Episode Length: 19:10

The FDA just approved a device that turns off inflammation through electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve—with stunning results for 50% of rheumatoid arthritis patients who've failed medication. But what if you don't need the device? What if consciousness can activate the same healing pathway?

In this episode, Kristin shares breakthrough research from neurosurgeon Dr. Kevin Tracy about how the vagus nerve controls inflammation (the primary driver of biological aging), and introduces her "volume dial" model for activating your body's natural anti-inflammatory switch.

1. The three nervous system settings and which one is silently aging you right now
2. Why chronic inflammation accelerates aging in your face, body, and biology
3. The FDA breakthrough that validates consciousness-based healing approaches
4. The "Living Flame" volume dial model - your essence is always at full power, but reception varies
5. How emotional hijackers (fear, worry, shame, anger) literally trigger inflammation
6. The 3-minute practice that activates your ventral vagal pathway naturally
7. Why longer exhales signal safety to your nervous system
8. How to shift from fight/flight to healing mode even in chaotic circumstances

The Three Nervous System Settings:

1. Fight/Flight Mode → inflammation rises → aging accelerates
2. Shutdown/Freeze Mode → deeper inflammation → worse aging
3. Healing Mode → anti-inflammatory signals flow → regeneration activates

The Living Flame Volume Dial: Your life force (essence, divine spark) is always burning at 100% power. What varies is how much you RECEIVE—like a volume dial that emotional hijackers unconsciously turn down. Turn the dial up consciously, and your vagus nerve signals safety, activating healing chemistry instead of inflammatory aging chemistry.

The Vagus Nerve Connection: When you feel genuinely safe (high flame reception) → ventral vagal pathway activates → inflammation shuts off → oxytocin, DHEA, and regenerative chemistry flow → biological age reverses.

1. Hand on heart - Feel your heartbeat (safety signal)
2. Breathe: 3 seconds in, 7 seconds out - Longer exhale activates vagal tone
3. Ask: "What if I opened up 10% more of this living flame energy?"
4. Visualize the dial - Turn up your flame reception slightly

Episode Length: 15 minutes

Hey y'all, hey friends, it's me Kristin back with a chilly winter day message for you. I'm so excited to tell you about today, because it's a topic that's really near and dear to my heart: radically alive systems.

For many of us, especially those of us like me approaching 70, sometimes I meet other women in their late 60s or early 70s, and I see this kind of dimness in their eyes. And I know that they're not having this experience of Radical Aliveness that I am having. So today, I'm here to talk about it.

Your life reflects the systems that you're running. So if there is a dimness in your eyes or a sagging or a heaviness or a gravity around you, it's because the systems that you're running are not working well for you. And you may not even realize that you're running systems, and you may not even realize that it's the systems that aren't working well.

See, a lot of times we start running systems when we're really small children. I know that I did. I grew up in a household where there was some dysfunction, and because of that dysfunction, the parenting wasn't optimal, to say the least. And so it began to program me with systems about how to do well in my family environment that weren't really very healthy.

These systems were not only unconscious, but very conscious. Like, for example, my dad used to tell me, "An accident is something you mean not to happen." So if I put a glass on the counter close to the edge, my dad would come and shake his finger at me and say, "When this glass gets knocked off the counter, it will not be an accident, because you did not make sure that you put the glass somewhere where it couldn't be knocked off."

This kind of system sets you up so that you're constantly looking into the future, identifying what you don't want to happen, and then living in a way that won't allow the thing you don't want to happen to happen. You're constantly focused on what you don't want.

Well, if you know how life actually works, what you focus on gets bigger and expands. So if you focus on what you don't want, what do you have a lot of in your life? A lot of what you don't want. And this is why so many people are depressed and anxious—because their focus is on what they don't want, and that is expanding and getting bigger every day.

And so the light goes out of their eyes, and their face gets heavy, and the gravity around them is weighing them down, and sometimes you get this kind of stooped posture. Well, those are all symptoms of bad systems. But you can change your systems at any time. It's a matter of getting conscious about them and deciding what you want to do about it.

One thing I realize is that despite the fact that trips around the sun have a biological impact—and I'm certainly not trying to say they don't—how much you age in those trips around the sun isn't so much about the trips as it is about these systems that I'm talking about. And one of the systems, for sure, without any doubt at all, is what I call the aging default.

The aging default is a system that is going to run unless you do something about it. It's this whole "hell to get old" belief. It's this "you're used up, washed up, burned out, burned up, exhausted, fatigued, old people are irrelevant" programming. All the things that when you were 20 years old made you think, "Oh gosh, I don't want to be an old person." My dad used to say getting old is hell.

