Cancer just doesn't show up overnight. It's the result of this stress on the body. And when our body no longer has the meats the resilience to deal with the stress within, the red alert is going to go on.
Today we have Mona Sharma, a nutritionists that works with high performing entrepreneurs and celebrities as well as a wellness advisor and coach. She blends iovating wisdom with modern science to optimize.
Health for somebody who suffers from something like stress or anxiety, Is it stress or anxiety or does it come from a deeper cause. We live in a world where we need to be busy all the time. We think it's a weakness to stop because it makes us vulnerable. What are the practices that you have every single day that are training your nervous system to be in this hypervigilant, busy state. We need to decipher the foods that are
causing us to be sick and imbalanced. We know that these ultra processed foods are linked to diseases amongst adults and children. Things like metabolic dysfunction, diabetes and obesity, and even cancer rates are going up. So control with your dollar and make better decisions I'm Radie w.
Kia and on my podcast A Really Good Cry, we embrace the messy and the beauty, providing a space for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together. Hey everyone, welcome back to this week's episode of A Really Good Cry. Today we have a nutritionist that works with high performing entrepreneurs and celebrities as well as a wellness advisor and coach. She blends iravatic wisdom with modern science to optimize health.
She is my go to person whenever I have any health questions or issues, and she always shares solutions with love and compassion.
So Mona Sharma, thank you so much for being here.
So good to be here. I'm so excited to connect with you me too.
I have to tell people that when I say she is my go to I mean like every single thing that I possibly think of, you get a text message.
Of I love it. Yeah, I love being the go to person.
I know you really are and you have such a magnetic energy and I mean that in the sense of the things that you share you feel like when you meet you.
So I don't know whether that makes sense.
But your energy is so representative of the wisdom and the nourishment that you give to other people. As soon as you walk into our room, I feel like my whole pattern of voice changes. I feel calm, and I think that that's just your presence that allows people to feel that way. So I'm so excited to share you with everybody that's listening.
The highest compliment for me, Thank you so much.
I wanted to start off by just asking you one how you got to where you are today and how you have created a world where you're able to share iobating wisdom which is so old with Western medicine and make it relevant and applicable to people.
Now. This is literally what drives me today. If the future of medicine can really merge the wisdom of all of our ancestors, no matter where we come from. Abada is one of those incredible sciences with the amazing, incredible science that Western medicine is giving us. Yeah, merge the two door together for true integration. I think that the world would be in such a better place. I think that disease prevention would be the primary source of healthcare
instead of symptom management. And I can say that, yeah, because I lived through all of it. So prior to becoming a holistic nutritionist and yogi and meditation teacher and reiki practitioner and NLP practitioner, I list them all because I probably should have just become a doctor instead of doing all of these modalities.
No, I love it.
But prior to that, I actually come from the world of fashion. So I worked out of sales for massive beauty brands, so Christian Dior and tom Ford Beauty and Estate Lauder companies and say that about you. Yeah, So my twenties was full of this like high paced fashion, fun lifestyle, traveling the world doing makeup for fashion shows, training people at big retailers. And I say it out loud, I'm like, yeah, that sounds kind of fun. Like it
was a really cool job to have. And as you know, being Indian, having an Indian father, I didn't become a doctor or a lawyer or a judge like my dad or like my brother. When I got into the corporate world, I hustled like this, A type hypervigilance that I had was like literally get to the top, get security, you know, do as much as you can to get a high paying job that was going to get me respect, and you know it came with a big, big, big priced egg.
So I used to say all the time that anxiety was my blueprint, like it's just it's who I identified at. I hit it very well, very very well. I would almost say that the calmness that you so pleasantly gave me, that compliment, that was almost a coping mechanism for me. If people perceive me as calm on the outside, they won't know about the internal suffering anxiety that I'm feeling that I think I've had since I was a little kid.
So here I am anxiety, fast paced life, waking up a hotel rooms, not knowing what city I was in, chasing this high corporate salary. It was a corporate job, right. Burnout is what I got to. During that time, I started getting heart palpitations. These heart palputations got so fast that I would bend down to pick something up and nearly hit the deck. I would want to pass out, and things got really bad. I ended up getting pcos.
I'll never forget a doctor told me that it was so bad that I would probably have a really hard time having children. Having children is the only thing I've ever known that I really really wanted, and I do have two kids today, beautiful children. Beautiful children. And the heart palpitations. I was like, look, this isn't working for me. This is now impacting my life. What's the solution. At that point in my life, I wasn't interested in getting to the root cause of healing. Give me quick fix.
So doctors wrote me a prescription medication for beta blocker medication. Beta blocker medication. They did slow everything down. I still to get my heart palpitations, but they weren't as bad, but they also caused me to gain forty five pounds. Forty five pounds later, I was like, hey, this isn't working for me, Like I feel completely lethargic. Everything, my tone, my energy just like drained. It dropped. And so they said, well, hey, we can go in for surgery, and I said, okay,
let's do it. So I went in from my first heart surgery. I was twenty three years old.
Oh my gosh.
