Can technology make America healthy?

Matt Welcome to the Great Indoors, a podcast where we look at the technological implications brought about by the next industrial revolution and how this can potentially help solve the biggest problems facing humanity. I'm your host, Matthew Robertson and joining me as ever is my copilot and producer, Larisa Yee. Now it's been two years since the start of the pandemic, and despite what appears to be improvements in the overall COVID 19 situation, the United States and North America, as a whole, is witnessing another pandemic. Now, if we turn back time almost two years ago in episode six of season one of The Great Indoors with Dr. Victoria Ngo, we discuss her research, which included a stark warning about the impact of these stressful events on long term physical and mental health. In that episode, we warned that Americans and pretty much everybody around the world faced a second pandemic, \one that would persist even after the physical threat of the virus had been addressed. Now, a recent Harris Poll indicates that this is coming to fruition. Survey responses reveal that physical health may be declining due to an inability to cope in healthy ways with the stresses of the pandemic. Many reported they have gained or lost an undesired amount of weight or drinking more alcohol to cope with stress and are not getting that desired amount of sleep. This is particularly true of parents, essential workers, young people and people of color. These reported health impacts signal many adults may be having difficulties managing stress, including grief and trauma, and are likely to lead to significant long term individual and societal consequences. Though it's not all doom and gloom, not all is lost. And during the pandemic, people harness technology and tried new ways of embracing mental and physical health exercises. Meditation apps and digital fitness classes boomed during the pandemic. And meditation apps such as Calm, which I've spoken about many times on this show and Headspace, soar at 20-fold increase in users eager to calm their anxiety. So today's big question is can technology make America healthy? My guest today to dig deeper into this is the one and only Beth Shaw. Beth is the author of four bestselling books on Health and Wellness, a pioneer in the wellness, yoga and fitness space in North America. Beth is the CEO and founder of YogaFit Training School. That's the global mind body education school, YogaFit. Now, in her latest book “Healing Trauma with Yoga and Mind-Body Techniques”. Beth provides tools and techniques drawn from her work as a recovery and health coach. She offers a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological and emotional changes brought on by trauma and depression. Now, I first heard Beth, as she is the host of radio show Make America Healthy, which airs every Wednesday on Voice America at 5pm Eastern. So I'd like to welcome to The Great Indoors today, Beth Shaw. So I'm really excited to announce our guest for today Beth Shaw. Beth, welcome to the great indoors. 

Beth Thank you so much for having me. 

Matt Excellent. And where are you enjoying the great indoors from today? 

Beth Well, I am enjoying the great indoors and outdoors in the lovely state of Florida. I'm in South Florida. 

Matt Nice. Very nice. Now this is a new question we ask our guests. If you could have an entrance, music or some intro music to start this podcast with, what would it be? 

Beth It would be this way, and it's a song by the 4 Non Blondes called What's Up? Oh, “What's going on?” 

Matt I think we got it. That's perfect. That's perfect. Well, that's excellent. That's a great start to it. Just for our listeners. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Beth. I gave you an introduction. Tell us a little bit about your work, what you're working on right now and how you got to be doing what you're doing right now. 

Beth Well, I'm the founder and CEO of YogaFit Training Systems worldwide, and we're the largest yoga mind body school in the world. Also, the author of four books, including YogaLean and my most recent book called Healing Trauma with Yoga. I got my start when I was six years old and I taught myself how to do meditation and guided imagery because I suffered from horrible migraine headaches, and no one in my household was very invested in fixing them. So I fixed them myself by teaching myself mind body tools. I've been working out since age 15, and health clubs fortunately fell in love with fitness at an early age. So it's become a lifestyle. And in the mid late 90s started yoga fit because I saw a need in the marketplace for safe, effective yoga to be taught, and also for more people to learn how to take control of their own physical and mental health using yoga and other mind body tools. 

Matt Excellent. Now, one of the things we've talked about over the last two years on this podcast, the one of the things that the pandemic has thrown up is the separate pandemic, the mental health pandemic that came up all over the world. Well, largely because of the lockdown and largely because of the fear of COVID. It's fair to say Beth that you focus on both the mental aspects and the physical aspects of health. Right. It's this combination. Is that a new phenomenon you know, fitness for me was always about physical running or aerobic exercise, but you bring those two things together. So when did you come to that realization that they were connected? 

