Episode Notes
Neil Bridgeman is a marketing and branding expert turned naturopathic nutritionist.
In this podcast episode, Neil talks to host Anne Muhlethaler about his personal journey from Australia to the UK where he landed in the then up and coming startup that was luxury online retailer Net-a-Porter.
The two know each other from then, and exchange on the way Net-a-Porter, and Mr Porter, have been the pioneers in the world of e-commerce, in the projects, collaborations and experiences created for their clientele.
Neil also shares his career conversion journey, along with his personal difficulties with anxiety and burnout, which led him first to a course on yoga for anxiety, meditation, and then naturopathic medicine.
In his new role, having opened his own private clinic, he tells Anne about the relationship between nutrition and depression, the importance of the therapeutic relationship, the crucial role of listening and the ways in which he hopes to educate his clients to support greater health and vitality for them.
A very personal and enriching conversation. Happy listening!
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Selected Links from Episode
You can find Neil at : https://neilbridgeman.com/
and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/neilbridgeman/
Net-a-porter https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-fr/
Roland Mouret https://eu.rolandmouret.com/
Natalie Massenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Massenet
Kelly Slater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Slater
Outerknown – https://www.outerknown.com/
John Moore, Outerknown – https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-moore-60a86a3/
Jeremy Langmead – https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/jeremy-langmead
Toby Bateman – https://www.linkedin.com/in/toby-bateman-59956260/?originalSubdomain=uk
Mr Porter – https://www.mrporter.com/en-fr/
Yoga for anxiety with Heather Mason – https://themindedinstitute.com/team/heather-mason/
Eve Kalinik – https://evekalinik.com/
The vagus nerve – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve
Kia Miller kundalini yoga teacher – https://offerings.kiamiller.com/
Kundalini yoga – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_yoga
Yin yoga – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_Yoga
Epson Salts – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_sulfate
Annie Carpenter – https://www.smartflowyoga.com/
Anne’s post about the bee and shifting perspective –
Keris Marsden, Neil’s favorite lecturer at the London College of Naturopathy – Fitter Food – https://fitterfood.com/about/
Listen to Keris’ interview with Anne –https://outoftheclouds.compodcast/keris-marsden/
Textbook of Natural Medicine – https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780323523424/textbook-of-natural-medicine
Eckhart Tolle – https://eckharttolle.com/books/
Dr. Mark Hyman – https://drhyman.com/
Dr Hyman’s podcast – https://drhyman.com/blog/category/podcasts/
Full Interview Transcript
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour, and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I’m your host, Anne Muhlethaler. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Neil Bridgeman. Neil is a marketing and branding expert recently turned naturopathic nutritionist. I have known Neil for, I don’t know, 10 years or so, perhaps a little bit more. Now, we haven’t been in the same country for a few years, and last year, we had a nice, long phone call where Neil started to tell me about his career conversion.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So we have a very wide ranging conversation in this episode, because Neil obviously is a marketing and branding specialist who held top roles at NET-A-PORTER, MR PORTER, Outerknown, and now in health tech. We, of course, talk about naturopathic medicine, his own journey with immune resilience, sporting injuries, and mental health, which are some of the reasons which led him to study nutritional therapy. We talk a little bit more about meditation as well as the benefits of yoga. And I must say, Neil is one of the most eloquent guests that I’ve had, particularly on the subject of yoga. So I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with my friend, Neil Bridgeman. Happy listening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Neil, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Out of the Clouds.
Neil Bridgeman:
My pleasure, Anne. Thanks for having me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s been only a few days since I’ve seen you since you joined a guided meditation. Was it last week?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yes, it was. That was so fantastic.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Good. But it’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen you last, hasn’t it?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, face to face, it’s been quite some time, definitely pre-COVID. Yeah, it’s been years now, so hopefully we’ll get to see each other soon.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I hope so. I really enjoyed discovering a little bit more about your work and your career path. But to get us started, I would love to start by hearing from you where you’re from and how you landed in the UK as senior marketing advisor for NET-A-PORTER, which is probably just around when I met you.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, absolutely. God, you’re testing my memory here. We’re going back to 2006 when I first arrived from Australia. So I was 26 years old, straight off the plane arrived in London, and immediately looking for jobs. And to be honest, the NET-A-PORTER job was the first job offer I got. Because I’d been looking for a couple of weeks, and I have a lot of digital marketing experience from my time in Australia, and when I arrived in the UK, there was not a lot of people with that experience. So I managed to somehow get my foot in the fashion door at NET-A-PORTER way back in the early days of the business, and I started as a marketing assistant. So literally in a marketing team of two, and then consecutively sort of worked my way up through the ranks, so to speak, to head up the marketing function for a better part of … In total, my time at NET-A-PORTER was almost eight years in total. So yeah, it was quite a fast ride. Let’s call it a bit of a rollercoaster, too.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I can just about imagine. How did you get into digital marketing in the first place?
Neil Bridgeman:
I studied marketing at university. In Australia, you very much go straight into whatever job, career that you’re thinking of from pretty much the outset of when you start at uni. Then I did my master’s in advertising as well, so I’ve done a lot of study back in the early days. I got a position at Interflora, the flower company, and I did most of their marketing alongside a couple of other colleagues. But I did most of the digital marketing, managed the website, all of the e-commerce back in the day when Google was selling ad words based on impression instead of cost-per-click. That far back. That’s where I sort of built up this skillset around digital marketing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing, because obviously, it’s … well, it’s a very sought after skill, I would say, nowadays.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely. And back then, there were not many people doing it either, so it was great for me. I mean, it really did shape up my career for sort of early success and was definitely … I had no fashion experience, so it was definitely the main reason that I was able to get my foot in the door at NET-A-PORTER back then.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’d love to hear … Did you want to get into fashion? Did you ever have any aspirations around that?
Neil Bridgeman:
I did. I was obsessed with fashion. So the story is, when I left high school, I actually wanted to be a chef. So I started an apprenticeship. I thought I was going to be the greatest chef of all time, so to speak, at least in Australia. I got a very quick sort of awakening as to what was involved in being a chef, which was, it’s not really a job, it’s a lifestyle. I very quickly changed course to then study marketing. But in between time, I had this huge passion for fashion. In Australia, we’re a season behind and I used to buy all of the magazines that were like three or four months old so that they were sort of … So we’re constantly behind, but I would buy them, I’d flip through, and then I was absolutely obsessed with them and also used to spend all of my money which I was earning on designer fashion when I could. Not that I was earning very much, but every last cent went to buying those key pieces.
Neil Bridgeman:
So yeah, I had a passion for it, but I never thought I would ever get a foot in the door. Then these just sort of worlds came together as soon as I landed in London, which was amazing. So I jumped at the chance.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did you make the decision to come to London?
Neil Bridgeman:
My parents were … were … they still are … British. But they moved to Australia in the 1970s, basically, when a huge proportion of people moved from Europe to Australia. So I had a British passport, so it was very easy for me to come and live here. I had a lot of friends at that point here too from Australia, so it just made a lot of sense. But I had no firm plan. It was literally just arrive and see what happens, and 16, 17 years later, I’m still here.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s so cool. Yeah, arrive and see what happens sounds how it was like when I landed in London.
Neil Bridgeman:
Exactly. You just sort of go with the flow, right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
But I got there six years before you. That’s so interesting. I read in the bio that you’ve got on LinkedIn that as you arrived, you worked very closely on the relaunch of Roland Mouret.
