Behind a Smile with Dr. Shauntel Ambrose
I host a podcast that shares the secrets behind some of the most resilient healthcare businesses worldwide, innovative products, savvy strategies and daily inspiration to reach your ultimate in your healthcare career. I interview the movers and shakers of healthcare who courageously push boundaries. Whether you a start-up, or needing a push to keep going or a family business or looking for mentorship without the business know-how. This is an all-inclusive, keeping it real, not for the faint-hearted, haters or the nay-sayers live your best life as a member of a global community in healthcare podcast!
Behind a Smile with Dr. Shauntel Ambrose
Creating Harmonious Work Environments and Strong Partnerships in Healthcare
Unlock the secrets to a fulfilling professional life with insights from Mandy Hoddinott, a trailblazing physiotherapist, psychologist, and coach. Mandy takes us on her fascinating journey from an interest in equine therapy to becoming a multi-talent in human physiotherapy and psychology. Learn practical strategies for posture correction and stress management, specifically tailored for dentists who often battle neck and back issues. Discover how physiotherapy can provide relief for TMJ and clenching issues that stem from stress, making this episode a must-listen for healthcare professionals seeking holistic well-being.
Ever wondered how shared office spaces could revolutionize your work life? Explore the innovative benefits of shared office environments, a trend that surged during the COVID era and continues to gain traction. These spaces not only cut costs but also enhance collaboration and problem-solving among diverse professionals. We dive deep into the essentials of effective communication, adaptability, and selecting the right shared office space to align with your business needs, ensuring a harmonious and productive work setting.
Finally, gain invaluable insights into maintaining relationships within professional couples and the importance of shared ethical and communication standards. We discuss ongoing projects aimed at building resilience and career growth, including a comprehensive guide on regulating the nervous system. This segment underscores the power of self-care, job crafting, and community support in pursuing your career passions and achieving personal goals. Tune in for actionable steps and inspiring stories that will empower you to take control of your professional and personal life.
Hello and welcome to Behind a Smile. I am Dr Chantal Ambrose and I am a dentist. I host a healthcare business podcast where I interview healthcare practitioners around the world, sharing tips on how to improve your healthcare practice, innovate and grow, while living your best life. We share products and information from healthcare partners that can help you in your practice journey, be it a startup, a family-based business or a multidisciplinary healthcare team. Most of the information provided here is based on personal experience and opinions. Of the information provided here is based on personal experience and opinions, so please supplement what you learn here with approved research, studies and professional advice. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and I invite you to join our community. If you haven't, we would love to hear from you. If you would like to be on the show, drop me a mail at behindasmile2 at gmailcom. Let's make it happen together. Welcome everyone. It is Dr Ambrose here, and I have a wonderful guest today. It's Mandy Hoddinot.
Speaker 1:I've brought you quite a few guests, but this guest of mine I'm very excited to have.
Speaker 1:She's our first physiotherapist, and she's not just a physiotherapist, she's a psychologist as well. And she's not just a psychologist, she's also a coach. We have in our studio today, mandy, who started off in Peter Maritzburg and graduated from UCT in 1993 with physiotherapy. She then went to the States and for seven years practiced there and then came back to South African shores, and as she was practicing she just noticed that the kids that she would treat seemed to be under such a lot of increasing stress and decided to study a psychology degree, and she graduated with her BA honors in psychology in 2021 and has now observed a link between the way the body expresses stress, from her 30 years of experience as a physiotherapist, and how we experience stress in the mind, from the studies of psychology, and she has put this together into a very unique way. She has integrated international coaching she is a member of the International Coaching Federation and so I'm very excited to bring to you a very special guest, mandy welcome.
Speaker 2:Good morning and thank you.
Speaker 1:Chantal, it's very good to see you today. I'm being excited to chat to you. You know, listen, I am blown away by what you have to offer today, and I want to know a little bit about your journey. So can you share with us what led you to do physiotherapy?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a little bit of an unusual story, because the reason I chose physiotherapy in the first place was because I wanted to work with horses, and it was one way of still earning a professional degree and being employable in the horse world. But as I studied physio, I actually really enjoyed the work with humans. As a result, I have pursued my career more in sport and in human physiotherapy.
Speaker 1:That is mind-blowing. So, if I understand you correctly, did you do a little bit of equine therapy as well then? Yes, I did.
Speaker 2:In the early stages of my career, I was seeing both people and horses, mainly racehorses.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then you know listen. We've had many healthcare professionals and you know that a large number of our listeners are in the dental field.
