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EP 52 ASSET SUITE

Your Brain on AI: Cognitive Decline, Passive Use, and Why Women Wellness Entrepreneurs Are the Antidote (Part 1)

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Episode Title: Ep 52: Your Brain on AI — Cognitive Decline, Passive AI Use, and Why Women Wellness Entrepreneurs Are Essential (Part 1)

SEO Episode Description (for Captivate's "Description" field):

What if the AI tools you're using every single day to save time are quietly making you less creative, less sharp, and less you?

Research shows that passive AI use can reduce brain activity by up to 47%. And in this episode, Anacani Walters breaks down exactly what's happening — not from a tech bro perspective, but from a nurse, flight medic, and women's wellness lens that nobody else in the AI space is bringing to the table.

This is Part 1 of a two-part episode, and it covers the foundational concepts you need before Part 2 takes you even deeper.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The difference between cognitive offloading (the one making you replaceable) and cognitive augmentation (the one making you irreplaceable) — and how to tell which one you're doing right now
• Why the 2025 MIT EEG research on passive AI use should have every wellness entrepreneur paying attention
• Why women wellness entrepreneurs are not irrelevant to the AI conversation — they are the antidote to it
• The three non-negotiable brain foundations that nobody in the AI space is talking about: sleep, nutrition and hydration, and movement
• How yoga teachers and movement coaches can turn their classes into neuroplasticity sessions using dual-tasking — a gift AI literally cannot replicate
• A simple 5-minute brain dump recall practice you can start today to shift from passive to active AI use

Why This Matters:

Attention spans are collapsing. Anxiety is at record highs. Children are questioning their own existence in an age of AI. And the wellness practitioners who teach breathwork, nervous system regulation, embodiment, and movement are not sideline spectators to this conversation — they are the most essential voices in it.

But you have to show up. You have to participate. And you have to protect your own mind in the process.

That's what this episode is here to help you do.

Your Quick Win From This Episode:

Before you open any AI tool today, spend 5 minutes doing a brain dump recall. Write or voice-memo everything you already know about the topic first. Then bring AI in to challenge, expand, and sharpen what you wrote. That single step moves you from cognitive offloading to cognitive augmentation.

Resources + Links Mentioned:

• Join the free EmpowerHER Biz Collective on Facebook: facebook.com/groups/empowerherbizcollective
• Jim Kwik's Limitless Program (brain performance): jimkwik.com
• Clarity Catalyst Call (90-min 1:1 strategic session): empowerherwave.com/clarity
• Grab the Clarity Gap Checklist: comment TWELVE on any @empowerherwave Instagram post
• Listen on Apple or Spotify: comment LISTEN on any @empowerherwave Instagram post

Connect With Anacani:

• Instagram: @empowerherwave
• Website: empowerherwave.com
• Free Community: EmpowerHER Biz Collective on Facebook

Loved this episode?

Subscribe so you don't miss Part 2 - where we go even deeper into mermaid mind mapping, chain-of-thought prompting as brain training, and why your community is suffering right now.

Leave a review if this landed for you. It takes 30 seconds and it helps other heart-led women find this show.

Share this episode with a fellow wellness entrepreneur who needs to hear it.

Research shows that passive AI use can actually reduce your brain activity up to 47%. That means that the tools that you are using every single day to save time might actually be making you less creative, less sharp, and guess what?

Less you. So today we are talking about what is actually happening to our brains and what to do about it.

So grab your cup of whatever's keeping you grounded and let's begin.

Welcome to Heart Led CEO, the podcast for women wellness entrepreneurs who are ready to build, scale and automate their businesses without sacrificing their soul, sanity or authenticity.

I'm an Anacani Walters, a nurse turned entrepreneur, military spouse, first time mama in my 40s, and a recovering burnout survivor who's making it a mission to help Heart Led women just like you create thriving businesses that really feel good, do good, and give you the freedom that we all deserve. Because here's the thing. You don't have to hustle harder to succeed. You don't have to drown in tech overwhelm or try to do everything alone.

And I'm here to give you the.

Strategies, automation, tools and mindset shifts that will help you step fully into that leader, CEO and impact maker that you are meant to be. If you're ready to grow your business in a way that aligns with your values and your life, you are in the right place.

Let's get into today's episode. Hello. Hello, my beautiful friend. I'm so happy to be here with you today sharing this space.

