Shonda Moralis, BREATHE MAMA BREATHE
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[1:13]I'm here today with Shonda Morales, MSW, LCSW, the author of Breathe Mama Breathe, Five Minute
[1:20]Mindfulness for Busy Moms, and Breathe in Power Achieve, Five Minute Mindfulness for
[1:24]Women Who Do It All.
[1:26]She's a psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in stress-related disorders
[1:30]in mindfulness-based therapy, Shonda currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and
[1:35]two children.
[1:36]So welcome, Shonda Morales.
[1:38]Thanks for coming on mom's own time to read books.
[1:40]Thanks, Vivi.
[1:41]We're thrilled to be here.
[1:42]And we're also here with Shonda's daughter, Anika, which is such a joy, so thanks for coming.
[1:46]Thank you for having us.
[1:47]How old are you?
[1:48]I'm 17.
[1:49]I can't let me just put you on this phone.
[1:50]You're already in college?
[1:51]17.
[1:52]That's pretty impressive.
[1:53]Thank you.
[1:54]So this won't come out to later, but we are filming this right around Thanksgiving.
[1:56]So I feel like this is a very family-friendly moment, right?
[2:01]She's home for Thanksgiving break.
[2:02]I think we'd have her fresh men.
[2:04]Ah.
[2:05]So two books, Breathe Mama Breathe, Five Minute Mindfulness for Busy Moms, which was amazing.
[2:11]Breathe in Power Achieve, Five Minute Mindfulness for Women Who Do It All, which really is the
[2:15]same as moms.
[2:16]I mean, when you get down to it, sometimes you don't have to be a mom to really take advantage
[2:22]of the second book.
[2:23]No, I'm kidding.
[2:24]Yes.
[2:25]You do not have to be moms, of course.
[2:27]So can you please tell listeners what both the books are about?
[2:30]Sure.
[2:31]So Breathe in Power Achieve is about empowering women to step off that hamster wheel and create
[2:35]a life of balance so we can only share capacity for greatness.
[2:40]And Breathe Mama Breathe is geared more toward the busy moms, and that's about creating
[2:44]more connection, calm, and contentment in motherhood.
[2:47]And they both contain mindful breaks, which are these five minute practices that help
[2:51]us to come back to the moment, remind us and opportunities to enjoy our lives, and take
[2:56]advantage of those beautiful moments that we tend to just not even notice when we're running
[3:00]on automatic pilot.
[3:01]It was so funny because you have all these different times of day and different situations
[3:07]where you can have a mindfulness moment, and you give great advice, and this is exactly
[3:11]how to do it and breathe here, but they're all the same situations that any, at least in
[3:16]Breathe Mama Breathe, that any mom is going to go through over the course of the day at
[3:19]some point, to drop off the sports event, all those things.
[3:24]And to me when I was reading them, I was thinking, well, these are some of the times
[3:28]that I can read, you know, it's almost like these are the times I read as when the time
[3:32]knows that the, you know, this little moments, and I guess if you read or you breathe as
[3:38]long as you're doing something for yourself.
[3:40]Right.
[3:41]And when you mentioned that before, and I would invite you to pause before you pull
[3:44]that book out and you get started because reading is that it can be really mindful, but
[3:49]it's also, you know, partially we lose ourselves in a story.
[3:52]So I think the purpose of mindfulness is to be aware first of, I'm going to read now.
[3:57]I'm going to sit here and enjoy this book and sort of to take that in, even if that's
[4:00]five seconds.
[4:02]And you do have reading as like one of the things at the end.
[4:04]Right.
[4:05]Reading with our kids.
[4:06]Yeah.
[4:07]Yeah.
[4:08]So for someone who's really busy and is not totally sold on the mindfulness thing in general.
[4:13]Right.
[4:14]Convert me.
[4:15]Yeah, absolutely.
[4:16]And I get it because I was completely, I was a skeptic when I started.
[4:19]I started meditating when Onika was about three and I was a very devoted meditator.
[4:24]So I took a class where the homework was to meditate for half an hour every day and I'm
[4:27]a recovering perfectionist and people pleasers.
[4:29]I was like, okay, absolutely.
[4:30]I'm going to do my homework.
[4:32]And I did.
[4:33]But after just a few weeks, what I started to notice was that by slowing down just a notch,
[4:38]I was actually more productive and more efficient.
[4:40]And so, and I was a hard sell because I like to get things done and I still do.
[4:45]So writing these books, we tend to write what we need to read and remember for ourselves.
[4:50]It's still that reminder for me too.
