Rising Above Conflict with Teresa Bruni

george grombacher 0:00
Come on

well Blackford, this is George G and the time is right welcome. Today’s guest struggle powerful. Theresa Bruni Theresa, are you ready to do this? I am so excited to have you back. Teresa. Teresa is known as the healer. She’s assisting individuals in healing physically, emotionally and spiritually through discovering and dissolving fear, grief, trauma, heart ache, and emotional pain. Theresa tell us a little bit personalized more about your work and why you do what you do?

Teresa Bruni 0:41
Well, you know, we, we had a really beautiful discussion back in March on the second of March for anyone who missed that they can learn more about my trip, my personal journey and how I ended up here.

My personal life is is quite satisfying. It’s, I live a very calm life. And part of that as a result of having been chronically ill, for nine years, I’ve learned to prioritize, you know, what is really important. And, and what isn’t. So, I enjoy being out in nature. And my big stress reliever is my photography, which if people want to, you know, visit my website, and they can go to the About Me page, and there’s a link to some of my best work. And so that’s how I, you know, release my stress and everybody should have a way. I think right away of the guy that goes fishing, you know, just grabs his grabs his pole and and jumps in that little boat and goes off by himself. You know, really, George, that’s a form of meditation, people don’t realize that sounds great. Meditation. So for me, it’s photography, life is good. Thank you for asking. And I continue on my journey to inspire people and help to get them well and live the best life possible.

george grombacher 2:19
I love it. I was just thinking about, it’d be great. I need a pickup truck first, because that’s how I’m going to get from where I am to the lake or the river. And then I need probably a dog to then get in the rowboat with me. And then we can paddle out and just have a really nice, idyllic day. Probably not going to be in the cars anytime soon. But who knows. So we are I’ve been thinking a lot about just how modern living is it’s kind of crushing us. We talked last time about how 60% of us are suffering from chronic disease or whatever sickness. And it seems like every time we turn on the television or open up the internet or whatever, it’s bad news, and we’re just constantly getting pulled along. So I was hoping we could talk a little bit about that today.

Teresa Bruni 3:09
Yeah, so first of all, let’s, let’s define what a chronic condition is. It’s always surprising to me, I can be working with clients for quite some time, you know, months on end. And then all of a sudden in conversation, they will mention that they you know, have high blood pressure, which never came up in conversation before. That is a chronic condition, anything that is consistent and ongoing. That’s the definition of chronic, consistent and ongoing. So even even joint pain can be a chronic condition. What confuses most people, I think is they feel that if it is managed with a pharmaceutical, then it’s no longer chronic, but that’s not really true. You still have a chronic condition. You’re just medicating it. So so. So first, as I mentioned, let’s let’s define what a chronic health condition is. And then it’s shocking that you can go out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, you can go out to their website, and you will see right there, you know, they make no bones about it. According to their statistics, 60% of all American adults have a chronic health condition. That’s over 50% of our population. And then they go on to say that 40% have two or more. Okay, so we live in a very sick society and we talked about that in our first interview. You You know, our health care system really is failing us.

george grombacher 5:08
And we do have a tendency to just treat the symptoms. And, you know, for whatever reason, it’s we’re busy or whatever. I think once you actually sit down, think about it, that doesn’t really make any sense why not endeavored to get to the root cause? And there’s so much that I think that there’s so much that goes into that, obviously. But what what what role does energy play if, if, if any?

Teresa Bruni 5:34
Well, that’s a great question. So one of my certifications is in energy leadership index assessment, which was developed by Bruce Schneider. And, and so some of what I’m going to talk about today is is directly related to Bruce’s work. With energy, we talk about the the seven levels of energy, where level one would be victim mentality. And we all know people who live there, right? People who just simply cannot get out of their own way. They feel that that life is not winnable. So why bother to try. And then on the opposite end of the scale, we have level seven, which is that I refer to it as that’s where we are when we are meditating, or in deep prayer or contemplation. It is superconscious energy, also referred to as Christ consciousness. So those are the those are the two extreme ends of energy. One is the bottom doubt, and the other is way at the top, which of course, we can’t live at the top. Because we have jobs to do, and we have kids to take care of, and we have financial concerns and all of that. But we can get to that higher level of energy, we can make it a point to get there at least once a day, go fishing by that boat, you know, by that truck in that boat. And so it will vary for people. How you get there, and what turns you on.

george grombacher 7:25
So we say energy, we’re talking about how I feel it’s my state of mind, it’s all

