Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop, and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast and videocast station. And today I've got a special guest who is going to talk to us about stress and balance and pulling your life back together. I've got Lisa Nesneski with me all the way from the other side of the world in Florida. Hi, Lisa. How are you? Hi, Dr. Warrick. Thank you so much for inviting me. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. From what I understand, I think your story will be something that is so important to share with people who are concerned and interested with their own health. But a bit of background, you mentioned that you've worked in pharmacy for a number of years, so you are in that medical space. Tell me a bit about your pharmacy career. Yes, I've been a pharmacist for nearly 40 years. I have done a lot of different things. I was a clinical pharmacist for many years, you know, at the bedside assisting physicians. I've been a university professor and taught clinical pharmacy. I'm board certified in pharmacotherapy. I've got a certification in botanical medicine, and I'm also a certified mindfulness meditation teacher. Wow, you've got all the qualifications, Lisa. No question about that. But I understand you're the author of two books. One, your first book, Grounded Chaos, but more recently a book, Seven Mindful Questions. And I understand those books were really born out of your own personal journey. And a number of years ago, you ended up really in an emergency room in a... a chaotic situation do you can you share that story with us yes i had some chest pain and i sort of ignored it it started in the middle of the day i ignored it till about two o'clock in the morning and i thought this is not going away i better have this checked out so i'm lying in the emergency room there i've got me all hooked up to all the monitors and um you know i i I don't want to say that I can read an EKG, but it was normal. But every time I had the chest pain, the crushing chest pain sensation, my heart rate would begin to drop. So my normal heart rate's in the 50s, which is somewhat bradycardic, you know, normal, but low heart rate. And each sensation of this... uh it would come and go crescendo and and then uh relax i would have my heart rate would start to drop and it went down 40 38 36 32 30 and when it hit 28 i said look at the monitor no one was watching the pulse rate because you normally don't watch the pulse rate when you're looking at a monitor you know i i had to say Look at my pulse rate. It's dropping when I have chest pain. I had to point this out. So meanwhile, I'm loosened, and my heart rate's in the 20s, and I get sort of a panic, like, this could be it. I could be checking out. This could be the last day. And I said to everyone in the room, I don't want to miss my life. And I took a big, deep breath and blew it out. And the pain subsided at that point, and my heart rate started to climb back up. But that was the point when I realized that I had to make some serious changes in my life. This was mostly stress, although my nurse practitioner daughter-in-law thinks it might have been esophageal spasm. Everybody likes to do their diagnostics on me because I'm quite interesting in my presentations. But, yeah, you know, normal heart rate on stress tests or normal cardiac. enzymes were all normal. Everything was fine except this excessive stress that I had at the point that this happened. It was just a few years ago. I had 275 employees. I had five departments at a hospital. I was a hospital administrator. So yeah, I had a lot of responsibility. I had pharmacy lab, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and the research department. So I had a lot going on. I began to question everything in my life at that point. And I've made significant changes over the course of the last couple of years. But I realized that I think in questions. And so as I began to, you know, there are certain points in your life where you have so much going on, whether it's a personal. challenge or a divorce or whatever it's like from moment to moment you're trying to figure out what am i doing and so that's really how the seven mindful questions started it started with what am i doing right now and why am i doing this and not accusatory but questioning from it from a an open-ended like really why what's the underlying reason the because so the what am i doing is awareness and why i'm doing it is the because and then why do i even care about this is this something that's in alignment with what's important to me so it's abc aware because care i'm aware because i care and the fourth question is pause and breathe you know when you take that pause and you breathe you open space for something better to come in. And at that point, I'm thinking, well, what is it that I really should be doing? Not an accusatory type of, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. No, this is like, what's really important right now for me to be doing? So that's what the should is. And that's question number four. And really question number four, pause and breathe, what's essential? is really the foundation of this whole method because then you begin to think and come back, CBA, choose what's essential. So that's really that emotional connection to when you're choosing something, is it really