[4:52]I have to remind myself to hop off this hamster wheel on pause and take a few deep breaths
[4:56]or take a mindful break because if we don't, then the pace of our day just feels so
[5:01]frantic and urgent.
[5:02]So the invitation is to, so not everybody is going to meditate for a half an hour every
[5:08]day.
[5:09]And that's what I found when I first started teaching this.
[5:10]And so to fast forward, when Anika was about to turn 10 and I was pregnant with my son,
[5:16]I know I wouldn't be meditating for half an hour every day.
[5:19]And so I came up with these five minute practices.
[5:22]So I could keep mindfulness in my life.
[5:23]And so that's the invitation to when women or people say, I don't have time for any of
[5:28]this.
[5:29]I get it.
[5:30]And I would invite you to pause and take two deep breaths and we have time for that.
[5:35]That's five seconds.
[5:36]That's 10 seconds out of your day.
[5:38]And you start to do that.
[5:39]You notice that we slow down the pace of the day just to notch and it feels less frantic
[5:43]and urgent and more calm and we can sustain our energy longer.
[5:47]See, you just mentioned you're a recovering perfectionist and people please.
[5:51]Are you just kind of threw that in there?
[5:53]But that I'm so interested in that.
[5:54]Hang on to that.
[5:55]Tell me a little more about that.
[5:57]Oh, what do you want to know?
[5:59]So pain and picture for me of what you were like before.
[6:02]Yes.
[6:03]And how you got out of that.
[6:04]Right.
[6:05]And my daughter's age, I was really in the height of perfectionism, kind of body image,
[6:10]really kind of on the border of eating disorder, but not quite very much worried about
[6:16]what I look like and had to have the perfect grades, the perfect, perfect outfit.
[6:20]And I ended up having what turned out to be the only panic attack I've ever had was
[6:26]sitting in my junior year in the cafeteria during study hall.
[6:29]I didn't know what it was.
[6:30]And in fact, I didn't even recognize what it was until years later when I was trained
[6:34]to be a therapist.
[6:35]And I was like, oh, I had a panic attack.
[6:37]That's what that was.
[6:38]And so very slowly over time to sort of let go of some of that perfectionistic tendencies.
[6:45]And I think partially just growing up and seeing that it was okay to be good enough,
[6:51]which I talk about in the book as well.
[6:53]So the most convincing part I found of the argument, aside from what you just said about
[6:56]breathing and all the rest, which yet, okay, I know that.
[6:58]I know that.
[6:59]I know.
[7:00]I know it's good for me.
[7:01]to show the brain actually physically changes and MRI scans after only eight weeks of daily
[7:07]meditation practice.
[7:08]Yes.
[7:09]The true.
[7:10]That's true.
[7:11]It's amazing.
[7:12]Yeah.
[7:13]It's a study by Britta Holso.
[7:14]And there are now thousands of studies that are out on mindfulness and meditation that
[7:18]show all the way down to the cellular level.
[7:20]We change our telomeres where they caps at the end of our chromosomes that are responsible
[7:25]for aging.
[7:26]And so when they wear out, then we start to age and get sick and die.
[7:30]And so the longer they stay intact, the longer we live a healthy life.
[7:34]And long-term meditation keeps our telomeres intact longer.
[7:37]So it really is exercise for our brains and for our bodies and our overall health.
[7:42]Wow.
[7:43]Yep.
[7:44]Amazing.
[7:45]So you also gave a statistic that happiness is 40% in our control, 50% genes, 10% environment,
[7:52]which to me means that I could completely strike out on the happiness scale and never
[7:58]get to 100%.
[7:59]But I don't think that's how you mentioned it.
[8:01]That's right.
[8:02]That's right.
[8:03]That's so funny that you took it that way.
[8:04]I'm like a total pessimist.
[8:07]Yes.
[8:08]I totally see it as a yay.
[8:10]We all have control of it.
[8:12]So right.
[8:13]It's not saying that you can only be 50% happy.
[8:17]That's the only chance you have ever.
[8:19]Right.
[8:20]But to me, it's so hopeful because especially with clients or patients who will struggle
[8:24]with depression, let's say, or that feeling of helplessness that I don't have
[8:28]control over my life or I had so many horrible things happen to me.
[8:32]What am I supposed to do about this?
[8:34]And to know that 40% is under our control is to me amazing.
[8:39]And yes, of course, we're not all going to be happy, 100%.
[8:42]No, that would be kind of boring anyway, even though we want other happy people.
[8:47]You have a scene where you take what you call a snap break capital S and AP, snap break
[8:53]in the closet.
[8:54]That's right.
[8:55]Show me that scene again.
[8:56]Tell me what was going on with the case.
[8:58]Yes.