They go through in ablation, so through your groin and through your neck, you're awake for the whole thing. Your heart's on this massive monitor and they induce you with you know, adrenaline and caffeine and all these uppers to try to induce these palpitations that I knew what only happened if I was moving my body right. And so they found a place where they could do an ablation, where they burn off a portion of your heart on this electrical note. They say they ended up doing two
oblations in that surgery. But the next morning I woke up in the hospital and my heart was still pounding. Oh, bawling my eyes out, What the hell is going on? They said, well, let's go back in. So now I'm twenty four, go back in for my second heart surgery, and I'll never forget. Doctors asked me why I was crying. I was like, oh, I'm looking at my heart on a massive screen. I identify now as somebody who's on medication and somebody who has a heart condition. I'm young, I
have this great life, but I'm not happy. I feel depressed most of the time. At this point, I feel sad, But doctors never asked me about that. Doctors wanted to know, like how much she's smoking, how much are you drinking? Are you parting? From the outside, you look really good. And I really want to call out to listeners who like so many people reach out to me about heart palpitations, and I think we all suffer from them for different reasons. But for me, like I literally had a broken heart,
I was really sad. There was a lot of like turmoil happening in my life. My parents were getting a divorce, I was going through massive changes, and they just didn't ask about that big part of me. Right, So I passed all the tests on paper, and they said, well, you know, at the moment, we can do this oblation again, but if we go through with it, it's right next to your sinus node, your essay node, and so if we do that, you might have to wear a pacemaker
for the rest of your life. In that moment, it was like one of those situations when your life flashes before your eyes, and I was like, what the hell is happening. I know that there's a better way to heal. I don't want to identify as somebody who's sick, who has a heart conditions. Makes no sense. And the irony of this entire story is that I knew that there was a better way. So I said. My dad was Indian, my mom is Danish. I've only ever known my mom
to suffer from debilitating autoimmune disease, so rheumatoid arthritis. So I've only ever known my mom to have deformity, so for all of her limbs. Right, my mom is such a fighter, you know. The model owner houserowing up was eat it it's good for you, Drink it, it's good for you. She tried every single Eastern modality to heal her body. And my dad with his inside in Nayraveda. My mom found this ashram in Valmaran and Quebec. It's the Shivananda Ashram where we would go and spend summers.
So my summers as a kid, I didn't get to go to fun summer camp. I literally had to go to yoga camp.
Yah.
My dad would tap me on the shoulder at five o'clock in the morning to go and meditate. But that was my blueprint, and I would see my mom's symptoms subside. I would see the energy of my parents shift here. I would even feel better going to this place, right, And so in that moment on the surgery table, I knew that I had to go back to my roots, and that's exactly what I did. So I called it quits on the corporate world. Craig, my amazing husband, was
so supportive. I went and I lived at the ashram for two months, and that's when I became a yoga teacher, just for my own personal healing, and rathery at the Ashram, returning to all of those ancient healing principles. My heart palpitation subsided, the weight fell off my body. I stopped dieting, I stopped being hardcore hardcore exercise, hardcore dieting, and my body came into balance. And we can talk about this more, but the structure at the ashram, literally the schedule is
set so that you were forced to be present. So maybe for the first time in decades, I became present to my thoughts, the quality of my thoughts, which God, nobody in this world should have ever hurt, my feelings, my emotions, the things that I was stuffing into my body, and like you know, he stuffings into your body, and I'm focus on doing, doing, doing, doing doing, I just ignored everything. And so looking back, when I think about my poor heart, was like, I can't do this anymore.
We can't take it. Like You've been ignoring all of these symptoms for so long. Here's what's going on, and I think that, you know, did I need the heart surgeries? Probably not, Like I really think that had. I have done just a lot of this introspection work, you know, work with different coaches and guides, work on my frequency and my vibration words that I use with my clients all the time. But back then was completely woo woo.
I think that now today there's a different approach to healing because the structure of my heart was actually healthy.
Oh my god, so many questions come to mind, but thank you so much for sharing that. What beautiful insight into why you are the person you are today. At the time, what were they naming your condition out of interest?
Yeah? So I get it was given the label of atrial tachycardia.
Right wow.
And so when people go to the doctors, I mean, what feels so good is to finally get a diagnosis. Right, we all want a diagnosis. Great, we've got a diagnosis. Now we're going to treat the diagnoses. But without getting to the root. And as you and I were talking about, we live in this symptom approach based healing methodology without considering the body as its whole. So if we know that the heart communicates to the rest of the body.
The rest of the body communicates to the heart. Why wasn't there ever any other introspection to this?
Right, so interesting how we always try and treat a physical problem with the physical solution. But the thing is so like we've now learned and we still talk about it, but I don't think it's put into action where oh, actually, what your mind is feeling, your body feels the emotions that are being suppressed, Your body is showing you what they are. So the physical is just the depiction of what's happening everywhere else, in your subconscious, in your mind,
in your heart. But when it's a heart problem, you end up trying to fix the heart as a physical body part rather than thinking about, wait, but what is the heart feeling? And we forget that the heart as a muscle feels something. It's more like it's a muscle and we have to try and fix it physically. But it's so interesting that they try to fix it physically, and it was actually something mentally and emotional that you actually did that helped heal it.
And what was so much worse for you know, I started to identify as somebody who is sick. I'll never forget. My brother asked me to do this triathlon with him. My brother's ten years older. He's the athlete, he's the end all of those things. And he asked me to do it one year and I was like, well, no, I can't. I've got a her condition. And thank God for him. He's just looked at me one day and this is close, like twenty eight, twenty nine, and he said,
how's that working for you? And I was just like, my life stop. Because although the disease had passed, the weight had come off. I started my healing journey. There's obviously some part of my belief system that still identified as somebody who had a heart condition. So because of that I went. I found a cardiologist who was in
tune with healing. I found a reiki practitioner. I made it kind of like my non negotiable to go back to the Ashram consistently as my source of healing, because it meant that I was moving myself to the number one position of my priority list to heal, so that I would never go back to that old version of myself that identified with sickness and illness.