Beth Well, you know, in ancient civilizations, they didn't see a separation between the body and the mind. Unfortunately, in our especially western civilization, we see the two as separate when in actuality there is there is no separation. If you're not taking care of your body, you're going to suffer mental health issues in some way, shape or form. If you're not taking care of your mind, you can put your body into reckless and harmful situations for just abuse it. So we really we need to treat the body and mind as the whole that it is.  

Matt There's two different ways of doing those things. So like I said, traditionally when it's come to training the body again, it was a pandemic. Then I started meditation for the first time ever, just two years ago. It came to me through an application for an app called Calm. I'll go through, you know, a meditation once a day, and I see the benefits enormously. And that combined with running, the combination of those two different activities, was beneficial to me. It's and I know you do yoga fits. I'm going to admit it. I'm a complete novice to yoga, so I'm really and I know Larisa is much more advanced than me. But is it fair to say yoga can bring those two things together, the mental and the physical stimulation and exercise? 

Beth Most definitely, yoga does bring the mental and the physical together. In fact, yoga the ultimate practice, was originally designed to ready the body for meditation. By practicing the different postures, you would get yourself to a state where you could sit comfortably for long periods of time and stay focused. A much like if you don't give a child exercise and you expect that child to sit all day long in the classroom, it's very difficult. So, you know, our bodies were made to move. And yet we need to find stillness, to connect with spirit, to connect with ourselves. I like to look at meditation as taking that trash out. You know, if you don't take the trash out on a regular basis, things pile up so that when we meditate, we actually it's a reset. We clear the mind. Even if you don't think you're clearing the mind just by engaging in the process, you get positive results. It's a muscle that just needs to get stronger. 

Matt Yeah. Is it something that is, as Calm I would say, in fashion, because that's discrediting it, all more people practicing meditation from what you can see as a result of the pandemic? 

Beth Oh, most definitely. Look, during the pandemic, people had to reach into their tool basket and use whatever they had at their disposal. Even those of us who had all the tools were still suffering. I myself was locked up in an apartment in New York City for the first three months of the pandemic until I decided to get in my car and drive to Florida. And you know, you're faced with yourself and you recognize that your thought pattern, if you have that consciousness and you realize that not all your thought processes and patterns are serving you. So with the practice of meditation and mindfulness and witness consciousness, we get a chance to see the neural pathways that keep getting ground deeper and deeper as we engage in the same thought process that may or may not be beneficial to ourselves, emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually. So meditation gives us a nice reset with all of that. We run a meditation course at YogaFit, actually several of them. And, you know, especially during 2020, we couldn't run enough courses. So I would say yes. Fortunately, yoga meditation, mind body has all gained in popularity in the past few years. 

Matt Yes. Let's talk about your latest book because this is fascinating, Beth. Healing Trauma with Yoga: Go from Surviving to Thriving with Mind-Body Techniques. Just give us an overview or an abstract you will have of this latest book. 

Beth Well, this book, fortunately, came out two months before the pandemic, so the timing could not have been better. And healing trauma with yoga really first talks about what is trauma. There's an assessment test, and there it's only a nine question test. So you can ascertain for yourself how much child childhood trauma you have or adult trauma. You know, most people have some type of childhood trauma. And so from there we go on to talk about how trauma affects the brain and creates all types of triggers and responses and where in our reptilian brain, where in fight or flight. A lot more of the time, especially if we've had trauma and then our prefrontal cortex, our executive function is not working as well, so we're not making good decisions. And so the book, you know, we talk about the problems and then we talk about the solution, which is how yoga and other mind body tools, meditation, breathing exercises, sound healing, Ayurveda, food choices, how that all goes into effect in your trauma response, your ability to handle stress, tension, anxiety, depression, PTSD and leaves us at the end of there's lots of yoga in the book also, obviously. But the leaves us the end my favorite chapter is living your best life chapter 12, and I give like 22 things that people can employ every day just to feel better. And I think especially during these times, like everybody should be reading this book and there are things that people can do that don't cost any money that can just make them feel better that day. And since you know, a lot of us are kind of living one day at a time right now, it's very helpful and very insightful book that provides a lot of valuable resources and insightful tools. 

Matt And I'm keen to dig into this a little bit more because I think it's fascinating. We've spoken about the mental health pandemic and the trauma people have gone through over the last two years. But I think I saw on your website that a lot of this came about through helping the United States and Canadian veterans that have come back from traumatic scenarios. Is that correct that? 

