378: Bamboo Bodies: Training Your Brain for Powerful Aging w/ Angi McClure

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:00
Ladies, I am sure you have noticed how with every passing birthday, you seem to be inundated with more helpful anti aging advice.

Courtney Townley 0:10
In today’s episode of the Grace and Grit podcast, we are going to explore a radically different approach to midlife and to aging, one that honors your body’s wisdom and harnesses the power of both ancient wisdom and modern brain science. Discover in this episode why fighting against aging may be the very thing holding you back from how you really want to be feeling and learn how to tap into natural rhythms that can help you to thrive in every season of life.

Courtney Townley 0:41
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 1:09
Welcome to episode 378, of the Grace and Grit podcast. I am your host, Courtney Townley, and I am so delighted to have you here today. We’re diving deep into a fascinating conversation about aging, but not in the way that you might expect. I am thrilled to introduce to you Angie McClure, a neuro based movement therapist who’s revolutionizing how we think about and approach the aging process. Angie brings a unique perspective by blending ancient wisdom with modern science. As the creator of bamboo bodies, she combines principles of functional Chinese medicine, Qigong and cutting edge neuroscience to help women navigate aging with grace and vitality. In this episode, we explore how seasonal changes affect our bodies, discover practical brain training techniques for better aging and learn how to shift from resisting aging to embracing renewal, whether you’re feeling disconnected from your body or simply curious about a more holistic approach to aging, this conversation is going to offer you valuable insights and actionable strategies. Let’s get to it.

Courtney Townley 2:18
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast Angie, thanks for being here.

Angi McClure 2:26
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Courtney Townley 2:28
How are you?

Angi McClure 2:29
I’m doing pretty dang good. I’m happy it’s spring. I was waiting.

Courtney Townley 2:32
I know so the listeners don’t know this, but you and I are both in Montana, which is pretty special, because mostly I interview people who aren’t in Montana, and we are definitely getting a great hit of spring right now, which is pretty darn nice. I don’t know it could be another fall spring that happens a lot here, but we’re gonna be running it’s gonna happen. It’s not Easter yet. So right, right. It’s not Easter yet. So you and I both have a heart for the powerful aging conversation. And powerful aging, in my view, is called a lot of things. It’s called graceful aging. It’s called aging, well, it’s called healthful aging. But when you think about aging powerfully, like, how do you define that? What comes up for you when you think of that phrase?

Angi McClure 3:14
I think for me and just for the listeners, giving you a background so that you can understand my answer is, I remember going back to school for massage therapy in New York City, and we went and did a tour of different massage considerations for jobs, and we were all riding the subway back, and I remember our professor spoke with all of us, and he said, you know, What do you guys want to do with this degree? And I said, I just know that I want to work with the aging population. Yeah. And everyone kind of laughed at that, thinking like, what is she talking about? But the thing is, is that I feel like the aging population is that moment when you go…

Angi McClure 3:59
Oh, why do I feel older? Why do I feel old? And I think, to answer your question, and why I’ve been so intrigued as a neuro based movement therapist, and developing an entire movement system around movement for the aging population, is because, to me, it’s that moment when the body starts to make this change and we have choices to make. And what I’m so intrigued by is the people that I have learned from and been around and befriended, who’ve become resilient. They’ve adapted, they’ve recognized that they’re no longer 20, no longer 30 or 40 or 50 or wherever they are in their season of life, but they never got caught up on it. And even if there was an element of fear, it was more driven by curiosity and through that want to learn how.

Angi McClure 5:00
How to ride this change. There was a mindset and a skill set that was developed to have them age well, as you said, or as I’ll say, age functionally. And so for me, I like to choose the word, you know, resiliently aging. And it’s not resistance, because in Chinese medicine, if you are brittle, you will break. And so to me, adaptation is key when it comes to aging, and that is probably where my true passion lies. Yeah, I love this answer, because this audience, of course, is largely midlife women.

Courtney Townley 5:39
And I think midlife is such an interesting moment, right? Like you said, it’s us arriving at this point where, number one, we’re faced with our own mortality, which maybe we haven’t really considered so much before, because we have so much time, or at least we thought we did. And then we arrive in this space where things do start to feel different, right? Our body is responding a little differently. We feel a little different in the morning, we may not have as much energy to go after certain things, not, maybe not to the extent that we once did.

Courtney Townley 6:08
And I think that that I say it’s an opportunity, because we can either be incredibly resistant to it, right, and we can defy it and fight it and try to reverse the clock. All the anti age Yeah, all the anti aging phrases. Or we can learn how to embrace it. And I love that about the work that you do in the world is, obviously that’s really what you’re helping people to do, is how to embrace the aging process. But before we go there, because so many people are literally conditioned to resist the aging process. What are some signs of that for you? Like, when you’re working or talking to a person, how do you know that they are resistant to aging? Like, what are some of the sign posts for you on that?

Angi McClure 6:53
So I don’t want to generalize, because I feel like sometimes we create these archetypes, and then we have to choose, am I A, B, C or D? But I will say there’s a spectrum within that where you have the people who are aggressively aging in the sense of not progressively aging. But I’m talking about that they’re really resistant with a falsification that you just made the comment of of anti aging. So I usually tend to call these people my type A. They’re very active, but they’re very aggressive with their actions of taking care of themselves. They’re the person who they genuinely eat perfect all the time. I will never measure up to this person, they exercise…

Angi McClure 7:42
Well, right? They exercise once, twice a day, but they also go out, and then they do their run, and they do this exercise. They can’t sit down, they can’t sit still. They’re always moving. And even their moment of meditation or stillness, it’s, it’s by the script. And I think you and I are, you know, all of us are aware of the consideration of someone who’s type a

Angi McClure 8:03
it’s a very brittle mindset. But what I’ve loved is that within that mindset, um, they break, not everybody yet, but again, being around that aging population, I have either met them in their 60s and 70s, and they go, go, go. And there’s such a fear of stillness. But then they end up with the knee surgery, the hip surgery, and they are back in class a week later, doing my class. And then they’re also with their PT, but then they’re gonna go for a hike with their boyfriend, and then they’re gonna and you’re like, girl, you need a slow like, just take a moment to stop and smell the roses.

