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Transcript
- 05:05 About Danny Cohen
- 11:12 How Danny coaches his clients?
- 13:53 Putting fears in perspective
- 18:57 Living in the present
- 21:11 Cultivating an attitude of gratitude
- 22:12 How to accept yourself?
- 28:28 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 31:34 Find Danny Cohen
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. I’m your host Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com. And here is my co-host, General Leigh Lowery.
Leigh Lowery: Hi everybody.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha. You can find her on generalleigh.com. And if you are not paying attention she is going to kick your butt and whip you into shape.
Leigh Lowery: Ha ha.
Wendy Myers: Today we are interviewing Danny Cohen, the inspirational wellness coach of motivationalwellness.com. He is going to be instructing us today on how to cultivate acceptance, gratitude, and keeping fear in perspective to create more self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence. And I thought this is going to be a great show, because one of the keys to living to 110 is cultivating self-love and acceptance of yourself and your circumstances.
Leigh Lowery: This is pretty much going to be my favorite show. I’m so excited.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha ha.
Leigh Lowery: But first we have to do the disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition. And it is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 Podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your health care practitioner before slathering your mug with any type of treatment that we suggest or any fitness regime that we suggest and this show.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha. And for all you guys, you can check out my store. It’s finally up on the website. It’s myersdetox.com/store. I’ve got all of my favorite Supplements, they are called Endomet, and they are the Supplements that I take and that I prescribe to my family. I’ve also got several different kinds of near-infra red saunas that I highly recommend that everyone do to detox all the heavy metals and chemicals that we are exposed to on our environment today. And I also have a free contest going on. For anyone interested, you can go on the homepage of myersdetox.com and you can sign up to win a free hair mineral analysis. So just check that out. You will see the little link on the little graphic on my homepage.
Leigh Lowery: So cool. And I am the general Leigh. You can find me at generalleigh.com. And I have an online training program based here in Los Angeles, but you can get a hold of me, and I do a very comprehensive online training program inclusive of online training and nutrition. So you can find that on “General Leigh Fitness and Nutrition” through Facebook, or at generalleigh.com. Okay so Wendy; again, what is going with that book of yours?
Wendy Myers: Well you know, it’s actually going pretty good. I mean, right now I’m still in re-write. I’m in the second re-write and just trying to re-work it, make it more readable and more compact. I tend to be longwinded so.
Leigh Lowery: Ha ha.
Wendy Myers: So I got to whittle this thing down. And I’m looking for a copy editor to tell me what aspects of the book suck.
Leigh Lowery: Ha ha ha.
Wendy Myers: And I need to edit it out. But for those of you who are just tuning in to the Live to 110 Podcast, my book is called “The Modern Paleo Survival Guide“, and it’s going to be available on Amazon about June 1st 2014, hopefully. I’m still trying to pinpoint down the publish date. But the book is about taking Paleo to the next level, by including the most nutrient-dense foods, including also crucial lifestyle tips in line with how our ancient bodies function optimally. And the importance of detoxing.
This aspect is not found in any other Paleo book but it’s crucial. Because you can eat the healthiest Paleo diet in the world, and still suffer health issues and disease if you don’t detox from having metals and chemicals so prevalent in today’s modern environment. So that’s basically the book in a nutshell and hopefully I will be done very soon, because I’m over it. I want to get it out to everyone. I’m excited about it.
Leigh Lowery: That’s so cool. It is really exciting. And like you said, sometimes we need someone to comment and tell us, “Alright, you got really longwinded here. I wish to make it edit me as I was talking to people”.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha ha.
Leigh Lowery: You know, like, “Oops, stop. Go back. Reverse.”
Wendy Myers: Yeah. So, our guest today is Danny Cohen of motivationalwellness.com. And he is the inspirational wellness coach. And he is a fellow graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, that’s the school that I went to. And he helps women and young adults who want to regain control of their self-confidence. He specializes in helping his clients boost their self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence, so that they can transform their bodies and live a happy, healthy life. So, Danny I’m so happy to have you on the show.
Danny Cohen: Thank you very much, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: So first, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, and why you became a health coach focusing on motivational wellness.
Danny Cohen: Right. Well, I primarily started my business really out of passion to help those individuals who are struggling with body image, self-esteem, self-confidence, because I myself was dealing with those issues at one time. And I was really down in the dumps. I didn’t know who I was. I had a lot of body image issues myself, and I just wanted to be able to give back, and help those individuals develop that self-esteem, self-acceptance, and love themselves for who they are.
Wendy Myers: And what is your background? You said when you were growing up, you had some health issues.
