The Conversations That Could Change How We Understand Mental Health
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Scilla Andreen, CEO and founder of Impactful Networks and co-founder and CEO of IndieFlix, to explore how storytelling can change the way we understand and talk about mental health.
Scilla shares how a series of films on bullying, screen time, and anxiety led her into mental health education, how the Creative Coping Toolkit brings those stories into schools and communities, and why grownups so often say they wish they had learned these tools as children.
Together, they discuss the gut and mind connection, why sleep, nutrition, gentle movement, and stress and mindfulness matter so much, how generational patterns shape our health, and why every person's experience deserves to be believed, along with a look at Scilla's upcoming Health 101 initiative.
Hear why mental wellness works best as a shared practice, and how story, sleep, nutrition, and movement can all become part of the conversation, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
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Scilla Andreen is the CEO and Founder of Impactful Networks, a health-tech education company that combines ethical AI, multimedia storytelling, and evidence-based curricula to address mental health education challenges. The company creates accessible tools, including the Creative Coping Toolkit and GiGi, to strengthen mental well-being and practical life skills among young people, educators, employees, military families, and vulnerable communities. She is also Co-Founder and CEO of IndieFlix, a global streaming platform dedicated to independent filmmakers and meaningful storytelling, and Founder of Impactful Fund, which helps remove financial barriers to mental health education and support. Across film, technology, social entrepreneurship, public speaking, and philanthropy, Scilla develops programs that foster resilience, emotional intelligence, belonging, and mental health literacy, guided by her belief in the power of stories, human connection, and practical education.
Website: https://scillaandreen.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scilla.andreen/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scillaandreen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indieflixceo/
Learn more about Impactful Networks: https://www.impactfulnetworks.com/
Visit IndieFlix: https://www.indieflix.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
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Edited Transcript:
Scilla Andreen: Now, it took me years to learn to sit with another human being and their stuff and not try to fix them. And that took a while. Now my kids think something’s wrong with me because I’m not trying to fix them. But it is so much more empowering for the person you do really want to help to listen to them.
Haylie Pomroy: You guys, my goal for doing this podcast is to bring people into our worlds that can help us learn, share our stories, and relate with one another. And so today I’m really excited about who we’re going to spend time with. It’s Scilla Andreen. She’s an impactful storyteller. She is the CEO and founder of Impactful and co-founder of IndieFlix, which is an award-winning filmmaking organization. She’s an Emmy-nominated costume designer, author, and founder of the Impactful Fund. She’s going to tell us all about that, impactfulfund.org. But in talking with her, her life mission, or things that she is just so heavily involved in, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story, is a lot of things that we’re dealing with, a lot of things that we relate to. First of all, she’s got six kids, guys. She’s a caregiver in her family. She’s the CMO, like we talk about all the time, the chief medical officer of your tribe.
Without further ado, and again, Scilla, thank you so much for being here today. I cannot wait to share some of what you’re doing with the community.
Scilla Andreen: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I love being able to share.
Haylie Pomroy: And you’re just a storyteller. I mean, we were talking before we started about kind of your life and how individually that impacts you. But right now you have this initiative, Health 101. Tell us all a little bit about it. It’s like, kind of get us up to speed. I’ve been reading and studying for us to kind of have this time together. But how can you share with our community what that’s all about?
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, I think just to set the table a little bit, I’m going to just, like, rewind just a bit, because Health 101 is on the horizon to come out. It’s what I’m working on currently. And I’m building upon a foundation that I started, oh gosh, almost 10 years ago. But really 7 years, 8 years ago, it just blossomed into something major with regard to mental health. I got involved early on with a small film called Finding Kind, which was about bullying and girl world, which then led me to create, with an incredible director, Empowerment Project, which was all about just empowering women and finding role models within our own communities instead of on the cover of a magazine. And then Screenagers, which was about how old your kid should be when they get a phone. I mean, that conversation has definitely changed. And then a friend of mine who ran our foundation, Impactful Fund, who was a childhood friend, kept saying, “You need to make a movie about mental health.” And I kept saying, no, I’m not going to do that. I don’t know anything about it. I’m a college dropout. I’m a filmmaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start to make a movie about mental health. And frankly, I don’t think that anybody would want to watch a movie about mental health at school or at work. And I was taking these films, which had blossomed into programs with not just discussion guides and marketing materials, but then, like, classroom discussion guides and team-building activities for corporations, and it had really just blossomed into more based on demand from these communities. And so I got a call on January 1st, early in the morning, from a dear friend who told me about my friend Tina, who had died by suicide. And she was the executive director of our foundation. And I just thought, oh my gosh, I knew she was struggling, but I didn’t know it was that bad. So I’m going to make a movie about mental health. And I don’t even know anything about it. I personally was living the stigma. I mean, even when I decided to make a movie about mental health and I told my family, they were like, why don’t you make a movie about diabetes or heart disease? Like, why mental health?
And coming from the films, the film world, I always thought it was shock treatment and straitjackets. It was Cuckoo’s Nest. I didn’t understand anything about mental health. I dove in and decided I needed to figure out how to approach this conversation in a way that would be universal. I picked anxiety because everyone has anxiety, and anxiety is actually really good for you. It’s what keeps us alive and aware and effective in so many ways, but it’s gotten to a point where it is too much, and it’s becoming paralyzing and debilitating.
So, I entered the conversation that way. We filmed so many people. I worked with some other amazing filmmakers, and we made Angst. Nobody licensed it into community for six months. They were all afraid that if we opened up this conversation, we didn’t have the ability to support it. We didn’t even know what to do.
Haylie Pomroy: And first, I’m sorry for the loss of your friend. And we work in the space of a lot of individuals that deal with chronic disease and chronic illness. Maybe they’ve been medically gaslit. They don’t feel heard. They’ve lost hope. Our whole purpose is to continue to throw these lifelines of hope in your health and your health and wellness. And also to believe people 100% for what they’re going through and that they are the ones that understand, as confused or as hard as the situation that they’re currently in right now is, they are the ones that understand more about what’s going on. We need to listen intimately.
In the anxiety aspect of things, even in the field of the immune system and neuroimmunology, it’s how our bodies adapt to the environment around us. And I think the other day someone said to me, do people have more anxiety, or are people talking about anxiety more? I think it’s both. There’s no way you’re going to convince me that people aren’t feeling more anxiety internally. We’re able to measure certain things a little bit now chemically, so that people, we don’t just tell somebody, like, hey, it’s in your head, which, okay, maybe it is mast cell activation and I’m having an environmental toxicity response and I’m sending out all these histamine bombs and my fight-or-flight hormones are high for a reason. It’s not just calm down, take a couple of deep breaths. But why do you think it wasn’t received? Do you think it’s an uncomfortable conversation? Because it’s real.
Scilla Andreen: Well, I definitely think it’s uncomfortable. I think it’s still uncomfortable. In fact, it’s interesting; there was a New York Times article that came out recently that says we’re talking about it more than ever, and it’s worse than ever. Kids are dying. The biggest thing, I think, was fear. There was no denying that there was a problem. Kids were dying by suicide. People were struggling on a massive scale, and this was before COVID.
Schools just weren’t prepared; neither were corporations, to show something like this and have this conversation, and they weren’t quite sure how to support it when it was so opened up.
Haylie Pomroy: Is it like the elephant in the room? Like it’s better to all pretend like it doesn’t exist?
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, because it’s really difficult.
Haylie Pomroy: And do you think it’s because we’re not sure what to do about it? Go ahead, please.
