Podcasts about christina oh

Christina is the special guest chef and recipe provider in our Nourish Yourself coaching program that runs only once a year. We recently put out an AMA on Instagram asking what questions and anxieties are particularly present for you in this precarious post holiday moment when the New Year, arrives along with RESOLUTIONS SELF CARE and of course DIETS.We got so many wonderful questions, from what is ‘balanced eating' and how do I get there, to how to handle other peoples' body/diet talk. Today, we discuss your questions and provide (hopefully) some answers. We will be doing a part 2 early next month (when maybe a few dry-January/Whole 30 plans haven't shaken out as hoped). Feel free to comment with more questions to be answered in that episode!These are also the questions that are addressed in Nourish Yourself, our seven-week anti-diet coaching program that aims to equip you with the information you need to empower yourself around food and gain the confidence to make choices that work for YOUR life and YOUR body. Our winter 2025 course starts in March and enrollment opens in February—you can sign up for the waitlist here to be notified.During Nourish Yourself you get 7 Weeks of gentle focus, redefining the patterns and thought processes holding us back from ease and joy around food, cooking and even grocery shopping! The course also features Live Virtual one-to-one sessions with Cadence and a LIVE VIRTUAL GROUP COOKING CLASS with Christina Chaey to ground us in our own personal skills and goals.Let go of anxiety and overwhelm around food and 'diet'. Get the information and tools you need to find what works for you, your life and your body. FULL INFO HERE.I've also written about food and nourishment in these posts: Literally Everyone Else Lives on Carbs Guacamole Fulfillmentand 7 Decades of Self DenialCurious about working with me? Please check out my other offerings…Virtual Run Club enrollment is currently open and closes Jan 10th. Each series we start with a group coach call. 9 out of 10 participants begin by saying how much they hate running or are terrified to start. It's a truly beginner friendly program. Many VRC alums have gone on to create non-obsessive, joyful running practices, and even inspired our next level up Virtual Marathon Training Club.I also teach beginner strength and stability via Kettlebells and Pilates as well as several restorative classes and workshops including Anti-Anxiety Cardio and Fascia Release™ . All my programs are designed to gently shift our bodies into balance without the shame or ‘sweat is fat crying' mentality that infects so much of mainstream fitness. I hope you can find something here that supports you.You can also find plenty of free support on my IG HERETranscriptCadence: Hello, I'm Cadence Dubus. This is Busy Body podcast and today I'm here with Christina Chaey. I'm super excited to kind of co-host this conversation today with Christina because we are collaborating on the Nourish Yourself program which is rolling out this winter/spring to support everyone. Christina, introduce yourself and why you're here today.Christina: Oh, sure. Hi, I'm Christina Chaey. I use she/her pronouns, and I am a recipe developer, a writer, soon-to-be first-time cookbook author. I have my first cookbook coming out in early 2026. I write a newsletter on Substack called Gentle Foods where I write essays and contribute recipes really around a very aligned topic of you know kind of nourishing yourself and just meditations on I think finding peace with cooking and just finding ritual and practice in that process.Cadence: That's exactly one of the reasons why I reached out to you to do this program together, because your focus is very much in this space of accessible eating that's still delicious, exciting, interesting, not rote, you know. And also makes space for mistakes or jazzing up something from your pantry, like there's a lot of options. It feels very scalable. I really like cooking and I like eating, but looking at your recipes, I'm like, oh, I could literally take it to this next level. Or I can imagine someone who really is like, I've never really cooked something more complicated than like stir-fry. You also have options and you're very like clear about that in your Substack, like try this breakfast thing it's like three ingredients and I've been eating it all week and I feel like somebody who's like kind of looking at you aspirationally would be like okay, maybe I can try that, you know, and then you know see your photos from like the big holiday meals and stuff that you make that are really like, okay, I can see why she worked at Bon Appétit. And understand that there's a scale to go to, but it doesn't feel at all like, oh my god, I could never and I just follow her to be wowed all the time.So I wanted to bring that in because I really felt and feel like food appreciation and kind of food awareness, food knowledge is such an important aspect of developing peace around food. And knowledge in general, that's such a part of my brand, like how your body works, understanding why things happen, understanding what pain is, understanding what cellulite is, like understanding these things so that they aren't haunting us or kind of like hanging over us in some way. So that's a really important aspect of the program is that you really bring this like, you can do it, here's just ways to make hummus not be the most boring thing for you.Or, like, we literally do a live cooking class with you, which, you know, I think everyone experiences, like, oh, I'm doing it. It's happening. Like, I just made a meal that's going to last me several days, and it wasn't the scariest thing I ever did.Christina: Right, totally.Cadence: So we did an AMA that you beautifully articulated on your [Instagram] stories. We wanted to answer some questions today that are very much in line with what we talk about in the course. And the people that ask those questions, those are our peeps. These are who we hope are going to join.Christina: Yeah.Cadence: Talk us through what you put out there.Christina: Yeah. And thank you for that lovely introduction. You know, Nourish is something where I feel like I never took that course with you when you were running it, I think maybe a year before we started working on it together, but I wanted to. I was very intrigued by it. And even as someone who works in this industry, who has worked in food and worked in food media and restaurants and whatever for the last decade-plus of my life, it's just funny because I'll read a description of the Nourish course on your website and I'll be like, I need that! And all to say the things that we're talking about today, the questions that we're examining and hopefully trying to shed some light on, one: I feel like I want to emphasize to people like these are not the right answers. We're not coming with right answers. We're not coming with like definitive science or whatever. Like that's not what I do. I feel like what I try to do is examine sort of like the emotional and the stuff that we kind of hold on to that's like behind the questions. Like, okay, what are the things that we're really feeling that are driving some of these anxieties and fears and guilt? And how do we look at these things with a bit more compassion? And I feel like that's something that you share as well.Cadence: Another way to say we're not giving the right answers is that really the way that I teach and coach people is what is called in the industry “client-led,” meaning my role is to be like a shepherd, a guide. I really believe people have the answers in them. I think we are all beautiful, sentient beings and really we kind of know. We're like plants growing towards the light. We kind of know where we want to be.Often we don't have the resources which could literally be knowledge, straight knowledge. So that's literally what's in our course. Like the three workshops that people get, one is just like, what are carbohydrates, protein, fat? What are they doing? How do we digest them? Did you ever sit down and really look those up and learn about how they break down your body? Or have you just been reading like pop diet information from various magazines and being like carbs fat protein good. If you don't really understand how these work, you're always going to be just at the mercy of the next kind of fad or headline or whatever. And also it could just be someone creating space, which I think is a big part of we're doing, like a container to help you have insight. Even like a yoga class is basically a space for people to breathe, be self-reflective, go internal, be restful. They might not be able to provide that for themselves regularly.Christina: Totally.Cadence: But they're like, oh, I love this class that I take every Saturday morning. Who cares what the moves are? What it is is this calm space where the lights are dimmed and there's nice music. And maybe that's really the value of that. So I also really always, and I think this is also a place that our values align, I am always steering people away from anyone who's like, “This is the right way and that is the wrong way.” That is a huge red flag immediately because there isn't a way that works for every single human, and you know there are like general rules of non-self-harm and things like that don't poison you know but one person's like ideal way of eating can be completely not workable for another person based on all kinds of things. So that is literally why the diet industry exists because it's complicated. If it was simple, that whole world wouldn't work.Christina: Yeah. You know the other thing I was going to say is that we are only human. We too are people and consumers of media and just like, crap in the world. Yesterday as I was doing some prep for this episode, I totally got got by one of those sponsored ads that are popping up all over my Instagram that are like, “This is the way that you're going to eat right and everything's going to change and your skin's going to clear up and you're going to lose 20 pounds and you're going to blah, blah, blah and then, and then it'll be over for all of you,” you know? But I totally got got. It was an ad from some kind of low FODMAP-specific food delivery service. But the ad was like, it was aesthetically attractive, it was showing all these yummy foods, it was talking about, you know, how the service makes it easy to go through all the steps of what it means to follow a low FODMAP diet, which for anyone who doesn't know is just, It's a certain kind of diet that's often prescribed by doctors that involves specific phases of eliminating like a ton of foods and then reintroducing them slowly. And I was just like, wow, this sounds great! I love this! I need this. And then I was like…but I don't! I was like, before the second I was watching this ad where it was talking about these specific phases and how this service was going to help me achieve all of them, this thought has never crossed my mind before as something I might want or need in my life. But the temptation to just have like an easy answer, or I think the right answer, all these things we just talked about is super real and it continues to be something I navigate in my own life, which is why I appreciated that so many of the questions that we got from people really followed a few major themes.Number one, thank you to everyone for sending these amazing questions. We got dozens. And I think some of the major themes that I noticed in these questions were, you know, a real concern around this “right way” to eat. A lot of stuff around restriction and moderation and finding balance, which I have a lot of thoughts about, and I'm sure you do, too. Ingredient-specific fear mongering, so I would say that's anything related to fears around sugar or carbs or seed oils or whatever it is, this messaging around “evil foods.” And then I think another huge one was just handling when other people around you are engaging in this sort of harmful talk around dieting and other toxic mentalities around food and bodies.Cadence: A bunch of the questions also were with like domestic partners which is super challenging.Christina: Okay so I have a question for you, which is like, do you have a question that you feel like immediately struck you as like, oh my god, great question?Cadence: I have a few. They were all so good, they were great, so I think there's kind of a theme, there's like sort of a few questions that get mixed into one, which is all this kind of like how to frame healthy eating without that turning into restriction, how to eat well and balanced without giving up things that you like. How do I be healthy without overanalyzing everything that I'm eating? These are all in this same kind of Venn diagram of eating without freaking out, which I think is very much what we try to address in the Nourish program. Cause I think that there's a billion people out there, mainly women and femme-socialized people, who probably had much more extreme, disordered eating when they were younger, have kind of healed that to a point. They're not doing the more extreme behaviors that they did, you know, in their teens or their twenties. But now they're kind of in this nowhere zone, this ether where they're like, okay, I know what I shouldn't do anymore. I'm not micromanaging my meals like crazy or I'm not starving or binging or doing these more intense things. But I still have enormous anxiety, you know, and now it's just kind of floating around constantly and it's almost like I'm doing an impression of somebody who eats well and balanced, but I don't really know what that is. I don't know if that's resonating in my body. And it makes one really vulnerable to those kinds of Instagram ads because of course you want someone to go, “this is the way” or “stop eating this” or “all seed oils are killing you,” you know, “your coffee is rotten.” Like all these things. Have you heard that one, how the coffee beans are all rancid.Christina: I don't want to hear it. I have, I have, I just willfully tune it out.Cadence: Yeah, exactly. So I think that person, like that is this person who's educated and food aware enough that they're not living on completely super high processed food, but they are literally worrying, should I not be eating seed oils? Or, you know, is every time I eat a pastry or, you know, some salami, pepperoni, something that's processed in that way, is that horrible? And then I think with that comes a lot of restriction in ways that are maybe more subtle, but that's just the anxiety piece. Like a lot of just like, “I never have sugar” or “I never have dessert” or like, “I don't keep X, Y, Z in my house.” It's not a really joyful, free place. Even if from the outside, that person looks like, oh, they're eating a sandwich. They had avocado toast for breakfast. Like, what are you talking about? They seem fine.Christina: Yeah. As I was listening to you talk, I was reminded of something I've been working on a lot this year, which is just this idea of positive visions. I think what you were saying was basically like, if you're coming from this place of what not to do, if that's one column, this other column of what to do is not self-directed. It's not self-informed. It's not something that you're actively pursuing. All you're doing is pursuing something that you don't want to do. And so it totally makes sense that it then leaves this morass of just like, well, what do I do? And then it is this perfect funnel for all kinds of information and misinformation to come through, and at that point, it's just like no wonder everyone is confused about everything all the time. I actively feel like someone who counts myself as part of that demographic often, and this is my profession, which sometimes I forget that means I know more than the average person about a lot of this stuff. And yet here I am still feeling confused about plenty of things.But yeah, I mean, I think I'm curious to know what conversations look like with clients of yours and people that you work with around this idea of like, well, how do I do it? How do I do it right? And how do you go about shifting that to, well, maybe it's not objective, how do I do it right in an objective, singular way, but how do I make it right for me?Cadence: Yeah, exactly. So that's part of what we address in the program and when I work with people one-to-one, one thing that I ask is that they keep a food diary, which is different than calorie counting. I'm not asking for portion sizes or like how many grams of XYZ. Really, I just want to see a picture of their day because literally a picture of what you're eating says a lot. Like if you're getting up at four in the morning because you have a long commute and your first meal of the day is at like, 5:30 in the morning, that's going to be a very different picture throughout a day. That's a super long day if you get home at like 7:00 at night and you're going to bed at nine or whatever you know, versus someone who gets up at 10:30 in the morning and their first meal of the day is at 11, 11:30. I literally look at everyone's journals and then we just start talking about like, what is your lifestyle? Like what makes the most sense for you? Do you cook? Do you have time to cook? Where do you get your food? Do you like to do that? You know, this is how we start to remove the barriers.Like if you really find it hard to find time to shop, can we prepare your pantry and your shopping lists for when you do shop to really set you up so that you don't have to shop very much. And you still have a lot of options that are nourishing and balanced for you at home. And just literally start to create those creatively together. Like what are snacks that you can have on hand? Like what does a solid day look like for you? And hopefully with the self-awareness that we build in the program, people can also notice like, oh, I actually felt really good when we made XYZ plans, or that didn't work for me, I got really tired or my digestion was off, blah, blah, blah. Great, let's keep, you know, tweaking that to make it work for people.That's why, you know, dieting and various prescribed programs just don't work because it's literally just like putting something on top of someone. And like if you've got kids or you're up really late or whatever, suddenly your little meal plan just doesn't work anymore because it doesn't allow for variation and and that's why everyone quits eventually, I mean one of the many reasons.Christina: Yea. And this is where I feel like it can be so helpful to really challenge certain binaries and certain assumptions that we hold about food specifically. Like I noticed there were a couple of questions that people asked or comments that people made about snacking.Cadence: Right.Christina: And there's such a demonic kind of reputation that snacking has where it's the enemy. Snacking is my weakness. Like it's garbage, whatever. But to me and I think something that we emphasize a lot in this course and in our own philosophies is like the context of it really matters, where if a snack at a certain time of day is going to be the difference between you feeling like you're going to crash and you know binge at night and end up feeling horrible like right before you go to bed or whatever the scenario may be, then that is something that I would you know, I would advocate for you to eat that snack. And then I think from there it becomes a question of just like I think it's about a willingness to engage with what you're actually sort of feeling and how you mentally and physically are actually processing and digesting in the purest sense of the word, like the input.I feel like we have talked about this before, where…sorry I have to gather this thought. Oh yeah, with binaries, I think another one that comes to mind is this idea of “processed food is bad” or “fast food is bad” or whatever. And I'm thinking about someone who was in one of our courses a while back who, oh my God, I'm sorry. Can you hear the cat like screaming? I fed him specifically right before this so that he would not scream. But here he is being nourished again.But anyway, yes, this idea that processed foods are bad, fast food is bad. And I was thinking about this person who was in our course like a little while back, who I think she spent a lot of her day in her car for work, right, like that was just the reality of her life and her lifestyle. And that is a case where it's like, okay, you know that your lifestyle that requires you to get up in the morning and be in a car for an hour or two hours or something first thing in in the morning, that is not the person who is going to wake up tomorrow and be like, I'm gonna make a two-hour trad wife-style home breakfast for myself every morning before I get into my car, you know? Like that's not that's not going to be the right thing for that person. However, something that might be right for that person is, as you said, some education around what kinds of options might make them feel better during that car ride. Maybe it's about just grabbing the egg wrap at, you know, your drive-thru in the morning that you can eat in the car and getting that combo of protein and carbs and et cetera will end up making you sort of feel better throughout the day than a different choice. And those are the kinds of things that I feel like it can be really hard to know how to ask those questions if you don't know that those are the questions.Cadence: Yeah, exactly. That's a great point. And I think there's also an assumption that to change, it