And what was the routine that you had at the aushtrum. So, for example, if people are trying to implement, you know, I'm sure many people listening to this are like, oh my gosh, I've I get help palpitations. Well, I feel like I'm sad in my life right now. You know, if they don't have access to the ostrum. What is a simple routine that you were doing there that you recommend people implement into their life now to create mimic that same effects.
I love this question, So I really I have this protocol with my clients, and it's really about building your ashram at home. I would love for every single listener to be able to go and experience an ashram. I know that you have many many times and the magic that comes with that, but it also means that if I'm looking to go somewhere to feel a certain way, that I'm putting that power outside of myself, when true healing and consciousness is within. So I need to learn
how to replicate that at home wherever I am. So maybe let's first describe the rituals at the ashram and then we'll describe the second half. So, like I said before, the structure the schedule at the ashram is pretty strict, honestly, so strict and repetitive and consistent to the point where it kind of feels like torture where they're like, oh my god, this again yoga, you know. So first of all, we wake up early in the morning, We rise with
the sun every single day. We hydrate with warm, nourishing liquids to support our digestion and talx and elimination. From there, we move into about thirty minutes of meditation and about an hour of set saying so set syng sitting in community gathering, chanting together, which activates your vagus nerve, which is like the spiritual calling and attunement of your own frequency, followed by some sort of a lecture from whether it's a swami at the ashtram or a spiritual teacher that's there.
It's the education around like, hey, there's this wisdom and intelligence within your body, let's learn how to awaken it. So we're already anchoring that belief. From there, we moved to our yoga practice. And yoga practice isn't like this crazy hardcore, you know, hot yoga. It's thirty minutes of breath work, breath work again, attuning to our vegus nerve.
We can talk about that in a bit, turning into heart rate variability, calming down to the heart rate, coming into the present moment, balancing the left and right meridians of the body in or energetic centers right before we move into the asiner practice. The asiner practice is the actual yoga poses that most people in the West are
familiar with. But the really cool thing about this lineage of yoga that I grew up with at the Shavvenandashram was after every single pose that you hold, you're holding it, you move into shavasna. So hold the pose, move into shavasna. Hole the pose, move into the shavasna, and it's training your mind and your body to move through these periods of stress where it's like, Okay, I want to get out of this the mental resistance that comes with us. So we all experience off the mat and then we
go into relaxation. So we're ultimately retraining our nervous system on how to build that resilience of moving into fight or flight right or something stressful, then back into relaxation. It's retraining and we take that back into the world. From there, we go into beautiful sethfig high vibrational brunch,
which is like so colorful. I said, I started eating more carbs than ever before, and that's carbs from the earth, like really trusting in nature to heal the body, reds, purples, blues, greens, like all of these beautiful colors, more fiber than I was definitely eating. Back home, and the afternoon's open for either devotional practices, some karma yoca, maybe some study, and then we repeat that whole thing at noight we go back into our breath, work, back into our yoga at
four o'clock. Six o'clock is an early dinner. Seven thirty is back into set saying, and then lights out by about nine thirty or ten every single night. So imagine doing that for two months straight. Yes, talk about retraining for this, like really stressed out, high intensity, plugged in nervous system, you know, behavior that I had into now feeling a sense of rest and digest I put the wisdom back into my body to heal, so it could really just start to activate instead of worrying about stress
and worrying and anxiety and fear. It can now operate and do the things that it needed to do every single day. To heal.
You know, I remember when I when we go back to the actual room every year that we go to to do our practices. My first few days, my body is like what are you doing? Like high alert, and I'm like, so, what's next?
Where do we go?
What's happening? Why were you sitting around? Why are we not doing this? And it really takes i'd say good few days, if not a week, oh yeah, to settle in to the space of space, like to set it into the idea that we have time, set into the idea that we don't have to go from thing to thing to thing, and that the busyness is sometimes a way to hide or step away from what you actually have to come to terms with.
Yeah, there's an article written about that too, like what's the new emotion that we all have? How are you busy? Right? How are you busy?
It's so true? Are you trying to get out of saying that?
I know it's so true?
Right?
And we're giving each other permission to just be busy. Well, busy to me, my shoulders are up at my ears, everything's contracted, my digestion shut down, everything's kind of sore. I'm not sleeping well. I'm not, you know, I'm eating
all the time, so it's really addressing that. Maybe that's a good question for your audience is what are the practices that you have every single day that are training your nervous system to be in this hypervigilant, busy state and the retraining with your question about what can we do, like what practice is from the Ashram? Can we rebuild? You can obviously do every single one of those things that I had mentioned from the Ashram back home, but if you want to start with one or two, your
morning is magic. It has to be able to set the tone for the day that you want ahead. So one of my favorite meditation teachers, he came up with this analogy RPM rise P meditate. Every day I say add on a G RPMG rise P meditate, and then gratitude. So every morning, before I even get out of bed, my hands are over my heart. I'm literally like, thank you for waking up today. Thank you to this heartbeat who's been beating for me since before I even arrived
on this planet. Thank you for detoxing overnight, for replenishing and restoring my body. Thank you for the ability to wake up in the morning with a sense of common peace. Help me carry this with me throughout the day. And it's like we now know, through incredible practitioners and doctors and science that is now validating that the power of gratitude can change the frequency of your heart. Right, So you mentioned before the power of your heart having this
electromagnetic frequency. We now know that through gratitude practices, you can expand your own electromagnetic frequency beyond the radius of your own body. So if you start off in gratitude or throughout the day practice gratitude, you're radiating that energy to people around you. You're going to be impacting their field, impacting the way that they feel. You're going to notice that people are going to want to come talk to you and maybe smile at you or say good morning.