Scilla Andreen: No, I just think that that’s something that’s really common. I mean, I have six kids. I’m so well-versed in all of this now, having been working on it for so many years. But when my own kid has an issue, like a panic attack or something, they start spiraling or something, I can often become a deer in the headlights. And I know I have my tools, like I know what I should be doing, but I panic, and it doesn’t help the situation, and I need to learn how to check myself. Like, but it’s a practice.
Haylie Pomroy: But it’s interesting, because I was just in Slovenia. I was at the International Congress for Autoimmune Disorders. And we were working with everyone from immunologists, neurologists, nephrologists, and virologists to people in complex disease study. And someone said something, and again, from St. Petersburg, from Israel, from the U.S., from Stanford, you name it. It was this massive group of about 1,200 people coming together to talk about it. There’s such a neurochemical, physiological response. And we were talking in the autoimmune space about fear of the flare. About the anxiety around, when’s the other shoe going to drop? Is my health going to take a negative turn? Is that secondhand smoke or the food, the gluten that I just consumed, is that going to be the thing that kind of pushes me over? And I think that for so long, with anxiety, people said just toughen up, tough it out, or apply a tool, as opposed to supporting the body so that it has the capacity to adapt to these stressors. Like, I’m all for, like, let’s infuse the body so it’s more resilient to the stressors that are exposed, that they’re exposed upon or exposed to.
Are people starting to have those kinds of conversations? Like, it’s like, I don’t know, we have a lot of type A individuals, a lot of really successful individuals that walk through the clinic that get diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). There is a component to anxiety, to hormone dysregulation, to dysautonomia, and their doctors aren’t even talking to them about it. They’re like, yeah, life is stressful.
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. I’ve written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body’s overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That’s hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now back to our show.
Scilla Andreen: It’s interesting, because in the schools in particular, which are now being very controlled by legislature, local state legislation, and depending on the state, parents are really getting involved in what is allowed to be taught in a school. And that’s our future. That generation that we’re educating now. And you need the whole community to be part of it.
I think that you have a lot of different schools of thought that are rooted in very deep sort of origin stories. There are a lot of people who think that we’re creating a bunch of wussies in our children because we’re talking about our feelings too much. And we’re putting, we’re projecting mental health issues, and it could spread like a cold. I mean, I can’t go into all the different ones, but there are all these different schools of thought. What’s interesting, to just call it out, and I think everyone can say it, the red states, the conservative states, are a little more pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We know that there’s an issue, but, like, let’s not get too into all of that. Let’s focus on academics. Let’s understand that there are some things happening here. In the bluer states or more progressive states, it’s much more like, oh my God, we’ve got to lean into social-emotional learning. We have to, like, really understand, like, how food affects mental health, how exercise, sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, human sexuality education, like, how we identify, like, all of that. Learning from all the states.
Haylie Pomroy: But it’s so sad to see anything even politicized. Because we peel everything away. I mean, I hear what you’re saying, and I know that it’s so important. When I was at George Washington, in the public health space at GW, like, it’s great for us to identify trends and trajectories, because then we know where to invest to make an impact from a public health perspective.
But some of the basics, and I love the 101 concept of this future initiative, some of the basic things, that we all eat, we all breathe, we all drink, are such a unifying, universal opportunity for us, in my opinion. When you take away some of the nuances. And I mean, I decided, even with my soil science ag background, to jump into the diet space because I was so irritated that people would even talk about nutrition and fasting in the same sentence. Or not eating as an option. Try doing it to a zoo animal, you’ll lose your license.
Try doing it with the ASPCA, you’ll get in trouble. Try doing it to your dog or your cat. But yet, as humans, we expect so much of ourselves, and we somehow went less.
I kind of feel like there are things that can unify people. And I think that mental health, and just the, even not segmenting mental health and integrating mental health as a basic health principle. Just like we stitch ourselves up if we get a gaping wound. We repair a fracture with swift medical intervention. We have ambulances that scrape us off the ground, me included, after a car accident. My opinion is that if we can normalize mental health and normalize our body’s mode of communication, and how sophisticated we’re getting at listening to that, it can unify people.
I do, I like, again, in epidemiology and being in the public health space, it is interesting to see those trends. We are trying to, like, and this is, I was reading a lot of your stuff, and so many people feel hopeless in their health. The individual, the dear friend that you lost, I’ve lost two friends to suicide. And I always think to myself, like, what could I have done differently? How could I be a different friend? How could I be differently involved in this person’s life?
That’s a little, I try not to struggle from an ego perspective, like I could have fixed something, but how could I have been more supportive? But then we look at our hundreds of thousands of people in our community, and I think sometimes giving some of those real-life solutions that don’t necessarily feel overwhelming and daunting.
I was just teaching a course; we had our coaches come out to my ranch, which is part of my medicine for myself. And one of the things that I was talking about with people that have adrenal fatigue or are having anxiety is, don’t give them a to-do list. Look at what they’re doing and see what you can take off of their plate and see what you can infuse them with. What’s the shortest space between getting some relief, the solution to relief, and administering the relief? How can you shorten the gap? That’s, like, your number one goal with clients that walk in with anxiety. What do you tell people, or what stories do you feel have been the most impactful, about people getting some relief from the anxiety that they’re feeling?
Scilla Andreen: I think what we’re learning is the films, and so we have a program called the Creative Coping Toolkit, and that’s where all the film programs live. That’s where Angst lives, which is the one I was telling you about that was the first one that kind of launched me into the mental health space. And then from Angst came Why Anxiety Is on the Rise, and that’s where we made, like, to understand the role of social media and technology. And then, why are people so mean online when they wouldn’t be that way in person? And that’s where The Upstanders came in. And the last one is RACE to Be Human, which is like, how do belonging and othering affect our mental health and our lives? And so that was RACE to Be Human.
Haylie Pomroy: So how do they get the toolkit? And is this like a link where everybody can download the movies? Like, how does this work?
Scilla Andreen: For right now, it is, and has been for many years, licensed into community at, oftentimes, the district level, or even the state. In California, it’s at the state level. It’s available to every K through 12 public school and charter school in the state of California. One of our programs within the toolkit: Washington State, Illinois, and Alaska had all four programs. Actually, Illinois had only Angst, and the other two states had the whole program. And so you can go to, actually, our foundation, which is impactfulfund.org. And you can access it there.
Now, we’re raising money to keep it free in these schools, or we license it directly to schools and corporations around the world. Honestly, I am on a mission with our foundation to make it free across the country in every classroom.
Haylie Pomroy: It’s amazing.
Scilla Andreen: It’s a big haul. But to get back to your earlier question, as far as the biggest feedback we get when anyone watches it, grown-ups say, where was this program when I was younger? I might not have self-medicated so much or been in such a self-destruct mode to bury, not address, that kind of thing. Young people say, I need my dad to see this. I’ve had eight-year-old kids see it and be able to point to a particular character in the movies, because it’s all stories. And most of it is children talking. And they’re so vulnerable and pure and raw and unedited that they just speak this pureness that everyone can relate to. We’re going into assisted living environments where they think it’s better for the residents to be able to connect more with their children or grandchildren, when in fact they’re connecting the dots for themselves about why their mom never left the house and how the generational component... I mean, think of how much of our lives is generationally influenced.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Scilla Andreen: Money, food, superstition. I mean, all of it. Including mental health. And then there’s the genetics piece, not just the learning component, but the actual DNA. And so that’s kind of where we’ve really found an impact, introducing the conversation and looking at it through a particular lens of just honest, pure, unedited, and unfiltered. And people just start talking. And everyone is wired differently.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes, absolutely.
Scilla Andreen: Then, what works for you? Just like there are a million diets out there. And some people are like, “Oh, Scilla, you should be on this diet.”
