Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Running in the Red: Warning Signs Your Engine Might Be Shutting Down and What to Do About It
Are you running your life in the red zone without realizing it? That was me—juggling family commitments, a demanding day job, a DJ business in peak wedding season, and countless other responsibilities. I thought I was handling it all until my body delivered a devastating wake-up call.
What started as blurry vision in one eye led to a shocking diagnosis: retinal venous occlusion. High blood pressure had hardened the arteries in my eye, cutting off blood flow and permanently damaging my vision. Despite previously getting my stress under control after leaving law enforcement, I'd unconsciously slipped back into old patterns—going full throttle without intentional rest. Now each blurry moment serves as a visual reminder of what happens when we ignore our body's warning signs.
During a therapy session, I received a profound insight: my nervous system can't distinguish between different types of stress. Whether it's career pressure, family obligations, or endless activities, stress is stress. When we constantly operate in high gear, our bodies produce elevated cortisol levels, affecting everything from heart health to cognitive function. The fight-or-flight response stays activated, keeping us perpetually on edge.
The solution isn't complicated, but it requires intention. Meditation, controlled breathing exercises, outdoor walks, and mindful music listening can activate the parasympathetic nervous system—our body's natural relaxation response. Even implementing just one of these practices can make a significant difference in blood pressure, anxiety levels, and overall well-being.
For years, I equated rest with laziness. Now I understand it's essential medicine. Eight hours of quality sleep resets the amygdala, improving emotional regulation and memory. Intentional slowdown isn't a luxury—it's preventative healthcare that affects every aspect of your life.
If something in this episode resonates with you, try adding just one intentional rest practice to your routine. Your body is likely sending warning signals—the question is, are you listening? Subscribe now to hear more conversations about health, resilience, and finding balance in a chaotic world.
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
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If you're anything like me, you're going morning, noon and night, from the crack of dawn to the wee hours of the morning. That is your life family, kids, hobbies, sports work, activities, things that you think I just got to do. If you don't intentionally take time to slow yourself down, reprogram your physiological and nervous system, it eventually is going to take its toll. It's going to kill you, it's going to hurt you, it's going to affect your family. It's going to take its toll. It's going to kill you, it's going to hurt you, it's going to affect your family. It's going to affect your life. You can't run in the red. All the time I thought I could and I couldn't, and it nearly killed me. I learned a lot of things through therapy. I learned a lot of ways to slow down and I did them for a while, and now I'm slipping off again and my body is warning me. Tonight's episode is about how to get back in line, what the warning signs are and things you can do to intentionally improve your health, both physiologically and mentally. Stick around.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast. My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for a pretty awesome show. So tonight I want to talk about something. I want to talk about me for a minute. All about me, me, me. Tonight I want to talk about something. I want to talk about me for a minute. All about me, me, me. I want to talk about me.
Speaker 1:So you know, summertime is here and work is busy. I'm traveling with work. Some I've got, you know, my day job that's got me going a hundred miles an hour. I have got my DJ business. We're in prime wedding season, so I've got wedding, weekend after weekend after weekend. All those weddings take a lot of time to prepare for, besides the event, each wedding I probably spend 40 hours preparing for, and that's for each individual event. So you know there's a lot of stuff going on. But plus, you got the family right. I got the family. I got kids running all over the place. I got a daughter turning 16, learning how to drive and getting her license and adding cars to insurance and adding daughters to insurance. And then my wife, she's out doing church camps and after church camp and the world is just going so busy. My son is in hawaii. Things are going every single direction and going, going, going and it's been this way for quite some time. It's been this way for probably the last four or five months, you know, as we're preparing for this summertime season that we're in.
Speaker 1:But I mean, listen to me right, the story I'm telling is something that all of you guys out there can relate to. You're going through the same thing. You're like Aaron, you're not alone. We're all doing this. It's just the pace of life, and life is good, though. Man, I'm just totally blessed. I'm totally blessed to be alive. I'm blessed to have my health minus that one eye. But we're working on that. Life is good. We're cruising along and just busy, busy, busy getting it done. You know, burning the candle at both ends, up early to bed late at night. That's just kind of the way that I go. That's the way that I do things.
