Strategies for Understanding Your Body and Mind with Garey Simmons

Rhonda: Welcome to add to Act 2: 0:00

You're On!. Join Us Weekly at our studio roundtable as Rhonda

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Kate and Linda invites spectacular guests to weigh in on staying sexy, vibrant and healthy.

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or a martini

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You're On!

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Greetings friends. I'm Linda Tighe and I have the great pleasure of podcasting with my two dynamic A2YO cohosts

Kate: 0:33

Kate Leavey

Rhonda: 0:34

And, I'm Rhonda Garvin Conway, and today

Linda: 0:37

I am thrilled that we get an opportunity to talk with Garey Simmons, I met Garey actually through a platform called Success Circles, which we've also talked about on the podcast. It's an amazing platform, and I am so grateful that I was able to be buddied up with Garey, he's an amazing guy. He has a deep knowledge of the body and health. He has a deep understanding and curiosity about the human spirit and the power of of the mind and in regards to our health. So I just want to ask our listeners, do you wish you had a better understanding of your body? Would you like to have more energy? Are there some strategies that can help me streamline my understanding of my body and therefore my approach to my health and well being? Well, this is the conversation for you. So I'm going to give you a little bit of background about Garey. Garey Simmons first is the father of 10 children, five boys and five girls. Through a series of overseas events. He became involved in missions work and traveled to 30 countries in the next 29 years fulfilling such roles as media imprint programming director organized youth groups even met with the module Hadi leaders in Pakistan, eventually teaching English in Shanghai at a European expatriates school and business English at Johnson and Johnson in the year 2000. Upon returning to the US, Garey became involved in the telecommunications industry and later started rehabbing houses in Baltimore in 2005. Having received a diagnosis of high risk factors for heart disease and potential stroke, Garey began studying alternative ways to induce good health and mitigate chronic and inherited diseases. By 2006. Garey became fully convinced that high potency Omega three fish oil was the first step to reclaiming health he started dietary supplement company in 2006 and ran that company until it was sold in 2020. In the middle of the pandemic, he remains on the board and helps part time with operations and marketing a proponent of the meds, philosophy and EDS where mind state exercise diet and sleep are the four pillars by attending to these four areas wellness and vitality can be achieved, reclaimed and proclaimed. Garey graduated from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in 2013 completed one year of Functional Medicine study at the Tracy Harrison and the School of Applied Functional Medicine and recently completed training as a precision nutrition health coach. Garey supports outreach and missions in Nigeria where there's a lot of need amongst the mothers and infants, children with cerebral palsy and other melt maladies. Currently, Garey spends time visiting his grandchildren and building a Self Help website called Full body healing, where folks can learn about mind state exercise, diet and sleep. So thank you, Garey, so much for being here today. We're so excited to talk with you. Thank you for that. There's a lot of transitions there. And at Hulu, of course, we were talking about reinventions and transitions. So tell us a little bit about that. I mean, being a father of 10, in and of itself has to have an act two or three

Garey Simmons: 3:15

There were there was two marriages. But yeah, I had four kids. And then I proceeded to have another six kids, but my youngest, now, thankfully, I can say with a lot of humility and grace, my youngest is 24 years old, and she holds two bachelor degrees. And she got her first job in a mental health and wellness clinic in Montgomery County, Maryland. So I'm very proud of her proud of that. And I've got kids, Canada, throughout the United States. And the fact that I've lived in third world countries, most of my adult life, I wasn't exposed to all the, you know, 10,000 varieties of potato chips walking down the aisle in the supermarket. You know, we were lucky to find potato chips anywhere. And so, I was living a very natural, holistic life in India, and China. And when I was on those different mission stations, I studied Arabic medicine in India, and I also I was treated with Chinese medicine when I was living in China. That was the foundation and the crux of wanting to be more holistic and natural in my life. But I'm also a child of the 1950s. So I grew up eating canned green beans, that was vegetables, they came out of a can and the whole - I don't know if you want to take a deep dive into food policy in the United States - but anyway, the manufacture of food is directed by government money and subsidies and lobbying and therefore it's not always your fault. If you're not feeling top of the world and exhibiting your peak potential for who you are as a human being. The body is terrifically magnificent, and capable of so much and it's very humbling for me to be a student of health and wellness. I'm not a medical doctor, I have studied with medical doctors and nurse practitioners in various wellness courses to talk about wellness and striving. And moving towards a better lifestyle is always my favorite thing to talk about, like, I can bore people to tears. So believe me....