It's like, it's pretty incredible the power of our energy when we tune into it. It so is.
And you know, the busy thing that we were talking about, it's almost like now it's not it is an emotion, but it's also almost like an award that we think we're giving ourselves that like, oh, yeah, I'm just so busy, right, And I think like, if I reflect on it, I definitely had that mindset of it, because I was like, oh, it proves that I'm doing something, and it proves that I like doing such important things because I'm busy all
the time. But actually, in the moments that I have felt that way and I have actually been very busy, it has depleted my mental energy, my physical energy, my emotional energy, my ability to interact with people in a way that's present, to be able to interact with the people that I love with presents and with mindfulness.
And with love.
And it almost like it depletes you of all the things that you actually want to be. It depletes you of all the emotions that you want to have. It depletes you of like the ability to actually have meaningful interactions with the people you want to have meaningful interactions with. So it strips actually, it actually takes things away from you more than it gives to you.
Right, And I think, like the intention behind the busy aspect, let's focus on the positive with it, right, So we treat cortisol as like we demonize it. Cortisol. Oh, stress, you're gonna gain way, You're gonna hold onto fad, You're gonna do all these things too much. Cortisol. Cortisol is actually a beautiful thing. It's our motivation in the morning, it's our get up and go, it's our drive. But living in the state of constantly feeling like we're wearing
busy with a badge of honor. Yeah, right, and like no one else is noticing. It's just you that's putting self impose limitation and belief upon yourself. Over time, without practice coming into kind of that RESTful state, we've become addicted to living there. That's what that was my mo The busier than I could be if I was sitting down, resting or watching a movie, I need to be doing something. I can't just tell I have to be doing something. If I was in a car, it's like I had
to be listening to something educational. I couldn't waste time in the car. Right, it's constantly busy in doing and if you get stuck in that kind of hypervigilant state too. To your point, it's that analogy of like you know animals running in the wild from a predator, right, they're running constantly there. You know, their processes and their bodies shut down, digestion stops, and yet we operate at that
pace for as long as we can. Then we go out and we try to biohack our way to try to feel better, do things that are really really hard, right, to kind of shift us back and because we think that it's good and it's strong. But I would say the most challenging practices for any of the people that I work with is really just like stop exactly breathe
and learn how to be in their bodies. Like if a lot of my men, specifically that I work with, if I guide them to an embodiment practice to come into their bodies within fifteen seconds, their eyes are closed, but they can't keep them closed. They need to open them to see. Yeah, so much discomfront. I don't want to be and there need to be doing something keep my eyes open? Right, and women too, right. We live in a world where we need to be busy all
the time. We try to wear these accolades of being moms and entrepreneurs and doing it all, and we think that we need to show up to everybody else by doing it all. We think it's a weakness to stop because it makes us vulnerable, yes, right, it makes us be it as though we're going to be perceived as not successful.
Yeah, it's so much I always think about this.
I know I'm in that state when certain workouts that are really intense feel more attractive than the ones that are calm. And I have to like sit into the pose and you have to like go through each thing slowly. And I always, for a long time, I've chosen the hard the ones that I perceive as being harder. But actually, if I think about it, sitting in the arseness or like the slow movements of yoga, the reason I avoid it is because I don't want to go through the
slow pace. I'm so used to the fast pace. This weekend, actually I took a nap a day, nap for like a couple of hours. And I since me and Jay have been married, I've probably napped in the day maybe twice. He's seen me do that because I just don't. I'm never and when that was when I was unwell and had COVID, those are probably the only two times. And it was so interesting because I was reflecting back on it and I woke up from the nap and I
was like, oh my God, like what just happened? As I said to Jane, and I was like, when was the last time you saw me nap? And he was like, yeah, I don't think I've really seen you nap. And I think for the whole day, I was kind of going on about it, saying, I can't believe I napped, Like I don't even know what happened to me, Like why I told my mom about it, I told my dad about it.
I was like really in shock that I actually needed to nap. And Jay was like, God, I feel like this nap really affected you.
And I was like, and I think it was the idea that one why am I tired? One why am I acting on it? And two why am I acting on it? Why did my body need that much rest? I never need that much rest, So it was almost like my body was telling me you should have been doing something else, or my mind was telling me, but my body was so exhausted and I really needed that nap. And it's so funny how the rest feels more uncomfortable.
And I was like, oh, I could have organized this, and I could have done this, and I probably should have read this book for work, but it reminded me of that because I felt so uncomfortable and I had to explain why I took that nap to so many people.
You had to justify it app to other people, right, And let's have around that for a second, because you know, I can hear a lot of your listeners probably empathizing. You know, we have to rationalize it afterwards, right, instead of just owning it. But here's what like again, science is proving at the astrom they rest in between those yoga poses. They rest because they know that your productivity
can actually go up. Your motivation goes up, your creativity goes up, the way that your body functions goes up. Your digestion is able to turn, you know, go up. So you know, when we think about the things that your body is communicating every single day, I think, as women, especially because we do have that intuition, we've almost mastered
ignoring the symptoms. Yes, right, So one of the practices that I have whenever I'm speaking to larger audiences is, you know, how many people here, by rays showing their hands, how many people here suffer from digestive issues, heartburn, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, actne on their skin, ezema, low sex drive, lack of concentration, inability to sleep, inability to rest, hypervigilants, worry. You know, every single hand.
