Podcast, Autoimmunity, Mindset & Relaxation Christina Tidwell Podcast, Autoimmunity, Mindset & Relaxation Christina Tidwell

Cultivating a Healing Mindset and Self-Acceptance with Murlene Joseph

Murlene Joseph is a Registered Nurse and Certified Health Coach. Because of her own experience navigating chronic illness, she began her coaching business Myrrh Wellness in order to support others struggling on their own healing journeys. She’s here to remind you that you’re in control of your health. You can feel strong, light, and happy. In this episode of The Live Well Podcast, we speak about the importance of mindset on your healing journey, and how to cultivate self-acceptance and self-love in order to heal.

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Murlene Joseph is a Registered Nurse and Certified Health Coach. She is a descendant of Haiti, born and raised in Florida. Murlene has always loved helping people with their health, but it was her own experience with autoimmune disease beginning at age 25 that led her to health coaching and teaching individuals how to advocate and uplevel their health with small, consistent habit changes that provide sustainable healthy lifestyles. 

When she was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, rheumatoid arthritis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome she felt hopeless navigating the murky messaging of health and wellness, not sure where to start feeling good again. Because of her own experience navigating chronic illness, she began her coaching business Myrrh Wellness in order to support others struggling on their healing journeys. She’s here to remind you that you’re in control of your health. You can feel strong, light, and happy.

In this episode, we speak about the importance of mindset on your healing journey, and how to cultivate self-acceptance and self-love in order to heal.

LISTEN BELOW (AND DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE SO YOU'LL NEVER MISS OUT!)

Click here to listen in iTunes

Click here to listen in Stitcher

In this episode of The Live Well Podcast, I have special guest Murlene Joseph joining me. Murlene is a registered nurse, board-certified holistic nurse coach, and the founder of Myrrh Wellness. We talk about the importance of mindset on your healing journey.

SHOW NOTES:

  • 0:00 Intro 

  • 8:02 - Learning to find balance

    • Moving away from extremes and an all or nothing mindset

    • Letting go of unrealistic expectations

    • Accepting what is

  • 10:32 - Murlene talks about her love for food

    • Not denying yourself

    • We gravitate towards the things we love and bring us happiness

  • 12:08 - The turning point: realizing that her body and what was happening was not something Murlene could control

    • Shifting mindset to being happy and being healthy

  • 13:10 - The goal is 80-20

  • 13:34 - Being imperfect is easier

    • Trying to get to perfection is a journey we will never reach

  • 14:17 - Constant self-criticism can affect how you show up in your business

  • 14:45 - Being authentic and honest

  • 15:23 - It’s okay to admit that you don’t know everything

  • 16:52 - Healing isn’t always linear

    • Learning acceptance

    • Getting up and moving forward

    • It’s about self-confidence, self-love and getting rid of expectations

    • Acknowledging that no one is perfect

  • 19:09 - Showing up authentically in business and in sharing her healing journey

    • Healing also means failing sometimes or falling and getting back up

  • 20:19 - Live is happening now and being present in this moment

  • 23:13 - Shifting your mindset around healing

  • 28:18 - Asking for help, listening, getting advice, and understanding that we don’t have to have all the answers

  • 36:16 - Finding acceptance and what that means for Murlene

    • Accepting change which can be really hard

    • Accepting that we don’t have all the answers

    • Accepting help

    • Loving your body the way that it is - flaws and all

    • Accepting imperfections

  • 41:50 - Having supportive people in your life to interrupt negative thoughts and emotions

  • 44:08 - Not holding back anymore and living life regardless

  • 47:01 - Asking yourself what you’re really willing to do to change

  • 48:28 - Practicing humility

  • 49:39 - Where to find Murlene

  • 50:15 - Final thoughts & comments

Ep 85 Cultivating a Healing Mindset and Self-Acceptance with Murlene Joseph.png

Connect with Murlene

Website | Instagram | Facebook



If you loved this episode, I'd be honored for you to give me a rating on iTunes. This helps me to get content out to others who are interested in getting control of their health through diet, lifestyle shifts and personal empowerment.


If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell and I'm so excited that you're here! I am a RN & Functional Nutrition Practitioner that helps those with autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance and gut issues heal without overwhelm so you can feel better in your body in a way that honors your unique needs and feels sustainable for the rest of your life. 

If you suffer from:

  • Fatigue and energy crashes

  • Brain fog

  • Poor digestion

  • Painful periods and PMS

  • Symptoms of autoimmunity

  • Stress and overwhelm 

...and aren't getting the support you need, I’m here to help guide you! My job is to clear the overwhelm, help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and co-create a sustainable path forward to help you reach your goals and feel better in your amazing body. When we work together you can’t fail. 

