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Wes: Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness Podcast, where we talk to wellness professionals from around the world to gain their insights into healthier living. I’m your host, Wes Malik. Our guest today is Todd Nyholm, who is a Somatic Therapist and has written a book about healthy living. He has studied Visceral Manipulation, Structural Integration of the Rolf Method, Acupressure, Shiatsu, and Sensory Repatterning. He’s well versed on matters of health and he spent his life devoted to learning about health and vitality. He’s put it all together in a fantastic book and a method called, Nytality Life Method and, Ah, Food, Why Do You Trouble Me So Much? Let’s welcome Todd to the Podcast. Todd, welcome to the Lifelong Wellness Podcast. How are you doing today?
Todd:: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Wes: So we're recording our podcast over the holidays and I wanted to ask you, how did you spend your holidays?
Todd: I got a little time with my family. Got to see my parents and brother, sisters and niece. We hang out a little bit, and yes I was nice and quiet and I stayed off from working at the clinic and helping people. It’s kind of refreshing.
Wes: Now that 2021 is here, what do you looking forward to in the new year?
Todd: I’m looking forward to putting out my second book and getting a chance to help people with that. Moving my system forward because, I’m constantly working on it, trying to help myself and help other people with things that I can put together for health and fulfillment and vitality and all that good stuff.
Wes: So, tell us about your first book and then we’ll ask you a little bit about your second book and what you’re writing about.
Todd: Okay, the first book was kind of an introduction to some of ideas that I like to help give to people through food.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: So, I was struggling myself with all kinds of different diets and I’ve tried probably every one you can imagine. Struggled with them all. So I tried to make a diet for myself that worked a little bit from the inside out. So, working with your mind and your emotions and kind of reprogramming the program you have from your family or from your culture in terms of food and changing it up. That you can understand it a little bit and that makes it a lot easier to work with my diet and with that I lost about 60 pounds’ pretty quickly. It really helped my health.
Wes: Wow!
Todd: So that’s for my book one. I tried to make it really convenient, like a conversation where I was talking to people, as opposed to like a forced mechanic where someone says, ‘well live on broccoli and water for 2 months' or something.
Wes: Right.
Todd: I gave a different option so you can kind of grow into it and nurture with your diet for yourself.
Wes: So, how did you feel losing all that weight and being healthy.
Todd: It was a huge thing for me. I was fighting with some infections and so it helped me with the process of killing off some of the problems that I have and some of the parasite infections that come with lime disease and some of those things. So I felt tremendously better as I went through and finding an option that worked for me that didn’t make my digestion worse was a big thing as well.
Wes: Okay. What is special about your method and how is it different from others?
Todd: I would say because it can work with others it’s pretty useful. You could go through my book and use the principles in there and still apply it if you’re doing like intermittent fasting or things like that and so, rather than being “You have to do these things”, it’s more on building up in a new way, building you up. As opposed to forcing you into things that are really difficult, that gives you some different options and I really like that was really useful for me. And the other things I was trying to do with that – give some people some principles for their overall health that could be useful, just sort of snuck in the back door through a diet method.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: Yes.
Wes: The title is very interesting: Ah, Food, Why Do You Trouble Me So Much?
Todd: It still makes me laugh to hear it (laughing) because I’ve struggled with it so much.
Wes: Was there a particular food that you struggled with or just food in general, like all of it?
Todd: Yes, I tried. Everything I struggled with since as far back as I can remember, and it wasn't until the end of last year, I think, where I ate and I didn’t have any pain. That was probably working with a functional medicine doctor and killing off some of the infections of the parasites in my stomach and things like that. I had that problem my whole life. You get all this different advice from different people and none of it works and I couldn’t figure it out and I finally did last year. So it’s a big change for me. But that was certainly something I felt a lot… Ah, food, why are you so troublesome for me? Doesn’t seem to be that way for everyone else, so what is it?
Wes: So what are you writing about now?