Yeah, yeah, by the INDs already have.
So these are symptoms. These are modern day symptoms that we're all suffering from, and we're identifying with them. They become us over time, especially if we're not doing anything to change them, and then we're normalizing them in society and the work that you and I do with our clients. It's like recognizing those symptoms are so common, but they're
certainly not normal. And so if you can just honor hey, okay, I'm getting this, you know, irritability every single day, getting these digestive issues every single day, instead of ignoring them, tuning in understanding where they come from, talking with a practitioner, and then working with your body, which is unlike any other body on this planet with a different background and genetic code and obligations and expectations and everything, working on
a protocol that's so unique for you to subside those symptoms, because if we do have a symptom, it's simply our body's way of communicating with us so that we can resolve it. And instead we see the accumulation over time that leads to further imbalances for the diseases that eventually lead to disease disease just doesn't show up overnight. Cancer just doesn't show up overnight. It's the result of this
stress on the body. And when our body no longer has the means or resilience to deal with the stress within, the red alert is going to go on.
Yeah, I feel like we've normalized it because the only time anything spoken about is when it's.
It's chronic state.
So you don't hear doctors going on about if you've got a bit of bloating, should be get if you have eczema, you know, just put this cream on it.
It's so interesting.
I keep seeing these ads whenever I'm watching something, when an advert comes on, it's all a lot of them are health things, like a cream for XMA or this, And it's so interesting to me that they will say this can help take your XMA away with them two days, and then at the end it's like, can cause cancer,
can cause multi disorders, can cause all these things. And I think about how we've normalized the fact that you can take away these daily symptoms by putting a band aid on it, and like you're not really taking them away, you're just allowing You're not allowing your body to show it and I think there's a difference. You're not taking it away. Your body just isn't showing the symptom because you're suppressing that, and so it still exists in you.
But all of these little things, they're trying to take them away so easily by pretending like they don't exist, but they're still developing in our body. And so I think it's normalized because the only time you then hear about a health issue is when it's it's chronics, when it's a cancer or heart disease or diabetes, and so we get used to thinking, oh, well, the doctors don't
saying this is a big deal. So if I have bad digestion for three years, four years, five years, my whole life, it's a normal thing.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. And that goes from like all these imbalances that you're talking about that are seemingly quite simple, to even bigger things like miscarriages. Doctors are like, I'm so sorry, it's it's normal. Ya. It's like, well, no, it's not normal for me, right, And so I think that you know, the wisdom, it's time for the wisdom to come back into our bodies. And I think that deep down a lot of women understand this concept of consciousness within us or intelligence, like we see it all
the time. If we break our bone, our body knows what to do to heal it, repairs it. If we have a wound or a cut, our body heals it. But we were never taught that we could become our own healers. And so I still think, like right now, it's still a little bit of a foreign concept. But as this world of like quantum healing is now waking up or understanding. Okay, you know what kind of done with the system of diagnoses and diagnosing. Ye, if we understand that we have a physical body, but there's also
an energetic body that stands behind it. And now we understand through science that every single cell has its own frequency. Okay, And if you think about an orchestra, if there's one instrument in the orchestra, call it a violin that's off tune. Now that's a cell in your body. The whole orchestra is going to go off. But we have to understand
what's the source of the imbalance and the frequency. And this is where I think, you know, not only ancient healing modalities, things like aire beta and traditional Chinese medicine and so many other ancient cultures, but also sound healing and frequency healing and PEMF and vibrational tables and acupuncture and all these modalities that I think need to be needs to go viral, and it needs to go mainstream, right.
I'm amazed at how many people still haven't experienced something like acupuncture when it balances the meridians in your body, like I've seen so many people yield through acupuncture and through sound healing.
It's just it's incredible, it is, And I think we get skeed of, you know, whenever I talk about anything to do with natural means of healing. And I find it really interesting because people's a lot of people's automatic reaction is stop telling people misinformation, and you know, doctors, like you can't tell people people that doctors aren't wrong.
I'm not saying doctors are wrong, but.
I think people are so scared to believe that they can heal themselves because it feels like such a heavy responsibility. It's like, wait, how are you telling me that I can heal myself and I don't need to go to a doctor. And I'm not saying you don't need to, but what I am saying is I truly believe that how the person that knows how to heal your self best is because you are living in your body day
and day out. You are observing your if you choose to, you can observe your body every single day, in every single moment, so you have the ability to get to know your body in the best way possible, more than any diagnostic tool possibly can. And the more that you connect to your body and your heart and your mind, the more your body starts speaking to you. And so it's not saying that you're worried about something you don't
speak to a professional about it. But in the day to day life where little things are going wrong, you should be able to self correct by having the education to do so. And I know you know it does feel heavy like to think that you can heal yourself after being told that just for a coffin of cold
you should go to the doctor and get antibiotics. Of course, you're going to be scared to take that responsibility onto yourself because you've forever been told that it is not in your control and that you do not have the power to do it. But again, just because something is normalized does not mean it's the right way or the right thing to do. And so I think people's fear is very justified. But I think as soon as you start taking it back into your own hands. Like I share this not.
Very often, actually I don't even know whether I've shared on this.
Podcast, but I have chosen for the past ten years not to take medication, like conventional medication. And at first, I swear people thought I was psychotic. I was like, I had a headache, everyone take just take an advil. I was like, I don't want to take an advil. I'm like, And now my friend's come over and they're like, do you have advain? I'm like, can I give you peppermint oil on your head?