Neil Bridgeman:
I did.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s a brand that’s very dear to my heart, a designer that I care about very much, and who I worked with quite a bit first at Louboutin and later on, I consulted. Do you want to tell me a bit about what that was like for you?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these were sort of the internet e-commerce hey days, right? They weren’t a lot of people doing what we were doing at NET-A-PORTER in the first instance, and I have to sort of jog my memory a little bit here because we’re talking like 2007, I think, the project with Roland was when it happened. But Natalie Massenet, the founder of NET-A-PORTER, came into a meeting and said, “Look, we’re going to do this pre-order down the runway with Roland Mouret. Customers will be able to order direct from the runway and pre-order what they want and then have it delivered in five or six months’ time.” No one had done anything like that before, so it was completely revolutionary.
Neil Bridgeman:
And quite frankly, at that point in time, it pretty much turned the whole business upside down to make that project happen. Which actually, if you did something like that now, is a very clear recipe for success and really clear processes, but back then, we all just launched into making this project happen. Obviously, I came in from the marketing side, there was editorial, obviously buying teams involved. It was a huge effort, and it made phenomenal headlines both for, I guess, Roland and for NET-A-PORTER and really pushed us, I think, as a business. It was very much always being the forefront of innovation, and those types of projects were absolutely key to the success of the business, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It’s interesting, because I didn’t remember exactly how the launch unfolded, but I do have a memory that this was the time where luxury fashion was in the real boom, and Roland had done it dresses, which were obviously on the cover of all of the magazines, all of the celebrities had been wearing them. So yes, there was a lot in there to make this a really interesting and fascinating and successful launch. It’s really strange to think back that this was the first time when it was revolutionary, because obviously, other people have made a whole business out of …
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… ordering from the runway.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. I mean, pre-order now is pretty standard, right? But back then, it was absolutely revolutionary. No one had done it. And these projects that we had, whether it was with Roland or Halston or with McQueen or even Karl Lagerfeld for that matter, they were all built off of doing something that the world had never seen before and taking it to an enormous audience, which is what we had at NET-A-PORTER. And again, all around positioning us as the most innovating retailer out there. It was a phenomenal experience working on all of those projects over all those years. Like I said, definite rollercoaster but a lot of fun, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It sounds amazing. Well, interesting enough, the next question I was going to ask you was around your sabbaticals, because I’m a little bit jealous. I’ve never taken a gap year, and I definitely did not take a sabbatical longer than four and a half weeks, so I’d love to hear from you. I understand you were working very intensely. How did you decide to take some time off, and what did that do for you?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, look, I think … First of all, I highly recommend, if people can make it happen both in terms of life commitments and financially, taking time off to travel or to explore who you are, I think is incredibly beneficial. What led to the decision? I’d been at NET-A-PORTER for eight years, and to be pretty honest, I was fairly burnt out as a result. And that’s not saying it in a very negative way. I threw sort of my heart and soul into my job, and I was pretty tired after that, to be honest. So what I decided to do … and maybe it was a fairly dramatic response, but I sold my flat, I sold everything in it. I took all of that money and I took a small chunk of it and I said I was going to take a year off, and that’s exactly what I did.
Neil Bridgeman:
I literally left with a backpack on my back, and that was it. A few things in storage, but everything else was gone. It was a real sort of defining moment of my life. I managed to travel, gosh, all over. Central America, South America, Nepal, a lot of Europe during the summertime, went back to Australia. It was just a phenomenal experience, and it really just reset me, I think, completely, from being in this fast-paced job that really took a lot out of me to really calming down and investing time in me. It was just pure freedom. There was no real plan. So I just took it day by day, week by week. If I landed somewhere and I loved it, I would stay there for a couple of weeks or a few weeks, and it was just pure freedom. It was unlike anything I’ve experienced ever before or since, to be honest.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sounds like fun.
Neil Bridgeman:
It was fun.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I want to do it now.
Neil Bridgeman:
Do it. Go on, Anne.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I can’t quite just now, but maybe in the future.
Neil Bridgeman:
Of course, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So after your time off, if I’m correct, you moved to LA and you started working with … What’s that name?
Neil Bridgeman:
Outerknown?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Outerknown.
Neil Bridgeman:
Outerknown, exactly, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The brand by Kelly Slater. That sounds like a really nice change of environment. Do you want to tell me about that?
Neil Bridgeman:
It was. Yeah, look, I had basically … The latter part of that year off, I had spent a huge proportion of it in nature, so hiking in Patagonia and in the most pristine wilds of the world. It was incredible. I wanted to step into a job that took me out of my comfort zone, A, in terms of location, so not going back to the UK, not necessarily going to New York where I knew loads of people. And just by chance, these guys got in touch with me and started to tell me about what Kelly was doing. Those who don’t know, Kelly Slater is pretty much sort of all-time world surf champion and is a bit like the god in Australia and in other countries as well. So I knew him really well, or at least I knew of him well.
Neil Bridgeman:
They pitched this concept to me of a sustainable menswear brand, and I loved it. It was based in LA, so I was not going back to my usual haunts. It was going to take me way out of my comfort zone. I was going from women’s wear to menswear, and not only menswear, but sustainable menswear. So I just jumped at the chance and I moved to LA just like that. Well, I flew from Chile to Miami for an interview, flew back, and then flew back to LA and then ended up setting up a little life there, but for only a year. I loved the job, I loved the business, I loved Kelly, all the people who work in that. John Moore, the creative director, is phenomenal. But I didn’t … dare I say it … and certainly don’t want to offend anyone … I just didn’t love LA. I just couldn’t find my groove, to be honest, and it was for no particular reason whatsoever. It just wasn’t gelling with me.
Neil Bridgeman:
So I decided to head back to London, but I stayed there for a year and set up the business, the website, all the brand. It was phenomenal. I had such an amazing time and I learned a lot about sustainability, which was a huge challenge at that point in time. It’s a little bit more mainstream now, as it should be. But yeah, it was a phenomenal experience. It was. And then I came back to London.
Anne Muhlethaler:
From the LA shores to London. And so when you got back to London, you stayed in menswear, if I’m correct, and you went into MR PORTER.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yes. I went back.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Love MR.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. I loved MR, too. I mean, it was … Look, secretly, it was the brand I always wanted to work for when I was at NET-A-PORTER, and most people know that. But the team that caught wind of the fact that I was coming back to London, and Sabah, who runs the marketing department, she was going on parental leave and needed someone to come in and just hit the ground running. Jeremy Langmead, who was the editor at that time, got in touch and said, “We’ve kind of got a crazy idea, but do you want to maybe come back to MR PORTER?” And I was like, “You know what? That sounds perfect.”
Neil Bridgeman:
So I just jumped at it, honestly. It was just an initial gut reaction. I was like, “This is perfect.” And I stayed in the business for about two and a half years, so it was an amazing time. And I got to work with incredible people like Jeremy from an editorial perspective, Toby Bateman, who was managing director at that time-
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love them. They’re the best people.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, they’re the best. The best. And it was fun and it was definitely the heydays. I mean, MR PORTER’s had many heydays, I would say, but at that point in time, we were just churning out these phenomenal projects and exclusive projects with Gucci and Balenciaga and Prada and getting amazing results off the back of it, too, which is hugely … If you work in marketing, not only doing the work but getting the results is hugely gratifying. Yeah, it was a great two and a half years.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It’s interesting, as a consumer, or when I try to bring a slightly external perspective to the businesses, I find MR PORTER a lot more attractive as a platform to engage with. And NET-A-PORTER is a beautiful business and I really enjoy it and certainly shop from it, but MR PORTER really has evolved, I want to say, as a very, very strong brand of its own …
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
… that I find has much more character and texture than any of the other e-commerce for women’s wear that I see out there.