Beth That is correct. We have a program called YogaFit Warriors. We started with our work with the armed forces really worldwide. We were doing trainings on military bases in Germany, obviously U.S. Canada, and we have certain yoga techniques that we teach people that takes trauma out of the body without them even having to talk about what that trauma is. We've been running the YogaFit Warriors program now for over 12 years with a lot of success. It was actually designed by one of our yoga master trainers who is a lieutenant military colonel. I'll tell you a story. I have a friend from childhood. We went to summer camp together and her brother was my first boyfriend. He passed away, I guess, about seven years ago from a widowmaker heart attack and she and her mother were left to raise his children because then his wife died of cancer a year later. And I reconnected with her when I moved back to New York City from Los Angeles, and she was also working for Fox and some other news channels in the Middle East during a lot of the wars and hadn't had a lot of trauma from what she saw. She was on a ton of medication. She was consuming a good bit of alcohol, and I took her to this YogaFit Warriors training. We all went down to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we hope these trainings everywhere. It just happens that it was in the place that I've never been in Alabama, and we went there and she took the training and after the training, she was able to cut her medication in half. So I have seen from people close to me this YogaFit Warriors Training works and obviously we've seen with thousands of people that we've helped over the past 12 years that it's really helpful for anybody who is suffering mentally and sometimes physically. You know, there's a lot of chronic conditions, chronic pain issues that are really rooted in the mind and mental pain. So when we start healing the mind, we really also start to heal the body. 

Matt You mentioned that there's different types of trauma. There's trauma that can come from PTSD and what military personnel have to go through this childhood trauma. How does it manifest itself? How do people self-diagnosed that they're having an issue that can be addressed with yoga?

Beth First to diagnose, again, it's called the ACEs Test, which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences test. And it's really rooted more in childhood trauma. You know, did you have divorced parents, with someone in your house being battered? Did you have parents that were on drugs or alcohol? Were they incarcerated? Did you suffer any childhood sexual trauma? And then you can see know out of nine questions how many you answered yes to you. And then the higher your score is on the ACEs test, actually the higher propensity you have towards alcoholism, addiction, divorce, chronic job changes, suicidal thoughts, obesity. So we see that so much is really rooted in childhood trauma. And then we start to unravel how to heal the body and how to heal the mind. Because, you know, trauma is running the lives of and especially with addiction. Mostly everyone who is addicted to something, they're just self-medicating to feel better because they're suffering from trauma, they don't know what else to do about it. And then the chemicals or the alcohol changes the brain, and it's a downward spiral from there. 

Matt There is a higher trend in people recognizing trauma within themselves these days. Right. I think people are more open. They're more able to say, Yeah, I'm suffering here. I need help. And the reason why I talk about this is we did an episode with up here in Canada. There's a big mental health initiative that's run by Bell, Bell Let's Talk. And one of the main things that that initiative tries to do is to alleviate the stigma around mental health. And it's OK to say you're not okay. But is that something you've seen over the years with people coming to the realization that they are facing this trauma and they do need to do something about it? 

Beth Most definitely. I think the more people who are open about their mental health challenges and struggles, the more it becomes widely accepted and that it is OK if people need to start talking about it. I mean, quite frankly, the mental health implications of this whole pandemic are going to be ten times worse than COVID ever was. Yeah, people are traumatized. People have lost jobs. People have been isolated. People haven't been able to go to church, to worship, to dance together, to go to the gym. Many people use the gym, myself included, as their part of their mental health routine. I mean, I work out for my muscles in my body and all of that. But really, I work out because I don't feel good unless I've exercised that day. So for me, it's a very valuable spoke in that whole wheel of mental health. 

Matt Let's take my situation, for example. I talked about I started meditation two years ago. I've become much more cognizant of being healthy. I have four small children. And with me, the desire to try and get healthier, with all the stresses in life, the stresses of both work, the stresses of what happened in the pandemic, the stresses of being a father, all of these different things. And I thought, let's see how we can make things better because I think with me, I always struggled with sleeping. I'd go to bed things would be on my mind. 

Beth I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about that. 

