generational wealth, family wealth, right? You can pass down these valuable assets to your family members. 

So that allowed me to be able to relocate to Los Angeles. In the beginning, I continued my jewelry business. But honestly, it never recaptured the sales that it had before September 11th, even though I got sales reps in Los Angeles, Seattle, and also London, All of that didn’t make up for the kind of business that I had in New York by itself before September 11th.

And also my chronic pain levels we’re building up from, you know, all of that stress and movement and you know all of the other types of recovery actions that you take to try to triage, you know, save your business kind of thing. And then my husband was my business partner through all of this and he was in that car accident with me, honestly too. Again, financial stress can take a toll on health. And when I talked about that PTSD issue, you know, we were young. We didn’t get that explained to us. 

We didn’t know why we were more emotionally reactive. We didn’t know. And that makes it harder right to be in a healthy relationship and interact well when your physical health is down, and your nervous system is hyper-reactive. You have all of these stressors to deal with too. 

There is a point where you realize that even if you’re one and two, it’s hard for you to continue what you’re doing, but you’re not necessarily enjoying what you’re doing anyway. And you don’t necessarily have the maturity, the support system, the education, the community, you know, the healthcare team to help you navigate how to keep and how to heal your relationships yourself. Do you know how to help your business survive?

So, you know, I think it’s a combination of ignorance and a lack of really seeking out the proper community support, mentorship, support, and healthcare team. And if you don’t have all that in place, you can topple over, you can crumble so you know, businesses can be left dissolved, you know, sold or you know. Marriages can end in divorce and then you know you in my case.

The number one, the number one cause is as financial issues, to end marriages.

Because also it’s the from the financial stress because now we’re not living in the jungle right, running from lions and tigers and bears and dinosaurs. 

So, when we feel. Threatened because that’s the thing about post-traumatic stress disorder the trauma is feeling like your life is threatened. And then you can have smaller triggers that bring you back to the that your life is threatened, a state of being response reaction physiologically, mentally, and emotionally. 

And that’s the problem. Until you learn how to heal yourself, your mind, body, and spirit together, you can have like… It took me a while to be able to cross the street, even hearing the traffic would take you to that place of really having the physiological, mental, and emotional response of having a gun to your head, like having your life threatened. And so financial stress is really a big culprit because we base our sense of security in life on our financial health, many of us. We can judge ourselves, you know, against falling short of the right goals that we have there because we don’t feel safe.

So, Dr. Andrea, I’d like a question. So, you know in 2020, the pandemic happened. There were millions of people all across the world and including the United States like, there were so many Americans that had their businesses and then they just got wiped out. And not only did they have to spend with financial stress, but they also had to worry about getting sick as well. Well, and I’m sure many of them had a lot of PTSD. 

So, what would you tell what advice would you give Americans who went through the horrors of, like, losing their entire business, losing their savings, and having their businesses shut down? How can they turn it around and get back to success?

So that was my response as an essential healthcare worker, I could go to work. And so, one of the things that acupuncture can do, it can reset your nervous system. We have Acupuncturists Without Borders. We can show up in the trauma zones and we can treat people, reset their nervous system, and get them out of the fight or flight PTSD response. And so that’s done with regular ear acupuncture. 

So that’s why I created my foundation. I can raise money. And I can go and I can give people because again, if you lost your job. And you know, you lost your business, maybe you don’t have money to pay for copays. Maybe you don’t even have insurance anymore. You don’t even have access to essential health care.

So I made tons of YouTube videos I have like about 82 videos. I have tons of self-care education. It’s one of my specialties within my practice, so I love to empower people. You don’t have to have an acupuncture treatment with acupuncture needles stuck in your ear. To turn your stress button off, to flip the switch, and get out of the fight or fly. You can use breathing techniques. You can use Qigong and yoga movement techniques. You can use guided imagery meditation. You can also use interactions with nature as well. 