Todd: I’m in the middle of editing a book, a much bigger picture book, and so it goes through principles for life in terms of how to live in a way that’s healthy for you and then fulfilling, so it brings different components of your life together and leads to something long term, that could be fulfilling but also removes as much suffering from your life as you could. If you think about your health as being a form of suffering, even in social situation or the way you live your life because I’m so fascinated with the idea of how do you live a life that’s truly fulfilled. I think you've got to stack it all on health. If your health was bad, nothing else makes any sense at all. If you ever had that experience, it will shock you a little bit and then once you get back to it you can build on that. But the principles can be used all the way across to the same principles used for your health. If you can look at your career or with your finances, your relationships or your relationship to life. So this book is trying to get a very big picture view that I can hang other principles on it as I did on the diet book connected together.
Wes: Could you share some of those principles with us?
Todd: Yes, let me (laughs) I’m not quite prepared to let me think. One example is what you’re doing isn’t making you feel alive.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: For instance, if your work makes you feel kind of dead inside…
Wes: Yes.
Todd: Maybe it’s time to rethink that, because that’s not going to be good for your health long term. It may serve other purposes, but if you were to find a new career that made you feel actually alive inside… made you feel something.
Wes: Excited.
Todd: That made you want to do something.
Wes: Motivated.
Todd: Yes, exactly! Excited and enthusiastic. But you can also apply that to all kinds of things and I will go into more detail of course on all that once I put it all together.
Wes: So, it’s a book about life and living it to the fullest.
Todd: Yes, very much so, and then building it as I said from the perspective of health, so you look at things that might be destructive of your, let's say fulfillment. Health, and you could build off that. So yes, it was quite a big picture and I put a lot of interesting things to aim at I’m really proud of it, it was a huge thing for me and I kind of worked on those principles since I was 8 or 9 and I’ve been almost obsessed with it, trying to figure out those kinds of things.
Wes: Really? Have you been thinking about life at such a young age?
Todd: Yes, it’s always been at the back of my mind fundamentally. I tried to talk to my friends about it and they looked at me like I was crazy. They wanted to talk about cars.
Wes: Right.
Todd: …Or girls, or whatever.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: It’s always been on the back of my mind in a really strong way. Even when I was sitting in the backyard learning how to meditate a little bit and think about life in many ways. It’s just always been there for me, that’s what I’m thinking about.
Wes: You are a somatic therapist.
Todd: Yes, and that’s a general term that one of my teachers used because we learned so many different therapies. Our business card wasn’t big enough to put just visceral manipulation on there, and cranial sacral therapy, and Structural Integration of the Rolf Method, Acupressure, Shiatsu… So he started using somatic therapy, and I just kind of borrowed it from him 20 years ago because it fits on a card and it’s easier to use.
Wes: So, it’s an umbrella terminology for all the things you just mentioned.
Todd: Yes, very much so. When I’m using it very generally in that way as supposed to trademarking a term that someone might use.
Wes: Okay. So what is, let’s go one by one. When you do somatic therapy with someone and you apply all these items, what are you applying in terms of visceral manipulation? What is that?
Todd: Visceral manipulation comes from the osteopathic school, so very specifically working with the organs. So you might work directly with the positions of someone’s liver and so if it doesn’t move well and if it doesn’t move well in its attachment points, you’ll go in there mechanically with your hands and move it gently so that it can ease those restrictions. And in the case of the liver, if it’s restricted, that might mean neck pain and headaches – those kinds of things that connect mechanically, so it’s not chemistry in the liver… It’s like, mechanically how does it sits in its attachment points?
Wes: Okay.
Todd: How it’s relating to the right kidney and things like that.
Wes: That’s a good example, just the liver. So visceral manipulation is the mechanical way the body is working together. That’s what you fix? I hope I get this right.
Todd: Yes. So I'm trying to adjust to other people.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: And then…
Wes: So, it’s with the organs.
Todd: Just the exact thing, similar on the outside.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: So, rather than the liver like “Where’s the muscle?”,” where’s the tissue?”, the fascia tissue, things like that.
Wes: So, if somebody comes to you with the complaint of neck pain or headaches or something, how do you apply visceral manipulation to that? How do you know what the issues are, the problems are?
Todd: Well, first I would look at how their bodies are moving and so you can really see those restrictions and how people breath, and how they walked around, how they sit and how they take their shoes off when I bring them into the room.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: So, I kind of watch their body and then I’ll talk to them, see where they’re at, see where they’re at mentally a little because it goes both ways, so if they’re mentally really stressed out about something and they have a headache, that’s going to move to their body.