has to be somewhat like really drastic. I think that's very much what marketing and doing this around the new year, we're doing this intentionally because this is the time that there's just so much of like basically make a drastic change. The one that you fell down, it was like, “all your problems are solved like forever!” Like there are these really big promises. And it could be these baby steps of, what if you make a better choice at the drive through, start to notice how that feels. Maybe that turns into, oh my god, I can pre-make little egg McMuffin things at home actually and now I've just reduced like the salt and the grease and the this and the that, but like, let me get there slowly in my own time instead of taking that person and expecting them to make homemade granola every morning and like you know source a zillion beautiful nuts and grains and all this stuff. Like that's just that's not gonna happen.Christina: Yeah, and I think too, just being careful to unsubscribe from the…I'm not sure how to call it, maybe the “hierarchy of health” where it's like, you know, homemade granola is great. Homemade egg muffins are great. I am not really interested in telling someone, like, that that is a better choice for their life. Because it might not be, you know, and that's where I think it's so interesting to talk about other ways that we define health for ourselves, other ways that we define balance, where so often these things can look so explicitly like it's only about you know how many grams of carbohydrates you're eating in a day or only about how much unprocessed food you're eating or whatever it may be and it can feel super rigid. And in fact there are other determinants that I prioritize in my life or other things that I value. Maybe I'm someone who like the time I choose to spend not making homemade whatever is time that I would rather spend taking a 20-minute walk, do you know what I mean?Cadence?: It always makes me think of when I talk about this kind of like, what is “healthy,” you know, how much attention do we want or need to put into these aspects of our lives, specifically food and movement and those kinds of like health and wellness categories. I think of a couple of clients that I have and have had in the past who are doctors, like surgeons, emergency room doctors, and a client I had a long time ago who was in some kind of like creative I don't even know what he did. He worked for a big media company and would put out these really huge products of some kind. Big creative projects, videos, things happening in spaces. I think it's the kind of company that Google would hire to do a big event for them or something.Christina: Got it.Cadence: And all these people loved their jobs. Love, love, love their jobs. Huge amount of satisfaction, creativity, meaning. The surgeon in particular I'm thinking about, she would tell me she would do eight-hour surgeries on a moment's notice. That's being an emergency room surgeon, someone comes in with multiple gunshots, you go from chatting in the hallway with your colleague to eight hours straight on your feet, full focus. You're not being like, guys, I have to stop every three hours for a snack. Like, they don't get a pee break. I don't know how, I don't know how they do it. But she, and I mean, I would ask her, I was like, how do you like, what does that feel like? And she was like, you're just so like, this is how there's different people in the world for her and the way her brain works. She's like, you're so focused. Like, I don't have any thoughts about like, I have to pee or that I'm hungry. She's like, once I finish, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so hungry. Like all this stuff, you know, but yeah, doesn't cross her mind. She's just completely immersed. And similarly, this person who did the creative media stuff, he had crazy long hours. He just worked insane hours. It was 100% taking a toll on his body. He knew it. He was always straining and spraining things. He was eating all over crazy food, no consistency of any kind. But he was really honest that he was like, I love my job. I love my life. Like I'm not willing to change what I'm doing right now. Maybe later he would, you know, but he was just like, this is what I worked my whole life for and I'm not going to like get like, you would get up at six to like immediately start working at home, take a shower, grab a quick snack, get on the subway, be at work. Like, he's not fitting in a 20-minute stretch session there, you know?Christina: Totally.Cadence: And I'm like, I respect that dude. Is that the body that I want to live in? No. But, like, he is super fulfilled in a different way, and I value that. Like, I'm not seeing a sad person who's feeling lost and confused and uncomfortable. He's like, this is the life I've always wanted. And similarly, with people in the medical field, a lot of times the environment dictates how they can take care of themselves, and that's just like a cost-benefit analysis. And to expect that person to drink a green juice in the middle of their 24-hour shift is just illogical, basically.Christina: Yeah. And that really brings up a lot of thoughts for me around how my conception of balance as it pertains to food just continues to evolve as I get older. I think where I am today I would say feels much more like balance doesn't mean that you're perfectly balanced in the middle of the seesaw and, neither here nor there is teeter-tottering to one side at all times. I think it's much more like I've come to believe in this idea of balance as rooted in resilience, which I think is also something that you and I both value a lot philosophically. The reality is that life brings different things to either side of the seesaw constantly. And balance is really about knowing where your center is and how to get there, no matter where you are on that seesaw, if that makes sense.Cadence: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I write about a lot in my Substack, that we can't aim for sameness. Like sameness doesn't exist.Christina: Yeah.Cadence: Sameness is the perfectionist idea that I'm always going to approach every day, every meal, every problem, every setback with this perfect solution or this relaxed, optimistic, knowing way. But consistency, resilience is kind of the “two steps forward, one step back” thing. When I was in my twenties, I used to run myself ragged, not eat enough, not because I was having disordered eating, but because I was just a dumdum 20-year-old who was just not bringing snacks and being like, whatever. And I would get crazy hungry, eat too much in that I felt ill or like, it's just not nourishing, you know, regularly felt like it was too much for you. And it, and regularly kind of felt like I was going to faint or like shaky, you know, like not, it did not feel good.Christina: Right.Cadence: I have developed enough knowledge, skill, self-reliance, connection, confidence with my body, other resources, just like better planning ahead, joining the [food] co-op, things that give me resources for literally having better snacks around, that even when I still run myself ragged, I don't drop all the way back to that way of handling things. I might still get to a point where I'm like, oh my god I'm so hungry, but I'm not so hungry that I'm like eating an entire pizza on my own or just like cleaning out my whole fridge I'm so hungry like oh my god I'm so hungry I'm gonna eat my meal now you know?Christina: Right.Cadence: And I think like that's a place, that's a promise, you know, that I want to give people. It's like, I can give you the skills that you can lift out of kind of where you're feeling now. So you just have like a little more resilience to fall back on because you will get sick, interrupted, overstressed, overworked, go on vacation, have in-laws in your house for too long. All the things that do make it almost impossible to be like, I'm having my yogurt and chia seeds.Christina: Like you could choose to not do those things, I suppose, but really the consequence is that your world just becomes smaller and smaller. Like, that's not the life I'm trying to live, personally. And I continue to be on this journey, but it's taken me quite a long time to get to the place where I am now, where, you know, I was just thinking about growing up with women's magazines in the 2000s when I was a teenager and how balance with food, for me, my conception of balance with food is really rooted in some of that crap I was consuming during those years where balance was like, an always variety-packed 1200-calorie daily input that ends with a square of dark chocolate, you know? And it's like, well, I don't want a square of dark chocolate all the time. Does that mean I'm doing it wrong? Like it's just so funny to think about how much that defined these long-term ideas I have held around what it looks like to be balanced. And it's something that I find was really echoed in a lot of these questions that we got from people that were around, you know, like staying “healthy” but with “balance.”Cadence: Yeah, exactly. That is something that I address in the workshop. Literally one of the first questions I ask is like, what is healthy? What does that mean? What do we mean when we say that? And I just want to add, when you were like, we could avoid all those things, the social situations, the going out, the traveling, and then our life gets really small. And I would say what I think happens for people, is instead of avoiding those things, they just live in fear of them. They're excited for their trip to Cancún, and they're terrified that they're going to be drinking and eating too much and all this stuff. They're super excited to go to Christmas and New Year's or whatever holiday they're celebrating. At the same time, they're like, oh, there's going to be all these cookies and stuff. And there's this sense which I have addressed in several kind of social media posts that I've done, this idea that like one thing, one event, one meal, one handful of cookies is setting you down this dark path or undoing everything. And that's such a reductive way of thinking. And it's fed so much by like women's magazines. Like, that your guilty pleasure, your naughty treat, all this kind of stuff. Really what we're trying to build is a resilient engagement with our nourishment, with food, via appreciation, via just resourcing, with our knowledge, with our understanding and intuition with our bodies. Because like a cookie or a holiday meal or a two-week vacation, it doesn't, literally how our bodies work, how our metabolism works, it really doesn't affect you the way that we think it does. Sure, you get bloated, maybe. I mean I went to Italy for like 10 days and I definitely came back and I was like wow, two plates of pasta and a bottle of wine every day does make a difference. But also since I don't live in Italy sadly, I didn't worry about it because I knew I was just going to come home and go back to my usual way of eating, which is a much, much sadder version in comparison to eating in Italy, basically.Christina: Right, right.Cadence: But I want to give people that kind of confidence, wisdom, that like you can go to a party and go bananas if you want. And then you just go back to the way that you normally take care of yourself and it just doesn't matter. And I want to really relieve people of that anxiety and guilt and you know. A bigger question which we like can't even address here is like, if this holiday period is turning into some kind of spiral for you where you are really feeling that you're doing a lot of imbibing in a way that doesn't feel good, but is kind of this release and now you kind of can't stop and that's like a whole other thing to address you know and that is probably more about like restricted behavior at other times and shame and messaging that you're having. But just the general person who's like freaked out because their friend brought cookies over for them and left them at their house and they're like well, now I'm gonna eat that whole plate of cookies. Yeah, you are, and then they'll be gone and then there won't be another plate of cookies and you'll just go back to your normal life and it's just like, it's really okay.Christina: Right, right. I mean, I think it's really about this idea of, and this is from a question that someone asked about, like, what helps you with food fear? Like, i.e. eating bad foods, bad things will happen if I eat X food, etc. I think so much of it is around just that boogeyman of that bad thing that's going to happen that remains undetermined, undefined, nonspecific. I think fear grows and thrives in non-specificity.Cadence: When we don't really know what we're talking about, you're so much more susceptible to someone saying that nut oils are destroying your digestion. And you're like, I guess? I don't really understand what digestion is actually!Christina: Right, right, right.Cadence: Like if you were to be like, tell me what digestion means. What does that actually mean? What happens when we swallow a piece of food and what happens? Where does it go? I don't think many people could really do that.Christina: “I don't know, but it's bad.”Cadence: Yeah, exactly. “But it's perilous at every stage!”Christina: I know we have to kind of wind it down a little bit, but I wanted to make sure that we talked about all the things we wanted to talk about.Cadence: Yeah, I can actually go for another 15 minutes if we want to answer some specific questions.Christina: Oh, nice. Okay. Well, I wanted to make sure we talked a little bit about this behemoth topic of handling other people's diet talk, because there were quite a few questions around that. I enjoyed one question that was, “When people around you talk dieting do you dissociate, push back, or a secret third thing?” I love a secret third thing joke. But you know, a lot of like how to deal with parents who are passing on harmful diet culture rhetoric to kids or moms who have disordered eating who always want to talk about it, that kind of thing.Cadence: I think it's super hard because I notice when it happens around me, a lot of people say things where it's like so quick and it's not the movies, I'm not someone who could just right away like fires off a zinger, you know.Christina: You mean like in response?Cadence: Yeah. In reality, I'm really taken aback. I'm just like, oh my god, that's where your headspace is right now? I thought we were just having sushi together. Like, what? And I found recently, we were out with couple friends of ours that, as couple friends tend to go, we're not like super best friends, super intimate friends with them. And the woman in the group at some point was like, oh, I just like to, we went to dim sum, which I love to do. And I didn't realize that she'd never really experienced the whole experience. If people don't know what dim sum is, you go to these cavernous restaurants in, at least in New York, this is my experience. And they have carts that go around with all these amazing dumplings and whatever you want. Endless options. Little cakes, little this and that. And there are little plates with two to four to six little items on there.Christina: The pinnacle of small plates eating, truly.Cadence: Yeah, seriously, yeah. And the whole point is you go with a group of people and then there's just so much food on the table and everyone's trying things and it's super fun, it's just like such a fun experience. And she kind of was like, slowing down and I was like I want to order another one of the shrimp noodle things, those are my favorite, and she was like, “Oh I think I'm done, I really just like to taste different things or something. Like basically she was trying to say like she doesn't eat a lot, she just like, bites things? It was a nonsensical statement. And I didn't have a response. I think what I often do is model my own comfort, you know?Christina: Well, because like, what are you going to say to that?Cadence: Exactly. But I want to address this person's question in that sometimes people literally say, “oh, I'm not going to eat that.” “I'm trying to be good” or “I'm cutting out X, Y, Z.” And that's easier to be like, “oh, I don't really engage with food like that.” Like, I don't really believe in that. Anyway, moving on. Or just be like, hope that works for you! Moving on. But I think a lot of times people say things in a more subtle way. Like, “I just like to take bites” or like, you know, some weird subtle thing that is kind of a, yeah, it's a diet. It's a restrictive diet-y way of shading what's happening. And in those situations, I try to just be like, “Well, I like to eat until I'm done eating. That's what I like to do. So I'm going to order my shrimp noodles and I'm going to eat them.” And I'm not going to make a big show of it. And I'm not going to go, “Oh, I ate so much” and I'm not going to go like, “No dinner for me tonight,” you know? I'm literally just going to eat my damn food and move on and hope that you'll notice that that seems like a more relaxed way of being.Christina: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's tricky. I don't really know. I'm trying to think about what I do. I feel like I want to think more about how to approach situations like this, because as it stands right now, often it's just, as you mentioned, it's so quick that I don't really have time to process what I'm hearing, much less a response. Also, I think it gets really tricky because of autonomy and like, this is your prerogative and this is your body and your experience and who am I toCadence: I have this client who has parents that are really bonkers with this stuff, they're always on diets and it's very, very hard for her to go visit them. I think when it's something like that, where it's an intimate relation, it's a parent, it's a partner, it's a super close friend that you see a lot that you do things with. I think you can literally make a boundary and just say, “Hey, you know, I'm glad like whatever, that's how you do stuff. I'm really not in that.” I think there's enough media around diet culture that most people understand that some people are really against dieting. And you can just be like, “I don't want to hear that kind of stuff. It's actually upsetting for me or it's stressful for me.” Like, you know, I think that's fair and still can respect, they can do what they want. And I think it's also okay to internally judge and just be like, it doesn't work. Whatever they're doing is not great. It's not positive. So like, you don't have to share space with it. You just don't. You can just be like, your mom that's cutting out all dairy and wheat and going on weird crash diets every six weeks, it's not good. You don't have to kind of enable that by letting them blabber on about it. You can just be like mom, is there someone else that you can share this with because I actually find it stressful and I'd rather we talked about something else.Christina: Yeah I agree. I do think in certain relationships that can be a good strategy for sure.Cadence: Virginia Sole-Smith had something in a [podcast] episode that she had or something. I don't know if it's her quote or someone else, but she, I learned it off of her stuff. If someone literally, if you're at a buffet and someone, whoever it is, is like, “Oh, I'm being bad” or whatever, that kind of thing, or like, “we're all dieting tomorrow”. Her response, which I have memorized so that I can throw it out if I'm ever in that situation, is just to say, “Oh, it's too bad how diet culture makes us feel like we have to earn our food” or whatever the situation is. “It's too bad diet culture makes us feel like certain foods are good or bad.” Because it really puts it on them, like, we already agree, right? It's really too bad, right? It forces them to…it will probably make them be quiet, basically.Christina: I mean, that's clever. I like that a lot. I also think that it does a good job of framing it as like, we are all on the same side of being affected by this systemic issue.Cadence: Yeah.Christina: We might not hold the same beliefs or philosophies, but we are both subject to the same messaging that is objectively harmful. And I think even people who engage in those behaviors often are aware, as we've talked about in this episode already, that like, this is not, you know, this is not it. It's like, all you know is what you don't do.Cadence: Exactly. Exactly. It's a little opening door of like, there's a little empathy in there that possibly could spark a conversation, or not, but it might just give them a little something to think about, too. if you care, you know, to kind of leave them with that, that they might be like, right.Christina: Yeah. That's a good one. I'm going to pocket that one for my own life.Cadence: I really liked this question: How do you figure out how to build a nutrition plan without a nutritionist? I love this question because, kind of to your point earlier about the hierarchy of health, we tend to also outsource our health and our judgment, you know, like positive judgment about what we need to like an authority figure, you know?Christina: Right. Like you tell me what is good or bad for me.Cadence: Yeah. The doctor told me I need to do this or that so I guess I do. We really love when people tell us what if we're wrong like we just love all that. And similarly I think there can be kind of like lore that the only way to be healthy is to have an authority figure tell you what to do, which is also why the marketing works for like the one that you fell down. It