Mind, Body Clutter with Deb Sarah

Deb Sarah is a mind-body therapist. Using science-backed tools and her own real-life experiences. She helps her clients to optimise their health and enhance their performance and life.

Deb’s life changed significantly when age 21, she was hit by a car. An accident that nearly claimed her life. It was this near-death experience that was her wake-up call. She started to change the relationship she had with her body, her health and her mind.

Deb Sarah - Mind-Body Therapist

So, Deb, tell us a bit more about what you do.

I have a special interest in helping women understand their bodies and their cycles so that they can work with them instead of against them.

The other part of what I do is create unique corporate experiences and programs to help employees optimise their health, their performance and prevent burnout.

What was the driver for you to start your business, Deb?

Everything I am helping people with is something I've experienced myself. Growing up, I saw many friends and people having eating disorders. I also had my issues around that. And the care just wasn't there.

At that time, it appeared health professionals didn’t quite understand how to treat an eating disorder.

And time and time again, people were just being sent to nutritionists and told what to eat or how to eat. With overeating disorders, that was to eat less and move more. Instead of having someone help them identify and treat the underlying cause of the eating disorder.

Quite often, it’s trauma or an unhelpful self-belief. And that’s what we need to treat—the underlying cause rather than the food.

There is a huge gap in our healthcare system and how we look at these problems.

As a Mum to an 11-year-old daughter, I worry about these issues because I also suffered from poor body image growing up. What do you see as the main problems people are facing?

Oh, it's a huge question.

We’re not properly educated about our bodies and what’s normal and what’s not. Take understanding your menstrual cycle, for example. Our cycles have a huge impact on our energy, our mood, our cognition and our general functioning.

I often have clients come to me with bloating. So, they diet and think, I've eaten chocolate. It must be because of this. I’m bad. Not everything is due to weight or food. It could be hormones, stress or poor hydration. Maybe it's because you're at a certain part in your period where you're holding onto more water, and that's why you're bloated.

But because we don't understand how our cycles work, we don’t understand it’s normal for our bodies to fluctuate in weight and experience bloating.

Because of this, we internalise the bloating. We internalise the mood swings. We blame ourselves.

Are you listening to what your body needs?

One of the things I see that concerns me is the number of supplements women take to feel better, reduce bloating, balance the hormones, and get skinnier.

Yes, It's like, there's bloating, there's something wrong with me. Internalising your body's bad and wrong, but your body may be performing optimally. It's performing the very function it needs to perform. You may be misreading the signals because of what society tells you. I remember back in the day. There was this yogurt advert. It was all about bloating and how you should eat this yogurt to fix it.

And that's great, but what if we could learn to listen to the signals our bodies were sending? Maybe it’s because I haven't slept well enough, or my cycle is causing a hormonal fluctuation. And instead of trying to diagnose, treat, and fix everything, we just took a step back, paused, and listened to what our bodies needed.

I think you're right. There's so much distraction when we're all so busy. When I go on holiday, I sleep much more, and my body tells me I need this rest. And I probably need more rest in my daily life.

Do you think the digital world has caused more issues for women and their feelings about their bodies?

So firstly, I want to say it is not your fault. The diet industry is a $44 billion industry.

It's geared to tell us that we aren't good enough. You aren't beautiful enough and need a product to make you worthy. So, stepping back and having some self-compassion around that is important.

The other part is the busyness and the fast pace of life. We’re so disconnected from ourselves in our lives. Many of us are living very unintentionally, just following an expected path. For example, women are told to get married, have kids, and buy a big house.

And we follow that path without taking a second to pause and think. What do I want for my life? Do I want a face full of makeup every single day? Or do I want to work on my internal sense of self and love myself for me? No matter how I look or what I'm doing in life?

What a powerful message Deb. I just came back from a couple of weeks' holiday. I went camping in the outback, didn't wear any makeup for a week, and just threw on whatever I'd got in my backpack, and it felt amazing because there was no pressure.

We all feel this pressure, don't we, to conform to this idea of the ideal life? Looking a certain way, having the possessions that tell the world we are successful. And our conformity fuels it further.  But when those things don’t make you any happier, you’re left looking for the next thing and the next thing.

It’s interesting in our work—this constant buying of more leads to overwhelm.  Because the house gets so full, it creates much more work.

So, when people come to you, I guess they’re already open to a different possibility. But how do you work through that with them?

So yes and no, because you might have someone with an eating disorder who comes to me, and there is resistance there. They want to do better. They want to change their life and be free from binge eating. But the behaviour is serving them, helping them avoid discomfort. They may not be ready to give it up. It's helping them to avoid the parts of themselves that they don't like. And I think we all have that resistance within ourselves.

And then I do also have people who are high performing and come to me to excel.

To start this journey, I always recommend pausing and taking a second. The simplest thing is to sit down with a pen and paper for 10 minutes and write what you want from life.

It's not easy because we have a lot of voices in our heads. Sometimes you’re not able to decipher which one's yours.  When you finally can, you can start to let go.

In your example, let go of the possessions filling the void. What is your desire? Everything you want for your life that the expectation from society has suppressed. And in doing that, you can let go of the need to be rich, have that new car, and live in the postcode.

Because those are just external factors that are filling a void and a need you aren't fulfilling yourself.

The real measure of success - self belief and self identity

What are the key things for people to succeed in life?

So, I think it's very individual. But I think the number one is self-belief and self-identity. Have you taken the time to understand yourself? It’s not easy.