Before we get into anything, I really just want to ground us really quick. I want you to just close your eyes, put your hands on your belly, maybe put the other hand on your heart.

And as you inhale through your nose, allow that lower hand to expand, bringing that belly out then into your ribs, that last little breath into your chest.

Bring your shoulders up, back and down, exhaling from your nose, from your chest, your ribs and giving yourself that internal hug, bringing your belly button up and in, inhaling through your nose, belly, ribs, last little breath into your chest, shoulders up, back and down as you exhale from your chest, your ribs and that last little breath into that internal hug. Belly button up and in.

Okay, now before I dive in, I do want you to put on that possibility scarf on because today's topic can spark some big feelings. I realize that maybe some resistance or you might even have feelings of defensiveness. And that is okay. Any one of them, all of the above.

That just means that it's landing exactly where it needs to and I just need you to keep an open Mind, that's all that I need you to do in this episode. And if you need to pause, take another breath and then keep going. So let's go ahead and get into it. Now.

Maybe you've been creating a lot of content recently, which is very, very possible because that's really what AI has been helping people do.

Now imagine that you're working on a piece of your content and you just need a caption and you're sitting down with maybe Claude or chatgpt or Grok and you give it your usual prompt. You get this output and you go ahead and still proofread it. You clean it up and then you go ahead and post it.

And then you go back about an hour and you reread it because you're checking just to see, do I get any likes? You know, have, has anybody commented?

And you're refreshing your screen and you're looking and you're actually reading it just to see one more time and then start thinking to yourself, did I actually write that? Is that me? Does it sound like me? Is this what I sound like now?

I mean, it was good and it was polished, it said all the right things, checked all the boxes, but you still read it feeling like a little hollow, like it wasn't really yours. Almost like if you were wearing someone else's outfit that technically fits you, but you feel uncomfortable in it because you know it's not yours.

Have you ever felt that way?

Like you are producing more content than ever, but something just doesn't feel good about it and you are becoming more efficient and that feels good, but somehow you feel less present in what you're actually putting out there as you your own work. And I want to tell you that I completely understand that that feeling is not just some weird vibe that you're somehow getting all of a sudden.

It is actually your brain trying to tell you something.

And if that is you, if I just described what it feels like for you in the present moment, know that you're not alone and that we're going to talk about this because this is something that I've been really diving into now, what is actually happening? That's what I'm going to cover today with you is, number one, what cognitive offloading is and why it matters for my women wellness entrepreneurs.

Specifically, because I really want to make sure that I'm talking to you. Number two, the research that really has changed how I teach AI.

Number three, I want to talk about the non negotiable brain foundations that nobody is actually talking about in the AI space. And I proved it this past week when I spoke at an AI summit. And number four, a simple practice that you can start doing today to protect your mind.

So I really want to get into it because there's a lot. This is actually going to be a two part podcast.

I've never done one of those before, but that's what I have to do because of how massively important not only is this topic, but how important I want to make sure that you get all of the pieces to take this with you, be empowered, become aware of what's happening, and go live your life in a better way. So, number one, what is cognitive offloading? And why should you care? Because at this point you're probably like, what is it?

And what does this all mean to me? Anakani. Now, the thing is, is that there are two ways to essentially use AI. The first is what I call cognitive offloading.

And that's basically when you're using AI to do the thinking and you just approve whatever it's giving you. You literally take what it gives you. You're again tweaking it a word or two, removing the EM dashes so that it doesn't look like it's AI generated.

And then you post it or you it or you present it. And it sounds really efficient and it makes you feel really efficient because it's plug and play, basically.

And in the short term that is what is happening. But research shows that that is considered passive AI use, which is basically what I just talked to you about.

And I refer to it as thinking of yourself as you really become a glorified VA or intern for, for AI. You are just doing what it's telling you to do. You're copying and pasting, and that's pretty much it.

You're taking what AI gives you and you are not engaging your own brain. You're not questioning what it's giving you. You're just taking it for what it's worth and then just doing what it's telling you to do.

And that in itself, that simple, what feels like a very simple and harmless action, is actually reducing your brain activity up to 47%. 47. You guys, now I'm a nurse. You guys know my background. I used to be a flight medic.

I started off emergency medicine and I spent a good 15 years in surgical oncology. And when I heard that number, I was like, what is that even possible? Like, that sounds like an excessive percentage.