seems really authoritative right, it was like “I have all the answers” and you're like “Great!”Christina: I'm like, “Great, I love answers.”Cadence: Yeah, exactly. And also I want to address that we are not nutritionists, and that's intentional. Like I actually at one point considered getting a nutritional degree.Christina: Same.Cadence: And then I realized that it was just really not, again, how I wanted to engage with food. I think that we have too much over focus on grams of protein and how much carbohydrates and all these kinds of things, people are very worried about that. And it's kind of missing the forest for the trees. Really, if you can just, you know, eat a variety of foods regularly, consistently, and eat regularly. Most people really need to eat more, which always like blows peoples' minds. Even if people consider themselves overweight, usually they're skipping a bunch of meals. There's just like a real lack of consistency. And if you look at any living animal, we both have pets. People have pets out there. Generally, you feed your pets very consistently. And that keeps them healthy. It keeps their weight balanced. It's part of caring for them, right? You don't forget to feed them for a day or just feed them once and then some little snacks of theirs and then be like, whatever, you'll have dinner tomorrow. But we do that to ourselves, which blows my mind. Or I always tell people, if someone was like, could you babysit my eight-year-old, you wouldn't be like, sure, I'm going to feed them nothing but coffee until 1, then we're going to get like a bag of chips, and then I'll make them a sandwich around 4. Then we'll eat some leftovers at 11:30 at night. And then a bottle of wine. Your friend would be like, I'm never speaking to you again. You would be like oh, I'm gonna make them breakfast, and I'm gonna ask them later if they need a snack, and I'm gonna make sure they drink some water, and I'm gonna you know. But for ourselves we're just like, oh yeah, what I just said was totally fine and I'm gonna do that for 15 years. So I think building a nutrition plan without a nutritionist is literally just like what we talked about in the beginning, examining what works for your lifestyle and figuring out, is there a need? Do you literally eat no fruits and vegetables? Well, those are really helpful so let's try and get those in. But maybe you eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Maybe you're overanalyzing your diet. And it's really just like, I've definitely had people in the course that I'm like, we had someone in the course who comes from a cooking restaurant family. Oh my god, her meals were great. She was like, variety, all the things, balance, blah, blah, blah. I had no problems with what she was eating. I was just like, this is great. You eat all kinds of stuff. You're getting everything you need.Christina: And more importantly, she didn't really have problems with what she was eating, right?Cadence: Exactly.Christina: If this is the person you're thinking about, her predominant concern was, “Why don't I look the way that I think eating this way should make me look?”Cadence: Exactly. Exactly.Christina: Which is a totally different, like…we're just not having the same conversation anymore.Cadence: And that's huge. And that's the kind of thing that we can talk about in the group, you get individual sessions with me. So that's like exactly what we would talk about in an individual session. I would go, actually, everything you eat looks great, balanced. You're eating regularly, you're not starving in the middle of the day. Like everything's great. What's the problem? “Well, how come X, Y, Z?” And I'd be like, all right, let's talk about body types. Let's talk about other things, movement, like whatever. That might be what that person gets out of that course.Christina: Yeah.Cadence: And then joining kettlebell classes and Run Club and like addressing that aspect of her life instead. Not intentionally to lose weight, but really just to connect to her body in a different way and develop a different perspective about her body.Christina: Yeah we're really working them up to that incendiary “you'll just never be skinny” viral video, which, for those who don't know, I would love if you could just explain that one because that's probably the most incendiary thing that you've ever published.Cadence: I'm going to post it again towards the end of January.Christina: It's the perfect time for it, really.Cadence: And it came actually, that story about the cookies that I used that was like from a real client and I had a conversation with this client who was like tortured about these cookies that her friend brought over. And she has the coolest life. She's like TV-adjacent in LA and her friend brought her to this amazing cooking show competition thing and so they like brought home boxes from all these contestants.Christina: Amazing.Cadence: And I was like, this sounds amazing. Like best weekend ever. And she was like, yeah, but now I have this box of cookies here. And I was like, please explain the problem. And then she was like, well, I'm going to eat them. And I was like, yeah…and then? And so I made this Reel, like almost just based off of that conversation where I was just basically like, our perception of ourselves, the less punchy version is that our perception of ourselves that somehow we're supposed to dramatically look different from the way that we look today is for 99% of us just not true. You're never going to be skinny. Very few people are skinny, this idea of skinny. For my body to be skinny, I would have to be very ill. I have had a naturally muscular body always. There's a picture that I remember from when I was a little kid on a swing set with my arms like this, you know, like holding the swing set ropes with my little delts and biceps. I wasn't even doing sports, that's just my body. My mom can do 10 pushups and she never lifted weights. Like that's, you know, that's just like my genes, you know? So, we have this kind of idea maybe that gets developed when we're teenagers or something that somehow I'm gonna one day be skinny and that this cookie that I'm eating today or my missed workout that's why I'm not I'm not. You know all these little things but it's really like, let's be reasonable about what our body actually is. What does our family look like? What's reasonable for our lifestyle? Of course, Instagram is full of people who've dramatically changed their bodies. Dramatically. They also spend almost like a side job doing that.Christina: Which is my other favorite Cadence-ism about that being a hobby. Or how do you phrase it? It's just like, body modification is a hobby. The same thing as any other kind of hobby that you invest time and resources and dedicate to.Cadence: The six-pack with everything defined. That's body modification. It's like a kink that they're interested in. It's the same as someone whose face is covered in piercings, who has tattoos head to toe. You know there are plenty of people out there who are really invested in the appearance of their body as this hobby as like a fetish almost and I would really put I don't think bodybuilders would disagree with me. They're so interested in how can I morph my body, can I get really big, can I lose all my body fat. I follow a guy who regularly posts when he was just this like enormous superhero body and now he's still super muscular but he's like I don't train like that anymore, I'm not competing anymore, it's like not my interest. I'm like a dad now. He's just like I don't have the time to do that anymore. That's like I'm restoring a car in the driveway. It's like I'm still interested in my body and what it can do and looking in a certain way, but I don't have the time, you know, he's like, i'm in a relationship, like my life has more stuff going on than when I was likeChristina: Yeah and I think it's the difference between thinking about it that way versus thinking about it as a like, well if only the stars aligned and all these factors lined up and then yeah, this would happen, this kind of body would happen, and it's like, no.Cadence: Yeah. If only you signed up for the Instagram ad FODMAP thing, in a year you would be like, tiny Christina. No, literally not true. I always am shocked how tall you are. It's just not going to happen.Christina: Speaking of that, and then I will speak of it no more, I saved that low-FODMAP sponcon ad just for the purposes of referring to it for this conversation, which I immediately regretted because now guess what I'm getting is just only other versions of that ad, which I'm sure will continue on through the new year.Cadence: Yeah, exactly.Christina: But what can I say? I'm only human. Well I don't know, I feel like that's kind of a lovely place to wrap our thoughts for this part one. And we will be doing a part two at the beginning of, well this is coming out at the beginning of January, we're going to do another one that comes out at the beginning of February where we'll again be soliciting questions on the topic of I think we decided that was going to be around building sustainability and this idea of like, okay, like it's the end of January and whatever thing you decided you were going to do, like the low FODMAP meal plan delivery system got boring within two weeks, shocker, now what? And so I'm really looking forward to, I see that as a conversation around, okay, we know the “don'ts” column. How do we start filling the “do's” column?Cadence: Yeah, exactly. Very cool. Well thank you so much.Christina: Thank you. Happy new year. This is technically the last day of 2024, though you'll be seeing it in 2025.Cadence: Exactly. Thank you so much.Christina: Thank you.Busy Body Podcast is produced by Brad Parsons at Train Sound StudioMusic is written by Robert Bryn, performed by the Wild YaksIllustrations and design by Jackie Mendez at Aesthetics_Frames and Me! Get full access to After Class with Cadence at cadencedubusbrooklynstrength.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of I Don't Care, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson, FACHE, explores the impact of healthcare mentorship on leadership development through the inspiring journey of Christina Oh, the Greater San Francisco Market President for Sutter Health. As a highly accomplished healthcare executive, Oh shares her unique journey from her early days at Baylor University to her current leadership role in one of the most competitive healthcare markets in the nation.Throughout the discussion, Oh delves into her experiences in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, offering valuable insights into the importance of healthcare mentorship, the role of responsible philanthropy in healthcare, and the challenges and rewards of healthcare leadership. Oh highlights the impact of healthcare mentorship as she reflects on the guidance she received from her mentors and the strategies she employs to develop future leaders within her organization.In addition to her personal journey, Oh discusses the transition from for-profit to non-profit healthcare, emphasizing the significant role of community benefit programs and philanthropy in driving impactful healthcare initiatives. She also touches on the importance of curiosity in leadership, recounting a recent experience where taking a step back and embracing a curious mindset led to better decision-making and team engagement. This episode provides an in-depth look at the career of a dynamic leader who continues to make significant contributions to the healthcare field, mainly through the impact of healthcare mentorship on leadership development.

Last week, co-hosts Andrea Ochoa and Christina Oh attended the 2024 NATO Youth Summit, which was a collaborative event hosted by NATO, The Aspen Institute, Aspen Institute Romania, the Swedish Defence University and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. The event focused on global security issues and enhancing youth understanding of the transatlantic alliance, including how the alliance can address current and future security challenges. As part of the event, Burn Bag sat down with some of the following panelists and speakers: • Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, U.S. Department of State• Vice Admiral Guy Robinson, Chief of Staff, NATO Allied Command  Transformation (ACT) • Colonel Florian Lemoine, Scientific Advisor, NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT)• Lauren Walsh, Professor and Director of the Gallatin Photojournalism Initiative, NYUTopics included INDOPACOM U.S./NATO priorities, NATO multi-strategic operations, NATO emerging technologies and defense innovation, and more. The 2024 NATO Youth Summit also featured the work and idea exchange of some of the Summit's Youth Challenge Winners, who proposed a variety of ideas to help shape a more secure tomorrow. These challenge winners will be featured in our next episode as part of our 2-part series covering this event.

What exactly are movie producers looking for when searching for new creative voices? Director Carlos López Estrada returns with another all-star panel to discuss this very topic, with some of the top producers in the field. So if you are an aspiring filmmaker, screenwriter, director, or any of the above early in your career, this episode is filled with real-world advice for navigating the film industry as an emerging creative voice. Joining Carlos are producers:- Christina Oh, Producer, “Minari” - Poppy Hanks, Executive Producer, “Judas and the Black Messiah” - Michael Gottwald, Producer, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”- Andrew Hevia, Producer, “Moonlight” - Janet Yang, President of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences / Producer, “The Joy Luck Club” and “Over the Moon.”“I try to see as much stuff as possible, then just reach out to people when something seems just really great. But a lot of it has, of course, been like: You work with one director, that director knows this other person [and] says, ‘you guys, you should talk.' You then meet that person, you realize you love their work and you want to work with them [too]. Anything that makes your world smaller I think in this industry is super helpful.”—Michael Gottwald, Producer, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” This discussion was streamed live as part of Antigravity Academy's new Satellite Sessions — “monthly conversations with incredibly exciting figures from the film and TV universe” — co-presented by CAPE USA (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment). Follow @antigravityacademy and @capeusa for more information on even more upcoming panels.Antigravity AcademyCAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)For more inspiring Satellite Sessions just like this one, be sure you are subscribed to The Dolby Institute Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode.Learn more about the Dolby Institute and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

This week, The Burn Bag's new co-host Christina Oh interviews Andrii Bondarenko, Chief of Staff for Oleksiy Goncharenko in the Ukrainian Parliament. Andrii discusses his unique views on Prigozhin's short-lived uprising as a covert success and his maintained influence and popularity in Russian social media channels. We also discuss President Zelenskyy's continued aspirations to join NATO's ranks, and the stark reality of these ambitions following the conclusion of the war. Andrii provides further insight into the Ukrainian populace's rising negative sentiments regarding China and Iran, and the nation's increasing regard for democratic values globally.

[NEW!! We're now accepting your English-related questions, feedback and topic ideas. If you'd like to contact us, please send an email to: podcast@christinarebuffet.com ]In this episode, Christina and Matthew talk about: ways that they break the ice the importance of being a good storytellerthe new format, which is to highlight different expressions used during the podcastThe extra mile (useful English vocabulary you'll hear in the podcast): to break the ice =  to start to get to know people, by avoiding awkwardnessa commonality =  a shared feature or attribute to take the pressure off = to reduce the amount of stressDo you want the transcript of the podcast, more vocabulary resources and live conversation practice?Join the Faster Fluency Conversation Club!You'll become more fluent and more confident in English faster, in a fun community of professionals from around the world!Brand new! Here's the link to the transcript! Use code 'FFCC50' to receive 50% off your 1st month in the club!  Special!! Buy 5 months, Get 1 free!! Buy 10 months, Get 2 free & an Individual Evaluation session!! We meet 6 times a week: Mondays 18:00-19:00 CEST (France time)Tuesdays 13:00-14:00 CEST (France time)Wednesdays 20:00-21:00 CEST (France time)Thursdays 0:00-1:00 CEST (France time)Thursdays 11:00-12:00 CEST (France time)Fridays 12:30-13:30 CEST (France time)    You can also check what time it is for your time zone with the Time Zone ConverterDetails about joining: https://mybusinessenglishcourses.com/faster-fluency-conversation-club/join-now--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Christina:Hey, everybody. Christina here with your Faster Fluency Conversation Club podcast. I hope that you're having a great day. And today I'm here with Matthew. Matthew, How are you doing?Matthew:I'm doing all right. Um, as we typically do, uh, starting with weather, there's a big storm coming here and it's, um, it's, it's giving me a headache, .Christina:Oh, right, Okay. You're, you're one of those people who's like affected by the weather. It's like, there's, there's always that joke of like your grandpa who's like, oh, my arthritis is acting up. Guess the snow is coming.(continues...)Support the show

Featuring Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung and producer Christina Oh, moderated by Jim Hemphill. Hosted By AC Archive Coordinator Oriana Nudo and AC Creative Director/Programmer Grant  Moninger.

On the March 15, 2021 episode of /Film Daily, /Film senior writer Ben Pearson is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to talk about the latest film and TV news, including this morning’s Academy Award nominations. Opening Banter:  In The News: 2021 Academy Award Nominations Announced: ‘Mank’ Leads with 10 NodsHT: Best ActorRiz Ahmed, Sound of Metal Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Anthony Hopkins, The Father Gary Oldman, Mank Steven Yeun, Minari Chris: Best ActressViola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman Frances McDormand, Nomadland Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman Brad: Best DirectorThomas Vinterberg, Another Round David Fincher, Mank Lee Isaac Chung, Minari Chloe Zhao, Nomadland Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman Ben: Best Original Screenplay Judas and the Black Messiah Minari Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7 Jacob: Best Picture The Father Judas and the Black Messiah Mank Minari Nomadland Promising Young Woman Sound of Metal The Trial of the Chicago 7 HT: Best Adapted ScreenplayBorat Subsequent Moviefilm The Father Nomadland One Night in Miami The White Tiger Chris: Best Animated FilmOnward Over the Moon A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Soul Wolfwalkers Brad: Best ScoreDa 5 Bloods Mank Minari News of the World Soul Ben: Best Supporting ActorSacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7 Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah Leslie Odom, Jr., One Night in Miami Paul Raci, Sound of Metal LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah Jacob: Best Supporting ActressMaria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy Olivia Colman The Father Amanda Seyfried, Mank Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari The Biggest Surprises and Snubs From the 2021 Academy Award NominationsHT: First Cow Chris: Delroy Lindo Brad: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm Ben: Judas and the Black Messiah Jacob: Paul Raci TriviaChloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell: first time two women have been nominated for Best Director in the same year; there are now seven women who have been nominated for Best Director in the history of the Oscars. Minari’s Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung become the first actors born in Korea to earn nominations. Minari producer Christina Oh is the first Asian American woman to receive a nomination for Best Picture. Judas and the Black Messiah marks the first time an all-Black producing lineup earned a nomination for Best Picture (Shaka King, Charles D. King, and Ryan Coogler).   Other Articles Mentioned:     All the other stuff you need to know: You can find more about all the stories we mentioned on today’s show at slashfilm.com, and linked inside the show notes. /Film Daily is published every weekday, bringing you the most exciting news from the world of movies and television as well as deeper dives into the great features from slashfilm.com.  You can subscribe to /Film Daily on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the popular podcast apps (RSS).  Send your feedback, questions, comments and concerns to us at peter@slashfilm.com. Please leave your name and general geographic location in case we mention the e-mail on the air. Please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, tell your friends and spread the word!  Thanks to Sam Hume for our logo.