Wes: Right.
Todd: Or it might be they had an accident and that’s moving their way up and now they’re angry because they are in pain all the time. They’re getting headaches from that.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: I’m trying to track thing a lot in different ways.
Wes: Alright. So let’s move on to the next. What is the Rolf Method?
Todd: Dr. Rolf that was her last name. She originally called it Structural Integration, but that was too long for people, so they started talking about being Rolf… and that eventually became Rolf's thing which is a trademarked term I don’t pay to use. You’ll never see me hide it anywhere. So, it's usually Structural Integration and I think she was really a genius at looking at different soft tissues in the body and then realigning them. This is why she called it structural integration, taking the structure, and integrating it into one unit that works together. And so it works a lot in fascial tissue. It works a lot with the nervous system contraction of the musculature. It talked a lot about body armoring and working through emotional stuff that gets locked up in the tissues and sees the whole body that way. You can see someone who’s bent over, say 20 degrees, and stand them up straight without method. It's kind of famous for that. So with that, I worked a lot with accidents, and different joint problems, people struggling with those kinds of things.
Wes: Okay like arthritis?
Todd: Yes! Definitely can do some things for arthritis, particularly osteoarthritis, that works really well. It’s a little trickier with rheumatoid arthritis. With that, I would probably use a lot more limbs trains therapy, moving your limbs in and out, and maybe some acupressure has been really helpful for that and I kind of put all together relative to what the person needs and what I think I can help them with the most.
Wes: Alright, let me ask you about that, considering you just mentioned it. What is Acupressure?
Todd: So, Acupressure and Shiatsu – one is from Japan and one is from China. They’re looking at energy points through the body and if you ever get a chance to look at it online, look at Acupressure points and Acupuncture points. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. But you're kind of relating to the body through the energy system and the connections that it has and so they connect a lot of things together, like how your emotions are working with your liver, which is an energetic thing, rather than a chemistry thing. So, you are looking at a very specific point and then working them together to get an effect that way. There are thousands of years of history to that, so it’s very well put together. Pretty interesting how it works.
Wes: When do I use acupressure? What is shiatsu used for?
Todd: You know, ultimately you can do it for just about anything, like if you’re struggling with a headache you might do liver points or large intestine points or gall bladder points and different headaches might use it for different things. So any kind of health problems you have it can be helpful. I’m not saying you should skip going to the doctor to do that, but I would use it in conjunction with that. I think it’s great in bringing down anxiety and helping with depression and things like that. At least in my own experience, it was quite helpful for me. One of the things I love about that is you could teach people to do it on themselves and you can do it in yourself quite well.
Wes: Oh! Really?
Todd: You can check points on your hands and feet. You can use it for all kinds of things.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: For instance, I may be nervous about doing an interview with you today, so I could do a couple of points to help bring down the nervousness maybe a little anxiety, and that… kind of help calm things down.
Wes: So, where were those pressure points be?
Todd: Yes, one I use is on the wrist, so if you go to the wrist fold, like if you fold your hand towards your head while you’re looking at the palm facing you.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: You’ll go to the wrist fold right under your pinky.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: And you stick your thumb right in there and if you’re feeling a little anxious, traditionally you’d want to go counter-clockwise, you just rub it in a circle with medium pressure, doesn’t have to be really hard, and you do that for 30 seconds. Do it with a little deep breathing. That seems to work really well. That’s a great one if you're struggling with anxiety or you’re nervous about public speaking or something like that.
Wes: Really?
Todd: You can do it on both sides if you want. Whatever you like.
Wes: Interesting! How did someone come to the conclusion that if I’m nervous or I am anxious, that this pressure point can help alleviate or fix that problem?
Todd: I think there are two major theories about that. One is that people just experimented over thousands of years and they figured out some things that worked, which I’m a little skeptical.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: I think another one is people were so in tune with their body they kind of naturally knew the kinds of places that sort of worked for them and so they worked it and then someone, maybe said “Hey! Can you teach me that?” and eventually it built. Over time there were different doctors who were teaching each other how to do it. But I think that they can kind of sense it over time. They were so much more connected with their body at that time than we are now because they didn't have internet, a store cam, and TV to watch. I think they were into their body quite a bit more and much more experiential.