And I know what happens to muscles when you stop using it. And in case you didn't know your brain is a muscle and just like every other muscle in your body, when it stops being used, it atropies.

It's basically being called cognitive atrophy. And it is happening very quietly, but it is happening nonetheless.

Now, a lot of women who think that they are killing it in their businesses are producing way more content than ever, more emails and they're having way more captions, maybe better ones, more proposals, and their brain is actually getting softer with every single one of those things that they are producing. But here's the thing. The second way to use AI is what I call cognitive augmentation. Now this is when you do the thinking first.

You are literally bringing your ideas, your story, what made you special, your magic, the strategies that you've created, the stuff that you've lived through experiences. And then you bring AI into challenge it and sharpen it and expand it and make it powerful and allow you to reach more.

One of these makes you replaceable and the other one makes you irreplaceable.

So sit with that for a minute because I know a lot of people are contemplating and worried about whether AI is going to take their jobs, but that is the wrong question. So the second point I want to cover is why women, wellness entrepreneurs specifically are vitally important to this. Now.

Why am I talking to you directly, my wellness beautiful sister? I don't care what you are.

Whether you're a yoga teacher or some type of a movement coach, a breath work facilitator or a birth worker, a doula, energy healer, you're a naturopath, a functional medicine practitioner, up paddle board or surf instructor, whatever your flavor of wellness, I am speaking directly to you. I need you to stop whatever it is you're doing unless you're driving and you cannot stop. And hear me.

I hear so many of you saying AI is not really my world and I'm just too busy with clients to learn these tools. And I get anxiety just even thinking about it. I just want to do things the traditional way, do everything manually because it works for me. Now.

All valid. I hear you.

But I also need you to hear me when I say that you are so much more than your inner beliefs of what you're capable of and all those false beliefs that you have is costing your community. Because here's what is actually happening in the world right now that a lot of people are not pointing out and talking about.

Yes, there are things that are affecting the world when it comes to AI, but there are also people who are using AI to help with a lot of the things, especially environmentally now, what are the things that are not brain brought to attention for a lot of us is that attention spans are collapsing. Anxiety is at record highs far beyond what they were when we were going through Covid.

And our children are growing up in a world that we just cannot even support them with.

We as parents are struggling to figure out how to support our children in a world that they are existing in that is so completely different from what we were growing up in. To the point where children are now questioning their own existence. Hear me when I say that this is so big.

Our children are questioning their own existence. Not adults, children. Because they are growing up in an era where now AI and robots actually exist.

Things that when I was little, I would never have thought that I would have lived to see the day. And now I am raising a child into this space.

They are wondering if AI and robots can do things better than humans and are smarter than humans, then why do I exist? What is my purpose in this world? And that, my beautiful friend, is where you come in.

Because I truly believe that your breath work and your nervous system regulation practices and your embodiment practices and your movement and your presence are the literal antidote to the AI overuse and all of the things that it is creating. Hear me when I tell you that you are not irrelevant to the AI conversation like you believe you are.

I truly believe with all my heart that you are essential to it. But guess what?

You have to show up, you have to participate, and you have to protect your own mind in the process, obviously, because that's what the whole point of this podcast is.

The brain foundation nobody is talking about in the AI space is about something that I learned from a coach, Jim Quick, who happens to be my brain coach. If you don't know my story, I had the equivalent of an 8th grade reading level up until like my mid 20s.

So if you don't know Jim Quick, he's a brain performance expert, I'm in his limitless program.

And one of the first things that he literally teaches before any of the speed reading or the memory techniques or any like, advanced stuff with improving your, your brain function is that you cannot optimize your brain that is running on empty. Basically the whole analogy of you cannot pour from an empty cup and neither can your brain.

And I find it amusing that in the AI space, everybody is talking about like prompts and tools and language models and workflows and automations, but hardly anybody is actually talking about the actual hardware that is most important to the entire Conversation, which is your brain.

So I want to give you the foundations because these are the things that, I'm not going to lie, directly impact your cognitive function, but they should not be anything new.

And when I say your cognitive function, well, your creativity and your critical thinking, your ability to use AI as a sparring partner instead of a crutch. Okay?

And I promise you, you already know all of these things, but I just want to reconnect you with why they matter now more than ever, because I know so many of us, especially as women wellness entrepreneurs, are not doing any of these. Now, I'm not telling you anything that's new, believe you me. I'm pretty sure you already know all of these. And there is no judgment.