The new movie “Minari” is a personal story from filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung. It’s about a Korean American family struggling to run a small Arkansas farm in the 1980s. Chung says he thought “Minari” was going to be the last script he ever wrote before leaving the industry entirely. He’s joined by Christina Oh, the producer at Plan B Entertainment who read Chung's script and fell for it.

The Last Black Man in San FranciscoJimmie and his best friend Mont try to reclaim the house built by Jimmie's grandfather, launching them on a poignant odyssey that connects them to their past, even as it tests their friendship and sense of belonging in the place they call home.Director: Joe TalbotProduced by: Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Joe Talbot, Christina Oh, Khaliah NealCast: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold, Rob Morgan, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock, Thora BirchDistributor: A24Release Date: June 7, 2019Runtime: 2 hour 00 minutesGenre: Drama Late NightA late-night talk show host's world is turned upside down when she hires her first and only female staff writer. Originally intended to smooth over diversity concerns, her decision brings about unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women who are separated by culture and generation become united by their love of a biting punchline.Director: Nisha GanatraProduced by: Mindy Kaling, Howard Klein, Scott Rudin, Jillian Apfelbaum, Ben BrowningCast: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, Max Casella, Hugh Dancy, John Lithgow, Denis O'Hare, Reid Scott, Amy RyanDistributor: Amazon StudiosRelease Date: June 7, 2019Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutesGenre: Comedy, Drama See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Most people think that the only way to go through separation is by hiring a family lawyer, going to court and letting the judge decide who gets what. No so! In this interview, Nicole Quallen shares her perspective on respectful, out-of-court resolutions available for separating couples. Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the  DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website:  https://www.twofamilieslaw.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twofamilieslaw/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TwoFamiliesLaw Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10651550/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/ Transcript: Christina: Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Nicole Quallen. Nicole is a mediator and non-traditional family lawyer in Durham, North Carolina. The non-traditional component of her practice is that she has limited herself to entirely out-of-court resolution for her clients. Her law firm is called Two Families Law, and she helps separating couples build two healthy families through negotiated separation agreements, mediation, and collaborative law. I think that you'll find the discussion with Nicole really inspiring. The conversation with Nicole will really provide you a lot of hope, if you're going through separation because she explains the various processes that she has available for clients to help them sort out their issues without going to court. The different processes involve different levels of support, depending on what the clients need. Nicole is a passionate advocate for respectful family resolution. I think you're gonna enjoy this interview. Here we go. Christina: Welcome Nicole! I'm so happy that I have you here with me today. Nicole: Thank you, Christina! And I'm so glad to be talking to you, too. Christina: I'm particularly excited to have you on because you take such a positive approach to the experience of divorce, with your focus on resolution rather than inflammation. And I'm wondering if we can just start out by having you talk a little bit about yourself and what brought you to family law. Nicole: Sure! Well, yeah, family law really found me. I actually didn't even take family law in law school. I but went through a divorce. My second and third year of law school. And found myself after graduation with an offer from a local family law firm that seemed to speak to me. So I went right there  and sort of hit the ground running at a very, what I would call a traditional family law litigation firm here in North Carolina where I was, you know, I think I took a deposition on my third day there. And I stayed there for about two years, and I, say I loved-hated it. I loved the working with families, I loved that it just being in that, that really sacred inner space of family, and I loved the intellectual challenge of it. But I hated feeling emotionally drained. And I ultimately left that practice feeling that I wasn't actually helping these families. That's what I wanted to do, and was trying to do. But I often felt like that the trials that end... that's what most of our families are going through were court cases. And I felt like they were not being served; that they were leaving core really with a lot of trauma that to us, and I felt really conflicted about it and left. And I actually locked the law altogether for about three years. Christina: Oh, wow! Nicole: Yeah, I moved to New York City and started working in the, the non-profit sector. I thought it was sort of my penance. I thought the law is not for me, I'm not meant to be a lawyer, you know. There's something about the law that felt so good, but you just thought 'I just can't do it'. And then slowly, kept creeping back into law and family law in particular. Friends would be going through separation and would ask for my help. And quickly once I started doing that work on my own, I realized I still love family law, I wanna help these families. I just wanna do it in my own way. I know there's gotta be a way. And so, about two years ago is when I started my own practice where I work with families exclusively out of court. Christina: OK, that's fascinating. Well, I can totally relate to the love-hate part of the traditional family law model. My experience was very similar – that I loved working directly with families and having the impact in such an important part of people's lives. But the actual litigation process was so traumatic that I, too left for a different take on the whole process. Why don't we talk a little bit about how you do that out-of-court process now? What are the options for clients? And yeah, what does that look like? Nicole: Yeah, great question. I'm always reading about how you do it too, and I know there are different ways in different states and countries. So in North Carolina, I usually give my clients, when they come to see me at a consult. I boil down that out-of-court process here into three possibilities. One is mediation, which is you know, traditionally what you would think of and where I would serve as a mediator. So I'm trained as a mediator, I would sit down with both of the spouses and be really a guide communication-wise, where I'm trying to help them to have the discussions they need to resolve all of the issues of their marital estate – custody of their children, if they have it, division of all their assets and debts, and then any support payments that need to go from one party to the other. And in mediation in North Carolina actually, I know this is different than what you're able to do Christina. Here, as a mediator, I'm not allowed to draft anything for the parties. So I guide them to the decisions, and then they need to go to a third party attorney and turn that into what here is a separation agreement, which is a fully legally binding private contract, and forcible in court, but you don't have to go there if, you know, as long as everyone abides by the terms you never need to go to court. So that's, that's mediation. Christina: OK, so let me ask you a quick question about that. When they hire the third party attorney and assuming that that attorney still only represents one client, so do they have to go from mediation sort of into the adversarial process to get the draft, negotiate it and complete it? Nicole: Yeah, you're right in that assumption. It's really... I mean mediators, we don't like that process. So yes,  they will go to an attorney and that attorney can only represent one party. In all of the cases that I have done, only one party has ever hired the attorney. And that attorney really works as sort of a scribe, and they are putting into writing what the parties have agreed on. And I think, you know, if you've done a good job in mediation then hopefully everyone agrees by that time. But there's certainly exactly the possibility that, you know, everyone thought they agreed in mediation and then when the attorney drafts it up, that one party says 'Uh-uh'. And then yes, you can be right back into a litigation [inaudible]. What I would tell folks is, if something happens in that draft that doesn't look good to you, come back to mediation and we'll try to resolve it there. Which actually has never happened to me. I think attorneys who do that drafting hopefully, you know, have a good idea of how to translate the sort of summary we give them in mediation to an agreement. Christina: Oh, good. What I sometimes see is that, well I don't see that very often because here I am alone to do the drafting. But what I've seen in the past is that people can take a mediated agreement to one lawyer to draft and then when the other person goes to get independent legal advice. Then you've got the two attorneys on board, who are now sort of inflaming a conflict that didn't seem to really exist before. And they seem to be on board in mediation and then it goes a little bit sideways with the two attorneys on board. Nicole: Exactly. You know, I think that I'm mostly able to avoid that because I have relationships with some attorneys who respect and also participate in the mediation process. So when they get the agreement, they don't really want to inflame. But yes, totally. I mean, that's how just exactly like our experience over here which is that as soon as you got two attorneys – two litigation-minded attorneys – involved no matter how much the parties have come to a resolution, you just... you never know what's gonna get brought up. Christina: And so tell us a little bit about collaborative law. I understand you're quite involved in the collaborative law process. Nicole: Yeah, definitely. So yes, we are talking a little bit about the options and one is mediation. The second one is sort of a negotiated separation agreement, which we'll talk about later. And the third is what is called in our statutes, collaborative law. In North Carolina, we got it in 2003, I think. And a good amount of the states have a collaborative law statute. And so here's the process, it's super cool. In collaborative law, both parties need to hire an attorney who is trained and ideally experienced in collaborative law. And everyone signs a pledge saying, 'We pledge to work through the legal issues of our divorce together. We pledge not to file a lawsuit and to go to court. We are honest and we're gonna disclose, you know, all of our finances, you know like what you do in court. And then everyone meets in... we come four-way conferences, but you meet in these conferences, or both attorneys and both parties get in the same room. And you talk through issue by issue and we do it in a way where the goal is not for each party to get sort of, you know, the best they can get, the most money. But with an eye towards having two successful individuals and successful children going forward to a workable fair agreement. So the hallmarks of that are that you sign this pledge saying you're not gonna go to court, which doesn't mean you can't. If the process fails, the parties can go to court, the attorneys cannot. So when the attorney signs that pledge, that's it. And the parties, they can go to court, they'd need new attorneys. Yes, so that's the basis of the process. And the other hallmark of the process is that you can hire what we call financial neutrals or child specialist neutrals, to come and join the process. You know, traditionally in litigation, you hire, each side may hire a child psychologist to come and testify about what's in the best interest of the child, and you know, why one parent is miserable and one is wonderful, or what not. And in collaborative, both parties would agree to use one – either child specialist or financial specialist. We use those when folks have you know, complicated finances, businesses, you know tons of real estate properties, or something like that. We have these awesome financial specialists who are trained in collaborative divorce, who can come in and give really good advice about how to make smart financial decisions. Christina: Yeah, I think that's a real benefit to have the parties choose one professional who they trust. And then you use that as a basis for the discussion of how to make their decisions. Nicole: It makes all the difference. If you think about it with, I mean, I'm sure in litigation you saw dueling child specialists. And if you have one doctor saying, 'Mom is a great parent and Dad is, you know, really damaging this child,' and the other '...and Dad has one of the opposite.' It's like... very difficult to get past that. You know. Christina: Yeah, so one of the benefits that I saw when I was practicing collaborative law was that it gave both people the comfort of still having somebody sort of on their side, even though it is meant to be a team approach. So that's one of the benefits that I see of collaborative law over mediation that some people really like to feel like they've got somebody looking out for their interests and protecting them. What would you say are some of the other benefits of the process? Nicole: Yeah, that's great. Everyone has an [inaudible]. So the benefits... the first benefit that always comes to mind in collaborative law versus, you know, sort of court is that you are avoiding the trauma of a trial. The benefits of having the third party neutrals there. The biggest benefit I think about is that lots of other types of divorce settlements can leave you feeling 'OK, you are satisfied in the moment', and then long term, they might break down or you might start to question 'Did I get a good deal?', 'Did I make a bad deal?'. And I think collaborative is the most protective process where people who leave that process when you have sat in on these sessions, you know, and we do four, five, six sessions. I think everyone leaves feeling like 'I put it all out there. I listened to everything, you know, my spouse had to say. I really understand what we came to'. I think there, you know, agreements that people feel really invested in and are much less likely to breakdown over time. So I think that's an emotional benefit you get. And then depending on how you do it, collaborative divorce is almost always cheaper than going to court. Christina: Would you say that's because it generally resolves faster? Nicole: Well, I think... I think collaborative divorce for me any way tugs in more expenses than mediation. But I think discovery in a traditional trial where both parties are, you know, requesting just scads of documents and hiring a private investigator – that process. What I saw in my practice is that that process alone costs 10, 20 plus thousands of dollars. Because you're preparing for everything that could go wrong and you're leaving no stone unturned, versus in collaborative divorce, we send our clients a list and say, 'OK...' you know I have my clients put things on drop boxes and say, 'OK. This is what you need. You need to turn a roll on these documents...' and they upload them themselves. So that's, you know, virtually a free process. And then yes, again I would say they resolve more quickly than the full negotiation process of a trial, you know, from start to finish. And those in North Carolina take, probably an average of a year – often more. Christina: Hmm, it's pretty similar here. (…) Are you able to able to get involved with families at  different stages of separation? Do you ever have clients come to you for collaborative law who, maybe started in litigation and then they decide what's not the route for them? Nicole: Yeah, interesting. I'd love to hear your answer on this too. So, I think it's the very best if you can go collaborative first, because like we talked about where you meet with a litigator and they start to scare you. It's hard to undo that fear, I think? I've done a bunch of consults with folks who are in the litigation process; they're really unhappy. They come to me and they want to try collaborative. But I find it those folks who have trouble getting their spouse on board. So I think it's hard to go back from the path of litigation. I've done it a couple of times where... I guess in one case, one of the parties lost their attorney so they  were willing to try. So the answer is I think it's far better to do at the beginning and I... I'm willing to work with people in any part of the process. I just find it's hard to get them out of the litigation track once they're there. Christina: Yeah, that's interesting. So when I was practicing law for the collaborative files that I did, they were for clients who came in pretty much the beginning of their separation and made a conscious choice that's how they wanted to handle the whole transition. I don't think I had any people come in after they have started litigation. And I think you're right that you can't go back from that. Litigation really brings out the worst in people, right? Like you said about getting an expert to say the other party is just a terrible parent and traumatizing the child and... I mean, sometimes sure, that does happen and maybe true but for the most part, the adversarial process of trying to put your own case forward and trying to destroy the other person's case – particularly when they're parents. It's something that people have difficulty having just real conversations with each other after that. Nicole: Yeah, totally. And you can totally see why, I mean, it would be very difficult attacking someone's parenting is so personal. Yeah. So that's why yeah, I totally agree. Anybody I hear who even has a whisper of divorce I say, 'Let me give you a free consult please! Please talk to me before you talk to a litigator.' Because even... and you know, litigators are doing their best in their doing, and pour into work and that I don't think that they're all awful by any means. But it's just a different process, like you said it's completely adversarial. And once you start it, it's really hard to go back. Christina: Right, I mean, the adversarial process was designed in a way that it's appropriate for people who never have to deal with each other again. So if you've got a car accident, and you're suing the person who hit you, or like a medical malpractice suit or something like that, where there's no need to protect the relationship. It's a great process, I get the information out there, and helps the judge get to the truth. But it is so inappropriate for family situations, particularly parents who will have to deal with each other for the rest of their lives. Nicole: Yeah. Completely agree. Christina: Do you have any advice for somebody who is looking at their options, how they can present the option of collaborative law to their spouse? Nicole: Yeah, I love that question. So I do this all the time, you know. I meet at a consult with only one of the spouses, and I do consults with both spouses too, plenty. But if I'm meeting with one spouse and they say, 'Well, I really want this but I'm not sure. My spouse is going to.' What I say to folks is 'OK, so the two main motivations to try to do something like collaborative mediation, separation agreement... the core of why I do this work is, you know, we want to preserve our co-parenting relationship, we don't wanna go through the trauma of court. All those sort of emotional and human factors. And then I say, 'And if that doesn't speak to your spouse, maybe because they're feeling afraid, vulnerable, you know plenty of good reasons that we could talk to if we got to a consultation. You know, and then I say that speaks to almost everybody is money. And I say, 'Tell your spouse that the average, you know, full custody and equitable distribution trial in North Carolina, the average trial cost is $37,000. Tell them that, tell them that they'll need you know, $2,000 a team or to hire an attorney. Tell them that I'll give you a free consultation and that most of my clients are out the door and under $3,000 and see if maybe they're willing to try it.' And one of those two methods seems to be pretty persuasive. And I also tell people that we just talk about which is don't wait. As soon as you feel comfortable having that talk, before your spouse goes to see a litigator, try to have the conversation. So... Christina: I think time is of the essence for sure. OK, so why don't you tell me about your negotiation process? Nicole: OK, so we talked about mediation and then the collaborative divorce. And actually, the bulk of my process is this third sort of funky process that I do that's the most popular and I think it's actually honestly workaround because I can't be like you do where I'm meeting with both parties and mediating the discussion and then drafting for them. And so what I'm doing with a lot of my clients is  I'm representing one of the parties, working with them to draft a separation agreement that covers all of their issues just like any other due process is. And then the other party sort of receives that agreement reviews it, maybe hires an attorney to review it. Maybe not. And then sign. And you know, there's something not ideal about that process because I can only represent one party. And I wish I could do what you did where I, you know, really work with both parties. And sometimes the other party will sit in on meetings and I have to make it, you know, very clear that I can represent them, and that I can advise them. But that they are, they are too sitting on it. And then I tell folks, 'OK, if the other party is gonna hire an attorney to review or to participate in this process, I really recommend that you work with another attorney who is collaboratively-trained, like I am, to avoid like we talked about inflaming and this sort of bringing up financial issues that might cost more on legal fees and whatever benefit a party. So that's actually the bulk of my process. And it's  a little, like I said... It's a little structurally funky, but it works for tons of people who come to my office, and they say 'We're separating.... We agree on you know, 70% of our issues... We need some help making them legal... We need some help thinking about things we might have missed. But you know, we definitely don't wanna go to court and we don't wanna start a big fight. So that's how a lot of those cases get wrapped up and it winds it being much more cost-effective to them. So I think they just don't need all of the support that the collaborative process provides because they really do agree in most issues. Christina: So, what is exciting in your business right now? Is there anything that you'd like to share that you think will be helpful for people? Nicole: Yeah. Man, I think this work is so exciting all the time! Something I'm sort of currently passionate about myself and the other collaborative practitioners in my community is that we want more attorneys to do this work. And I think that the client base is out there. I talk to litigators who I think is skeptical of that. But I have been doing this for less that two years. And I have just got clients after clients saying, 'I didn't know this was an option, I'm so glad you have this...' And in my one city of 250,000 people, there are two of us who practice collaborative law full time. And the other one, my mentor, is retiring. So I'm desperate to get more attorneys doing this work. I think collaborative attorneys... I think we have a lot less stress and some more job satisfaction; I think my clients are amazing. So, something I'm excited about is just spreading the word within the bar and trying to talk about how we can you know, just make collaborative divorce be a bigger portion of what's going on in family law. Christina: Hmm, there's the traditional view is that... Well, family law is just difficult and you'll eventually burn out. But I agree it's really great to be able to share the different methodologies where you can actually enjoy your work and feel like you're doing good and still be working with a professional. Nicole: Yeah, totally. I mean, I know you're a believer and you're leading the call here. But to me it just seems like night and day, as far as quality of life. So, yeah. And right in the different methodologies, actually I love doing all the continuing education that I do as a collaborative lawyer you know, just learning about conflict and psychology and human needs, and how people function rather than learning about you know, how to wire tap your access... cellphone to trying to like catch her doing whatever. That's just... it makes me happier and you know, better. Christina: Wiretapping is not your cup of tea! Nicole: Yeah, right! It just... It just doesn't quite feel like what I always wanted to do to make the world close. Christina: Oh, that's awesome. So what are the best ways for our listeners to get in touch with you if they'd like to find out more? Nicole: Yeah so, my  practice is called Two Families Law, and my website is spelled out twofamilieslaw.com. I have a pretty active Facebook and Twitter page where I share ideas about collaborative law, conflict resolution, some of the reasons I do this work and stories from, like our community of collaborative professionals. So those are just great ways to follow about collaborative divorce. And then all my personal contact information is on my website and I'm just always too over-the-moon-happy to talk to anybody about the practice or why someone should either do this work or should try out the collaborative divorce. Christina: Oh that's fantastic! Well I think the people in your state are very lucky that you decided to come back to family law. Nicole: Thank you Christina! Christina: So thank you for being here today! You've shared lots of great information, and good luck with the building of the collaborative community! Nicole: Thanks, Christina! Hopefully, we talk again soon in lots of different ways.