Yeah, for ten minutes.
If it doesn't work, ask me for the advil and I will happily give it. Actually I don't have advalin in the house, but I will order it for you. But try this, or if you have a cough, let me make you some udgewayhing water and if it stops the irritation, great.
If it doesn't, I will order you some cough serrup. And what I've.
Realized is, in those ten years, touch with it. Even when I had a tooth infection, which I think I had messaged you about at some point years ago. I got tooth infection and the passor was I take antibiotics, and my body was telling me you don't take antibiotics, like, don't do it. And I put clove wall and I was chip. My mom was like, chew on cloth. It will help with the pain, it will help the inflammation. And I had those antibiotics that were given to me
and I didn't touch them. And all that to say, there are I'm not saying everything will be healed by that, but trusting in my body's ability to actually do what it's supposed to do by me fueling it in the way I know I should. So I think it's two things. It's like, yes, your body can do the work, but are you giving it the things to allow it to
do the work in the best way possible. Are you feeding it, nourishing it, listening to the right things, learning the right things to know what to do in those situations.
So it goes in two ways.
Your body has the ability, but not if you're not treating it in the right way to actually fight the way that it needs to.
Yeah, don't be silly. I know the people that you're talking about who say it's irresponsible in all the things, but we're also waking up to the fact that Western medicine is also a very antiquated form of training. Right the fact that we now you know, this past year was shining light on the fact that doctors really have no nutrition training when nutrition and hydration is a pillar of survival keeping a human body alive, it makes no sense. And the fact that we just know that there's so
many things that we can be doing. So I think that if you can become your own greatest investigator to understand what's causing your symptoms or if you're noticing that you do get things like head of headaches pretty consistently, something's caught it causing the headache your body communicating like hey, figure this out for me, right, and like you don't
pop TITLENL and advil when I needed. I just really understand what I can be doing and all these other incredible modalities that we can be doing.
Also, and even with breath work what you mentioned, like, I emphasized this so much because I'm seen not even just mentally and emotionally, but physically, what difference it made I from a young age was told I was asthmatic.
Wow.
So I was on in halo's when I was younger, when I would work out, when I was, you know, doing any kind of exercise, or I was at school and I did pee, and I was like getting a bit out of breath. In my mind, I was told, take you in haler before you even do that. Take you in haler before you even go into an exercise, just in case, so that your lungs can handle it. And so I grew up taking an inhaler before I
started running, before I played with my friends. As soon as I felt a little bit out of breath, when I had allergies for cats or dogs or whatever it was, it was like minehala was the way to go. I made a decision that I did not want to use minehala when I got into I think my teens, and then when I got to my twenties, I decide and I was use it here and there. As soon as I felt my chest go tight, it was scary for me. So I'd be like, okay, I need to take my inhaler.
I made a decision not too. And that was after learning breathwork and what I realized was, I would say every single time I felt it, all I did was take deep breaths, And all I did was sit there with my breath and go deeper and deeper into it. Whether it was at night when I was feeling wheezy, whether I'd just been around a cat and I was having an allergy for it.
You know, there was so.
Many times where I've been through it where I was about to take reach for something and I didn't, and breathwork was the thing that got me through it. Even the most recent time, I haven't had an allergy for such a long time. But I went to a house and I had a shoot where they had obviously had a cat in the house, and I was literally in this photo shoot and my team was seeing me getting more and more breathless through it, and I actually got a wheeze, which I hadn't had for a long time.
My face was tingling from it. Everything.
I got home and I was like, I have to have a shower. I need to put eucalyptus oil in the shower, and then I need to get out and for half an hour I need to.
Deep breathe, let the oxypen back in.
Yeah, an hour, maybe too later, I felt like nothing had happened to me.
Yeah, and it was just so interesting for me to observe.
And again I'm not saying this is going to heal everyone, but I am saying it was so interesting for me after not having experienced it for a long time, actually putting it into practice and being like wow, I would have normally, yeah, taken something for this, done something for this, but my body knew what I needed, and because I listened to it, I didn't go straight into trying to work or do anything else. I took two hours where I was trying to listen to what's happening, and I
took action in that way. And breath is just so powerful it's unbelievable.
So what did you do? You took your body from a stressful state, yes, where your mind wanted to take over and say, oh my god, it's happening again, start to freak out more anxiety and instead of going to pop the pill or whatever your trained response is for when that anxiety comes up, which is a rightly deserved anxiety response. Like, I'm not dismissing that, but there's so few people because of your background and where you came from knew. Oh, hang on a second, my body's stressed.
I need to come back into balance again. What are their modalities that got and help me? And it's retraining And I think that people need to understand, like you can train your body, you can retrain your nervous system whatever, this state of comfort that you're used to being in. I know for me growing up, I was on antibiotics every single year from the age of three until about fifteen when my mom found a functional medicine.
Doctor and we'll be you on antibiotics, fool.
I tonsilitus every year, tonsilitis every single year. It was wild. And back then it was just like, oh antibiotics, Sure, two weeks later again, Sure, give it to it again, over and over. Right, Now we know the gut microbiomes completely wiped out, and the vagus nerve moves from our gut through our heart and up to our brain. Right, this constant state of stress that's moving back and forth through my heart right, and the bacteria that are also
involved in our immune system and stuff like that. And after stopping that those antibiotics, I've never looked back like I really haven't. So again, I think it's just about asking questions and being curious. Just be curious if there's another way that you can heal your body.