Speaker 1:Recently I had my eye injury that was diagnosed, and my eye injury for those of you who don't know like one day I'm sitting at church and you know this had been oncoming for a couple of years, but you know about in the month prior to me discovering this, it got really bad and I cover one eye and I can read everything. You know all the words on the screen at church, and I cover the other eye and I can't see anything Like. It's all blurry, I've got no vision and I'm like man, that's weird. So I go to the doctor and the doctor says, you know? After several different doctors they say, hey. The doctor says you know, after several different doctors they say, hey, you've got, you know, retinal venal occlusion and that means that the, because of high blood pressure, the arteries have hardened in your eye and they've occluded the veins and therefore there's not good blood flow and as a result of that, tissue has died in your eye and you're blurry because you've lost vision.
Speaker 1:You know, and we can. We can't fix it, but we can give it physical therapy, kind of like you would in a stroke. If you have a stroke and your right arm goes limp, you can do physical therapy. It may get stronger, it may not, you know, but you got to try. So in the case of my eye, she says we have to do injections into your eyeball and I'm like that sucks, but that was really the only option. So that, or I go blind and they remove my eye. So I'm like, all right, I'll take the injections. So I get these injections into my eye and I move on with life and I noticed that I have blurred vision a lot and my depth perception is not quite there and when I go upstairs I'm kind of searching for my foot right Because I have grayed out and kind of blurry areas around the peripheral vision.
Speaker 1:And that sucks because that is a visual reminder of my high blood pressure and my high blood pressure was caused due to stress on the job. A stress injury in law enforcement, which is also the PTSD, was also considered a stress injury. So now I have the high stress on my job which I never had a blood pressure issue prior to the last five years of law enforcement. But that high blood pressure came in, which ultimately is what helped get me out of law enforcement and diagnosed the PTSD. But that high blood pressure took its toll on my eye and, as a result, now every time I look out in my field of view there's literally a visual reminder of the bullshit that I went through in law enforcement and it's hard, you know it's um.
Speaker 1:I was walking down the hill one day out of my yard with my kid and I'm walking in and it's this little dirt hill decline about six, eight feet and as I'm walking I kind of stumble because I didn't see a depression in the ground and I stepped into it and I kind of stumbled and fell and that was, I didn't fall but I stumbled. I think I said that four times now and that was an indicator, just a reminder that I can't see. My eyes aren't where they used to be. I go downstairs and I'm searching for that first step and I go up a ladder. It's the same way and it's awkward and it's um, it's frustrating. To be honest, it makes me feel like man, if it's not one thing, it's another.
Speaker 1:You know, and now, with this vision deficit, that I have this blurred vision, this depth perception problem that's going to affect, say, my motorcycle riding. You know, I've always been known as a motorcycle rider. I've always done that. It's been part of my identity and you know, if you've been listening to this, you understand that I've been really struggling, like with the motorcycle. It's a part of the old Aaron. I haven't ridden my bike in two years but I don't want to give it up because if I give it up, that's the last thing that reminds me of my old self. But on the flip side, now that I have these vision problems and that my high blood pressure and my stress is now changing my life. I don't need to be on a motorcycle if I can't see. The last thing I need to do is be stubborn because of my identity, get back on a motorcycle, not see a car in the intersection and get T-boned and killed. That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:So I take my blood pressure as a result of all of this and it's high again and I'm like I'm on blood pressure meds. My blood pressure when I came out of law enforcement was high. I got it down. I was doing a bunch of therapy, I got my blood pressure down and everything was great. I was kind of coasting along and I don't take my blood pressure for a long time. Now I'm having these issues. I take it again and all of a sudden I notice it's high again and that, you know, sucks, because I think I'm doing all the right stuff. So I make an appointment with my doctor Life is good and I see how we can deal with that Right.
