What if the way most people are using AI right now is quietly making them less creative, less sharp, and less themselves, and nobody is talking about it?

In this episode, Anacani Walters shares the research that stopped her mid-scroll and completely reframed how she thinks about AI as a wellness entrepreneur. Research shows that passive AI use, letting AI think for you instead of with you, can reduce cognitive function by up to 47%. As yoga teachers, health coaches, healers, and heart-led CEOs, this is our conversation to lead.

But here's what the hype world won't tell you: intentional AI use does the opposite. It sharpens you. It amplifies the wisdom only you carry. The difference isn't which tool you use, it's whether your brain is in the driver's seat or the backseat.

In this short but powerful episode you'll learn:

• The difference between passive AI use and intentional AI use (and why it matters for your brain)
• Why women in wellness are the most qualified voices in the AI conversation, not the least
• One habit shift you can make before your next AI session that changes everything
• Why Anacani is speaking at the Queens of AI Summit this Saturday, and what she'll be going deeper on live

This episode is for the woman who loves using AI but wants to make sure she's using it in a way that protects her voice, her creativity, and her cognitive health, not slowly outsourcing them away.

🎙️ Ready to go deeper? Anacani is speaking live at the Queens of AI Summit this Saturday — and it's completely free to attend. Grab your spot in the show notes below.

In This Episode:

• [00:00] The stat that reframed everything
• [02:00] What cognitive offloading actually means for your brain — and your business
• [05:30] Why wellness professionals are essential to the AI conversation, not behind in it
• [09:00] The difference between AI as a crutch vs. AI as a catalyst
• [12:30] Your one action step before Saturday
• [14:00] Join Anacani live at the Queens of AI Summit

Links & Resources Mentioned:

🌊 Queens of AI Summit — FREE, this Saturday Anacani is speaking on Day 2, Session 12: Protect, Participate, Profit: A Hands-On Guide for Women Who Refuse to Be Left Behind by AI 👉 Grab your free spot here

📋 Grab the free "12 Signs You're Stuck in a Clarity Gap™" Checklist Comment TWELVE on any post at @empowerherwave and it lands straight in your DMs. No opt-ins. No funnels. Just clarity.

📞 Ready for a strategic mapping session? Book your Clarity Catalyst Call — 90 minutes of personalized direction so you stop spinning and start moving.

Connect with Anacani: 📲 Instagram: @empowerherwave 🌐 Website: empowerherwave.com 💬 Free Community: EmpowerHER Biz Collective on Facebook

Keywords (paste into Captivate's keyword/tag field): AI for women entrepreneurs, cognitive offloading, intentional AI use, heart-led CEO podcast, AI and burnout, wellness entrepreneurs and AI, Queens of AI Summit, women in AI, AI tools for coaches, nervous system and technology, AI content strategy, female entrepreneurs AI

What if the way most people are using AI right now is actually making them less creative, maybe less sharp, and probably less themselves?

There's research actually on this, and it stopped me in my tracks.

And it's exactly why I said yes to speak at a summit this Saturday, because this conversation really cannot wait.

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

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

I'm Anakani 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 am sorry.

So, so blessed to be here with you today.

I hope wherever you're listening from, you are doing amazing.

Beautiful.

Know that I see you and you are awesome.

And I need to tell you something.

I need, like, I need you to really hear it.

And I'm not coming to you as like a tech expert or this is like a really a tech thing.

Um, it's not really even like a business thing, but more as like a body thing.

Um, think of it as like a nervous system thing.

Is a wellness really a thing?

Because if you're a yoga teacher or some type of a woman's health coach, a healer of some sort, or even a birth worker, I am talking to you like, this is literally something that I need you to like, listen and stop what, whatever you're doing and just give me a few minutes.

Most people are not connecting these dots from what I can see, and it's really mind blowing.

So here's what I found.

Research shows that passive AI use, when you allow AI to think for you without engaging with it or using your brain first, you're letting AI pretty much do everything.

You're becoming that intern that I've talked about where you're just copying and pasting and that's the extent of it.

For most of us in the AI space already know that one of the biggest pushbacks is that AI is reducing cognitive function.

And the research actually proves it.

When you're using AI without you actually engaging your own brain, it's showing that it can reduce your cognitive function by up to 47%.

47%.

That's huge.

Okay, when they're talking about it, people aren't really talking about numbers.

But when I heard that number, I was like, holy seaweeds.

Now think about what we already as wellness professionals know in our general knowledge from what we do on a day to day basis.

What happens when a muscle stops being used?

It atropies like it starts to get weaker, it forgets what it's supposed to do.

Your brain is essentially a muscle.

And what nobody in the AI hype world is really telling people is that there is a massive difference between passive AI use and intentional AI use.

Like, one will soften you, the other one sharpens you.

Or you can look at it from one replaces your thinking while the other one amplifies it.

So there's a huge difference in how people can use AI as to whether or not it will affect that cognitive function in your brain.

And I truly believe, as women, especially in the wellness space who, where we've spent years learning how to regulate our nervous system and teach how to breathe through hard things and learning how to be present in our bodies, I 100% feel that we are literally the most qualified people on planet earth to be having this conversation.

And you might be thinking, anakani, you might be listening and you have not even started using AI and you're thinking, what?

That doesn't even make sense.

It's a bold statement.

I realize this, but understand that we as women wellness entrepreneurs are not behind in AI.

Actually, in truth, we are essential to it.