Speaker 1:Because I am a dentist and, as you know, we suffer a tremendous number of neck and back issues and, if I'm honest, I think the most of the professionals that I get to speak to only step out of their clinical persona in order to go and pursue other options is because often their neck and their back become something that they just cannot deal with any longer. So I was just thinking now do you have any sort of advice that you can offer dentists to avoid these future neck and back problems from a physiotherapy point of view? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, my heart really goes out to dentists of many of the professions I've seen. I think that the challenges that you have with the way that you sit and the way that you have to turn and look into a mouth and focus on a small space is incredibly challenging. I've actually questioned my dentist about it and all I can offer is that you need to be aware of which way you're turning and how you rotate it and how you're bending over forward, and you need to reverse that as often as possible. So when you take breaks to stretch, rotate your body the other way, put your neck in the opposite, turn your head the other way and also to just flush your system. So it's really important that at the end of the day or every morning that you go for a walk or do something that flushes your muscles and gets rid of all those toxins that build up from being in one posture for hours on end during patients, but for injuries that are coming from neck and back, issues from just the way we have to work.
Speaker 1:We have, I mean, for the most part. I think if everyone could work with a microscope they would, but costs don't afford that to every single practice and I think we could appreciate having to do a little bit of self-care for our jobs. That'll make you know, each patient procedure, as complex as it ends up being a little bit easier for us. So we appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Now over the last couple of shows, you'll see that we have been focusing a lot on clenching and TMJ and stress, and in fact I've just come off a burnout workshop in Cape Town this weekend. So I'm really interested to hear a little bit of what you have to offer. But tell me you know, as a practitioner, I've often sent patients to physiotherapists who have TMJ related issues and clenching issues in addition to some of the other therapies that we will have available as dentists.
Speaker 1:Now, often dentists would not ordinarily refer to a physiotherapist and I would love to hear from you what benefits would that be that a physiotherapist will be able to offer our TMJ patients more information and more support than just a dentist?
Speaker 2:Well, tmj just from my psychology training is essentially a stress reaction.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're clenching or grinding your teeth at night, that is because you're too stressed. So that is getting down to the cause of it, what you'd really need to deal with. However, what I found as a physio is that as soon as you put your hands on somebody's body, they tend to open up to you. So a physiotherapist can be very valuable in this way because as the patient is lying there and being treated for the tight muscles around the jaw and you know mobilizing the actual TMJ, the patient also tends to open up to you and start to tell you about the stresses in their lives at the moment. So it has kind of a double effect from that point of view. But as a physio, you really need to release the muscles around the temporomandibular joint and you need to do some mobilizations around the joint and inside the mouth. So it's quite technical. It's not my area of speciality, but I have seen some TMJ patients and you know the TMJ also causes headaches and can cause neck problems. So those also need to be addressed.
Speaker 1:What I find is we've just spoken about this very recently, when I was lucky enough to interview somebody who is seeing TMJ as their main line of work, and we were talking about the fact that the symptoms sometimes are not completely available to people, thinking that it's a dental issue.
Speaker 1:So they'll often go to a doctor first complaining about some sort of shoulder pains, or they'll complain about headaches, and often the dentist doesn't get to be seen until they reach the last bit, or really, incidentally, they would go to a dentist and then the dentist will notice that their mouth opening is not ill or that there'll be a click when they open the mouth, but just for a routine cleaning. So there's almost an end line. That happens, but there's no help available for a long period of time. People are just put on pain meds before they can have any intervention, and what we're wanting to do is really bring awareness to having people just be a little bit aware of the symptoms, even though they don't sound like they're dental. It doesn't present with aching teeth necessarily Some people do with significant clenching.
Speaker 1:So it's just getting those processes right and getting enough help on board and then getting them to the right people at the right time. I think is where we're trying to go with the support for that. So we really appreciate that. I've heard of a lot of different diversification. I'm very excited to hear that you're living your best life. From what I can see and what I've read, and now from physiotherapy, you have actively now pursued another career in psychology and you wanted to link the two because you saw from the physiotherapy people's desire and need for needing to reduce stresses that often are just physical and that they're seeking physical help from you but then they're sharing such a lot of their psychological stress with you as well. It's a different route to take. Now tell us what led you there. What was the day that you said this is something I'm going to have to pursue in life.