Kate: 5:25

Oh, not here. I think this is really fascinating. I think it's fascinating to consider that often there's no food in our food anymore, because of the way that it's manufactured or what we're putting into our soil. So I think the more light

you can help shed on: 5:41

what do we do to stay healthy. I feel like, you know, you try to do the right thing. And still, you're not feeling like you're at your peak or you're not feeling healthy, and you're getting exercise, you're eating the right things. You're trying to at least - I think anything you can offer, well, selfishly, I want to hear, but I know that our listeners are very intrigued by all of this.

Garey Simmons: 6:04

Really, you know, what are we as human beings, you know, what are we comprised of? How do we what's the operating system that runs this magnificent computer that we are endowed with and that we have received as a gift? Nobody asked to be landed on this planet? We don't have a choice about that. But once we're here, what do we do with what we got? And how do we take care of ourselves? And probably the - you had Joseph (Varghese) on? And he talked about the big why, like, what is your life about? Well, that's a really good question. Quite honestly, everything that I thought meant what my life was supposed to be was sort of taking or downloading from the system and the people around me what, what they think I should do, but in reality, we are here for purpose, I believe that that's just a belief system that I have, really everything that happens up here in our mind, state controls everything else. So whether you exercise or you don't exercise, or the healthy or you eat junk food, those things are controlled by decisions and belief systems that you've installed. Either you've installed them, or probably more often than not, they have been downloaded. When you were somewhere between the age of the of birth and seven years old. Everything you did from those in those first seven years, you are downloading from the outside world, mainly your parents, hopefully, it was mainly your parents or people at school. And that became your belief system until you reached an age of majority. And you figured out I can make decisions for myself and Dad, I don't really think you're right about that. I'm going to go a different direction. And we do that around the age of 1213 or 14 years old. I mean, I know it actually starts at six and seven, eight years old, I just took care of one of the grandkids recently, and they're teenagers already these days. I don't know if that's the influence of too much screentime or what but anyway, there is a lot of creative thought going on in a seven year olds mind. Back to the question of how do we become healthier now that we are grown adults, and we can make our own decisions? I think it's good to just check in with yourself as to who you think you really are. And what you think about yourself? Is there a loving relationship between you and you? There's the outside view this, this replication of what's on the inside? But what's your treatment? Would you treat your friend the way you treat yourself? Would you talk to friends the way you talk to yourself? You know, just think about that for a minute. A lot of the negative self talk, no, you can't do that. No, you're not good enough. No, you're not this or you're not that that comes from when you were to and you were told no 20,000 times. You just can't do that. Sorry. It's not for you know, don't stick your finger in the socket. No. So we grow up with that emphasis that there are so many things we can't do. And then we when we get to this teenage adolescent years, and we figured out, hey, I can do some things. Let me try my hand at this. Let me try that. Let me try the next thing. We start seeking and going out in the world. And it's, it's for a very biological reason. We have a family. And that's where we got all this information from, we download all this information. But then we find things we don't agree with. We have to move out to find people that we do agree with people that we can become sympathetic with people who will empathize with the things that we're thinking about. And you go out and you start looking for friends. And ultimately you look for a mate and you want to raise a family, you can start the whole process all over again. I think the treatment of oneself and your mental attitude towards who you are as a person being willing to say, I really love my life. That's very important to me. I think that I only came to that recognition just a few years ago. I'm here for purpose and I love my life and I love who I am and I love what I do. If If you haven't gotten to the point where you can really be friends with yourself and be in love with who you are, and treat yourself with, with this foundational premise that if you believe in God, we always say God is Love that says, that's a kind of a cliche, but that is really the essence of life. You know, that's what we want to move towards. Just you know, there are other bio mechanisms in our body that make us fear, make us afraid, make us run away. But then the pleasant things, and the pleasure of life is moving towards things that are, you know, the kindness, the joy, the happiness and filling up your heart with those things. I think that's where health really begins. If you want to talk about practicality, things for people who are full grown adults, we can do that, too.

Rhonda: 10:45

Thank you for talking about those limiting beliefs and the internal work because I think we can all encounter programs and information ad nauseum. But if we're not addressing the inner work to be in the mindset that we are worthy, and hey, this belief cuts in my way and is a block, then it's going to continue to feel really challenging. So I segue into talking about this pragmatic approach. I understand you have a philosophy, it's a great acronym, I believe, MEDS. And if you could share with us what that represents and how it works, I think we could all benefit to hear about the granular and how to put it into action.