What do you do when you can't decide whether to work on your relationship or create a plan for separation? Charlaine Avery tells us about a specialized form of counseling called discernment counseling designed to help make this exact decision. Charlaine has worked with individuals, couples, and families for more than twenty years; helping them with relationship issues such as communication problems, conflict, grief, affairs, transitions, parenting and step-parenting.  She believes relationships are the foundation of a healthy life and feels honored to share people’s struggles and appreciates their courage as they learn to connect in healthy and loving ways.    Charlaine is the first counselor in BC to be certified in Discernment counseling – a process that assists couples to decide if they want to stay the same, change with identified goals, or end their relationship. Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the  DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website:  https://www.averycounselling.com/ SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-159369673 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/averycounselling/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CounsellorCA Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlaine-avery-7b318240 Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/ Christina: Today I'm talking to Charlaine Avery. Charlaine is a counselor with over 20 years of experience in couples' counseling. And she has also obtained training in discernment counseling. She's the first counselor in British Columbia to have this counseling, and this is a process that helps couples decide if they want to keep the relationship the same, work on changing their relationship with specific goals in mind, or whether they would like to end their relationship. Charlaine says that this process can be particularly helpful when couples are not on the same page about what they would like to see for the future of the relationship. She also tells us that research on this process has shown that couples who have gone through this process and decided to eventually separate had a smoother separation as a result of having respectfully gone through the discernment process and decided to end their relationship together. Alright, let's jump into the interview.  Christina: Welcome, Charlaine!  Charlaine: Thank you, Christina!  Christina: I'd love to have you tell us a bit about yourself – introduce the listeners to you and your background and what drew you to working with couples?  Charlaine: OK. Well, I'm 62 years old which means I've been around the block a bit. I've been a counselor for over 23 years. I love working with couples because you can see the changes that are happening. And what I really love about working with couples is when you can see them finally turn toward each other and starting to being really able to hear each other and to talk about those things that have been difficult and to decide if they can really work on this, or whether they really need to call it. It is a very poignant moment when people are able to do that. And then they can make decisions about how are they going to move forward.  Christina: Part of what you do is you help couples decide whether or not they want to put the work into the relationship, or make that big decision of ending it, right?  Charlaine: Yeah. Working with couples can be challenging sometimes because you don't always know if everyone's on the same page and is equally committed to the relationship. And so, I've done couples counseling now for 20 years, and so sometimes you just don't know why it isn't working. I decided to study discernment counseling a few years ago because it really helps the couple to get to this place of saying, “Are we gonna stay the same as we are or are we actually gonna identify what are our issues and what are we gonna work more deeply on? Or are we really done – done that we need to move on?”  Christina: So you studied discernment counseling. What exactly does it involve and how does that training set you apart from a general couple's therapist?  Charlaine: So there was a project down at Minnesota called Marriages on the Brink. And what they found is that it was really important that each party and the couple have an opportunity to be seen individually, to talk about what they were going on. And it was also very important to have three options on the table. We can stay the same as we are, or we can identify our issues and figure out what are we gonna work on in longer term, more intensive counseling, or we can decide if we're going to just call it quits and not be together anymore. How the stuff differs from what many couples' counselor's offer is often you bring two people in your room, you meet with them together so there's this sense of secrecy or you know, 'you know something about me that I don't know that you know about me.' And... But you also don't ever get the chance, unless you meet with them individually to explore those issues. What I like about the discernment counseling is it's very neutral; it is really there to help people decide if there's a piece of the counseling where you meet the couple together, you find out about the history, you find about their hopes and dreams. And you find out about what's not been going on. Another piece of I think is really important is they do ask what about 'what about the children of the marriage, and what is the plan for them,' so that the children's needs don't get forgotten is part of the conversation. It's a fairly intensive process because you commit from session to session – it's a maximum of five sessions. So you really have to get in there and really find out what's going on. You meet with them together and then you meet with them individually and the other partner waits. These individual sections of these sessions are about 20 to 30 minutes. It's really an opportunity to get to know the person, find out their understanding and perceptions, what haven't they been able to say. One of the questions that always has to be explored is 'Is there someone else in your life that's complicating the situation that the two of you are in?' And then from that conversation with them, figuring out whether what of those three options -- do they want to stay the same; is it so painful they need to change it; if it can't be changed, are they really considering not being together anymore.  Christina: So I am curious, have you ever had a couple at the end of five sessions who are still confused about what to do?  Charlaine: That's s often because, I mean if they're confused, it means they're choosing to stay the way they are. Which is OK, right, because it's a neutral approach. Sometimes the couples' counselor would say, 'Well, you know, the counseling isn't working so you shouldn't be together.' And I actually don't believe that. Counselling doesn't work for as many reasons sometimes, and it's really important to allow people the option to say, you know, 'I don't wanna deal with this now.' or 'I don't wanna change now so let's just stay the way we are for now.' And that's OK too, so it makes room for those options. And then there's the same kind of pressure. And also at the end of each session, I ask each member of the couple, 'Are you willing to come back?' If they say no, then we're done. If they say yes, and then we just make another appointment. So I meet with them individually and then I actually get the person with my support to give a report back, kind of a summary about where they at with the other person, whether they're still unclear or if they need a clear choice. And then that the other person just listens, and then they see the other person. Discernment counseling is not couple counseling. So it's really important to understand the difference. We're not actually trying to change the relationship yet – we're actually trying to explore where are you right now. And based on where you are right now, what are your options. So that's quite different in couple's counseling and that can be difficult for couples because they think they're coming in to get fixed. Discernment really can't zip out how do we figure out what needs fixing. And then once we identify what needs fixing, then what are you willing to do to fix it.  Christina: in what sorts of circumstances do you recommend that you found it to be helpful? For people listening and you know, couple of points where they can look at their relationship and say this exists or that exists and maybe discernment counseling would be a good idea for me.  Charlaine: Yeah, so discernment counseling is done when you don't know what to do. It's obviously become too painful for things to stay the same, but there's all kinds of reasons why people don't wanna end their relationships. But there maybe a general unhappiness and they don't know what's possible and they're not sure if their partner will buy into longer-term work. If one of the two is not sure about how committed they are to the relationship, then that's a really good time to come into discernment counseling. I do this... I have this mantra-kind of relationship tune-up maintenance or repair. And so it might just be that you're needing a tune up and that would be... we'd be able to identify that pretty quickly. So for instance, a couple comes in, we talk about things. They decide that they want to go to couples counseling and we can say these are the issues we're gonna work on, we're gonna commit to it long term, then we're done. And then they can move see me as the couple's counselor or I can refer them out to another counselor. So, because they're clear on what they want. It's when people are uncertain, or when the stakes are high. Or when they don't know what the options are. Or when, you know, they just need help talking to their partners about the thing that isn't working for them. So it's kind of an intro, and it really helps to figure out what's people's motivation and trying to get a good sense of what would it take specifically to work on their relationship rather than taking this global kind of view of things. I really like it because it is very respectful of people's beliefs and values. It's really open-ended in terms of the conversation. They do get my support if there's something they do need to say to their partner, then I support them to say that. And so I think it's just really helpful to get on point.  Christina: Now, is this process... I imagine it's open for any couple and intimate relationship, they don't have to be married, do they?  Charlaine: Definitely it would be helpful for anyone who's trying to determine the status of the relationship. If you're not married, of course, there are different legal implications and things like that. But from my perspective, it doesn't make any difference. It's, you know, 'Do I wanna continue with this relationship or don't I?' 'Do I wanna continue, then what needs to be different?' 'Then if I don't wanna continue, then how do I let my partner know and just how do we move forward from that?'  Christina: I don't know if you would have this information, but have you seen any benefits to couples who do eventually decide to separate? I'm wondering if they might have an easier time of going through the separation process after having gone through the discernment process?  Charlaine: That was an interesting piece of the research, was that lawyers actually started referring couples because what they found is, because of these kinds of conversations that are respectful and clearly communicating; that there was less conflict if they did decide they had to separate and move on. There was less conflict because the emotional part of letting go of the relationship was actually being taken care of prior to going to the lawyers, where sometimes it can become quite conflictual. There's no guarantees obviously, but if you two have resolved and you're on the same page about why you're separating, then you don't need to argue about 'are we separating or not?' It's clear that that decision's already been clearly made. The difficulty, of course, is for the person who's being left, it might not be their choice, it might not be their decision. But at least it gives them a place where they can express this to their partner, and their partner can get my support explaining to them why it's not an option to continue. So the lawyers actually find it quite helpful.  Christina: That's what I was imagining. You would say because I do see sometimes when people haven't had the opportunity if they're coming into a mediation and they haven't had really an opportunity for closure or to accept the relationship has ended. Then that can really drag on discussion of the substantive issues that we're trying to talk about. Because there's all these emotional issues that haven't been resolved yet.  Charlaine: And the thing about relationships is that they don't usually go downhill all at once. So it's a small accumulation of many things. And so when the relationship is put in question, you know sometimes people can't be honest about what's going on. But by meeting with them individually, I'm able to help them to say what they need to say to their partner. So I had a couple in here recently and they're good people. And they care about each other, but it's not just giving them what they need in their life. And it was interesting. They couldn't say it to each other but they could say it to me, that they were done. So I supported the first one to go to say that to the partner. And the partner... then I met with the partner then the partner said that “it's such a relief 'cause I'm on the same page.”  Christina: Oh, good.  Charlaine: Right. It's funny how face to face with couples, it's sometimes hard to do that. And you really need, you know, a caring supportive person to help you to say that. And now I'll be helping them to decide what are the next steps on how do we go forward now that we're both on the same page.  Christina: And so how can people work with you? Do you work with clients online?  Charlaine: I have done some discernment counseling by Skype, as long as the couple's comfortable with that. Because you know, you want confidentiality while you're having the conversation with me. And so that it takes a certain amount of trust about whether you know, the other person's actually not listening at the door.  Christina: Oh, I see. Yes.  Charlaine: So the interviewing people individually direct like as a couple I can do that on Skype. You know, because you can just pass the computer back and forth typically. So it's possible. It's always better in person but since I'm the only one in BC who has a certification at this time, it's gonna be hard for them to find someone locally. And so I'm making it available by Skype.  Christina: OK, great! And I think I saw on the discernment counseling website that there is a list of practitioners in Canada and the United States who do this type of work – is it just the two countries or there are discernment counselors in other countries as well?  Charlaine: I'm not sure. They just reopened the training for people who are interested, so maybe people from other parts of the world... they pretty much began in the US in the last five years or so. So it's definitely a growing aspect of the counseling field.  Christina: OK, fantastic! And what are the best ways for listeners to get in touch with you?  Charlaine: I'm available by phone. People can book appointments directly from my website, I have an online booking system. So they can go to my website averycounselling.ca, counseling has two Ls. And you could look at my blogs, 'cause I have blogs on discernment counseling and I also have connection to the discernment website, the developer of this. There's a little video of him talking about what this is about as well. By phone, through the internet, whatever works for the client.  Christina: Perfect! OK, well thank you so much Charlaine for sharing that information about this new branch of counseling. I think this is gonna be really helpful for a lot of people.  Charlaine: Good, well I hope so. And I much certainly found it helpful for the couples that I've worked with.  Christina: Excellent! 