Angi McClure 8:39
So I think initially, all your listeners were probably ready for me to talk about, you know, the ones who ignore everything, but sometimes it’s almost the hyper vigilant ones are some of my favorite people, because I get to, like, pull the reins back and be like, Hey, let’s recognize that we’ve shifted from that summer season in life of Go, go, go. And especially as women, it doesn’t serve us well as we shift into our 40s and 50s. And in Chinese medicine, this is viewed as your autumn season.

Angi McClure 9:09
And like so many of us, during our actual external autumn season, when it starts to get a little bit cooler outside, the days a little bit shorter, we are so obstinate we don’t want to slow down. It’s like a my son whenever I’m calling into him where he’s had all summer long plane till 10 o’clock at night, because it’s still sunny outside, and I call to him in the autumn saying, hey, it’s time to come in. We’ve got to get ready for bed. You know, school is coming like we’ve got to shift gears, and with such, you know, fight. He does not want to come in. And so I see that in the aging population that, you know, we want to work harder, we’re going to push against this. And it’s a very young, young energy. But there’s no yin to anchor it. And so I’ll often see people get sick, injured, or.

Angi McClure 10:00
Emotionally, they actually are probably one of the hardest people to be diagnosed or have a pathology, because everything is about fighting and finding what I’ve come to teach through my movement class with bamboo bodies, people really resist this stillness component until they realize that there is probably more power in slowing down and coming into your current rhythm.

Angi McClure 10:31
And that’s probably my favorite individual, because the rest of us would probably say, well, then there’s the ones who don’t want to do anything. You know, they’re in complete denial. And some of us may have family members like this. Some of us may drag our own selves into this that, hey, you can be in pain, you can be unhappy, you can be sick all the time, and you’re like, well, let’s just, you know, getting old, and you’re like, wait, no, no, there’s so much that you can do. And so that’s why I like to always encourage people that you can actually train to age well.

Angi McClure 11:04
And as you mentioned within the anti aging component, I feel like that’s what’s really hard for people, is all of us on the in between where we are either go, go, go, but we realize I need a little bit of a foundation, or we are kind of the ones that need a little bit of the stick or the carrot to be like, come on, like, let’s do a little something for ourselves. But that’s where I feel in the general concept of wellness and fitness, it’s still a very

Angi McClure 11:37
improper place to put so many of us for aging because we’re still being told exercise to stay young, exercise so you don’t get old exercise. And it’s like, well, here’s the deal. No matter how you eat, how you exercise, biologically, you can slow down the aging process, but chronologically, like you’re gonna age, and that’s where I really encourage age training so that we don’t run into the aches, the pains, the emotional and mental frustration that all of us will naturally come into as we begin to age. And that’s I think, the part that the warning signs, if you will, or the things that we look for, I think sometimes are sent to us or presented to us in a way where it seems like we’re doing it wrong, but I feel like we are aware, and if we are curious, that I think, is the first best step any of us.

Courtney Townley 12:32
100% Yeah, awareness, I think, is, is hugely key. And I think we all come to that, unfortunately, in different ways, like I always use the analogy that some people have to hit that brick wall really hard before they finally have that awareness. And I don’t know why certain people are wired differently than others. You know, to have to hit that brick wall so hard, and on either end of that spectrum too, like you said, either denial or like, aggressively fighting against it, like, and I will say like, from personal experience, and honestly, it’s kind of the kind of the ignition of this show in general, because we talk about the yin and the young, the ebb and the flow of life, the grace and the grit, right? It’s all that.

Courtney Townley 13:11
And I like talk about aggression. I mean, my whole life was aggression from a very early age. And I think for me, and I’m very grateful for this. It was around the time of motherhood, like when I became a mother, that introduction of that new stressor, even though it was a beautiful stressor, let’s face it, motherhood is like a big stressor. And slapped me upside the head, and that was kind of my wake up moment where I was like, Okay, if I continue on this trajectory. If I keep pushing without pulling back, I am definitely going to break and then, like evolving in my career and starting to learn more about the nervous system, and the oscillation of the nervous system, right, there’s such an ebb and flow in that that we need. Yeah, and then having so many examples of people, especially midlife, because that was just the population I was working with at the time.

Courtney Townley 14:05
How much that lack of pulling back was contributing to so much disease, which ultimately led to disease, right? So it is. It’s such a it’s such a powerful note that I love what you said there. The people have a fear of stillness. And it also reminded me of people having a fear of boredom, right? We’re also living in this time where we have so much opportunity to be distracted and consuming things. I know the phone as she points to her phone exactly, and we’re almost afraid of the not doing, yeah. So I love, I love this conversation, and I love this invitation, and I also love the correlation between the seasons and the aging process itself. So will you speak a little bit more to that? Will you talk a little bit more about sort of the seasonal shift and how those two things correlate? And I want to tie that in first.

Angi McClure 15:00
First by emphasizing what you just said, Courtney, you know, with seeing that that ebb and flow, and you know, so many like how that disconnect can lead to disease. And this is what I love about Chinese medicine, is that when we look at the concept of Qi, can be diluted as talking about energy, but really it is, again, even still diluted into talking about life force, energy, and how we want to explain it is exactly as you said, is that it’s about this flow, and this flow just moves. And so, as I mentioned, and as I’ll talk about the seasons, I don’t want anyone to get locked onto a season, because it’s about phases. It’s about cycles, and even yin and yang. It’s not one without the other, that when we come into the nervous system, that, yes, we need to dip into the parasympathetic. That’s the Yin, the calm, that’s where we can actually heal, that’s actually where our brain can create those, you know, new rewirings.