Wes: Okay alright. The last one I’d like to ask you and get these questions and so we have this understanding. You also mentioned Sensory Repatterning. What is that? Where is that used? How is that used?
Todd: Yes, Sensory Repatterning came from a doctor named Milton Trager, and so he put it together before he even became a doctor. So sometimes you hear it called trigger work which is another trademark term but the generic term people used was sensory patterning and which we're doing with that is we’re using the body to get into the mind a little bit. If you see someone do it, you watch some people move their bodies in all these different ways and it’s an interesting way to get to the tension that sits in your mind, through the body, and so there’s this big rhythmical motions and that.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: So, you might see the move in your arms around in someone’s head and it’s a really interesting way to get into it. It's very gentle as opposed to Rolf, which can be very heavy on pressure, and so I think it gives you some options for people that are already in a lot of pain that can’t take much.
Wes: Thank you very much for explaining all those things. Now I have a better understanding of these things because some of these things I’ve never even heard of. Now you’ve been working on and developing something called the Nytality Life Method. So explain to us what that encompasses?
Todd: Yes, so that is some I guess lifelong project of my heart to figure out how to help people live a fulfilled life. To help them liveda better life. To help them get away from suffering that so many people like to run through their natural day with. So with the method, I tried to put as many things together so that you can get as many different pieces of your life to work sort in harmony together to have a better life. So I made it big as I possibly could.
Wes: Right.
Todd: The very big picture – there’s a set of exercises to do with your body, there are very specific things to work with your emotions. You could train your emotions in any way. There are ways of looking at your mind. What I am most interested and excited about that, is I put them all together so you can do it somewhat concurrently, so rather than your mind to be over there and your emotions to be over there and your body over here…
Wes: Yes.
Todd: Your spiritual health is over there, your relationship health, and your financial health. I’ve built it all in the same principles, so you can learn one set of principles and apply them in lots of different ways. I’m trying to show people what to do through the books because it seems a little complicated. In the Western world, we broke everything apart when we examined it, so if you go into a dissection workshop, you’re going to pull everything apart and put the liver over there, the heart over there, looking into everything. What I’m trying to do with this in a lot of ways is put everything back together into a context, so that you can have a really great life and when you get to the end of it and say “Wow!”. It’s exactly what I want to do rather than the opposite.
Wes: Right, now if we want to learn more about it, the Nytality Life Method, where do we start?
Todd: Well, obviously the first book is a great place, I’ve loaded a lot of the principles into it.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: It’s an easy place to start and also you can go to my website and I’m putting more stuff in there. Like I said, the second book will be out soon and next time I’m going to put videos up on my website and then on my Instagram, and probably start a YouTube so I can start showing smaller things in different ways, rather than through the book, to actually talk to people on video.
Wes: Through your practice, the work, you meet with a lot of people, you come across a lot of people with problems, issues. You fix them, you practically work on them and you’re successful at it. What is the most general common complaint or issue that people come to you with that you help them with?
Todd: It can be quite varying; I think over the years I get a lot from people from different things. People are really struggling with say anxiety or depression at this time in the US. A lot of them, as things get darker like they don’t have the light on. Also people with different physical ailments – obviously I see a lot of that, so people that had car accidents and some things. I think in a lot of ways getting people to acknowledge their bodies is a big thing because we're so disjointed from it, so there’s a lot of pain. That I worked in the clinic that way and then I like to introduce a lot of principles when I’m talking to them. Some of the things that are there in the Nytality Method that I used over there, just to help them put different things together. So I think ultimately just trying to find ways to find out whatever they’re suffering from that they can’t see, I help them see it. So there’s this aspect of awareness and consciousness that I really try to bring to the work that I do, that I think is really helpful in the big picture too.
Wes: So, if we were concerned about our health in terms of being pro-actively healthy, we don’t want to have issues down the line. I seem relatively healthy and okay, I don’t have any major issues or problems. What is the thing that you would recommend that I be aware of and either change or do pro-actively to maintain that healthy lifestyle?