Matt Yeah, I couldn't get things out of my brain. And then I would the next day feel tired, feel really tired, feel apathetic. I didn't feel as sharp as I could be. And anyway, just for me, doing the meditation helped massively and keeping healthy. But the latest thing I did, which I went now into two and a half months of this was I completely stopped drinking alcohol. And it wasn't like I was a huge drinker. I mean, I had my moments back in my day at university and various things like this, but I literally cut alcohol completely out of my routine, which would typically be maybe one or two glasses of wine in evening and maybe some beer at the weekend watching sports or whatever. And I'm now two and a half months into this and I feel pretty good. I'm sleeping really well. I never planned for it to go on this long. So give me your analysis, Beth, from a health perspective, mentally and physically, what effect this has probably had on me in the last two and a half months? 

Beth Well, first, I would like to congratulate you because I think that's awesome that you did that. 

Matt Thank you.

Beth I think that anytime we take away in substance that we think may not be the healthiest for us. And I can relate to that because I gave up my antidepressants during the month of January, which was also for me, a dry January, which then came into February because I did a liver cleanse. You know, I think that you're just gaining more consciousness, you're meditating, you're more aware of your body, you're more aware of how alcohol slows us down and makes us tired and doesn't allow us to get as much deep sleep. So I think you're on the right track. I think that's great. 

Matt And I do. I track my sleep through my and I'm looking at my deep sleep and I was really interested. You do your radio show Make America healthy right Beth?  The episode I can't remember the name of the expert you had on it was about making your brain healthy from just a couple of weeks ago. 

Beth Dr. Patrick Porter.

Matt That's correct. Yeah. I thought that was a fascinating episode because he talked about the different brainwaves waves, the state of the brain, from gamma through to beta through to delta, which is the deep sleep part of the brain. And I was relating it back to I checked my stats every morning. How was my sleep last night? Had I checked my deep sleep versus my light sleep patterns? But I thought that was that was a fascinating episode of your show, Beth. And I think again, there's an inherent health aspect to good sleep. That's undeniable, right? That's not even something. 

Beth I can relate to it. I wear an Oura ring. And it also tracks my deep sleep, and I'm obsessed with at least getting an hour of deep sleep a night. So I'll try different supplement natural supplements to see if something gives me more sleep. I'll try lowering the air temperature a couple of degrees and see if that helps. I sleep with a weighted blanket sometimes. So you know what gets measured gets fixed. Technology, fortunately, has progressed to the point where we can measure so much of what's going on with us. We can, you know how many calories we need to intake every day so that we don't overdo it. We can measure our sleep. We can also obsessed with walking at least five miles a day. So, you know, a friend of mine who's a doctor, she's also a yoga fit master trainer. She said of these devices are just more reasons to make you feel bad about yourself. But you know, you can say that, but you can also say these devices that we're using now can really help us achieve optimal health. I can't wait for the day that you can just like, kind of do your own bloodwork, you know?

Matt Let's switch gears into technology and how this is helped, because obviously you've been doing yoga fit that it's your thing. One of the things I know is back in my in the United Kingdom during the pandemic, that was when everybody was there was this huge trend, this huge phenomenon overnight of a guy called The Body Coach. I don't know if you're aware of him, Beth, but he's an English guy. And all of a sudden on Facebook, every day he would do virtual workouts, exercises for all the children, and the whole country got into this phenomenon. Even over here in Canada, my wife subscribed to the service. She might into a huge keep fit regime. She is all about nutrition and working out. But social media had encouraged this wave of people being conscious of their health and acting on it. Have you seen technology play a part in people participating in YogaFit and what you do both in your sessions? Have you been able to reach new audiences and engage them through technology and social media? 

Beth Yeah, I mean, love, most definitely. Pre-pandemic, we were running 15 conferences a year across North America that had an average of 250 people in them. And we were also running a thousand trainings live worldwide every year. So when all the lockdowns happened, we had to switch to an all virtual model, which we did within three weeks, and we were getting people from all over the world taking yoga fit trainings, you know because we have them on different time zones. We do trainings in Australia. We do trainings in Europe. So it really opened up our reach and breadth, which was really beautiful. I was also leading an eight week yoga lean transformation groups, and we have people from all over the world participate in. Getting that sense of community and camaraderie as they exercise, did yoga together. A technology definitely for YogaFit has been very helpful. And also, we have many different trainings that YogaFit like YogaFits Therapy program, and we do bring in certain different devices for some of our trainings. I personally use a lot of biohacking. I'm love biohacking. I go to all the conferences. 

Matt What is biohacking? 