Angi McClure 16:05
But the young, the sympathetic, it never turns off. Otherwise you’re dead. Like everybody always gets so worried about, well, what if I get too still in Chinese medicine, where there is movement, there is stillness, and where there is stillness, there is movement. So it’s just the way, or known as the doubt, like it’s no if it’s stuck, then you’re dead. So no one has to worry about stillness. It’s just probably one of the greatest skills that we have to train towards well, and certainly, back to what you said earlier, right? That awareness piece, you cannot become aware if you are not still, yeah, it just doesn’t happen. I for I’m going to show this to Courtney real quick, but for your listeners, just so you know, I’m holding up a jar of sand and water, and this is the best way of putting it, is that the sand has settled in this jar, and both Courtney and I can see straight through this jar of water with settled sand and in Chinese medicine, if we’re not still, then we have no clarity.

Angi McClure 17:08
And in fact, if we are in such a state of fight or flight, our nervous system, in addition to just your brain, making and executing decisions, is flawed. So if you’re thinking, you’re stuck, you’re overwhelmed, you can’t make a good decision. Being still is going to be important, because it’s like this jar of sand where it’s settled to the bottom, and I can see through clearly. But what’s unfortunate is it takes more time for that sand to settle. So this is ranging all the way from Courtney, I being moms, and all it takes is seeing that school district phone number call you up.

Angi McClure 17:47
All it takes is that one driver to cut in front of you and, oh, all it takes is coming home and you realize, like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even plan dinner. Like, what are we gonna do? Like, it takes nothing for that jar to get shook up. And as I explained this, I’m shaking the jar in front of Courtney so she can now her and I can see it’s just brown sludge. We can’t see through anything. And I will tell you, even at the end of our interview, this jar will not be clear. Yeah, it takes about a good day for things to settle. And I use this visual example to show people that the skill of settling is not a one minute. Well, let me just breathe for a second. It’s a start. So I love that.

Angi McClure 18:26
And honestly, that’s gotta start somewhere. We’ll start somewhere, but it comes to realizing that if we are not still, we can’t see through this jar of water. And so many of us live our lives with a shook up jar where we can’t see through it, the sediment hasn’t settled. And even if it kind of settles enough, we think good enough. And it’s within that that not only can we not see clearly, but we can’t find or feel that rhythm. And so where there is stillness, there is movement, neurologically, biologically, biochemically, and when we don’t have that movement, then, as Courtney said, that’s where pathology arises. That’s where we can feel older. That’s where we get the diagnoses. That’s where we come into this element of feeling of failure and disconnect. So to go into your question that you had about let’s go over the seasons. Maybe this will kind of draw this together,

Angi McClure 19:28
little give and take. But let’s just say, from about age zero, so new little baby to about our 20s, we come into our spring season, and like Courtney and I are experiencing right now externally, outside Montana, things are new. There slowly becomes little buds of grass and flowers. The smell is clean. Everything is exciting, and it’s this waking, young, rising energy. It’s not to its peak. It’s not summertime, but.

Angi McClure 19:59
Just this beginning, if you will. From our 20s and through our 30s, we come into our young summer season, thinking of this all the way from many people who become, you know, career people. We go through college, we make this big move, we meet our mate or our partner, we become parents. We make big life decisions. A lot of growth happens during that summer, young season. And what’s unfortunate is, is that not only is there a phase that cycles in and out of this, but we live in a culture that only celebrates rewards and recognizes and supports that young summer energy. Then forever summer, that’s like, almost the anti aging message, oh, my god, story of my life, trying to talk about, like, what about the summer and or, what about the autumn and winter? Season is, you know, the push that I want people to see. And so exactly as you said, Courtney, like that. Shift from summer is so jarring, because, especially as women, we have a very difficult time to accept that things are about to change. Now I’m only 42

Angi McClure 21:16
but I’m also a very hyper aware human being, and I swear I used to always say, if you don’t, you know, get to your 40s, and your 40s are gonna hit you. And when I turned 40, things just got different, as simple as that. And anyone remembering or coming into their 40s goes, catch something just started to get different. Well this is the part where, as biologically, we shift into the autumn season. Stress is so important. Sleep is gonna be weird. Our nutrition is just crucial. Movement is crucial, because as we have these hormonal shifts, estrogen begins to go down, inflammation then will come up. Movement is going to be an anti inflammatory component for us neurologically, it can help us with our mood. We need to look at strength training from a gentle perspective. We could talk about that later, but that’s again, people are like, I gotta train like I’m young. No, you gotta train like an autumn person.

Angi McClure 22:17
The point to this is is train smarter, not harder, and we’ve got to look at things with a little more grace, a little more gentleness, and a little more of that wisdom where there’s a yin root to it, and that’s where the divide comes. Because the next season all of you are waiting me to say is winter. And some of you are thinking, oh no, that means from my 60s and beyond, is winter, right? So 40s and 50s are autumn, and then post post menopause, we’re looking at our winter season. But here’s the thing that I love, my studies in Chinese medicine, specifically through the movement practice of Qigong. I studied with, with, with women. These women were the first of their generation who were able to teach Qigong, because during the Cultural Revolution, it was banned, and through that, many of these masters lost their young teachers, so they couldn’t teach men and then the silence of the night and early mornings they would teach their young granddaughters. I got to learn from these women. So these women came into Chinese medicine going well. Women don’t just come into winter. And a lot of Chinese texts are like, well, and there you go. Like,

Angi McClure 23:34
I think for me, predominantly, as a 20 and 30 year old working around people who are 3040, 50 years my senior. I did not see old, fragile, weak, little grandmas. I started out in New York City, Courtney. These women were tough, and I moved to New York City or from New York City. I was in San Francisco. I was in Portland, Oregon. I lived in France, I became familiar with these women post menopause.