Garey Simmons: 11:29

I appreciate that. Thank you. So we all we all need tools to do jobs to do work to get things accomplished. You need a tool MEDS is a tool, it gives you a focus and focal point. And generally we can handle two or three or four things to focus on at a time in order to achieve a result. So I used to say mind state was 80% of life and 80% of health. But now I've reformed and I believe that mind state is 100% of everything. It's kind of a Buddhist concept that what you believe is the creation around you, you project, what you want in life and what comes to you comes from you it's a it's a cycle, it's a it's the same thing as what happens in the body itself, where mind state, we can call it a pillar exercise, we can call it a pillar, diet, we can call it a pillar and sleep. But all those things are totally integrated and holistic together. You can't separate one without the other. You can't be sleeping really well at night while you're mad and upset and bitter at the government, the IRS, your made your kids, that just doesn't work, you know, you're not going to get good sleep. If you're if you're upset with life. If once you get the mind state peace, and there's a lot of tools, when you go to full body healing, I have a free course there. It does require a sign up. But you can access about 10 or 11 lessons that deal with mindset exercise, diet and sleep,

Kate: 12:58

I would like to talk about Western meds. And this notion that we have a pill to solve every ill.

Garey Simmons: 13:05

A pill for every ill.

Kate: 13:07

But often we're addressing the symptom rather than the cause. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about your stance on synthetic medicines versus food as medicine.

Garey Simmons: 13:19

Great question. So Hippocrates is credited for saying Let food be thy medicine and medicine by food. And we've heard that that's I guess, 3000 years ago, but in clinical science, as you know, the those this western allopathic way of dealing with disease, really, clinical studies were only started in 2003. Or published, I should say, in the 1990s. When doctors went to medical school, there was no nutrition there was no there is no concept of talking about food. And in fact, to even underline it and put an exclamation point on it. Doctors have the worst lifestyle. You know, there they go from their four years of medical school into an internship and residency and they're on 12 hour shifts, and what are they eating? When they get a five minute break? They're eating pizza, they're eating fast moving carbs that are going to give them the energy to keep going at that moment. But it also creates all this cortisol and stress and they're living off of epinephrine and adrenaline and then when they when they're off duty they have to sleep and they get up and start the whole cycle again. So when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs now, I was pretty adamantly against all pharmaceutical drugs for most of my life. I think I was given a penicillin type pill. When I was in India, I had a blind boil on my arm that just would not try it all the natural remedies couldn't get that thing to pop and go away. So I went to a doctor to have it lanced. He gave me an antibiotic just in case and that pill turned me beet red from the top of my head to the bottom of my Feet like I had this really adverse reaction to penicillin. I swore off pharmaceutical drugs now I'm good, you know. And as I said, where I was living, it's equivalent of what we call farmer markets here, open air markets where you go get your fresh food and vegetables and meats and cheese, if you're so lucky. You know, that's how I live. That's the way I prefer to live. Now, when it comes to medicine, of chronic diseases, that we have the four horsemen, right, we've got, we've got heart disease, we've got cancer, we've got diabetes, and we've got neuro degenerative diseases, those for chronic illnesses. Basically, my belief is that they come from lifestyle and diet, even poor diet or poor lifestyle leads to these certain outcomes for people. There's some little bit of genetics involved. But underlying most of this really is the diabetes question from diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, and cancers form from insulin resistance and too much glucose in the blood, and there's no uptake for the glucose. And then the fat becomes this extra, almost organ, that has to be dealt with by the body and the NR system, historically, and pre-istorically, we're not fit for that we're not fit to be living that type of lifestyle. I have reformed a bit to the extent that if you are in a crisis, and you are in deep trouble, and you're one step away from emergency, go ahead and take the medicine, as the doctor says, this is going to save your life and get you out of trouble. But I'm not really in favor of treating chronic disease only with medicine. I mean, I know this was taught to doctors to have first line therapy, that means lose some weight and eat better, okay, the lessons over that's all you're going to get right? In that vein, they're going to prescribe that pill for every ill and then send you to a specialist unless they go out and study functional medicine, or holistic medicine, or I've met medical doctors who have delved into all the other different art forms from Chinese medicine, acupuncture. But yeah, that's I spent a year studying functional medicine. And I really love it. And that's where I had to taper off this idea that all synthetic medicine is bad. Well, it is if you're trying to live off. But if you're trying to get out of a really dire emergency situations, do what your doctor says,

Linda: 17:28

if your house is burning down, you're going to call the fire department, not the restoration company. But if you're trying to take care of your house and prevent fires, you're going to call the restoration company to come in and make sure that your your house is in good shape.

Garey Simmons: 17:41

Keep your house up to code. That's exactly right. That's right.

