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Two photos side by side. On the left side is Phil Startin wearing a dark blue shirt and on the right side is Yasmin Neves wearing a bright blue jumpsuit standing against a rustic wall.

S7E04 Webinar highlights – Stress management and mental health

Listen to S7E04: Webinar highlights – Stress management and mental health

Welcome to Living Well with MS, the podcast that helps you make informed choices to support your health and wellbeing with MS. This week we delve into stress management and mental health with insights from Overcoming MS facilitators Yasmin Neves and Dr Phil Startin. They are joined by community members Melanie Lown and Bill Morgan, who share their personal experiences.

Meditation has been shown to improve quality of life in people with MS but it’s not always easy to get going. As Phil shares, “When we run Overcoming MS retreats or events, often one of the first questions we ask the group is ‘which steps in Overcoming MS do you find the hardest to adopt?’ And it’s always meditation.”

If this resonates with you, tune in to gain valuable perspectives and practical tips to help you manage stress.

Watch this episode on YouTube here. Keep reading for the key episode takeaways and the guest’s bio.

Topics and timestamps

Personal experiences with stress management

00:56 Yasmin introduces herself and dives into the stress management pillar—and why it’s key to thriving with MS.

05:26 Phil shares his journey as an Overcoming MS facilitator & meditation teacher and how mindfulness transformed his life.

15:36 Melanie opens up about her Overcoming MS journey and the importance of being kind to yourself while adopting the program.

21:53 Bill reflects on how his MS diagnosis led him to meditation—and why it became a game-changer for his well-being.

Example practices

29:13 Yasmin explores the benefits of gratitude and heart-centered breathing for emotional resilience.

31:02 Phil discusses how slowing down during stressful times can help you regain clarity and balance.

31:47 Melanie shares her top tips for shifting out of “fight or flight” mode and finding calm.

33:59 Bill explains the power of deep breathing and how it can support both mind and body.

 

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Episode transcript

Read the episode transcript

Melanie Lown  00:00

I’m not a big mantra person, but if you just have some words that can offer that same oxytocin response. For me, it was actually an MS nurse that was one of the first people I got to interact with in clinic, and as I was leaving, she said, you’re going to be okay. And sometimes I just say that to myself, you’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.

 

Overcoming MS  00:24

Welcome to Living Well with Ms. This show comes to you from Overcoming MS, the world’s leading multiple sclerosis, healthy lifestyle charity which helps people live a full and healthy life through the Overcoming MS program, we interview a range of experts and people with multiple sclerosis. Please remember all opinions expressed are their own. Don’t forget to subscribe to living well with MS on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And now let’s meet our guest.

 

Yasmin Neves  00:57

And we’re bringing to life the Overcoming MS handbook, the Roadmap to Good Health, with the help of two of our community members who have MS and following the Overcoming MS program, and Dr Phil Statin, who is just a wonderful facilitator and teaches mindfulness and meditation. So I’m Yasmin. I’m based here in sunny south Wales in the UK. I’m a facilitator for Overcoming MS. I’m a HR professional by trade, and I’m truly passionate about the Overcoming MS program. Having lived and breathed it for the last five or six years, I can’t actually remember how long it’s been now. So today’s webinar, as I mentioned, it’s all about stress management and mental health, one of the pillars to the Overcoming MS program, and in my opinion, one that probably isn’t spoken about enough, and one that probably a lot of us struggle with in everyday life. So we’ve got Dr Phil tonight. We’ve got Mel and Bill, who are two community members who have lived experience of MS and are both truly passionate about mental health and stress management, and between us all, we’re hopefully going to have a conversation about our past experiences give some tips and tools. So today’s webinar is all about stress management and mental health, one of the key pillars to the Overcoming MS program. And without me going on even longer, I want to welcome to this virtual stage Phil. Are you there? Do you want to come in and join me?

 

Phil Startin  02:34

I am indeed. I am indeed. Yas, yeah.

 

Yasmin Neves  02:37

How are you doing today?

 

Phil Startin  02:38

I’m good. I’m good. And yeah, just really looking forward to this webinar, because I think I think you’re absolutely right. Stress management is it’s such an important part of the program and sometimes a pillar that we perhaps we don’t give enough attention to. But yeah, I’m sure we’ll discuss all of that today’s part of this webinar.