Angi McClure 24:04
We’ll just generalize, but women in their winter season, and they were the most strong, encouraging, kind, welcoming women who would teach with me, who would open up their experiences, who had stories upon stories, and that’s where I came to learn, is that there was a pathway, there was a flow, there were lessons that needed to be learned. And when I learned this in Chinese medicine, I already had the experience to accept that if you do it correctly, if you find ways to settle, if you find that flow, like you were saying, If we learn to bend rather than break, rather than entering this winter season, and it leads to death, we actually come into what’s known as our second spring. And I think that is one of the most empowering thing. And whether you’re thinking, Well, I went through, you know.

Angi McClure 24:59
Surgically or medically induced menopause at the age of 35 don’t worry about this. We’re looking at time, time can be on our side. If you’re thinking, I’m 60, oh no, it’s too late. No, you’re aware. You’re halfway there. If you’re thinking, well, I, you know, I’m I’m 40 and I I’m already post menopause. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. That’s fine. You’re here. You listen to Courtney. The second spring is something to understand that neurologically, your brain wants you to survive. So when you make these little shifts and come into a rhythm and a flow, second spring is about the ability to adapt. It’s about resiliency. Because as we age, it is not for the faint of heart, and many of you will probably nod your head in recognizing that

Angi McClure 25:52
it’s tough, yeah, and with all those lessons to learn, how much can you bend and learn? And most importantly, for my winter women or my second springers, how much can you teach and share? This is where second spring will help the younger seasons understand that in our culture, we are meant to remain strong by adapting, by bending and becoming resilient. And I think that’s where the women I’ve been around have been super powers. So to me, second spring only makes sense, because they’re living within that flow. Yeah, I love it. I love it so much. It’s

Courtney Townley 26:33
in my community, we talk about it as the renovation years right mid life, because what you’re explaining right is we arrive at this place where we’ve been living a certain way, and we can keep forcing that hand and we break because we’re not our body isn’t adapting to those old ways of taking care of ourselves. And let’s be honest, a lot of people didn’t take care of themselves up until they got to their autumn season.

Courtney Townley 26:57
And so now we’re having to basically confront this choice, am I going to keep things the same and just keep banging my head on that brick wall, or am I going to start renovating my life to maybe pollinate in some more stillness and learn some more skill sets and give myself the grace of moving my body differently So I’m not just in this space of constantly adding more stress to my system, right? Because ultimately, that’s what breaks us down. So I love all of this, and I love that just the resilience piece, right, that the learning how to bend and and I think and correct me if you see this too, because I see this a lot with women I work with, where at midlife, life is full, right?

Courtney Townley 27:44
We got, I don’t know about you, but I got a lot on my plate, and then to also be having to learn new skills and adapt my life to better take care of myself. Sometimes those things feel like a contradiction. It’s like I don’t have the room, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the space. So how do you maybe help someone resolve that? How do you help sort of coach someone through that?

Angi McClure 28:12
I have come to learn through a therapist, she was talking about anxiety, and it made me feel really good, because, as I call shaky Chihuahua anxiety, is the one where you’re always, like a balloon pops, and you’re all nervous all the time. And I’ve got a couple of shaky Chihuahua friends of mine, and I love them dearly. Yes, I’ve never associated myself as shaky Chihuahua anxiety, but I definitely say like I feel sometimes like I have, you know, anxiety. And she said, Is it actionable anxiety, or is it fear driven? And I never thought of it that way, that the A could stand it as actionable, because there is a component of, is there something that I can do right now for this? And if the answer is no, then it’s something you’re gonna have to let go. But there’s a piece to that, that I think what we don’t do. And again, I made a comment on,

Angi McClure 29:06
we’ve got a strength train. We’ve got to do, you know, eat better. And I want for all your listeners to understand, and this is one thing that I’m really genuinely working on to set this template for people to physically, mentally, emotionally, have a guided checklist for if that’s what your personality needs. Because when you listen online to different professionals that I truly admire, the list and requirements for what to do during your perimenopaus puzzle times, it’s how to train me from osteoporosis is asinine. Yep, I am never going to try and get my ox Max oxygen, max intensity up to like, 75% I’ll die like I am not that type of person. I’m not going to try and train for, you know, an hour and.

Angi McClure 29:59
Half a day and make sure I get in every single thing that I have to. I love baking and so to say, like, hey, no sugars ever. We have to eat clean and organic. We’ve got to do more protein. More protein, ladies, more protein. It’s so stressful. Listen to me about how you’re supposed to be so healthy.

Angi McClure 30:22
So for me, this is where I come into this opportunity to tell everyone to step back, because is the anxiety actionable, or is it just fear driven? And being interested in wanting to take action to do better is a wonderful thing, but it is a scary place to start, because you’re told we’ll go weight train and people picking up something heavy does not mean that you’re weight training or strength training. You’re just picking up something heavy.

Angi McClure 30:53
We have to understand that as we age, our brain is actually changing as we age, we actually can’t handle as much stress as we once used to be able to do so. So it’s ironic that we’re being told to do some of these high stress or activities, but it’s not pairing with that anchor of, how am I taking care of myself during my Autumn season? So when someone is looking at what can I do, how do I make these changes again? Ideally, you don’t want them fear driven Sure. You want to look at it from an actual perspective of what can I do.

Angi McClure 31:34
Because for me, I do not have the time to work out for an hour. However, I’ve got time for 15 minutes, and if I make myself go do something for 15 minutes, I’m so proud of myself. Yeah, and within that, I also recognize I am a friend, Gal, sort of person. So I have a friend that her and I, we train together every week, and her and I are on the same page, where we never will say no to one another, but we also could be honest, if today is one of those, can we just go for a walk, type of deal? Or, Hey, I’m feeling really strong.

