Elevating Women’s Confidence

Paula: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone and welcome to this episode of Chatting With The Experts TV show hosted by me, Paula Okonneh. Every week, I bring to you amazing women from Africa, from the Caribbean, in the Diaspora. And these women are professionals or successful business owners. And the mission of this show is to inspire, to educate and empower women globally. And guess what? My guests never disappoint. Never ever disappoint you. Today, our show is about Confidence, The Secret Sauce to Success. And we’ll be talking about building confidence from the inside out. With me to do this is Dr. Neema Moore, who is a dynamic chiropractor. I can’t speak today. A dynamic [00:01:00] chiropractor.
She’s also a speaker and an Amazon best-selling author of the empowering book, Confidence Now. She’s also a business owner. She has a fervent dedication to championing professional women, and she’s deeply committed to helping them cultivate confidence, enhance their well being, and step into their full potential. I always say, my guests’ bios are so, oh my gosh, bold. Bios always bowl me over. So because of that, now I have a tactic of asking them to just share themselves and to talk about themselves instead of me reading all of the amazing things that they’ve done. And so with that, I want to welcome Dr. Neema Moore to the show.
Dr Neema: Hi everyone. Thank you so much, Paula for having me here today. I’m so excited to have this conversation.
Paula: [00:02:00] Absolutely. I say this every time, but I am blessed when people say yes. So thank you for coming on.
Dr Neema: Absolutely.
Paula: So you talked about that. You’re a chiropractor.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: You’re a speaker and you’re an Amazon bestseller. Well, you know, that’s why I’m saying I am thrilled to have you here. Look at all these titles that I can attach to your names and all the platforms you’re on. So let’s talk about, well, first of all, how did you become this dynamic chiropractor? Tell me about that.
Dr Neema: I have been in practice for over a decade, seeing people from all over the world all up and down the East coast in Virginia. And, you know, as I was in my office and I would see people and just so you know, everyone, you know, when people read your bio, it’s just your highlight reel, right? It’s just your highlight reel. And it’s just those great. [00:03:00] Pictures we see on Facebook, but you know, as I was in my practice and I was practicing and I had two small children, I’m a mom to twins and I wanted something more. I would see patients come in and I would see how, you know, their depression or their anxiety, or even, you know, when they were stressed out would just affect their bodies.
And I knew that I wanted to do something more than just adjust people in my office to make them feel better. I really wanted to think about how else can I empower people? And of course me being a woman, a mom, a business owner, I really wanted to find a way to empower women. I am just all about that. That’s why I’m so excited to be on the show today because this is my jam, like empowering women to walk. In their greatness. I just think women are just so amazing. And I wanted to find different ways outside of the office to help women feel empowered.[00:04:00]
Paula: We share that love of that word. Amazing. When it comes to women, because I believe in that 100 percent women are amazing.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: Wow. So you went down that road and what did you discover? I mean, in terms of like, okay, you wanted to do more than just not just, but doing, you know, adjusting people so that they feel better.
Dr Neema: Yeah.
Paula: What did you discover? How did you…
Dr Neema: So what happened about, you know, maybe 10 years ago, I was in practice, I was literally facing in the midst of a divorce and had two small children, to be honest. And I had to figure out ways to uplift myself. You know, I felt very alone running a business is already hard. And when women go through things like divorce, it is very, very challenging financially, emotionally. And so I had to [00:05:00] really dig into my own toolbox to find ways to uplift myself and figure out what did I want my life to look like moving forward? You know, what did I, you know, sometimes endings are a new start.
Paula: Yep.
Dr Neema: It’s like, okay, what do you want your life to look like now? So how are you going to pick yourself back up? How are you going to reinvent yourself? And so of course I realized, you know, during that time when it was very hard, I felt overwhelmed. I felt tired. I had four little eyes looking at me, not just two because I had twins. I had to figure it out and I had to figure out, you know, how did I want to move forward in the world so that my children would see me feeling happy, right? Do you know that one of the major things to determine if your child’s going to be successful or happy is how happy is the mom?
Paula: Yes.
Dr Neema: How happy is she? And we hear this all the time, like mothers make a [00:06:00] huge difference, whether the dad is there in the home or not, they make a huge difference in how our children turn out. So I had to get it together. I had to figure out What do I want my life to be like now? How can I, you know, help and inspire other women? And then of course I started to meet other women and have other girlfriends going through the same thing. And I wanted to empower them. I’ve always been that girlfriend that people came to, to ask advice from, and I just said, you know what, the tools that I have learned that I stand on for my foundation so that I can continue to push forward. I wanna help other women do the same.
Paula: Awesome. So you started by thinking about mindset. How to tune your…
Dr Neema: Absolutely.
Paula: Mindset. Let’s talk more about that.