In my health & nutrition coaching programs I support you in the quest to get back into balance by listening to your story, understanding your needs, getting to the roots of imbalance in the body and co-creating a sustainable path to healing together. These sessions weave together functional nutrition and science, lived experience, mindset shifts, and intuitive guidance for a unique and full-spectrum approach to nutrition counseling and holistic health.

I always offer free 20-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and identify what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.

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Healthy Lifestyle Tips, Mindset & Relaxation Christina Tidwell Healthy Lifestyle Tips, Mindset & Relaxation Christina Tidwell

Overcoming Wellness Burnout

If you’re feeling like your daily wellness routines are a chore or something that’s becoming really overwhelming then you may be experiencing wellness burnout. I define wellness burnout as a state of increased stress and overwhelm that comes from the constant pursuit of health and wellness practices. In this post, I share the importance of having a toolkit and a few questions that you can use as soon as you feel that your body needs it.

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Overcoming Wellness Burnout

Over the last several years working in the realm of holistic health I've come to see a phenomenon I like to call "Wellness Burnout." ⁠

It can feel SO empowering when we realize we have the power to use nutrition and lifestyle shifts to improve how we feel. We might start out by experimenting with diet, then start taking new supplements, then incorporating dry brushing, taking saunas, meditating, doing yoga, oil pulling, tongue scraping, trampolining, acupuncture, breathwork, fasting, cleansing, blue light blocking, grounding, seed cycling, and ALL the things!⁠

I speak with clients at this place of burnout who say, "Christina, I'm literally doing everything right and I'm STILL not feeling better. What gives?"⁠

At the end of the day, we all just want to feel BETTER. And most of us are willing to do whatever it takes! If you get to the place where your wellness routines have begun to feel like a chore, you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, and you're trying to get through tasks so you can mentally check off a box that you "did it" but are feeling stressed the whole time, you might experiencing some Wellness Burnout.⁠

While we can certainly use many of these amazing health-supportive practices, we don't have to do ALL of the things ALL the time. ⁠

In fact, we aren't meant to. Taking the time to tune into the practices that feel good and supportive to you specifically at this moment in time, and working to bring more depth and presence to those (rather than adding on more interventions) allows us to reap the benefits more fully and take some pressure off of ourselves to do it all.⁠

If you are experiencing some Wellness Burnout, what are you noticing? Are there 1-3 practices that are the most beneficial to you right now? Is there any room to release others? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!⁠

PREFER TO LISTEN? TUNE INTO THE LIVE WELL PODCAST BELOW (AND DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE SO YOU'LL NEVER MISS OUT!)

Click here to listen in iTunes

Click here to listen in Stitcher

In this episode, I talk about wellness burnout which I define as a state of increased stress and overwhelm that comes from the constant pursuit of health and wellness practices. We have good intentions, and then we start to feel like we need to do all of the things all of the time.


If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell and I'm so excited that you're here! I am a RN & Functional Nutrition Practitioner that helps those with autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance and gut issues heal without overwhelm so you can feel better in your body in a way that honors your unique needs and feels sustainable for the rest of your life. 

If you suffer from:

  • Fatigue and energy crashes

  • Brain fog

  • Poor digestion

  • Painful periods and PMS

  • Symptoms of autoimmunity

  • Stress and overwhelm 

...and aren't getting the support you need, I’m here to help guide you! My job is to clear the overwhelm, help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and co-create a sustainable path forward to help you reach your goals and feel better in your amazing body. When we work together you can’t fail. 

In my health & nutrition coaching programs I support you in the quest to get back into balance by listening to your story, understanding your needs, getting to the roots of imbalance in the body and co-creating a sustainable path to healing together. These sessions weave together functional nutrition and science, lived experience, mindset shifts, and intuitive guidance for a unique and full-spectrum approach to nutrition counseling and holistic health.

I always offer free 20-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and identify what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.

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3 Questions to Help You Tune Into Your Body

In order to cultivate sustainability in our healing journey, what we really need to do is become experts at listening to what our bodies are telling us. Instead of constantly searching and looking outside of ourselves for the answers, I'll share tips on how to look within to figure out what works best for you and your beautiful body, and three simple but very powerful questions to help you tune into your body.

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3 Questions to Help You Tune Into Your Body

Have you ever found yourself following a diet plan or a protocol only to get bored or only last a few weeks before you “fall off the wagon” or revert back to your old way of doing things? Do you feel like you do ok when you’re on a strict guideline but the minute life happens and you travel, go out to eat or have a stressful day you fall back into old habits? Does it feel like you’re really black and white about your health and like you’re either being “good” and adhering to a plan or you’re being “bad” and doing whatever you want? 

It can feel like a really frustrating cycle of trying something, falling off, trying something, and falling off. If you’re felt this way you’re certainly not alone!