Beth Biohacking is anything that we can do to make ourselves younger physically or chronologically. So we have our biological age at our chronological age. And if you're taking good care of your body and you're eating well and you're exercising and you're meditating and practicing yoga, you can actually be a lot younger than your birth certificate age says that you are. And also through technology, there are different biomarkers for us to track that telomere length and the like. So, you know, technology is really helping us, even though what I just read an article today from Dr. Mercola, who I'm a huge fan of. And that said that the U.S. death toll is rising like crazy. And we also know that obesity in North America is up to about 50 percent of the population, which is very scary for a number of reasons. You're going to have a lot of health conditions, comorbidities, contraindications, diabetes, heart condition, all of that. But also, you know, obesity affects everyone in your surroundings. It affects your animals that need a walk. It affects your children, your ability to show up in life. So I would only hope that more people will embrace technology as a way to get healthier. And that's what my show on Voice America.com. It's called Make America Healthy. It's all about how do we take the power back to take control of our own health physically and mentally. And what technology can we use? We've had people from BrainTap on. We've had the founder of Hapbee, which puts you into different brain states, including one, and I'm waiting to get my device, including one that puts you in a state where you had a couple of cocktails without you having to have a couple of cocktails, THC or whatever your thing is. We're having on the show a lot of people from the tech world right now describing their gadgets and how they can help us be healthier. 

Matt Well, and so I love the idea of biohacking. I think that sounds that sounds great. And the next thing you said after that, and I think this was the device in your trailer for that episode. 

Beth The BrainTap. 

Matt Which looks like a VR headset. Is that right? Explain that, if you will, for our listeners, because I felt that was because that provides sensory stimulation to the brain via lights and sound right to. 

Beth Yeah, it's sound therapy combined with light therapy that actually goes into your ears and into your eyes, but you close your eyes while you're doing it, and it can take you into different brain states. Now, according to Dr. Patrick Porter, a lot of people are deficient in the delta and the theta states, which are more relaxing. And then the ultimate spiritual brainwave to be in is the gamma state. And so there's some gamma trainings on there. I use my BrainTap probably four or five times a week. Sometimes I use it in place of meditation. Sometimes I'll use it with that theta or delta program just before I go to sleep and I have become addicted to it. I love it. 

Matt Yeah, I did because the first thing we we've been looking at the metaverse and virtual reality a lot. And the first time I saw the trailer for that episode, I saw it and I thought, Oh, that's VR, but then realized it was this device called the BrainTap that provided that and it sounded great. And going back to your earlier point, something that I think about a lot, you know, when we look at technology being able to provide the sensors to monitor obviously our way, our body mass of blood pressure, all those other KPIs that we need to act on. I think the real, the capstone, the holy grail of what technology can do is, like you said, bring in your bloodwork, bring in extra sensors to bring in all those KPIs, but then proactively be able to suggest something to you when it knows that you're heading in the wrong direction or you know, so effectively, you're prescribed automatically, proactively every day or, however, often it changes the means to turn your health around or if you're doing something wrong. I always find that a fascinating proposal in the future. 

Beth Yeah, it's truly amazing. I know my Oura ring will tell me if my body temperature is too high, if I need to be in a rest day, if my heart rate variability was too low or too high the night before. So there's a lot of metrics that we can get right now. And you know, I have said for years that our health is our most valuable asset always. And I would only hope that during the pandemic, people realized, Hey, if you weren't taking care of your health, chances are you're going to have some problems now. And if you were taking care of your health and boosting your immune system, good for you because chances are you're going to stay healthy. I know that was my experience. I had COVID. I thought it was PMS. It wasn't, for me, very big of a deal. I think it was worse when I got bit by a tick a few years ago and actually ended up in a hospital in Toronto, which is a scary story for another time. But you know, it's really all about taking risk personal responsibility of your body and your mind because nobody else is going to do it for you. By the time you get to a doctor, chances are you're on the road to a place called maybe too late. Yeah. So we all need to empower ourselves with technology with basic things like clean eating and exercise and yoga and meditation to take the best care of ourselves because it then becomes a ripple effect to everyone around you, your coworkers, your family. So and you become a source of light and empowerment for others when you're shining your light brightly by taking care of your health. 

Matt No, I couldn't agree more. And obviously, this is one of the things that hopefully is more permanent than temporary as we come out of the pandemic. It's not just, you know, people have said for two years, I need to do it as things to go back to normal that, you know, people fall back into the bad habits this needs. It's it needs to be, you know, continually at the top of mind of people as we move forward. Now, but with that in mind, I spoke a little bit before about my journey to meditation, which was by accident, even though I get the benefit of it, I'm a complete novice in yoga. I'll admit it. I've never tried it. I've never even really looked at it, maybe as I should. And for many people listening, they probably never tried meditation. On those two areas, what would be your advice? What would be the best place to start to get a taste of it? 