Neil Bridgeman:
100%. I’ve talked a lot about this before, and this is just my opinion. It’s not backed by any sort of science or data or anything else, but the MR PORTER brand started with such a strong personality and identity. It really did. And by virtue of the fact that the brand name itself is a name, MR PORTER. So the brand is deeply rooted in a clear personality, clear identity, and the team have stuck with that through and through since day one. I think that’s why it has such a stronger brand connection. And also, it started from a clean slate, remember, whereas NET-A-PORTER, it’s a much broader audience, to be honest. I also think that it evolved over years and years and years, so it doesn’t necessarily have as defined a personality or tone or identity as MR PORTER. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have as much equity as the MR PORTER brand. But I think, like you said, there’s just a little bit more clarity with the MR PORTER brand, and that’s very much thanks to the buying team and to Jeremy and to all of the teams who really work on that, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. They definitely have a great sense of humor as well.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, absolutely. That wit, that’s key, absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think so, too. So you made the choice to continue to work in marketing and digital marketing, but to develop a new career.
Neil Bridgeman:
I did.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I remember I came across that … I think I came across the switch that you were going through on Instagram, and even though I’m very little on Instagram, I started seeing you posting a couple of stories about personal struggle with back problems, if I’m correct?
Neil Bridgeman:
It was, yeah. It happened over a period of time, but coming towards the end of my time at MR PORTER, I was really wracking my brain. I was trying to really sort of, I guess, visualize what my career would be when I was 50, and it was just blank. There was just nothing there. It was just almost like a bit of a black hole. I was wracking my brain thinking, “Why can’t I visualize this? Why is there nothing there when I think about a career in marketing or a career in fashion?” And it really started to challenge my thinking around what my future career was going to be. And I just sort of worked with it. I didn’t let it freak me out or anything. Then I slipped a disc in my back and I went through a pretty arduous journey of pain and recovery and it pushed me to my limit, both, I think, mentally as well as physically.
Neil Bridgeman:
But then, because of that, I had a light bulb moment, and it was a literal light bulb moment. I sat on the couch on New Year’s Eve in pain and I had previously worked with nutritionists in the past to work on immune issues, energy issues, just general health, and had fantastic results, and I always had an interest in health and well-being as well. So when I sort of just had this light bulb moment, I was like, “I want to be a nutritionist. That’s what I’m going to be when I’m 50. I’m going to be working with people and helping them have healthier lives. That’s what I want to do.” And I had the clearest image in my mind of me doing that, sat in my clinic with a client opposite me, and working with them. And it was the first time I’d able to develop a mental image around that at all.
Neil Bridgeman:
I literally just jumped at it. I was like, “Right, okay, where can I study nutrition? How do I get the qualification?” and went into full project management mode as per my normal style. I found the right qualification, I found the right college to study at, and I started … I think it was like two months later.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I wonder, how did you go about getting to that visualization? Was there any sort of reflection, contemplation work?
Neil Bridgeman:
You know what? Funny you mention that. That evening … It was New Year’s Eve and obviously, like I said, I was in quite a lot of pain and I was not … whatsoever like everyone else. So I actually went to my yoga studio to do a gong bath and meditation that evening. And it’s funny that you’ve just mentioned this. I’m literally connecting the dots right now, to be honest. That was a one and a half, two hour gong bath meditation, very chill, came back home, sat on the couch, light bulb moment just like that. It must have opened up something. I’m a big believer in right timing, and I just think a lot of things converged. Clearly, meditation had an effect that evening.
Neil Bridgeman:
Prior to that, I hadn’t really been doing a lot of meditation or breathwork, to be honest, because I was … When you’re in that much pain, the breathing, the movement, it’s quite limiting, so you sort of … I think you end up stepping back from a lot of work like that sometimes, or at least I did.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it’s counterintuitive, because most of the time when we’re in pain, we think movement is going to make it worse. However, it’s not always the case.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, completely. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Obviously, you need to be very mindful, but I know that for me, generally, I try to get movement and get the blood flow, and it helps a lot. The reason I was asking wasn’t necessarily … I didn’t expect you to say it was because of meditation, but I do find that … and I have heard … that when we ask ourselves a question … So you were already asking yourself, “What am I going to do? And what am I going to do?” And then if you-
Neil Bridgeman:
Over and over again.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Exactly. And our brains are wired to try and find solutions. And even if you’re not necessarily perceiving that there is an undergoing activity, it was percolating at the back of your mind, and possibly what it needed was a little bit of extra rest or space. Wow, what a fascinating story.
Neil Bridgeman:
[crosstalk 00:23:08] Yeah. And honestly, I literally just connected those dots as we’re talking now, which is very interesting. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But now, I really want to ask you, what was your experience of nutrition or nutritional naturopathic medicine before that?
Neil Bridgeman:
It wasn’t huge, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I had a natural inclination towards health and well being. I devoured all of the Instagram content that’s out there and would listen to podcasts and do a lot of, I guess, self-education around what to eat, what not to eat. But to be honest, even back then, a lot of the information is confusing, it’s contradictory, it’s really hard to navigate.
Neil Bridgeman:
I had worked with two nutritionists in the past at different phases, so one … When I got back from LA to London, I worked with a nutritionist called Eve Kalinik, who’s phenomenal. I had a bunch of immune issues. I was getting sick all of the time. I had lots of horrible symptoms that were really starting to affect me. I worked with her systematically over the course of about six months to first do a full what we call gut protocol. So I had a lot of dysbiosis in my gastrointestinal system, so a lot of overgrowth of non-beneficial bacteria and yeast and lots of stuff that I won’t go into tons of detail, because it’s not that pleasant. You go to a very strict protocol over the course of 13 months, and then I had a couple of setbacks and then had to sort of have a go again. But then that really brought my immune system back up to where it needed to be. Around about 70% of our immune system is within the gastrointestinal system, so that tends to be where with naturopathic nutritionists, you would tend to focus a lot of effort on to start with.
Neil Bridgeman:
So that’s one area. Then prior to that, probably about five years earlier, I was just exhausted. I went to a nutritionist and I just said, “What’s wrong with me? I’ve got no energy. I’m absolutely shattered all of the time,” which is not normal. It’s not a normal way for anyone to feel. We worked on boosting my energy back up. We did a bit of testing around my stress responses to things and noticed that I was in this sort of fight-or-flight mode most of the time, as many people tend to be these days. We worked a lot of just really dampening that down, calming the system down, building up, I guess looking back now, all of the micronutrients and macronutrients you need to actually generate energy within the body. So that’s really what my background was prior to deciding to jump into the actual world of nutrition.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love the fact that you project managed and that you found your way into the cause two months later. I’d love to hear from you what you think is the most important thing you learned over the course of your training.
Neil Bridgeman:
The most important thing I learned in the course of my training … It has very, very little to do with biochemistry, underpinning what nutritional strategies you give for clients. It actually comes down to the therapeutic relationship that you have with a client, and my greatest sort of lesson was to just listen. So in many cases, I’m the last resort in many people’s health journeys. They’ve tried a whole bunch of other things, different types of medication, different types of treatment. In many cases, they haven’t worked, and people are coming to me because I’m their sort of last port of call. Many feel like they haven’t been listened to. Many feel like they haven’t been heard or seen. What I do is really just sit with a client. And I’m a private clinic or practice, and that affords us the benefit of an hour, hour and a half with a client to go deep in their full health history and their full health journey, so that’s a real luxury.