I’m like, well, I’m allergic to nuts. And it’s like 80% nuts. It feels like that’s not going to work for me. Or, like, when all my kids went off to college, they all became vegan or that kind of thing. Holidays were challenging. Making a million different meals for everybody. But to answer your question, mostly it’s learning how to address everyone’s individual needs and then from the family level and then the community level.
Haylie Pomroy: Our given, like, no matter what, and I tell this to our coaches that we train, is, like, check your ego at the door. We believe you. We embrace your story. We embrace your experiences, 100% the truth. It’s, how in the world would I ever know what’s going on with an individual more than they would? And yet so many people go in, and they see a practitioner, and they’re told that their feelings are wrong or their experience is wrong or what they’re experiencing isn’t real. It’s really hard. And to your point about diets, I mean, even fundamentally, we have 18 different nutrition programs that all of our individuals are exposed to, because there is not a one-size-fits-all in a complex body. And also, we have different needs at different times.
Scilla Andreen: The body changes. I mean, talk about menopause. Like, that’s a whole other world. And, like, you made a point earlier, and I don’t know if it was before we started, about how Western doctors don’t always know to, and I’m saying this just because I live in an Eastern and Western world, factor things like hormones into why you might be having heart issues.
Haylie Pomroy: We learned these systems siloed. We started to specialize in medicine, and we forgot how important a generalist is.
A person that understands. But guess what? The generalist is you. You’re the one that understands all aspects, or at least has some experience or the most expression of that.
We have this community where people feel like it’s a super safe space to talk about everything. And I mean, during the pandemic, we talked about everything, and we continue to do that. I continue to be committed to doing that, because in my clinical practice, I have people that have very strong religious beliefs. I have people that have very strong philosophical beliefs, and I am so proud of them for embracing any of it, any and all of it. And it’s not my position to come in and say, oh, they’re wrong. This is actually right. I don’t know who the heck I would think I was if that ever came out of my mouth. But I think that the biggest thing is that we learn through story. And the biggest thing that we learn through is people having the courage, I guess I would say, to share their worlds and their experiences.
When I’m listening to kind of this toolbox, I’m like, oh my gosh, this would be so good for all of our coaches to have in their repertoire, their verbiage, but also in our community. I’ll make sure that we post impactfulfund.org for everybody so that they can go and look at the Creative Coping Toolkit. I’d love to have you back, where maybe we can pull some of those tools and go kind of deeper into those. But I guess I’ll say this. People have asked me a lot why I don’t hide it, why I tell everybody everything. Well, I talk about when my hair started falling out, and I developed a product to help with hair growth because I was just traumatized by it. I mean, like, handfuls. And when my platelets have gone off from an immune perspective, when I’m having or struggling with fear of the flare after coming off a flight, or things like that.
But I think the biggest thing is that when we create our reality through storytelling, there’s a holistic aspect of both the spirit and the emotionality of the story and the factual aspect of the story. And I love that you’re giving people kind of that marriage of the practical tools that they can go out with through story, though, and out of the mouths of babes. Like you said, a lot of kids, in their innocence, or also maybe they haven’t had the life experience where they’ve been shut down for telling their truth in a vulnerable way.
Tell me about your upcoming projects.
Scilla Andreen: Well, Health 101, of course, which is sleep, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, stress, and human sexuality education.
Haylie Pomroy: Start from the beginning. I want to touch base. Number one was sleep. I love the S word, sleep. I really believe that if we could, and there’s, if we could master sleep and nutrition, we would probably have 70+% of all diseases gone. That’s my opinion.
OK, the second one was what?
Scilla Andreen: Nutrition.
Haylie Pomroy: Love it. And nutrition, guys, is like nutrition, nutrients. It’s not not eating.
Scilla Andreen: I think it’s important to understand the connection between the gut and the mind.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. Funny enough, my son, Eiland, who’s now 20, going to be 26. I have a really cool... I was teaching a course. Gosh, I think it was the cardiology department. I was teaching a course. I was very pregnant, and I was talking about the gut microbiome and the gut-brain connection 26 years ago. I am a diehard...
Scilla Andreen: Way ahead of the times.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, I think you learn a lot when you go through a lot. I guess I’ll say that I was never... with my particular autoimmune disorder, pregnancy was not an option. As I was very pregnant teaching that course, I had a significant conviction about why it was so important, because it saved my life, and it also allowed me to bear two children and create new lives on this little earth, this little place we call Earth.
Number three is?
Scilla Andreen: Movement.
Haylie Pomroy: Movement. I love that you don’t use the word exercise.
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, that’s just not how it works.
Haylie Pomroy: I know. I love exercise. I’m not putting down exercise, but...
Scilla Andreen: I like when I’m done.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, I love that. Exercise is good when you’re finished. Movement, critically important. And we sometimes have individuals that have what they call post-exertional malaise, which is when their disease state, or their level of oxygen depletion or dysautonomia, where they can’t regulate their blood pressure, happens during exercise. And so movement, sometimes even passive movement, we have individuals that, when we’re working towards their healing journey and we’re getting them in the right trajectory, acupuncture and massage are considered movement in the Fast Metabolism Diet. In Phase 3, massage is considered an exercise. That passive movement, the movement of Qi, the movement of blood, the movement of lymphatics, the movement of acidity in the body, is so important. I love that you use that word.
Scilla Andreen: We’ve been stretching. I think people underestimate the importance of stretching. I mean, one of my favorite yoga moves is happy baby, because I feel like when you are rolling around on your back, your lungs go so far down in the back that I feel like it’s almost like a lung massage. For anyone who has any kind of respiratory thing, the fact that you can almost feel like you’re giving a little stimulation to the lungs is amazing to me. And I feel like, oh, I can take deeper breaths. I’m actually creating some circulation there. And I love toxins.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love that you use that pose. I have a client that had both COPD and dermatomyositis with pulmonary fibrotic tissue. And we were trying to improve their PFTs, their pulmonary function tests. It’s not like, I think it makes you feel better. It’s like, look, guys, I mean, I’ve got to have a protocol for progress. I’ve got to check them in at Brigham next week and see what the heck’s going on. And we did so much of that. A physical therapist actually told me. I’m always reaching out to people like yourselves to say, help, I need help with this person. I need insight. I need wisdom. I need more than I could possibly get out in the world and experience myself to bring back to the table. And that is a pose that, yes, made a significant impact in PFTs for the client with both COPD and dermatomyositis.
Scilla Andreen: It’s sort of interesting; part of my pitch when I reach out to the top people, whether it’s at Stanford or the Anna Freud Institute in England or Thrive Australia or Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, like all the various incredible experts, and I should talk to you when I do some of my pieces in Health 101, is being able to take all of this incredible knowledge and boil it down into just easy-to-consume information for the basic person living in the world, who may not always have a lot of money, the best insurance, or the ability to even navigate how to go about getting access to some of the best vetted information when you’re overwhelmed with all these things you can do on TikTok and Instagram and word of mouth, where you’re not, again, we’re not talking to, like, medical professionals. We’re just surviving.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone, and I decided that I didn’t want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That’s why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, and be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I’ll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That’s hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now, back to our show.
Yeah, absolutely. But I love this dissemination of knowledge. And I always tell people, like, find what’s right for you. I’ve gotten horrible advice from people from Stanford, and I’ve gotten the best advice in the world from people at Stanford.
Scilla Andreen: It just depends on you.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah, it depends. And also, like, nobody has a hierarchy over you in this whole journey but knowledge and, like, what fits for you, and seeking knowledge and seeking knowledge and seeking knowledge. Give me number four. You went through those really fast.
Scilla Andreen: Human sexuality education.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay. And I feel like I’m missing one.
Scilla Andreen: Stress and mindfulness.