the right thing for me to be doing, the feeling tone behind that? And so, you know, many, many years, and this is probably a pharmacist trait. You don't pay attention to your body. You just keep working and keep working and keep working. And finally, your body screams at you and says, you know, hello, I'm here. You better pay attention. We're checking out. We're moving to the next possibility. But yeah, paying attention to your body and your feelings. You know, your feelings kind of get stuck in your body. if they're not processed. And I think that's partially what happened that day in the emergency room. So choosing what's essential, choose. Better is the next one. So when you think of better, you think of your patterns where you've repeated and made mistakes and you want to go back and really fix those things. And they're really those subconscious habits that you have that determine your behavior. So when you're choosing better because you're aware of what you're doing, it takes a while for you to get out of that groove of what you have been doing habitually because it's subconscious. And then finally, it's the alternatives. You know, what alternative is best for me right now? You might have a number of things that are really important. But really, what is it that you can get done in that moment? So the whole mnemonic is I'm aware because I care, A, B, C, pause and breathe, then choose a better alternative. And I developed that because, you know, so many people have read the seven habits of highly effective people. I challenge them to name one. Other than maybe iron sharpens iron. I don't remember all seven. And I thought, well, I really want people to use these questions in sequence. So I'm going to put it in a mnemonic. So it's I'm aware because I care. Pause and breathe. Choose a better alternative. And did you have someone who guided you through this direction? Were you supported or was this a journey you took by yourself, Lisa? This was a self-discovery. Yeah. You know, I have a writing coach. I have an editor who's phenomenal. This book has had many iterations before it came out. I actually wrote this one first, but Grounded in Chaos was published first. It's the one that wanted to come out to the world first. But this one, yeah, I took my time and really worked through it. And what's fascinating about the book is, you know, Grounded in Chaos is all written in narrative verse. So it's all poetry. And so my poetic style is I'm telling my stories of everything that's happened to me. And that's how Seven Mindful Questions starts with another one of these poems. But this book, as I was getting the certification in mindfulness, I thought, I need to put meditations in here. And I also need to put exercises in here. So it's designed to be quite interactive so that you learn the method and practice it. I'm going to have a gift for your listeners that they can get a sample of the meditations. I recorded them in my own voice. They can certainly record them in their own voice. But I've got all of those out as a special gift for the listeners of your podcast. And that would be fantastic. And I personally am aware of the benefits of meditation. But I was going to ask you, up until your event in the emergency room, with your stress-related pains. Had you been a meditator up until that point? Has that been something that you had participated in until then and became more focused, or is it a new endeavor? So my first experience with meditation was through the University of Pittsburgh had a natural medicine. uh integrative medicine clinic and uh a gentleman there led a meditation i thought well let me try this and see and this was in 1997. so i've been a long-standing meditator i i have used i've learned a number of different types uh i've actually learned a healing type of meditation through the folks at Psychic Horizons in Boulder, Colorado. I've done that for many, many years. But when this whole episode started, one of my teachers was offering a 60-day challenge. And it was a five minutes a day. And I did that twice a day for 60 days. And I have never stopped meditating twice a day since. So, yes. That's fantastic. Look, I think this is a natural spot to just wrap this up. I think that this mnemonic, this seven mindful questions seems a very sensible way. If I can recall, it's aware because I care, pause and breathe, choose a better alternative. You've got it. It seems like... You can learn it in 10 minutes. It's beautiful. So I'm going to wrap up. For those listening, this is Lisa Nesneski, who I'm speaking with, a board-certified pharmacist who's got enormous experience in meditation and stress control, released two books, but I'm directing you to seven mindful questions because I think that should be in everyone's toolkit. Lisa's already offered to give us a little bit of a meditation sampler, and that should be attached to this podcast wherever you hear it. Lisa, all the way from Florida, thank you so much. You're most welcome. I really enjoyed our conversation, and thank you again for inviting me. I'm very happy to have been here today. Thank you. For those listening, I really hope you got as much out of Lisa's. guidance and her seven questions as I did. Until next time, take care. Bye for now. Wishing you live as well as possible for as long as possible. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.