Linda: 17:44

Yes. Keep your house up to code. Yes, yeah. And I know we're getting close in our time. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about the mindset piece. I totally agree. I also study at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. So you know, they talk about primary food and secondary food and primary food is your emotional state and how you treat yourself and how you love yourself. But that's not so easy to do. But those little little voices in my head are still there. And the tracks that I've learned throughout my whole life are still there and quick sort of thought on there a good way to shift give a, you know, some some sort of practical way to shift in the day when you start to notice that you're doing

Garey Simmons: 18:20

I'm a practitioner of using brainwaves to adjust my thinking and, and let me preface it by saying that there are molecules in your body that make you feel good and want to get out there and accomplish things. And there are molecules in your body that make you feel depressed and want to go to bed and never get up again, that it is biological. It's you know what, which came first the chicken or the egg, like and that's where hopefully if you start with mind, state and realize a few things and make a few declarations about who you are and what you believe in what you want for your life. You can build on that that becomes foundational and you can build on that Dr. Bruce Lipton. The Biology of Belief is his Cornerstone work. He taught me that the first five minutes when I wake up in the morning, and the last five minutes before I go to sleep. You're entering the brainwave of theta. theta is self hypnosis. Favorite is the imaginary playground that that 2,3,4,5 year old is playing in making tea for people who are not there yet. And creating and doing all this wonderful stuff that is theta theta is a slower brainwave, and we're operating right now at beta. That's our normal functioning conscious mind. But if you want to get in touch with your body, and you want to get in touch with your subconscious mind, use theta and theta is that five minutes before you've you're falling asleep. And that five minutes when you're first waking up before you open your eyes. This is also a Buddhist thing to do the way a Buddhist monk will wake up is not to open his eyes. First thing you ruminate and you think and you you let them out Do what it's doing. And General I postulate those in the evening before I'm going to sleep I give it give it to God or give it to the universe. I've worked on it. I can't figure anything out it's befuddling. Well, if you put that in your theta brain to theta brainwaves and and let the subconscious work on it, a lot of times the next morning or the morning after, there will be some clarity. And there'll be a new way of looking at a new idea. And I think that's probably one of the best places to start is just, I mean, that's we're talking about 10 minutes a day, and you're going to be in bed anyway, doing something other than trying to get to sleep, well make it a practice to affirm yourself, you know, make it a practice. I mean, that's how I lost 30 pounds, I was I was consider being a health coach and being 3035 pounds overweight, and having gout flare ups and being prescribed medication that I wouldn't take how I saw this, you know, well, I tried drinking more water, I try, you know, a lot of different physical things. But when I decided that at 186 pounds, that I wanted to be 179, I just told myself as I was going to sleep, and I was as I was waking up 179, 179, 179 I kept repeating it for about two weeks. And then with everything else I was doing in my life and the study, the studying of autophagy and various methodologies, how the body works, understanding what's really going on, I felt like I was connecting with my subconscious and the way to astrology. And yeah, I got down to you know, the BMI, magical goal weight, further than that, I've lost more weight by getting a little more active. And one of the things I currently do, but I get up in the morning, and I go for a walk, these eyes are actually, you know, we call them eyes, or we think they're connected to our brain. But in fact, the cells in the eyes are actually part of your brain, just think about that you've got your brain sticking outside your skull. And what's that for...it's to regulate the environment and to understand what's going on around you. So the central nervous system can keep track of everything. All the organs operating at a certain time, the circadian rhythm is nothing to be trifled with, you want to get sunlight, or even clouds, cloudy sky is fine. You're getting photons from the sun. And that's activating that circadian rhythm clock, you know, that sits just above the roof of your mouth. And that is the supervising clock that affects all other clocks in your body. Your liver has a clock, your heart has a clock, your spleen, every part of your body has a pulse and a clock that organizes the work that that part of your body needs to do. And it does it holistically and synergistically. So lowering the inside lights in the evening, having fresh air and sun in the morning. That's another great place to start building a new functioning way to improve your health.

Kate: 23:04

I know that you're doing work in Nigeria, and I know this is a much larger discussion. But I think it's regarding vitamins and supplements. And I don't know if there's something that you can offer to our listeners and to me, that we should be taking that is you know, helpful to get us to be working in our at our best.