Angi McClure 32:10
Like, do we want to go, like, do some weight training and go play? So I have an accountability partner that helps me out through the week. So boom, there’s another little time that I work out, and then I have the financial privilege where I have a friend who’s in the same field with me, and I pay her, and she trains me on Mondays. So there’s another 30 minutes that I put myself down to train. So I have to set up systems for my personality type to help me, and within that, I have the support for my husband for food that we have in the home, and when I’m tired or I don’t want to cook, He’s the first person. He’s the only person my son’s not cooking. He’s right there. He has his days that he cooks and he wants to help out.

Angi McClure 32:56
So I’ve had to set up systems to help me, sure, but I’ve also had to give myself a lot of grace, because it’s also that ebb and flow, as I mentioned. That’s why we can’t get stuck in an archetype. Oh, I’m an autumn person, so everything’s about slowing down, yeah, but within my week, I may have one week out of the month of March that I feel really energetic, and then I have one week where I feel really blood and I don’t want to do anything at all. And then I have another week where maybe I’ll just do something really light and gentle. So you’ve got the ebb and flow within your own cycle, within the weather, within you know how you’re feeling and what’s going on with life. So I look at, if I’m able to do something throughout the week. I’m so proud of myself for those 15 minutes that I allowed myself to do something. And I think that’s the big thing is, is don’t have it based on fear, because there’s cortisol. Try to create some systems to help you out for that actionable want and desire.

Angi McClure 33:59
And for me, I had to learn how and who I am. I also have to say things out loud, because I feel really embarrassed. If I told everybody I’m gonna start learning how to jump rope. By the way, I’ve been telling everybody this. And you wanna know what was great? I haven’t been jump roping. I’ll be honest with all of your listeners. I told everybody I’m like, I’m jump roping. I’m gonna do this and help my pelvic floor. It was one of my students, my bamboo body students. She wrote me an email the other day, and she was like, Angie, how is your jump roping? That motivated me. I’ve been jump roping every single day. And I was like, Oh yeah, the jump rope. I forgot about that.

Angi McClure 34:30
So it’s literally, I see it right now. It’s on my floor. I was like, start jump roping. So I also need, like, a little bit of that peer pressure to fall in. So like, know yourself and use those things like, sure, I fall to peer pressure, so I’m gonna tell everybody, I’m gonna do something, and that got my jump rope back out. So it helps when you know yourself, it’s interesting. So kind of circling back to where we started this conversation you were talking about, you know, your type A personalities, and how detrimental that can be to midlife and.

Courtney Townley 35:00
100% agree with you, and I see a lot of that. I always call it discipline to the point of self destruction, right? But there’s also the other extreme. There are people who will use the concept of grace and self love to the point of never, never exerting themselves or never applying effort, right? Because I really, and this is something I really just feel like I fully have come to understand in the past, probably like two years, that resilience is about removing unnecessary stress, but it’s also about leaning into intentional stress 100% and so can we speak to that a little bit like the personality type who is never pushing themselves to build resilience. I’m so glad, because I was thinking, ooh, I didn’t go into too much with type D. Oh, this

Angi McClure 35:52
is good. I’m not a huge fan of like, having everybody link into their archetype. I know you said that, yeah, for sure, but there’s a type A person. Type B is the believers. They’re the ones that they recognize that they need to do this, and they will do the best that they possibly can. And I usually bounce anywhere between a B and a C. Type C is that they’re curious, they’re actionable, but when it comes towards the I’m trying to think the word behavioral science behind creating goals and making change and action.

Angi McClure 36:30
There’s the people who they get stuck in the preparedness, preparedness mode. Yeah, that was thinking all the time, but never executing, thinking about it, thinking about it. And I’ll tell your listeners now, man, I can get stuck on C I can I love reading about this. It’s so interesting. And I’ve got all the information, all the data, all the knowledge. And for me, I have the luxury where I’ve created a job where I have to teach about vision training, I have to demonstrate inner ear exercises. I have to show tongue breathing and or tongue movement and breathing modalities, so I am forced to do the things that I’m super curious about. But for any of your listeners, you’re like, I think I’m falling into the C category, where I love listening. I’m so curious, but like they’re consuming, like you’re consuming, yeah, constantly. And I do.

Angi McClure 37:18
I bounce between B and C, where I’m like, I believe this is true. I recognize this, and I put it into my action in a very, you know, kind sort of way. So I want to just emphasize there are the two in betweens, and let’s go the other end of the spectrum of type D, the deniers, and we can deny delays, kind of, though, is the big concept. So type D people, I don’t want to say this without a love, so please, everyone out there understand this. This is respectful. But I’ma talk about my mom, because she’s a type D, yeah, and she has, she has never really been curious. She’s never really taken any action. And there’s always the I should, I should do that. I will. I will do that.

Angi McClure 38:03
But there’s never even the what gym could you go to? A physical therapist could help out? So she’s through a knee surgery. Is about three years old. She was not very proactive with her physical therapist, and now they’re looking at a second knee surgery on the other knee diet, just for an anti inflammatory perspective, having me as a daughter, there’s really tiny little things that you can do, little shifts. I never try to take food away from people like I said, I’m a foodie. I enjoy food. It should never be something that we punish ourselves. But to also just understand there’s like rhythms and order in which you can eat, to help shift things along which can be fun, but when there’s no desire, when you’re like, I’m fine, or like, well, you know, like, this was your grandmother, and this is me, and this will be you, that denial and also the delay, because it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad yet.