Speaker 1:And then I'm like well, I got another wedding to prep for, so I prepped for the wedding. I do my thing. It's a 12, 15 hour day on the weekend, two days in a row, and I go see my therapist and she's like hey, how are things going? I'm like, well, my eye right. So I tell her the story about my eye. She's like well, what is your blood pressure? And I told her and she's like it's a little high, you know, it's like one 50 over one 20 or something, I don't know, and she's like that's kind of high. She said you know how do you feel? And I'm like, well, you know, I feel okay. And she's like, well, tell me about you know you're doing, what are you doing? And I said, well, I got this going, I got weddings, I've got this, I got life, I got the kids, I got all this stuff a hundred miles an hour again.
Speaker 1:And she's like Aaron, your nervous system is warning you again. You came out of law enforcement at a hundred miles an hour. You slowed it way down. You went to therapy, you learned about meditation, you learned about controlled breathing, you learned all these different ways to engage your parasympathetic nervous system and you lived that way for a while and it managed your blood pressure. But now you find yourself speeding back up and slowly fading into that lifestyle again of 100 miles an hour and no intentional rest. She said your nervous system doesn't know the difference between day-to-day stress now or day-to-day stress then. All it knows is you're taxing it. You need to be intentional about slowing down, taking a breath and getting back into those old practices that you used to do. You know, and I said I never really thought about it that way. I just this is just life and collectively we agreed it was just life. Last time that got me all spun up and out of a job.
Speaker 1:So, you know, with that information she's, you know, she said hey, be mindful. You know whether it's your meditation or whether it's coloring or whether it's yoga or stretching. Do something every single day to be intentional, get into the word, find something you're going to meditate on, you're going to think about, you're going to let it capture your mind, even if it's for 5, 10, 15 minutes a day, even if it's for five, 10, 15 minutes a day. Have that intentional time. No phone, slowing down, being intentional and regulating your blood pressure, regulating your nervous system, letting it know that you're not in a fight or flight, that you're not in a bad situation and I'm like. Well, I said I haven't done that, to be honest. I said you know my meditation. I used to do it every day, multiple times a day. I hardly ever do it. I maybe do it once a week maybe. You know I used to intentionally slow down and not book myself out from morning, noon and night. I'm now booking myself out morning, noon and night again. You know I said I can totally understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 1:So with that information in mind and loaded for bear, I came home and I'm like, well, what can I do to rest intentionally rest and I thought about it and you know I go back and I try to think about all these therapy sessions that I went to and the tools in my toolbox and they're a little, to be honest, they're rusty. You know I don't remember all the stuff that I learned two years ago to regulate myself and slow myself down. So I had to go back through and kind of relearn it. I had to visit the old textbooks that I had and my old notes that I took during therapy sessions that you know, at the time it was a reminder throughout the week, but now, a year and a half, two years later, that I'm at a different phase in life. Now it's a reminder again because these are, these are tools that are transient and they fade. If you don't use them, then you lose them.
Speaker 1:So what I wanted to do tonight I know that I'm not the only one listening that finds ourselves in the rat race of life and everybody says you have to rest. You know, and one of my sergeants used to say you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Sleep is a crutch, and I said that for so many years. But it's not true. You need that rest and we all know this. I'm preaching to the choir. I get it, but I'm also preaching to people that are running their kids to soccer, to dance, working, working long hours, traveling, doing this, doing that kids getting married, whatever it may be, and the day is just going, going, going. We need to slow ourselves down.
Speaker 1:So what I did is I went through and I took a look at all the things that I learned about and I put together just a list of items that are benefits to slowing down and being intentional with your time, your mind and mindfulness, as well as a few tools out of my old toolbox. What are some practical things that I can do every single day, that I can focus on that will help slow me down, bring me to better health and just make me healthier and a better human. And for me, I'm not implementing all of these because in life we have these, you know, we have these poles and we're spinning these plates on top of poles, right, and we're spinning them. And we got another pole over here and we're spinning that, and these are all the activities that we're involved in in life. And we're spinning all these poles, all these plates, and we're able to keep these things spinning. And you know, surrounding us are all these poles with these plates spinning on top.
