Women In Wellness: Caitlin Cady of Heavily Meditated On the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Learn about the breath. Learning about the breath and how it connects the body and mind is essential. I offer a course called Breathe Well twice a year that you can join if you’re interested!
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Caitlin Cady.
Caitlin Cady has been called a “wellbeing whiz” because her positive perspectives and relatable, playful approach have inspired people across the globe to live to their full potential.
With a love for meditation and a colorful career, Caitlin is a devoted yogi, entrepreneur, author, speaker and mother of three. Originally from the United States, Caitlin has a wealth of knowledge and multiple businesses under her belt, including a nightclub and local magazine in Byron Bay, Australia. Caitlin now channels her energy towards empowering others with tools for better health. After a decade long battle with Chronic Lyme Disease Caitlin turned to meditation as a last resort, desperate to heal herself. As it turned out, meditation was the medicine that set Caitlin on a path to holistic wellness, happiness — and freedom from Lyme Disease.
Now Caitlin’s on a mission to make meditation more accessible and help others get their daily dose. Caitlin’s signature style of soulful straight-talk makes ancient practices and spiritual principles relatable, resonate and accessible for modern life. She has positioned herself as a leader in this space with the launch of a successful book and app in 2020., “Heavily Meditated”.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
Long story short: Meditation saved me from a life-sentence of chronic illness and the misery of perfectionism. I dish on the full story in my book, but the gist of it is that I was a perfectionistic over-achiever and struggled with illnesses like Lyme Disease. Through meditation, I learned how to slow down and be, which allowed my nervous system and in turn, my immune system to reset. In terms of concrete evidence, there’s not a trace of Lyme disease in my blood. Meditation helped me go from being burned out, sick and fearful to happy, healthy and living to my full potential.
So that’s why I wrote Heavily Meditated and created the app — I really believe that meditation is medicine and has something to offer everyone and my goal was to create what I wish existed when I set out into the world of meditation. Meditation literally changed my life and now I’m on a mission to help others get sit done.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
I had a somewhat unconventional journey to being a published author. Normally you send a proposal and a sample chapter to gauge interest, but in my case, the book was done, photographed and designed when I approached publishers.
I planned on self-publishing the book because so many people told me that unless you had a huge following on social media, publishers wouldn’t be interested in your pitch.
So built the book my way. I worked with the editor, photographer and designer of my choice and created a super beautiful book I am really proud of.
In the end, I wasn’t happy with the print quality I was able to access as a self-pub author. So on a whim, I sent the finished book (literally, a print ready file!) to a few of publishers and received three offers. It was really incredible.
So many lessons in that for me! Firstly, that if someone tells you “how things are done” feel free to ignore them! There are so many different ways your goals can unfold and there are no rules. Secondly, sometimes bad luck (poor print quality in this case!) is good luck in disguise. You just have to see every obstacle as a signpost redirecting you to a different route.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I think the biggest mistake any of us make is thinking we have to have it all figured out before we start. When I first started sharing about meditation I wasn’t a teacher and held no certifications. I have done over 500 hours of training and hold a number of certifications, but back when I started I definitely felt like I didn’t have a right to speak about the topic of meditation. And yet, I felt that no one else was explaining meditation in a down to earth way. I guess the lesson really is that imposter syndrome is so common, so many of us feel it. And yet the most courageous thing to do is to start before you are ready. Just sarting and then iterating is the best way to figure out what you’re good at, what you love doing, and how you can be of service to the world.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I’m convinced that the way we experience and interpret stress mentally can either make us sick or help us heal physically. In other words, I believe that our mind directly impacts our physical health. And I don’t mean that in an esoteric way. Here’s the connection. The mind interprets the world around us. And these interpretations essentially signal the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is responsible for all the functions your body does automatically, like breathing, circulation and digestion, among others.
Depending on how we perceive our experiences and environment, the ANS responds by activating one of its two branches: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) — also known as ‘fight-flight-freeze’ — or the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) — nicknamed ‘rest-digest-repair-and-reproduce’. So if our mind is interpreting the circumstances in our lives through a lens of fear, worry and anxiety, we are going to see a relative response to those circumstances in our body via the nervous system.
Keep in mind that the signal that triggers a fight-flight-freeze response may not actually be a major threat. It could be something small and relatively benign! Our modern lives see us inundated with interactions that we interpret as threats (deadlines, 24 hour news, overflowing inboxes, perfectionism, you get the picture) that can essentially trigger the same response in our body as if we were being chased by a saber-toothed tiger.
Think of it this way. Our bodies can’t heal if they are under constant threat. If the cascade of information from mind to nervous system to body is saying “run for the hills!” or “prepare to fight!” the body has to direct resources toward fighting or flying, thereby diverting resources away from the functions of resting, digesting, repairing (AKA healing) and reproducing. With all of that in mind, the theory is, if we can stress less, we can heal more readily.
Sharing tools like meditation, breathwork, yoga asana and journaling that can support us in reclaiming agency over our experience and how we interpret stress is something I’m so passionate about because we’re living in a world where we are constantly inundated with stressors and triggers.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
Wake up earlier. Getting up even just 15 minutes earlier every day to do something for yourself (I suggest meditating, obviously!) is a gamechanger!
Learn about the breath. Learning about the breath and how it connects the body and mind is essential. I offer a course called Breathe Well twice a year that you can join if you’re interested!
Have good sleep hygiene! For me, this means no devices in the bedroom, wearing bluelight blocking glasses from sundown, and heading to bed well before 10pm are essential wellness practices!
Meditate! Even just 7–10 minutes a day is enough to create a positive shift in your life. If you’re not sure where to get started, my book Heavily Meditated and my app are the complete toolkit!
Singletask when you eat! It sounds silly, but focusing on your food when you’re eating (instead of eating in front of your computer or the tv or in the car!) can go a long way improving digestion and the absorption of nutrients, as well as creating a deeper sense of ease, spaciousness, and wellbeing.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Conscious breathing three times a day! Breathing consciously is the fastest way to generate your state and impact your nervous system and brain. If we all stop, dropped and breathed in a specific way three times a day, I think the effects would be pretty profound.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Sustainability and climate change are obviously incredibly important topics that should be dear to all of us. That said, mental health is dear to me because I feel it’s something that is impacting more and more people, especially since the pandemic. And when we aren’t feeling well in ourselves, it’s difficult to create positive change in the world around us. Mental health challenges seem to be more and more prevalent and it’s no wonder. Technology is playing a huge role in this, as is the social isolation we’ve seen over the past 2 years during the pandemic. Now more than ever we need to bring greater awareness to the things that degrade our mental health and the tools and techniques that support it.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
You can sign up for my free newsletters at caitlincady.com or follow me on Instagram @caitlincady Thank you!
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Caitlin Cady of Heavily Meditated On the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.