Many of us do well with protocols where someone tells us what to do and we follow that plan. But this means that when we stop doing the protocol or veer off track, we feel lost. 

When the focus is on diet plans or protocols that we must follow, we rely on this external cue to tell us what to eat, how much to eat, what to do, etc. While it can be helpful to have guidelines and a plan when we are trying to accomplish a goal or improve health, solely relying on these external guides can have the unintended effect of disconnecting us from what our body is trying to tell us about what it needs. 

If we follow a plan that restricts calories, for example, we rely on that caloric number to tell us how much more we are “allowed” to eat. The signals we get from our bodies like hunger and fullness cues, energy levels, digestion, etc. take second place to this external guideline. 

Even in the case of a healing diet or supplement protocol from a doctor, if we get a list of things we need to do on a daily basis without connecting to how those things are actually affecting our body, we continue to rely solely on these external guidelines for how to care for ourselves. When this protocol or plan is over, or if it didn’t have the intended effects we wanted, we don’t have any information about where to go next and we’re left going back to square one. 

Sometimes we need specific protocols to support us during different phases of our healing journey, but in order to cultivate sustainability in our healing journey, what we really need to do is become experts at listening to what our bodies are telling us and turning inwards.

“Listen to your body” might be an annoying phrase that you can’t quite wrap your head around. It’s in the same family as, “reduce your stress” or “self-care” or other phrases that sound so nice and simple, but can be hard to pin down when you’re actually trying to achieve them.

Listening to our bodies has become a vague and somewhat challenging task because we've gotten so used to looking outside of ourselves for information and guidance on how to feel better.

Instead of constantly searching and looking outside of ourselves for the answers, I want to talk about how to look within as the only way to really figure out what works best for you and your beautiful body.

Here are 3 questions to start this process of tuning into the body

1. How do I feel?
This question can also be expanded a little more. You might also ask: Where am I holding tension? What are my symptoms? What is my energy level? To feel into the answer to this question, you may need to pause, stop, take inventory and breathe.

2. What do I need?
Based on the answer that you get by asking yourself “How do I feel?” you can then ask yourself what you need based on this? Answers that come up for you when you ask yourself what you need might be things like: rest, something to eat, letting out your emotions, a long walk. When you answer this question of what you need based on how you feel, you’ll get a very different answer than “I should”. Be careful of “shoulds”, and if they do come up when you ask yourself what you need, then come back to these two key questions.

3. Can I give myself that? 
This is where the dynamic comes into play where we might feel the “shoulds” or conflicting emotions. When you ask yourself this question, take the responses that you got when you really tuned in and try to really honor your body, what you’re feeling, and your needs. See if you can start developing a practice of saying yes when you ask yourself this question of “Can I give myself that?”.

Other tools that can help you tune in

5-second body scans. Before meals to ask yourself these questions to help you continue the process of strengthening this connection.

Getting quiet. Silence isn’t empty. It's full of answers. Breathing and meditating allows us to clear mental clutter so we can more fully listen to the signs and signals our bodies are trying to give us. I like the apps Calm or Insight for introductory meditation, or I practice my favorite 4-7-8 breathing technique.

Complete a 5-day food/symptom journal. This is a great way to start the process of noticing how what you put in your body makes you feel. You can download it by going to: http://www.christinatidwell.com/blog/symptomjournal

These 3 questions might sound simple, but they are SO powerful. This is a process, and it's like strengthening a muscle, so be patient with yourself! Let me know in the comments where you're at with this process of tuning in. What do you notice right now if you do a 5-second body scan? What comes up? If you complete your 5-day food journal and come up with some interesting insights, let me know!

PREFER TO LISTEN? TUNE INTO THE LIVE WELL PODCAST BELOW (AND DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE SO YOU'LL NEVER MISS OUT!)

Click here to listen in iTunes

Click here to listen in Stitcher

Have you ever found yourself following a diet plan or a protocol only to get bored or only last a few weeks before you "fall off the wagon" or revert back to your old way of doing things?


If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell and I'm so excited that you're here! I am a RN & Functional Nutrition Practitioner that helps those with autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance and gut issues heal without overwhelm so you can feel better in your body in a way that honors your unique needs and feels sustainable for the rest of your life. 

If you suffer from:

  • Fatigue and energy crashes

  • Brain fog

  • Poor digestion

  • Painful periods and PMS

  • Symptoms of autoimmunity

  • Stress and overwhelm 

...and aren't getting the support you need, I’m here to help guide you! My job is to clear the overwhelm, help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and co-create a sustainable path forward to help you reach your goals and feel better in your amazing body. When we work together you can’t fail. 

In my health & nutrition coaching programs I support you in the quest to get back into balance by listening to your story, understanding your needs, getting to the roots of imbalance in the body and co-creating a sustainable path to healing together. These sessions weave together functional nutrition and science, lived experience, mindset shifts, and intuitive guidance for a unique and full-spectrum approach to nutrition counseling and holistic health.