Speaker 2:As I'd said to you, I had been seeing a lot of patients and really young patients, you know, even kids from juniors at the junior school level that just suddenly started. I suddenly started to notice that their stress levels were just increasing and I thought this can't be right. You know, for developing brains to be exposed to this much sort of a chronic level of cortisol on an ongoing basis is not going to be good for these kids at all. So I was wondering how to help them, and I've always wanted to study another degree. So I thought I may as well study psychology and see what it's going to take to get going and earn a degree in psychology, and then maybe I'll have the knowledge to be able to help these kids a little bit better.
Speaker 2:You know, once I started studying psychology, I really discovered my passion, because it's something that I realized that I've been reading psychology books since I graduated from physiotherapy many years ago. So it is really it has become my first love and is the direction that I want to pursue in the rest of my career. However, I must just correct you a little bit. I'm not a psychologist. You have to have a master's in psychology to call yourself a psychologist. I've only got an honors, which is why I went and studied coaching through UCT Business School, so that I could use that knowledge to help people wherever I can.
Speaker 1:So thanks for that, mandy, because it's an important thing to mention that you're not a clinical psychologist, but you are able to assist people by your coaching. Now tell us, how did you go about getting involved in international coaching?
Speaker 2:I've done quite a few online courses through international companies and very often you engage with other participants on the courses and so you get to know them very rudimentary level, but often we would connect and we had agreed to sort of have a sort of cyber coffee afterwards a virtual coffee and I got to know some of the ladies who I did these courses with, and sometimes we meet online and they've seen my coaching business take off and a lot of them are still struggling to get theirs off the ground.
Speaker 2:They approached me to help me, to coach them and help them to get over the insecurities that prevent them from going forward with their own coaching careers. And in addition to that, there are a lot of South Africans living overseas and some of the patients that I've helped or the clients that I've helped here in South Africa have referred friends of theirs that live all over the world at the moment in different countries. So that's how I've got to meet them and generally people are the same all over the world, whether they live in South Africa or elsewhere. We all want to have good relationships, we all want to have successful careers and we all have stress over the security of our jobs or our method of earning income. It's pretty much the same kind of coaching, no matter what culture you're addressing.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting way to diversify a career, because what it does is it does give you accessibility to many, many more people, but at the same time, you get to reach your absolute best for yourself of what you are aiming to do and what you're aiming to actually accomplish.
Speaker 1:So well done to you? That's really very exciting. Done to you, that's really very exciting. I always commend anyone that is, like I say, living their best life and doing active steps to getting there, step by step. So we talk about many business strategies and we talk about ways to sustain businesses because, like you say, as professionals we don't often get to talk about how stressful that is and unless you have really good friends they will be able to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly of what happens in their businesses.
Speaker 1:But for the most part, it is something that you actually carry as a silent stress and you just hope that it's going to get better, and you don't really go for any coaching.
Speaker 1:And you know some people do have almost a phobia of admitting that they're needing help, and so you know. I think that one of the other strategies that I've noticed that you were able to take on that is a really strong strategy at the moment is to do an office shared space. So sharing offices has been something that came in quite new. Over COVID and post COVID, we found that the market for shared office spaces were increasing because people needed to start working remotely, and people who had now a job where they would have to go into work were now doing remote access but could not do it at their homes, and so the accessibility of shared office spaces became something that became a doable option where you will find almost a rentable space for an hour or two, no matter what you're doing for a lot of the options. So I was wanting to know now what are the benefits of this, since you are in a shared office space?
Speaker 2:I think that there are more benefits to disadvantages in sharing space, especially from a cost point of view. Most of us, having had a bad experience over COVID, with high work expenses and suddenly having to continue to pay those rents and admin fees when we had no income coming in during the lockdown, got us to think a little bit more creatively about how we set up our businesses so that we can keep it lean and mean and be at less risk of future problems with keeping our businesses going during any disruptions. So what I really like about sharing space is, you know, the sharing of costs in the actual space and in the admin fees, as well as the collaboration with other professionals. That's very valuable. You know, two brains are always better than one, and three even more, and often we have some challenging cases and if we can discuss those cases amongst ourselves, then sometimes you see a perspective that you wouldn't have noticed before. So you know, the other thing is, I've always been lucky with the kind of people that I choose to work with.
Speaker 1:We've always gone on well and had good communication, so that also makes a massive difference, maddy we know that you also have been quite innovative in the way you've taken on your strategies in order to sustain your own business. So, as part of a shared office space, can you share with our listeners what are the advantages and disadvantages, and then how do you choose the right fit?