Haylie Pomroy: Stress and mindfulness. And I love that you use the word mindfulness. Many times, people will be commissioned with or charged with relieving their stress by eliminating things, and sometimes they just can’t. Certain seasons of people’s lives are more stressful than others. I couldn’t change that my dad passed away. I couldn’t change some of the things that are going on in our family. And just changing the stress was not an option, changing those peripheral things. But the way in which I reacted and responded, I could make an effort with that. But also, how I infused my body to be more resilient under those kinds of conditions. It’s like someone said to me, and they were talking about hurricanes in Florida, when we rebuild, we rebuild stronger by learning what took us down and putting in tools, mortar, brick, whatever it is that made us more resilient for the next storm, so that we can stand in all our glory and all our beauty and weather the storm. And I just loved that analogy post-hurricane.
But I thought about if we just embraced that in our bodies. Like, how do we build back stronger? Because there’s going to be a storm and a next storm and a next storm. And how are we protective? I interviewed an individual last week that really talked about protecting, being mindful of who’s in your environment, what’s in your environment, and what you’re exposed to. We talk a lot about that from a toxin perspective, but also from a nutrition perspective. I go, when you open your mouth, it is going to do one of two things. It’s going to make you healthier. Or it’s going to push you towards a lack of health. That’s it. There’s no benign food. It’s because it engages and interacts with us.
In the basic teachings, I guess maybe I’m excited about the 101 perspective, because I like that if we focus on sleep, if we focus on nutrition, if we focus on movement, human sexuality, and stress and mindfulness, imagine the change, the difference in our population’s health, if we just focused on that. And I think sometimes we try to think of this magic bullet or magic pill, or magic idea or magic movement, any of it, for a dynamic body. And so in this initiative, what is the ultimate goal?
Scilla Andreen: It’s to educate people about everything you just mentioned, through story, and I film a lot of people. And then we weave it all together. It’s kind of like micro stories. It’s not like you’re following one, two, or three people through their journey. It is like being at a cocktail party or a dinner party, and you’re talking to a bunch of really interesting people who are being really vulnerable and sharing something that they went through, how they navigated it, and where they are now with it. And then we sprinkle in experts who then kind of break it down in the brain science component. What we’ve learned is that a five-year-old knows what the prefrontal cortex is and how to move the energy from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex, and can list off, within a minute, two or three different ways to do that. And now they’re, like, educating their parents. But it’s a community thing. Like, we all have to be involved. It can’t just be the kids. It has to be the parents too. And it’s a practice. It’s something that we all need to work on. We have a lot of activities, a lot of brain hacks, a lot of ways to just have fun with it.
Haylie Pomroy: I love what you just said, because one of the things is, it seems like individuals, it’s okay for people to be knowledge seekers. But it’s not okay, oftentimes, for adults to be help seekers. Like, I need help with this.
Like I said, with my friends and myself that have struggled at times. How do I receive help? Kids are hardwired to ask for help. Will you help me cut this? Will you help me open this? Will you help me? They’re still in the belief system. They’re still in the belief system that they’re...
Scilla Andreen: Until they’re not.
Haylie Pomroy: And hopefully they’re still, as they start to identify themselves as autonomous. I think sometimes that can become, that’s why the teenage years or adolescence can be so full of angst for so many kids, as autonomy sometimes is correlated with lonely or alone. You’re alone in your decision.
You’re alone in your struggle. But I think that if we can start to teach our children how to receive help, how to have knowledge, and how to make a change, like, I love that you’re empowering them physiologically to make a change in their body for the better. I think that’s amazing. And my goodness, we don’t give them enough credit for what they can absorb. If we just taught some of these basic but profound, impactful things, they can change the generation of our health, I believe.
Scilla Andreen: I’m a firm believer. I started all of this to be an advocate for kids. Turns out now I’m more of an advocate for grown-ups.
Haylie Pomroy: The inner child. It feels like the inner child. Like maybe we needed this when we were little, and we didn’t get it. And I love it.
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know why, because my parents were far from perfect. Like, they were young and dumb when they got married. I spent my first couple of months sleeping in a drawer. They weren’t prepared. I think because they were ill-prepared to have a kid, and they made their best, they did the best they could. They did a fine job. I felt like when I started having kids, I needed to be, not perfect, because I know that doesn’t exist. But I felt like I needed to have all the answers or they wouldn’t feel safe. And then that would hurt their childhood.
But when I felt like I always had to have all the answers, I felt like I always had to go in, and I lived with a cape on, rescue and fix, rescue and fix. I didn’t really get to teach them that they are fully capable of making decisions. I catastrophized everything. Oh, be careful. Nothing good happens after midnight. There are drunk drivers. Watch out for this. Watch out. I would send them out the door with all this fear on top of their own apprehension or anxiety. And so I learned in making all these films, and I thought, holy cow, I wish that I had...
Haylie Pomroy: Can I have a do-over? Yeah, right.
Scilla Andreen: I would have just dealt with things very differently. And it took me years to learn to sit with another human being and their stuff, not try to fix them. And that took a while. Now my kids think something’s wrong with me because I’m not going to fix them. But it is so much more empowering for the person you do really want to help to listen to them.
Haylie Pomroy: And believe them.
Scilla Andreen: That takes practice, and figuring it out together, because everybody’s different.
Haylie Pomroy: I think every health care practitioner, every person that’s going to engage with a person that walks in feeling vulnerable and talking about their health experience, needs this. I really do. We’re lucky at the Institute where I’m at. I’m very fortunate that all of this is embraced and embodied and supported. And it’s not because they thought it would be a cool idea. Quite frankly, it’s because we get the sickest of the sick.
It takes, they say, 10 years and 20 doctors before somebody lands in the clinic at the Institute, unfortunately, and they’ve usually been through a lot. And so the only way to unravel a complex issue is to incorporate these types of things.
It’s a rarity, unfortunately, in medicine, but I feel really fortunate.
Scilla, I know my community is going to have tons of questions. Can I ask if you would be willing to come back? They usually post tons of questions. I’ll get everybody to impactfulfund.org to look at the Creative Coping Toolkit.
Scilla Andreen: And also, they can go to impactful.co, not .com but .co. Impactful.co is, that’s the sort of, like, corporation that distributes it globally. I am working, and I think I mentioned this before, on setting it up so that people who are card-carrying members of the public library will be able to access it in seven-day increments for free. It’s not live yet. We’re working on it. It may be live by January, or maybe this fall. But my goal is to get it out in a meaningful way where people can access this content in a safe way.
Haylie Pomroy: I live in a community in Colorado, in Castle Rock, and we just built a brand new public library. And I think in this day and age of TikTok and Instagram, and just such a beautiful building. And some of my favorite things, we talk with individuals, and they say, I got your book at the library. It just warms my heart. It makes me so happy. And I think it’s such a cool thing. I thank you for putting it in that kind of a venue, because it makes it accessible to anybody. And I think the 101 concept, but all of the different micro issues that you’re giving a skill set for, I think are really going to help. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. I know you’re crazy busy. I love the storytelling that goes on. And I know our community is going to love all those, I would say, incredibly wise and intuitive comments from the kids and their stories that come through. Thank you so much, Scilla, for being with us.
Scilla Andreen: Oh, thank you for having me.
Haylie Pomroy: I would love to have you back.
Scilla Andreen: Totally. And I’ll have even more to share.
Haylie Pomroy: Keep doing what you’re doing. We need it. And thank you so much for being on. We’ll talk soon.
Scilla Andreen: All right. Thank you. Bye.
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Scilla Andreen, CEO and founder of Impactful Networks and co-founder and CEO of IndieFlix, to explore how storytelling can change the way we understand and talk about mental health.