The groundbreaking FAYR co-parenting app is taking off due to the dedicated efforts of its founder Michael Daniels and its senior advisor Gwyneth Paltrow to improve the lives of co-parents and children. The challenges of co-parenting can be overwhelming and can lead to significant conflicts. Michael Daniels came up with the idea of creating an app for co-parents to help them effectively manage their time, their finances, and their co-parenting communication. FAYR is a groundbreaking app that simplifies everyday matters for divorced and separated parents.  As a separated father of two young children, Michael found himself overwhelmed by the legal, financial and emotional costs of divorce on his family. After 20 years in the homebuilding industry, Michael hung up his hard hat to create a tool that would not just improve his family’s life, but would also help the other 55 million divorced co-parents in the US. Despite his success on the Apple tv show "Planet of the Apps" and partnering with Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael's guiding light remains the same: working everyday to be his best self for his kids.  Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the  DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website: https://www.fayr.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/befayr/ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/befayr Twitter:https://twitter.com/befayr Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/company/fayr/ Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/   Christina: Hello and welcome! I'm super excited today to be talking to Michael Daniels. Michael is the founder and CEO of the new Fayr app (spelled F-a-y-r), and it's a groundbreaking app that streamlines key aspect of family management for divorced parents. That includes sharing a parenting temp calendar, tracking shared expenses, recording communication, and more, all in one location. Fayr debuted really in 2017 and drew interests from Apple TV, who invited him to audition for the reality series "Planet of the Apps". Michael was selected for the show and he had huge success, securing a partnership with his now head adviser Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth is well-known as an academy-award winning actress of course, but she's also an active entrepreneur, with a highly successful lifestyle brand goop.com. She's a passionate voice for improving the experience of divorce for families and drew a lot of media criticism a few years ago for her announcement that she and her husband were consciously uncoupling. It's so exciting to see Michael and Gwyneth working ways to make life easier for co-parents, which is going to make a healthy and respectful divorce achievable for more and more families. Check out this interview with Michael to find out all the things that Fayr can do and how it can make your life better. Alright, let's hop in. Christina: Welcome Michael thank you so much for being here with me today! Michael:  Thank you for having me, Christina.  Christina: I'm really excited to talk to you because of the super positive project that you got involved with to help co-parents do a better job. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got inspired to create the Fayr app? Michael: Well, I would say my background can't be any further from this subject, I'm a home builder, I mean, I started building homes when I was a teenager, just an able-bodied worker. Later on, I went to work for the largest homebuilder in America and worked for them 6 years before going out on my own to become a custom home builder. And you know, like everybody else a lot of people go through divorces and it was just a very trying period for me. Family is important for me, I come from a military family and my father was an army officer for 30 years or so and you know traveling around a lot, family was always just important - we're always together. And I would say that that had a lot to do with feeling my interest in trying to do what I could for my kids and so, yeah, that being my background, I think it all really fed into my interest to communicate better, be as much a part of my children's lives and in a positive way. Christina: Well, the fact that you're outside of the standard legal divorce industry gives you a whole new perspective, I think what the industry needs. Michael: I think I relay to people really well, I find that the people I feel most comfortable and most effective in communicating with are just the regular people. I kinda leave it up to my team, they kinda do a better job than communicating with the professionals in this industry. Christina: And so how did you get inspired to create the app? What was the thinking behind that? Michael: What was the ah-ha moment? Christina: Yeah. Michael: Well you know, it's a culmination of a lot of things. You go through like these unexpected things can happen at any point. And so you get divorced, and then as the time goes on, the whole process was just tremendously arduous when you think about the two years it takes before from separation to finally getting through things, you fight over custody stuff, you know, whole bunch of money spent, and this is the measurable process and then when it's done and when you finally sign your parenting agreement, you think everything's gonna be okay but it's not. Emotions pop up, and next end, like you know, 6 more years went by and it's still not at rest. And so you never know when you're gonna be caught with this need to go back to court. And are you documented? Most people lose, not because they're bad parents, but because they're insufficiently documented. And I did, it's not fun to reconcile with laws all the time, and I would have to reconcile these laws every night and just miserable way to live thinking about this stuff constantly and so. Then you go to court and then the other person can very well say, "well you made that up". And there's really no way to prove anything, you know. You can't verify some of this stuff. So I thought to myself, "if there was something that could just galvanize, Google docs, Google calendar, your emails, Google spreadsheet, all of these things that I was happy to use constantly, text messages and everything, have it wrapped up and a one app - specifically like a go-to resource just for co-parents to either co-parent together or just document, just to avoid mitigate future problems. Assuming that was it, it was just a culmination of many years of these things and I just one day started looking into this. I mean, if nothing else, it's gonna help my life and probably help a lot of other people too. Christina: Okay. So I think this sounds like a good place for you to tell us a little bit about what the app does.That sounds pretty cool, the calendar and Google docs and so forth. All of that being rolled into one. What does the app do, and I'm wondering you mentioned that you can either use it together for co-parenting or it sounds like you can just also use it on your own? You don't need the cooperation of the other if you're just looking for documentation? Michael: Yeah absolutely. I mean it's basically an all-in-one digital ledger for child custody. So it's just the place you can go to let's say for example, things that parents run into. Let's face it, and I say this sometimes because I don't think people are very conscious of this, is that there's no other area in life that you can be in a simple lawsuit with another human being and you're forced to continue communicating with that person for years to come, you know. So it's a very stressful situation but the importance of communicating constructively with that person is paramount. And so how do you bridge this problem between the necessity for the benefit of the children (in my case 2 children) that you love the most in life, and then you have this horribly frustrating situation where you don't communicate well  because you were in a very bitter, emotionally, hard suit with this person. Because that what these things are - they're lawsuits. So anyway, I thought, what the app can do for you is let's take the calendar feature for example. It's color-coded so mom stays in one color, dad stays on another color, you put in your time-sharing agreement. And then if you need to switch a day, you can just let your day request just a fourth of the day to the other parent. The other parent instantly gets a notification saying "oh, Bill wants to forth his day to you". You can either accept or deny. If you accept it, it changes to your color, and it doesn't switch back to his color unless you release it again. But that way, if anything doesn't rise, your building this incontestable audit trail of information as life is happening. And that's just the calendar feature. But, it just streamlines things to where it's sending a new notification, it's letting you know when soccer is, you can set it up front where repeat this for the next six months every Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then every other year switch your Christmases, so everything's put in upfront and then it's just laid out for you. No more arguing, no more disputes over this particular issue. And I just wanted to simplify, take out all the arguing that goes on. And then the next feature, let's talk about expenses for example. I mean, people are very good about keeping a mental inventory of their own contributions for their children. But there's seldom real knowledge what the other person is doing. And no one's very good about keeping receipts, and no one's very good about all of the things that we have to juggle. And when your attorney tells you, "Hey, Friday I need all these stuff", it is terrible to have to start digging all that up and reconstruct that audit trail information. I had to call two different banks. my insurance company, doctor's offices, and dentist offices have reprint stuff and just have to dig it up and I'm sure there's still stuff missing. And if you dump it all at your attorney's office and your paralegal, just put it in a court-ready format, you know. That's costed you per hour. So it just all gets very expensive, I mean, I just spent nearly sixty thousand dollars in total on all these legal fees. And you think about what that could have done for what I have for my children. Anyways, the point is with this app, as things are happening I don't have to keep receipts anymore, buy something and I simply snap a picture of the receipt - it's there, it's recorded. Then I plug it all in,  and that's it. She can see it instantly, she can see everything that was purchased. Right now it's four categories and I'm about to expand that. So I called them involuntary expenses, it's either your medical, your dental, your personal or educational. And some of these things are tax-deductible. So the app also know which are tax-deductible, and at the end of the year, you can just say "give me my tax-deductible report", and it'll give you everything you've spent on your kids that you can deduct from your taxes as well. So just organizes everything, you don't have to save any more paper, and that's really beneficial. And again, at a glance now, both parents can see what's happened, and shortly you'll be able to settle up with each other within the app. You can just say, "okay I'm gonna settle up". You click the button and automatically transfers money to the other parent. You can pay child's support alimony, everything's gonna be able to be documented paid right thru the app.  Christina: Oh that will be handy. Michael: Yeah it will be great. And you can set it again. I want to make a co-parenting app that just lets you co-parent on autopilot. So yes you may do some work upfront, plugin all the stuff in. But once it's in, from then on out its just small little adjustments, here and there, as life is going on and you still make adjustments. But for the most part, you're just gonna get these "just go through life and things are gonna be nice and easy". So the next feature is my Geo pen points. The reason I have these is 'cause there are a lot of hidden cases where you're supposed to be somewhere but timely dropoffs or pickups, and there are court orders a lot of times, and to prove that you were there on time is an important thing. So with this feature, you can show up, you can simply say "I want to check in" and you log yourself and there it is - a time, date and stamp that you were on the planet in that spot at that time. So there's just no more he-said-she-said when you go to court. It's just you're good. You know you can prove that you were there. That prevents people from using children as chess pieces. And then the last feature that we currently have is our invisible text messaging. So every lawyer tells you, communicate email, 'cause emails are invisible in court, text messages are not. Well, with these, you have the best of both worlds. You have the ease of text messaging with the invisibility of email. It works just like the IOS messaging, super easy. And at any time you can just say "I wanna generate a report", and all of this stuff, every single day you had them the percentages, everything from whatever time, period you want to look at, just be instantly printed out in a PDF or Excel format. And there you go. Shortly though, right out just the two parents that can be on it, they are onboarded on in the system but shortly you'll be able to have third-party users for this login, to actually grow our user base tremendously. But you can have grandparents who are involved, step-parents, aunts, uncles, legal professionals, they'll have an interface too if they need to monitor just make a guardian light them for example. It's just gonna make everything much more simple, much more honest and fair - that's the name of the app, it's "Fair". It stands for Family, Advocacy, Your Responsibility, just to help make things easier that is in a very difficult situation. Christina: Sounds like it's streamlining a lot, saving a lot of time, and kind of peel back and take away some of the emotion out of the communication? I'm wondering if for example if we go back to the Calendar, and your request to switch a day, is that just very black and white like that or you switch it where you make the request, or do you have the ability for example to say, you know I have to work late next week. Michael: Every single one of these functions  - I know I'm just doing kind of a brief over if you're here, but if you select to switch, it actually requests you know, give a reason. You have to write a reason in so that it's notified "hey I'm working late" and you can put notes down there. So when this is printed off in the main report, it'll show that on Saturday, at 4:36 PM, you requested a fourth of the day, the notification was sent, it was accepted at this time, so the whole record is there for a judge or anybody to look at and they'll know exactly what happened, and the notes will be attached there too. "Oh I've forth of the day because I have to be here or this happens", so the communication is there, let's face it, six months from now I'm not gonna remember why I'm not gonna remember what happened. So, I've definitely thought all of that, I wanted to make this thing just as useful for people and just take out the anxiety that we go through later on. Christina: It sounds like some of these features might tend to actually encourage, better behaviors, so I'm wondering if, by using this app, maybe court applications are actually reduced or eliminated in some cases, what kind of feedback have you received? Michael: I mean I know from my own personal experience that it definitely mitigates problems that usually escalates to costly, you know court motions, and look you know, that's what we all want. I mean, our family courts... you correct me if I'm wrong I know you're more of a guru on this than I am but they're the most backed up courts in America, I mean that's why in some places it's up to three years, backlogs. So, hey if we can reduce problems and keep some money in some families pockets cause you know, it's they're sad statistics you know. I think most people know this what's sad is that you don't go in any sort of parenting tutorials. I don't know if they do this everywhere, but here in Florida, when you go and get divorce they make you take an online little... watch all these videos and take retention quizzes, and things like this that educate you in parenting, it's like "Man I wish I did this before when I became a parent." And then of course in this process just learning more about the effects of these two home situations on children nationally, it's pretty scary. I mean when you look at some of the statistics out there, and I'm not saying the answer is people should stay together cause I'm a firm believer that a lot of people if they're properly communicating it's a better situation for kids, for two people who don't like each other to not stay together. But the statistics actually show that if your kid is being raised in a broken home, they are twice as likely to drop out of high school, they're four times as likely to go to prison, twice as likely to actually attempt suicide. They're medicated for things like depression and anxiety and insecurities. They suffer from speech defects, asthma, and headaches at a higher rate. And I don't know what, I'm sure there's a lot of things that contribute to those statistics but, I think that kids growing up feeling that their parents are butting heads all the time, that can't help but believe that that causes some emotional duress on them. Christina: Oh absolutely, I think a lot of the studies have shown that it is the conflict that occurs in separation, not so much the separation itself, but that exposure to conflict between parents that's really traumatic for kids.  Michael: Totally. Christina: This app, I think has huge potential and you've already had a really exciting launch this summer, tell us a little bit about the Planets of the apps show that you're on. Some of our listeners might not be familiar with that. So what that was all about and what your experience is like there? Michael: That was pretty phenomenal the whole experience honestly, I was.. it was July 4th, 2016 and I was at my cousin's boat. And I'm kicking around this idea of building this app. So I priced it out and you know it was gonna be quite a bit of money, and I'm like "Man do i do that or I'm not... this a lot of things I can do with that kind of money " and he said "You know Mike, it's something that's.." he's like "I've been listening to you for 8 years complain about all the things you go through"  you know he's like.. "I think it's a good place to direct your energy and you gotta be passionate about something in life and you're really passionate about this" so I said, Okay I'm gonna go and pull the trigger. So 2 days later I put my deposit down, I started building it. And fortunately I did, cause if I had waited four days, I would've missed the window to be considered for Planet of the Apps. And it was very fortunate, and I didn't know they started with nearly 10,000 applicants and they narrowed us down to about, I guess about 80 of us that made it. And then of the 80, I mean less of a third of that made it to the final round, that I did. So it was really exciting cause I'm not an app builder, I mean I got out there and I was just overwhelmed by all these crazy smart people, I mean they cruise at that intellectual stratosphere that I can't look at from the ground binoculars, it's super smart people out there. And anyway, it's a good experience, so I go out on Planet of the apps, and we're filming this thing and I was lucky enough to have all four of the panelists there, you know Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Will i.am, and Gary Vaynerchuk, all four of them wanted to partner with me, and I think I was one of the only ones who have that. And super exciting, and again my app that time was just a concept, it was a Beta, it had to be in Beta but it was far from being in the app store. Far.  So I ended up choosing Gwyneth, and I chose Gwyneth because, one she's the only person who'd gone through a divorce, two you know this is a subject she's very passionate about, and you know the whole conscious of coupling that you've referred to as well. She gets it, and that's an important thing. I think I'd go through life and I think most people listening would probably agree that you just run into people especially when you're back out in the dating world, and you meet people who just don't get it. Unless you've been through it, it's something that kinda connects people. My dad was an army guy, so I kinda equate it to people who had gone to war, and you just talk to another guy and they just get it, you know. So anyway, I partnered with her, we met many times, we corresponded, we still correspond via email. And she's just been very very supportive, that I mean I'm about to launch Android and when android launches at the end of this month, I'll be re-engaging her efforts to get, start tweeting about it again. She's tweeted for me in the past and that's very helpful, I always get a good spike in downloads when she does that. And hey you know, it was a phenomenal experience, I gotta tell you I feel very lucky and I'm very happy that I have somebody like her who isn't just... she's not just bottom line focused like a lot of people are, who are just like "So how much money is this gonna make?" She's more concerned like when we met, it's like "is this gonna help people? Let's just focus on helping people and everything else will take care of itself." And I like that, I really really appreciate that.  Christina: Yeah for sure, I can see that in addition to her acting career she, of course, has the eCommerce lifestyle brand goop.com, which is also focused on having a great lifestyle, and you know the various different aspects of that, so having a positive co-parenting relationship I can see that would sort of fit in to that. Yeah, and she did have that very high profile divorce a few years ago, where the media was quite nasty towards her. I found it to be really discouraging that the intention and the desire to have an amicable divorce would be considered by the general media as being sort of a ridiculous goal to have or you know, just something the general public could aspire to.  So I love that she's putting up her energy behind this with you.  Michael: I think she's such a gracious person, I think Gwyneth is a really, you can just see it like when you're talking to her that she's really, you'll never know, you know I mean most of the media unfortunately for her, they portrayed her in any way that they want to, and they could do that with anyone, they could do that with you, me, anybody they wanted to. And I think it's unfortunate cause it's a "yeah you got your head in these clouds if you think people can do this amicably". But she's, you know, she's told me that she has a better relationship now with her ex-husband Chris, than ever before! She says "you know we have the best relationship we've ever had!" and that speaks volumes to her because that takes work. That takes a real concerted effort to just be able to say that, and to have done that cause she's doing better than I am, you know I mean like.. most people just don't do that well, with that. And I think most people like she said like most people get caught up in trying to be right... I'm right, I'm right. But it's like, it's not about being right, it's about being effective. Let's be effective for the benefit of our kids, let's not worry about being right. I listen to that, cause I'm.. just one of these guys who just want to be right. You know, I wanna win the argument. But you know, I got some maturing to do as well, you know. Christina: You've done some learning over the years. So in what circumstances do you see the app as being useful? Is this something you can see rolling out to most separating couples? Michael: Oh my goodness. I gotta tell you, I think married people should use this. I mean, let's face it, the number one reason above infidelity and religion - it's funny as it is, and if people would use this app, 'cause so many times, you know in today's world, and this isn't 40 years ago, but today's world, not our parents' generation, but you have 2 separate incomes, 2 separate bank accounts, and 1 person oftentimes paying the lion share of the expenses, and the other person's dropping it on a Harley Davidson or something like this just toys, and that becomes a point when things get tough. That becomes a real point of contention in a relationship. And so, I just think that anybody should. But obviously, that's a little lofty when you think that much married people are gonna jump on it. But, I gotta tell you, I see it ideally if two people can co-parent constructively together, it is a great platform for that. But if not, man do yourself a huge favor, use it because it is so much easier to just stay on top of things that document now than try to dig up those receipts later on. And you never do it, you never end up doing it, in fact, most attorneys tell me "I'm so frustrated with my clients because I tell them document... document and they just don't do it, and then inevitably they lose, and you know, that sucks".  Christina: Well there's so many things going on in life where you're separating trend to figure out where you're gonna live, maybe do you need to change your job, how are your children doing, and so the documentation just falls through the cracks. It's not high on the priority list, even though the lawyers might like it to pay. Michael: Yeah exactly. You've got life happening. And let's face it, it's not a fun thing to do. It is just the whole time you do it. You just dread it. It's not fun, I mean, and most people aren't organized with a lot of that stuff, so I just try to make it as easy as possible. And I think Fayr has a sincere effort at accomplishing that.  Christina: So having been divorced yourself and now being part of this industry trying to improve the experience for separating couples, do you have any advice? For couples who are in the process right now? Michael: Yeah I do, and it would be, you know it's tough because as you know, once you're years passed it you look back, and it's just like don't live with regrets. Really, really try to power through the nasty things that you kind of do, the unfair things that you do, because you're gonna regret the impact that it has on your kids later on because you wanna be the best you, you wanna be the best version of yourself for your kids. And the only way you're gonna be able to do that is just suck out the poison and they always say, you know, it's not the snake bite that kills you, it's chasing the snake that sends the venom to the heart that kills you. So just don't chase things. Just like what Gwyneth said, "don't worry about being right, just be effective and just be fair." I don't know, it feels like it's so easy to say, it feels like a cliche, it's like to put myself in that position back then, and I would say, "man, what the heck", he doesn't know what he's talking about. He isn't in my situation but, that's so I could tell parents it's just really trying to be fair with one another, 'cause it just hurts your kids when you're not. Christina: I think that's excellent advice. For people who are interested in trying out the app, what's the best way to contact you or to get a hold of the app? Michael : Yeah, so we're obviously on Facebook,  Fayr. On Twitter, it's Fayr Dad, and on Instagram we're @BeFayr. www.fayr.com. We have a lot of great information out there, you can google me as well, Michael Daniels Fayr, and you'll see up just a bunch of plan of the apps stuff, videos. We've been in the news all over the place even in England and Germany, actually. We got a lot of exciting things happening.  Fayr is doing great and we're gonna keep growing it as 55 million people across America who are living in a sort of two-home situation raising kids co-parenting, and I'm gonna keep marching forward and helping every one of them out that I can. Christina: And right now you said Fayr is available on the Apple App Store? Michael: Yes it is available in the App Store, that's Apple. And in another 2 weeks, it will be available for Android. Sorry Android has taken so long but we're constantly improving things and that's just more development time.  Christina: So for people who are not hearing this at the time of the original release, that will be around the end of November 2017. Okay Michael well thank you so much for your contribution to improving the lives of co-parents and kids out there. Michael: Christina thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it being here. Christina: And a pleasure talking to you.  