 

Yasmin Neves  02:54

Brilliant. So I’m sure most of our community know who you are. You’re a very familiar face on the Overcoming MS scene. But for anyone who is new to the program, or maybe they haven’t heard you speak before, do you want to tell us just a little bit about you, what you’re about, what you do?  you

 

Phil Startin  03:09

Of course, of course. Yas, yes. So yeah, about myself, I guess, like pretty much everyone else here on this, this webinar today, I’ve got MS. I was diagnosed way back in 2007. I’ve got Primary Progressive MS, and I’ve been following the program really quite strictly since about 2010, so for about 14 years now. And I was originally in kind of science and business and sort of consultancy,and yeah, over the years, I mean, mindfulness for me has become really, just really, important part of my life. So I now teach mindfulness, and particularly the the MBSR course, to different, different audience groups, but in particular to people with with MS and I just find it just such a super profoundly important part of my life. And yeah, perhaps, perhaps we’ll touch a little bit on that today as part of this webinar as well. So yeah, just, it’s just a brief sort of talk about myself, and it’s and it’s so nice that you’re going to join the facilitator team as well, because we’ve sort of been one of the few facilitators for many years now, and it’s been, it’s such a privilege to go along to these sessions and to go along to the different retreats, but to have more and more people join is absolutely fantastic. So great we’ve got yourself here and two community members from from a different continent. So yeah, tremendous.

 

Yasmin Neves  04:25

I think we’ve got a good, good team here today, and we just blow my own trumpet and yours as well, but someone’s got to do it. Thank you so much, Phil, for sharing a little bit about you. So you wrote one of the chapters in the handbook recently, didn’t you? Can you tell us more about that and what it involves, and tell us about the chapter, bring it to life for us, if you could?

 

Phil Startin  04:47

Yeah, and I’m going to talk. So my chapter was actually more around progressive MS, and what we can do for people with progressive MS, as opposed to stress stress management. But what I’ll do this session since this webinar is really about stress management. I’ll probably perhaps just talk a bit more about that. Is that okay? Yas?

 

Yasmin Neves  05:06

Yeah, absolutely. Please do yes.

 

Phil Startin  05:08

So, I mean, just coming kind of into stress management a bit more, and it’s, I mean, it’s an interesting one. I mean, actually asking yourself, Yas, have you ever seen has stress ever affected your symptoms?

 

Yasmin Neves  05:19

Yes, I think over everything, actually, stress is one of the biggest things that impacts my symptoms.

 