And besides that, too, some of the basics like… what are you eating? Are you drinking enough water? Are you having meals regularly? If we let ourselves get too hungry, we’ll make more stressful chemicals. The adrenal glands kick in, so we don’t pass out. And also, how we breathe is important too. Usually, when we’re stressed because we have this immediate, it’s a very old response physiologically to hunch forward, to breathe shallowly. You don’t get more air into the bottom of your lungs. You keep carbon dioxide makes us tougher, and more irritable. And then we tense all of the muscles because it’s like making a shield around ourselves, our inner organs, right? 

We get all of these stress chemicals going out to the arms and the legs so we can fight, or we can run away. And we get all of the tension. So, we feel stress along the vague nerve, tightness in the throat or the chest, nausea in the stomach, and tightness in the abdomen. Then it’s hard for us to breathe because that diaphragm muscle gets spasms so the lungs can expand, and then we stay more irritable and anxious from not breathing fully, cleaning out our lungs too. And then we stay tense, right? 

We get locked in the body so we can break all of that pattern up. Even just to notice, to open the chest, to breathe fully deeply into your hand, into your abdomen. When you feel that you’re stressed, start to take a complete breath. Breathe into your hand and your abdomen. Roll your shoulders back. Open your chest. There are some really simple breathing techniques. 

One of my friends is Sean Tiberio. He’s a Marine veteran. He has a great book that he wrote because one of the things you can use is a four-by-four breathing technique that is used in the military. He teaches at his retreats. I’ve done with him. It’s his book is Fortifying your Mind. He talks about tactics that the Marine soldiers use. If you inhale to the count of four, hold your breath for four counts, and exhale to the count of four. You can calm and focus your nervous system. Focus your mind. You can become more present. Get out of these rolling thoughts that are triggering these big emotional reactions. That’s one of the things that the soldiers use literally when they’re in battle. You know, snipers, 

We can be educated in very simple ways like a four-by-four breathing technique. To take control and I teach a lot. There’s another one from yoga, an ancient breathing technique. It’s 4/7/8. You inhale to the count of four, and then you hold for seven counts, and then you exhale to the count of eight. 

So, because each of the numbers is going up, the hold is longer, and the exhales are longer. You’re literally slowing down your heart rate and relaxing your nervous system, and even just doing that in four cycles four times in a row, you can be calm. If you have trouble sleeping, insomnia can help you fall. Neat. If you’re having a panic attack with heart palpitations, it can help you stop that from happening and so these are the types of things that I teach as part of the self-care education that’s part of my wellness hour program. 

So, I offer an hour of ear acupuncture, treatment, guided imagery, and meditation. These types of breathing techniques and then some movement activities, one of the simplest ones in cheap gong is body tapping. These are warm-ups for any type of martial arts practice. You can shake the tree, you can just stand and bounce right, shaking all the tension out of your body. Before we had things like rebound or trampolines, we just did that. 

OK, but what it does is it shakes all of the spasms muscles reset the nervous system, gets the circulation going, and it also drives out any inflammation. Inflammation is not electrically conductive. The energy in our body that needs to move around to animate us doesn’t get to move if we’re all stuck, right? 

And so, these are very simple things that people can do. They can shake the tree, they can body tap, right, they can change the way they breathe. What I love about those is I teach them a lot. Because you could do that anywhere. If you’re at work and you don’t want anybody to see you make fun of you looking like what I just looked like.

I mean no. If it’s, if it’s effective at releasing stress, it is effective, you know, cause.

No, but you.

Yeah, I mean to be honest…

It can help people if they see your example, but if you don’t want to deal with that, you know. We’re all going to go to the restroom when you go into the bathroom. You can do those.

At the bottom of the day on the day altogether. We know that financial Stress is now the number one cause of stress for all. So many people like their living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s really difficult. While we’re trying to get our financial figures, we have to figure out how to control our mind. And our body influences it. And then through that like, look at everything from a responding type of view instead of a…

Correct, correct, correct and so there are things that we cannot control. Nobody was in control of COVID-19 mandates, or lockdowns. Nobody was in control, right? Same with September 11th. Nobody was in control at the World Trade Center, you know, melted down literally. 

