Products And Practices That Have Helped Me Live More Consciously

I'm Lisa 👋 Welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness!

Subscribe to join others who want to live more consciously.

Hey 👋

My journey in aligning my life and feeling better has involved A LOT of experiments. It’s also still very much ongoing.

I’m a problem solver and I’m also innately curious about things.

So, through experiencing a significant amount of both mental and physical health challenges, I’ve tried a million and one things (and probably will keep doing this because I am…well, me) to see what might help. If any of my experiences and first-hand perspectives re: things that have helped me can help you, too, that would be an added bonus.

In that vein, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is assemble a quick list of some of the “helpers” - the tools and practices I have found that actually make a measurable difference in my life when it comes to being more aware of my thoughts, emotions, and actions and that have played a role in improving my health.

Additionally, before getting into anything, outside of any products I use or practices I have in my life, working with an excellent trauma therapist has helped me reframe the lens through which I see the world, be more aware of when my nervous system is dysregulated, and understand tangible things I can do to regulate it. I would say this has helped more than any daily ritual or tool I have added or experimented with.

Finally, there’s a great book called Lost Connections that highlights what I think are a lot of the reasons why in North America our basic human needs are not met inherently because of the systems we have created and are living within and why we have to work extra hard to make more conscious decisions and “go against the grain” to meet them. I strongly believe that a lot of the measures I will discuss below would not be as necessary if we lived in stronger authentic communities, with access to high quality food, baked in physical movement and more time spent outdoors. These are the long-tail things I’m looking to improve in terms of my overall life design.

[Disclaimer: This is intentionally meant to cast a wide net. If there are any areas you’re particularly interested in and would like me to dig into more, let me know. Any links I include below for products or apps or services I am sharing are because they have helped me - I don’t receive affiliate income them. Also, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I would recommend meeting with a doctor of there are any changes you’re interesting in making based on anything I am sharing here that might impact your health].

Mindfulness and General Self-Care

I’ve tried a whole lotta things in this space and find that the best products for me usually have these things in common:

1. Solve a good problem.

2. Simple.

3. Minimal ads.

4. Ideally, free.

Insight Timer: Of all the meditation apps I have tried, this is my favourite. I love how flexible and simple it is. I use the unpaid version which still offers lots of value. I LOVE the filters for time (i.e. “I’m looking for a 5 min thing vs. a 20 minute thing”) and LOVE the timer option with custom sounds like a wood block and gong 😂. Sometimes I just want to be with myself rather than have someone guiding me. This is especially true when I’m feeling the most overwhelmed.

Breathe Easy: I have tried a bunch of guided breathing apps, have gone to Othership and done guided breathing in a sauna, Wim Hof, and a million other things James Nestor mentions in his book Breathe. As someone who deals with anxiety and PTSD, I think if I can master breathing as a tool it will go a long way in helping my nervous system stay more regulated. I love Breathe Easy because it’s the most basic one I’ve tried. I often find that when I am listening to a guided breathwork session, I get stressed if I am not staying exactly on pace with the instructor which can make my stress increase instead of decrease. This app is so freaking basic that it’s gold - all you do is set a timer for how long you want to inhale, hold, exhale, and hold, and then watch the animation on the screen and follow along. You can choose a circle, a square, or a heart. That’s it. Simple. Effective.

Finch: I am a recovering people pleaser and have often focused outward when dealing with trauma triggers (i.e. Trying to change my environment to make it more safe or change the way I operate in interactions I am having to make them more safe) vs. inward (understanding my own experience and why I don’t feel safe in the first place). I am getting better at this but have struggled with prioritizing taking care of myself. I’m also left and right-brained and am going through the ADHD diagnosis process so having lists help me tangibly connect the needs I have with actions I can take to meet them. This kind of feels like a woke-2025 version of a Tamagotchi. The idea is you set daily actions you want to take to take care of yourself and by completing them, your little animated self-care companion grows. It lets you set daily and weekly recurring actions and also has a lot of tools I have yet to explore as emotional first aid if you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, sad, etc.

Sand Timers: Yes, I am going here and bringing things way back to the basics 😅! Sometimes I get into a funk where I want as little to do with my phone as possible. My phone in itself can be an anxiety trigger. I just got these little timers and love them. I use them when I am meditating or stretching, and would like to experiment more with them while working vs. using a Pomodoro Timer, countdown clock, or alarm which can add stress instead of reduce it.