Scilla shares how a series of films on bullying, screen time, and anxiety led her into mental health education, how the Creative Coping Toolkit brings those stories into schools and communities, and why grownups so often say they wish they had learned these tools as children.
Together, they discuss the gut and mind connection, why sleep, nutrition, gentle movement, and stress and mindfulness matter so much, how generational patterns shape our health, and why every person's experience deserves to be believed, along with a look at Scilla's upcoming Health 101 initiative.
Hear why mental wellness works best as a shared practice, and how story, sleep, nutrition, and movement can all become part of the conversation, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scilla_andreen
You don't have to figure this out alone. Inside Haylie's private membership community, you get personalized guidance and support, member discounts on supplements and shakes, and the ability to ask questions directly to podcast guests like Dr. Systrom. Join free for 30 days and take the next step on your health journey.
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Scilla Andreen is the CEO and Founder of Impactful Networks, a health-tech education company that combines ethical AI, multimedia storytelling, and evidence-based curricula to address mental health education challenges. The company creates accessible tools, including the Creative Coping Toolkit and GiGi, to strengthen mental well-being and practical life skills among young people, educators, employees, military families, and vulnerable communities. She is also Co-Founder and CEO of IndieFlix, a global streaming platform dedicated to independent filmmakers and meaningful storytelling, and Founder of Impactful Fund, which helps remove financial barriers to mental health education and support. Across film, technology, social entrepreneurship, public speaking, and philanthropy, Scilla develops programs that foster resilience, emotional intelligence, belonging, and mental health literacy, guided by her belief in the power of stories, human connection, and practical education.
Website: https://scillaandreen.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scilla.andreen/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scillaandreen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indieflixceo/
Learn more about Impactful Networks: https://www.impactfulnetworks.com/
Visit IndieFlix: https://www.indieflix.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Edited Transcript:
Scilla Andreen: Now, it took me years to learn to sit with another human being and their stuff and not try to fix them. And that took a while. Now my kids think something’s wrong with me because I’m not trying to fix them. But it is so much more empowering for the person you do really want to help to listen to them.
Haylie Pomroy: You guys, my goal for doing this podcast is to bring people into our worlds that can help us learn, share our stories, and relate with one another. And so today I’m really excited about who we’re going to spend time with. It’s Scilla Andreen. She’s an impactful storyteller. She is the CEO and founder of Impactful and co-founder of IndieFlix, which is an award-winning filmmaking organization. She’s an Emmy-nominated costume designer, author, and founder of the Impactful Fund. She’s going to tell us all about that, impactfulfund.org. But in talking with her, her life mission, or things that she is just so heavily involved in, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story, is a lot of things that we’re dealing with, a lot of things that we relate to. First of all, she’s got six kids, guys. She’s a caregiver in her family. She’s the CMO, like we talk about all the time, the chief medical officer of your tribe.
Without further ado, and again, Scilla, thank you so much for being here today. I cannot wait to share some of what you’re doing with the community.
Scilla Andreen: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I love being able to share.
Haylie Pomroy: And you’re just a storyteller. I mean, we were talking before we started about kind of your life and how individually that impacts you. But right now you have this initiative, Health 101. Tell us all a little bit about it. It’s like, kind of get us up to speed. I’ve been reading and studying for us to kind of have this time together. But how can you share with our community what that’s all about?
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, I think just to set the table a little bit, I’m going to just, like, rewind just a bit, because Health 101 is on the horizon to come out. It’s what I’m working on currently. And I’m building upon a foundation that I started, oh gosh, almost 10 years ago. But really 7 years, 8 years ago, it just blossomed into something major with regard to mental health. I got involved early on with a small film called Finding Kind, which was about bullying and girl world, which then led me to create, with an incredible director, Empowerment Project, which was all about just empowering women and finding role models within our own communities instead of on the cover of a magazine. And then Screenagers, which was about how old your kid should be when they get a phone. I mean, that conversation has definitely changed. And then a friend of mine who ran our foundation, Impactful Fund, who was a childhood friend, kept saying, “You need to make a movie about mental health.” And I kept saying, no, I’m not going to do that. I don’t know anything about it. I’m a college dropout. I’m a filmmaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start to make a movie about mental health. And frankly, I don’t think that anybody would want to watch a movie about mental health at school or at work. And I was taking these films, which had blossomed into programs with not just discussion guides and marketing materials, but then, like, classroom discussion guides and team-building activities for corporations, and it had really just blossomed into more based on demand from these communities. And so I got a call on January 1st, early in the morning, from a dear friend who told me about my friend Tina, who had died by suicide. And she was the executive director of our foundation. And I just thought, oh my gosh, I knew she was struggling, but I didn’t know it was that bad. So I’m going to make a movie about mental health. And I don’t even know anything about it. I personally was living the stigma. I mean, even when I decided to make a movie about mental health and I told my family, they were like, why don’t you make a movie about diabetes or heart disease? Like, why mental health?
And coming from the films, the film world, I always thought it was shock treatment and straitjackets. It was Cuckoo’s Nest. I didn’t understand anything about mental health. I dove in and decided I needed to figure out how to approach this conversation in a way that would be universal. I picked anxiety because everyone has anxiety, and anxiety is actually really good for you. It’s what keeps us alive and aware and effective in so many ways, but it’s gotten to a point where it is too much, and it’s becoming paralyzing and debilitating.
So, I entered the conversation that way. We filmed so many people. I worked with some other amazing filmmakers, and we made Angst. Nobody licensed it into community for six months. They were all afraid that if we opened up this conversation, we didn’t have the ability to support it. We didn’t even know what to do.
Haylie Pomroy: And first, I’m sorry for the loss of your friend. And we work in the space of a lot of individuals that deal with chronic disease and chronic illness. Maybe they’ve been medically gaslit. They don’t feel heard. They’ve lost hope. Our whole purpose is to continue to throw these lifelines of hope in your health and your health and wellness. And also to believe people 100% for what they’re going through and that they are the ones that understand, as confused or as hard as the situation that they’re currently in right now is, they are the ones that understand more about what’s going on. We need to listen intimately.
In the anxiety aspect of things, even in the field of the immune system and neuroimmunology, it’s how our bodies adapt to the environment around us. And I think the other day someone said to me, do people have more anxiety, or are people talking about anxiety more? I think it’s both. There’s no way you’re going to convince me that people aren’t feeling more anxiety internally. We’re able to measure certain things a little bit now chemically, so that people, we don’t just tell somebody, like, hey, it’s in your head, which, okay, maybe it is mast cell activation and I’m having an environmental toxicity response and I’m sending out all these histamine bombs and my fight-or-flight hormones are high for a reason. It’s not just calm down, take a couple of deep breaths. But why do you think it wasn’t received? Do you think it’s an uncomfortable conversation? Because it’s real.
Scilla Andreen: Well, I definitely think it’s uncomfortable. I think it’s still uncomfortable. In fact, it’s interesting; there was a New York Times article that came out recently that says we’re talking about it more than ever, and it’s worse than ever. Kids are dying. The biggest thing, I think, was fear. There was no denying that there was a problem. Kids were dying by suicide. People were struggling on a massive scale, and this was before COVID.
Schools just weren’t prepared; neither were corporations, to show something like this and have this conversation, and they weren’t quite sure how to support it when it was so opened up.
Haylie Pomroy: Is it like the elephant in the room? Like it’s better to all pretend like it doesn’t exist?
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, because it’s really difficult.
Haylie Pomroy: And do you think it’s because we’re not sure what to do about it? Go ahead, please.