So, what we can control is exactly what you said, what we need to focus on is what we can control. Which is our response. And so, if we start with the physical body first, because the stresses are mental, emotional, right, these thoughts… So, we dread things like oh, you’re right, I’m going to get kicked out of my apartment. Right. I’ll be homeless. Like, how am I going to eat? Am I going to be able to pay for my car payment? How an I going to provide for my family, right? 

And you can see this very, very horrible future, right? That you’re dreading, right? That you’re afraid of living. And that can create the physical effect of the fight or flight if you keep having those negative thoughts and triggering those negative emotions, it creates A physiological effect. 

So, you’re going to have different levels of stress chemicals and neurotransmitters and hormones that will make you physically sick. And so exactly as you said, we need to stand up and stop. Break the pattern. 

So, it’s like changing the channel on a TV, right? And it takes practice. How do you interrupt it? So, are you going to use one of those breathing techniques? Are you going to listen to a guided imagery meditation? Are you going to take a walk in a park or are you going to go? To a gym or exercise in your house, right? Because again, if we’re going to get out of our head that’s making these, you know, very fear-based. Right, horrifying images create intense fear-based emotions. We have to stop it and shift and change our state. But we can do that. Music and movies help too. 

So, you play the opposite funny comedy show, so I used to pick some shows. I was watching comedians in cars getting coffee. I would make myself watch something that would make me laugh. Right, so that I wouldn’t get stuck and feeling fear or loss or grief all the time to the point that my physical body was sick and then that’s when you get into things like you can get into, you know, clinical depression is now my physical body isn’t making the right levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitter chemicals because I’ve been in the habit of surrendering to and dwelling in negative, fearful, frustrating, or angry thoughts. 

And so, it is on us and then you know again when we look at things like what are you reading, what are you listening to because we become. Right. The five people we spend the most time with cannot just be people in real life like your 3D person, right? You’re another human being, but that could be the people that I listen to that I watch on TV. 

So, one of the biggest things that I noticed with my patients treating patients all through the COVID-19 pandemic, was the ones that did better were the ones that were not watching the news all day. Seeing all of these stories that right reinforce the fear and triggered more of the anxiety, more of the thread.

I mean, that’s how they make their profits at the end of the day, right?

Because they lock you in now. You’re so afraid you’re dependent upon seeing the news to tell you what to do. You’re so freaked out, right? But that doesn’t help you function as a human being. So that was one of the things is like, how many hours are you spending on your phone, the computer, and in front of the TV? And how many hours are you watching things that are telling you about horrible things happening in the world, that you should be afraid of and angry about? These are really important questions to ask.

I would say for most people it’s more than they would like to admit actually.

Correct, and that’s why it’s really important to ask because if you like, I haven’t had a TV since August of 2019. It’s been incredible. All of the things that I have time to learn, all of the books I have time to read.

And then when I do watch a film it’s that I chose it on purpose as a special event. I’m not just going to go home and flop in front of the TV and zombie out in front of whatever I settle for, that’s on. It became much more intentional. Because then I got to stream it on my computer and then do I want it to be on a bigger monitor? Do I want to watch it on my laptop and then you know, it’s like it’s more choices, you know, that are intentional and why am I watching this right? 

Because it’s also how you choose your friends and the conversations you’re having because. Complaining is physiologically addictive to you get a temporary hit of oxytocin. It’s called, and so you have a moment where you feel better that you were understood, that you commiserated and you complained you shared the story, but that’s a temporary hit and then it wears off and you know what? You’re more miserable and you’re more afraid. And you’re more grief-stricken and you’re more frustrated and angrier, bitter and unforgiving.

Completing is almost like a drug in a way. Because it’s addictive.

It is a drug. And so are electronics. So are the phones. This is a dopamine addiction device. Dopamine also comes from cocaine. Every time you get a notification, you’re going to hit dopamine. When people play video games, they get such a high hit, of dopamine that they’re no longer able to enjoy the smaller hits like a sunset or a nice conversation with the person. It’s not enough of a hit like the big drug of the video. Giving you a huge amount of dopamine at once. 