Speaker 1:But then you do something like add a new year's resolution. So now you're going to go to the gym and you're going to go every single day and you add that in and all of a sudden, you can't keep all these plates spinning. Things start to fall, things start to break and while you had great intentions when you made that news resolution, you realize that that's what's going to kill you, you know, because you're not able to keep your life going. We don't have room to spin one more plate and to change up our lifestyle. So for me, I can't implement all of these things that I'm going to talk about, but what I can do is implement one or two of them. One or two of them that I can focus on and maybe kind of recenter reset myself. I think that when I'm in that centered state I don't think I know when I'm in that centered state and I'm relaxed and I'm reset, my family can tell I can be a better father, a better husband, a better employee. I'm more focused, I'm more intentional, I'm more loving, I'm more kind. All of those things are a benefit, but we have to be intentional about it. So I want to take just a few minutes to talk about some of the health benefits that we get from intentionally slowing ourselves down, and then I want to give you some tools for your toolbox intentional ways to do that and things to focus on.
Speaker 1:We all know that when we rest, it's not just to feel good, but it is to reset our mind and reset our brains right. And I've learned that if you don't reset the brain, then you perceive danger. You perceive situations differently. That's why maybe I've been in a situation where I haven't had a lot of rest and I'm going, going, going and something small happens and I completely overreact, and then the excuse is I'm just tired, I haven't slept, that's because your brain has not had a time to reset, and that is what's so important is to reset yourself for both psychological and mental health benefits, and you can do that by slowing down your pace.
Speaker 1:When you slow down your pace, you're changing things physiologically inside your body. When you slow down, you're reducing, like I said, the brain's perception of a threat or of ill circumstances or your reactions to situations and stimuli are different, and that's because you have cortisol levels in your blood and the cortisol is the primary stress hormone. There's high levels of cortisol in there and that is why you're reacting that way. One of the reasons when you slow down, you intentionally slow down. You reduce those cortisol levels, reduce that stress hormone and now you can react and respond to things in a more reasonable manner. In reducing your stress in my situation and those cortisol levels, it's protecting your heart, your immune system, all of the cognitive function, the brain fog, all of that stuff that we experience when we're going, going, going and we can't remember things that we could remember yesterday and the details are lost. That's because our bodies are telling us we need to make a change and we need to make it sooner than later, you know.
Speaker 1:Another thing is that calmer pace. When you calm your pace, when you slow yourself down, when you slow down even the rhythm that I'm speaking right now, it decreases the sympathetic nervous system activity. Sympathetic nervous system, if you remember, that's the stimulating part of your brain, the fight or flight part of your brain, the part of your brain that wants to go, go, go and the activities that get you spun up or the drugs that get you spun up. The opposite of that is the parasympathetic nervous system. That parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for resting, digesting, relaxing. It's the slower pace of life, it's the slower deer taking the game trail of the water. It helps dominate and improve your cardiovascular system. When you implement your parasympathetic nervous system, it helps relax everything and that's super important. So lowering your blood pressure and your heart rate and having a calmer pace of life decreases your sympathetic, increases your parasympathetic, slows everything down and as a result for me, I almost had a stroke. My blood pressure was 185 over 145 when I went to the hospital that first day and that's because my blood, you know I was through the roof, I was stressed out and I wasn't calm at all. So it, you know, it worked for me. Hopefully it'll work for you. But just things to intentionally think about.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I learned was sleep patterns. It's super important to get those eight hours of sleep a night and I know sometimes it's very hard. I know that at least in my life. It's hard for me to intentionally lay down in bed at 10 pm when I have to get up at 6 am and, realistically, to go to bed at 10,. I need to lay down about 9.30 so I can unwind and relax into sleep and then be intentional in meditation or whatever it may be and finally get to sleep about that 10 o'clock and then wake up at 6 am and there's my eight hours sleep. That's super, super hard to do and sometimes it's not reasonable to do.