Scilla Andreen: No, I just think that that’s something that’s really common. I mean, I have six kids. I’m so well-versed in all of this now, having been working on it for so many years. But when my own kid has an issue, like a panic attack or something, they start spiraling or something, I can often become a deer in the headlights. And I know I have my tools, like I know what I should be doing, but I panic, and it doesn’t help the situation, and I need to learn how to check myself. Like, but it’s a practice.
Haylie Pomroy: But it’s interesting, because I was just in Slovenia. I was at the International Congress for Autoimmune Disorders. And we were working with everyone from immunologists, neurologists, nephrologists, and virologists to people in complex disease study. And someone said something, and again, from St. Petersburg, from Israel, from the U.S., from Stanford, you name it. It was this massive group of about 1,200 people coming together to talk about it. There’s such a neurochemical, physiological response. And we were talking in the autoimmune space about fear of the flare. About the anxiety around, when’s the other shoe going to drop? Is my health going to take a negative turn? Is that secondhand smoke or the food, the gluten that I just consumed, is that going to be the thing that kind of pushes me over? And I think that for so long, with anxiety, people said just toughen up, tough it out, or apply a tool, as opposed to supporting the body so that it has the capacity to adapt to these stressors. Like, I’m all for, like, let’s infuse the body so it’s more resilient to the stressors that are exposed, that they’re exposed upon or exposed to.
Are people starting to have those kinds of conversations? Like, it’s like, I don’t know, we have a lot of type A individuals, a lot of really successful individuals that walk through the clinic that get diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). There is a component to anxiety, to hormone dysregulation, to dysautonomia, and their doctors aren’t even talking to them about it. They’re like, yeah, life is stressful.
Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. I’ve written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body’s overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That’s hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now back to our show.
Scilla Andreen: It’s interesting, because in the schools in particular, which are now being very controlled by legislature, local state legislation, and depending on the state, parents are really getting involved in what is allowed to be taught in a school. And that’s our future. That generation that we’re educating now. And you need the whole community to be part of it.
I think that you have a lot of different schools of thought that are rooted in very deep sort of origin stories. There are a lot of people who think that we’re creating a bunch of wussies in our children because we’re talking about our feelings too much. And we’re putting, we’re projecting mental health issues, and it could spread like a cold. I mean, I can’t go into all the different ones, but there are all these different schools of thought. What’s interesting, to just call it out, and I think everyone can say it, the red states, the conservative states, are a little more pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We know that there’s an issue, but, like, let’s not get too into all of that. Let’s focus on academics. Let’s understand that there are some things happening here. In the bluer states or more progressive states, it’s much more like, oh my God, we’ve got to lean into social-emotional learning. We have to, like, really understand, like, how food affects mental health, how exercise, sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, human sexuality education, like, how we identify, like, all of that. Learning from all the states.
Haylie Pomroy: But it’s so sad to see anything even politicized. Because we peel everything away. I mean, I hear what you’re saying, and I know that it’s so important. When I was at George Washington, in the public health space at GW, like, it’s great for us to identify trends and trajectories, because then we know where to invest to make an impact from a public health perspective.
But some of the basics, and I love the 101 concept of this future initiative, some of the basic things, that we all eat, we all breathe, we all drink, are such a unifying, universal opportunity for us, in my opinion. When you take away some of the nuances. And I mean, I decided, even with my soil science ag background, to jump into the diet space because I was so irritated that people would even talk about nutrition and fasting in the same sentence. Or not eating as an option. Try doing it to a zoo animal, you’ll lose your license.
Try doing it with the ASPCA, you’ll get in trouble. Try doing it to your dog or your cat. But yet, as humans, we expect so much of ourselves, and we somehow went less.
I kind of feel like there are things that can unify people. And I think that mental health, and just the, even not segmenting mental health and integrating mental health as a basic health principle. Just like we stitch ourselves up if we get a gaping wound. We repair a fracture with swift medical intervention. We have ambulances that scrape us off the ground, me included, after a car accident. My opinion is that if we can normalize mental health and normalize our body’s mode of communication, and how sophisticated we’re getting at listening to that, it can unify people.
I do, I like, again, in epidemiology and being in the public health space, it is interesting to see those trends. We are trying to, like, and this is, I was reading a lot of your stuff, and so many people feel hopeless in their health. The individual, the dear friend that you lost, I’ve lost two friends to suicide. And I always think to myself, like, what could I have done differently? How could I be a different friend? How could I be differently involved in this person’s life?
That’s a little, I try not to struggle from an ego perspective, like I could have fixed something, but how could I have been more supportive? But then we look at our hundreds of thousands of people in our community, and I think sometimes giving some of those real-life solutions that don’t necessarily feel overwhelming and daunting.
I was just teaching a course; we had our coaches come out to my ranch, which is part of my medicine for myself. And one of the things that I was talking about with people that have adrenal fatigue or are having anxiety is, don’t give them a to-do list. Look at what they’re doing and see what you can take off of their plate and see what you can infuse them with. What’s the shortest space between getting some relief, the solution to relief, and administering the relief? How can you shorten the gap? That’s, like, your number one goal with clients that walk in with anxiety. What do you tell people, or what stories do you feel have been the most impactful, about people getting some relief from the anxiety that they’re feeling?
Scilla Andreen: I think what we’re learning is the films, and so we have a program called the Creative Coping Toolkit, and that’s where all the film programs live. That’s where Angst lives, which is the one I was telling you about that was the first one that kind of launched me into the mental health space. And then from Angst came Why Anxiety Is on the Rise, and that’s where we made, like, to understand the role of social media and technology. And then, why are people so mean online when they wouldn’t be that way in person? And that’s where The Upstanders came in. And the last one is RACE to Be Human, which is like, how do belonging and othering affect our mental health and our lives? And so that was RACE to Be Human.
Haylie Pomroy: So how do they get the toolkit? And is this like a link where everybody can download the movies? Like, how does this work?
Scilla Andreen: For right now, it is, and has been for many years, licensed into community at, oftentimes, the district level, or even the state. In California, it’s at the state level. It’s available to every K through 12 public school and charter school in the state of California. One of our programs within the toolkit: Washington State, Illinois, and Alaska had all four programs. Actually, Illinois had only Angst, and the other two states had the whole program. And so you can go to, actually, our foundation, which is impactfulfund.org. And you can access it there.
Now, we’re raising money to keep it free in these schools, or we license it directly to schools and corporations around the world. Honestly, I am on a mission with our foundation to make it free across the country in every classroom.
Haylie Pomroy: It’s amazing.
Scilla Andreen: It’s a big haul. But to get back to your earlier question, as far as the biggest feedback we get when anyone watches it, grown-ups say, where was this program when I was younger? I might not have self-medicated so much or been in such a self-destruct mode to bury, not address, that kind of thing. Young people say, I need my dad to see this. I’ve had eight-year-old kids see it and be able to point to a particular character in the movies, because it’s all stories. And most of it is children talking. And they’re so vulnerable and pure and raw and unedited that they just speak this pureness that everyone can relate to. We’re going into assisted living environments where they think it’s better for the residents to be able to connect more with their children or grandchildren, when in fact they’re connecting the dots for themselves about why their mom never left the house and how the generational component... I mean, think of how much of our lives is generationally influenced.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Scilla Andreen: Money, food, superstition. I mean, all of it. Including mental health. And then there’s the genetics piece, not just the learning component, but the actual DNA. And so that’s kind of where we’ve really found an impact, introducing the conversation and looking at it through a particular lens of just honest, pure, unedited, and unfiltered. And people just start talking. And everyone is wired differently.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes, absolutely.
Scilla Andreen: Then, what works for you? Just like there are a million diets out there. And some people are like, “Oh, Scilla, you should be on this diet.”