Well, I'm here to disagree with that, and I say getting old is heaven. We all know people that are not going to get old because they're already gone. In my high school graduating class, it is scary how many people are not going to get old. And I feel the privilege of having more trips around the sun ahead of...

Episode Length: 21 minutes

The Mirror Doesn't Match

Hi everybody. Today, I want to talk about that weird, uncomfortable feeling that you get when you look in the mirror and you don't really recognize the face that you see there.

I know when it happens to me, I'm like, "What? Who is this person?" I just can't somehow believe it, because the person that I feel myself to be inside isn't matching the face that I see in the mirror. Does that ever happen to you?

When it started happening to me seriously, I got involved in looking for research about how to live so that this disparity between what I see and what I feel inside could come closer together. Because as I approach my 70th birthday this year, it's very important to me to hold on to life, to hold on to that feeling of aliveness. I call it Radical Aliveness.

Radical Aliveness isn't probably just going to stumble on you. It's a way of life, it's a lifestyle. And so everything that I find in terms of research that helps me understand how to cultivate this Radical Aliveness is what I want to bring to these videos.

Discovering Awe

This week, I had an amazing, really amazing experience with a book called Awe (A-W-E). And you know, "awesome"—that word has really diminished the beauty and the value of the word awe, because people say "awesome" about French fries and where you went for breakfast this morning. "Oh, awesome."

No. I mean, I wish we could quit using it that way, because "awesome" used to be a word that really stopped the scroll, so to speak. When something was truly awesome, it was worthy of our attention, and it meant something.

And these researchers at UC Berkeley have found out that not only does it mean something to the mind, to our thoughts, it means something to our bodies. And that's why I'm here, because if you want to begin to align your biology with your feeling of Radical Aliveness inside, this understanding of what awe is is a really powerful tool to put in your toolbox.

Two Doorways to Awe

Let's dive in. There are two kinds of experiences that open us up to awe.

The Material World

The first is to comprehend—take in deeply—something in the material world, the world around us. Walking in a forest, running along a beach, hiking up a mountain, smelling the coffee, smelling the roses that are blooming in the rose garden, feeling soft, furry things on your skin.

If you really stop and have these experiences, it's awe-inspiring, because the ability to perceive the physical world through our senses is an amazing gift. And we take it for granted, friends.

All you have to do is look at a little kid, and little kids will teach you everything you need to know about awe, because they are not jaded to the world yet. Everything is like, "Wow! Wow! Wow!" And a day in the life of a little kid may have 20, 30—I don't know—countless experiences of awe and wonderment.

And what does that awe and wonderment do? It releases beautiful oxytocin hormone, DHEA (which is a growth hormone), and calms the heart rate, brings the heart into heart coherence, which is a very specific state of regulated, even steady heartbeat. That means that your nervous system is calm and peaceful and receptive, and all these little pieces say to your body, "You're safe."

And when your body is safe, it doesn't have cortisol and adrenaline and the hormones and chemicals that produce stress. Because stress uses inflammation, and inflammation is what really is the main problem with biological aging.

So it's very important to begin to live in this condition of harmony and flow and rightness with the world.

Moral Beauty: The Surprising Discovery

The UC Berkeley researchers found that there was actually an even more powerful way to experience awe,

Episode Summary:

Are you struggling with loneliness this holiday season? Many people are. But there's a difference between desiring connection and identifying yourself as "lonely" — and that difference affects your biology, not just your mood.

In this episode, Kristin explores how the words we use to describe our longing for connection can either empower us or trap us in a cycle of withdrawal and isolation. She shares her own experience navigating the first holiday season without her mother, and the three simple actions she took that transformed heartache into genuine connection within days.

Key Takeaways:

1. Wanting connection is life force. Calling yourself "lonely" creates an identity that leads to withdrawal
2. The loneliness identity triggers cortisol and inflammation, accelerating aging. Acting on the desire for connection releases oxytocin, which youths you.
3. You don't have to wait for connection to find you. One small reach — a text, a kind gesture, an unexpected call — can shift everything.

The Practice:

Put your hand on your heart and ask: What's one small thing I can do today to feel more connected? Then do it. Notice how your body responds.

Connect with Kristin at Kristin@KristinvanTilburg.com

What's one thing you wish you had said... that maybe now feels too late to say?

In this episode, I explore the research behind "the backpack" — what 1,200 elders in Cornell's Legacy Project called the weight of their unspoken words, unexpressed love, and unresolved regrets. Their biggest regret? "I wish I had said 'I love you' more."

I share how my mother's death at 103 taught me to leave nothing unsaid — and why carrying that backpack isn't just emotionally heavy. It's aging your biology.

This week's invitation: Choose one regret. Express it — out loud, on paper, or just to yourself. Then let it go. Your cells will thank you.