Dr Neema: Yeah. That’s the first chapter in my book actually. Yes.
Paula: Oh, I haven’t read, you see?
Dr Neema: It’s mindset. Because everything starts with the mind.
Paula: Mm-Hmm.
Dr Neema: And your body follows [00:07:00] your brain, meaning physically, emotionally, everything follows up here first. You know, we have a saying in chiropractic. Above Down Inside Out. We call it a D I O and that stands for that. Everything flows from above down and from inside of what’s going on inside out. And we can use that analogy for so many different things when it comes to physical health, as well as mental health, because everything starts from up here. Everything starts with your mindset. Everything starts with your brain and then it flows down. And then also what’s matters on the inside shows on the outside. Physically, you know, what are we talking? How is your body operating on the inside? It’s going to show on the outside at some point. How do you feel about yourself on the inside?
It’s going to show up on the outside as well. So, you know, taking some of those [00:08:00] tools and talking about, you know, starting with above, down, inside, out figuring out ways to practice healthy mindset, quieting the negative chatter that we constantly hear in our heads as women about you’re not good enough. You’re not pretty enough. Are you smart enough? You know, I was just had this conversation with my dad actually this morning. We were talking about the election and talking about how much stress and judgment that a woman in a high profile position has to have on her, what is she wearing? What is her hair look like?
What’s her background? It’s just so much pressure that we have on us. And so we’re constantly feeling like we’re being judged. So we have to figure out ways to quiet the negative chatter, things that people have told us as a child. Things that people have told us in school that aren’t true. Things that maybe our family has even said to us that maybe was by mistake or maybe on purpose. We have to figure out ways to quiet that chatter down [00:09:00] and replace it with positivity and positive affirmations.
Paula: That’s right. Replace it with positivity and positive affirmations. So, okay, so that’s the mindset. So how do we use that for mastering our bodies? I mean, how does that combine with, I know you said above, is it ADIO? Above,
Dr Neema: Above, Down Inside Out, but yeah, because you know, this is the thing that people don’t realize is that when we’re talking to ourselves or when we having this negative chatter, our bodies are listening. Our bodies are listening. I just came from a conference this weekend that talked about that sometimes you can have pain. So this is another reason why I started to get into, you know, how can I empower women to feel better and to have a happier life because pain will show up in your body when you are depressed, when you are unhappy, when you are stressed. [00:10:00] And there may not even be an issue there, meaning like, for example, low back pain, there has been studies to already show that there is a connection between increased stress and low back pain.
So a lot of times people are complaining of pain and it’s not because they injured it. It’s not because they feel it. Because they fell or they slept wrong. It’s because they’re unhappy. It’s because they’re mentally, their mindset is not in the right place. And they’re having some mental struggles along the way.
Paula: Wow.
Dr Neema: And there is a direct scientific connection between how you feel about your body, as well as how it actually feels if you’re in pain, if you feel too tight, all of those things.
Paula: Okay. Right. And I’ve heard that, but I’m just thinking like, okay, so if I come to you, I haven’t told you what’s going on in my life, but like, oh my gosh. At this age, if I say my knee hurts, you know, someone will say Arthritis. Maybe that it’s not arthritis. [00:11:00] I’m just overwhelmed with life. How would you help me?
Dr Neema: That’s a great question. So, you know, I have so many different people, but I’m going to tell you this. My favorite people and my avatar or the people that I love treating are women who are over 40, who are trying to get their health back on track. And you know, a lot of times they are forgotten. A lot of people in the chiropractic profession, they adjust pregnant women and babies. And I said, you know, what about the women who are done having babies and, you know, are at that point where the kids are older and they realize, hold up, I’ve got some, I’m still young, I’m still young and sassy and I want to do some things.
I want to travel. I want to, you know, start another career, you know, but you can only do those things when you feel good. And, you know, to live longer means that you get to be on the earth to have more fun with your family, to make more money, to start another business, start [00:12:00] another career. And so you want that longevity. So what I do is when people come into my office, of course, I see people virtually as well as I help women in my office. So I help women to become confident and healthy from the inside out through my chiropractic care through functional medicine, as well as maybe we’ll talk a little bit about my luxury wellness retreats and experiences that I have inside of the country as well as outside of the country. We’re going to Aruba next week. I’m taking a group of women to Aruba next week, but we start with the conversation, a consultation to see, you know, what direction are you looking to go? Are you trying to better your health? Would you like to lose weight?
I have programs for both. So it starts with a conversation. Then we do an examination. If you come into my office for chiropractic care, we do an examination. If you are a virtual patient, we start with a DNA test that actually tells me how fast are you [00:13:00] aging? Are you the age that you say you are, and if you’re not where you want to be, let’s roll back the clock. Let’s get you on the right supplements. Let’s get you on the amount that you need for vitamin D. Let’s answer the questions of what should I take to feel better, to decrease inflammation for that chronic arthritis that you’re feeling in your knee. So those are some of the things that we start with.