I’m like, well, I’m allergic to nuts. And it’s like 80% nuts. It feels like that’s not going to work for me. Or, like, when all my kids went off to college, they all became vegan or that kind of thing. Holidays were challenging. Making a million different meals for everybody. But to answer your question, mostly it’s learning how to address everyone’s individual needs and then from the family level and then the community level.
Haylie Pomroy: Our given, like, no matter what, and I tell this to our coaches that we train, is, like, check your ego at the door. We believe you. We embrace your story. We embrace your experiences, 100% the truth. It’s, how in the world would I ever know what’s going on with an individual more than they would? And yet so many people go in, and they see a practitioner, and they’re told that their feelings are wrong or their experience is wrong or what they’re experiencing isn’t real. It’s really hard. And to your point about diets, I mean, even fundamentally, we have 18 different nutrition programs that all of our individuals are exposed to, because there is not a one-size-fits-all in a complex body. And also, we have different needs at different times.
Scilla Andreen: The body changes. I mean, talk about menopause. Like, that’s a whole other world. And, like, you made a point earlier, and I don’t know if it was before we started, about how Western doctors don’t always know to, and I’m saying this just because I live in an Eastern and Western world, factor things like hormones into why you might be having heart issues.
Haylie Pomroy: We learned these systems siloed. We started to specialize in medicine, and we forgot how important a generalist is.
A person that understands. But guess what? The generalist is you. You’re the one that understands all aspects, or at least has some experience or the most expression of that.
We have this community where people feel like it’s a super safe space to talk about everything. And I mean, during the pandemic, we talked about everything, and we continue to do that. I continue to be committed to doing that, because in my clinical practice, I have people that have very strong religious beliefs. I have people that have very strong philosophical beliefs, and I am so proud of them for embracing any of it, any and all of it. And it’s not my position to come in and say, oh, they’re wrong. This is actually right. I don’t know who the heck I would think I was if that ever came out of my mouth. But I think that the biggest thing is that we learn through story. And the biggest thing that we learn through is people having the courage, I guess I would say, to share their worlds and their experiences.
When I’m listening to kind of this toolbox, I’m like, oh my gosh, this would be so good for all of our coaches to have in their repertoire, their verbiage, but also in our community. I’ll make sure that we post impactfulfund.org for everybody so that they can go and look at the Creative Coping Toolkit. I’d love to have you back, where maybe we can pull some of those tools and go kind of deeper into those. But I guess I’ll say this. People have asked me a lot why I don’t hide it, why I tell everybody everything. Well, I talk about when my hair started falling out, and I developed a product to help with hair growth because I was just traumatized by it. I mean, like, handfuls. And when my platelets have gone off from an immune perspective, when I’m having or struggling with fear of the flare after coming off a flight, or things like that.
But I think the biggest thing is that when we create our reality through storytelling, there’s a holistic aspect of both the spirit and the emotionality of the story and the factual aspect of the story. And I love that you’re giving people kind of that marriage of the practical tools that they can go out with through story, though, and out of the mouths of babes. Like you said, a lot of kids, in their innocence, or also maybe they haven’t had the life experience where they’ve been shut down for telling their truth in a vulnerable way.
Tell me about your upcoming projects.
Scilla Andreen: Well, Health 101, of course, which is sleep, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, stress, and human sexuality education.
Haylie Pomroy: Start from the beginning. I want to touch base. Number one was sleep. I love the S word, sleep. I really believe that if we could, and there’s, if we could master sleep and nutrition, we would probably have 70+% of all diseases gone. That’s my opinion.
OK, the second one was what?
Scilla Andreen: Nutrition.
Haylie Pomroy: Love it. And nutrition, guys, is like nutrition, nutrients. It’s not not eating.
Scilla Andreen: I think it’s important to understand the connection between the gut and the mind.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. Funny enough, my son, Eiland, who’s now 20, going to be 26. I have a really cool... I was teaching a course. Gosh, I think it was the cardiology department. I was teaching a course. I was very pregnant, and I was talking about the gut microbiome and the gut-brain connection 26 years ago. I am a diehard...
Scilla Andreen: Way ahead of the times.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, I think you learn a lot when you go through a lot. I guess I’ll say that I was never... with my particular autoimmune disorder, pregnancy was not an option. As I was very pregnant teaching that course, I had a significant conviction about why it was so important, because it saved my life, and it also allowed me to bear two children and create new lives on this little earth, this little place we call Earth.
Number three is?
Scilla Andreen: Movement.
Haylie Pomroy: Movement. I love that you don’t use the word exercise.
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, that’s just not how it works.
Haylie Pomroy: I know. I love exercise. I’m not putting down exercise, but...
Scilla Andreen: I like when I’m done.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, I love that. Exercise is good when you’re finished. Movement, critically important. And we sometimes have individuals that have what they call post-exertional malaise, which is when their disease state, or their level of oxygen depletion or dysautonomia, where they can’t regulate their blood pressure, happens during exercise. And so movement, sometimes even passive movement, we have individuals that, when we’re working towards their healing journey and we’re getting them in the right trajectory, acupuncture and massage are considered movement in the Fast Metabolism Diet. In Phase 3, massage is considered an exercise. That passive movement, the movement of Qi, the movement of blood, the movement of lymphatics, the movement of acidity in the body, is so important. I love that you use that word.
Scilla Andreen: We’ve been stretching. I think people underestimate the importance of stretching. I mean, one of my favorite yoga moves is happy baby, because I feel like when you are rolling around on your back, your lungs go so far down in the back that I feel like it’s almost like a lung massage. For anyone who has any kind of respiratory thing, the fact that you can almost feel like you’re giving a little stimulation to the lungs is amazing to me. And I feel like, oh, I can take deeper breaths. I’m actually creating some circulation there. And I love toxins.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love that you use that pose. I have a client that had both COPD and dermatomyositis with pulmonary fibrotic tissue. And we were trying to improve their PFTs, their pulmonary function tests. It’s not like, I think it makes you feel better. It’s like, look, guys, I mean, I’ve got to have a protocol for progress. I’ve got to check them in at Brigham next week and see what the heck’s going on. And we did so much of that. A physical therapist actually told me. I’m always reaching out to people like yourselves to say, help, I need help with this person. I need insight. I need wisdom. I need more than I could possibly get out in the world and experience myself to bring back to the table. And that is a pose that, yes, made a significant impact in PFTs for the client with both COPD and dermatomyositis.
Scilla Andreen: It’s sort of interesting; part of my pitch when I reach out to the top people, whether it’s at Stanford or the Anna Freud Institute in England or Thrive Australia or Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, like all the various incredible experts, and I should talk to you when I do some of my pieces in Health 101, is being able to take all of this incredible knowledge and boil it down into just easy-to-consume information for the basic person living in the world, who may not always have a lot of money, the best insurance, or the ability to even navigate how to go about getting access to some of the best vetted information when you’re overwhelmed with all these things you can do on TikTok and Instagram and word of mouth, where you’re not, again, we’re not talking to, like, medical professionals. We’re just surviving.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it’s Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone, and I decided that I didn’t want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That’s why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, and be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I’ll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That’s hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now, back to our show.
Yeah, absolutely. But I love this dissemination of knowledge. And I always tell people, like, find what’s right for you. I’ve gotten horrible advice from people from Stanford, and I’ve gotten the best advice in the world from people at Stanford.
Scilla Andreen: It just depends on you.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah, it depends. And also, like, nobody has a hierarchy over you in this whole journey but knowledge and, like, what fits for you, and seeking knowledge and seeking knowledge and seeking knowledge. Give me number four. You went through those really fast.