Sleep and Recovery

Whoop: To change something, it often helps to measure it to understand it better. Whoop has been a huge helper for me to understand how every action I take - going to bed at a certain time, how closely I eat to my bedtime, how much exercise I am getting, breathing exercises, supplements, social interactions and more directly impact my sleep and HRV (Heart Rate Variability - a general measure of nervous system health and resilience - people with high HRVs are usually more adaptable, less stressed, and happier). While Whoop became popular initially with athletes, I would recommend this product to anyone looking to improve their health. Rather than get overwhelmed by focusing on a million different metrics, I pretty much just make a change and see how it is impacting my HRV - a bunch of mini experiments. The things that help I can stack. The things that don’t I can try to minimize or remove. So far I have learned that meeting 100% of my sleep need, a consistent sleep schedule, zone 2 cardio, infrared light, wearing a mouthguard at night, and electrolytes (I take LMNT but have also just used salt in warm water or drank coconut water) have a positive impact on my recovery. (Also…having my .)

It sounds redundant but standard sleep practices have helped as well. Keeping my phone in a different room. Keeping the temperature pretty low (68 F/20 C). Using a sleep mask to make it even darker. Not eating a huge meal or drinking a lot of water right before bed time. Not drinking alcohol or caffeine (I’m off both right now). Doing some breathing exercises before bed. Getting sunlight when I wake up to help set my circadian rhythm. Limiting blue light exposure at night (altogether or by wearing blue light blocking glasses). The Huberman Lab podcast is a great resource for understanding sleep and actionable things you can do to improve it.

I’m experimenting with a few other things right now and trying to understand how they impact my sleep and HRV so if you’re interested in me writing more about this and what I’m finding, let me know.

Supplements: I spent a lot of my life not wanting to add any supplements to my diet and wanting to focus on creating a whole food situation that met my basic needs. I decided to get some tests done though within the last year and found out that I was severely deficient in Vit D (and probably had been for most of my life) in addition to a few other things that were at a detriment to my health and making me feel worn down and get sick often. So I started taking Vit D, Vit C, magnesium citrate, and a multivitamin to cover my bases, and am currently working with a naturopath and GP and experimenting with fish oil, creatine, protein (I’ve tried a few forms and so far whey and beef protein isolate seem to agree the most and I found 2 brands that use just a single ingredient for each), GABA, l-theanine, ashwagandha, probiotics, a digestive enzyme, and a few other things with the goals of a) Improving my digestion, b) Improving my body’s ability to rest, recycle and recover, and c) Downregulating my nervous system and supporting my nervous system health. I don’t want to go into the weeds here but can in a future post if that’s of interest. I have also experimented with TONS of different diets and food situations and have a lot of thoughts based on my own experiences that I might summarize in a later post (vegan, vegetarian, low-fodmap, low-histamine, high protein, no gluten, no dairy, no nightshades, etc. etc. etc.). One thing I will mention here is that this book has helped me a lot - The Bloated Belly Whisperer. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like 😅.

Environment

As someone who’s had a lot of complex medical issues and allergy symptoms, rather than masking symptoms, I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on and take the data my body is giving me and use it to change my environment in small, practical ways. Essentially - how can I remove some of the things that are stopping my body from being able to recycle and recover efficiently?

Something I didn’t think about much until pretty recently was the quality of the air and water I’m ingesting or exposing myself to.

I recently got a water filter for my drinking water, a water filter for my bathtub, and an air filter.

So far the main impacts are that my skin is a lot softer, I am not sneezing as much, my water tastes a lot better and when I make tea my kettle is a lot easier to clean because there’s less mineral deposits.

The air filter in particular has been an interesting tool to use as a data point - I was pretty shocked at how much my air quality drops when I light a candle or am cooking. It’s been pretty eye-opening. Now, when I cook I keep the window open.

I have also been trying to make more of an effort to buy more clothes made of natural materials like cotton. Same goes for jewelry - I’ve been buying wooden jewelry from Rare Olive for a while now and love it. Same for soaps, shampoos, and creams - Dr. Bronner’s has been a great brand in this vein - in addition to using more natural cleaning products and laundry detergent.

The idea behind most of this is that we’re exposed to a lot of endocrine-disrupting synthetic materials like BPA every day that have now been proving to cause a hell of a lot of health problems. Personally, I don’t think we’ll be able to totally eliminate plastics in our lives, so I’m kind of approaching it as “How can I at least take some steps to minimize exposure?”

I’ve also been trying to organize my living space around a biophilic design with lots of plants and wood.

So far these things all seem to be helping anecdotally but I want to track this over a longer time period to truly understand the impact they have.

I’ve been following this guy - Joey Sorts - for a while and I like a lot of his basic tips for reducing the things we’re exposed to every day that are health-detractors and things we can do to improve our living spaces to help us.

It's also important for me to say that I do think it’s possible to take this too far where it limits your quality of life and social interactions. I’m trying to approach it by slowly adding breadcrumbs of these things to my life and being flexible.

Body

The way I’d frame how I approach taking care of my body would be to separate things into 2 phases:

1. Damage control: What I do when things are not good.

2. Preventative/Maintenance: Things I do proactively to help increase the chances I’ll feel better in the long-term. Daily practices to keep the machine running.

Damage Control:

• Chronic Pain: Having dealt with chronic pain my whole life, two resources that have helped are John Sarno’s book, “Healing Back Pain” (which applies to back pain AND many inflammatory-type conditions) and Nichole Sach’s course, “Freedom from Chronic Pain”. I am still dealing with some pain on an ongoing basis so this is very much a work in progress.

• Heating Pad: I got this little guy from Shoppers Drug mart a few years ago and love it! I’m actually using it while typing this out.

• PowerDot: Helps with circulation and pain management plus it’s small and easy to travel with.

Preventative/Maintenance:

• Barefoot shoes: I switched to wearing barefoot shoes almost 100% of the time a few years ago and it significantly changed my life. My feet are stronger, more flexible, and I have a more stable foundation for everything up the chain. I’ll write a separate post about this because it’s a big topic to dig into. Doing an assessment with MyFootFunction helped me a lot here as well. The most shocking part, though, was that my feet increased 2.5 sizes because I had been wearing shoes that were essentially foot binding my whole life.

• Regular strength and and mobility work: I have experimented a ton with this especially though many injuries and to offset a lot of the issues I have because of my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. One thing I would recommend if you’re starting from scratch or experiencing pain currently is Whealth - Katie and Andrew that run the online program both have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome like me. They changed my life and how I approach taking care of myself. Here’s a bit of my backstory with their program and what I went through.

• Regular Zone 2 cardio: I used to cycle but recently switched to swimming in a warm water pool to help downregulate my nervous system even more and it’s been a lot better for me overall.

• Massage and muscle scraping: I use a small Sidekick tool and it has helped me break up a lot of scar tissue from previous injuries. I also use these tune up balls and a bunch of other tools like foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and voodoo floss to help assist my tissues and recovery.

• Dry cupping cups: I had a massage treatment done with these recently and it really helped my tissues glide more freely so I bought my own on Amazon. I would speak with a professional before using these on your own though because they can break the capillaries near your skin and are not good to use on certain body parts.

• Sitting on the ground regularly vs on a couch or chair and putting myself in different positions throughout the day - there’s a great episode of the Blue Zones docuseries on Netflix (the Okinawa, Japan episode) that talks about this and its impact on longevity.

• Not doing any intense exercise in the morning or at the end of the day. Being gentler with my system while it is revving up and revving down.

• Having lots of baths! Sometimes with magnesium and lavender. Recent research has shown that a warm bath activates the same nerve endings as physical touch and causes your body to release oxytocin. Read: It’s like a hug.

I am still experimenting and have by no means found the holy grail, but I have found a lot of things that help through this process. Let me know if there are any areas that would be valuable for me to expand on. What are some of the things you’ve experimented with and have found to have helped or hindered?

Soulwork 💜

• 🧘‍♀️ A great healing meditation for if you’re going through some hard things.

Thanks for Reading!

Thank you for supporting me, for following along, for emailing me, and sharing your thoughts and ideas 🙏

If this edition resonates, please drop me a note and let me know. I love hearing from you and it makes me feel less like a robot typing away behind a glass wall. If you know a friend who might enjoy reading this, forward it to them.

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✌️