Phil Startin  05:26

Yeah, no, and you are absolutely not alone in that. I mean, I run a number of courses, remember, retreats, on the program, I always ask that question, and pretty much generally, every time, most people put up their hands when I ask, Has stress impacted the condition for you? And I’m sure I asked today, I’m sure that, gosh, 170 people say we’ve got this webinar today, which is amazing. I’m sure most people will stick their hand up and say, yes, yes, stress does affect my symptoms, and it’s yes. Can both both exacerbate symptoms. They can also cause relapses, possibly even cause the onset of the condition itself. And as we know, the program itself is absolutely evidence based, and there’s a huge amount of evidence now that clearly shows there’s a causal relationship between stress and exacerbation of MS symptoms. This research has been published for years, and there was, there was a paper published, actually last year, which was the first meta analysis, which is absolutely the top of the tree in terms of research and research outputs, because it’s a collection looking over many different randomized control studies that said, yes, absolutely conclusively, there is a link between stress and exacerbation of MS symptoms and relapses, and possibly even the onset of the condition itself. So really, really important that we do what we can do to manage stress and work out how we can respond more successfully and wisely to stressful situations. I mean, how that they actually works, and what’s the what is the link? What is that causal link? Is pretty well understood, and I’m sure, again, most people of this webinar today will have heard of the fight or flight response, which is that link between acute stress and causes that physiological response change in our bodies. So it’s mediated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, and it fires off things like adrenaline, causes the heart to go faster, creates that tightness in the chest, but it’s an inflammatory response. Chronic stress, that actually connects to the body, in a physiological link via a different route, by the HPA axis, that links into the endocrine system, which causes to produce a whole lot of different hormones, including things like the stress hormone cortisol, which, again, most people, most people will have heard of, but both these, these pathways and some other ones as well, stress causes an inflammatory response in our bodies. MS, as we all know, is an inflammatory, degenerative condition. So actually, by going through stress and being stressful environment, you’re effectively just throwing additional fuel onto the MS fire. You just make the condition much, much worse. And it is, and it’s stress levels now worldwide are just massively high levels. There was some research published fairly recently by the World Health Organization that they now estimate that at any one point worldwide, the number of people with anxiety and chronic stress is around about half a billion people. It’s absolutely huge numbers of people. Majority of those people are in the in the Western world. So not only are we living with this kind of much, much more increased levels and stress worldwide, but we’ve got to deal with this condition, and all the unpredictability that comes from this condition, that can be again, generate huge amounts of stress and anxiety in its own right. So in fact, I mean, for those are those of us who have got relapsing remitting MS. I don’t know. Do you know when the next relapse is going to happen? How bad is it going to be? Will you recover? Will you recover all the function you just don’t know and you know, it’s great. There are now so many different drugs available, but again, we have to face difficult decisions. Which one do we take? Would you even be eligible? Will they work? What will the side effects be? So these, all these unknowns, we don’t even know what’s going to happen as the condition progresses, which, which it will do for some people. What’s going to be the physical impact, the cognitive impact of that, and how’s that going to affect you as a person, how’s it going to affect your relationships with your family, with your friends, with your work colleagues, with work itself? Are you going to be able to keep working? What about what about money and income? Perhaps your hobbies and all the things that perhaps are really, really important to you might be impacted. So living with MS just adds this, or this additional complexity onto, originally a stressed environment, a stressed world. The psychologists now talk about something called fear of progression, which they’ve actually observed in a number of different degenerative conditions, including MS. So this is a tangible, real fear that causes absolute stress and anxiety that we have to live with. And they found what psychologists have found, that actually, regardless of how long we’ve had the condition or the type of MS we have, it’s similar levels. This exists. Now, fortunately for us, all of us, 25 years ago was there abouts when George first put together the Overcoming MS program. He realized this, and he realized just how important stress management was, which is why he recommends that, actually, we should try and do around about 30 minutes meditation a day, really take care of that stress response I’ve been really been sort of when I first started meditating. I was really guided by George and by Craig Hassed as well. So I’ve been practicing for about for about 14 years now, and teach the program. But I think, as you kind of mentioned, it’s sometimes viewed as a really hard pillar to adopt, can really quite, quite difficult to get to get going with it, with meditation. And perhaps some of the reasons that I think, there’s various reasons for that, perhaps some it’s just them, I think, a lot of misconceptions as to what is mindfulness all about. And also say a bit more about that. That’s in a moment. But looking after our mental health in general is vitally important to say. I suspect we’re going to explore some of that as part of part of this, this webinar. And there’s lots of things we can do, in addition to the mindfulness, some of you might have seen some of the readings that George is doing from his his journals at the moment, available through the Hub, which, which are wonderful. And again, journeying can be, can be really, really effective, a great way of just managing our own mental health, even just getting outside, getting into nature, having hobbies, hobbies that we really enjoy, playing musical instruments, just reading, doing some arts. Can all have a have a positive impact on mental health and really make a difference. And I say, I suspect we’ll explore some of that, some of those with Bill and Melanie this evening. Yeah, but just coming back to mindfulness in particular, and I could just keep this really quite short now, I think just the the two of the big misconceptions I’ve noticed over the years. First misconception is that a lot of people assume that when you meditate, when you practice, you’re supposed to stop thoughts, and if you don’t stop thoughts, then you failed. And if you can’t stop the thoughts, well you just may as may as well give up, because you’re a rubbish meditator, and it’ll never work. So what? So? So why even bother? And it’s, I know, Sue Tibbles also one at one of the newly qualified medical facilitators brought some of that to life in a recently published master’s thesis. But minds will always wonder You’ll always get thoughts coming into your mind. So the purpose and the goal when you practice is not to. You’ll always get thoughts coming into your mind. So the purpose and the goal when you practice is not to stop the thoughts. What we’re really practicing is actually what we do with those thoughts. When those thoughts arise, how do we engage with them? And making that choice not to engage with them? So the mind will always have thoughts in it. So if you’re convinced that you need to stop thoughts when you practice, please put that to one side. It will never, never, ever happen which kind of comes on to think the second misconception about mindfulness, and that’s that it’s passive, that you just kind of sit, sit down and go, la, la, la. And isn’t everything wonderful. It’s all very relaxing. It’s all very nice. It’s not, it’s it’s really active. See what I was just describing, the fact that you we need to actually, these thoughts arise, do something about it that takes energy. Takes energy not to engage with the thoughts. It takes energy and effort when your mind does wander off, to bring it back again, to the bring it back again to the practice. So it is, it’s really can be sometimes feels like quite hard work. Actually, when we even practice itself. You’re literally building up the that attention muscle and developing that so where we’re into, then the into real life, and we’re actually in a real stressful situation, we can actually then learn how to respond more wisely and more skillfully to those stressful situations. Because what we’ll never, going to be able to do is avoid, completely avoid stressful situations. At some point during our lives, we will end up in a stressful situation, and what we need is to have the skill and the techniques to be able to manage that. So that’s really all I wanted to say on that. And yes, back, back over to you, Yas.

