The Clear Perspective with Caitlin Parsons

Had a very amazing chat with Caitlin Parsons in this episode!
We discussed how your physical health can affect everything else around you!

Get in touch with Caitlin
Instagram: @_caitlinparsons
Website: http://www.caitlinparsons.com/

Allison: Happy Thursday, my friends, we are here with another clear perspective and I am excited to introduce you to Caitlin Parsons. Welcome to the clear perspective.

Caitlin: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Allison: I'm excited to be here too. I'm also how you and I met because I think it's pretty amazing. And I want to give you props for it.

So let me introduce you first, Caitlin is a dental hygienist of 12 years, turned to yoga therapist, coach and CEO of Caitlin Parsons, yoga therapy. So she helps hygienists get back into align with our bodies and minds and throughout their lives. By teaching them the tools through therapeutic yoga, breath, work, meditation, somatic trauma therapy.

And so amazing work that you're doing for those in the dental industry. And she also supports women through private coaching and her monthly yoga membership, and she helps dental offices in her new eight week program, realign, dental wellness. So thank you so much for being here. I absolutely love what you're doing.

Um, as you know, I'm a yoga instructor as well. And I just see this being such an important topic and you know, the service that you're doing for the industry. So thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. So I first and foremost want to give you props for how you and I met Caitlin reached out on Instagram and I love this because I'm like telling everyone in the whole dental industry, I'm like, you need to be on Instagram.

You need to connect with people on Instagram. The dental industry is small and so. So many people and she just reached out. She's like, Hey, interested in me on your podcast. So love that props for you for finding me and being here today.

Caitlin: It really is such a small world, especially when you're go on Instagram.

I thought I was like, would never meet many people. And I'm like, it's actually, you can meet a lot of people.

Allison: You really can. And I feel like you can meet people that are, you're really aligned with on Instagram, because Instagram, as like we see it as like such a lifestyle, um, you know, visual platform. And so I feel like you can look at some of these patients.

We should be friends. So I love it. I'm so excited to meet you. So let me start by asking you some questions, because I feel like this is a topic that, you know, I've talked about this topic before, and I think it's something that I hear as a dental office manager, especially like all of my hygienists were in pain.

A lot, some of them had to get surgery for tendonitis. Some of them, um, you know, had two full weeks off because of their body. Um, Issues. And so how does yoga and meditation really support the dental professional from pain, stress, anxiety, and other issues?

Caitlin: I could talk about this all day, but like you, I mean, if you think about, it's not even just the hygienist, I mean the office manager, dentist's assistant everyone, that's in the office, that's sitting first of all, um, The way we sit makes a difference, but just in general, sitting for as long as we do is not good for our bodies.

So the more that we can stretch the areas that get super tight, the more that we can strengthen the areas that tend to get weaker, the more that we're sitting. Um, and you know, a lot of people think of yoga as the physical aspect, right? The physical movement practice, fitness practice. That's kind of what it is.

Trickled down to in our culture, but yoga is so much more than that. Yoga is increasing your self awareness. It is learning how to breathe properly so you can mitigate stress and feel better in your body and your nervous system. So there are so many pieces to yoga that are relevant for what we do in the dental profession.

That really doesn't have to just be. An hour long yoga class, where you can get those benefits. You can get them by sitting at your desk. You can do little stretches by just sitting in the operatory. You can take deep breaths and not freak out when you're in. When you have all of, you know, you're late for your patients, your patients grew, and the doctors yelling at you, all, whatever is going on.

We can use these, these tools in the moment. Once we learn them to, to feel better, to be our best selves.

Allison: I a hundred percent agree with that. And one of my mantras is when we're working with people to increase production or increase success increase, high-performance the first thing we need to look at is the human first.

We are all human beings in our dental profession, and we work in a demanding profession, a demanding career, physically, mentally, emotionally. And so when we're able to take the best care of ourselves and have strategies to overcome the stress, the physical strain on our bodies, that's how we have longevity.

That's how we have long-term success. And so I absolutely love that. And in my practice, in Bermuda, when I was managing ways that we'd start our meetings all the time, it was having just a slight. Short yoga session, where we'd all just stretch, we'd breathe. And it's amazing how even five minutes can transform how you feel.

Caitlin: Even two minutes, I'm like you can do so, so many things in such a little amount of time. And I am huge on translating the human body to what we produce because I, I started, you know, right out of high, right out of college. I became a dental hygienist. And while I was a dental assistant before that, but I was in pain for so long.

In the beginning of my career, I wasn't taking care of myself and I'm like 23, 24 years old. What am I going to do? And right before I retired, uh, last year, I'd say like the three years before that I really got clear on like, what works for me, how to support myself and the, like the hygienist I was at the beginning of my career towards the end is like drastically different because my, my productivity was, was completely different with skyrocketed.

Just the way I communicated with my team, my patients, my leadership skills change because. I evolved into a better version of me because I was taking care of my body, my mind, my emotions, all of that.