Beth We've got a lot of free resources on YogaFit.com. We have a resources page. We also have a bunch of free classes. Also on my personal website, Bethshaw.com. There are some videos and classes that people can take. YogaFit also has a YouTube channel with lots of classes on it. I would say to people, you know, start small, especially if you're if you're doing a lot of walking or running, cycling, you need to be doing at least 10 minutes of yoga to stretch out your hips, your hamstrings, your hip flexors, your low back after repetitive exercise. Because this will prevent you from getting injuries and getting tighter and tighter and tighter as any repetitive sport will do for us. Again, meditation, like so many other things, is just about showing up and engaging in the process. It's just like those days that you don't want to go to the gym, but you force yourself to go and 20 minutes into it, you're feeling much better and you're like, Yeah, I could stay here for two hours. It comes down to a lot of self-discipline, which is something I think a lot about. And can it be created in individuals to certain people have it, to certain people not have it, how can we strengthen that willpower muscle? We focus a lot on that in some of our yoga trainings because they all built in self-growth modules to them so that you're growing yourself while you're growing your knowledge of whatever discipline you're learning. It's time for people to really just make the decision. Like you did, probably with alcohol, you just make a decision one day and say, enough, I'm changing. Things have to change. 

Matt And here's an interesting thought, an interesting question. And we say here that age, you could do this at any part of your life. You could take up these techniques and the output will always be beneficial. But in this day and age that we live in, where one of the other things we've explored extensively is the extra pressure and stress physically and mentally that the youth the children have today. And one of the things my children have done at school is meditation. And that was unheard of in my days at school in the UK. Do you think yoga, meditation, mindfulness should be something taken more seriously as part of the school curriculum? 

Beth I most definitely. I mean, I would love to see yoga and meditation taught to all youth because children need coping skills. Children need to move their bodies. Children need to learn how to be kinesthetic. If you're going to injure yourself, oftentimes in life, your body will start to whisper before it starts to scream. The more body awareness we have, the better we are at sports and at life. So I think kids very much benefit from yoga and meditation and physical fitness in general. And again, children need coping skills now and coping skills that they can employ from within. 

Matt And again, let's face it, they're spending too much time on screens, gaming. They've been forced inside over the last couple of years. This this is the time, I say that as a father of four as well. Now as we as we start to move towards the end of our discussion, Beth, I've got some questions that I just kind of interesting and I just get your put. What's your favorite place to practice yoga? 

Beth Right now, I would say my living room because that's where I've been teaching and practicing a lot. I teach several classes a week online through our Yoga Lean Transformation groups and various virtual conferences. So it's the beauty of yoga really is that no equipment necessary. You don't even really need a yoga mat, although it is helpful. So it becomes the perfect exercise for these times, no Matter where you are, you can do yoga. I have done it in an airplane, you know, everywhere. 

Matt You, of course, started, as you mentioned in the beginning, quite early on your journey to this. But who's your biggest source of inspiration as an individual, both in this field and just in life in general? 

Beth My biggest source of inspiration is anyone who has the courage to speak out for truth, for peace, for people getting along and people acting from a place of kindness. 

Matt Excellent. Now as well, we talked about your radio show that that's also a podcast to Make America Healthy podcast, which is on Voice America Radio and you do it live on Voice America Radio 5pm, Eastern on a Wednesday. 

Beth Yeah, we go live on VoiceAmerica.com every Wednesday, but the shows also live on Voice America, so people miss an episode, they can go back. There's some really good episodes. There's one with Dr. Edward Group for Global Healing Center on cleansing the body and toxins. Next week, we're having Dr. Pam Peeke on to discuss the obesity crisis in North America. That will be an amazing show. She is a five time bestselling New York Times author and scientist. 

Matt I just thought I'd listen to it. I think it's great. And I think for our listeners, it's it's really eye-opening and interesting. And apart from that, what's next for you, Beth? What other projects do you have on the horizon right now? 

Beth I'm working on a TV pilot called Centervention about a total mind body makeover for individuals. I'm also working on a book, Yoga for Anti-Aging, which will be my fifth book. And I'm looking at doing another yoga lean cookbook because I cook most of my food and I'm always coming up with new healthy recipes and I never cook anything that takes more than 10 minutes. 