Secondly, it’s small, simple habits and changes. After my car accident, I gained a lot of weight, and I started to hate exercise and became negative and unhappy. And so instead of doing what I'd always done, which is dieting, over-exercising and all the things that didn't work. I decided to make one change. And the only change I made in my life was to do 10,000 steps a day, which is very arbitrary because I know we say 10,000, but it doesn't have to be that.

It could be you hate the gym. So go to a dance class instead, or something you feel better about. You don't like your job. Start googling other careers, gain knowledge and learn about what that could look like.

And the third one is probably one of the most important. Living a conscious life. So learning, breathwork, meditation, and slowing down from the fast-paced, go, go.

And consciously making decisions in how you create your life. And I say create because that's the important part. Being active in creating your life instead of letting life take you on a journey you don't want.

Powerful! I feel like I went on that journey myself. It's taken many years. If I looked back five or six years ago in the corporate rat race, it was all about how much money I was earning, what my job title was, all the possessions and the rest that goes with that.

But deep down, I was unhappy. I was drinking too much, wasting money on stuff I didn't need. I began to recognise that the drink to take the edge off was stopping me from dealing with the root cause of my unhappiness. When I finally plucked up the courage and gave up, things became a lot clearer.

I started to take steps to change my path. Quit the job and started working out what made me happy.  If someone had told me back then I’d be successfully doing what I am now, I’d have thought they were crazy.

And it's the same with decluttering. If your house is cluttered and overwhelming, start with one small thing. Commit to 10 minutes daily but do it every day and see the progress.

Momentum is key. And I think you should be proud of yourself for taking those steps and creating the change because it's not easy.

Some people like to complain because not everyone wants to make a change. Not everyone wants to go through the discipline, hard work, and pain it takes to create change. Some people want to sit and complain, and, you know, that's fine. You can do that over there. But over here, we're going to create change.

And when you're ready, you are welcome to join us here and create a healthy, happy life.

So, Deb, I'm fascinated by the ice bath experiences that you do. I hate cold, as I'm sure many people do. I moved from the UK to Australia because I hated being cold. The idea of getting into an ice bath! I can feel myself tensing up even talking to you about it now.

Why is it a good thing?

I think it depends on the individual. People do it for different reasons. There are many popups where people do it for a long time to show their strength. But the evidence shows no more than 10 minutes. And with my community, we do two to three minutes because it's more about-facing fears.

The most common thing I hear is, “I hate the cold. I'm afraid and don't want to do this”. That's very sane. But we do two to three minutes to dip your toe in the water, so to say.

It's about changing the stories and the beliefs that we have in our heads that we can't do something. Doing the thing and creating self-belief, the self-esteem and the real joy and going, wow, I just did something hard. And I think a huge part of it is getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Many of us have so much comfort in our lives that we take it for granted: the aircon, the food, the nice clothes.  We've got everything that we could need. But we’re not building resilience or adaptations to stress. So, when something perceived as bad happens, it takes you much longer to return from it.

When you put yourself in intentional discomfort, you build real resilience, so when things do happen, you bounce back quickly.

So, if somebody wanted to come and do one of your ice baths in Sydney, how can they do that? 

I run corporate ice baths and community ice baths.

I go into company premises or venues (like conferences) or the beach and run a breathwork session followed by the ice baths.  It creates a unique experience for teams.

We also have our beautiful community sessions every Sunday at 6:00 AM at Bronte Beach.

You can contact me and book at www.debsarah.com.

Amazing. I love the idea of a corporate one. That would be so much fun.

Everyone loves watching their managers or CEOs in the tub and seeing them in pain for two minutes. Everyone hypes each other up. It's quite a beautiful experience to watch.

It must be quite funny, though, people having to strip off. It's not something you normally do in front of your workmates.

People get corporate t-shirts made to cover up a bit more. We've had companies that, you know, they strip off and jump in. They're cool. We are very body positive and ensure everyone's as comfortable as possible when doing this.

I've got one last question for you. How would you describe your relationship and journey with the possessions in your life?

If you'd asked me a couple of years ago, terrible. I was unhappy with my body when I gained all the weight from the accident. I'd constantly buy clothes, but none would fix the problem or make me happy.

Now that I'm in a position where I love my life, I'm so grateful for my life. Possessions and money no longer have the same hold on me.

I've started decluttering and getting rid of things. I don't see my value through possessions anymore. I see them more as a way to express my creativity.

I do find the decluttering process hard. I set aside some time, but somehow, it's messier than before I started. Then I can’t find the time to finish the job.

It's a common challenge because it can be overwhelming and always takes longer than expected.  When we work with clients, we are like the support network that helps you get the job finished. And we do the heavy lifting. We'll get all the stuff out and sort it, then organise it all beautifully.

It’s tough with clothes, too, if your body size/shape changes. Which, of course, is completely normal at different points in your life. I'm heading towards 50, and, you know, you're looking at those things thinking, I'm never getting back into those.

I love you are not trying to force your body back into the clothes because that's something I see often. People whose weight/size has changed are holding onto smaller clothes. And then, really berate themselves, dieting and forcing themselves to fit back into clothes. Bodies are supposed to change. And we change with age. It’s so normal, but it's not normalised. And so, we think there's something wrong with us.

What frustrates me is that some of the things we hate about ourselves are the things that make us the most unique and beautiful, and interesting.

It's all about people’s energy, not what they look like. I'm drawn to people's energy and how they show up. You're valuable for who you are. Because you are you, not because of how you look or your job. I think that's important.

So important. I've so enjoyed chatting with you, Deb.

Your energy and passion shine through, and your messages are powerful. Thank you so much for sharing those with me. I appreciate it.