Okay, now the first one is sleep again. While you sleep, your brain is essentially repairing and cleaning itself without going really technical.

It's a system that flushes out all the waste from your brain cells during your deep sleep. And one of the things that it removes is a protein associated with cognitive decline.

But when you are sleep deprived, your prefrontal cortex, which is essentially the part of the brain that's responsible for the important stuff, decision making, creativity, critical thinking, cannot function at full capacity when you don't get enough sleep.

So that's the actual part that we need your brain to be active so that you can be a really engaged AI user instead of the passive one that's causing the cognitive decline to begin with. So ask yourself, how much sleep are you actually getting? And I'm not saying guess how much sleep you think you're getting.

How much are you actually getting? There's plenty of things that you can go and get. If you have an Apple watch, it will track it for you.

And I would say start tracking it to have that awareness of if it's something that you need to work on. Now, I realize there's things in life that come up that affect our sleep.

If you're caring for a young child or sick relative and things like that, yes, that plays a big factor. But it doesn't mean that it's impossible to get some or to work on it and just become a little bit better.

Remember, we're not looking for massive improvements. Small moves make big waves. Now, the second thing that you need to work on or pay attention to is your nutrition and hydration. I'm coming to you.

I'm putting on my nurse hat. I'm just going to have a casual conversation with you just like you would at a doctor's office. Because your brain is approximately 73% water.

So what does that mean? Even mild dehydration, and I'm talking 1 to 2% below the optimal level of what you should be hydrating your body with, can cause brain fog.

It will make it difficult for concentrating on anything and it will reduce your cognitive performance. A lot of people think that it's hormonal related and all these other things, but it often is just dehydration. We're not drinking enough water.

Your brain loves water. And in addition to water, it also loves healthy fats.

So things like avocado, fatty fish, walnuts, blueberries, leafy greens, they're not just buzzwords. They're actual real things.

And they are literally the brain fuel your body wants you to give your brain now without giving you like this whole anatomy and science class.

It's the omega 3 fatty acids in particular that are essential for the building blocks of maintaining the insulation that makes your brain signals fire faster and clearly. So if you want to stay sharp while you're using AI, then you need to start drinking some water and you need to make it a regular habit.

It's really easy when you're really head down and you have a bunch of tabs open and you only have a few hours window to not take that break for that extra water. But you need to build it in, set a timer if you need to track how much actual water you're consuming in the day.

Now, the last one is movement and neuroplasticity. This one is the one that I really feel excited for you. If you're a wellness practitioner that has anything to do with exercise or movement.

Because we already know that when you exercise, your body releases specific hormones that help with your brain. It literally stimulates the growth of new neurons and strengthens the existing neural connections in your brain.

That is what neuroplasticity is, which gives your brain the ability to rewire itself and form new connections and adapt better. And that is literally what you get to help with. Now, studies on dual tasking have been coming out.

Meaning doing a cognitive task while also doing a physical task is showing that that specific combination is almost like a crossfit for your brain because you Then start working on multiple systems simultaneously, which is really, really exciting for me because it's something where I think that that's where you, as a wellness practitioner, especially if you're like a yoga teacher or a movement coach, can really use AI to help you think outside of the box when you're creating your classes.

So if you're a yoga teacher, because that's the easiest for me to explain, since I myself am also a yoga teacher, imagine your student is in a difficult or challenging pose, like a chair or a tree, or they're in some type of crow pose or a challenging balance pose of any sort. Normally, we. We don't do a lot of talking. We get them in and we tell them to just focus on a point.

Well, their brain is already working super hard to maintain that balance. What if you, as the yoga instructor, layered in a cognitive challenge at the same time?

So as they're holding this really challenging pose, you say, while you're in this pose, I want you to think about what you had for breakfast three days ago, or I want you to silently in your head, recite the Alphabet backwards or solve some type of a simple math problem. What did you just do? You literally just turned your yoga class into a neuroplasticity session without them really needing to know why.

You gave your students a gift of something that AI cannot give them and nobody else is really doing. You are literally embodying cognitive training in your yoga classes.

Now, that, to me, is massively powerful, and I hope that that is exciting for you. And light bulbs are starting to bounce in your head about how you can start bring this into your practices.

This is what I call the epiphany and why I say that you are the antidote to what is happening with AI overuse.