Danny Cohen: Correct. Growing up I had cerebral palsy and also epilepsy. I had epilepsy for 25 years. I grew up with cerebral palsy. So in just about a year ago, I actually had two brain surgeries to help me with my seizures. And those were actually unsuccessful in the way of helping me with my seizures. But I’m actually grateful in the fact that I had those surgeries. I know that sounds a little crazy. But the outcome of that surgery; even though they were unsuccessful in the way of helping me with these seizures themselves, I do have cerebral palsy and a very good side effect of the surgery is that it gave me more movement of my left side than I have ever had.
Wendy Myers: Well, that’s great.
Danny Cohen: Yes. So I don’t have total movement of the left side, but I have a lot more movement on the left side, more mental focus, and more clarity. So I’m able to do a lot more things that I wasn’t able to do. And 25 years ago; and even prior to that, let’s say ten years ago. I was on a lot of medications. I did a lot of different dietary changes and Supplements. I took this and that. I tried to really hone in on a lot of different things to help myself. And I was also overweight. I eventually lost 80 pounds.
Wendy Myers: Wow.
Danny Cohen: And I was happy to a point, but I wasn’t really happy. I saw that person I was in the mirror —yeah he lost 80 pounds and he looked good. But I didn’t really feel good. Because when I saw myself in the mirror I was the same disabled person who had epilepsy.
When I started to really see; as years went by, I started to really notice that it wasn’t who I was in there that I was supposed to be. That was just my perception. I had to really hone in on that actual vision of identity. I’m Danny, I’m unique and I’m a beautiful person. And that is really the acceptance piece. We will go more into that later. That’s ultimately why I do what I do for my clients.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I know first-hand it is tough growing up with cerebral palsy. I had a classmate in high school who also had cerebral palsy and you know, it is sad. He was such a nice, good-looking guy but he was a loner because people are not accepting of that. They are not accepting of you with open arms as they would with someone without that health issue. I felt bad for that. We were buddies so I kind of know what you had to experience and some of the things you had to overcome. Definitely, many people who don’t have that health issue really struggle with their self-esteem and self-confidence, so I really hand it to you for finally being able to find your way to accept yourself and being able to teach this to other people.
Danny Cohen: Thank you. And that is ultimately what it is. Once you start to accept yourself, people start to see you differently. And it is not even that, because anyone can feel bad for somebody. But once you start seeing you for you, the other person’s perception of you shouldn’t even matter. And that’s huge.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Absolutely. So you said you had a couple of brain surgeries last year. How has that experience changed your perspective about life and your practice?
Danny Cohen: It’s actually been huge. With those two brain surgeries being unsuccessful as I said, it really makes you look at life complete different. You start to be able to wake up every morning and smell those roses a lot sweeter than they once were. Be more grateful for every little thing that you do have and that you don’t have. And it’s not just because I grew up being sick; that goes for everybody.
I’m talking about this now; and I will certainly go into much more detail as we go further throughout the interview, but it is all about accepting reality, being grateful for the things that you do have, being even more grateful for the things that you do not have. But having those two brain surgeries and not being successful just made me want to move forward even further with my practice and do the things that I wanted to do for others as I am doing now.
Wendy Myers: That’s great. I really admire your perseverance. Because a lot of people would have had those brain surgeries and be so discouraged and down because they weren’t successful. So, how do you channel that? How do you help your clients discover and learn about themselves; like for instance, you mentioned a few things before we started our interview. What are the concepts you try to teach them?
Danny Cohen: I find that the best way to learn about ourselves is to first feel every emotion. You don’t want to hide from your emotions. You want to embrace every emotion, seeing each one as that, as an emotion. And once that person embraces all those emotions; that is when their ability to change comes through, because all those emotions are also thoughts, and thoughts can change.
So if you are having a bad thought, you fully embrace that thought and that emotion, and then a light switches on. You feel it, you embrace it, and then you make that choice to change. So if it is fear, or if it is pain, or if it is excitement, you feel all those things. You fully sit in them and then you let them pass. And if it’s an emotion you want to stay with for a while, if it’s excitement or surprise or whatever it is, you let that stay with you. But if it’s fear mainly, or pain, you feel it for a second, and you let go.
Don’t hide from your emotions because that is the worst thing that you can do. If you hide from them, that is just going to sit with you and make you even sicker. And coming from a person who has done that in the past —because my seizures are mainly brought up by stress— I’ve always had a tendency in the past to really hold on to my emotions. And whenever I’ve done that, it is usually a trigger for a seizure. An episode for anything to really come out.
And when I tell people who aren’t sick; if they don’t feel those emotions, let them set in for a second and just let them out, that is going to trigger something internally inside them too. Because it’s going to trigger that response. Which we all go through whatever stress we have. But if we don’t really feel that emotion and let it out, it is going to go deeper and deeper until that stress response completely crosses something in our bodies that we can’t repair.
Leigh Lowery: It is so accurate, you know. This is Leigh speaking, but I had the shingles and it was based on a reaction of me not passing through feelings, really manifesting those internally and you mentioned fear, and I truly believe that people manifest fear in things and they vary if they don’t change their thoughts. So how do you help your clients get in touch with their fears and put them into perspective?
Danny Cohen: As far as fear, most people say that fear is not real. Fear actually is very real, and it is something that you cannot ignore. So we all have this little voice inside our head and most of the time it is usually that negative little voice. So we go through life listening to whatever voice we have —whether it’s positive voice or negative voice— but most often it is that little negative voice that constantly says, “I can’t do this. I can’t do that. I can’t do whatever it is.”
But if you cultivate that positive inner voice and reverse that negative subconscious, and reverse that more into a positive subconscious —because it’s possible, most people think that it isn’t— but we all have that positive subconscious inside of us. And breathe those positive thoughts and just allow them to come through. Allow to open your heart to new things. And all those things that you once thought you couldn’t do, you will be able to fully do them. And you can do them. It’s all about the “I can” as opposed to the “I can’t.”
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Danny Cohen: So it’s embracing that fear. Just like embracing all that other emotions. Embracing all that fear. Embracing the “I can” as opposed to the “I can’t” and moving forward with that positive inner voice.
Leigh Lowery: Even the acceptance of that fear that is coming over you. You have to accept that emotion and then change your thought pattern and process so you can move forward with the “I can”.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I think a lot of people really resist their negative emotions and they fight it. I have friends that still get depressed of being depressed when they just need to accept it, because it will pass.
Leigh Lowery: That’s right.
Danny Cohen: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Also, I’ve read an amazing book a long time ago called The Other Ninety Percent. It talked about how most people’s brains are automatically trained as survival mechanism from cave men times, that our brains are trained to focus on problems and solve them because this essential for survival. So you have to kind of almost re-train your brain to not focus on problems but focus on what you do have and having gratitude and things like that, because your brain just automatically goes there. And I think when you have an awareness of that, you really do have the power-shift your thinking into a more positive mode.
Danny Cohen: It’s really true. Your subconscious is such a powerful thing, and it’s always running, it never stops. It’s usually our subconscious that tends to rely on past experiences. We all have those past experiences that are always annoying us. And a lot of us tend to live in the past. And these are the things that I always talk with people about. When you are always living in that past moment, it’s not about what the past is about, it’s about being in the present moment. It’s about being now. Learn from your past. I don’t want you to forget your past because your past is a great teacher. You want to learn from it. Whatever the past taught you. And I’m using those tools in the present moment.
Leigh Lowery: So it’s like taking the lessons from the past forward but not re-living the past lessons kind of thing.
Danny Cohen: Right. You don’t want to regret as well, because regretting what happened, then you will just going to further bring more of those emotions deep down inside. And bring more of the stress out as well. You did what you did. Be happy that you did it. It’s done. It’s over with. And be over with it. Don’t regret, because the moment you regret; the more of those feelings and that hurt and that pain, whatever other emotions start harping down at you, it starts to take deeper into your heart and to your soul and make you that much more of that bitter, sicker person. And that’s not good either. So never regret anything, never live in the past. You want to live in the moment, which is today.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Ever since I’ve read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Because you know, I was addicted to Oprah one time. She was endorsing that. “Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle”. Ha ha. I have become very present of living in the now, trying not to dwell on the past or even the future because people can get very obsessed with what’s going to happen —is it going to be bad? Am I going to be okay? Am I going to be fine? So how do you teach this really powerful lesson to your clients?
Danny Cohen: What I do every morning is I always wake up with a smile on my face. And if I can’t wake up with a smile on my face, because say I’ve had episodes; so if I had seizures the night before and I don’t feel like smiling, I usually try to remember a positive thought or something that happened from the night before that was good and bring that up and that makes me smile. Or I watch something good on television to bring me to that moment instead of reliving a negative past. It’s about bringing yourself to the now, because it’s always good to remember those positive past moments. It’s okay to do that. But it’s not good to live in your past is what I am saying.
If you can bring those positive past moments to your present and keep reliving those, that is what I normally would do and that is what I would normally tell people to do as well. If they can’t bring up something positive at that moment, bring up a positive past moment. But what I normally do for myself is I wake up every morning with a smile on my face, I meditate on certain things, whether it be on love or success, peace and gratitude, whatever it is. There are so many different ways that I try to bring myself to the moment.
Wendy Myers: I think cultivating the attitude of gratitude is something, I personally try to work on every day. I try to refocus my brain on what I do have and not on what I don’t have. Some days are easier than others, like today Leigh and I are looking out the window and there’s a pod of dolphins swimming by. It’s amazing. Ha ha. So we are having a great podcast today. It’s relaxing watching the dolphins. There’s another one. There are more over there.
Danny Cohen: You see, it’s about noticing those little things. Whether it be the dolphins or the birds outside your window. Noticing all those little things and allowing that present moment light that little spark inside of you and make you happy. Make you notice all the beautiful things in your life right now. It’s about what is today. It’s not what is about tomorrow. It’s not what is about yesterday. It’s about what is today.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, right now. It’s funny. I’ve mentioned on the podcast that I am a sober woman. I was a woman who didn’t exercise for ten years of my life and was overweight. And it is really interesting to me to find somebody who had such different circumstances, but yet it’s a parallel when it comes to the solution to our problems. It’s really amazing to hear that, because your problems and the things that were seen as problems before —that now you have accepted and gone forward with— are so different from my set of circumstances but it is just amazing that the solution is the same base. And I think acceptance in life is so important. Our circumstances, our body. How do you teach your clients to accept themselves?
Danny Cohen: Ok. And I started talking about this early on the podcast and I said I would further elaborate on this so, for many years I struggled with that particular concept about acceptance of my life and what it was about. So I was heavy when I was young, and obviously I am physically disabled. And I have a seizure disorder. But I never accepted it. And when I lost that 80 pounds, I did feel great to a point but when I looked in that mirror and I still saw a physically disabled person who had a seizure disorder, I felt broken. I was disabled, I was bullied when I was alone. And this continued on for many years. And then I had a very life altering situation. As a matter of fact, in September 10th of 2010 I had a succession of seizures that was brought on by stress and that was really a kick in the ass, pardon the pun.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha. I like cursing on the podcast.
Leigh Lowery: Ha ha
Danny Cohen: Oh. Ha ha. But it really was. It was so out of the ordinary for me to go through something like that. So when I went through that and the doctors told me that this is what it was caused from, obviously this is what led to having those surgeries last year. I started to realize that this is who I am, I’m unique, I might have a physical disability, but I’m healthy. I might have seizures but I can still walk, I can still see the things outside my window and I can still hear the birds chirping. I had to be grateful and accepting all those things. And unique is a beautiful thing. We are all unique in our own way, and unique is beautiful.
Wendy Myers: Yes it is. Amen!
Danny Cohen: So once you start to realize and see that you are unique and know that unique is a beautiful thing, you can really start to let that set in and accept you for you. You can look in the mirror and notice all of your flaws and see that all of your flaws make you that unique, beautiful person. And that’s just it. It’s such an amazing thing, you know. I just want to make everybody aware of that. That unique is such an awesome quality to have. You are such an awesome thing to be.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And who knows if you hadn’t had your life experiences and your health issues that you wouldn’t have become a health coach. Many times we have to have some sort of health crisis and then people gravitate towards being nutritionists and health coaches and what not. So maybe that made you who you are.
Danny Cohen: Right. I was actually a certified as a nutritionist about ten years ago, and I became a health coach in 2010. So I’ve been in the health field for about 15 years now.
Wendy Myers: Wow.
Danny Cohen: Yeah. But I really didn’t know where I was going with it because of my mindset and because of all the other things that were going on in my life. And then when I got certified as a health coach in 2010 that is obviously when I had this succession of seizures and everything else happened. And then last year when my life became to a full circle and the surgeries and all these things happened, that is when I was able to truly focus on what I wanted to do with my practice, and it was to teach other people especially women and young adults in particular, because working with young adults, thy are dear and near to my heart because I was a kid who was bullied once. And to work with those children who are dealing whether it be with physical disabilities or not, kids who are in school are having a rough time, with low self-esteem and low self-confidence. I really wanted to give that back to them and let them know that it’s okay to be who you are.
And last year when I went through those successions of surgeries and everything else, that has given me now the ability to do that. So it really has been great in the past year and being able to build a business now that I wasn’t able to build ten years ago, and even three years ago when I first got certified as a health coach. So, I’m eternally grateful for all the things that have happened.
Wendy Myers: You know I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Danny Cohen: Stress. Stress is huge. It’s a killer. I mean there is heart disease there is cancer. There are a lot of other things, all autoimmune issues that come up. But stress, which can lead to all those things is a big thing, and we can’t hide from stress. But we can manage it. When we learn how to manage our stress levels… and I’m huge on telling people this. I tell everyone to relax.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha.
Danny Cohen: Sometimes I say it a little too often. But if we could all just relax and breathe, take a couple of deep breaths when we are in a situation that we think that we can’t handle but we know that we can, things just seem to go away. Stress, which is a killer, and causes all these underlying problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and all the underlying causes of autoimmune issues and what not, all the inflammatory disease I mean in terms of that. If you can manage your stress levels, you will be a much happier and healthier person.
Wendy Myers: I totally agree with you. I think a lot of things I tell my clients as well is, of course stress kills. But I think many people don’t understand exactly why, exactly what the mechanism is, and it’s basically when we are in our sympathetic nervous system mode when it’s called sympathetic dominance. That is when we are in our fight or flight mode, when we are releasing adrenalin and our adrenals are getting overworked, and we are stressed out.
We are thinking fast about a million things to do. You’re going, going, going. And when you are in that mode, you can’t digest your food effectively and you can’t detox. That is why you have to relax and sleep more and what not, get eight hours of sleep at night because that is what gets your body into the parasympathetic mode where you are able to digest your food and able to detox. If you are always in the sympathetic mode, stress, fight or flight, your body can’t detox and you just spend years accumulating heavy metals and toxins and your body is not able to get rid of it and you eventually suffer malnutrition because your body isn’t able to digest its food and those two things are the killers, they are the bases of all these diseases of western affluence.
Danny Cohen: Yeah, absolutely.
Wendy Myers: Totally agree with you, that is a huge, huge one. So can you tell the listeners more about you and where they can find you?
Danny Cohen: Sure. They can go ahead to my website motivationalwellness.com, and if they would like to learn more about my services and what I do, they can also sign up for a Be Beautiful, Be You strategy session. I’d certainly welcome that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. What is that?
Danny Cohen: Be Beautiful, Be You is a new program that I am setting up. And what I do with that program is we go into detail where we can fully strategize your life in a light, bringing more passion, more love and more gratitude into daily life. And that’s ultimately what I love to do with my clients. I want to be able to give them that passion, give them that spark back, and allow them to develop more of that daily gratitude into their lifestyles, more of that self-love. So with that Be Beautiful, Be You strategy session I allow them to go into detail and we can break that down into more steps to work with you and developing that practice. And that can be found on our website motivationalwellness.com. I also do have a free offer on my website and that can be found at tinyurl.com/danny-free-gift. Also, you can find me on Facebook at facebook.com/motivationalwellness.
Wendy Myers: Well, Danny, thank you so much for coming on the show. Your story is truly inspirational and how you have overcome so much adversity and now you share your knowledge and your teaching is about self-love and others. I have to say I really respect that you triumph and refuse to give up and help others to tap into their self-esteem and self-confidence. Because it is one of the number one things people struggle with, especially young adults and even young adults that are attractive and do have a lot going for them are still struggling with finding their identity. I know, myself struggled with that probably until I was 30 at least or longer. So it’s really great you are focusing in on this niche.
Danny Cohen: Thank you.
Wendy Myers: And everyone, if you want to learn all about detoxification, The Modern Paleo Diet or healing your health conditions naturally, go check out my site myersdetox.com. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter @ iwillliveto110. I’m also on YouTube @ Wendyliveto110. And today actually Leigh and I are going to be filming our first cooking segment. We are going to be making chicken broth today because I want to start getting some recipes and some videos on how to make healthy Modern Paleo food in preparation for my book publication around June 1 of The Modern Paleo Survival Guide. I want to help you guys to be able to implement the principles in the book with how to cook healthy food.
Leigh Lowery: It’s going to be fun today. And if you want to find more about me, go to generalleigh.com. Or you can find me on Facebook @ General Leigh Fitness and Nutrition and lastly on Instagram @ genleigh. And if you liked what you heard on the show today, please give the Live to 110 podcast a review on iTunes. We really need your reviews and we would love them so please send a positive, positive review for us.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Please take two seconds to do that right now just open iTunes, search for Live to 110 and write that review, because we need that to get in the search engine so that more people can hear our words so that we can spread our gospel about living healthy. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Remember, you have to learn to accept yourself and have an attitude of gratitude to live to 110. So Danny, thank you once again for being on the show.
Danny Cohen: Thank you.
Wendy Myers: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to the Live to 110 podcast.