Neil Bridgeman:
But for a lot of clients, listening to what they’ve got to say. It’s often the first chance they’ve had an opportunity to really talk through everything. You have to listen, and as a nutritionist, you’re a little bit like a detective. So we’re covering a vast array of questions, all parts of the body, really going way back into sort of early adulthood or childhood medical history, and you’re starting to piece together the puzzle. And that just comes from good listening, and that’s the thing I learned the most in all of my time, my four years studying, was listen. Listen to who’s in front of you and give them a chance to speak, because often it’s the first chance they’ve had ever.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow, it sounds sad. It sounds sad, but I hear you. That’s from my perspective.
Neil Bridgeman:
And there’s no judgment on my side. I operate in a very different way than the traditional public healthcare system works, and all of those systems have their challenges. A lot of them also do phenomenal, phenomenal work and play an incredibly important role in people’s lives when they need them. But it is really hard. It’s not so much sad. There’s a lot of … By that middle to the end of the first consultation, there’s also a lot of relief and joy and you can see people starting to loosen up and get more comfortable with what they’re talking about. And you end up in a pretty happy place most of the time, I would say, but there is often, like I said, this first opportunity to really go deep. And unfortunately, you can’t do that necessarily with a GP. It’s just not the way that part of the healthcare system is set up. But like I said, you’re talking about private system versus public system, so they’re quite different.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I find it fascinating, because to explain to our listeners, I had an interesting journey with nutrition, and I had a couple of great naturopathic doctors, one on holiday in Thailand and then when I was in New York. It really set me off to consider my health and my body and the causality effect of what we ingest and directs a lot of how we feel.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But you’re right, it came after years of having pain my body, not understanding what it was, and not being diagnosed for over two and a half years, not being taken seriously by my local GP when I was still in London, and then struggling to find a diagnosis because the markers in my blood tests weren’t strong enough before it came back with rheumatoid arthritis as a diagnosis. But thankfully, a bit like you with your discovery of your future career, when I got the diagnosis, I thought it was wrong and it was something else, and I followed a hunch. That’s what led me to take out all red meat and gluten out of me … Well, actually, first red meat. First, I came back from Greece and I was in so much pain. And most days actually, I did not tell my brother, who was with me on holiday, because we had lost our mom that same year.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, I’m sorry.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So I didn’t want to make the holiday, which was great, traumatic. But there were days where I was in so much pain, and so I followed that hunch after watching a TV show that I don’t remember the name of. Long story short, as soon as I stopped eating meat, 80% of the pain immediately disappeared. Like, gone, never came back like that.
Neil Bridgeman:
That makes sense. Red meat is naturally inflammatory. It just is. And rheumatoid arthritis is, by its nature, and inflammatory disorder, so it makes a lot of sense. I had a similar, albeit a much less painful journey, back in my early days of jumping into health where I had chronic sinusitis for years, decades, since I was actually in my teenage years. I cut dairy out and I was able to miraculously breathe very clearly within weeks of just making that one simple change. Now, that’s different for everyone. That’s what worked for me. It’s not necessarily what would work for other people. But those small changes can have dramatic, dramatic influence, positive influence, I would say. And it’s just food, right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Now, one of the things that I find problematic in the current system that we’re in is that because food is not sufficiently, in my view, studied or prescribed as a way to treat diseases, oftentimes, we don’t remove the root cause of the issues that we come to GPs or yourself with, and we just treat the symptoms. That’s something that I find really problematic, because meanwhile … and I know my journey is specific to me, but I know someone else who’s done the same and that was my GP in New York who also had rheumatoid arthritis and who followed the same regime. She was gluten free, dairy free, and meat free, and as such, we are able to live a very healthy life pretty much without the need to resort to medication. And of course, I say this knowing that I’m grateful that there is medication available to treat the symptoms when they do come up. But meanwhile, it’s not prescribed and there’s millions of people around the world suffering who have no idea …
Neil Bridgeman:
I think-
Anne Muhlethaler:
… that some of these changes can change their lives.
Neil Bridgeman:
Look, the fact is, most chronic disease is preventable with lifestyle modifications, and that’s a fact. I think we have to look at the bigger picture here. I think it’s not just the responsibility of GPs or healthcare systems to prescribe, I guess, nutritional protocols to be in better health, but let’s take a step back as well and look at actually how we’re educating our children around the role of food, how to cook food, how to be confident around cooking food, and have a positive relationship with food. These are a lot of the challenges that I actually face when I work with some of my clients, is just there’s a potentially negative relationship with food. It could be just a supreme lack of confidence with how to actually prepare or cook food, which should not be underestimated. Most people aren’t confident in the kitchen, and that’s because we’re not teaching them the skills at an early age to do that.
Neil Bridgeman:
It’s more systemic, I think, in many ways from a social perspective, but I think the tide is turning. People are reconnecting with food. They are educating themselves more about what is healthy and what is not. Then there are people like me who can help guide people through the torrent of information that’s out there, which is sometimes hard to navigate, which I think is the next challenge we have, is the mass of information around health and lifestyle well-being that is now starting to confuse the general public, which is something else that’s becoming another problem, I would say.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I agree. I was wondering what your opinion was as a qualified nutritionist on the benefits of fasting.
Neil Bridgeman:
I think fasting can play a really powerful role in people’s lives at the right point in time. And it depends on what type of fasting you’re talking about. If you’re talking about a general juice or water fast, which is quite extreme, over a large period of time, my view is … First of all, it’s not something I would prescribe to any of my clients because it’s quite a severe protocol in and of itself. So my assumption therefore is that your body will have a fairly severe reaction, which could be positive, or it also could be negative as well. So it’s quite risky. It works for some people, but not all.
Neil Bridgeman:
What I am a big fan of is time-restricted eating windows, which is a form of fasting. So when I say time-restricted eating windows, that’s going from having your last meal of the day at 6:00 at night and then not eating anything until breakfast the next morning, say at, I don’t know, 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning. That’s a 14 to 15-hour break that you’re giving your digestive system, which is incredibly powerful. It allows it to clear itself out and renew. That is hugely beneficial.
Neil Bridgeman:
And then there are other things like fasting-mimicking diets, which definitely have a place. But I think you need to be in relatively good health before you jump into doing those, and then you’ll see the greatest benefit. Because what they do is … It’s sort of like a cellular spring clean, in a way. That’s the way I sort of describe it. It’s sort of out with the old, in with the new, and that is a real benefit, definitely. But look, personally, I don’t do very many fasts whatsoever. I am a fine of the time-restricted eating window and like I said, my last meal is at 6:00, 6:30, and then I don’t have anything until 8:00 or 9:00 the next day.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. Actually, a friend of mine reminded me about this particular diet, and it’s something that I really enjoy doing. Most days, it’s 14 to 16 hours between, but I really like to be on an empty stomach in the morning, so for me, it’s really eating between 11:00 and 12:00 and then eating the meal between 7:00 and 8:00 PM, and it works really well.