Angi McClure 38:58
And these are the ones that I will say it breaks my heart, because many of us if, if you’re on this podcast, you are in Category C or B or A, there’s no way that you’re listening to this as a D, because just by turning this podcast on, you have automatically entered type C. So for not caring at all for not recognizing that there is options for just delaying and delaying delaying. And all of us have a piece of that within us, all of us, but it’s the inability for action that you then ask, what is it going to take? Is it the next surgery? Is it until the big fall? Is it until you’re diagnosed with something. But exactly as you said about the stress factor, that when it comes towards resiliency, let’s use for me talking about you like bending and bamboo. Let’s just talk about the bio dome trees. And if any of you guys remember from the 90s, there was the big.

Angi McClure 40:00
Dome that was built, and it was this really cool, fun project of, hey, can we live on Mars? I think that was the intention. And this big dome where they had a whole ecosystem that they created, and when they lost their funding, and when the dome came down, they had these trees that they had grown inside the dome. And it was within, I think, a week or so that the trees all came crashing down. The trees were never raised to be resilient, because they were never raised around wind. Yeah, they never had the ability to bend. I’m not saying if you were in a point of denial, or if you’re in a point of delaying, that it’s necessarily bad.

Angi McClure 40:40
But again, as Courtney and as I, we both emphasize awareness is going to be the best place to start. This is uncomfortable. This hurts. Is this me? Is this what the future is going to look like? Those are wonderful questions. So I don’t downplay the concept of not being able to take action. It’s very difficult for people, and here’s the irony behind it, it takes a lot of brain fuel and power, and the brain wants to conserve that all the time. So if you’re already in this lockdown protective mode, and then having to change a habit or make yourself start moving, the brain really will not be excited for it. So it’s really hard to start things like sitting on a tricycle uphill. Once you get going, you’re fine, but that first push is so sticky to get going, so starting something is the worst. Yeah, the brand that’s why path of least resistance, I’m always saying, Yeah, exactly. And that’s where I think you get a lot of people who get stuck

Angi McClure 41:47
in the deny, delay mode. It’s protective. It’s 100% protective. There’s always a value to it, always. And I feel like that is the part where, like you said, Are we either going to have to get to that breaking point and then that moves along, and it might for some of us, but I do want everyone to recognize this, and I made a comment on this, that faint or aging is not for the faint of heart, that I do mean when I tell people we are going to have to adapt, that we have to learn to train to be resilient, and There literally is a neurological pathway towards that that I teach through breath training and strength training. And I want to use those two as examples. If I have you list something heavy, your animal brain is going to be the first to talk, oh, this is really heavy. I don’t really like this. Don’t do it. Just put it down.

Angi McClure 42:39
So you’re going to say, Oh, it hurts out. And I had clients all the time like they can’t even, you know, do much one squat, oh, this hurts. Ah, the brain’s not yet been trained for that stress, that resilience. So if we do breathing exercises, have the brain feel a little more fueled. I’ll have people have to eat something right before so we’ve got a little more of that fueling in the brain so that we can slowly start to train towards not fearing the difficulty, not fearing the stress. And this is where it’s so funny. It’s a Goldilocks situation, not too much, not too little, but just right. We can’t over stress ourselves, because as we age, we can’t handle as much stress, so resiliency from a neurological lens is actually said that it is the ability to bounce back and recover from stress and adversity by conserving your psycho physiological resources.

Angi McClure 43:37
This is us understanding that you come back to breathing. You sit and you calm yourself. And this could be literally in between, say, for Courtney, in between your weight lifting sets that when you’re like, Oh, I’m burning out. Just stand there. Just stand there and breathe to the point where you’re bored, to the point where your body’s like, are we gonna lift that last set real quick? No, just wait a second. I’m gonna stand here for two to three minutes and just stand look like a weirdo and breathe. So then we can reset. So then you can come back and go for that last set, go through that strength training stress, but you had the capability to handle it.

Angi McClure 44:17
So it’s such an interesting element where we need those stressors, because you got to learn to roll with the punches. It ain’t going to be easy. Stuff’s going to come our way, but we have to learn to stop and reset. So for those who are D, type D, and they’re thinking, oh my gosh, I just I can’t handle anything, then stop. Just stop and be still. I think that’s one of the nicest things is we’re being told right now, eat this way. Train, this way. Strength train. You need a little bit of cardio, not too much cardio, more protein, but that much that just stop. And for all your listeners, at the end of this podcast, you’re gonna turn it off and you’re gonna go to the next podcast. You’re gonna turn it off or go to the next thing. No.

Angi McClure 44:59
No one. We’re Americans. You can be three minutes late if we’re not in German, like, just sit there and stare and just be for three minutes and see what your body regenerates and shifts and says, Okay, I can now handle you getting out to go grocery shopping, or you, you know, getting in to do the rest of your job, or when I turn the podcast off, I’m going to, you know, have this reset. No one thinks when we get tired or when we can’t be actionable, you just stop. You don’t start. You actually stop. And I don’t think anyone tells us that that’s how you could possibly get out of type D and move to a C and A, B type, you know, actionable energy, yeah.

Courtney Townley 45:44
And it’s the dosage, right? It’s like, I always say, because a lot of people ask me, Well, how do I know it’s becoming a problem, right? And it’s like, well, if you’re stopping all of the time to the point of never starting, then it might need a different approach, right? But absolutely, it’s, it’s, um, I think also that so much of it is our is our habit, right? It’s a way of we’ve just been practicing certain things for so long that we again, the path of least resistance for our brain is to keep doing it the way we’ve always done it. And so it’s breaking that pattern and saying,

Courtney Townley 46:21
Okay, how can I meet myself where I’m at and just move that needle of effort like 1% not 20% not 25% not 50% but just 1% like that seems like an easier do for me, and definitely makes my brain less freaked out and less resistant than trying to go all in, right? The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single stop. It’s so true. It is so true. Okay, so to wrap this up, I would love to have you share with listeners a little bit about what they can find from you. I know you have an offer for them that they can sign up for. So let’s talk about that. And I’d also like to invite you for any closing thoughts on like this powerful aging conversation.