I always offer free 20-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and identify what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.

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3 Ways to Ease Anxiety and Create Calm with Audrey Sutton Mills

I am so happy to have Audrey Sutton Mills on this episode of The Live Well podcast to speak about the collective fear and uncertainty that many of us might be facing in these times. Audrey’s purpose is to help you uncover your light and embody your worth, knowing that you are enough and you matter. I can think of no better person to speak into the big emotions that are coming up collectively right now, and how we can use simple tools to help bring us back to ourselves and find more calm and ease.

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I am so happy to have Audrey Sutton Mills on the podcast today to speak about the collective fear and uncertainty that many of us might be facing in these times, and explore ways to ease anxiety and come back to ourselves. 

Through her podcast, courses, writing, and events, Audrey teaches tools to cultivate deeper self-love and connection. Audrey believes we all have a light within us, but it gets covered up by the complexities of life. Her purpose is to help you uncover your light and embody your worth, knowing that you are enough and you matter. I can think of no better person to speak into the big emotions that are coming up collectively right now, and how we can use simple tools to help bring us back to ourselves and find more calm and ease. 

LISTEN BELOW (AND DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE SO YOU'LL NEVER MISS OUT!)

Click here to listen in iTunes

Click here to listen in Stitcher

On this episode of The Live Well Podcast, I have Audrey Sutton Mills joining me to speak about the collective fear and uncertainty that many of us might be facing in these times, and ways to connect back to ourselves.  Audrey believes we all have a light within us, but it gets covered up by life.

SHOW NOTES:

  • 0:00 Intro 

  • 4:03 - Using mindfulness tools to come home to yourself

    • Dealing with fear, uncertainty, and our own inner critic

    • Using simple tools to work through the unknown

  • 6:02 - Some of the things we're noticing now given everything that's happening in the world with COVID-19

    • Dealing with uncertainty and letting go of 'shoulds'

  • 9:29 - Trying to control everything around us actually keeps us stuck

  • 10:50 - The tools and ways that people can begin to learn how to come home to themselves

    • “There’s your business, other people’s business, and God’s business.” - Bryon Katie

    • Letting go of control, understanding what you want & need, and changing our perspective during this crisis

  • 12:32 - The tools and ways that people can begin to learn how to come home to themselves

    • Focusing on what is actually in your control

    • Self-care and getting clear on what self-care actually looks like for you in small and sacred ways

    • Giving yourself self-love which might mean compassion, grace, sitting with the tough emotions

  • 16:17 - The practice of surrender and simple ways to surrender

    • Write down what you want to surrender, let go of the control, and release it

    • Rewiring your thoughts by letting go of what’s not serving you

    • Meditating and holding space for what is

  • 20:27 - Resources for meditation practices

  • 21:03 - Slowing down, moving through the process of winding down and going inward

  • 23:20 - Audrey shares some of her personal backstory and how she was forced to truly evaluate her life and learn to slow down

    • “We either willfully shed or we are broken open.” - Mark Nepo

    • True transformation takes place through trauma and tough times

  • 25:59 - The Guest House by Rumi

  • 28:07 - Finding more joy and gratitude on the other side of tough times as individuals and as a collective

  • 31:08 - Recapping the 3 steps to stay open and come home to yourself

  • 32:48 Additional resources from Audrey and where to find her

Ep 77 3 Ways to Ease Anxiety and Create Calm with Audrey Sutton Mills IG Tile.png

Connect with Audrey

Website | Facebook | Instagram



If you loved this episode, I'd be honored for you to give me a rating on iTunes. This helps me to get content out to others who are interested in getting control of their health through diet, lifestyle shifts and personal empowerment.


If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell and I'm so excited that you're here! I am a RN & Functional Nutrition Practitioner that helps those with autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance and gut issues heal without overwhelm so you can feel better in your body in a way that honors your unique needs and feels sustainable for the rest of your life. 

If you suffer from:

  • Fatigue and energy crashes

  • Brain fog

  • Poor digestion

  • Painful periods and PMS

  • Symptoms of autoimmunity

  • Stress and overwhelm 

...and aren't getting the support you need, I’m here to help guide you! My job is to clear the overwhelm, help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and co-create a sustainable path forward to help you reach your goals and feel better in your amazing body. When we work together you can’t fail. 

In my health & nutrition coaching programs I support you in the quest to get back into balance by listening to your story, understanding your needs, getting to the roots of imbalance in the body and co-creating a sustainable path to healing together. These sessions weave together functional nutrition and science, lived experience, mindset shifts, and intuitive guidance for a unique and full-spectrum approach to nutrition counseling and holistic health.

I always offer free 20-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and identify what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.

Read More