[8:59]Because as you can attest, Tony, my daughter, you know, life happens.
[9:04]And I think it was probably one of those winter days where I was all trapped inside.
[9:08]Oh, I know.
[9:09]It was coming home from a work meeting and I was just exhausted and there was just kind
[9:13]of chaos going out in the house.
[9:14]And so the quietest part of my house would be closing the bedroom door and then closing,
[9:19]going into the closet and closing the closet door and sitting and we're talking walk-in
[9:23]closet.
[9:24]Not quite.
[9:26]Yeah.
[9:27]Just sliding doors.
[9:28]Yes.
[9:29]Yes.
[9:30]Not spacious.
[9:31]And the dog still tries to get her nose under the door and find out where I am.
[9:35]However, it's this idea of we have to go and do whatever we need to do because kids
[9:41]find us in the bathroom.
[9:42]That's the problem.
[9:43]So we have to go somewhere else where they may not be able to find us at least for
[9:47]a couple of minutes.
[9:48]And it's about stopping and noticing what's going on, which for me in that moment, I was
[9:52]feeling completely overwhelmed.
[9:53]My muscles were tight, you know, headache, tension, headache and accepting.
[9:58]This is how it is in this moment.
[10:00]because that really can get us in trouble.
[10:02]When we human nature is to tense up
[10:05]and resist against unpleasantness,
[10:07]unpleasant thoughts and emotions and situations,
[10:10]allowing and then we pay attention to the breath
[10:13]because we just noticed that rising
[10:15]and falling that happens in our belly
[10:17]and it can ground us and bring us back to that moment
[10:19]and keep us in our bodies.
[10:20]And so it's a very quick way to kind of bring our attention
[10:24]back to the moment and calm down in a stressful situation.
[10:27]And it's helpful if you can go into the closet
[10:29]but you don't always have to do that.
[10:30]You can do it anywhere.
[10:31]So many people are telling you
[10:32]I'm getting out of the closet.
[10:34]These are what I'm going to do right here.
[10:35]I can't do the closet.
[10:36]All right, all right.
[10:38]You never know what you're going to learn.
[10:39]So just to break it out one more time,
[10:42]snap SNAP, the S is for stopping and is for noticing.
[10:47]Noticing.
[10:48]Right.
[10:48]Accepting.
[10:49]Accepting and pee is.
[10:51]Pay attention to the breath.
[10:52]OK.
[10:53]Should you do a couple of snaps while you're in.
[10:55]You can.
[10:56]You can't.
[10:58]The three breath hug was another one of my favorites.
[11:00]Tell me about that one.
[11:01]Everybody loves to hear about this.
[11:03]So this is very simply just giving a training
[11:06]our kids or our partner to give a big bear hug
[11:09]and then coordinate our inhales and our exhales
[11:12]together.
[11:13]And it's very calming.
[11:14]It's very connecting because what we tend to do
[11:16]is give a hug or, you know, and we just kind of release
[11:19]or to really do that and bring our attention together,
[11:22]it's so calming.
[11:23]And I like to tell the story of, once again,
[11:26]Monica sitting here, she was about five
[11:28]and I had taught her the three breath hug
[11:30]and to help her calm down.
[11:32]And I was having a mommy meltdown in the bathroom this time.
[11:35]And she slid a note under the door that said,
[11:38]meet me in my room for a three breath hug.
[11:39]So cute.
[11:40]I loved this part of it.
[11:41]And what's even cooler is, just maybe two years ago,
[11:44]what a friend of mine was like, hey,
[11:46]do you have some mindfulness for kids' books?
[11:47]Can I borrow those?
[11:48]And I was like, sure.
[11:49]And I just page through to see what was in there
[11:51]and I found the note as a book hug in.
[11:53]No.
[11:54]Yes.
[11:55]Post it and not Instagram and she may be taken off,
[11:57]but.
[11:58]I don't remember all of this stuff.
[12:00]Do you remember the three breath hugs?
[12:02]Yeah.
[12:03]Do you still do them?
[12:04]Well, yeah.
[12:05]I mean, I don't know, it's deliberately,
[12:06]but we, yeah, you're a good hugger.
[12:09]Do you feel like you've taken some of these mindfulness techniques?
[12:12]Like, do you feel like you implement mindfulness
[12:14]in your day-to-day life?
[12:15]Yeah.
[12:16]I mean, probably not as much as I should,
[12:17]but when I do, I definitely notice a difference, too.
[12:20]Like, what are times when you feel like you might
[12:23]have a mindful moment
[12:24]that other people might just plow through the day?