Todd: The first thing I tell people is to work on centering their awareness in themselves and in their life, because we're also distracted with things. People are spending 3 hours a day worried about what’s happening in Egypt or something.
Wes: Right.
Todd: It’s tough to maintain your health with that. So if you could really spend some time, like for instance in the diet book, in the beginning, I tell you when you sit down to eat, try to pay attention to your body a little bit, try to bring your awareness here so you’re not trying to watch a newscast while you’re eating potato chips and you're 7 bags in and you didn’t notice it, so that’s a good chance to practice kind of being here, being in your body. Now, seeing what your mind is doing now, what kind of thoughts are you having? What kind of emotions are you experiencing? What’s triggering those kinds of things? So I think that the place to start with everything. Start to bring your awareness and consciousness into yourself now, and then build from there.
Wes: That’s a great place to start off and that’s a good basis point, awareness of your body. Now, when you learned acupressure and shiatsu I’m assuming that you’ve studied ancient therapies and modern therapies from all over the world. What else have you studied and what other things have interested you in terms of healing modalities and methods?
Todd: Yes, I went as ancient as I could get and as modern as I could get in the different categories if I could. So studying yoga was a big thing for me and Ayurveda, also martial art traditions and their ways of working with the body.
Wes: Right.
Todd: Some of them really get into health and they’ll give you these exercises. They’re like, “Here’s some exercise for working your liver.” When I was 16 I was like, “How did you even do that?”, because it’s so outside of the way we see things.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: Anywhere I could find anything… I’ll be up at 3 am reading about something like a native American traditions using herbs to help this.
Wes: Right.
Todd: Or meditation to help that, and I try to put it together in a way that’s useful now.
Wes: So, what’s the most interesting thing you’ve come across from ancient therapies or literature?
Todd: Probably in a lot of ways, that example I was just giving of being present now and in your body now. And I would also add to that, that a human being is bigger than we tend to think of it is. In the West at this time, we tend to think of ourselves as almost just an intellect with a body that’s running around. I really learned from those older traditions that you're much more than that. Then there’s a lot more of you put together and there’s a lot more going on with your intuition and your sense of self and your energy system and things like that. It really broadens the way I see the world and myself.
Wes: I don’t think a lot of people know about that or even understand that. Are we more than we actually perceive ourselves to be?
Todd: I would say yes. Again, if you really pay attention to yourself and you do that for a while, you’ll start to notice it. You’ll start to notice that there’s a lot going on in your thoughts. Then you tend to notice, because they’re almost running you and when you step back and when you look at them, you’re like “Oh wow! Look at this thought here, I didn’t know I was thinking about that.” Or if you look at your emotional self, then you're like, ”Oh! These emotions are kind of running me” and if you stepped back a little bit and you’re like “Oh! Actually I have more directions over these that might I thought”. Then you might notice that there’s a voice that’s inside of you. You’re like, “Wow! This is a very good idea”. You don’t really know why, and so you take a left rather than a right.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: And then you notice something that happens where normally wouldn’t have. That would have been dangerous and you’re like, “How did I know that?” The amount of time that’s kind of literally saved my life has been huge too and so I think we are just a lot bigger than we tend to experience. Often because we’re so distracted.
Wes: So, this is kind of like a, we’re connected to the universe kind of thing?
Todd: Yes, in a lot of ways. You can look at that probably, but you can get a little lost if you go that broad, or if you might just experience it in yourself and then you see it and you’re like, “Wait, how was I over here?”, and it certainly shows that you’re connected to the things that maybe you have not noticed otherwise. Like I said, save you and it can lead you to all kinds of interesting things, like maybe you’ll find your beautiful partner that ay, or whatever, because you went left instead of right. You didn’t know why, you just kind of felt it. Maybe you felt it in your heart, which is one of the things I talk about in the second book, is like you act and feel in your heart itself, like in your chest area. A lot of cultures used to talk about that. Why did the Azims talk about that? And the Yoga masters talk about that.
Wes: Right.
Todd: Some of the Japanese and you’re like, “Wait, these weren’t necessarily directly connected. How did they come up with the same idea? Because they really felt in themselves and were able to use it.
Wes: And there was a common conclusion and the conclusion they all reached was pretty much the same.