Speaker 2:During COVID and lockdown, a lot of people were caught unawares because their office expenses were really high and they couldn't keep up with the costs with no income coming in during lockdown. So many people have been looking for ways of working together, and I think that there are more benefits than disadvantages because of the amount of money you can save by sharing space and then also sharing admin costs makes a huge benefit, or is a huge benefit. And in addition to that, if you're working with like-minded professionals, there's a lot of collaboration that can go on, and when you have difficult cases, you can run them by other people, because you know two or three heads are always better than one to solve a problem. So I think you can provide a better service in that way. Yeah, so, and I think that so long as you, so long as you have good communication skills, then very different personalities can really gel together and make something even better happen.
Speaker 1:Hesitant only because they're not sure what that gray area would look like when some people just work differently from others and now needing to meet in the middle so that everyone can have an equal opportunity at the administration and all of the other offerings of a shared base. But then you know, with your background in psychology and with some of the coaching that you do, what then would be some of the tips that you could give people to look for people that will work well with them, because I think that will be. The next question is how do you know it's going to work if you don't have people that are long term associations?
Speaker 2:have people that are long-term associations. You know, if you have similar visions for where you're going and what you're using the office space for and you have shared sort of ethical and communication standards, then very often, even when you have to have those difficult discussions which you always are going to have to in any kind of shared space, then you can do so with sort of respect and kindness rather than creating conflict. To create a harmonious business environment, I think, comes down more to how you communicate with each other and how clear you are on how you're going to be using that space, how much noise you're going to be making and how much bandwidth you're going to be using in order for it to be successful and for you to be able to work together without too much conflict, have this mutual respect and it comes down to a baseline of knowing that our ethical standards and the way we want to run our offices are similar.
Speaker 1:Find that conflict with individuals that just don't have those baselines that are cohesive. It's almost impossible to get right for a long period of time, and they do, unfortunately don't end up in the right direction. But for the people who get it right, they make that concerted effort right at the beginning to know that there's a checklist. These are my needs and this is what I'm looking to do. How about you?
Speaker 1:It's almost there's a criteria, and if those criteria fit each other almost there's a criteria and if those criteria fit each other, then I think you have a winning strategy, because a shared cost at this perspective and at this level of the economy is always going to be something that people can look at doing and improving their businesses by doing. And then the collaboration that comes from just two minds and three minds thinking together for more difficult cases is remarkable. What can be accomplished really in our treatment regimens. So we really appreciate that, you know.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I want to definitely touch base on is the fact that you are a published author. A published author and one would think that with that many, many personas on your plate, that there's definitely no time to write a book, leave alone go and publish a book. So tell us a little bit about your book and your process and what advice, you know, do you have to someone that is thinking about now. I've always had this passion about writing and I just can't put my mind around. How did you get there? Tell us a bit about the journey and congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Well, it was quite a long journey. It actually started many years ago when I was between husbands so I had just gotten divorced from my first marriage and I used to hang out with quite a few other divorced ladies and we used to go out a lot, keep each other company and obviously, you know, after dinner, late into the night, the talk would come around to the demise of our marriages and our sex lives. And it was quite interesting because a common theme amongst everyone was that they always asked the question how come, when couples get together in the beginning and everything's going well, do they have lots of sex and then, as the relationship goes on, that wanes until eventually there are a lot of couples today that don't have any sex at all, and they felt that that was one of the reasons why their marriages failed. So I decided to do some research and see what I could find, and I was researching kind of the neurobiology and neurochemistry of sex and of relationship, and the sort of information that I found about reward centers and things like that sort of reminded me of a study that I'd read about years before, which was called the Marshmallow Test, and this was a study that was done with children. Can you still hear me, okay, because I can see? It looked like we were disconnected again.
Speaker 2:I was going to be telling a whole story. So, basically, this marshmallow test took young kids at the age of four and what they would do is they'd put a kid into a room and a teacher would come and give them a marshmallow and say to them if you don't eat this marshmallow before I come back, you'll get two marshmallows, otherwise you're only going to get the one marshmallow, and then the teacher would leave the child. And it's quite entertaining to watch the videos that have been taken on YouTube. But the bottom line was they were divided into two groups the marshmallow eaters and the marshmallow leavers, and what they found over time is that the kids that were able to delay gratification at the age of four went on to lead much more successful lives. And this has kind of ran parallel to what I found out in my research in neurochemistry and reward centers was that if you can delay gratification when it comes to your relationship, and especially the physical part of your relationship, then it does seem to have a lot of rewards later on in your relationship.
