Dr Jenna Macciochi

Like, I'm not sure it's actually helping people.

I think people need to get, regain agency.

Yeah.

And I think that's by really having those conversations with yourself, getting to know yourself and to be, for me, that could only happen in stillness.

when I wasn't distracting myself with busyness or the phone or another project it was sitting with yourself and I you know many of us think about meditation as being like getting into this calm zen place but it's not it's really observing how nuts your mind can be

And then observing it again and again and again until you start to be able to get control of that sort of monkey brain.

And then, you know, not sort of sleepwalk through your life, which is, I think, you know, where I got to, where you are unconscious to your behaviors.

And then you see them and you can't unsee them.

And slowly, by just repetition, you get there.

This is a really lovely study that was done and it resonated with me and certainly was my introduction to self-compassion, which is sort of having a sense of common humanity, how we speak to ourselves, sort of having the compassion for yourself as you would for a good friend.

And there's several different techniques that you can find to help you develop this.

But they're looking at blood markers, so a sort of empirical readout of your immune system.

And particularly, they were interested in unwanted inflammation.

So inflammation is your immune system's weapon of defense.

So when it wants to remove something from your body or heal or repair damage, it will pull out inflammation.

So it's very, very useful.

It keeps us alive.

It's the reason we haven't died out as a species.

But over time, that can get a bit leaky and your immune system will react to things it shouldn't.

with inflammation.