Todd: Yes, and they got to maybe a little different way, but if you kind of pull it apart and you look, “Oh! They’re doing the same thing in a similar way”. Just a little cultural viewpoint that stuck in there and you just have to filter through a little bit because every culture has its own bias that way and you’re like, “Oh it’s the same thing, it’s just different places”.
Wes: Fantastic! Now when it comes to health and living healthy. You have been through a lot yourself. You explained how you’ve lost a lot of weight and you did that through an approach that used your mind and your emotions and awareness about your diet and about your health. How about exercise or different apart from focusing on the food, what else did you focus on in trying to get healthier?
Todd: Yes, I really focused in terms of exercise and how it connected to my overall vitality and well-being, and then sort of upping my metabolism. So, rather like forcing myself to go to the gym and say, “Okay I will do 90-minutes of x”, I will go through and do exercises and say, “Can I still feel energetic after I do this and put on a little muscle?” I really like bodyweight exercises for that reason because it’s harder to overextend your energy in a day that way. Because I really know a lot of people who overextend themselves, and then they will end up eating a lot of weird food because it’s almost the same energy they’re working with, was powering the real power and there’s none left and so they’d be eating 12 bags of baked potato chips in a can or something like that.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: I like exercises where you're conscious of what you’re doing and you’re building muscles, but you also feel good at the end of it, so you’re never feeling depleted, but you felt like you got something done. So I did a lot of it that way. I did a lot of walking. I like walking quite a bit because it also stirs your digestion and back to that visceral manipulation concept. Moving everything inside, so movement itself is great. Obviously, I like martial arts, so I did a lot of martial arts forms built for strength and building muscle and things like that.
Wes: What kind of martial arts and what kind of things were included within those martial arts?
Todd: So for that, I was using a lot of Chinese martial arts, sort of Shaolin Kung Fu, in particular, it was quite good for my weight loss because you have all this dance work which builds musculature in your legs. Then they have all these methods for building strength through different kinds of tensions and different kinds of movements while your body is under different kinds of tensions, and it’s hard to hurt yourself, and it’s hard to overextend yourself with that for you to get some muscles. I might add some weight on top of that to build a little bit from there. But I found those things to be a little bit more revitalizing rather than de-revitalizing than being in the gym all the time, at least for me.
Wes: So, do you have an alternative for when the gym is closed for a couple of weeks or something? Do you do something at home?
Todd: Yes, I built a whole set of exercises that are based on the principles of Nytality Methods for working with your body that way.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: Different kinds of methods that are somewhat based on somebody’s yoga postures, as well as tensions in different positions so that you can get that body weight. It’s a little different than other people who did it.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: Because that’s the way I like it and eventually I’ll put those in some videos. So I like that kind of thing. Certainly, you could do different. There are yoga videos out there you can find, whether you’re using tension or you're holding yourself in different kinds of postures for five minutes and that is exhausting in a way. It could be more profound than you might think.
Wes: We always tend to focus on a couple of basic things when it comes to health. It’s outward appearance, but we all know that we need to focus on our inner health is wealth, internally like things like energy, vitality, our minds, our souls. The connection that we have between the two. We need to have them in sync. We have to have them working together. Our emotions, all those things combined. It can get quite difficult to focus on all these things at the same time. What would you suggest if somebody is thinking about, “Okay, you know what this is it, I have to start getting healthier. I know you mentioned centering on yourself but what are the first actual steps you would suggest that a person do?
Todd: Yes, if they’re starting from kind of nowhere? The first thing I would do is whatever is interesting to you and then make it as small as possible so that you can easily win. Like there’s no way to not win and so maybe you do one push-up.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: Maybe you say, “Okay, I’m going to stop drinking 6 cokes a day and go down to 5”.
Wes: Right.
Todd: And so you do that in 3 to 4 days and you’ll be like, “Okay I can do this” and you're starting to win and you want to make sure that you always win. Don’t set any goal that you can’t make it at the beginning.
Wes: Got it.