Garey Simmons: 23:23

Well, obviously, as Linda well knows the nutritional piece of what you eat and how you believe in what you eat is important. Certainly there within our society today, there's going to be gaps; we're going to be missing things. And while naysayers will say "well, that you're just making expensive peepee, you know, like taking the supplements, but that's not quite true. We do want to get as much of our vitamins and our minerals from the food we eat. And as you pointed out at the beginning, the apples that we today are not the apples that our grandmother's ate. And the same is true for wheat, especially for wheat. With that said, there are certain we know everybody is in agreement, vitamin C and vitamin D, right? Yeah, with this pandemic that's ongoing. Like we just we have to, we have to take care of ourselves. There's a great quote from Dr. Andrew Weil, he says "You cannot count on the medical system to keep you healthy. I mean, the medical system doesn't even get involved until you're really, really sick. You can't you can't see a doctor until you get an appointment, which might be three weeks from now. What are you going to do for yourself in the meantime." I'm a big proponent of vitamin C and vitamin D. I want to get my vitamin D from the sun, but I do also take it as a supplement. I feel very strongly about the immune system and there's a lot we could talk about the immune system. But yeah, that's that's really important. And then omega three fish oil. That's the cornerstone of not everybody likes fish and unfortunately the fish that are in the ocean, the larger fish. They've been out there for a while and they've encountered pollutants and carcinogens and all sorts of nasty things that we wouldn't want to put in our bodies. If I were to recommend, I was quite surprised to learn this myself. But farm raised salmon actually has more omega three than ocean cod salmon, but certainly salmon once or twice a week in any other kind of seafood that you enjoy. As long as it's, you know, deemed safe, and then supplement with omega threes, they come in nice little shiny capsules, and they're easy to take. And it's if nothing else, it's an insurance policy because it's got the SATs inflammatory effect, and most of the chronic diseases come from inflammation.

Kate: 25:39

And so Gary, we're gonna shift into the golden nugget segment. So that's a little bit of information or a thought that you might have that will help our listeners as they are at a point of transition or reinvent. So

Garey Simmons: 25:53

I think the nugget is to really be in touch with where you are right now. And that little key at the beginning I shared I think that's really my nugget is really respect who you are and love yourself and just treat yourself the way you would treat any of your friends and your loved ones. Right? You wouldn't be mean or snarky, or doing put downs all the time. So my my mission and my big WHY is to just fill up my heart with all those good things, happiness and joy and transmute those things into health, right? I want to be healthy, I want to live a long time. And I want people my age, especially to take better care of themselves. You can't wait for the medical system to invent something that's going to heal you. Prevention is better than cure more money spent on prevention and eating well, like, here's, here's a little tip to sorry, you're gonna have to shut me up. No, no, no, no. My key to losing weight was autophagy, A U T O P Hagy. It means it means self eating, right? You're eating yourself. It's the recycling of cells in your body is prompted and sparked by intermittent fasting. So eating less calorie restriction allows me - I don't have to get this massive amount of food to satisfy my body. I just need a few really good things. So I'm willing to spend more money on higher quality food and eat less of it and be healthy and be happy.

Rhonda: 27:27

Oh, there's so much I love this conversation. Thank you. And unfortunately, we are going to begin to wrap it up I have the task of saying it's that time. So before we we put an end to this amazing dialogue. Could you share with us what's next for you?

Garey Simmons: 27:46

Oh, wow. Yeah, Grandpa is the key word here. My kids, my grandkids are spread around the United States. And for the last two years, no traveling - my journey the rest of this year is to see more of my grandkids. So, I've got some on the West Coast I've never met and there's a couple in Wisconsin that are going to come down to the East Coast that's really big for me. Family is really number one. I've achieved what I want to achieve with finances and money and that kind of thing. Business. I think it's really important to be motivated to do all those things. But at this point in my life, I really want to enjoy my grandkids and impart and and make it easier for my grandkids, parents, my kids to have an easier time. So that's that's really what's next for me with fullbodyhealing.com, that is the venue where I'll be posting, there's 150 blog posts up already. And you don't need to log in to read those the classes that are 10 or 15 lessons each, those will be coming out. There's about six of them in the works. So you can partake and enjoy that and it's all for free. At some point we will start charging money and then that money is going to help support the clinic in

Rhonda: 28:56

Nigeria, which is very good and important work of having them Dr. David, we can vouch for that. Absolutely.

Linda: 29:03

Absolutely. Well, Garey is one of my favorite people in the world. I'm really so glad I met him so glad to have this conversation. And thank you for being with us today.

Garey Simmons: 29:12

Oh thank you ladies, I appreciate it very much and keep up the good work.

Kate: 29:16

And folks, just to reiterate, you can find out more about Garey at fullbodyhealing.com and also about the supplements and vitamins at thevitaminspa.com.

Linda: 29:27

And so it is left to me to say go for it be brave, live well and do good. Because it is act two

All: 29:34

you're on.

Kate: 29:35

Act Two You're On was brought to you by Act 2 Share Our Stage.

Linda: 29:39

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Rhonda: 29:44

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