 

Yasmin Neves  14:57

Just to pick on up on that last point that. Stress is part of our life. It’s part of a human experience. And you know, stress isn’t always bad. We need stress to get us motivated. But the problem is, is when we stay in that stress response too long, and we don’t know how to then come back out into the activate that parasympathetic nervous system, and sometimes you’re not always aware of when we’re in that stress response. Well, thank you, Phil and Melanie, thank you so much for coming on today’s webinar. Really, really great to meet you. Do you want to just start the same as what Phil did? Just tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey, what’s brought you here today?

 

Melanie Lown  15:36

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here, and this conversation has just already started off so rich. I was diagnosed in 2018 and immediately jumped in just looking for different ways that I could participate in this experience as the individual with MS, I noticed a lot of you know, just interactions with Western medicine, like, where’s my role? Where’s my participation when working with doctors? And that’s one reason that I really gravitated to OMS, is it had this full picture of a way that I could participate with, you know, diet, exercise, stress management, being outside, being involved with my family and with the community in this experience. So I immediately, kind of jumped in with this program soon after my diagnosis, and have been following it ever since. And one thing kind of a different take I want to looking at this conversation with stress management is sometimes when we participate in our experience, the conversation about stress can induce stress, you know, like, Oh, I’m I’m not supposed to be stressed out. Okay? Oh my gosh, I’m stressed about not supposed to be, to be stressed right now, and that, in and of itself, can kind of make the pendulum swing and have it a stress response. And I think that’s really where mindfulness and meditation and even self compassion, which is really just kind of creating this balance and softness can come into the conversation, and I became really interested in mindfulness and meditation. Actually went back and studied psychology after my diagnosis, and recently finished my master’s, and now teach mindfulness and meditation also, and I’m really, really passionate about what kind of taking this lens into all aspects of the OMS program can do being mindful about our participation in all of the pillars of the program, I think can kind of make us aware of when that pendulum is swinging, especially different personality types. I can be a perfectionist, and I’m like, Okay, today I’m going to follow the diet to a T, and I’m going to exercise, and I’m going to do all these things perfectly, and then I get to the end of the day and I realized I’m so stressed out because I didn’t do everything perfectly, and it kind of has this like counter intuitive response. So I think bringing mindfulness into that too, we can become aware, and the more we practice by sitting in our meditation practice, the more we can bring that out into our life and see that play out. Becoming mindfully aware of, oh, I’m noticing this, like tightening in my chest when I think about how perfectly I need to follow the diet aspect. Or I’m noticing my this, like churning in my stomach when I’m thinking about, Oh, I I didn’t do my physical exercise, you know, as much as I wanted to this past week, and that’s just bringing that mindful awareness into how we’re, you know, kind of interacting with the program as a whole. That’s something I found as a community member. And in some ways, it almost feels cyclical. It’s like, okay, I’m starting with my participation here, and now I’m being mindfully aware that, okay, I’m actually now having this counter intuitive stress response as I’m trying to follow the program perfectly, and I can bring in this, you know, balanced, more soft approach to it, And now I can participate in my experience again with a little bit more of a human approach. And that’s kind of what I’ve found with my experience in the program and with mindfulness and meditation, two of the attitudes that I found to be so helpful to me that mindfulAttitudes from Jon, Kabat-Zinn non striving, which can be so difficult, especially when we’re working with the OMS pillars, wanting to be an active participant in our experience, that if we can bring that down and remember why we are actively participating to you know, be the most healthy and active member that we can be in our MS journey, but then just more broadly, as a human living this life, if we can maybe try to soften that striving energy and just remember that we’re doing this to be as healthy as we can be. That can really help and has helped me. And then also just this attitude of beginning again. It goes with that cyclical pattern, but then it also goes just when we’re sitting in our sitting meditation and just remembering, oh, I have thoughts that are starting to come. I’m noticing those thoughts, and now I can begin again, coming back to my breath. I don’t need to get caught up in ugh. I didn’t do this perfectly. Scrap it done with the meditation. Move on with the day. It’s just Oh, okay. I’m thinking, I’m coming back and I’m going to begin again. And so it applies to both. It applies to that sitting meditation, and then it applies to that, you know, cyclical pattern of this doesn’t have to be perfect. I’m going to participate, I’m going to notice, and then I’m going to bring the softness in that has been my experience. It’s been so helpful. And I’m just so grateful for OMS in general. It’s dramatically impacted my overall experience and participation. So thank you so much. I’m so excited to hear from Bill, fellow community member as well.