Todd: Maybe 6 months down the road, you can do that. but you want to make sure that you win and you build some momentum so you feel good about yourself. You are building your sense of self as you do that, because often people in that place don’t have a lot of sense of self esteem that they can do that thing that they’re trying to. So the smallest possible thing that you know you can win with.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: I would start there and I would start with what interests you and after a few weeks I would find the things that you don’t like, things that you don’t want to do the most, and just try that a little bit.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: So maybe you don’t like working out and so you say” Okay I’m going to do 3 wall push-ups because that’s the thing I hate the most” (laughs).
Wes: Right (laughs).
Todd: Or maybe you can’t give up coke, I’m just using those examples.
Wes: Right.
Todd: Because they are easy and a lot of people struggle with them. Whatever it is that you really don’t want to do, find the easiest way to look at that and say, Okay I’ll go to bed 10 minutes earlier or wake up 10 minutes earlier because that helps my job or whatever it might be. So I would start on those places where we can start pulling on the thread because it can build over time and like I said I like to find the things that are most difficult and just start the easiest thing possible. You have the thing you like to do, the thing you dislike to do and you’re a little of both and that will lead you into something bigger, and if you can do that while you’re focusing on yourself and paying attention to yourself at this moment now. You can watch with your mind and your emotions are keeping you from those things. So you may find out that you drink a lot of coke because you’re totally stressed at the end of the day and that sugar rush maybe the acid in it is helpful for you at the end of the day and you say, “Oh!” Then you’ll start to notice one of the things that could be really helpful is going through your day in a calm manner. So you figure out what’s making you so, let’s say angry at work, and you start to work on that.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: Say, ”Oh! By doing this project, it’s making things difficult for my health”, and everything will start to connect overtime working through that way.
Wes: Oh that Is fantastic! That is a really good starting point because usually, the most difficult step is the first one.
Todd: Yes. When you have no momentum, trying to get going is really hard.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: But once you get it going, you get it going in a way that’s easy for you. If you could just imagine like you got a big rock you want to move, if you try to push it uphill, it’s just going to roll back on you. But if you think about rolling it downhill, like what’s easy for me to do right now, kind of make sure that it went on and build its own momentum over time and then you’ll not try to push it uphill. It kind of works on itself.
Wes: What would you suggest to a person if they kind of lapse when they started on a good program and then there was, I don’t know, a Christmas party or had too many drinks or just gorged yourself on Thanksgiving turkey or something?
Todd: Yes (laughs).
Wes: And it’s like, “Oh my God! It’s back all of this is back! What happened to me?”, and then because a lot of times that happens, right?
Todd: Yes, and I would say you should expect it to happen. It’s going to happen at some point.
Wes: Right.
Todd: When it happens, just go, “Okay this part of the project – it’s not the deviation.” You didn’t fail.
Wes: Okay.
Todd: It’s just nothing, nothing works fully all the time right?
Wes: Right.
Todd: Nothing works 100% all the time. So one of the things I really got from studying those old methods is that things have to cycle. If you look at that Yin and Yang symbol.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: things are moving back and forth and so if you look at times like, okay this is where I’m in a bit of the yin cycle and if I don’t lose it, I don’t get myself really emotional, I don’t beat up on myself. Just kind of be okay with it and say, “Ah! it’s part of the cycle, tomorrow we’ll do this.” So people hit that point and then because they start to beat up on themselves emotionally or mentally and they start to tell themselves, “Oh, I suck I can’t do this, I’m not worthy,”… whatever the thing they start to tell themselves.
Wes: Yes.
Todd: If you could just stop that and just say, “Oh tomorrow I will do this”. You don’t emotionalize it and you see it's part of the pattern that you’re in rather than a failure, you can come out of it even stronger than you started because you’ve built up a kind of momentum.
Wes: Brilliant! If people want to get in touch with you Todd, how can they?
Todd: I would say the best way is through the website, which is www.nytality,com I have an Instagram which has the old name that I’m still using which is Nyholm Vitalife Method, I post there quite a bit. I also have an author profile on Facebook which is Todd Nils Nyholm, my middle name is spelled NILS. You can find me there and all those places will get to me. if you’re interested in these ideas I could pass them on to you.
Wes: Brilliant! Todd, thank you so much for explaining all these things to us in detail and I really hope you have a great successful launch of your second book. Looking forward to it.
Todd: Thank you and I’m really excited about it too and great to talk to you.
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