Allison: It's so powerful. It is so powerful. I'm getting goosebumps talking about this because I was the same. I was a 22 years old and I had lower back pain.

And I'm like, what? It's like, I'm a 22 year old dental assistant. How do I have lower back pain? And I kept going to my physiotherapist and I was like, what can I actually do about this? Like, I don't want to keep with fixing something. And that's when I started to kind of, you know, be proactive, which is so powerful.

Yeah, but I want to talk about something that I think, um, like other people are starting to talk about this more in the industry. And I think it's really, really important and it's all tied in, and I think it's a conversation we should've been having years ago, but really it's kind of like the mental health aspect of our jobs.

So how do you feel like, what do you feel like this is the connection between the physical pain and stress that people feel in the operatory and how that translates to how they show up in their everyday life.

Caitlin: I mean, it's the, how we feel in our physical body. It's, it's almost impossible to be in pain and feel good and have all your energy.

It literally being in pain is, is draining your energy. Your body is working extra hard to, to try and heal the pain. So we literally have less energy. We have less motivation. We have less focus. We have less clarity. So we're literally like. I know when I was in pain, like you said, I had low back pain. I was told I needed surgery.

All of these things, I was almost like a skeleton version of me and we become depleted. I know a lot of people in the dental industry really resonate with that of just like you see it in, like all the Facebook groups I'm defeated. I have no idea what to do. And it's like, we, we give every thing we have, we go home we're in pain.

And then all of a sudden it's like, I have literally nothing to give. And then most people go home and they have. Kids. And then they give any last bit to them and then they go to bed and they start over again. So it's just like, there is a huge correlation with, with pain and, and our, our stress levels, our emotional state, how we take care of ourselves.

There's literally studies out there that show a correlation between being in physical pain and depression.

Allison: So 100%. And the funny thing is, it's not funny, actually it's terrible, but the. the odd thing is that oftentimes when we're working day in and day out, we actually don't even acknowledge that we're in pain.

So like, if you just sat here right now and ask yourself, like, is there pain in my body? I bet so many people would be like, actually, yes, my neck, my wrist, my forearm, my shoulder, my lower back. There are so many things that are probably not feeling great, but we get used what we mal adapt to our environment and we just kind of ignore it.

I did for many years, because I didn't actually know that there was a different solution. I just thought I could, you know, push through it, which we don't need to do.

Caitlin: Yeah. And I think the, the issue with that becomes that if we're ignoring, we're ignoring, we're ignoring the signs from our body, which is intelligence from our body.

Then we get the big, oh my God, I blew a disc or I need surgery now. There's like no way out, but this, but yet we had all of these signs before that our culture really doesn't. And I know that this is a conversation that needs to happen more and is happening in our field. But. We need to be listening to that.

We need to have tools to understand in how to listen to our body

Allison: a hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. And when we look at like, when I I'm brought into a practice to talk about productivity, ROI, increasing production, the first thing that I look at is how has your team feeling. Are they drinking enough water?

Are they mentally okay. Um, you know, are they sleeping at night because that is what helps people produce more in any sense, like produce more energy, produce more joy. Um, because if you're in physical pain, like how are you going to be more productive? Right. So what would you say. We could have our teams focus on one thing.

What would be the one thing that you would suggest them focusing on to kind of get themselves out of pain or, you know, feel like what, what do they need to prioritize for themselves?

Caitlin: There's so many, it, I feel like it depends on the practitioner and what's going on in your body and in your life. But for the most part, just taking time for you and it, doesn't again, have to be this long hour long practice.

It's or it doesn't even have to be yoga if something else resonates and makes you feel better. But I feel like. Like, if you could take care of yourself even throughout the day, if you could find tools to just come back to yourself and like before this next patient, as I'm typing the notes, I'm just going to like stretch my shoulders or like do this stretch for my low back.

But if you, we could start to remember that we're we're human and to come back to ourselves, even throughout our Workday afterward, before work, that is a powerful shift that we can start to make is when we're aware we can make the changes that we wanna make.

Allison: I love that. So it's really like coming back to ourselves and remembering that we are human beings, not human doings.

Like we're literally, we're here to serve others. That very first thing we need you to serve ourselves because it's not selfish to do that. It's selfish if we don't. Yeah. We don't take care of ourselves. Somebody else is going to have to.

Caitlin: Absolutely. And I, that was my motto or that was how I lived. I was like a human doing for Mo like the first half of my career.

I was a people pleaser. I wanted to like take care of everyone else. Like, that's why I led myself to so much pain and I got to the point that I was like, Almost at rock bottom. I was told I needed surgery for my hand. I couldn't open my hand more than this. I was like looking at, maybe I need to retire at the age of, I forget if I was 25 or 26 and I had to make some radical changes and it was hard at that point, but it doesn't have to get to like the rock bottom that I got to.

Allison: Yes. Oh my gosh. So if you could tell like any new hygienists, like, let's say you're a new hygienists coming into the industry. One of my very best friends is actually just graduating in a couple of months. Like, what would you tell that a dentist in order to have a career like long-term success enjoy,

Caitlin: I'd say prioritize yourself and like find what works for you in each season.