Yeah, I just don't change the plan. Just have a plan A. Yeah, that's a little bit different. And if Plan A doesn't work within an hour, within two hours, go back to the plan B can. I think it's just giving yourself that grace of space to think and create a new pathway. And if that new pathway doesn't work, go back to the old pathway.
Yeah. And I love that you brought up breath work too, So breathwork I think is also like the future of medicine. Yeah, I really do so. If you can imagine going to your doctor's office, sitting in the waiting room and being prompted through a screen on how to breathe deeply, I wonder how many people would go into the appointment like, oh, you know what, I don't know if I need to be here anymore, or if it was something that was more acute, or if it was related to an illness
then leaving the doctor's office. But the first thing that they recommended was breathwork every single day, right, or even meditation, right. Like, I think that there's so many people out there who
say that they can't meditate. Yes, And it's like, well, if I told you that there was this one thing that science is now proving that can lower your anxiety, improve your happiness, give you great your creativity and mental focus, optimize your digestion, literally lower inflammation in your joints, help you sleep better, help you have better relationships, all proven, Right,
would you do it? Yeah, we would do it, right, But when we lived in a pill, but it was a pill, that's easier, right, So I don't have a five or ten minutes in the morning.
Yeah, you spoke about energy, you know, we would talk about energy and frequencies, and I think sometimes, you know, back in the day you said it was woo woo. I still think people have that narrative of it, that.
It is a little bit woo woo.
I would love to hear one when you're speaking about energy, When people are talking about energy, what does it mean, what does it look like, how can people experience it?
And frequencies?
Discuss that a little bit so people can understand where in their day they're experiencing frequencies and how it affects them.
Yeah, if you think about your current state of energy, I want you to consider when you wake up in the morning, what's the most important feeling that you want, what's the most important emotion that you want? And I bring this up with my clients on our first call. You know, the first call is always want to tell me what to eat, what's the supplier protocol, what's the diet? And I'm like, okay, I've been brace a little bit. Yeah,
I don't want to know what to do. I want to know what to do also, right, But when we peel back the layers, when I'm understanding my clients, so that other branch that I'm working with my clients on is understanding what is your core value system? What do you believe to be true about healing and health? How are you describing yourself every day? I've said a few times on this podcast, my blueprint was anxiety. How would my body function if my blueprint was anxiety? How do
you identify? And typically within the first sixty minutes on this initial call, I met with tears by like ninety percent of the callers because they identify with a memory that they had. You know, last time, I felt like really happy and like peaceful in my body, with like no worries in the world. I was like five or six years old, Like, I remember a version of myself that felt peace, but I don't feel it anymore.
I think I cried in my first cool you did, Yeah, I remember now that you mentioned. I was like, I think I'm one of those clients.
But it's so normal way because we peel back the layers of what do I think I need to be doing. What's the next thing that I can try, what's the next protocol I'm going to try something new? What's the next magic pill? There's no magic pill. Let's peel back the layers to figure out, like, when's the last time that you actually felt good in your body? What are the emotions that we can waken from that point? Right? Have you ever read any of David Hawkins? No? But
I washed his stuff. It's like incredible, Right. So he has actually a chart of vibrations that people can look at where we can actually measure the vibrational frequency of specific emotions. When somebody's feeling anxiety or shame or stress or worry or tension or fear within their body, like that energy comes in, it's a lower vibrational frequency. When someone can shift into feeling a sense of happiness or peace or even joy, all of a sudden that expansion
opens up. We can measure this, and we now know through doctors like doctor jo Despenza, right, whether you can visualize the feeling and make it feel really real in the moment, your mind and your body doesn't know the difference between it happening in the past versus happening right now. This is true gratitude, right. So with my clients, I help them really uncover, like what is your core value? The sad part about all this is that I would say a lot of people, how do you want to
feel when you wake up in the morning. I want to feel successful. I want to feel motivated. I want to feel wealthy, I want to feel admired, I want to feel like you know, people want to connect with me like, yeah, none of those are really emotions. Yeah, the core emotion that you want to feel. And it could take like honestly up to thirty minutes for some people to really even come to the word happy.
I know I was going to feel how do I want to feel? And I was like content and satisfied?
Did you come into this world to just feel content and satisfied? What's bigger than content and satisfied? For you?
What's bigger than content and satisfied?
If you were to wake up tomorrow morning and you wake up feeling content and satisfied, is there anything bigger than feeling content and satisfied?
I can think of lots of words, so I could just shout them out, ye, shut them out? Devoted, useful, not this?
How do you feel when you're useful to others and devoted and content and satisfied?
Present whole?
How do you feel when you're present and whole? You can see how this exercise is kind of so good.
It's actually good going through it. How do I feel when I'm present in whole?
Sometimes? And if listeners are doing this, do you close your eyes just come into your body? How do you feel in the morning when you wake up and you feel content and whole and on purpose and pleasant and whole? How do you feel what's that emotion within your body?
Joy?
There? It is?
Yeah, it's always joy.
I feel joy? Right, and we think about all these things. Yeah, I want to be on purpose, I want to contribute, I want to be able to support others. I want to be in mission based right, But how do all those things make me feel. That makes me feel like joy for some other people makes them feel a sense of peace and calm.
Yeah.