Scilla Andreen: Human sexuality education.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay. And I feel like I’m missing one.
Scilla Andreen: Stress and mindfulness.
Haylie Pomroy: Stress and mindfulness. And I love that you use the word mindfulness. Many times, people will be commissioned with or charged with relieving their stress by eliminating things, and sometimes they just can’t. Certain seasons of people’s lives are more stressful than others. I couldn’t change that my dad passed away. I couldn’t change some of the things that are going on in our family. And just changing the stress was not an option, changing those peripheral things. But the way in which I reacted and responded, I could make an effort with that. But also, how I infused my body to be more resilient under those kinds of conditions. It’s like someone said to me, and they were talking about hurricanes in Florida, when we rebuild, we rebuild stronger by learning what took us down and putting in tools, mortar, brick, whatever it is that made us more resilient for the next storm, so that we can stand in all our glory and all our beauty and weather the storm. And I just loved that analogy post-hurricane.
But I thought about if we just embraced that in our bodies. Like, how do we build back stronger? Because there’s going to be a storm and a next storm and a next storm. And how are we protective? I interviewed an individual last week that really talked about protecting, being mindful of who’s in your environment, what’s in your environment, and what you’re exposed to. We talk a lot about that from a toxin perspective, but also from a nutrition perspective. I go, when you open your mouth, it is going to do one of two things. It’s going to make you healthier. Or it’s going to push you towards a lack of health. That’s it. There’s no benign food. It’s because it engages and interacts with us.
In the basic teachings, I guess maybe I’m excited about the 101 perspective, because I like that if we focus on sleep, if we focus on nutrition, if we focus on movement, human sexuality, and stress and mindfulness, imagine the change, the difference in our population’s health, if we just focused on that. And I think sometimes we try to think of this magic bullet or magic pill, or magic idea or magic movement, any of it, for a dynamic body. And so in this initiative, what is the ultimate goal?
Scilla Andreen: It’s to educate people about everything you just mentioned, through story, and I film a lot of people. And then we weave it all together. It’s kind of like micro stories. It’s not like you’re following one, two, or three people through their journey. It is like being at a cocktail party or a dinner party, and you’re talking to a bunch of really interesting people who are being really vulnerable and sharing something that they went through, how they navigated it, and where they are now with it. And then we sprinkle in experts who then kind of break it down in the brain science component. What we’ve learned is that a five-year-old knows what the prefrontal cortex is and how to move the energy from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex, and can list off, within a minute, two or three different ways to do that. And now they’re, like, educating their parents. But it’s a community thing. Like, we all have to be involved. It can’t just be the kids. It has to be the parents too. And it’s a practice. It’s something that we all need to work on. We have a lot of activities, a lot of brain hacks, a lot of ways to just have fun with it.
Haylie Pomroy: I love what you just said, because one of the things is, it seems like individuals, it’s okay for people to be knowledge seekers. But it’s not okay, oftentimes, for adults to be help seekers. Like, I need help with this.
Like I said, with my friends and myself that have struggled at times. How do I receive help? Kids are hardwired to ask for help. Will you help me cut this? Will you help me open this? Will you help me? They’re still in the belief system. They’re still in the belief system that they’re...
Scilla Andreen: Until they’re not.
Haylie Pomroy: And hopefully they’re still, as they start to identify themselves as autonomous. I think sometimes that can become, that’s why the teenage years or adolescence can be so full of angst for so many kids, as autonomy sometimes is correlated with lonely or alone. You’re alone in your decision.
You’re alone in your struggle. But I think that if we can start to teach our children how to receive help, how to have knowledge, and how to make a change, like, I love that you’re empowering them physiologically to make a change in their body for the better. I think that’s amazing. And my goodness, we don’t give them enough credit for what they can absorb. If we just taught some of these basic but profound, impactful things, they can change the generation of our health, I believe.
Scilla Andreen: I’m a firm believer. I started all of this to be an advocate for kids. Turns out now I’m more of an advocate for grown-ups.
Haylie Pomroy: The inner child. It feels like the inner child. Like maybe we needed this when we were little, and we didn’t get it. And I love it.
Scilla Andreen: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know why, because my parents were far from perfect. Like, they were young and dumb when they got married. I spent my first couple of months sleeping in a drawer. They weren’t prepared. I think because they were ill-prepared to have a kid, and they made their best, they did the best they could. They did a fine job. I felt like when I started having kids, I needed to be, not perfect, because I know that doesn’t exist. But I felt like I needed to have all the answers or they wouldn’t feel safe. And then that would hurt their childhood.
But when I felt like I always had to have all the answers, I felt like I always had to go in, and I lived with a cape on, rescue and fix, rescue and fix. I didn’t really get to teach them that they are fully capable of making decisions. I catastrophized everything. Oh, be careful. Nothing good happens after midnight. There are drunk drivers. Watch out for this. Watch out. I would send them out the door with all this fear on top of their own apprehension or anxiety. And so I learned in making all these films, and I thought, holy cow, I wish that I had...
Haylie Pomroy: Can I have a do-over? Yeah, right.
Scilla Andreen: I would have just dealt with things very differently. And it took me years to learn to sit with another human being and their stuff, not try to fix them. And that took a while. Now my kids think something’s wrong with me because I’m not going to fix them. But it is so much more empowering for the person you do really want to help to listen to them.
Haylie Pomroy: And believe them.
Scilla Andreen: That takes practice, and figuring it out together, because everybody’s different.
Haylie Pomroy: I think every health care practitioner, every person that’s going to engage with a person that walks in feeling vulnerable and talking about their health experience, needs this. I really do. We’re lucky at the Institute where I’m at. I’m very fortunate that all of this is embraced and embodied and supported. And it’s not because they thought it would be a cool idea. Quite frankly, it’s because we get the sickest of the sick.
It takes, they say, 10 years and 20 doctors before somebody lands in the clinic at the Institute, unfortunately, and they’ve usually been through a lot. And so the only way to unravel a complex issue is to incorporate these types of things.
It’s a rarity, unfortunately, in medicine, but I feel really fortunate.
Scilla, I know my community is going to have tons of questions. Can I ask if you would be willing to come back? They usually post tons of questions. I’ll get everybody to impactfulfund.org to look at the Creative Coping Toolkit.
Scilla Andreen: And also, they can go to impactful.co, not .com but .co. Impactful.co is, that’s the sort of, like, corporation that distributes it globally. I am working, and I think I mentioned this before, on setting it up so that people who are card-carrying members of the public library will be able to access it in seven-day increments for free. It’s not live yet. We’re working on it. It may be live by January, or maybe this fall. But my goal is to get it out in a meaningful way where people can access this content in a safe way.
Haylie Pomroy: I live in a community in Colorado, in Castle Rock, and we just built a brand new public library. And I think in this day and age of TikTok and Instagram, and just such a beautiful building. And some of my favorite things, we talk with individuals, and they say, I got your book at the library. It just warms my heart. It makes me so happy. And I think it’s such a cool thing. I thank you for putting it in that kind of a venue, because it makes it accessible to anybody. And I think the 101 concept, but all of the different micro issues that you’re giving a skill set for, I think are really going to help. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. I know you’re crazy busy. I love the storytelling that goes on. And I know our community is going to love all those, I would say, incredibly wise and intuitive comments from the kids and their stories that come through. Thank you so much, Scilla, for being with us.
Scilla Andreen: Oh, thank you for having me.
Haylie Pomroy: I would love to have you back.
Scilla Andreen: Totally. And I’ll have even more to share.
Haylie Pomroy: Keep doing what you’re doing. We need it. And thank you so much for being on. We’ll talk soon.
Scilla Andreen: All right. Thank you. Bye.
