2294: Inside the Mind of a Wellness-Driven Dentist

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To learn more, just visit EckertEnterprises.com forward slash dentalpreneur. That's E-C-K-A-R-D Enterprises.com forward slash dentalpreneur. To learn how you can start building a future of financial freedom today, EckertEnterprises.com forward slash dentalpreneur. The Dentalpreneur Podcast. Okay doctor, it's time to put down that hand piece. You're listening to the show dedicated to helping dentists get their lives back. It's time to decrease your stress, increase your profitability, and regain your passion. And now introducing your host, Dr. Mark Costas. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Dentalpreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Costas. What is up friends? I hope you're doing great out there today. I have a very, very interesting guest today with such a fascinating bio. I think you guys are going to really, really like what we're talking about today. Let's welcome to the podcast for the first time, Dr. Kristin Yont. In addition to owning her practice in downtown Calgary, Dr. Kristin Yont has worked with the Calgary Flames, the NHL team for 26 years and is currently the lead dentist within the medical team. She is also very experienced in forensic dentistry. Dr. Yont is one of a few practitioners in Canada that are accredited to teach the SMART program from the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The stress management and resiliency training program is designed to help participants regain control and build resilience through a variety of mind body principles and self-care interventions, leading to reduced medical symptoms and vulnerability to disease and to enhance wellness and quality of life. Dr. Yont is an avid speaker and runs workshops, retreats and programs for dental professionals. She also works with universities, healthcare associations and business leaders to implement wellness initiatives for their organizations. She has recently completed compassion cultivation training from Stanford and an inner MBA program that focuses on building consciousness leadership. Dr. Kristin, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm really great. Thanks. And it's awesome to be here. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this talk with us today. We missed each other at Thrive. We were both recently there in Las Vegas. I was in the vendor hall just doing podcasts like crazy, which was super fun. Usually they have me in one of the breakout rooms or sometimes on the main stage, but it was a different experience for me being able to kind of have one-on-one time with a lot of the speakers there. But I heard great things about your presentation from the main stage. Maybe we'll start with that and I'd love to go into your origin story, but what is it that you focused on when you spoke to the general session at Thrive Live this year? Yeah, well, that was my first time at Thrive Live and oh my gosh, what a great experience it was. I would keep you busy the entire time. I would walk by your booth, you're busy the entire time. And I appreciate what you do for sure, which is really great for our dental community. You know, I was asked to speak on the main stage because recently the organizers have talked about increasing wellness within the profession. And it's not just about dentistry, clinical dentistry and the science of it, but it's how do we all do this job and how can we be more well? And particularly, I talk a lot about stress management. And so yeah, I was given 20 minutes really just to, you know, discuss wellness and what are a few things that we can do to reduce stress, feel better, and then a little bit of science around that because I definitely come from a platform of science. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So let's go back. Let's go in the way, way back machine and talk about how you got into this. You could call it like a sub, sub, subspecialty within our profession. We both know as, you know, either current or practicing clinical dentists that there's a ton of stress associated with our profession. Unfortunately, you know, they say that, you know, 50% of dentists wish they wouldn't have selected a different profession. 80% of dentists report to feeling some level of burnout and stress. Emotional and emotional distress is, is kind of regular for our profession, a 1.5 times more likely to experience depression or anxiety, two times more likely to, to commit suicide. So it's a, it's pretty well known that we have a stressful profession. So how did you get involved with working clinicians and dental professionals through some of those challenges that I just talked about? Yeah. Well, we, you are right. We do have a really difficult profession and I don't really think the general public actually appreciates that. I really got involved with stress management from my own stressors really. I, I've now been practicing dentistry for 27 years and you know, I graduated when I was 23 from the University of Saskatchewan and the very first thing I did was like the day after grad is I moved to Calgary and I had like a mound of student loans. I bought a dental practice within like the first three months. I bought a new house. I bought a new car. You were so young too. My goodness. You were only 23 and you did all of that the same year. That's nuts. I know. I know. It's really hard for me to think back to that and believe that I actually did that because I know like when I looked at, you know, my parents, they definitely didn't want me to do that at the time, but I'm, I was really quite driven and I always, I tell, and I told this story at Thrive Live, like I, I, I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan and I talk about how summer holidays really weren't a holiday. Like we, I spent a lot of my childhood, you know, working on the farm, um, during unpredictable situations. And, you know, I really think that I gained a lot of determination and, and courage and grit from, from that experience right of my childhood. And it was really what got me through dental school. And so then, you know, I finished dental school and it was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I was presented with a good opportunity. The person, the practice that I was joining, he didn't want an associate. He wanted someone that was committed. And it was like, you're, you, if you're committed, you've got to put your money on the table. And um, yeah. And honestly, it was hard for me to get alone back in those days, but I finally managed that. And yeah, so it, that was, and you know, to be honest, I actually at the time didn't find it to be too stressful. Like it was stressful financially, but when you grow up on a farm, you kind of come from a conservative mindset. And so I was fine continuing to be conservative through, you know, through my payments I was making. Um, but it, and so I could mentally really just manage the problem. You know, I had processes, I had people to help me do that. And even in regards to like, I was a practice owner at 23 and I was managing staff. I mean, staff that were older than me, I was managing all the stressors that we regulate now and manage. Um, but you know, you asked me how I really got into this. It was not through that, the financial stress. It was through the stressor of, unfortunately when I was in my early thirties, I went through a divorce and it was the first time in my life where I couldn't think my way through a stressor because it was so emotionally taxing on me and then having to manage the practice and being a dentist and then having to manage my own personal, um, emotional relationships and everything that came with that, uh, that was really the TSN turning point really in my life. It really pushed me over the edge and, and that's really what brought me here because it was through the solutions that I explored to really manage my own stress. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that it's really important that people are able to kind of convey what brought them to a level of stress in their life where you're either forced to kind of give up or to take it in a positive direction. It sounds like you utilize that difficult experience to kind of redirect your life to help other people. Tell me about it. Was it the smart program that got you formal training in this? No, it wasn't. It was actually, so, you know, I was, as I was going through my divorce, like I said, it was really emotionally heavy. Um, and, but also it really affected, you know, my mind, the way I was thinking, you know, everybody has that itty bitty shitty committee in their head. And I found that the stress just ramped up my inner thoughts of kind of, you know, you're such a loser, you know, I can't believe you're managing a practice. You can't even manage a relationship, you know, no one's ever going to love you again. You know, all these thoughts in my head, um, emotions, behaviors, I started drinking more beer, right? I started doing more online shopping, right? All the things that I was trying to do to distract myself. But it was actually the moment that, uh, one day I could hardly get out of bed and, um, it was because like the stress chemicals had really just infiltrated my body. And I woke up, I could barely, you know, barely move my back. My upper neck was killing me. And all of a sudden I'm like, well, no, I gotta go to work because I got divorce payments to make, right? I got, I got clinic loans to pay. And so it was that moment that I actually recognized that it's stress is having such a physical, um, influence on me. And so then you asked me, what did I do? Well, the next move for me actually, and you'll never guess this was, uh, I actually joined a yoga class. Wow. That make, actually makes logical sense now. Back then it was probably something that people wouldn't turn to immediately to handle stress. But so, so tell me like, what was the, what was the result of that and how long did you have to do it before you noticed the difference? Yes. That's a good question. I, so I joined the yoga class, not for inner peace and serenity. I joined the yoga class so that it can really just stretch out my body. Like I needed to get to work. And so I joined the yoga class for that reason. Like I had a goal in mind, stretch out my body, feel better. But what I recognized and the practice that I did was like an Ashtanga style practice, which is, you know, physical postures. You end with like relaxation and Shavasana and maybe a little bit of meditation. And so it took me, like I started practicing once a week and then within a few weeks I recognized that it started to make me feel better. So I would practice twice a week and it took about eight, eight to 10 weeks for me to actually notice that when I got to the office, cause I practiced in the morning before work, when I got to the office, it actually made a huge difference on the way that I was thinking throughout the day, like my mental clarity and on my, um, my ability to control my emotions. And it was there then that I just, like I've continued to practice yoga ever since I became a yoga teacher. I, which I, and I just wanted the knowledge because I actually am super sciencey, right? Just like you. I could feel the change and I wanted to mentally know, like, what is it that's making this change in me? Like, what is the science behind it? And so I took my yoga teacher training, then I started teaching people, my staff, I taught seniors, I taught community yoga and everyone would say the same thing, like, this makes me feel so much better, but yet I didn't know why. And it was then where, you know, I'm, I'm just like you, I'm hungry for knowledge. And again, this is back, this is 15 years ago. So the research on yoga, which I now know is a mind body therapy, was really just starting. There was tons of research around a few books, lots of articles. And so I would read everything I could. And I picked up a book really that was on the science of yoga in itself. And it was the origin, one of the authors was from Harvard. And I actually sent him an email, which I usually don't do. I usually keep to myself, but I sent him an email, I said, this is such a great book, you have any more information for me. And then he invited me to Harvard Medical School's mind body medicine conference. That was in 2017. And man, as soon as I arrived, I knew like, it was exactly what I was looking for, because it's a room full of physicians talking about the science of mind body medicine. And it was there that I found the SMART program. Yeah, that's awesome. So fascinating. You know, it's interesting to me, what really stands out to me is that, you know, we're involved with Western medicine, kind of an allopathic model where we're dealing with treating symptoms. And what is so attractive to me about Eastern medicine or naturopathic medicine, which is actually repelling for a lot of allopathic Western type physicians, is that you go to the root cause and try to figure out what is causing these symptoms in the first place, instead of throwing a pill at something or dealing with this host of symptoms that has a root cause, right? So it's interesting to me that you found a community of actual allopathic physicians that are interested in, you know, this type of medicine, because to me, it's difficult, it has been difficult to find. I am all about, you know, I'm all about any type of natural remedy or new habit formation that can eliminate the need for medication, you know, or just strictly treating symptoms. To me, I mean, it's interesting to me that so many allopathic doctors that are some of the most brilliant people that I've ever met, don't take the time to say, well, instead of just dealing with all these symptoms here, this negativity and this pain, let's just try to go upstream just a little bit and try to figure that out and figure out if there's a natural way that we can solve that. It's the same thing with like nutrition is never discussed in medical school. It's like, well, you know, that's probably has something to do with, you know, the reason that we're so unhealthy as a society in general. But I mean, I could talk about that for hours and hours, but tell me about like what happened at that first conference that just kind of lit a light bulb and where are these people? Like, is there, is there really a significant number of allopathic doctors or Western medicine focused people that believe in this stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So at the conference, it is the mind body medicine conference and you know, mind body medicine isn't something that I learned about in dental school. Nobody learns about this in dental school. You know, back then you would have thought you're on the dark side of the lunatic fringe if you said that, oh, your thoughts affect the way that your body reacts, right? But we now know that there's this, this interconnectedness between the way that you think, the way that you feel and really your relationships and your attitudes and your mindset, all to the physical functioning of your body. And like I said, when I arrived there, I just, I knew that it was exactly what I was looking for because we have the founders of mind body medicine. It was Dr. Herbert Benson speak about mind body medicine. He spoke about the relaxation response in a scientific way. You know, John Kabat-Zinn was there and I'm like, oh my gosh, I've died and gone to heaven because these guys are the godfathers of this movement on how it is that your mind, you can take, you can participate and take responsibility in the way that you think and the way that you feel. And ultimately my goal, goal, right, because we have to have a goal was to, you know, I just wanted to learn so much about what is the science. And it was then through that, like I took, I applied for the smart program and I never thought I would be a smart teacher, but it actually just made such a difference in my life that I was like, oh my gosh, so many more dentists. We need to, we need to spread, we need to spread the science. Absolutely. I'm going to get into the specifics of the smart program, but I want to, I want to go back to something that you said earlier and you were talking about this kind of internal self-talk and this internal narrative that you're trying to logic yourself through. And then you just realized that I can't do this by myself. I can't logic myself through this. I think that as you know, overachievers, people that like have a doctoral level degree, dentists are first of all, on an Island as, as a profession in general are very isolated unless you really, really are intentional about getting, getting yourself around a positive community. It can be very isolating. And I think a lot of people like you alluded to consider themselves a failure if they can't logic themselves through negative self-talk and this internal narrative that, that is constantly, constantly running. How did you break through that? And are there some like easy remedies for us as people that are self-aware enough to say, Oh, this is my own thought pattern. That's kind of leading me down this road. Yeah. Well, I, you know, like I said, I was born and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan and, you know talking through our emotions really wasn't anything that I was taught back then. You know, I, even at Thrive Live, I told the story about how, you know, if you, you're so busy working on the farm, if you fell down, you cut your leg open, you know, there's not any iPad time or sugary snacks or hugs to help get you through it. It's like, your mom just says, okay, go over and, you know, wash your leg off with the hose by the house and let's get going. You know, you stand up, dust the, you know, dust yourself off. And these are all really good qualities that I created in myself. But when it came time to manage the thoughts that I was saying and the feelings that I was having, I actually didn't know what to do. But it was actually a good friend of mine who for my birthday that year, I think I turned 30. She gave me a one hour session with a psychotherapist. Oh, really? Yeah. What are you trying to tell me, friend? Yeah, well, exactly. And the truth is, I didn't think it was weird at all. I actually knew, like, you know, when you innately know that it's something that you need. And I remember driving to that appointment thinking, I don't want to go here because, and this was the reason, I didn't want to cry. Like, I could feel it inside of me and I didn't want to let it out because I knew once I just took the top off, it probably wouldn't stop for a while. But ultimately, you know, that's the best thing that I learned during that period of time that, you know, you can have these emotions and having these thoughts inside of you. I used to think, and when I teach dentists, the SMART program, like dentists think that they only have bad thoughts about themselves. But the truth is, is we all have negative thoughts. It's actually a process of our mind really just trying to whip us into shape, trying us to better ourselves. But really, the key is becoming aware of the negative self-talk, like from moment to moment. And we have these thoughts all day long, you know, whether you try and put a crown on and it doesn't fit and you're like, ah, this is stupid. How did I do this? You know, you blame yourself for it, even though the person had periodontal disease and the impression was terrible, right? You blame yourself all day long for certain situations and you hold yourself accountable to standards of perfection. And then, you know, we just have to become aware of what it is that we're thinking and feeling. And so, that's one of the key skills that I teach people is just awareness. And then once you're aware of those thoughts, then you can actually change your thinking. And then you change the way that you feel. Yeah. Are you teaching these techniques in a group setting, one-on-one? Would you consider yourself kind of a coach, like a life coach or a therapist or a counselor? I, you know what, I just call myself a smart teacher. The SMART program was really set up. It's an eight-week program. And it's an online program. It's taken once a week for eight weeks. Each session is an hour and a half. So, yes, it's a structured program. And it's not like it's a video game where every level, like dentists, we're just so structured in our thinking and we have, we're so goal oriented. It's not like every session you conquer and then you move to the next. But every session is just a number of skills that you then apply to your life. And in slowly and surely, you apply these skills. And usually by the end of the eight weeks, you actually notice a difference. Because neuroplasticity, it takes about eight weeks for us to notice change. And ultimately the program is about changing the way your brain is connecting and functioning. Excellent. Excellent. So tell me from a user experience perspective, so 90 minutes, eight weeks, what types of things are we talking through? Is this something where you're lecturing at us and then you give us homework? Or are we doing, are we doing exercises together? How does it work? Yeah, actually a little bit of both. The program tries not to give too much homework because the truth is people are so busy. And ultimately to commit eight weeks of your time is actually a big deal. It is. So, but there are activities that you want to do regularly. Okay. I'll tell you about the pillars. You know, the first pillar of the SMART program is really learning how to relax, like hurry up and relax. And it's not just about, I'm not just teaching you to relax, although that is a component of it. But ultimately I just teach people, you know, what is the science and what's going on in our nervous system right now? And what's happening inside of our body? And how does all this stress that we're feeling relate to disease? So there's such a scientific component to that. And I teach people to relax and there's many different ways that we can relax. And it's, you know, how do we engage the parasympathetic nervous system? How do we train our nervous system? Nobody teaches you to train your nervous system. It's true. There are activities and stress awareness because a lot of the time, like I said, when I was going through my divorce, I had emotional outbursts. My mind was racing. My behaviors were going off the wall. And, you know, I didn't even realize that that was because of stress. And so but it was only till my body started triggering pain that I became aware of it. However, there are ways that we can become more mindful or more aware of what our body is actually saying to ourselves so that we can catch ourselves in the moment. And ultimately, it's that awareness or that mindfulness piece that allows us to respond more effectively to our life, you know, through stress awareness. And then, of course, the last component and pillar is really just, you know, OK, now you're relaxed. Now I know when I'm that I'm stressed out and how I express it. But what do I do about it? And there's so many different strategies that we can take. And some people might not like this strategy and some people might like this strategy. So there's so many just strategies and skill building that we then just ultimately apply to our life. And it's really just the start of really life change. It's the start of the journey to actually thinking more clearly and becoming more healthy and happier and fostering more resilience. Yeah, that's awesome. So when we're talking about the whole kind of overarching title or theme of this branch of medicine, the mind body kind of stress reduction, how much of that is physical stuff like yoga or exercise or diet versus and treating the actual body versus internal contemplation and exercises that you're doing with your brain in order to trigger the sympathetic kind of cascade versus the. The parasympathetic versus the sympathetic, which is which is which is where all the negative stuff happens as far as stress goes. Yes. So, mind-body medicine is really just our ability, and it's the research that shows that the way that you think, feel, the attitudes you have, the behaviors that you show, all have a relationship to the physical functioning of your body and vice versa, right? So there's a bi-directional communication between your mind and your body. And that's mind-body medicine, and really it's about learning, learning how you participate in that, becoming aware of how you participate in that, becoming self-aware. And then there's the aspect of self-care, right? How is that then self-care is a little bit different, but how can you change your habits to then improve your overall well-being? And self-care are things like, yeah, exercising, like physical exercise, you know, what types of exercise should we do at certain ages and when, and especially as dentists, oh my gosh, like the way that we sit, it's so physically stressful that we need to move. You know, we need to focus on our sleep, we need to get enough sleep, we need to focus on our diet. There's ultimately other strategies and just community, you know, this is, I'm really big on community through with our colleagues and in the field of dentistry. I feel like, like you said, it's an isolating profession. And if we can actually just come together more, the power of that discussing, like even if you're going for a beer after work, you know, you're discussing how your day was. And even if your day was like a train wreck, if you can come together and talk about it and even laugh about it, I mean, that's actually self-care in itself. And so ultimately it's just learning what we can do as professionals to live better, to live with less stress. And the rub off is you actually become more self-aware, you become a better leader, and then you're effective throughout your whole practice. And this stuff rubs off to your team as well. Yeah. Awesome. With all of our constant bombardment of stress and different things that happen, I mean, I remember when, you know, you're in dental school and somebody in your class or a row instructor would give you some offhanded remark about your clinical care or a prep or something, and it would be the end of the world. Like you wouldn't be able to sleep for three nights. And then like by the time you graduate, you're like, okay, I built up a little bit more toughness and resiliency when it comes to that sort of thing. But you know, as we get into dental practice, then the layers of complexity start to build on one another. And then you have all of these things and you're seeing, you know, three maybe restorative columns at once. And then you're checking two columns of hygiene simultaneously. So you have all of these expectations from, you know, multitudes of patients, like hundreds and then thousands of patients that are counting on you and are unaware of all the things that are happening in your life or they don't care. So you have the team that's growing. You have the patient base that's growing. You have your personal life that's trying to blossom. And so you are actually quite vulnerable for a lot of different attacks, right? Attacks from the team, attacks from the patient base, attacks from the state board, you know, maybe dental insurance companies, whatever it might be. Your own, you know, spouse, your kids. So as you kind of grow into a more evolved human, that's what we're hoping to become. How do we build up the resiliency as our lives get more and more complex? So resilience really is just our ability to be able to adapt, right? It's how do we go through these day to day experiences, which generally in dentistry, there's just so much certainty around our day. I always tell people that my schedule is a guide because the wheels can fall off at any moment. But that's how I approach my day, like with an open mind of kind of curiosity. I've tried to eliminate, you know, when I was younger, because a lot of what we deal with is negativity, you know, tooth fractures, a crown fractures that you just did, a patient's in pain, like there's a lot of a negative aspect to what we do. And unfortunately, our brain is an organ of prediction. And so if you live your days through kind of so many negative moments, your brain's predicting more negative moments the next day. And it just becomes a habit in your system and through your brain. And unfortunately, you know, we just have to become aware of some of these loops or these experiences that we're having. How is it that you can increase your capacity for the experience? Now the SMART program, stress management, I'm not taking your stressors away. But how is it that you can tolerate them in the given moment and manage them? And that's where the awareness piece really comes in. You know, if a patient says something, you know, how many times does this happen to you? Patient sits down, they're like, you know, I don't want to be rude or anything. And I just want to tell you how much I don't want to be here. And I hate dentists. Right? Well, ultimately, that affects you. And if you will let that affect you, then ultimately, that creates a negativity within yourself and this elicits the stress response. But if you can be aware of that comment and aware of how it makes you feel, you can actually even just take a breath in the moment and notice that, you know, hey, this patient's probably not trying to be rude to me. And you can take a moment and you can let it pass. And so it's ultimately this awareness creates more space within your day to respond to situations. And that ultimately is resilience. How do you adapt to situations and every experience that you have just like, you know, I when I got out of dental school, I remember someone told me, you know, it's going to take you five years to actually start to get better at this. And you know, hey, I still nothing surprises me in the office anymore. And this is after 27 years. But every experience that you have that you can manage appropriately just builds upon the next and you become a wiser, more tolerant person, more well-equipped and more compassionate, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And I think that compassion fatigue is real. I've experienced it. And you alluded to it earlier, like sometimes you give so much to your team and the practice itself and your patient base, you get home at the end of the day, particularly by the end of the week, you got nothing left for the people that you're doing it for in the first place. Right. So there does appear to be a finite amount of compassion that we can all extend to the outside world before we're out and we're all charmed out. And usually the people that get the brunt of that are the people that we love the most that are waiting for us at home and that might not completely understand what it is that we go through on an everyday basis. First and foremost, am I right? Does compassion fatigue exist and how do we kind of pace ourselves so that we don't run out of it by the time we get home for our people, for our tribe? Yes. This is a good comment because when people ask me to speak, actually, this is kind of one of the number one topics that they ask me about is about compassion. And if you would have asked me 10 years ago, if I would have been discussing compassion, I probably would have laughed. It's crazy, but the science around it is very intriguing and how it works with stress management. So we do call it compassion fatigue, but the more proper term is actually empathy fatigue. So empathy is actually our ability to put ourselves into someone else's shoes. And that's emotionally and physically. And we do this all day long with our patients. Someone comes in with an abscess, they're in pain. We can feel their pain. We feel it cognitively and emotionally. Compassion is actually being motivated to help that person and relieve their suffering. And so we actually are very compassionate because we're trying to help people. We're motivated to help relieve their pain. Now, empathy fatigue, yes. If we are constantly putting ourselves into someone else's shoes, feeling their pain, feeling their pain all day long, then we physically feel their pain too. That's just mammals. We are mammals. We have an innate ability to care and to feel and to sense other people. That's cranial nerves 5, 7, 9, 10, and 11. We have these nerves that allow us to relate to people. And you can read someone without them even saying a darn thing. You can just read it on their body, read it in their posture, their face, even in their expression, their tone of their voice. If we step into someone else's pain all day long, then it causes us pain. But the solution to that is actually mindfulness-based compassion. It's mindfulness. Mindfulness is awareness. Mindfulness isn't about being calm. It's about being aware. And if we can become aware of ourselves stepping into someone's shoes, so feeling someone else's pain, well, then what do you do about it? You can mindfully actually process what it is that you're feeling inside. Now, like I said, I was born and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan. I was never taught how to feel. But we need to learn how to feel and how to sense ourselves and become aware of when we're feeling someone else's pain. Because if you don't, awareness in itself dissolves all habits, and it can dissolve all emotions. You can't heal what you can't feel, and that's really a true expression. All you need to do is become aware of that, what you're feeling, and process it. So let's just say you had a really busy day at work. You're going to leave work, and you've got a big night with the kids and the family at home. Well, yes, if you carry your stress home, you have tendencies to unleash on your loved ones when you get home. But if you can actually just sit maybe before you start your car and take a couple breaths and just notice the impact of the day on your system and mindfully feel that, you can process that and leave it behind at the office. It's a skill, mindfulness and managing fatigue. Empathy fatigue is a skill. So true. Those are really, really impactful comments. It's interesting because I had, as multiple practice owner, and I had practices that I would jump off to an hour and a half here, two and a half there, maybe 45 minutes here. And then I had a couple that were close enough to my house where it was a 10 to 15 minute drive. And I always found out that, I realized rather, that when I would go home from a practice that was too close to my house, I didn't have time to actually address those and unwind and take a deep breath and prepare myself for round two of compassion and empathy, which was dealing with and being loving for my family and my kids, et cetera. I felt it was much easier for me to engage at home if I had just a little bit of a buffer, like a 45 minutes to an hour buffer prior to seeing my last patient, dealing with the challenges of managing humans to when I walked in the door of the house. And I think that was just a coincidence that I realized that, and I would either put some happy music on or I would just drive in silence and just contemplate and think about, self-reflect on the day. That was extremely, extremely powerful for me. And I think that that's just a little hack for realizing that the actual time that it took for me to get home, that commute, the length of the commute was actually helpful for me. Yes. Yeah. You know, I'm lucky because I get to walk home from work and it's just that space. But as soon as, my husband knows that as soon as I walk through the door, the very first thing that I do is I actually go into meditation. You know, we really didn't get into contemplation and meditation maybe next time, but really the science around that and how it allows you to manage your nervous system and change the physical functioning of your brain is absolutely amazing. And so, yeah, I get home from work 20 minutes and, you know, I just absolutely feel like a new person. If you have time. I mean, even if we, we have about three or four more minutes, but I do, I'm a huge proponent of self-guided meditation. There's a couple of apps that I use. It's helped me so, so much. And like, I have like the squirrel on the treadmill all the time or the monkey that's jumping around trying to distract me when I'm, when I'm doing this. And when I realized that you don't have to be judgmental about that and just kind of let that passing thought go then and not judge yourself about whether I'm doing the quote unquote doing this right. That was huge for me. So journaling, guided meditation and yoga nidra, those are the things that I kind of lean on a lot in order to kind of maintain that space between an event that happens and how I react to it. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I, that the smart program, the one of the pillars is, you know, eliciting the relaxation response. And I teach a number of methods on how you can meditate, how to hurry up and relax from, you know, single point of focus meditation to body scanning, mindfulness, meditation, insight meditation, loving kindness and compassion based meditations. But what people have to recognize is that, and I ask my patients this all the time, do you meditate? Because this is about managing your nervous system and decreasing vulnerability to disease ultimately for me. And how do I teach my patients and my, and my staff to do how to do this. But if you can train your mind, right, if your mind is always jumping around and people always say that's the reason I don't meditate. But the truth is, is that meditation is not about calming your mind and sitting in silence. It's actually more about recognizing when your mind shifts away. And the more that you recognize and pull your mind back to like an object of focus, like your breath, the more you're strengthening the part of the brain that develops your attentional networks and the attentional networks of your brain are ultimately connected to the regulatory circuits of your body and your brain and help to regulate your actions, your emotions, your thoughts, and how you relate to people. And so meditation is more than what you think, right? It's more than managing your breath. It's actually building your brain to actually become more healthy. And we can, we can talk about, I could talk about that for hours. What is the gateway drug? Like if, if people are like, okay, never done this before, or I tried it for many years and I was just quote unquote bad at it, how do they get back into it? Do you recommend some sort of techniques? Like what is the minimum viable dose? Like is three minutes. Okay. Cause some of the body scan stuff that we do in inside our group at our group meetings is about three minutes of body scan. And people always report back to me that it helps them a lot throughout the whole day. Yep. Okay. So if you look at the research, actually 20 minutes, twice a day for eight weeks, they notice notable changes on fMRI scans. Now that seems like a really big pill to swallow. And there's so much research going on now with shorter amounts of dosages. And I think as our imaging gets better, they'll be able to detect change a little bit better, but really to get started, you just have to start and you really cultivate a time in your day. And I always say to my smart students, you don't have to like it, but you just have to do it. And you have to cultivate some time in your day, which usually nobody has time. So carve it out of sleep. You get up two minutes earlier and you get up, you sit and you breathe for two minutes and you notice what your mind, what happens to your mind. You notice that your mind drifts and you pull it back. And really the concepts are so, they're so simple, but it's not easy. But trust me, within about eight weeks, you begin to notice change in the experience that you're having when you're doing. It's kind of like a crystallizing experience where this is changing who I am and you want to show up the next day. And it's then that you can start expanding and increasing the amount of time that you sit. I love it. I love it. Those are great tips. Listen, Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time to educate us today. This is right up my alley. I love talking about this stuff. And like I was saying, it's difficult to get some colleagues on board with this whole mind body thing. And the fact that we're thinking about not just treating symptoms and those are the sorts of kind of big picture ideas that are difficult for allopathic left-brainers to absorb. What I usually tell people when they're resistant to anything related to Eastern medicine or naturopathy or mind stuff like meditation or yoga nidra or yoga in general, breath work. I'm huge fan of all of those things is just give it a try with an open mind and you'd be surprised at how quickly you'll start to notice the difference. So this was really, really valuable and thank you so much for sharing today. Yeah, no, I really appreciate being here and I just really appreciate it. And I appreciate you as well for everything that you do for the dental community. So thank you. I appreciate that, Kristen. What's the best way for people to reach out to you and maybe engage with some of the trainings that you're giving right now? So I am open to speaking with anyone. Feel free to get a hold of me. They can go to my website. So my website is mindbodyteacher.com. Click on contact me. So info at mindbodyteacher.com and I will respond because I am really interested. I really want to make a difference in this world and I want to make a difference to our dental community. I'm absolutely here. Do you coach or train or teach anybody that's not in the dental field? Oh, yeah, I do. Like the program is for everyone, you know, with a grade 12 ultimately. But it's just that market of mine, you know, I'm just so close to the dental community and healthcare. Like I teach a lot of physicians, but hey, I teach accountants, teachers, moms, you know, retirees. You know, another thing I actually didn't mention and it's because it was published after I saw you at Thrive Live, but I've just recently published a book and it's called The Stress Solution. So and it's actually a really great entry level, easy read about some of the science of what we're talking about today. So you can go to Amazon and pick that up as well, The Stress Solution. That sounds right up my alley as well. I'm going to go grab that today. Thank you so much, Kristen. I really appreciate your time. What a lovely talk that was and totally informing. So hopefully you and I will cross paths again and we'll be able to spend more time together. Yeah, sounds great. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Kristen Yount. Hey, dentalpreneurs. If you're dreaming of launching your own dental startup, I've got the event that's right up your alley. Join me and my good friend, Dr. Chris Green for The Plan, The Project, The Practice, a night for dental startups. It's going down on Thursday, September 18th from 6 to 9 p.m. in the heart of New York City at the New York County Dental Society. This event is free. Yes, completely free and is hosted by The Practice Launchpad along with We Care Practice Advisors and Provide Bank. Expect expert presentations, dinner and drinks, and powerful networking with people who know how to build practices from the ground up. Spots will go fast, so register today at thepracticelaunchpad.com. That's thepracticelaunchpad.com. Mark your calendars and I'll see you in NYC. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to today's podcast. As you know, the fundamentals of a good business are universal. A solid flow of new customers, systemization, human resources, and cash flow. That's exactly what I cover in my first book, Pillars of Dental Success. If you'd like a free downloadable copy and other valuable practice building resources, just go to dentalsuccessnetwork.com forward slash pillars. We'll see you at the next episode. And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dentalpreneur Podcast. Look forward to reconnecting on the next episode. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Dentalpreneur Podcast. Check out truedentalsuccess.com for full recaps of every show, a schedule of our live events, free video tutorials, and a whole host of practice building resources.