Because this is the intersection of wellness and AI that I keep talking about, where you're taking that zone of genius and you're meeting the most urgent conversation of our time. Now, there's one thing that I really want you to do for today.

Before you open up any AI tool, I really want you to just spend five minutes doing what I call a brain dump recall. I love brain dumps. Here is how it works.

Before you let AI summarize anything or draft something for you or help you respond to anything that you need to have it help you respond to, I want you to actually write down what you already know about the topic first. Or in this case, open up the microphone.

Push the microphone button on your phone, or if you're on your desktop, it has the Same function and just start talking it out like you would if you were writing. Writing it on paper actually would be more beneficial for you than doing it voice. But if you're short on time, that works too.

I don't care if it's messy, I don't care if it's incomplete.

I don't care if things are spelled right or it like halfway makes sense, as long as it makes sense for you and you get your thought outs of your head and onto something written. Then after you've done all of that beautiful work, then you bring AI into it and then you have it challenge what you wrote.

So you can ask AI to ask you what you missed. You can ask it to give you some type of a counter argument to what you wrote.

You can ask it what an expert would push back on or maybe have it give you a pushback from a direct competitor or maybe even your dream client. Now what you just did is you went from literally a cognitive offloading to a cognitive augmentation in really just one step and that is it.

That's your quick win for today. It's something super simple that I want you to just play with. And there if you really want to reflect.

I know this was a lot and I want you to sit with this. You can listen to this again if you need to. Is where in your business are you currently approving instead of actually thinking first?

And there's no shame, there's no judgment. Again, it's awareness. You know that I believe awareness is so powerful and it is always usually the first step.

So to bring this all home, I covered a lot. That's why I broke this up into two episodes. So what did we cover today? Number one, there are two ways to use AI Cognitive offloading.

That's the bad way where AI does your thinking and you just become softer in your brain. Now there's cognitive augmentation, where you actually think first and AI sharpens it.

One makes you replaceable, the other one makes you irreplaceable. So if you're worried about whether AI is going to take your job, you might want to start working on your cognitive augmentation.

Number two, wellness entrepreneurs are not irrelevant to the AI conversation. In fact, they are essential to it.

And they, in my opinion, are the antidote to what AI overuse is creating in people's bodies and mind all over the entire world.

Number three, the brain foundations that nobody is talking about in the AI space is not prompts, not frameworks, but sleep, nutrition, hydration and movement. Those are your non negotiables before any prompt strategy even should matter for you.

Number four, Dual tasking in your movement practice is a powerful way to build neuroplasticity in your clients and yourself. So the next yoga class that you teach can literally breathe a brain training session for your clients.

That is your unique contribution to the conversation and your quick win brain dump recall before you open any AI tool today. Now, as always, if this episode resonated with you, which I hope it did, I would love to continue this conversation again.

You can come join us inside the Empower Her Way Biz Collective Facebook. It's free and that is actually where I'm giving you guys resources, more prompts and having conversations exactly like this one.

Thank you so much for staying with me. I 100% thank you from the bottom of my heart because I know that was a lot.

Which is why if this resonated, you definitely want to come back next week for part two of this episode. And we're going to be going even deeper.

We're actually going to be talking about mermaid mind map and chain of thought prompting, which are literally brain training exercises for you. But we're also going to be talking about why your community is suffering.

We're going to go deeper into that subject and you're just not going to want to miss it. So as always, I want you to continue to be you continue to be beautiful.

Continue leading from your heart and I will catch you in part two of this episode. All right, beautiful.

That's a wrap on today's episode. But before you go, let's talk about something really important. You are not just another entrepreneur trying.

To figure things out alone.

You are a wave leader. Someone whose work is meant to create real impact, touch the lives of others and make this world better.

And I want you to know you.

Don't have to do it alone.

If today's conversation resonates resonated with you, I'd love to keep this energy going inside of my free Facebook community Empower Her Biz Collective.

It's where we take these conversations deeper with live trainings, tech walkthroughs and real heart centered support from other women wellness entrepreneurs who really get it. So if you're ready for community, clarity.

And support as you build your own.

Business with heart and ease, I'd invite you to come and join us. You'll find the link the link in the show notes.

And hey, if you love today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review if you feel inclined and share this with a fellow heart led women entrepreneur so that we can build this movement together. Until next time, keep leading with heart.