Speaker 1:But that eight hours of sleep has been medically proven to reset your amygdala in your brain. And the amygdala in your brain is what's responsible for that reactionary, involuntary reaction, overreaction, threat perception. You know the things that make you overreact and eight hours allows that to relax and reset itself. When you're getting less than eight hours sleep then it's just a cumulative effect of that amygdala. It doesn't get reset all the way. The next day a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Before you know it you're so testy and edgy and a prick that nobody wants to be around you, and it's all because you haven't slept and it's because you haven't had time to rest.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things that one of my books tells me is about rest, is it? It says it is boosting your mental clarity and it improves your focus. It improves your productivity, it reduces brain fog, enhances creativity, helps you to be a more functional human being in this world, and that's again, again, because you're us. All this stuff sounds like anecdotal, right? All this stuff is like hey, dude, I totally know this. Well, we know it, but we don't do it. We absolutely know we need to rest, but it doesn't stop us from going outside and finish the paint job or mowing the yard or whatever it is, instead of taking that intentional rest time. We know all of this stuff, rest time, we know all of this stuff, we just don't do it. And the reason that we don't do it is because we want to be productive and it doesn't really catch up to us until you find yourself with high blood pressure again and on the verge of a stroke.
Speaker 1:I spoke about the mood, I spoke about the amygdala and you know the uh, what rest does for that. But you know, one thing that also does at least it did for me is it helped reduce my anxiety. It helped align me and anxiety for me in my world. I think I attribute anxiety to the root of fear and fearful of something, fearful of a set of circumstances, fearful of the outcome, fearful of my eye, fearful of a medical thing and, as a result, anxiety breeds from that. But when you're rested and your brain is functioning correctly, my anxiety reduced in my world. And these are some things that worked for me. Not only did the textbook tell me, did the classes tell me, did the therapist tell me, but I noticed these things worked in my world and I'm almost talking to myself right now because I need to implement these things back into my life. You know, I've started doing a couple of things.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I can't implement them all, but I've started doing a couple of things just to make myself a little bit better and a little bit more restful and a little bit more intentional when I reduce my anxiety through rest and through intentional rest. It decreased my irritability, my mood swings, it helped stabilize me. It helped stabilize that parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous systems. I'm sure you know if I was a chemist or a medical doctor, I could talk about dopamine or serotonin or something in my blood. I'm sure it reduced those levels, but overall it just made me feel better. It enhanced my memory. I was having some memory issues where I couldn't literally couldn't remember the name of my coworkers sitting next to me that I've worked with for 15 years. I couldn't remember their name. I had to go through the Rolodex to find their name and, through process of elimination, remember who it was. And those are all memory issues that are caused by stress.
Speaker 1:A slower pace it leads to deeper breathing. Slower breathing, improved oxygen intake. You know there's breathing patterns that you can do four seconds in, hold it for four seconds, eight second exhale. If you do this four to six times, it resets that brain. It oxygenizes the brain and gets you back into the swing of life. It gets you back into thinking clearly, gets that mental focus back, that mental clarity back.
Speaker 1:One thing I always attributed resting to and slowing down is laziness. If I found myself sitting down on the couch or taking a nap at three o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday, I felt lazy. I felt like I wasn't worthy of resting because I have stuff that I need to do and sometimes I'm still guilty of feeling that way. Um, but it's not laziness, it's intentional. It's got medical benefits, psychological benefits and really you taking a little bit of break. You know, it's like eating that Snickers bar You're not yourself if you're, if you're angry. So taking that intentional rest it's just a way to help reset everything reset relationships, blood pressure, all the stuff that I've spoke about.