Teresa Bruni 7:33
great question. When we talk about energy, we were we are talking about both physical and emotional energy. So they go hand in hand. So let’s go back to that level one energy, a person who is experiencing level one energy, and we all do, you know, it doesn’t take much to to throw us into level one energy, a simple traffic jam on the freeway can make you feel as though you’ve lost your sense of control. You have, you know, you have no control over the situation, you’re stuck. And you can immediately fall into that level one energy. That’s how easy it is. When you are in level one energy. You are emotionally drained. And physically you feel lethargic. So it you know, when we talk about energy, we’re talking about both emotional and physical energy. When you’re in the higher levels of energy. Let’s say and we’ve all experienced this. It’s vacation day, okay, and you wake up and you know, you’ve got a flight to catch. Because you’re on your way to spend two weeks in a place that you’ve been, you’ve spent weeks and months planning right? Suddenly, you’re filled with energy. Most of us don’t wake up like that on a daily basis. But boy, when vacation day is there, you know, we are we are ready to go. We’re jumping out of bed, we’re ready to get that luggage in the car head off to the airport. So again, your emotional energy is high. You’re happy, excited. And your physical energy is high as well.

george grombacher 9:35
That makes a ton of sense. And I 1,000% I can see, you know, I could probably crash right if I got into a traffic jam on my way to the airport to go to Hawaii or whatever and find myself feeling like all of a sudden I was a victim and the universe was in fact conspiring against me. So the fluctuations there. That’s probably pretty Easy, and probably not healthy. Human. Yeah, so

Teresa Bruni 10:05
let’s talk about that. And that’s a great example, I explained to my clients all the time, you can wake up in the morning and be in a really good place. And then when you get out of bed to go use the bathroom, you stub your toe, right? And, and so your your energy can shift just that quickly. And your example is even better, you know, you’re on your way to the airport to catch that flight to Hawaii, and bam, you get stuck in that traffic jam. Am I going to make my flight? Why is this happening to me? All those thoughts, right. So so it’s, none of it is good or bad, right or wrong, it just is your energy will fluctuate, just like the stock market, it will go up and down throughout the day, depending on, you know, what you’re going through at the moment, it could take, it could take a simple phone call to shift everything. And we all know life can life can shift in a heartbeat, right? But here’s the key, the key for your health is to try to keep yourself in those higher levels of energy as often as possible. You know, they used to say walk on the sunny side of the street, practice gratitude, all those things that people talk about, they really do work. When we’re in those lower levels of energy, we are actually in fight or flight. And when we are in fight or flight, our body is releasing cortisol and adrenaline. It is shutting off our immune system, and it’s actually physically damaging our body. When we are in the higher levels of energy, and there are a lot of ways to get there, one that I recommend to my to my clients who have a chronic health condition is laughter. Simple 20 minutes of laughter, will, will push you right up into those higher levels of energy. And that will shut off the fight or flight response and turn on literally turn on your your healing response. You can literally laugh yourself well.

george grombacher 12:26
It is the best medicine after all.

Teresa Bruni 12:28
It is it is and there’s a great book, I’ll just mention it. It’s it’s an older book, I read it 20 years, 25 years ago when I was chronically ill. It’s called anatomy of an illness by Norman Cousins. And basically, he he had gone to the doctor and was diagnosed with a terminal condition. He locked himself away with funny movies and mega doses of vitamin C. And, and he recovered his ill health, his illness, you know, was did not end up ending his life. So that’s a great example of how laughter can help heal, you’re turning on your immune system. And that’s what we need when we’re chronically ill. So, you know, what’s the point of all of this? Well, we live in a very catabolic fight or flight society. Part of that is innate in us because of our fight or flight response. We’re always looking for, you know, what could go wrong next? And how can I protect myself and my family, although in today’s society, the fight or flight response is turned on far more often than it needs to be. We, you know, we don’t have to deal with saber toothed Tigers or fight for our food supply. So yet, so many of us get stuck there. And a lot of times, that’s learned behavior. So we learn from our parents, they learned from their parents, we learned from our friends or teachers, our churches, is so so if you’re caught up in that, the world is just an awful place. And it’s, it’s, I have to fight for myself or I’m going to be taken advantage of then then you’re living in the bottom and of that scale in that fight or flight range. And that’s what’s making people sick.

george grombacher 14:45
I’ve long thought there is danger in constantly being outraged, and by constantly and maybe not constantly. It strikes me that I had lots of fun conversations with my wife about this. She works in human resources. And there are a never ending list of things to be advocating for. If it’s Ukraine, it’s black lives matter. It’s guns, it’s abortion. It’s and this is just in last two weeks, essentially. And if I live in that space, it just struck me that I can’t do that. And it’s probably not good for me.