Because I do feel that we have different seasons. There are seasons that are harder for us emotionally or physically, um, Find ways to take care of yourself, body, mind, emotional state, if you can find one thing that does all of that great, but find a way to do it. And, and for me, it's, it's like a morning routine and an evening routine, even if it's like 15 minutes, 15 minutes, even if that is in bed as I'm waking up.

Um, but yeah, prioritize herself.

Allison: I love that. I obviously love that. And what would you say? Because I do, I work with a lot of doctors that asked me, like, you know, their hygiene team. They're like, I think my hygiene team is burned out. Like we hear that so much. They're like my hygiene is burned out. I don't know what to do.

How can doctors support their hygienists? Especially right now. Like it's not been an easy year and a half for the field. Um, how can doctors support their hygienists right now?

Caitlin: Um, the first thing that comes to mind is, is leading by example is taking care of yourself. And really when you are of yourself, you exude that to other people, you are your best self, and that is.

That's it's magnetic. So, so that's one thing. And then we can, doctors can bring in, I mean, not even like an eight week program like mine, but you can implement like you guys did, you can implement a one minute long meditation or a one minute long movement practice in the morning to just start getting things, moving in a different direction and start getting your hygienists kind of thinking a little bit differently and see what happens from there.

Allison: Absolutely. I love the lead by example, um, thing, because I don't think sometimes as leaders, we don't recognize how like our actions or inactions affect our team because our team's always watching, even when we don't think that they are. And so being that leaders is so important. I absolutely love this.

And I think this message is so timely for where we are in the world right now. So thank you. Yeah. So I want to, I feel honestly, I feel like we can talk about this all day. We can alignments around this and similar beliefs and values around this. Um, but let me ask you this final question, and that is in your zone of genius with your purpose, your mission, with what you're working on in the world, what would be your definition of success?

Caitlin: I purposefully didn't think about this beforehand. So I would say my definition of success is. Feeling good. And in alignment, not just in your body, but like when you wake up in the morning, you're not feeling anxious to do these things or spend time with these people. You feel successes is true happiness when you wake up and when you go to bed at night and not that happiness is going to be all of the time, right.

There's ebbs and flows. But this, this feeling of being in alignment in all areas of your life,

Allison: I love that. I love that and I that's very close to my destination. That's true. So it's no surprise to me. So tell me how you can, like what can doctors do to find you and that you can do to support their practices.

Like tell me a little bit more about your eight week program.

Caitlin: So my eight week program is actually just launching. I'm so excited about it. I actually, when I started yoga 10, 12 years ago, I started to feel a little bit better in my body and was like, we have to find something that can be for our community because I'm not the only one.

And I had this download, like you're meant to heal your pain so you can heal all of these other people or help heal all of these other people. And so it's like just this big, full circle moment to come back around and be launching this program right now. Um, I, so there's, there's a couple of ways I have a monthly membership it's super easy, super affordable, and you can do it at your own home or you're at your house, but there's also practices that you can do like mini practices in the aunt.

That's awesome. But the, and I actually have a freebie on my website. It's like morning meeting freebies. So those are mini, like mini movement practice you can do with your team, standing up mini meditation, a couple other things. And then my eight week program is I go into the office, the first session.

It's about an hour long session with the team I of. Integrate the, there will be classes every week, essentially that you can either choose to do with your team or they can do at home. Um, and then each team member gets an individualized session. So it's most of the time it'll be an ergonomic session. Um, so kind of figuring out like how you sit, how you, um, What's going on in your body, what's going on in your mind?

How can we help you feel better? So each team gets a little bit of attention and a little bit of tailoring the program to them. And then it'll be, yeah, like the rest of the seven weeks are, and we'll do a yoga therapy class. And then the rest of the seven weeks will be a yoga therapy class that they can either do together or in person.

But it really brings in a lot of the pieces that we talked about here. So it's not just movement to help our posture to help us feel better. It's the stress, it's the, um, finding practices to help our energy and to help our emotional states with bringing all of it together in one eight week

program.

Allison: That's amazing. I love that. And I'll definitely be telling some of my practices about that. So I want to acknowledge you for first, all. You know, having that hard look in the mirror because I think that's the hardest part sometimes is to notice that the direction that you're on the path that you're on, isn't working and then having the courage and the discipline to change.

Yeah, because change is always hard. So I want to acknowledge you for that. And then also turning your own transition into something that's going to help the rest of the industry. So I'm really excited for you. I'm so grateful that you reached out to me and that we can share this message with more people.

And if you want to reach out, find Caitlin Parsons, I've put her, um, website in the comments. Reach out to her, get that freebie, um, join her monthly membership because we can change so much when we can change our own energy, um, heal our own pain and it really could transform your life. So, yes. Thank you so much for being on here today.

Caitlin: thank you. All right, everyone. Bye. We'll see you next time.