Neil Bridgeman:
It does, and it’s great for blood sugar regulation. It also really sort of allows us to switch between using different sources of fuel for energy, so it allows us to build up better resilience between switching between carbs as well as fats for burning energy, which is really beneficial for everyone to do. It’s kind of like fine tuning your sort of energy engine, so to speak. Yeah, they’re very beneficial for a lot of people, absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It’s funny, though. I’m asking the question partly because, A, I fast regularly, and it really suits me. My body’s like, “No food? That’s fine,” and I never expected that. I think the longest I’ve done is tea fasting for seven days, but obviously, it was within a medical facility, so I was really well looked after. To be fair, there were a couple of days at the beginning where I could barely move I was so tired. Because what people don’t know is detoxing takes a lot of work.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Your body is working super hard, so don’t think you should be doing anything, particularly exercise. Forcing ourselves to exercise is a little bit silly.
Neil Bridgeman:
No, I think-
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s good to let nature do its work.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely. And I would also sort of preface, if you are going to go into wanting to look at something like fasting, just to understand the reasons why you’re looking for that type of a solution. Then if you can, to work with a healthcare professional like myself or someone else to guide you through that process, because it’s quite a big deal for the body to go through, I would say, definitely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I need to tell you where, actually, I found this interest in fasting, because it’s very unusual. My father, as I mentioned, was a doctor, a gynecologist, and surgeon. In his late 70s, he was living nearby in Geneva and I think after … He was not Catholic, but somehow, he heard the Pope say something about fasting. And a little bit like the trigger that you had about nutrition, he had a trigger about, “Huh, fasting.” And this is a man who was very sporty, who cycled up mountains until his early 80s, and only quit tennis after tearing his Achilles’ heel, which is very painful.
Neil Bridgeman:
God, that’s awful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And at age 75. But so, he decided to start fasting and he was measuring his vitals every day, so taking his blood pressure, et cetera, and his pulse. And so he decided to fast every Monday for six months, and recording, obviously, the data on a daily basis, and it was phenomenal. Over the course of six months, his blood pressure went normal when it had always been high, his weight dropped by 10 kilos … I want to say effortlessly, because he never stopped eating. He was a very jolly person. Was never very big, but always with a little bit of belly. And so I can’t remember a couple of the other pieces of data, but it was very overwhelming in terms of the change, and it was great to see it observed by someone who is a scientist, and he was looking at the data.
Neil Bridgeman:
I love that he basically ran his own …
Anne Muhlethaler:
Study.
Neil Bridgeman:
… individual medical study.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I know. Yeah, because he had all of the tools and gadgets. They were already available at the time.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. Look, it can be incredibly powerful for people. My only sort of caveat would be is to be in relatively good health beforehand, because like I said, it’s quite a big deal to put your body through something like that, particularly a multi-day fast.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I would agree. And I do think it’s really great to be followed by a doctor or to have experience with it.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, one of the things I was wondering … I appreciate that what you’ve felt like you’ve learned the most was this therapeutic approach and the listening and the conversation that you have with your clients and your patients. I was wondering, on a purely medical level, is there something that you feel was a myth that was debunked for you, or something else that you learned that was a really big aha moment?
Neil Bridgeman:
In relation to nutrition, I think what was my sort of aha moment … because I’ve always had an interest in mental health. I’ve had my own challenges with anxiety. My biggest aha moment was discovering that something like depression or anxiety or potentially other mental health disorders are not just in your head. There is a very complex set of biochemical reactions and pathways that are kick started as a result of some type of stressor or event in your life. And as a result, you then start to feel or act a certain way. That was a massive aha moment for me. Before that, I just thought it’s just the way you think, which it kind of is, but the way you’re thinking is actually driven through a set of physiological reactions, and that was the biggest game changer for me. I started to lean in enormously into how nutrition can then support mental health disorders, which is sort of my passion point and one of the areas I’d definitely love to specialize in in the future. So that was my aha moment, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Are you telling me that you’re going to study some more?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yes, I am. I start my masters of science in nutrition in January. So I’m taking myself back to university again for another two years part time, so it’s quite manageable. But really good to have that qualification at a master’s level, postgraduate level for anywhere. It will effectively allow me to be able to practice anywhere in the world, which would be fantastic, give me a lot of freedom.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Very excited for you.
Neil Bridgeman:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, one of the things I was wondering is, what’s it like to be head of marketing for a healthcare digital provider at the same time as being a nutritionist? Where do you see pain points for the system in which you’re working?
Neil Bridgeman:
Well, at the moment, the nutrition clinic that I run is a side gig, so to speak, and I have a full-time job working for a digital healthcare provider. That affords me quite a few benefits, because what it allows me to do is I have an understanding of what a therapeutic relationship can be like between a patient and a healthcare professional. I can take that into a lot of the work that I do day to day in my main job, per se, main in inverted commas. I just have greater empathy with both how healthcare professionals … what they face on a daily basis. A bit different in terms of I’m not operating in the public healthcare system, so it’s fairly different. I’m not trying to necessarily put two and two together there. But also understand things from the patient side as well.
Neil Bridgeman:
I think that then brings, like I said, a different level of empathy. And you need to have that level of empathy if you’re in marketing. You need to understand who you’re speaking with and who your audiences are. That then helps you do your job better. And so in a way, it’s actually worked out really nicely. It’s sort of been these two worlds that have come together really perfectly, and I feel they bounce off one another really nicely. It allows me to talk to doctors with confidence in the business that I work in. It allows me to interact with GPs and psychologists and specialists, which is phenomenal for me, and I look up to them with such awe and inspiration and I learn a lot from them as well. It’s been a fantastic way to bring these sort of two worlds together in a way. It’s made a lot of sense from my perspective, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I thought so. It does look good from afar, I would say.
Neil Bridgeman:
It makes a lot of sense. You sort of have this path … or I was on in terms of nutrition, and this role and moving out of fashion into digital healthcare, it’s been transformative for me, definitely, doing the two together at that time, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing. Now, going back to anxiety, which you mentioned was something that you struggled with, do you want to tell me a little bit more about what you’ve discovered in that relationship between the nutrition and mental health disorders? Anything that you can share?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. Personally or professionally in terms of …
Anne Muhlethaler:
Both, if you feel like it.
Neil Bridgeman:
Both? Okay, sure, 100%. We have to share … If you’re comfortable with it, I think the more people share about their mental health journeys, the better. We have to normalize. Many people have challenges with mental health. And maybe I’ll start with the personal side, because that sort of then sets up the professional side. Looking back, I’ve always been an anxious person. It’s through teenage years through early adulthood, definitely had my challenges with anxiety. And it all came to a head when I was about 28, if I remember correctly. I had an acute bout of anxiety, very severe with very, very physical manifestations of that anxiety, so shaking, shortness of breath, chest pains. I used to feel like the ground as I was walking sort of undulating under my feet, which is based on a whole bunch of issues that get affected through acute anxiety within a section within your ears.
Neil Bridgeman:
So it was terrifying. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what was going on. So I went to a GP and they’re like, “Well, you’re suffering with anxiety. You’re having a really acute spell of it. We want to put you on beta blockers,” which essentially slow down your heart rate medically. I tried those. It did not work for me at all, and in fact, when I came off of them, I was even more … than I had been. I was at my wit’s end, and it was literally by chance I came across this article in The Sunday Times. I still remember it. It was a two-page article and it was about using yoga to support mental illness or mental health. I read up on a person called Heather Mason, who runs an amazing institute here in the south side of London called The Minded Institute. Back then, she was doing these courses which were called Yoga for the Mind, Depression and Anxiety.