Did you know that using a Divorce Coach can help you minimize your legal wrangling? Tara Eisenhard shares what a Divorce Coach is and how they can help families get through the divorce process with more ease and grace. Tara Eisenhard is a passionate divorce coach who believes that families should evolve, not dissolve, through the divorce process. She is the author of The D-Word: Divorce Through a Child’s Eyes and the blog, Relative Evolutions. Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the  DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website: www.taraeisenhard.comInstagram: www.instagram.com/taraeisenhardFacebook: www.facebook.com/author.taraeisenhardTwitter: https://twitter.com/relativevolutnsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraeisenhard/ Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/   Episode Transcript Christina: Hi everyone! Today we're going to be talking about divorce coaching. Divorce Coaching is a really interesting new service, relatively new. You've heard about the sports coach, the life coach, the business coach. Today you're gonna learn about how a divorce coach can fit into your separation process and help you find your footing and make decisions on your process that will help to go smoothly for you. Today I'm talking to Tara Eisenhard. Tara is a passionate divorce coach who believes that families should evolve, not dissolve, through the divorce process. She also does mediation and is the author of The D-Word: Divorce Through a Child's Eyes. She also is a regular blogger and blogs under the name Relative Evolutions. Tara provides some great analogies and ways of thinking about how a divorce coach can help you in your circumstances. Let's jump into the interview. Christina: Welcome, Tara! Thank you so much for joining me today. Tara: Thanks so much for having me! I'm happy to talk. Christina: So, I'm excited to have you share with our listeners a little bit about yourself – you're doing a combination of some really interesting work, and yes. So tell us what brought you into the field of divorce? Tara: Well, my parents actually separated when I was 13, and they had a very good divorce. So it was a positive experience in my family. I grew up thinking that divorce was a really good thing overall. And unfortunately, I grew up and I got divorced, which was not unfortunate. That was great, I also had a good divorce. But when I told people that I was getting divorced, that's when I realized that unfortunately, my experience is not very normal. And so for a lot of people, divorce is a horrible experience that tears families apart. And I wanted to know why. So I started to... First I was just curious for my own information and I did some research and started to kinda go down this rabbit hole where I was learning everything that I could about divorce and how could it be better than it is, and why it is the way it is. And eventually, it just continued to ignite this passion within me to change the way that we talk about divorce and change the way that we approach divorce in our culture and try to make it better for more people. So at this point, it's been about 11 years since my divorce and I am now a divorce coach, I'm an author, I'm a mediator. And really just trying to spread the word that divorce can be a positive experience and a really healing thing for a family. Christina: That's fantastic! I'm really excited to share with people your positive approach. Because I think people are really inundated with a lot of negative assumptions and stories that they've heard from people. And you're in a somewhat of a new and growing area which is divorce coaching. So can you tell us a little bit about what exactly is that? Tara: So divorce coaching can mean different things. Sometimes you might see the word and its associated with more of like comfier service – somebody that's going to help you fill out paper work, for instance. I don't get involved in any of the actual legal process. My focus is a directional one. I work with my clients primarily on a one-on-one basis to help them to really get some self-awareness around what their goals are, what is working for them, what's not working. And then we try to put together a plan to help them strategize, how to get where they wanna be at the end of all of this and really throughout the process. As they're transitioning and transforming to find their new normal and birth their new life. Christina: And how would you say that that compares with counseling? I think because this is a new area, it's something people aren't really familiar with. They wouldn't have heard, maybe their friends or family members talking about it. So how do you make that distinction? Tara: So there's a really great analogy that I'd like to use involving a suitcase. And if you have a suitcase, and you take it to a therapist or counselor, that person is going to help you open the suitcase, will get how you packed, did you pack appropriately, what does it mean whether you folded your clothes, do you have enough room in the suitcase, is time to buy new clothes, that kinda thing and really dig deep into that suitcase. If you take the suitcase to a coach, the coach is gonna say to you, “OK, where is that that you wanna take the suitcase and travel to?” And then you tell them, and the coach is gonna say, “Well, here are some bus schedules and some train schedules and some plane schedules. Let's talk about the best way for you to get from here to there.” So really easy way to sum it up is therapy and counseling is a deep process; coaching is a directional one. Christina: Oh, that's a fantastic analogy, I really liked that! That's very visual. It really helps wrap your mind around that whole concept. So you're helping people navigate the divorce process and make decisions about how they want to move through. For example, the various legal processes might be one. Do you get into the emotional aspects at all? Or will that be something that you would refer out for example if somebody is having emotional barriers? Do you then help them with the process of choosing a counselor? Tara: I can help them to decide what kind of help they need. So just for instance, I have a program where one of the modules talks specifically about emotions and we talk about what healthy healing means, and for instance, if we talk about emotional wounds the way that we would look at a physical wound on your body. If you have a physical wound on your body, you need to know is this something that you can treat at home? Do you need to go to a doctor? If you need to go to a doctor, do you need to see a specialist? Is it necessary for you to get stitches or have surgery? Do you need ongoing therapy and ongoing treatment? So there's lots of variables that can come into play. And what I do on the emotional side is I really just help people to look at kind of how deep that emotional wound really is, and what kind of help do they need, if they need some additional therapy. Do they need to have, you know, medication for instances that something's going to help them, or would it help just to go and have somebody to talk to, and how often is that going to, you know, therapy gonna be necessary for them. That kinda thing. Christina: Hmm, OK. And what kinds of issues would you say are pretty common that you're finding that a lot of your clients are experiencing while they're going through the separation? Tara: Well, some really common issues are, for one, just kind of the sense of overwhelm. “What do I do next? My mom tells me to do this, my sister tells to do this. My best friend wants me to do this. My lawyer tells me that we need to do this.” So I work with people on kind of taking out that external chatter and really focusing on what their individual goals are. Another big one is the communication with the ex. “You know, every time I talk to my ex-husband on the phone or my soon-to-be-ex, you know we get into a huge argument and we spend 3 hours screaming at each other while the kids are waiting for dinner in another room,” or something like that. So, work with people around ways that they can be more productive in that communication. Setting those personal boundaries in their communication with their ex or even maybe some other family members, too, when we're talking about that overwhelming person giving advice. So setting boundaries and creating rules around which they're gonna function in this new kind of relationship. Christina: That's fantastic! I think that is a much-needed service. I think they need to learn a new way of communicating and particularly if they're gonna be co-parenting in the future. Because they're in a place now where obviously they're communication did not serve them well during the relationship. So they need to find a way to shift that so that they're not experiencing that same pain and frustration for years to come. Tara: Yes. Absolutely. Christina: And so what does your process for working with clients look like? In terms of frequency, do you have packages, do you have online options? Tara: I do. And, so there's two different ways of how I work with people. I do have online courses, I have my kinda signature courses called Divorce Made Doable. It's a six-week program and there's a virtual classroom. Each week is a different module, and then I also offer additional support with that. So we have a Facebook group, we do weekly conference calls and anybody who signs up for that course gets two one-on-one coaching sessions with me. Each week is a different topic and it's planned ahead of time. The other way that I work with people is to do a one-on-one coaching. And in that case, I meet them wherever they are, and whatever it is that they need to talk about in their unique situation. So it might be communication with the ex. It might be I don't know what to do next. I need to you know, figure out my budget. Or, I'm getting too much overwhelming information from other people. I don't know what to do with my kids, you know, as far as how I'm talking to them and how I'm presenting myself to them. All kinds of different things that can come into play there. And as far as the individual piece is concerned, I do have a package price for people that want to book multiple sessions at once. But not everybody needs a lot, you know. It just kinda depends – I usually recommend once a week is kind of a good, you know it's a good frequency to touch base, check in. Coaching always involves some kind of homework, some kind of follow up. So there's somewhere to go when this session is over. People know what they need to do next. But, you know, if it's a small issue, sometimes one session is enough. And if it's an ongoing kinda thing that you wanna get deeper and go broader, then you know, they might talk to me for multiple sessions. Five, ten, whatever. Christina: OK, it's nice to know you're flexible with that. So you can meet people where they are. And for the course, is that geared towards people who are at the very beginning of the separation process? Tara: The course is actually, and really any of my services are geared toward anybody at any stage. The content and the approach that I have is basically that, you know, our core needs as human beings apply, regardless of whether I've been separated for two minutes, two months, or twenty years. Because there's issues that are unique to that separation process. If they're continuing to be issues, things like communication from my ex, and people telling me what I need to be doing. Those are things that persist. So, it really doesn't matter. I've had people take the course that are still living together and they just know that their marriage is over and they don't know what to do next. They're looking to get a good start. And then I've had people go through the program that have actually been divorced for several years. And they're just looking for ways to kind of wrap it all up and kind of get some closure around it, and feel better emotionally, and know for sure that this is what I'm gonna do to put this chapter to bed and turn into a new one. Christina: For those people who have some financial concerns, I think it's quite common for people to be worried about involving more professionals than they need to. You touched on the pricing piece a little bit earlier. I wonder if you could comment a bit on how coaching might compare to legal fees or counselor's fees. And whether this is the kind of thing that might actually be preventative, you know if you do some coaching, maybe that will help reduce fees in other areas. Can you comment on that? Tara: Absolutely! And one of the things that I tell people is that quite often, the more professionals you involve in your process, the more you can control the cost of the process. Which really doesn't sound like it makes sense until you start to think about what the process looks like when you're taking everything to separate attorneys who are not necessarily skilled in dealing with, for instance, the emotional aspects of it. Or goal-setting. Things along those lines. So, working with a coach... the cost of coaching is less than the cost of working with an attorney. And that can, the prices of attorneys vary obviously by hundreds of dollars an hour. So the coaching cost can save you hundreds of dollars an hour, over working with the attorney. And then also knowing, through coaching, knowing, if we go back to that emotional wound. Being able to figure out where do I wanna go, what kind of help do I need with this, do I need to talk to a financial adviser, you know if my ex and I both go to, like a divorce financial analyst. Where that's one professional that is neutral that's helping both of us as opposed to paying two separate attorneys, to fight and communicate for us. Which is obviously going to cost a lot more money in the long run. Christina: And so with coaching, you've got the benefit of helping make decisions that are really aligned with the person's own goals and the potential financial savings. Are there any risks or anybody for whom you think coaching wouldn't be appropriate? Tara: Well it depends on the individual. And basically, you know, it comes down to whether or not somebody is ready for coaching, whether or not it's an appropriate outlet. And it's not appropriate for everybody. Coaching, like I said, it's a directional process. And so, you know I always talk to people before we start to schedule sessions, just to make sure that we're kind of on the same wavelength and that coaching is going to be an appropriate thing for them. For somebody who is not ready to let go of the past, somebody who isn't ready to begin to take those kinds of steps forward, even if its baby steps. In that case, therapy might be a much better option to kinda help get unstuck emotionally before, you know,  they're ready to run out and start setting new goals and kind of run that marathon. Christina: OK that's a really good point. Now, what advice would you have for people who are at the beginning stages of their separation? Tara: So my number one piece of advice, and it's actually two-fold. The first piece is to get honest. And be honest with yourself, with your partner, about the state of the relationship. A lot of times, things start to go downhill and you've got one person saying “This is over” and the other person saying, “Oh no, how can you give up?”, which is how my process started out. But you know when people are able, to be honest about the current state of a marriage and if I'm really honest I don't want to be married to somebody who doesn't wanna be married to me. Once you have that kind of clarity, you can reach that place of acceptance and be able to move forward much easier. The other piece is really self-awareness. Because when we know what our needs are when we know what our goals are, we're so much better equipped to move forward in a productive manner as opposed to just being angry and being in this place of misery, and wanting nothing more than for somebody else to feel miserable too. Christina: Absolutely, and that does not go anywhere positive, does it? Tara: No. Never. Christina: So what is exciting in your business right now that you would like people to know about? That they might find helpful as well? Tara: Well, probably the most exciting thing is that I'm also working to put together some other online options. We don't have them out right now but you can continue to look at my website and see what's, you know, what's new, what's going on there. And then you know, as always, I'm just really, in general, passionate about helping people. I absolutely love divorce, which is a very unique thing to say. I'm told everybody's very shocked when I say that. But I love divorce. I think it can be a wonderful, beautiful and healing process and I'm really eager to help people kind of make the best of their situation and help their family evolve in a respectful and peaceful manner. Christina: And you're also pro-marriage though, so you wanna share both sides of that? You just recently get married again, didn't you? Tara: I did! I did! I am absolutely pro-marriage. Not that I hate marriage. But I did... I got married in January of this year. And my outlook on it is really that.. You know I think that partnership were... as human beings, we're hardwired for connection and so partnerships come very easily for us. We wanna share our lives with another person. I think that love, in general, is wonderful and beautiful. And I love the idea of two people taking the world together and making the most of their bad situations, and kind of coming through it as a team. But I also see that as human beings, we grow and we change every single day. And when a relationship is appropriate in your 20s, it might not be appropriate in your 30s. The person that you wanna raise your children with is not necessarily the person that you wanna be retired with. And I don't think that any relationship should survive at the expense of its participants. So I think that as we grow and change, sometimes relationships do, too. And that's why I see divorce as a solution to a problem. It's, you know, divorce isn't a problem. Marriage isn't a problem. It's just that people grow and change and as we move through life, we need different solutions to be able to make the most of where we are. Christina: Exactly. Because happy marriages don't end in divorce. Tara: That's very true! Christina: Only the unhappy ones. Tara: Right. Christina: So I just wanted to quickly circle back and make sure that it's clear for people. So you've got the online course – do you work with people on an individual basis, both in person and online? Or is it just one or the other? Tara: I can work with people in person or online. I'm located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the United States. So locally, you know I'd be happy to meet with people but if there's somebody that is on the other side of the country or on the other side of the continent, I would be happy to meet with them via Skype or telephone conversation. Christina: Fantastic! And what are the best ways for our listeners to get in touch with you? Tara: If they wanted to kinda just check me out, they can go to my website its taraeisenhard.com. I'm also on social media. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn. And as far as contacting me, they can go to my website. There's actually a contact form on there that will come right to me if somebody wants to make an appointment for a consultation, or they just have questions about our program or anything like that. Christina: Perfect! OK, and we will have all of those links in the show notes for everyone. Tara: Sounds great! Christina: Excellent! Well, thank you for your time today Tara. I think this is an excellent service you're providing people, and you're gonna do a lot of great help. Tara: Thank you so much!