Angi McClure 47:11
So starting with what I have to offer is I am really excited, because we’re shifting, you know, slowly out of spring into summer in a little while, but I wanted to share this foot treatment. It’s a very simple you can use it with a hand towel, or, as I demonstrate in the video, I use a little soft rack up ball and giving everybody an opportunity to do something that is so, so simple, but coming down to the feet energetically, it’s very grounding, right? And if we’re wanting to really try and work with our nervous system, if we’re wanting to reduce inflammation, getting outside and being barefoot is very, very, very key for this season that we’re in and moving in through the summer season. So I wanted to gift everyone with a little foot treatment. And what it involves is us coming into breathing and having this ball slowly been massaged around different points of the foot. It allows us to explore the foot itself.

Angi McClure 48:20
And I think one thing that I want to emphasize here is that this little massage technique that I show everyone is actually about joint mobility within the foot. So I made a comment, oh, I want to strength train, but just going to grab something heavy and pick it up isn’t strength training. You’re just picking up heavy stuff. There’s an actual development and skill that needs to be trained in order to strength train properly. It’s kind of oddly the same one as I mentioned. Hey, I want you to get outside and be barefoot. So everyone probably thought easy, let me just kick off my shoes and I’ll be outside. Yeah, you disguise it as massage. Yeah, exactly. I’m tracking everyone to say what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to increase your brain’s understanding of where your feet are and how your feet move.

Angi McClure 49:04
So this little technique should be done gently and slowly and over time, you should ideally be able to see your feet sink and become one with Earth. I can’t tell you how many times in bamboo bodies classes, people come in and they take their shoes off, and their foot is so disconnected from the floor, it’s like just they’re standing in a box, and their foot is the block on the floor. And so to get us to reconnect, that’s the secret sauce. It’s not just, Oh, I’m gonna go outside barefoot. It’s I need a foot that’s connected to my body and my brain, and that’s the little connection that I want to sink into the earth. So getting outside barefoot, you guys can all start now with a really simple, simple and it feels really good, actionable routine that you could do gently in the morning.

Angi McClure 49:59
Morning, you could do a little bit in the afternoon, you could do maybe in the evening, no more than that. For my type A, people type B, C, D, just do it once in the morning. Do it once in the morning. I always have to talk to everybody because I never know personality types. They’re like, I’m gonna do this on the top of the hour. Yeah. So getting everybody a gift of feet. You’re welcome. We need that lovely to have that connection. And it’s just a simple, simple way. This is how I start my baby bodies classes off. Is that I have racquetballs in class, and everyone goes without having to be guided, because they’ve gone through this little treatment video where they know how to mobilize the foot, and I will say a quick little sneak pee or sneak tool within this is when you have more foot mobility.

Angi McClure 50:48
What’s exciting about this is that, in addition to just its connection to our nervous system, when we mobilize the foot, it can actually help with low back issues, hip issues and knee issues. And I never want to use any modality or exercise or drill as a fix it, but the feet is kind of like apple cider vinegar. It’s got multiple uses that you never think about. So I want people to look at this in a way of, how is this benefiting you in your sleep? How is this benefiting you in your movement, your strength, feet pain, hip pain, low back pain, because the feet are kind of one of those areas of the body that it really can affect you systemically. So I think this is a really fun gift to give everybody, just to reconnect, and it gives you that time I’m showing Courtney, my sand jar is still murky. Man, that still working. Yeah, water is still murky.

Angi McClure 51:42
I think that the foot exercise is gonna give all of you an opportunity where you’re focused on something that literally is grounding, that when you’re done with that, I challenge you to just stand there like a weirdo and look at the wall or look out the window and just be in your feet for just three minutes as you breathe, and you’re just starting, you’re starting that opportunity to be still at the ground, and you can use just that stillness anywhere, anytime.

Courtney Townley 52:11
It’s so interesting, isn’t it that the feet are are so neglected. And I certainly do not have a foot fetish, but I love feet. I’m in that she’s not kinky. No, it’s not a kinky thing. But I think being a dancer, right? I was in a dance class last night, and this came up where we’re doing, you know, this complicated choreography, and and the teacher paused, and she was like, you know, it’s like half the room is forgetting that they have feet, right?

Courtney Townley 52:39
Like you’re moving and your body is so beautifully expressive. And then there’s like this dead fish the end of the line. And I think that that’s just it’s so true of just humans in general, that we put so much attention on strengthening the chest and the quads and the hamstrings and all these body parts. But the magic is in feet, it’s like the foundation, literally, of everything.

Angi McClure 53:03
Yeah, I actually have a workshop on May 31 that that I if I can, or however you guys are able to find it on my website too. But I’ll be teaching it on feet and going over that topic too, of not just, Oh, my feet hurt. Let me do this exercise to help with plantar fasciitis, my bun, right, etc. What it is is actually discovering the magic of the feet and how it can help, ranging from migraines all the way to your posture to your strength. And just like you said, when we come back into our feet, our movement changes. It does so drastically, so So, so drastic.

Courtney Townley 53:46
And your stability, right? Your spatial awareness, like everything shifts with the feet. I love that. So good.

Angi McClure 53:52
I love feet to too girl, what we could talk feet? We’ll get together and talking feet. I love it like that was a weird podcast, the foot watch,

Courtney Townley 54:01
the foot fetish podcast. I like that. I like that. This is so this has been so good, like so many great points in this conversation. So, in closing, powerful aging. Where do you want to leave it?

Angi McClure 54:17
I want for all of us to start looking at pro aging, pro aging every time you hear a commercial with, by the way, someone who is either younger than what they said on the commercial, or they’re just one of those beautiful, 75 year old women who has thick, thick, thick gray hair and not a wrinkle on her face. She’s not real

Courtney Townley 54:40
now, like in the world of AI too, I see all these ads of AI images, and I’m like, What are we doing to people? Yeah, yeah,

Angi McClure 54:50
I’m pro aging. I want to age. We’re going to and privilege with this shift. I tell my students. Says all the time. I’m like, people say, Oh, but you’re only 42 I said, Yeah, but you’re 82 like, you didn’t get hit by a bus, congratulations.