It always starts with a conversation, consultation. No one gets cookie cutter treatment from me. I really like to customize plans for each woman that comes into my office because I have a lot of tools in my toolbox. Maybe it’s chiropractic, maybe it’s weight loss. Maybe it’s just, I want to live longer and feel better and have less brain fog. Those are the things that we talk about. And then we create a plan for you.
Paula: Oh, I absolutely love it. I love it. And, you know, you mentioned that one of the tools or one of the ways you help women is [00:14:00] luxury.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: And, you know, when you talked about Aruba, I thought of course, sunshine,. And I associate sunshine with excess vitamin or vitamin D.
Dr Neema: Exactly.
Paula: Yeah. So we know I’m from the Caribbean and I’m also from Nigeria. So I know about sunshine, sometimes excess sunshine. So women like my family who live like in the Caribbean or in Nigeria, how, I mean, I guess vitamin D will not be part of what you recommend for them because
Dr Neema: I’m not going to say that I’m actually going to say, you know, they do get a lot of vitamin D, but you know what, because of our beautiful melanin, sometimes we don’t absorb as much as our lighter melanin counterparts. And so sometimes we think just by getting out inside in front of the sun, that is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it’s not enough. And we still need supplementation. [00:15:00] So the only way to know would be to know that would be to get tested. I believe in knowing your numbers to know that, you know, what do we need to do to increase that vitamin D?
Because vitamin D, like they finally understand now what chiropractors have been saying for a long time about the importance of vitamins in our system. And vitamin D has stepped to the forefront because we need it when it comes to immunity. We need it when it comes to our bones. We need it when it comes to inflammation so many different things depend on vitamin D. So I wouldn’t necessarily say that I would say, you know what, it’s still important to test them. Because even though they are getting outside, sometimes it doesn’t convert. Like, our lighter counterparts who don’t have as much melanin.
Paula: See, I heard someone else say that. So you’re confirming what I heard.
Dr Neema: Yes, that’s very true. Yeah, we don’t synthesize it the same.
Paula: And sometimes mindset too, we feel, Oh, [00:16:00] if I stay out too long, I’ll get too dark and I don’t want to be too dark. So, let me get into the shade.
Dr Neema: Being a person of color, there’s a lot of things that are constantly in the back of our minds. And that, and I say person of color, because a lot of different races who do have a lot of melanin, that is, that is something they are concerned about.
Paula: Yes.
Dr Neema: Asians, Indians, like I said, people of color, that’s a whole ‘nother show we need to do. But yeah, so sometimes people don’t want to be out in the sun and I, and also the sun can do damage. It does sun damage. Sun damage is real to people of color. That’s not good either, you know, and it causes you to age quicker. So, you know, it’s one of those things I’d rather take a good supplement than probably stay out in the sun too long. Not because of skin color, but because more of the damage it does. You know, we’ve got environmental [00:17:00] things going on where we don’t have much of a protection. So your skin can burn so quickly and that causes your face to age quicker.
Paula: True. That’s so true. All right. So we talked about mindset and how you can help through, I mean, different tools that you have in your toolbox.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: Now, does any of that include us or include groups, you know, like, do we do it alone? Do you recommend that? Let’s just talk about.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: We, older women. We don’t normally do well when we are by ourselves.
Dr Neema: No, we don’t.
Paula: We love to be with our friends, our girlfriends, you know, doing fun things together. So is that one of the things you incorporate?
Dr Neema: Absolutely. You know, I think women, we love… one of my business coaches said, women love getting together and just talking. Like we love, let me tell you, that will never ever get old. It’s who we are. It’s how we were created. We are meant to be bonded. We are meant to be in that kind of [00:18:00] tribal sisterhood. That is just who, I don’t care what type of woman you are. Women like to be around other women. We like to have connection. We like to have nurturing. It’s just who we are. So I encourage, and I actually have a group where people can become a part of where, you know, you get that encouragement and that information that you need to better your health.
2025 for me is going to be all about women’s wellness. I’m going to be totally tapping into and promoting more of women getting healthy and happy. And one of those ways is going to be in groups. I suggest that women come together in groups because I think we can learn from each other. We learned so much from each other. You know, sometimes women say, well, I don’t want to be in a group. I just want one on one with you. And I do that too. But what I learned is that when we’re in a group and someone else asks a question, sometimes you may say, well, I wondered [00:19:00] that too, but I didn’t want to say it, you know, and so we just learn from each other and also what’s really important right now because of where we are in the world.