So, you train yourself to only want the big hits and then you get disassociated, disconnected from all of the small moments in life. Or we could get dopamine from a sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishing a goal, a sense of having a beautiful love and connection relationship. Enjoying nature becomes less stimulating, less meaningless, and so that makes electronic use very addictive to also too. There’s a state of functioning that the brain goes into from exposure to watching TV. It makes us less functional, more zombie brains. That’s not good.

No, Andrea.

Right. And you get used to it and then that becomes too like I think the COVID-19 experience for a lot of people too. It takes more effort to learn the breathing techniques to get some exercises to do at home, to make yourself go on the walk when you don’t feel like it, to take control of your emotions, make yourself watch the comedy. If you don’t feel like it is right. 

You have to be very disciplined and willful and understanding. If I don’t make myself do these things. I’m going to make myself sick. Right. There are no two ways about it. You’re either helping yourself or you’re killing yourself.

Like everything you’re saying, it’s simple and we all have just started. Like we knew about it at different points in our life. But you’re like, giving it a concise, like concentrated form, and I’m loving that. I wanted to ask you about your nonprofit, chillax Ohm Foundation. And more about that, if you could tell me in the audience about it and. Like the work that you do.

So, I have a private practice clinic and I also offer retreat experiences and I use those as fundraisers. So, then I can be a pop-up clinic and I can also offer hours at my clinic and other locations where people can come and get treatment for free. 

So, Wellness Hour is happening at my office on Sundays here in Pacific Palisades. And then I can also people can contact me to offer places for me to go and pop up for six weeks. So, usually, treatment plants and acupuncture or 6 to 8 weeks to make a new pattern that your body is used to living in. And so, I designed the scholarship to be a six-week program, and then I teach people. These types of techniques change their state. 

So, when you graduate from the six-week program, you’re in control, you’ve become your own medicine. That’s what I’m teaching you how to do. So, then you’re not dependent upon getting the treatments when you’re faced with these difficult circumstances, there are always going to be challenges in life. We can’t control that, but we get to control how we’ve learned how to help ourselves and how to respond. So that’s this concept of learning how to become your own medicine. So, at will You treat yourself? You know what to do. You know how to respond so you don’t have to settle for being rattled.

Andrea, like for like the audience like, I know, like, can you tell them a little bit more about acupuncture and its benefits to the nervous system? Because I know it’s like a new fairly new concept to some. 

Yes, yes, yes. So, some people have never had acupuncture. And so, these are tiny needles. They’re very tiny. Like 1 strand of hair. So, it’s not like an ice pick. It’s not like the sewing needle. I like to identify that. And then the feeling of the tiny needle when it’s inserted, can be like a mosquito bite. Sometimes you don’t even feel certain needles that go into bigger muscles. You wouldn’t even notice it was put in there, so you can feel a little bit of a pinch.

But what it does, especially for the ear acupuncture we’re talking to that vagus nerve that’s in charge of that stress response That runs from the back of the head, the amygdala, down through the throat and chest, and the stomach down to the abdomen. So, all along the spinal column. So, we want to tell the vagus nerve that has the root in the ear to go to Vegas, go on vacation, and calm down. 

So, people get relaxed. People can fall asleep. People also can enjoy the results more than just immediately after and during the treatment too. So especially in this kind of case, if somebody’s been stressed out for a while in fight or flight, that’s why it can be 6 to 8 treatments until the body is used to living in the parasympathetic rest digest repair ideal. Homeostasis state of being.

 So, it’s like training, it’s like training a puppy, right? The puppy doesn’t get it. I have to put a leash on and be potty trained and like what time we eat the puppies. Just like spazzing out, right. Everything’s new and exciting. Can’t calm down. So, it takes a while to train the puppy. So, the nervous system. That’s all right, hyperactive. And freaked out from prolonged stress. 