[12:26]I think one of the biggest things is like,
[12:29]when something is going wrong, too,
[12:30]I kind of just have like a moment
[12:33]where I realize that I have to accept what is going on
[12:36]and like, I can't change it.
[12:39]So, yeah, that gives you a little bit of perspective,
[12:41]which is the point of being able to see
[12:44]that there's a bigger picture here.
[12:45]And it feels so urgent and or terrible in the moment,
[12:49]but to be able to step back and get that bird's eye view.
[12:51]Yeah, yeah.
[12:52]And tell me how this whole book came about.
[12:54]Your therapist told me how it came about.
[12:56]So the first book, Breathe Mama Breathe,
[12:58]was because I was pregnant with my son
[13:01]and was also working with a lot of stressed out moms.
[13:04]And so we all had this intention
[13:06]of going to sit and meditate 20 minutes a day,
[13:09]30 minutes a day, and then it doesn't happen
[13:11]or it really kind of isn't possible,
[13:13]especially when we're in the thick of it
[13:14]within the trenches with little ones.
[13:16]And so there was that piece,
[13:18]and then I was writing blog posts.
[13:19]So I was writing a bunch of blog posts
[13:21]just to help my clients.
[13:23]And I came up, it pulled together and said,
[13:26]this could be a workbook.
[13:27]And then I thought, well, maybe this is the makings of a book.
[13:29]And so I can hurt if I pitch it to an agent,
[13:32]like an agent, and then she pitched it to publishers
[13:34]and the rest is history.
[13:35]So yeah, it wasn't an intentional book writing process,
[13:39]especially in the beginning.
[13:40]Do you have you always like to write?
[13:42]Yes, but not in that compulsive,
[13:44]like I must write every day kind of way,
[13:46]sort of in spurts throughout my life.
[13:48]And I always liked to write.
[13:50]And I was told that I was a good writer,
[13:51]but I wasn't sure what I had to tell.
[13:53]I didn't know what stories I had to tell when I was younger.
[13:55]So now I feel wisdom, I guess, in my older age.
[13:59]And more experience.
[14:02]And so now you've written two mindfulness books.
[14:05]Are you doing, are you gonna target a different
[14:07]population with a third book, or what's your plan?
[14:10]Yeah, not sure.
[14:10]Now I'm not sure.
[14:11]You know, I definitely women's issues,
[14:14]and it's definitely my thing.
[14:16]It was in my 20s and then kind of motherhood
[14:19]and therapy sort of took center stage.
[14:21]And then as Onika started growing up too,
[14:24]in the past few years,
[14:25]she's really gotten into feminism and women's rights.
[14:27]And sort of reignited my passion for that too,
[14:31]which is so exciting to kind of be in that space together.
[14:34]But Gay Hendricks wrote the big leap
[14:36]and he talks about creative fermentation.
[14:38]And I feel like this, my second book just came out
[14:41]about a month and a half ago.
[14:42]So I feel like I'm in that period of creative fermentation,
[14:44]which sometimes feels uncomfortable,
[14:46]but I also welcome it because, you know,
[14:48]I just follow my curiosity and then-
[14:50]What is creative fermentation?
[14:52]Oh, it's sort of having that space,
[14:54]which is part of what we talk about with mindfulness.
[14:56]I feel like you need to just barrel ahead
[14:58]and make something happen,
[14:59]allowing the space of allowing and following curiosity
[15:03]and reading and learning and see what starts to bubble up,
[15:06]what starts to come together.
[15:08]Do you like to read?
[15:09]Do you find time to read?
[15:10]I love to read.
[15:11]Yeah, do you too?
[15:11]Yeah, I mean, with school,
[15:14]I'm reading a lot, so I don't have as much time
[15:16]for reading kind of for fun,
[15:18]but she reads all the time.
[15:20]Yeah.
[15:21]Oh, I love to read, yes.
[15:21]What kind of experience?
[15:22]It's probably not as much as I, you know, with kids
[15:24]and everything seems like every time I sit down,
[15:26]my son is like, do you want to play baseball?
[15:28]You want to play basketball?
[15:29]I don't play football, so there's that.
[15:31]So I don't have to do that.
[15:32]That's right.
[15:33]That's right.
[15:34]I love to read a handful of nonfiction at one time,
[15:37]like kind of toggle back and forth
[15:38]and then usually one fiction, you know, at that time.
[15:41]So yeah, people ask me often, like,
[15:44]when do you find time to read?
[15:45]And I'm like, some books I save for bedtime, right?
[15:48]They're those, you know, just to get lost in that.
[15:50]Exactly.
[15:51]I feel like nonfiction is more daytime.
[15:53]Definitely.
[15:54]Well, before I sit up in bed and read the nonfiction
[15:56]and then when I lay down, I read the fiction.