 

Bill Morgan  21:53

I’m humbled and honored and grateful to to join this esteemed group here who have probably a little bit more experience at this from me or from my experience. I’ve just begun this journey. I was diagnosed a year ago this month, at 61 years old. I’m 62 now, scary, very, very scary. I think I’d like to approach my five minutes here to help more of the people that are just joining OMS. I am just like Melanie said, I’m so grateful for finding this. I found it soon after diagnosis, I was in a very, very bad place, mentally, physically, just not knowing what in the world was going on and how this happened to me, and I have since learned the damaging effects of stress and what it can do. I never knew that. I never knew that before. I just went about my daily life, busy as it can be to everybody. Job is taking its toll on me. I was heavy traveling, never seeing my friends and family that can be stressful on its own, but in behind the scenes, my family has been riddled with MS. My mom, 50 years ago, was diagnosed with MS, has since passed away, but two of my sisters also have MS, and 30 years into that, unfortunately, they just never had the tools that we have today, the medicines and these types of programs that we can follow. So unfortunately, the disease took them, and when I got my diagnosis, it just leveled me, leveled me. And the reason why this came about, and this is what I wanted to share, is those stressors, the person closest to me in life who lived here with me passed away from cancer, and that took me down a very, very dark, dark place for months, if not a couple years. So the diagnosis was like, there you go. That’s what the damaging effects can do. So I had a choice. I could either let this take me, or I could dive into some research and see what I could do. So this is what I wanted to relay to you, and literally, I’m learning from Phil and Melanie’s experiences and listening to what they say, and I. Wow, that that is exactly right. It’s not exactly perfect, or it’s not easy to be perfect in all the pillars and those little you know, sways back and forth. Don’t beat yourself up over those. You can’t we’re all human. So when I looked at the whole meditation, mindfulness aspect of this, I had never done that before in my life, and I was trying to think, Okay, how do I do it? Do I have to sit in a chair? Do I have to close my eyes? Do I gotta, you know, what is this supposed to be No, it’s not any of that, and it’s all of that. It’s whatever you can put into it. I liked what Phil said about all the thoughts jumping into my head. I can’t stop them. And he’s right. I can’t stop them. They’re there. I just let them drift. And it’s amazing to me how I can control that. I can control that drift.

 

Phil Startin  26:11

And you can Bill, you can, you can actually, you can control how you interact with those thoughts, and you can choose it. It’s phenomenal, isn’t it absolutely phenomenal.