So, if you go for acupuncture once a week, what fun is? If you learn self-care right, breathing techniques, meditation, types of Qigong, or yoga. If you learn how to change your state with the entertainment you choose, you can move along. You know, even faster than that. And then you know how to keep yourself from getting stuck in fights or flights, post-traumatic stress disorder. And you’re in control, so you don’t have to spin out like that again. And then you can remain calm, ideally. No matter what, no matter what comes you can take yourself back. And be in command again, yeah.

Andrea, is there any other product or work that you’re doing right now which is connected to this as well that you’d want the audience to get a glimpse into?

Yeah, yeah. So, on my website, chillaxOm.com if you look in the services tab. I have some online programs too, so one of the things that offer too is a really fun six-week healthy Habits challenge program that I run about every six weeks so. 

You can participate just for $20. That way I can give you prizes. And anybody can be anywhere, and you get to self-evaluate your lifestyle and have class, material, and worksheets you can fill out and it can start with just adding one to three very simple habits like we just discussed today. Can you get used to using a breathing technique when you feel tense to release it? 

And will you commit to doing that for six weeks? And then you can come to a weekly meeting on Sundays for an hour? You can watch a video where I can give you, you know, some other insights and tools too. And I also do some laser coaching as far as people bring their questions and their challenges and we can work on things. Especially mental and emotional stress. If we change our perspective on our circumstances, they don’t need to cause stress anymore. 

The mental and emotional turmoil and stress come from reviewing our circumstances and judging them and reacting frame. So, I have a wonderful partner Harlow Chip and he is also will Co-facilitate with me some of those six-week challenge meetings too. 

And so, me and Harlow, Chip Reisberg, I work with the participants. We can give some insights to change the perspective to come and reframe our relationship with our circumstances to find a way to gain confidence and feel empowered and let go of some of those limiting thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. That can prevent the new habits from sticking. And so that’s a fun program. 

Anybody anywhere, you know, can watch the recordings or participate in a live Zoom. And I wanted to make it accessible and affordable. And then on my YouTube channel, people can access my website too. There’s a whole bunch of videos you can see videos how to do it. You know, body tapping, I do guide imagery meditation. There’s a whole bunch of resources that I’ve provided. You can access it for free to start to become your own medicine and use some of these tools and get in the driver’s seat and how you. Respond to life.

That is awesome!

So, can you tell the OR like can you tell the audience how they can connect with you? And also, once. Again, I like how they can connect with your work. So that they know where to go.

Yeah, thank you. So, the easiest thing to do is if you go to my website, you can click through on the contact page and you can shoot me an e-mail. And then you can also click through the social media links there and you can find the YouTube channel and start to see some of those videos too.

Well, what is your what?

That I’ve put up there.

What is your website? Again, if you can.

Yeah, yeah, so that’s chillaxOm.com So, we want to chill, don’t we? And we want to relax. And then if you are aware of the traditions of yoga and our medicine, the concept of ohm, right, can we be at peace in the world? 

So, she likes home as a state of being that we all can choose on purpose to reach. And have that be the better response to the challenges in life so that we’re in a good place within ourselves to use our skills and experience to contribute to society and help each other, you know, walk through whatever it is. Is that we face, you know, so there’s a way to tap in there. And find a community of like-minded people by joining groups like I have you know and find a new way to respond to stress and reinvent our relationship with our circumstances so, we’re not slaves to our circumstances you know.

No, totally like I endorse everything that you’re doing, and I want my audience to take a look into it because I mean, we need to know how to master the stress in our life because we cannot control our external circumstances; but we can control how we respond to them if you know.

And I’d like to call that mind-body mastery. It’s that’s the game that we’re playing.

Dr. Andrea, I’m really glad that you took the time to come to the show. And I would want to invite you back at a later time because what you’re doing is amazing and it’s impacting a lot of people on a positive level. This is what we need in the world.

Yeah, yeah, I’m happy to come back. I can even share some of my material. We could do like some live class kind of experiential experiences too. I can lead people through stuff to do, evaluate their health, and do some of the techniques that I teach. We could do something practical too, would be fun.

And I want to, I want to conclude this podcast by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that look, there’s an extra ring within every one of us. And we must awaken it and unleash it.

Bye-bye for now.