Listen to me, it only works if we show up though.

Like, this is the piece that I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about how I want to move forward as an AI educator.

The wellness coach that I want to be is the one who's not posting every day, who's not doing all the things, who's not burning out, and when I come back to who I know as my dream client, she has been posting every day, she has been doing all the things and guess what?

She is burning out now.

She's not burning out because she's working too hard.

She's burning out because she's outsourcing her thinking without realizing it.

We are letting the tools make the decisions that only we should be making.

And slowly but quietly, our voices are getting thinner when we're taking those approaches.

And you might feel that your content feels like it's getting blander and you're not sure why.

You can't figure out why.

You're doing all the things.

You're using all the right prompts, you're buying all the right courses.

And it's starting to feel like it's the algorithm and whatever.

Well, guess what?

It is not the algorithm.

It's not a niche problem.

And it is most likely the way your using AI now, the fix to it isn't to quit AI, by the way, because I know that that's the first thing that a lot of people are going to start to do.

The fix is to use it in a way that you'd use any good tool.

Like, let's just say in a yoga practice, with what intention?

You don't just flop into a pose.

You don't just go into your yoga practice and try to get into crowd or go straight into tree.

No, you find your drishti.

You breathe into it, you slowly start to warm up.

You warm up the muscles that need to be warmed up.

If you're a yoga instructor, you know how to properly create a yoga class with all the pieces to make sure that you're guiding and really setting up your students for success around some main challenge pose or around some type of a theme.

You decide where you're going before you actually even start moving your body or moving those bodies of your students.

Same thing with AI.

You have to think first and bring in your magic, bring in your wisdom, your lived experiences, and of course your voice so that it sounds like you.

We know that it is you.

And then you bring AI in to challenge it.

You help let AI help you refine it.

You let AI help amplify it so you have bigger reach, not replace it.

And that's the difference between a coach whose content sounds like everyone else's, doesn't matter what you do.

And then there's the one whose content actually makes people stop scrolling and go, omg, she's in my head now.

Your voice is literally your competitive advantage.

I know it feels like for some of us in certain niches, it feels like there's just a saturation and why even bother?

But that is further from the truth.

You are never going to be everyone's cup of tea.

There's somebody out there for Everybody, there's gazillions of people on planet Earth and guess what?

Not all of them.

They're not doing yoga.

They're still looking for you, but they can't hear you yet.

They haven't heard your voice yet.

Your humanity is what AI cannot replace.

And protecting that with purpose and intention is the work that needs to happen right now.

Now I'm going to be going so much deeper on this subjects Saturday at the Queens of AI Summit.

We're talking about how to protect your mind.

Learning how to participate in AI in a way that actually serves your values and what you want to stand for in the future that you want to see and then end up profiting from it without really burning out or selling, you know, yourself short.

It's free, it's super powerful.

There's a bunch of other women that are going to be talking about AI in different aspects.

Everything from money.

And then you have me on the other side now.

The link will be in the show notes.

Come as you are.

I am saying yes to this because I wanted to make space for you at the table.

I keep telling you that there's plenty of room for you at this AI table.

Even if you've never touched AI.

I highly encourage you to come and listen.

Be in the rooms, wear your curiosity scarf.

I'm going to be there with, with you.

You can come into my Facebook group, ask any questions that may, you know, have completely gone over your head in one of the sessions.

I'm happy to have those discussions in there to support you, to cheer you on if you did something, you got an aha moment, whatever.

Share that in the Facebook group too.

I'd be happy to see that you're there, that you're listening, that you're trying to take in whatever you can and that you showed up.

I would love to celebrate that.

But before Saturday, there's one thing that I want you to do.

The next time you use AI, just pause.

That's all I want you to do.

Pause for 60 seconds and then write down what you actually think before you ask AI or just think about it.

Meditate on it.

Your instincts, your take your wisdom first and then I want you to start talking to AI in it.

Remember, never take the first outcome challenge.

Why it's giving you that information.

If you have an idea, have AI challenge you, defend why you want to teach, what you want to teach, or why you're planning a certain class the way you want to, you know, teach it, or why you're sequencing something the way you want to Sequence it or whatever and then have AI challenge you.

We're gonna talk about a lot of this.

More like what is she talking about?

But I'm curious.

Get your seat.

It is completely free.

It's two days.

I'm gonna be there on the second day and my topic is gonna be so juicy.

And this one habit shift is literally the difference between using AI as a crutch or to take over and the difference in using it as a catalyst.

If you just do what I asked you to do, it feels really simple.

Like that doesn't feel like it's going to make a difference, but trust me, it does.

So let's just wrap this up by bringing it all together.

Remember, passive AI use dolls you, but intentional AI use sharpens you.

Now, the difference is whether your brain is in the driver's seat or the backseat.

Are you the intern that's just basically copying and pasting whatever AI tells you?

Or are you the one that's challenging and thinking first before AI does and then working with it as a collaborative partner and as a heart led woman?

This is literally your superpower.

Honestly, you are so more advanced and farther in the space.

If you just stop discounting yourself, start being in the room and start using the tools.

You already know how to be present, you know how to be intentional.

We just have to apply it to our businesses with AI.

I hope to see you on Saturday again.

The links are in the show notes.

As always, my beautiful friend, continue to be you.

Continue to be beautiful.

Continue leading from your heart and I will catch you in the next 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 resonated with you, I'd to like 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 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.