Teresa Bruni 15:27
It’s not, you are, you are absolutely right about that. We talked about level one, and we talked about level seven, level two is conflict. And we, you know, we kind of have an addiction to conflict, there’s something about it that attracts us. Let me let me defend my opinion. And that is not a good place to live. You know, when I was a little girl, my mother had a saying. And I’m sure people still say it today, I’m so angry, I can’t see straight. And that is exactly what happens when you’re in those lower levels of energy, your perceptual lens, the lens through which you see the world gets shut down. And it is literally true that when you are angry, you can’t see straight, it’s not a good time to be in the car driving, it’s not a good time to be, you know, talking to your kids. Until you can bring that anger back down under control. It is it is incredibly toxic. And you know, it, it will cause you well, it could cause you to if you if you’re in level too often enough, it could literally cause you to have a stroke.

george grombacher 17:00
Yeah, it strikes me that when I am actually in conflict, talking about why it is that our bodies have these responses, and a long time ago, it kept me from getting eaten. And you know, I’m super grateful for that. But today, getting myself so worked up, over whatever bad email or a tweet that I saw, whatever, that is definitely not serving me. And I’m still having a similar biological or whatever the term is effect on my body. But for literally no reason. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Teresa Bruni 17:37
You’re exactly right. And, and you’re actually explaining it better than I am. So thank you for that. And that’s one of the reasons, you won’t find me on social media. Because it’s just so toxic. And I see, you know, I look at life differently. And I consider myself a thought disrupter. And that’s what I want to do for your listeners, I want that I want to disrupt their thought process and show them that there is a different way to think about things. And, and so you know, you and I connected on LinkedIn, I spend time on LinkedIn. And even this morning, as I was scrolling through the feed, I saw so many posts that that were catabolic. You know, this is right. And if you don’t believe this, then you’re wrong. The world The world doesn’t spin on right and wrong, you know, there’s a lot of gray area in between. And it’s only when we can pull our lens back and look at things from that broader perspective, that we can get a truer picture of what is going on.

george grombacher 18:58
And I mean perspective for me, that’s one of the keys to living a happy life. And essentially, it’s just how you look at something makes all the difference. And so when I find myself or I don’t, when people do find themselves and they recognize, oh, you know what, I’ve been trapped in this lower energy state for an hour. How do they it’s how do they pull themselves out of it?

Teresa Bruni 19:24
Well, the first step would be to recognize it. So congratulations on that. The next step would be to get up and get the blood circulating. Okay, we spent way too much time being stagnant. And when we’re stagnant and the blood isn’t moving, we can’t get the proper nutrition and oxygen to our cells. The first thing that I would do after that is listen to some comedy and it’s it’s so readily available, you know, on the internet, you can Um, you can jump out to YouTube and do a search, what I recommend to my clients is we all have a favorite show that that we’ve liked over the years. And maybe it was maybe you don’t watch television anymore, but you have a show 10 years ago that you that you enjoyed, do a search for the bloopers and outtakes of that show, whether it was a drug drama, or you know, or a sitcom, just do a search for the bloopers and outtakes and I am telling you, you will laugh until your side’s hurt. And that is the quickest way to pull yourself out of that fight or flight response is always laughter. Yeah.

george grombacher 20:47
I think that’s great. I think everybody just picture to their mind. It’s so much fun when when actors break, you know, this deck or whatever, you’re watching siren live, and they just can’t hold it together, and they’re cracking each other up. That’s the most funny thing for sure. It

Teresa Bruni 21:03
is. And so that’s the quickest way to pull yourself out. And, and, you know, just realizing that this too shall pass. It’s really a personal choice. Every moment that passes, we have the choice on how we’re going to focus on something, will we choose to see the negative or will we choose to see the positive, there’s, there are always going to be things that are out of our control, and that we just have to accept.

george grombacher 21:39
So hard, but that’s, that’s a constant, constant reminding reminder, to just like meditation, you can stray just need to pull yourself back straight, pull yourself back, and just keep reminding. And that’s the reality is that we do have choice. And that’s maybe one of the more important things that we have is the agency to choose how we’re reacting to a situation and the things we’re paying attention to what we’re letting in and what we’re not letting in and so important to pay attention.

Teresa Bruni 22:17
Yeah, and the the, you know, the first step is to have this realization that you live the way that you’ve been living. If your life is not happy and fulfilled, then it’s time to make some changes.

george grombacher 22:36
Yeah, well said. Latrice, you’ve already given us a handful, but the people are ready for that difference making tip, what do you have for them?

Teresa Bruni 22:46
My tip for everybody is to question everything. We live in a world that is so magical, yet, we tend to just go with the status quo. And when you pull that lens back, and you begin to question everything, a whole new world opens up for you.

george grombacher 23:11
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets caught. We are questioning so many things in our society right now. I think that that is such an excellent thought. And why not turn that lens back on back on ourselves and say, Why am I doing the things that I’m doing? Is this is this the life that I really want? And then we can exercise that choice we’ve been talking about? So I love it. What Theresa thank you so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you.

Teresa Bruni 23:38
The easiest way to learn more about me is to visit my website which is my name Teresa bruni.com also less fear more flow, which is like business name that will take you to the same place. There are lots and lots of resources on my website, the link to my YouTube channel is there and and my LinkedIn profile and there’s a Contact Me form I would love to hear from any of your listeners. And you know, just allow me to inspire you to live a better life. Love it.

george grombacher 24:18
If you enjoyed as much as I did so Theresa your appreciation and shared today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Theresa bruni.com. It’s te r e s a b r u n i.com. And check out other great resources find her YouTube channel and let her inspire you. Thanks. Good, Teresa. Thank you. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai