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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is all about the importance of healing in community and of community in general. And I’m here with an in real life friend, Megan Butler, who is a community builder with a deep understanding that both independent reflection and collective expression shape our human stories. She has 11 years of combined experience in science, education, and event curation. And she now leads the community vision and heart centered healing at Kuya, which is a transformational wellness facility in South Austin. In this episode, we delve into what the data says about community and longevity, what mirror neurons are and how they can impact us pretty drastically, the roots of the word and the understanding of community, the distinction between loneliness and solitude, and the distinct benefits of community for healing and how many modalities can be more effective when done in community. This is a topic I talk about a lot on here because I feel like it’s really important. And without further ado, let’s join and learn from Megan Butler. Megan, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Megan: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it, Katie.
Katie: Well, I’m so excited we finally get to have this conversation. And it’s always fun when a real-life friend is on the podcast and we get to just have a conversation and then share it. And I’m especially excited for this one because I know you know so much on so many topics. And also just from knowing you personally, I know how incredible your heart is and your passion for helping people. And I know that’s going to come through in today’s episode. I didn’t know until researching for this episode that you are also a doula, though. And I would love to, before we jump into all of our topics of today, hear about what that has been like for you and how you got into it.
Megan: Oh, well, thank you. And yes, it’s quite perfect timing, right? You and I have met in community setting among amazing people, great environment, good wine and food, and have built an amazing friendship. And it’s nice to connect in this way.
Yeah, gosh, I was very passionate about doula work and the birth process because of its connection to transformation, right? I am not yet a mother, but I studied the practice because I could see how much a woman would change along the way and this connection to this new being and how that comes about through transformation in self.
And, you know, this kind of connects to our conversation in community because a big part of a doula’s job is simply to witness the woman in her birth process, right? Witnessing her strength, witnessing her going through something very difficult, very hard, but being a support system for her and being there to cheer her on even after the baby is born. It’s this, you know, you are valued, you matter, and you did something that’s quite remarkable. So that’s been a big passion of mine and I mostly do so with friends, right? So I haven’t been a part of, you know, tons of births, but they kind of come up with friends of mine, and I’ve, you know, traveled to visit friends and help them along the way. And I’ve learned a lot about my own personal healing. I actually had quite a traumatic entrance into the world, and I was able to emotionally heal a lot of that just through being a part of other births. So that’s been pretty special.
Katie: That’s so beautiful. And like you, I pretty much only am a doula for friends these days, just because of that most babies tend to come at night and I have my own kids to take care of during the day. But I agree with you. There’s such transformation in that experience. And it’s always such a miracle to witness and an honor to get to be part of that energy.
And you’re right, I think it’s the perfect springboard into talking about community because I know we’ve talked about this in person before a little bit, but I’ve noticed this, especially the last few years how I feel like the technological world has connected us more digitally, but that we’re less connected proximally. And when, you know, people love to quote the blue zone studies and it’s talk about if they drink wine or how much fish they eat or don’t, or if they’re vegetarian or how much sunshine they get. And I think all of those things can be important, but I think the pattern that really strongly emerges from blue zone data is that yes, they do those things, but they do them in community and with intentionality and in proximity of people they love. And I think that’s something we’re missing parts of in our modern world. I know you share kind of an outlook on this, but I would love it if you could walk us into sort of a broad reasons for the importance of community. And then we’ll go into how that ripples into areas of health and so much more.
Megan: Yes, wonderful. And I’m glad you referenced the blue zones because this is the thing we’re all interested in, right? Being healthy, being vibrant. The American Journal of Public Health did a study on elders in later years. They’re 70% less to experience cognitive decline when they’re around people that they love, right? They’re expressing what matters to them. They are connected, they have a reason to live longer.
And similar to, you know, in blue zones, sure, they again, they drink their wine, and they might partake in activities that aren’t stereotypically super healthy, yet it’s all done in a community setting. And when you are sharing laughter and expression, and even, you know, being around others when someone is super vulnerable, or going through a hard time, humans have what are called mirror neurons. So there’s a test done, you know, in the 90s with monkeys using electrodes to kind of understand when one monkey was to perform some task, the other one witnessing it, their brain lit up in almost exactly the same way.
And we have these experiences, right? You see someone bite into a lemon, and you’re likely to salivate more. Or you see, you know, a video or a movie that invokes emotion, and you can tear up or cry, right? We can mirror what we’re seeing. And a lot of this is for survival. It’s for connection, this importance of seeing ourselves in one another. And, you know, the word community originates from a Latin word, communitas, which means like having in common, right? Shared in common. And there’s nothing that we have in common more than all wanting to, again, be happy, be healthy, to be whole, to be fulfilled.
And what’s really interesting about this feeling of wholeness is that it’s quite fleeting, right? We might have moments where everything in life is going really well, but it might not last very long, right? You might have a great relationship, but your job is struggling, vice versa. There’s usually one element of life that unfortunately grabs most of our attention, and that’s potentially in a negative way. But when we start to understand and kind of lean into the beauty of the imperfection of life, then we get to support one another.
And our pain and our sorrow and even our joy and our accomplishments, they might have differences when it comes to details, but they’re all the same, right? So if I’m going through a really hard time, I’m actually able to collect more data on how to move through that based on the people that I surround myself with, based on how a friend of mine worked through that similar circumstance, or based on how someone handled it, and I might not have resonated, but it gave me data on how I want to move forward. And when we’re able to surround ourselves, again, see the mirror of us in one another, we get to feel more of that wholeness more often.
And the way in which this connects to health, you know, health and community are so intertwined. And we know this when we’re just experiencing life, right? Whether you’re out to dinner with friends or goodness, I even, I’ll have my Saturday mornings, I’ll work at a coffee shop. I don’t talk to anybody, but just being around people provides me with energy, right? This is, there’s an element of you know, motivation through doing something around other people. Same thing at the gym, right? I can work out at home, but I’ll tell you right now, my workouts are typically a lot stronger when I’m doing so in community.
And if we can start to understand the connection of health with community, you know, we get to be a little bit more intentional about it. And unfortunately, in many hospital settings or healing settings, the environment and the experience is not very welcoming, right? People are isolated, even sure some situations and infectious disease, or, you know, even in compromised immune systems, you need to be isolated. But there, there should be some type of element to allow people to feel more connected. And that’s been a priority of mine in the last few years particularly in my own healing journey.
Katie: So many good points. And to your point, like we see data, even that grandparents who live close to their grandkids tend to live longer because of all the things you just mentioned. And I think an important counterpoint before we really get into the specifics of the health side of this is kind of the distinction between loneliness and solitude, because we’ve seen the headlines in the last few years that loneliness can be worse than smoking. And that like this lack of community can be really actually damaging for our health. But I think it’s really important to differentiate between loneliness in a negative context and choosing times of solitude, which can also be really restorative and important for a healing journey. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that, even just in understanding the difference and how to sort of prioritize when solitude is important.
Megan: Yes, that’s an amazing question. The juxtaposition of community really is important. And, you know, we’re all inspired to be around others. But if we are constantly among a group of people, it’s hard for us to understand who we are as an individual separate from the other, right? And, you know, I actually just went through this phase personally where, you know, I’ve grown a lot, I’ve had external circumstances that have changed my life, and I have, you know, elected to pull away from certain communities.
And if you think about it, right, like, are you the same person that you were maybe 10 years ago? Likely not, right? So the people that you spend time with are likely going to change too. So there’s this molting process. There’s this quietude, which is similar to a solitude of really pulling back to reflect on the direction of life. And it can be challenging at times because there’s this in-between, right? I recognize that I don’t necessarily resonate with the old me or old patterns or old groups of people I used to hang out with, yet I haven’t yet grown into the new me that reflects the direction that I’m going.
And for those that are in that state, it’s quite easy to get a little bit discouraged and feel what it’s like to be lonely versus being in solitude. And during that time, it’s important to connect to, you know, whatever your, your spiritual circumstances, right? Whatever your spiritual connection is. And you can do that in community, right? Even like how I mentioned working at a coffee shop, right? I don’t have to be connecting with people to feel connected. And just through this experience of understanding that one is changing, Lacy Phillips talks about this in To Be Magnetic. She’s a founder of To Be Magnetic. She calls it, what does she call it? Magic Dark, right? So you’ve passed all the tests. You’re doing things on your own, yet you haven’t quite seen the light at the end of the tunnel. But just knowing that that’s coming is really, really important.
The difference between loneliness and solitude is mostly emotionally based, right? So being alone, taking time to restore, right? Taking time to reflect, taking time to understand who you are underneath the surface is quite different than this feeling of, hmm, something’s missing. I do feel lonely. And loneliness is quite common, right? It’s rare for someone to go through life and not have a period of time where they feel lonely. Yet what’s really nice is during that time, you get to connect further with yourself.
And in understanding yourself even more, even further whatever happens internally is a direct reflection of what’s happening externally. And in time, you will come into the right community, and you’ll have a really healthy balance of what it’s like to be a part of community. In addition to, you know, knowing when it’s time to be alone. And it’s a balance that ebbs and flows throughout life. And it’s another thing that changes and can be fleeting, similar to the feeling of wholeness.
Katie: That’s so beautiful. And I know we’re going to get to do another episode that really delves into also the kind of dovetailing of the nervous system side with this. And I know you’ve had a personal experience with that, and I have too, but for the rest of this episode, I would really love to hone in on understanding that about community and balancing that with the need for intentional solitude. What do we know about how community can actually enhance the healing process, enhance different health modalities? I know just anecdotally, for instance, like we know the benefits of sauna, for instance, and how, you know, if it were a pill, we would all take it. And the Finnish sauna studies are really astounding. And I almost always prefer to get in a sauna with people because it’s so much harder alone. And so I know I get the benefits so much more strongly when I’m in community, but from a health perspective, especially for someone who is maybe working to a place of healing, what can we know about community that can help us along that process?
Megan: Yeah. And the talking about sauna specifically, there are many people, you know, I work at a wellness facility in South Austin, and we have a community sauna. And many people who are members have their own saunas and cold plunges at home, yet they elect to come in because of the shared experience, right? We’re doing something hard together. And because of that, there’s this common thread of an outcome for health and for wellness. And even in that environment, particularly, right, you’re in a dark space, your body is sweating, even emotionally, you start to kind of sweat or move feelings, and more expression starts to happen.
And there’s this magic in that environment to where the conversations that are had within a sauna are usually deeper, and they’re more vulnerable, and they’re more expressive than outside of the sauna. And, you know, sweat baths and sweat lodges and steam rooms, they have been around for a very long time, since the 7th, 8th century. And they’ve all originated separately. But what’s in common there is this is a shared space where people are focused on their own healing. They are healing spiritually, they’re healing emotionally. And, you know, even in Turkish bath houses and Russian banyas, a lot of times births would take place in those spaces, so definitely a reflection of this transformational element of purifying the soul, purifying the body, and stepping into a new self, which is truly remarkable.
You know, this connection that we feel, the way that we can show up better for ourselves and others when we’re being witnessed, when we’re seen. I think often of way back when I was a high school science teacher right out of college, so 23 years old teaching 15-, 16-year-olds, and I was nervous, and I felt very vulnerable. Yet the vulnerability is actually what helped me become a better teacher because I didn’t show up with a sense of knowing. It was more of a we’re all going to express and we’re all going to discover together.
And I was lucky to learn from some of the best in a pedagogy called modeling, which is an inquiry-based learning style. So instead of focusing on the outcome, all the focus was on the question, asking more questions, setting up experiments where there was no end goal. And I got to watch all of these communities form within each classroom. So you’d have six or seven different lab stations. And each group of five or six people would form their own community. And you start to see with one experiment, you’d have two that stood up more as the leaders because they felt more confident in that type of expression. And that would change in the next experiment.
You’d get to see how communication would form. It was much more than just the material that was being taught. It was about them connecting to one another. And through all of this creative energy being poured into what they were interested in and connecting, I had essentially no behavioral issues because there was a sense of fulfillment. And towards the end of every experiment, they’d get up and they’d present to the rest of the class. And they’d talk about what they would find. And the number of light bulbs that would go off for everyone in the classroom, including me, were far greater when a group would come up and they’d be vulnerable. We don’t really know what the outcome is. We don’t really know, but here’s what we found.
And those experiments provided so much more value than some type of protocol that was deductive reasoning. If A and then B, then you get to C. And in watching how this worked, I was able to kind of transition for every single classroom, for every single group that I taught to help mold the community. And that element of just showing up vulnerably allowed people to kind of take down, take off the mask.
And that’s when you start to get into the spiritual healing and the mental healing. Like I don’t have to, you know, step into some role. I don’t have to be some way. I’m going to show up exactly as I am. And with that, I’m starting to understand the thing behind the thing. What am I really bothered by? And how can I express that? And how can I be received? And I’m actually received in a way that I thought I was going to be rejected. But it seems like the person I’m connecting with has that same experience that I’ve had. And now I feel that much closer to them because of it.
So this is kind of this underlying element of community that is so important, right? This validation of you matter. This, you know, affirmation of you being valued is something that keeps us kind of ticking and moving forward and expressing and creating in the world.
Katie: That’s so beautiful. And I know one thing I hear from people often is that even if they understand the importance of community, it seems like it’s elusive in the modern world or that it’s not just naturally built in the way perhaps it was in future generations and certainly long ago when we lived in small communities. So I’m curious if you have any tips for cultivating community wherever we live in our own proximity. I know you do this so incredibly with Kuya in Austin. And so anybody in Austin can obviously go there and get immediate benefit from the community for people who aren’t already plugged into an amazing community. I know for me, I had to learn to actually cultivate it myself and be the one who initiated the community. But do you have any tips for that?
Megan: Yeah, I do. You know. This is where I feel like trust really comes in, right? Like, you’re meant to meet the people that you’re meant to meet. And the timing on that is also divinely orchestrated. So a big part of this is trust, right? Just spending time in places that bring you happiness and going into those spaces where you have the mental door open of I’m ready to receive new friends. I’m ready to receive a new relationship. I’m open to learning from other people that share common interests, right?
Jim Rohn talks about, I’m sure you’ve heard this quote, you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And it’s worthwhile really reflecting on that, right? Who do I spend time with? What have I sampled from each person and what have I taken in as an expression of self? And if you don’t like where you are in life, or if there are certain attributes in people that you see that you spend time with that you’re looking to kind of transition out of, it’s helpful to be really clear on the reflection that you want, right? Who am I interested in spending time with? And what does that look like for me? And how can I put myself in environments where I will see that, right?
Of course, you know, there’s centers all over that have various community events and such. But if you’re feeling really inspired to connect with new people, chances are everyone that you’re around also has that inspiration and is yearning for that. We all yearn for that in one way or another. And as you said too, Katie, you’ve had to kind of create that on your own. And it doesn’t have to be this, you know, whole song and dance. It doesn’t have to be this curated event, right? It can be something as simple as connecting in a third space, you know, not home, not work, but somewhere new, a new environment, a relaxing environment, right? We’ll talk about the nervous system soon, but our external environment where we step into has a, you know, huge effect on what’s happening internally and connecting with people in that way in a new space and leaving it open to who shows up, right? You know, it doesn’t have to be, okay, if I want to meet community, it doesn’t mean I have to show up with people somewhere. It can be something as simple as going to the gym, trying out a new workout class, and being open to connecting with new people. And chances are it will be certainly received by those that you do want to connect with.
Katie: That’s such a good point. And jokingly, I think when you talk about that quote about you are the kind of the average by people you spend the most time with, I jokingly attribute my low biological age to that because the people I spend the most time with are all under 18 right now. But jokes aside, I think to your point, it’s really important to realize we’re aware that we create our environment and how we set up our homes and our lifestyles. But I think we talk less about the reality that our environment also shapes us. And so anytime we can be aware of that, it’s actually a really impactful needle mover to address in our lives and can be so beneficial when we’re just a little bit more conscious and aware of how we create our environment and how we interact with that in our community. So you’ve made so many incredible points in this episode. I will be so excited for our next conversation that will also go deep on the topic of nervous system health. But for this episode, Megan, thank you so much for all that you shared, for your time, for your wisdom, and for being here.
Megan: Thank you so much, Katie.
Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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