Matt OK, well, it's good. Efficiency, efficiency. 

Beth Got to be efficient. 

Matt Exactly. Well it's so we're going to go into our new regular part of the podcast. It's called TGI To-Go, Beth. 

Beth OK. 

Matt Now I'm going to ask you 15 multiple choice questions, but you only have two choices. And basically all you have to do is give me your preference on the two things I mentioned. 

Beth OK. 

Matt We'll get a good insight into you in rapid pace style questioning as it were. 

Beth Perfect. 

Matt So if you're sitting comfortably, we'll do TGI To-Go. So question one. Cats or dogs? 

Beth Dogs. 

Matt Fall or autumn? 

Beth Autumn. 

Matt Singing or dancing. 

Beth Dancing. 

Matt OK, here we go. The other question. Utkatasana (chair pose) or Bakasana (crow pose). 

Beth Chair pose. 

Matt Oh, OK. And why would that be? 

Beth It really works the glutes. I do a lot of chair poses in my classes. 

Matt All right. Savasana (resting pose) or Ananda Balasana (happy baby pose)

Beth Savasana. 

Matt Did I pronounce those correctly? 

Beth Correct enough. It's OK. No one expects you to know Sanskrit. 

Matt Batman or Spiderman? 

Beth Oh, Spiderman.  

Matt My son agrees with you on that one. Thailand or Indonesia? 

Beth Thailand. 

Matt Have you been to Thailand? 

Beth Yes, I'm going actually back to present at the Asia Fit Conference at the end of September, and I can't wait to go back. 

Matt Nice. This one might be a tricky one ice cream or chocolate? 

Beth Ice cream. 

Matt Cycling or running? 

Beth Cycling. 

Matt Verizon T-Mobile or AT&T? 

Beth Well, I'm with AT&T, but I yeah, let's just leave it there. 

Matt By the way, Erin Brockovich said exactly the same thing. 

Beth Okay, so we're on the same page. 

Matt We'll have to let our folks at AT&T know about that. Next question. London or Paris? 

Beth London. 

Matt Netflix or HBO Max. 

Beth Netflix. 

Matt But soccer or baseball? 

Beth Baseball. 

Matt Los Angeles or New York. 

Beth New York. I'm a New Yorker, born and raised. And I lived in L.A. for over 20 years. I would say, five stars New York. 

Matt Excellent. When are you coming back? Because obviously you are in Florida right now. 

Beth Well, I live in Florida now. Thanks to the pandemic. I am one of those, I'm just another statistic that fled New York. 

Matt And the final one TGI To-Go. Indian food or Italian food? 

Beth Oh, that's a hard one, but I'm going to go with Italian food, even though we take people to India every year and I do love Indian food. 

Matt Well, then you've just said my wife said to me before Indian food or Italian food, and I said, Well, actually, well, I'll let you know later on. So we're going to go Italian based on that. 

Beth Okay. 

Matt Thank you very much, Beth. Well, listen, I want to say thank you very, very much. I've really enjoyed our conversation. 

Beth Me too. 

Matt Thank you for joining. I encourage our listeners to check out your radio, show, your podcasts, your website and your book will pop all of it in the show notes so people can check that out. Any closing comments you'd like to, or thoughts to ponder for our guests to take away. 

Beth Thoughts to ponder. Remember that your health is your most valuable asset, so make sure that every day you're taking care of it. You can find me on Instagram at Beth Shaw Health. And it's really been a fun show today. Thank you so much. 

Matt Well, an amazing episode. You know, we take our health and particularly these days, our mental health for granted. And you know, in reality, these are the greatest assets we'll ever own. And despite this ever advancing, ever developing have a technologically advanced world. The health crisis surprisingly continues to grow, particularly among the young. Now, a big thanks to Beth. And you know what? I'm going to try out YogaFit courtesy of Beth, so thank you. They have a studio here in Toronto, so stay tuned. Please subscribe to our podcast on all the usual podcast channels. Leave a review or rating if you feel so inclined, it certainly helps us check out two of the Amdocs podcasts that are brilliant and available now. The Future of Tech with Avishai Sharlin and Points of View with our Chief Marketing Officer, Gil Rosen. Visit our website Amdocs.com/the-great-indoors. And we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of The Great Indoors. I'm Matt Roberts for Amdocs in Toronto. Have a great day wherever you are.