Neil Bridgeman:
I called her up and told her my story and she’s like, “I really think I can help you. Come join one of our courses.” It was super cheap. It ran over like eight weeks. I had this initiation to yoga, to breathwork, to meditation, and it made a phenomenal difference and I went and did the advanced course with her. So yes, it was literally life changing. I mean, that’s when I started to integrate yoga into my life daily at that point. I’m not such with daily now, not really. It’s definitely a frequent practice, but back then, it was daily and it made a phenomenal difference. It calmed my system right down. I was able to get rid of a lot of the physical manifestations and symptoms that I was suffering with, but it took time. And that’s it. It wasn’t a sort of quick fix. It wasn’t take a pill and feel better. It was actually get to the root cause of the problem, which is you have an overactivation of your nervous system and you are in pure fight-or-flight mode constantly. Then I used yoga systematically, including breathwork, to really calm the system down.
Neil Bridgeman:
Professionally, that was sort of my first real … I guess you could call it burnout, for want of a better term. Then I’ve had a couple of other instances in the last few years, but now I have my toolkit. I can also clock it really early, and I have an amazing therapist that I work with as well, so I have cognitive behavior therapy at my fingertips and I’m very lucky to have that as well. It’s a really powerful combination. When I start feeling it bubble up, I know the changes I need to make, I know what tools to pull out of the toolkit and to get it back on track. So I’ve never experienced what I went through in 2008 ever again because I’ve been able to get ahead of the problem before it starts.
Neil Bridgeman:
So that’s sort of the personal story, and it’s been harrowing. It’s still a daily challenge, maybe not so much a battle anymore, but it’s definitely made me a stronger, better person. I have learned so much from my anxiety. I don’t resent it in any way. I embrace it. I’ve learned to make friends with it in a way. I know that sounds a bit strange, but why fight it? It’s there and I know how to keep it under control, which I think is hugely empowering. And ultimately, now that I’m going into the world of nutrition, I really see how food and lifestyle modifications play a phenomenal role in mental health challenges like depression and also like anxiety. I’ve been able to use a lot of what I’ve learned myself, and now I’m also able to hopefully impart a lot of what I’ve learned with other people and help them with their challenges. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is. It’s the bit of the job that I love, to be honest.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m so grateful that you’re open and able to share this with people. I was wondering whether you’d speak to the relationship between meditation or breathwork and the vagus nerve, which is considered to be one of the nerves that really can get us to slow down and to activate the parasympathetic nervous system to help us get out of that fight, flight, freeze mode.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, look, it’s my favorite nerve, if you can have a favorite nerve. I sound like such a nerd when I say that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m going to say you can, just … you know.
Neil Bridgeman:
I sound like a total nerd saying that. Essentially, the vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic response. And when I say parasympathetic, I mean that movement from fight or flight into a more calming or calmer state within our nervous system. It really controls the response of that within our lungs, within our digestive system, and particularly the heart and our heart rate. So what feelings like yoga, breathwork, and meditation do is really stimulate that nerve. The elongation of exhaling can have a profound impact on stimulating the vagus nerve to calm down your heart rate. By doing that, you then get this follow-on effect of sending messages back up to the brain that everything is fine and that everything is calm.
Neil Bridgeman:
What I love about yoga in particular is the postures, for want of a better term, or asanas, as they’re, I guess, technically well known as, they put us in a more challenging position. They sort of really challenge our posture, our nervous system, and then the breathing really then starts to counteract that. And it teaches the brain to have greater resilience with the stress response, which is absolutely key, that sort of really primitive part of our brain which controls the stress response. By doing breathwork, by doing yoga and really sort of putting the work in, you teach that part of the brain to calm down and to not overreact in that split second reaction. And that, I just think, is hugely powerful.
Neil Bridgeman:
I had this really interesting experience the other day, actually, where I was walking in the dark and I was walking past someone’s house just near my flat here in London. And this enormous Rottweiler was in the front yard of one of the houses. I hadn’t seen it, and literally just as I passed it, it started barking very loud at me. Normally, that would have absolutely terrified me. I would have had that massive adrenaline rush, that huge spike in that stress response. And actually, I just sort of looked at it. I was like, “Oh, the dog’s barking at me.”
Neil Bridgeman:
And it was at that moment, I was like, “Wow, you’ve really come a long way, Neil, because five, ten years ago, if that had happened, you would have gone into full fight or flight. You would have had adrenaline surging through your body. You would have been shaking. It would have absolutely terrified you.” And now, something like that, albeit a very specific situation, didn’t really push me into that fight-or-flight mode. Maybe it should have, who knows. Maybe I’ve got a dampened response now and it’s probably not in my benefit. But it was really interesting to just note that and go, “Wow, okay, I’ve got a really different response to these types of things than what I used to have.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
Listening to you, this … First of all, thank you so much. It’s such an eloquent way to explain to the people who are listening to us what yoga actually can do and what the physical asanas actually bring, apart from strengthening, balancing, and stretching, the more obvious physical benefits. I don’t do it very often, but I do follow an Australian Kundalini teacher called Kia Miller. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across her.
Neil Bridgeman:
I haven’t, no.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Kundalini is a form of yoga that is meant to help us modify our energies in the body, and it looks very different than what you may think of yoga, which is oftentimes Hatha or Ashtanga. Anyways, sometimes you’re in a position for one, two, or three minutes and you just have to effectively repeat a certain movement while directing the breath in a certain way. I have to tell you, it’s so hard. Sometimes it’s like you have to move your arms up and down for, I don’t know, 90 seconds while breathing a certain way. Man oh man.
Neil Bridgeman:
I have the same thing with Yin yoga as well. I find it so much harder than a traditional Vinyasa or Hatha flow. For me, putting yourself and standing still in a particular posture for two or three minutes, it’s really challenging and way harder than a typical Vinyasa or Ashtanga, to be honest. I’m going to have to try out the Kundalini yoga. I haven’t tried it, to be honest, Anne.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, I’ll send you a link.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, please do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
She’s very, very interesting. But what I thought was great is also … And I think this came from her, but I may have heard it from other teachers, because every pause lasts a certain amount of time. She literally will say something like, “Keep going. You’re doing so well. Perhaps that’s the hardest thing you’re going to be doing today,” moving your arms in this way or your legs in this way. You’re holding book pose and doing Breath of Fire for 90 seconds. And that really does, I think, change our perspective on the rest of the things that we do and what we find hard.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely. I think, like I said, it puts us a different perspective on things. It puts us in positions we’re not necessarily used to and by doing so, it challenges us. Then our challenge is to then sit with it and to be with it and to breathe through it. That has a profound physiological effect on the mind and also the body. Yeah, like you said, I’d love people to think less about yoga in terms of being flexible and bending yourself into these weird and wonderful shapes … which quite frankly, I can’t do because I’m also a runner, so I have this weird sort of dichotomy between doing yoga and then having this quite challenging running regime as well, which makes me more stiff, and then the flexibility I sort of build up with yoga.
Neil Bridgeman:
But it’s not really about bending and making shapes, at all in fact. You can have a profound practice just by doing the most simplest and basic postures, or perhaps just even sitting still and being in Savasana at the very end when you’re lying down. That is the most profound moment, really, of the whole practice, for sure. It’s an incredible tool that we have at our disposal, and I wish more people would give it a chance, if that makes sense.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I like to joke that yoga had me at Savasana. That’s the day that I realized-
Neil Bridgeman:
I agree.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I remember I was in my London apartment the first lecture I had with my friend, Aton. There was a very hospital-colored green carpet.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, it sounds delightful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I know, and I didn’t have a yoga mat at the time, so I just put down a towel. And I remember just breathing in whatever was in that carpet. But at the end, it sort of all made sense, and I like the word “integration,” when everything that you’ve done over the course of your practice suddenly just seeps in and you get the benefits by not moving and staying still. I think it’s hugely beneficial.