[15:58]It's like, oh, okay, yeah.
[15:59]Yeah.
[16:01]So yeah, because you said you were a bibliophile.
[16:03]Yeah.
[16:04]So lover of books, yes.
[16:06]Do you collect books?
[16:07]Do you like to keep them in the house?
[16:09]Or are you like a kindle person?
[16:11]Oh, I definitely like real.
[16:12]I like to handle books, yes.
[16:13]I don't love the library too, though.
[16:15]So we do so.
[16:16]Oh, that's great.
[16:17]I just want to talk about this one moment in your life
[16:19]if you don't mind going back to it.
[16:21]You had skin cancer on your face while you were pregnant.
[16:25]Then you had a poison sumac attack.
[16:28]Your mother-in-law had terminal cancer
[16:30]and then you got mastitis.
[16:33]Oh, my gosh.
[16:34]Yes.
[16:35]How did you get through that moment?
[16:36]How did mindfulness help me through?
[16:38]Yeah, yeah.
[16:38]So that was probably, I would say, the darkest moment
[16:41]I had where I still remember that lying in bed.
[16:44]And my son was probably three weeks old,
[16:47]kind of that intense time of sleep deprivation.
[16:50]And that really knocked me over sleep deprivation.
[16:53]So and I wasn't expecting it, but I had a moment
[16:55]where I was really thought about if I could just disappear
[16:59]right now.
[16:59]And I didn't have a plan.
[17:01]I wouldn't do anything.
[17:02]And I thought of my daughter.
[17:04]And I thought, obviously, I'm not going to take matters
[17:07]into my own hands and actually hurt myself.
[17:09]But there was a moment I wish I could just disappear.
[17:11]This is so overwhelming and intense right now.
[17:13]And I just felt like I was drowning.
[17:15]And so what I did was think about,
[17:18]came back to mindfulness and came back to my breath.
[17:20]And so just in this moment, can I just accept,
[17:22]I am feeling bold over right now.
[17:25]And I felt that inhale and that exhale,
[17:26]just like I'm talking about in the closet
[17:28]and moment to moment, hour to hour,
[17:30]and kind of just got through that.
[17:32]And as a mental health professional, too,
[17:34]I would say, definitely my guy in a college
[17:36]was looped in and she knew me for 10 years.
[17:39]And she was really noticing something, too.
[17:41]So we said, we'll keep an eye on this.
[17:42]And when I started to get a little bit more sleep,
[17:44]I came out of that.
[17:45]But it really felt intense in that moment.
[17:47]And we need to really, and even as a therapist,
[17:49]I didn't see that coming.
[17:50]So I think we really need to take care of each other
[17:53]and pay attention when moms are in that postnatal phase
[17:57]to really watch out for each other.
[17:59]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[18:02]I always recommend the essential guy
[18:04]to getting your book published.
[18:05]Okay.
[18:06]To anybody who asked me,
[18:07]I followed that, like my Bible, and it was wonderful.
[18:10]And just to keep writing,
[18:12]even though the self-doubt will show up
[18:14]and you're going to wonder if this is any good,
[18:17]I talk about in, and breathe in power,
[18:18]achieve about the U-shaped curve,
[18:20]about, you know, we always have his dip in our creativity
[18:23]where we feel like this is terrible.
[18:24]I'm terrible.
[18:25]Nobody's gonna, what do they wanna be doing here?
[18:26]Forget it.
[18:27]And that's when we throw in the towel.
[18:28]So don't throw in the towel, just keep going.
[18:30]And eventually you'll come out the other side.
[18:33]Hold on to the towel.
[18:34]That's right.
[18:35]That's right.
[18:36]Okay.
[18:37]All right, well, thank you so much
[18:39]for coming on mom's no time to read books.
[18:40]And I'm good.
[18:41]Thanks for joining us.
[18:42]Thank you.
[18:43]You've been listening to mom's
[18:44]and have time to read books with Zippy Owens.
[18:46]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[18:49]at zippyowens.com to get more updates about episodes
[18:52]like these and also lots of live events.
[18:54]This episode has been sponsored by the podcast,
[18:57]but that's another story with Will Schwabing.
[18:59]Check it out for insightful stories
[19:01]to find out what notable figures like authors,
[19:03]actresses, and directors have found
[19:06]to be some of the most powerful books in their lives.
[19:09]You can follow me on Instagram at mom's don't have time
[19:12]to read books.
[19:13]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[19:16]for the Sound Editing.
[19:17]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[19:19]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[19:21]Thanks for listening.
[19:22]You could always email me at zippyatzippyowens.com.