Angi McClure 55:10
Yeah, that’s amazing. So I think anytime you see something on, you know, YouTube or Instagram or a commercial, think you know I’m pro aging, and pro aging is gonna mean you’re going to look older, and it sucks sometimes, and as I want for all of us to recognize, think get around other people who also are pro aging. Women in my class two days ago, we were all chatting, and I mentioned about entering perimenopause, and I said, my hair, my hair is starting to change, and I’m starting to lose more hair. And I said, Please tell me, ladies, when you’re post menopause, like the hair Fallout stops. And they all look at me. They’re like, Oh,

Angi McClure 55:57
your hair differently. And I was like, but we all laughed. We all realized this is what it is. And there’s such joy and camaraderie. There’s cool things to talk about, but to constantly tell yourself, I am pro aging. When you tell yourself I’m doing the foot exercise, I’m pro aging, when you go and go for a walk with a girlfriend and you decide to swap stories about stuff that’s pro aging, and I want to emphasize in your own self talk,

Angi McClure 56:26
that how you think exuberates outward. And some of the most beautiful people that I am surrounded by are in their 70s and their 80s, and they are in their 70s and 80s and look like they’re in their 70s and 80s. And one of my good friends just the other day, she just looked beautiful in class. And I sent her a text after and I said, Hey, I just want to let you know you looked stunning in class today, just so you know. And she wrote me back that her entire life she never felt beautiful, never felt beautiful with her husband, never felt beautiful. Then whenever they got a divorce, she had a hard time dating. She had a hard time ever looking herself in the mirror.

Angi McClure 57:05
And the fact that I said that to her blew her mind, because what I saw in her was so beyond anything that she was raised and taught and tried to work against. So when you become pro aging, what that did for me is I’m a 42 year old woman that saw a 75 year old woman who’s gorgeous, and it made me realize how important that’s gonna be for me as I age. So one day I’ll have a 40 year old woman looking at me going, look at that little old lady. She looks like part rat, part Fox, Park camel, but she’s so cute. She’s beautiful. And I’ll say thank you so much. It’s been hard for me to age and my body turning into this combination of a camel slash box slash wrap face that I’ve got right now, but it is beautiful, dang it. Thank you.

Angi McClure 57:56
And I will encourage her to love that, because we are going to change, and it’s not going to be that cliche of what we think of anti aging beauty. It’s going to be pro aging beauty inside and out. And I just want to encourage everyone that fix it inside. It’ll shine outside, and it’s going to help the younger generation 100% yes, I love it so much. And I just want to add on to that that I talk a lot about borrowed beliefs, and borrowed beliefs being a lot of us have developed some really negative self narrative because we borrowed beliefs from other people, like a teacher said something to us growing up, our parents said something a co worker, and we just clung, and we never let it go to the point that it’s it literally. We made it a part of who we are.

Angi McClure 58:39
And I just want to offer that so much of that renovation that has to happen at midlife is about going in and examining the beliefs that you’ve borrowed and making sure that you give back, like, let go of the beliefs that aren’t serving the life you want to live. Yeah, and don’t underestimate, like, what you said to that woman, you literally gave her a belief to borrow about herself, right? And that like, I think we underestimate the power of telling people things like that. And we also definitely do not normalize the conversation of pro aging, especially in the woman’s world, right? We just don’t, we don’t do it. And I think we need to be having more of those conversations to be able to adopt new beliefs about ourselves and about the aging process in general and And just one last thought too, I was listening to something that’s been really interesting with the conversation of menopause. I think it is humans, whales and elephants are the only mammals that go through menopause. And for those listeners, you may or may not know this, they don’t do a lot of studies on women.

Angi McClure 59:52
We’re kind of unpredictable, yes, but now you’ve got a lot more women in the field who are like, can we.

Angi McClure 59:59
Study us. And so there’s more studies coming out, and like questioning, good questions, just as simple as, why us, why menopause? Why within evolution, are we getting this and what they’ve come to find so far? And I thought this was so incredibly beautiful, was that as we come past those child bearing years, and we’ve been told that we dry up. We’re not desirable anymore. What’s so funny is a good that’s all I have to say. On that one. It’s like, gross, like, right, done. But the other component as to what there’s a professor, I think Columbia professor, talking about this, about the role in the older woman, is understanding that they actually have more of the lessons to wise woman,

Angi McClure 1:00:55
the wise woman, the Sage. And that has been throughout many matriarchal communities, and even within animal kingdoms that are more matriarchal, is the wisdom from the woman is to be so highly regarded, and because of time, and like you said, things that have poisoned our mind, I think this generation right now, of women in their winter season, second spring, to realize, ladies, it is your time to be our wise women. I want more wise women in this world to encourage us, to make us feel secure and safe, to nod our heads when we go, oh, this just feels weird. It’s like things are changing. And they’re like, Yeah, isn’t it great?

Angi McClure 1:01:42
And that was the way that the women closed our conversation where I said, Oh my gosh, there’s so many things that are changing. And they all laughed, and two of them said, Isn’t it wonderful, yeah. And why are we not saying that about ourselves as we go through these seasonal shifts, as we come into a moment to be able to be still and within that discomfort, say, but isn’t this wonderful? And I think that that is very, very, very empowering for all of us. All of us indeed,

Courtney Townley 1:02:09
Agreed such a good note to end on. Thank you, my friend. This was lovely. I always love spending time with you, and I have no doubt the listeners will get a lot from this episode.

Angi McClure 1:02:19
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s just such a joy.

Courtney Townley 1:02:27
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.