Neil Bridgeman:
I remember a point after doing some yoga when I had my first sort of bout of really severe anxiety and I started getting to yoga more, I remember saying to a friend that I felt like I had gotten my peripheral vision back, that my field of vision had opened up more. Because in that state of anxiety, I was so focused and tunnel visioned, and as a result of doing yoga, doing the practice, it just opened everything back up again and it was such a incredible moment to start to see the world more, the world again. That was a game changer for me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It’s funny you should say that, because only a couple of days ago, I was rushing back home. I had gone grocery shopping, and I had signed up to do a yoga class with an amazing teacher based in Oakland, and so her morning is my evening. Her name is Annie Carpenter. She’s really a phenomenal teacher and a great meditation teacher, too. And then for a second, I was like, “Why am I doing this to myself? I’m doing too much. Why am I running around?” But anyway, I really wanted to take that class, so I got there a couple of minutes late. I landed on my mat and then 75 minutes later, I just walked out blissed out. I mean, it’s a very challenging physical practice sometimes, and I’m definitely performing for the Zoom camera, which is really embarrassing. But it just changed … exactly what you said, it changed everything.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love to explore metaphors, and a few years ago, I wrote a short blog post having seen a really large bee incapable of getting out of my flat, even though the other half of the window was wide open. She was battling, trying to dig herself into the glass in the corner of the frame, and I just thought, that’s us most of the time. We’re battling against an invisible enemy and we never stop long enough to take a step back to notice that the window’s wide open and we have tons of possibilities.
Neil Bridgeman:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But in order to see that, we need to, as you were saying, shift our perspective, and that happens when we take care of our physical body in that way.
Neil Bridgeman:
I also think that access to nature can open up that sort of window in a way as well. So many of us are disconnected from nature because we work in big cities and we’re not necessarily able to get out to the parks or even out to forests or the coast. That’s been a huge part of my life as well, is just accessing nature as much as possible, as frequently as possible. If it’s going for a big run, or it might be just a walk, which I’m pretty fond of as well. It doesn’t always have to be about running. Or going on a big hike like I do in the mountains. That for me is just … That’s like my heaven, basically, I have to say. I get so much from nature and being in it. It’s really humbling in some cases. That’s what really has opened up my window, I think, in many ways.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m very glad that you brought this up, because I know that this is one of the things that brings about a lot of changes. But I think it was Karis Marsden, the naturopathic nutritionist who you recommended me to.
Neil Bridgeman:
My lecturer.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Your lecturer who was on the podcast.
Neil Bridgeman:
Oh, my favorite lecturer, by the way.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I know. She’s so amazing. I am such a fan. I think it was her who brought up nature as well in our conversation, and it may not have been during the podcast, but over a separate conversation we had. And in one of the things I want to say to people who are listening who aren’t close to nature or who find it hard to get out into the wilderness is it’s also really great to have plants in your own home that you look after. You get a lot of benefits just by getting a little bit more of a sense of intimacy and closeness with the flora and fauna, to be honest.
Neil Bridgeman:
But look, I think access to nature doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be in some sort of wild forest in the middle of Sweden. I mean, great if you can make that happen. You can also just … getting out and getting fresh air in many cases, for a nice walk, and maybe not even having a podcast going at the same time, dare I say it. Sorry, Anne. That’s quite a controversial thing to say. Just listening to the world a little bit. I don’t run with music and I don’t walk with music or podcasts. I just listen to what’s going on. And some of it could be the construction drilling that’s happening down the road, or it could be the birdsong in the forest. Either way, both sounds bring you back to the present, which I think is absolutely key, particularly if you do consciously note them, and that’s important.
Neil Bridgeman:
So I think you can just … Getting out and getting some fresh air is also contact with nature. We’ve been cooped up and stuck in our homes so much more than we normally would be these last couple of years, so I’m very fond of really setting aside an hour each day to at least get in some movement outdoors. And like I said, that could just be a nice stroll, and I get a huge benefit out of that as well.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much. We’re coming close to the end of the interview. I wanted to first ask you if there’s anything else that you feel like we haven’t covered and that you want to share with our listeners.
Neil Bridgeman:
I think we’ve covered pretty much everything, to be honest. I think this has been great. We’ve talked a lot. It’s been a big journey, Anne.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes, I know. So as you know, obviously, the podcast touches on business and mindfulness, and I would love to hear from you, what rituals around yoga or nutrition or anything else that you do regularly really supports you and keeps you balanced?
Neil Bridgeman:
What keeps me balanced? In all honesty, I think that the thing that really does keep me balanced … and I don’t get a chance to do it all of the time … is hiking. I know that sounds quite specific, but I always take the time throughout the year where I can to really get out, like I said, into nature. My happiest place is on the hiking trail, particularly in the middle of summer on a hot day somewhere in probably the Alps or the Pyrenees and switching off from the world. So I hike on my own. I don’t typically hike with other people. My phone doesn’t work most of the time. I’ve got my tent, I’ve got food, and I just switch off and I also just shut up.
Neil Bridgeman:
I’m in marketing, so my job is to really talk a lot, so it’s nice to just be quiet and to not speak and to just be with nature. That for me is a game changer, really, and if people can find their version of that and invest time in it, that has a massive impact in making you a better leader, managing stress, giving you perspective. Yeah, it has a huge impact, for sure. Does that sort of answer your question?
Anne Muhlethaler:
It really does, and it’s wonderful because it’s very evocative as you describe it. I feel like I can see you up on a trail in the mountains, and it brings a little bit of summer into my snowy location.
Neil Bridgeman:
Into your winter world, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. What do you do on a day to day when you aren’t able to reach that or to access, let’s say, this particular ritual?
Neil Bridgeman:
Self-care is important, and obviously, I’ve got a relatively good diet and I exercise, which is important, too. And that’s different for everyone, what type of exercise they want to do. But to really sort of bring me down, to end the day, I love a bath. I don’t think there’s …
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s great.
Neil Bridgeman:
… anything better than sitting … It’s so luxurious to take 20 minutes, 30 minutes to sit in a bath. I might then listen to a podcast or just even the radio and just soak and relax and enjoy it. I put some essential oils in the bath and there’s obviously Epsom salts as well, so you get lots of magnesium absorbed through the skin, and it’s just this lovely thing to do. And because I am pretty active as well, it’s really soothing for my muscles, so it really aids recovery post-exercise.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You’re reminding me that I should do that tonight.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah, you should. Go for it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That sounds great. And yes-
Neil Bridgeman:
Particularly if it’s all snowy and cold in Geneva today. You should do it, definitely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And you’re right, you’re reminding me about the huge bag of Epsom salts I have in the cupboard somewhere. I’ll dig those out.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. Get a good couple of cups into a full bath and really soak in it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So I’d love to ask you a few questions that I ask all of my guests at the end of the interview. The first one, which I heard from another podcaster which I really, really love is, tell me about an act of kindness that has touched your life.