 

Bill Morgan  26:22

That’s exactly it. So I start my day, and this is what I want to relay to everybody. I start my day just with the healthy input. I found these things and I’d like to share them. I think I posted them, a couple of them on the on the Hub Reflections of Life. These are these little snippet videos that are on YouTube, and they’re just so wonderful. They’re they’re human, they they bring us all together as one, and it just calming, and it gives you a great frame of mind, or anywhere from six minutes to maybe 12 max. So I start my day with one or two of those. It just puts a smile on my face. It’s everything I’m inputting. I’m reading things that here’s one, you know, Positive Thoughts. I are positive thinking. Have that by my bed stand I literally, I’ll read it before I go to bed, just a couple little pages, just to get healthy input. At I’ve I’ve told other people that are listening to me, because I can talk up a storm, garbage in, garbage out, and it’s that saying right there, the more positivity you can bring into your life, the more benefits you’re going to receive on the other end. So I’m always grabbing things that’ll uplift me. So when it comes to my mindfulness and my time to just be quiet, it’s amazing how my mind journeys into good thoughts. And now the thoughts that drift into my head that seemed stressful don’t seem so stressful anymore, and they just roll off so for me and this journey with OMS, I think, and literally, I did write this part down because I wanted to make sure I said it. I’m grateful. I think I’m at the best place I’ve ever been in my life. I literally, I’m grateful that this experience has happened to me. I’m volunteering more than I ever have. I’m involved with my community. I’m just inputting so many good things, the diet has made made me feel great. I’ve never felt this good. So I just say to all of you, stick with the pillars one little tiny bit at a time. It doesn’t have to be perfect, like Melanie said, Just do what you can as you can, but keep going, stay positive.

 

Yasmin Neves  29:13

Bill, I absolutely love that bit where you just said, I’m truly grateful, because, as you said it, I could, I could see you feeling it. And that’s a really, really practical example for everyone listening here today, gratitude, that feeling of gratitude, is a really good emotion to counteract stress, and only when you truly feel it. That’s when you can, you know, slow your heart rate down. It reduce those cortisone levels in your body. And when you when you felt it, I was like, Oh, I can really feel that. So thank you for sharing. What I would love from all of us, one at a time, is if we can all give someone a practical tip, because it’s very good talking about this stuff, but sometimes implementing it is a whole other story. So I’ll go first, just to give you all time to think. What is one thing that you do as a person when you are in the stress response, and how do you bring yourself out of it? So for me, when I notice that I’m in the stress response, and I’m very good at going into it, stress is a very addictive emotion, which my body quite likes. It will actively seek it out. When I notice that I’m in the stress response, one thing that I do is I slow my breathing down ever so slightly slower than my normal rhythm, and I will connect to my heart. And that small practice in its own will just calm my nervous system down ever so slightly enough to bring myself out to the stress response. And you may have noticed I’ve actually been doing it during this webinar, because there’s been moments where I’m like, oh, so many questions, and I don’t know who to when I need to stop people from talking and bring everyone in together. I’ll take a moment, I’ll slow myself down and just connect to my heart. That’s a really simple tool that anyone can use, and no one really knows that you’re doing it. That’s my tip. Phil, I’m going to pick on you next. What’s your one tip when you’re in the stress response?

 

Phil Startin  31:02

I agree with you. I don’t think there’s much else you can do, other than just slow it down and just taking it, taking a moment. And even sometimes and often, with these stress responses will be in relation to somebody else often, and it could be, let’s say, a difficult situation. And I think there’s nothing wrong in saying sorry. Would you mind just if I just had 10 seconds, please, and turn away for 10 seconds and breathe and go back. And not only will you notice a change in yourself, I suspect you’ll notice a change in the other person as well. So sometimes just forcing in that pause can make, a huge difference. So yeah, that would be my suggestion.

 

Yasmin Neves  31:41

Beautiful Bill mentally, who would who would like to go next?