Did you know that you and your kids can use mindfulness to help manage the stress of divorce? Aurora Johannson shares with us how you can use the strategy of mindfulness to reduce your stress levels and make better decisions. Aurora is a mediator, family lawyer, mindfulness teacher and yogi in Kelowna, British Columbia. She enjoys peacemaking,  meditating, teaching and the interconnectedness of all things. Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website: https://insidepassagelaw.ca/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfuldivorce/ LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/aurora-johannson-a17aaa3b Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/   Episode Transcript Christina: Hey everybody! Welcome to the Divorce Well Podcast, today I'm talking to Aurora Johannson. Aurora is a Mediator, Family Lawyer, and a Mindfulness and a Yoga instructor. She has been a practicing Family Lawyer for over 8 years and just recently has started an innovative new practice, a law, and mediation practice which integrates Mindfulness into all of her processes.  Divorce can be such a stressful transition even when you and your partner are doing your best to make things go as smoothly and respectfully as possible. Aurora shares how using Mindfulness can help you manage your stress and improve your decision making. Check it out, it's a really great discussion. Welcome Aurora, thank you so much for being here today. And I’m really thrilled that you’re actually here in person. This is my first in-person interview.  Aurora: Oh it's very exciting for me too! Christina: So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in mindfulness. Aurora: Well, I am a parent, I'm a family lawyer and have been since 2007. I have a partner who I've worked with for several years. And a few years ago I started getting, I guess getting burnt out from work and from just having so many, different things to do in a day. And the work wasn't feeling like it really jived with me anymore. It was taking more than it was giving, and my sister actually had some experience with mindfulness so already, she'd gone to a couple of silent meditation retreats and I started looking into it and I believe it was her who told me about an app called "Insight Timer". Once I got onto that the rest just sort of flowed, and the more I learned about it, the more it made total sense to me. And I found very little in the Mindful Meditation, and Mindfulness practices, and teachings to really argue with. It just went with my own personality and my understanding about the world. I'm a big believer in physics actually, rather than religion, you know the interconnectedness of all things is really like a physics concept. Looking at electrons, and how we're all made up of, stardust. Actually, but when you really take it down to like a particle level, or an electron level it's true. So, that was one of the concepts that I.. I liked that there was this scientific basis to it as well, and I've gone from there.  Christina: Okay, yeah I've been reading that there have been quite a few, studies done in recent years on the physiological effects and benefits of Mindfulness. But why don't we take a step back, and for people who are not familiar with the concept, can you describe what exactly Mindfulness is? What do you mean when you're talking about Mindfulness? Aurora: Right, so backing out of the whole universe, and having to understand all of those things. It's really a very simple concept. Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment that you're in. Because we really can't be anywhere other than where we are right now, but, we spend a whole lot of time if not even most of our time, either in past things that have happened going through our mind. How we could've done them differently, maybe even congratulating ourselves for things that went well. Or in future, things that could happen, or are going to happen. Everything from what we need to make for dinner, and laundry we need to do, to where we want our careers to go, and relationships and things like that. That's not a bad thing, those are natural things. That's how we work as human beings, we plan and we learn from our past. However, there's a lot of enjoyment and clearheaded thinking to be gained from being able to be present. And a lot of, sort of calming mental health effect as well. So it's just being aware of your, present situation. Right now, right here, I'm sitting on a chair across from you. I can feel the carpet under my foot. I can see the table in front of me, I'm aware of the temperature in the room and I'm not zoning out, I'm actually zoning in. I'm really aware of what my body's doing. What I can see, hear, feel that sort of stuff. Christina: So it sounds like something that you would be practicing, basically throughout your day, rather than during a specific period of time. For me Mindfulness, sort of blurred together with meditation? Is meditation part of Mindfulness? Is that part of how you achieve Mindfulness? How do those two things connect? Aurora: That's a really good question because meditation... you know sitting out lotus pose and saying "Om", is where many people go right off the bat. When the thing about Mindfulness, but actually, you're absolutely right. Mindfulness is a practice, that we have throughout our day, and many people all people probably have moments of Mindfulness in their day. Say you, this is a classic one, say you drive home, it's a day that you're kind of tired you've been working, it's been a long day, you drive home and you realize that you can't remember all the turns that you took on the way home. That moment when you realize that, and you recognize "Oh I''m home, I'm sitting in my car here." That's you coming back to the present moment. And what Mindful practice really is, is doing that over and over and over and over again. So, when your mind wanders, and you recognize that it's wandered, bringing it back.  One of the Mindfulness practitioners I listen to, I can't remember the name of the top of my head, but they talk about it, it's like training a puppy. You call the puppy to you, if the puppy doesn't come the first time, you don't go and beat the puppy. You don't chastise the puppy, or yourself when your mind wanders. You just go and get the puppy and bring it back to you. And so, where that intersects with meditation is that meditation.. a daily practice of meditating, I missed mine this morning and that's okay. I'll try and fit it in later today. But daily practice of meditation helps you grow the neural pathways that you need to have to be able to bring that puppy of your mind back.  Christina: Okay, interesting. So the meditation is actually sort of like the training ground to help you with your mindfulness throughout the day.  Aurora: Right, it's kind of like going to the gym. Yeah.  Christina: Okay so what would you say are the benefits of Mindfulness, both in general and also within the legal process. Why is this something that people should be considering? Aurora: So looking at Mindfulness as a remedial activity, helping you with the problem. It can help you reduce stress, just looking at it for a period with a positive standpoint. Even when you aren't having a stressor, and your practicing Mindfulness, you may find that situations that would've stressed you out before, are less stressful.  I'm a family lawyer, my clients have a lot of stress. I had a lot of stress. When I started practicing Mindfulness, I noticed that that went way down. And it sort of increased my capacity to deal with things. When you think about, this is something that I got from our colleague Henry Yampolsky, from taking a course with him on Mindful Mediation, when you have a bunch of stressors in your life, you may be finding yourself feeling maxed out like you're at maximum capacity. How can you change that? It seems like the vessel that is us, is the size that it is, how can we affect our capacity to deal with things. You can actually increase your capacity, the space that you have to process, information and challenges, by practicing Mindfulness. Scientifically you can also shrink your amygdala which is where a lot of your stress response arises, I believe that's your reptilian brain people call it sometimes you fight or flight center. And what you want to be able to do is to respond to things rather than react and so if that system is not super powerful, but your capacity system, your space, your mindful awareness, is what's been strengthened, then when something comes up that's stressful you'll have the facility within yourself to deal with it. Christina: That's one of the things that I read recently, was that the amygdala would become less sensitive, so you're less likely in a stressful situation, to have that fight or flight response triggered and you can respond more rationally or productively rather than a knee-jerk type reaction.  Aurora: I believe that's correct. That's my understanding of it. And that it physiologically actually become smaller, so less sensitive and smaller. A lot of people are fond of saying that the neurons that fire together wire together, and so if your neurons that are firing all of the time are in that stress reactivity mode, those are the ones that are being enhanced and growing. And if you're practicing your daily meditation for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or half hour, then that's what's being strengthened.  Christina: So then as, a family lawyer, how do you see all of these benefiting your clients who are going through the separation process?  Aurora:  Well, I noticed that my clients have tended over the years to be largely preoccupied, and I can think of many meetings and there are countless more that I can't recall, where people getting to a.. really like a trance, where they even look like they're looking into a far-off distance, when they're telling me their stories about things that have happened to them, or things they wished had gone differently, or fears that they have about what can happen in the future and it's really important for me to know that story. But I notice that they'll get repetitive about it, not just in a way that I need to hear what they have to say, but in a way that they're really repeating this past history, or fear to themselves over and over again. And I've used Mindfulness practice as I've actually used they like, alright let's come back to the room it seems like we are way far off and somewhere that where we don't know anything about what's going on in the future yet, or what could. And I get drawn down there as well. and I realize, wait a second where are we? We are not in this room. Let's come back to the room and look at what we actually have any control over, which is ourselves. So it empowers the clients to get out of that mode of trying to figure out what another human being is going to do and persuading them or cajoling them to do or not do that, and to come back to what actually they can control and when they realize "Hang on a second, I'm driving the bus that is my life, that person's not steering anything, they can influence me but I actually have a lot of control over what I do in my life and my choices". It puts them in a place where they're going to make much better decisions for their lives and their children's lives, in future setting up the life that they want, rather than just reacting or responding to this how they wish people would be or they fear people will be. Also, it helps them deal with stress... Christina: Which is, of course, prevalent for most people throughout the process.  Aurora: Yes. Yes, I've seen people actually, I believe I was practicing Mindfulness techniques with my clients for years and not realizing what it was. And it was very satisfying to watch my clients transform from the time they would come to me often very stressed, they were sometimes overweight, underweight, really visibly anxious looking, to living their own lives. And that was really exciting for me. And I can remember one of my clients particularly, who was just quite birdlike and quivering with anxiety, and over the next year, she just blossomed she found new work that she was able to choose just deciding herself. She didn't have to worry about what her partner, who she didn't get along with, was going to say and things like that, just a lot of like self-determination. And what I used to say to people was, it's okay to go out and have fun, it's okay to figure out what you want to do and to do that, I think the Mindfulness is one of the things that helps them with that. Figure out what those things are.  Christina: Right. Are there particular situations, or people for whom you think that this Mindfulness practice would be really well-suited? Is that something that everybody should consider or are there certain things where you can say, you know if this applies to you or if that applies to you this might be of particular benefit and you should really think about trying it out.  Aurora: I would say that it can benefit anyone or everyone. It's really a non-invasive thing because it's only you examining yourself. And being present with yourself, listening to yourself. That said, I would say that anyone who's curious about it would probably really benefit from it, maybe more quickly because they may have a little bit more excitement about it. But once people are practicing it, and seeing the difference that it can make, I think just about anybody could benefit from it. The only caution I would say is that we have a number of, well... myriad coping mechanisms and psychologists would be the people to talk to about that but we have a number of coping mechanisms, things like denial for example, that are in place for a reason. So if someone is really, say using denial as a coping mechanism, it's not for me to try to re-orient them and bring them out of that. Because they're using it for a reason and if they're still using it, my understanding is that, that's because they're not ready to let go of it. So, the thing to just be aware of when practicing mindfulness is that you can come across thoughts that are disturbing or upsetting to you. And that is a good time to get some professional assistance, somebody like a counselor who can help you to find other coping mechanisms or help you to investigate those things just so you're not going it alone. Christina: Yeah, that's really good to know. So when you're having more awareness about your thoughts you might actually end up having upsetting thoughts or realizations and then that has to be dealt in a healthy way.  Aurora: Right. Christina: And I will be having some interviews with a counselor, and a coach, and so they will be able to shed a little bit of light on that too.   Christina: So, would you say that these types of principles can be shared well with children?  Aurora: Definitely, definitely. I introduced my oldest son to some meditations on the insight timer, there was a 20-day challenge, 20-day learn to meditate challenge, and it was one minute at each day. So Day 1 is 60 seconds long. And he really enjoyed that, he did it in the evening just as he was going to bed. He'd lay down in bed and he plugged in his tablet and used that app and he's so proud that he did that. He learned a lot about it. He's 11 years old and so when people at school are making jokes about meditation and doing that classic Om pose, which is part of it, but it's not all of it, and not everybody has to do it that way. But he knows that that's not necessarily what meditation is about.  Christina: Right. That's impressive. So he got up to 20 minutes?  Aurora: He got up to 20 minutes and he still uses it sometimes to help him fall asleep. He gets attention issues and so sometimes in the night when it's time to go to sleep, his brain is really active. A lot of our brains are at that time. So to be able to come back from the thoughts to lying in bed.   Christina: Would you say that using an app like that is a helpful way to get anybody started?  Aurora: Absolutely. It's really approachable and there's more than one app out there.  Christina: This is not an advertisement for that app. We will not be sponsoring this.   Aurora: This is not an advertisement for that app. What I would say is to find a way in, that's mindfulness talk. But it's also for lay people. Find a way, just try it and there are so many different types of meditation out there. There are groups that you can be part of in person, you can do guided meditations. A lot of people find guided meditations great to start. And then what I found myself is I started with guided meditations and then the better I got it doing those, the more consistent I was, the more I actually really started to crave trying to do it on my own just with a timer. So I use a timer now often. But sometimes you know it's Friday or Saturday or something, and I just feel like something different, and I'll find a new guided meditation.  Christina: Can you describe one of those guided meditations? What is that? Like, what are they saying to you?  Aurora: How are they programming me?  Christina: Yeah.  Aurora: No way. They are not programming me at all. Um, all right. Well, a common one, this sort of a favorite of a lot of people is a body scan meditation. And that's where you might start sitting or lying down if you're feeling drowsy. You might start sitting up and eyes closed or open, but in a place where you won't be interrupted during the time of the meditation. Both the shortest body scans are both 15 minutes.  Christina: Oh that's a pretty long to start of.  Aurora: It is but because you have instructions, the time sort of flies by. it gives you prons of what you're thinking about now. So for example, the one I'm thinking about by Elisha Goldstein, he starts out in I believe your right big toe. And you just basically go through many different areas of your body, working from your toes up, so you just start by just feeling your right big toe. And then into the ball of your foot, and to the ankle, because you'll notice probably throughout today after having this conversation that there are lots of parts of your body you just completely ignore all day. But you can bring your awareness to them at any time.  Christina: So for people who are right now feeling stressed and busy and overwhelmed are ready, what would one of those one-minute meditations look like?  Aurora: A 1-minute meditation may look just like coming to a comfortable seated position, closing your eyes and watching your breath. Just for the minute. While watching even your chest rise and fall, or your belly rise and fall. Anything rhythmic that's going on in your body, whatever you feel is comfortable to you. And here is the key: when you notice your mind has wandered because everyone's does. You just bring your attention back to that rhythmic item. Over and over again. And you may notice at the end of a minute that it's wandered for the entire minute, or not. And there's no wrong way of doing it. You just bring your attention back.  Christina: And then noticing of the whole mind wandering, that's the actual success part rate is that you've noticed and now you're coming back.  Aurora: Exactly. And there's a micro and a macro level to that. So, on the micro level, it's within that meditation. You notice your mind has wandered and you come back. On a macro level, it's about getting your butt on the cushion, or the kitchen chair, wherever you medicate. And for me for example, I haven't done my meditation today so I know on a macro level, I need to get my butt in the chair later on today.  Or if it's weeks between the last time you meditated than today, coming back to the meditation, you'll notice you've wandered away from it, come back to it. And non-judgment is one of the main tenants of mindfulness philosophy. Not beating yourself up when your mind wanders. And noticing that, that instinct to trust yourself.   Christina: Right. So what recommendations do you have for people who are going through the process of separation right now, and are hoping to separate peacefully?  Aurora: That is a big question. I think learning is much about yourself as you can. Learning in terms of mindfulness, what does your mind wander off to, and bringing it back? The more you can know about yourself, the better decisions you can make. You can notice when you're motivated by fear. That's something that is unlikely to happen. You can notice when you're motivated by anger or spite, or when you're doing something self-destructive. Or that might not be the best thing for your children. I've seen so many people who just wanna do best for their kids, and who gets side-tracked on some sort of spiteful venture. And I think as a parent, I don't even really judge that. I used to judge that so harshly. And now I think, we all have lots of things that we do regularly where we go "that was not my best parenting moment". But it doesn't mean that I'm a bad mom. But I mindfully notice.    And then I can go to my son and say "that really wasn't very cool what I just said, and I'm really sorry, can we try over? Come back to where we wanna be?" So yeah, I would say that the more you can learn about yourself, the more aware you can become, the better decisions you'll make. And also, the more opportunity there will be free to experience. Enjoy, even while this process is happening.  Christina: That's something that a lot of people might not have even considered possible.  Aurora: That's true. People who are having divorces and separations often go about it either as something should be avoided entirely or something where if they work really, really, really hard at it and dedicate all their time to it, it would go by faster. Or it'll be more successful. And that just isn't the case. Often they just sort of get in an obsessive kind of a thing where it's consuming their lives. But it's also about proportion. If you have even 20 minutes a day where you are taking time out to tune in, maybe failure body or enjoy looking at flowers or whatever it is that you like and actually enjoy that cup of coffee or tea you're having actually taste it, what does the liquid feel like in your mouth stuff like that, that time is time where you weren't stressing about your divorce.  Christina:  Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing all of this great information, Aurora.  Aurora: It's my pleasure. I hope people will get turned on about mindfulness because I really feel confident that it can help.   

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