Neil Bridgeman:
An act of kindness that has touched my life. I have to really think about this. I think it’s nothing profound or huge in any way, but my best friend, who lives in Australia, for my 40th birthday pulled together all of the photographs from our teens, 20s, and 30s and it took a huge amount of effort and work and had quotes from all of my friends. She pulled it together, literally put it together by hand, and it was just the most phenomenally kind, amazing thing that I’ve ever received, just my friendship in a book, all my life in a way. She’d taken the time, hours and hours and hours, days probably to put it together, and it just blew my mind, to be honest. So that’s definitely a touch of kindness, an act of kindness that really touched me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s gorgeous. Thank you so much for sharing. What song best represents you?
Neil Bridgeman:
I was thinking about this in terms of representation. I can tell you what my favorite song of all time is, and I’ve loved this song since I was about 15. It’s Deeper and Deeper by Madonna from her Erotica album, of all things.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing.
Neil Bridgeman:
And everyone who knows me knows that’s my favorite song ever.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s amazing. Now, what or who did you want to be when you were growing up?
Neil Bridgeman:
I wanted to be … I think we touched on this earlier. I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to be Marco Pierre White. That’s who I was going to be. I had his cookbooks when I was in my late teens and I was like, “I’m going to be him.” That was fun for a while, until it ended and I chose a different career. And then I guess I wanted to be a fashion designer at one point, but realized I didn’t have the artistic skill, so I went into the marketing side instead.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That seems like a very smart pivot, so congrats.
Neil Bridgeman:
Very sensible. Yeah, thanks.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I now want to add a question. I wonder, is there a cookbook in your future possibly?
Neil Bridgeman:
Potentially. Content plays a really important part of my career in general. I come from a world where content was at the absolute center and heart of the business. It’s part of my toolkit that I have for clients. I need to be able to inspire them with recipes and with handouts and with information to educate them, so I really enjoy the process. I love writing. I’m not necessarily any good at it, but I like the process. Yeah, I potentially might have some sort of something in written form in the future, perhaps. I would love to look at some products as well, and potentially experiences in the future as well.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yay. That sounds great.
Neil Bridgeman:
Definitely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now, what would you say to your younger self if you could send yourself a message?
Neil Bridgeman:
Okay, this is what I would say. I would say, “Study science at your high school,” number one. It’s such an uphill battle for me to go into science and learn biochemistry, biomedicine. It’s been hugely challenging at the age of 38, 40, over the last four years to do that. So I’d say, “Study science, Neil, and don’t necessarily study …” God, what was I studying? Information technology. And then, “Travel more, or travel as much as possible.” And I kind of do a lot of that now, but I would love to have done more in my younger, younger years, like in my early 20s, definitely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I hear you on both counts.
Neil Bridgeman:
Thanks.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Neil Bridgeman:
It’s two pieces here. They’re just statements, really, but they’ve stuck with me for a really long time, particularly as someone with anxiety. Just worry about it when it happens. Stop worrying about whether it will happen or if it will happen. Just worry about it and deal with it when it does happen, because you’re quite good at managing your crisis. And then the other one is just being comfortable saying no. I’m a pleaser. I have been my whole life, and I sort of referenced my … My most common word is probably saying yes. I think learning to say no, it’s not necessarily advice I’ve always taken, but it’s something that’s definitely stuck with me and I need to continually work on.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What book is next to your bed or on your desk?
Neil Bridgeman:
Okay. On my desk is my bible as far as nutrition is concerned, which is A Textbook of Natural Medicine by two men called Pizzorno and Murray. I think that is my bible. That’s on my desk. Next to my bed, which is a Kindle, would be Eckhart Tolle’s book, which is The Power of Now. So I can continually pick that up, open it or be at any point, and read something that would have a fairly major impact on me. I love that book. It’s not an easy read, but if you break it down into small chunks, it’s a great one to have by your bed.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I’ve got his other book, actually, awaiting me.
Neil Bridgeman:
I haven’t read that. I must read it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. A New Earth, I think it’s called. Perhaps during the holidays. Now, who is one person that you think we should all know about? It could be a politician, a writer, a musician, an artist, an activist.
Neil Bridgeman:
I think we should all know about Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark is the … he is the global voice behind functional integrative medicine and nutrition. He’s written a ton of books. He’s the godfather of everything that I’ve just discussed around nutrition and preventative medicine and how you can avoid chronic disease. Get to know him. He’s got an amazing podcast called The Doctor’s Farmacy, which is F-A-R-M-A-C-Y instead of your traditional spelling of pharmacy, and he’s just a fantastic advocate for clean eating, policy change around food regulations, all sorts of stuff, and he’s an amazing man, a real inspiration. So he’s a person I think everyone should know about.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks so much. I so know his name and I am looking at his books right now online and I don’t think I’ve seen any of them. But …
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. He’s-
Anne Muhlethaler:
… somebody else told me about him.
Neil Bridgeman:
He’s written a really great book called What the Heck Should I Eat? and just dispels a lot of the myths, just skips straight to the point, brilliant guy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. I’m looking forward to digging into the podcast, for sure.
Neil Bridgeman:
Amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And perhaps one of the books. And my last question, which I love to ask all of my guests is, what brings you happiness?
Neil Bridgeman:
I’ll go back to what I spoke about before. I love being in the mountains. It’s pure bliss for me. I get a huge amount of energy from being in the mountains, whether it’s hiking or skiing, I don’t mind. It’s my happy place, for sure. So there’s definitely a life in the future that’s not in a warehouse apartment in Hackney in London and some sort of, I don’t know, cabin in the mountains. Let’s see. But yeah, that’s 100% where I get happiness from, for sure.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing.
Neil Bridgeman:
My pleasure, Anne.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you for the time. It was such a joy to talk to you about your expertise and experience in digital marketing at NAP, at MR PORTER, and of course, to discover more about what you’re doing now with nutrition.
Neil Bridgeman:
Thank you so much.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Can I ask you, where can people find you?
Neil Bridgeman:
Yeah. They can go to my website, which is neilbridgeman.com, nice and simple. All the information about me and the way I run my clinic and consultations is up there, and lots of information about recipes and various guides of how can you fight depression and PCOS and various other conditions. And you can find me on Instagram as well. It’s just @neilbridgeman, and that’s it, nice and simple. Just my name.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yay.
Neil Bridgeman:
Amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, thank you so much. I hope that you are going to have an amazing rest of the day into your weekend.
Neil Bridgeman:
Likewise.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m glad that Zoom let us continue to chat, because for a while, it was a little bit touch and go. But I’m super, super happy, and hopefully we’ll talk again very soon.
Neil Bridgeman:
Awesome. I can’t wait to see you soon, Anne. Come to London soon, okay?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, and you come to Switzerland. I have plenty of mountains here.
Neil Bridgeman:
Yes, that’s a very good point. All right.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks again to Neil for being my guest on the show today. So you can find him at neilbridgeman.com or on Instagram @neilbridgeman. Easy. You can also find details about all of the subjects we’ve talked about in our show notes. So friends and listeners, thank you again for joining me today and if you want to hear more, you can go to your favorite podcast app and hit the subscribe button and perhaps even leave us a review. It’s always lovely to hear from you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
If you’d like to connect, you can get in touch with me @annvi on Twitter, on LinkedIn, Anne Muhlethaler, or on Instagram @_outoftheclouds, where I also share some guided meditations and daily musings about mindfulness, et cetera, et cetera. You can find me and all of the podcast episodes on the website, which is finally live, annevmuhlethaler.com. If you don’t know how to spell that, it’s also available at outoftheclouds.com. Feel free to sign up to receive email updates, whether you’re interested in podcasting or mindfulness.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you will join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe, and take care.