 

Melanie Lown  31:47

I’m happy to share. I have a few that I’ll just offer rather quickly. I think if you can, perhaps trying this in formal practice first might be helpful, if you can identify someone that you know is going to give you that oxytocin release, which is that connection to you know, either it’s often described as a mother figure, but it could be a partner, a loved one, anyone, if you can just imagine them giving you a hug, that can actually release oxytocin, which is going to help bring down that sympathetic response. So just imagining that, imagining that hug, it could even be an imaginary person that you’ve had some type of response to, but that you know is going to give you that response. That’s number one. Number two, of course, I mentioned earlier, if you can change your scenery, get outside and do any type of physical activity that helps me almost every single time, yeah, and then I think again, just if you can return to that breath, sharpening your awareness over time, over time, so you can understand exactly what it is that’s causing you to feel that way. Because sometimes we think it’s one thing, and then as you peel the onion back, you realize it’s something completely different that’s causing you to have that response, yeah, and I’m not a big mantra person, but if you just have some words that can offer that same oxytocin response. For me, it was actually an MS nurse that was one of the first people I got to interact with in clinic, and as I was leaving, she said, you’re going to be okay. And sometimes I just say that to myself, you’re okay, you’re going to be okay, and that saying that and knowing that will release oxytocin in my body will bring that back in the parasympathetic. So those are my offerings. I hope you find that helpful, even if those nuggets lead you to something else.

 

Bill Morgan  33:59

Hey, Melanie, does a dog count? Because that’s that’s all that’s living here in the house with me right now. And my dog and I are close, so he comes over for smooches and hugs all the time. So I hopefully that works too. But I go to the breathing similar to what Yas, and Dr Phil said, I have a way that I like Yas’s better, though. I’m going to try that to go to the heart mine. I literally try to pull that breath and picture it going up to the brain, oxygen to the brain, right? So I’m taking deep, slow breaths. And I usually count to, you know, 10, maybe even 20, sometimes. And I just take those deep breaths and, wow, I just everything goes away. It just de-stresses me. So that’s, that’s, it would be my tip for everybody, just some deep, slow. Breath,

 

Yasmin Neves  35:01

The power the breath. Hey, is so powerful, isn’t it? Some amazing tips there. And like I said a moment ago, I feel like we could potentially talk all evening. This is such a big topic, and we’ve just scratched the surface, so hopefully we can do more of these. But thank you so much. Phil, Melanie, Bill, thank you so much for your time this evening. It’s been wonderful talking to you, wonderful hearing your stories, wonderful just listening to your tips and your wisdom and your expertise. And I’m really I’m sure that from some of the questions that we’ve had and some of the comments that we’ve had, you’ve given some really valuable insight and wisdom and hope to a lot of our community, and that’s what this is all about, just spreading this hope and positivity to others who may need it at different points in time. So thank you, honestly, so much for your time. It’s really valued.

 

Phil Startin  35:56

Thank you too, and thank you for hosting it so beautifully, and and British holding is also so gently as part of the session, session today and going through the questions, you did a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Yas. Thank you for doing that.

 

Overcoming MS  36:09

Thank you for listening to this episode of Living Well with MS. Please check out this episode’s show notes at overcoming ms.org/podcast you’ll find useful links and bonus information there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and please rate and review the show to help others find us. This show is made possible by the Overcoming MS community. Our theme music is by Claire and Nev Dean. Our host is Geoff Allix. Our videos are edited by Lorna Greenwood and I’m the producer Regina Beach. Have questions or ideas to share. Email us at podcast, at overcoming ms.org, we’d love to hear from you. The Living Well with MS. Podcast is for private, non commercial use and exists to educate and inspire our community of listeners. We do not offer medical advice. For medical advice, please contact your doctor or other licensed healthcare professional.

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Biographies

Yasmin Neves – An Overcoming MS facilitator, Yas is also a coach, speaker, and entrepreneur passionate about the mind-body connection. After her MS diagnosis, she became obsessed with personal growth and unconscious change. She runs Healthy HR, sits on an employment tribunal, and helps people thrive at work.

Dr Phil Startin – diagnosed with PPMS in 2007, Phil discovered Overcoming MS in 2011, transforming his approach to health. A trained MBSR mindfulness teacher, he delivers the mind-body component of Overcoming MS retreats as a facilitator. He’s a trustee for MS-UK and passionate about MS wellness.

Melanie Lown – Melanie helps individuals and organisations find balance and resilience through mindfulness and meditation. After her MS diagnosis, she explored how discomfort can lead to growth and healing. She holds an MA in Psychology and has trained in mind-body wellness.

Bill Morgan – Bill is an active Overcoming MS community member living with MS. Read more about his journey and experiences in his blog post here.