Speaker 2:So I thought of writing this into a book and I didn't want it to be sort of a dry psychology book or, you know, self-help book. So I thought if I put it into a novel form then at least it would make it fun and entertaining for people to read and to learn about. So I chose a romance novel because it would have been a little bit difficult for that subject matter to fit into a sort of crime murder mystery matter. To fit into a sort of crime murder mystery, and in addition to the relationship advice I've also added a couple of other sort of life lessons along the way, so that it becomes, you know, sort of a double genre.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, this is fantastic. I really I applaud you and I congratulate you. I don't know how it is possible that somebody can do that much within such a short period of time. And you know, each time I read your biography or when I really listen to you, I think that you're really a person of action, that you're really a person of action and you know we've had on previous shows how a vision process sometimes for people remains just the vision process. It never becomes an actual part of their action plan and it just becomes almost a distant dream that you know they never get close to doing. And I think that you have mastered, you've really mastered the. I think it's these tiny little steps towards making what you have in your vision process something part of your reality and I really applaud you on that.
Speaker 1:Now we're talking about something that is probably something that most people won't talk about, but it will contribute to a significant amount of stress. And when we're talking about professionals, and we're talking about the stresses that, just as a professional person, you have to go through, I think you would have a little bit of advice for our professional couples who have to deal not only with keeping their practices running and keeping their patients happy and keeping your bottom line able to pay your bills and maybe try to save some. What relationship advice would you give to our professional couples out there?
Speaker 2:That was quite a it's quite a long question. And the first thing we have to all acknowledge is that if you can find a professional couple without relationship issues, I'd like you to point them out to me and I think we should get them on here and give them an award, because I don't think that that's possible. In fact, you know, I kind of believe that relationships are meant to be problematic or create challenges. I think that the way that our partners trigger us in our relationships reveal to us the very next step we need to take in our personal growth. So I think it's essential actually that we challenge each other. Sorry, I need to consult my notes because it was quite a long question.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing is you know, as professionals we have very little time and we've got a lot that we're trying to fit into our days.
Speaker 2:So we need to first of all obviously make time, because relationships take work and we need to prioritize that.
Speaker 2:It's not a matter of you know.
Speaker 2:The analogy would be taking a bunch of seeds and throwing them out in your garden, you know, through the window, and then hoping something will grow of seeds, and throwing them out in your garden, you know, through the window and then hoping something will grow.
Speaker 2:So we have to make time and we have to use that time very effectively so that we can actually grow closer together and get to know each other better, rather than using that time to scroll through our messages and have a tech break doing, you know, puzzles online and things like that, and rather use that time to engage with each other. And then the other thing is, you know, about communication. It's about remembering that we're both on the same side, that a conflict is about trying to discover the truth together and it's not about trying to prove that you're right and trying to make them wrong. So if you can remember those little things, then they're just simple steps to improving the quality of your relationship with the small little amount of time that we have to do that in this modern age amount of time that we have to do that in this modern age.
Speaker 1:I think that it's one of those things that I really appreciate you doing, because you're bringing to the surface just a way to be able to strategize to really get your relationships to be what you really imagined and wanted them to be, but in a stepwise progress. So I really do commend you. My only question left where do we find your book?
Speaker 2:It's available on Amazon if you have a Kindle, and also in hard copy if you live overseas, and it's also available on Takealot here in South Africa. And if you want to buy a hard copy locally, if you live around the KZN Midlands, the Mushroom Farm, there's a bookshop there that stocks them. Otherwise, online is the best place to get them.
Speaker 1:Well, well done and congratulations and thank you for making the time, even though it sounds as though you make time for a lot of different things. Is there anything that you are working on at the moment that we are soon going to hear about?
Speaker 2:Actually there is. I'm busy rebranding and building a new website with my own coach, and one of the things that I'm doing is writing another book, which is more of a nonfiction kind of book, to include my step-by-step process that I take people through to teach them how to learn how their nervous system works, to calm their nervous system down and regulate so that they can improve the resilience of their nervous system and are able to handle stress a lot better. So that's going to be hopefully coming out in the next year. I'm writing as fast as I can and it's a fun project at the moment. Well, congratulations.
Speaker 1:We are overwhelmed by the amount of, I think, of goodies you've been able to deliver us. We really appreciate it, and you just keep on doing what you're doing. I think that, step by step, every single thing that you've been able to afford us for today has been something that has refreshed us and something that really has been an important discussion. So thank you for being brave enough to bring it to our attention, and we're looking forward to hearing from more of your projects and your coaching and your books.
Speaker 2:Thank, you very much, and thank you for inviting me, chantal, it's been an honor.
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