And what I mean by that is. Loneliness, you know, the surgeon general has already said that loneliness is going to be an epidemic. And we are going to feel more alone and we are already feeling more alone than ever, especially coming out of COVID. So I think it’s important for women. People aren’t going out as much sometimes. And so I really think it’s important for women to connect in-person, online so that they know that they’re not alone. They’re not the only one having a health issue or health challenge.
Paula: You are so right. Not being alone on, or even if you know, sometimes I heard somebody say this one she said I’m in a crowd but I feel alone. Knowing that someone out there in a group like you said may say something that you’ve been [00:20:00] feeling you just didn’t know how to get it out. That’s itself.
Dr Neema: And that’s why I’m just thinking, Paula, you need to come to one of my events. This year is going to be about bringing women together in small, intimate groups, where we go someplace fabulous and have lunch or go to the mountaintop and have a glass of wine and just connect, talk to each other, not a big crowd, but where you can connect and talk to each other and, you know, maybe network as well, or find another sisterhood and create another sisterhood with someone. That’s going to be it for me moving forward for sure.
Paula: That sounds exciting. Tell me a little bit more about it since you’ve openly invited me.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: Tell me.
Dr Neema: And you all are invited as well if you’re watching.
Paula: Alright. Of course.
Dr Neema: I love bringing people together and it’s just one of the things that I love to do. That’s why I started to create the retreats to bring people together, but I do that here in Northern Virginia [00:21:00] as well and surrounding areas. We just went to Bluemont, Virginia Bluemont winery, which is on top of a mountain. You can see the, you know, the leaves are changing here and it was just beautiful. And I love bringing women together to just connect, to take their cape off. That so that they can be their authentic selves. It’s so important for women to feel that they can just be themselves. Just like we were talking about all the pressures that we have you know, what do you look like? What are you wearing?
You know, how much education do you have? You know, do you have kids? Do you not have kids? How much do you weigh? So I like to bring women together who are diverse. You know, from all walks of life and all ages that can really come together and connect, share. I kind of facilitate, we eat some great food, laugh, hug, and everyone just feels uplifted and empowered when they leave.
Paula: You are already wetting my appetite. So I’ve [00:22:00] already said yes. I don’t even know what date it is, but it’s a yes. Perfect. And as you said, I mean, this is also extended to all who have joined us today.
Dr Neema: Absolutely. And also please know, like people come from all over the country to, to my events, even if, even though I have them here, people come from New York, they come from North Carolina, they come from Georgia. They come from all over to come to the events because they want that connection. And they want to be, I’m very particular about who comes because I want to make sure that I have a safe environment for women to have a good time and be themselves.
Paula: Absolutely. I love that, you know, because there’s nothing better than a safe space.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: Nothing better than when women come together. They like to talk as you mentioned for the most part, but even when they’re speaking to each other, they want to feel safe and heard and seen. And so that sounds like what you’re doing.
Dr Neema: Exactly, exactly.
Paula: I love it. So, where can people find you online because I know we’re talking here and there are people [00:23:00] waiting to continue the conversation.
Dr Neema: Yes. And listen, I love connecting with people. I am a people person. So please don’t be afraid to send me a message and say, Hey, or I saw you over there or comment. I am on all platforms under the same name, which is Dr. Neema DC. So DR my name Neema, N-E-E-M-A and my Doctor of Chiropractic, initials behind it, DC. So you can find me on Instagram Facebook, as well as LinkedIn on all under the same name, Dr. Neema DC, and I’d be happy to connect with you.
Paula: And folks, I can vouch for that. She and I were at a conference.
Dr Neema: That’s right.
Earlier on.
Paula: And that’s how we connected. And…
Dr Neema: yes, we sat right next to each other.
Paula: Right? And here we are now.
Dr Neema: And here we are.
Paula: Yes. So take those conversations sometimes offline, online, and many times I say take it from online to offline. [00:24:00]
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: Because we need each other. We need to connect and we need to, how else are we going to better the world? We are the ones, those of us who have children, we are the ones who bring these children into the world. And even if we don’t have children, we nurture. We are the nurturers and we bring people together. So let’s continue to do that by coming together.
Dr Neema: Yes.
Paula: And with that, I want to encourage people, if you’ve listened to this, or even those in the audience can share this with other people. If you’d like to be a guest on my show, reach out to me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com. I’m on LinkedIn as Paula Okonneh. I’m also on Instagram. My handle there is at chat_podcast. I always get this wrong. All right. Let’s say that again. I’m at chat_experts_podcast and I’m on Facebook as Paula Okonneh. Reach out to me there and come join us on this right now is [00:25:00] the online world, but we always stay behind to speak with those who join us because there’s nothing better than you’ve listened to someone, heard their views, but you have a question. You can ask Neema today that question immediately after this. Thank you, Neema, for saying yes,
I enjoyed talking to you.
Dr Neema: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Paula: Absolutely.