Speaker 1:Well, how do we go about doing this? You know, get outside and walk, walk for five to 10 minutes. Get the blood flowing, get your heart rate up. Breathe that clean oxygen, get some nice deep breaths, oxygenate your body. Practice that breathing exercise I spoke about. You know, four seconds in, hold it for four seconds, eight second. Exhale that kind of breathing pattern, do that four to six times Sometimes. Take those really deep breaths, fill those lungs with oxygen so you get that deep lung air out. It's not just you. Get rid of all that stale air, exhale that, re-oxygenate your blood.
Speaker 1:I do a lot. I don't do a lot. I did do a lot of meditation. I did meditation and I would do it at night before I go to sleep, you know, and there's apps you can use out there, like Calm or Centered. Those apps have guided meditations, and if you've heard of meditation before and you think it's all this hippy dippy crap, it's really not. Meditation is a way for you to focus your mind, your thoughts and your breathing on one thing, and what it does is it turns down the noise in your head. So if you lay down in bed and all you can think about is the day and the struggles and the fight you had with your boss or your wife, whatever it is, meditation is a way to center that, quiet all the noise and go into a nice deep sleep. It is super, super cool to do. If you haven't done it, you should totally try it. Meditation is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I like to do is I like to listen to music. You know this is called the Murders to Music Podcast right, and I'm going to wrap it up with this, but it's called the murders to music podcast. I like to listen to music and I will find a song that is relaxing, peaceful. You know there's this thing called frizzen. Frizzen is when you have an emotional reaction to a piece of art or to a song. You listen to a song and the hair stands up on the back of your neck and on your arms and you get goosebumps. That's frizzen. I find a song that will do that to me, you know, and it may be secular, it may be Christian, you know, it just depends. But I find that and I just center myself, listen to that music and just inhale, exhale and just process and kind of be with myself, and it helps recenter me. These are the things that work for me. These are the things that I've learned over the years and I just want to share with you guys.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a hippie dippy meditation person. I'm just a guy that nearly died in the line of duty due to stress-related injuries. I worked really, really hard to deal with that stress and to lower my blood pressure. And then, through the transformation of life and just the way things go, what you learn first you learn best. And what I learned first was to go, go, go. So I've slowly faded back into that and, as a result, my body is telling me again slow down. I'm having eye issues, I'm having sleep issues, I'm having cop dreams, I'm having blood pressure issues. All of these things are manageable, but it's because I have been unintentional with my rest. I've been unintentional with slowing my pace and, as a result, my nervous system is reacting and it thinks that I'm in a fight or flight state and it's it's preparing it's preparing for war. These are things that have worked for me.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe this doesn't apply to you, um, but I man, I think, I think that if you're listening to this and you've got this far, something has caught your attention. So if you can implement one of these things, if you can implement one of these you know four or five ways that I spoke about just to slow yourself down and center yourself I think you will see a change in those around you will see a change. I've got some awesome shows coming up, guys. I've got a great show coming up interview with a police officer out of California who was involved in a officer involved shooting. You're going to get to hear his story. You're going to get to hear the story of the officers that are with him. You're going to get to hear the behind the scenes, uncut, never told before, details of how the shooting happened, how it affected him mentally, how it affected his family, and all of this in the name of bettering people.
Speaker 1:This podcast is educational, entertaining and provides value, and we can do that through our circumstances and our situations. We live in life and there's always something to be learned. There's always a silver lining. No matter what crap you're in the middle of or what God has dealt you, what crappy hand you've been dealt, there's always a silver lining. And you know, coming up on a show in the next week or two, you're going to get to hear the silver lining of this terrible, terrible tragedy that occurred in California. But until then, I just want to say you guys, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for the continuous support. You can reach out to me at murderstomusic, at gmailcom Murders, the number two music. At gmailcom, you can hit me up on Instagram at murderstomusic. Find me out there, communicate, become a part of the story. You guys, I love you. Thank you so much and I'll see you next week. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders to Music podcast.