So if I could work with you every single day when you wake up every single morning and just visualize, like that train thought that took you through all of those things, the thoughts that came up, the activities that you're doing, the people that you're meeting with, like, get all that in, Like, how does that make you feel joy? Your core value then that day is joy. So if you are lining all of your decisions around what you eat, is this going to take me close to joy or
deplete me from joy? I'm going to eat that. Is watching this movie going to take me towards joy or deplete me from joy? I'm going to watch that? Is it doing this activity going to move me towards joy or not? Right? And I'm hearing listeners say, yeah, but mohen, I go to a job that you know I need to make money, it doesn't bring me joy. Yeah, but that's your ownership for your healing blueprint to seek more joy in the opportunities when you can.
Yes, right, my gosh.
Frequencies and energy people, and I feel like we spoke about vegas nev as well. Could you just talk a little bit more about that.
Yeah, vegas nervous is like miracle wisdom. I call it intelligence of the body that moves from our brain down through our body, passes through our heart into our gut microbiome, and it's by directionals, so it's communicating to the brain commuting back to the gut through the heart. Right, So we have more nerve endings also within the gut microbiome than we do within the brain, but we don't have any connection to what's happening in our gut. It's become
this trendy word. There's science behind it that we're trying to validate. It's still evolving. We can't see your gut, right, so we're so does connected. Get to know your gut? Get to know your gut through things like your bowel movements through you know, if you're somebody who gets nervous all the time and your stomach kind of goes off, right, just get to know your gut is your digestion optimal because if it's not, you're suffering from any of those
digestive symptoms. It's sending a stressful state, a stressful feeling up to the brain. So for somebody who suffers from something like stress or anxiety, is it stress or anxiety or does it come from a deeper cause? Right, and we now know that we can do vague toning exercises, and Western practitioners will often recommend a device that's you know you can put up. It's like this electrical stimulation for your vagus nerve that you hold up. I'm holding
my pulse points right now. They're great, they can be effective. But again, ancient wisdom knew about this. They knew that through humming, chanting, we can activate our vegas nerve. Right when you're gargling, you activate your vegus nerve. When you're speaking with some people, there's a way that you can speak to activate the vegas nerve. Through breath work, you activate your vegas nerve. Through yoga practice you activate your
vegas nerve. There's so many modalities that activate your vegus nerve that we need to focus on because you're building resilience back into the body. Interesting, So going back to the resiliency training, you're retraining your vagal tone by shifting your body. Knowing how to shift your body from fight or flight into your parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest So when you're in your rest and digest mode, this is your This is when you're priming your vagel
tone to be optimal. Your digestion is on point, your energy is on point. You eat when you're hungry, you stop eating when you're full. Right, you can recognize anxious th thoughts, and you can come back into the present moment. It really is our body functions at its best. But again you have to understand, like when am I living out of alignment and too far over here for too long?
I'll stay there when it feels good. When I need to be productive and on overdrive, maybe giving a presentation then know how to calm back.
Yeah, when you said sound frequencies, it really reminded me of I tried so many different meditations as I was coming into the practice, and I found chanting and the practice of montra meditation was the most encapsulating one like the one that attracted me and took over my senses
more than anything else did. And I was thinking this morning when I was doing my practice, I've started this hibit every time I get distracted or my waivers anywhere with the mantra I put my hand on my chest and I feel the vibration and my body of the of the mantra that I'm chanting.
And it completely takes me back into my body.
Like that feeling of the sound vibration where I feel it in my heart and I feel it through my body. It completely brings me back into the present moment. And so that's why I always found montra meditation to be a little bit more useful for me than silent, because one, the mantra carries so much energy that has existed in the world, as has been said over and over again, like words carry so much weight and power. But at the same time, the sound vibration that's going through me,
it's almost like a humming feeling. You're saying the mantra over and over again, feeling that sound go through you over and over again. I've even heard that the different
levels that you say it makes the difference. So when I'm chancing it, I'll do a higher pitch, which I feel up here, and then I'll do a lower pitch, which I feel down and like your body, yeah exactly, yeah, And so it's so beautiful to play with those sound vibrations as you're doing your meditation because it kind of takes you up to your mind and then down to your feet.
Yeah, and this is something you can do on your own. You can do this with your kids. You can do this anytime. You can, like gosh, just happy birthday every single day, which is powerful. Yes, I'll never forget. After I was giving my spiritual name, so you chant the same mantra over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And I got up to stand up and I was walking, and in that moment, I was like, I can't feel my feet. I cannot feel my feet on the ground. This is so good.
Don't lose this, don't lose this. It was just like this incredible light feeling. And again it was free. There is no psychedelics, there is no plan, medicine or anything needed. It's just something that we need to shed light on.
What would you say?
You know, I've actually not made it through any of my questions because this has been such a great conversation.
But I love it so much. I guess it.
You know, for anybody hearing this and they're like, I want to start this journey, but I don't even know where to start. What are some of the tips that you give to people to just start off with as a baseline, Let's start with food, because I feel like foods are places where people formally confuse in lost. Right now, what are some of the things that you recommend people incorporate into their life.
Yeah, So for listeners, I have an incredible program on my website, So go to Monasharma dot com and it's the Roots of Healing. So the things that you and I've been talking about today kind of just recaps all of that. Food is such an important piece because I think we need to stop thinking of like just throwing things down the hatch and expecting her bodies to deal with that fast food. Where do we start with us? So, food is information for every single cell in your body.
So how you fuel your body is everything. And we live in a world where we've been taught to believe that food that comes from boxed packages, you know, with these fancy words on the front of the box, healthy, organic, gluten free, keto, paleo. It's like, oh, it must be good for me. But from the diabetic standpoint, it's a boxed dead food. There's no information or life force energy there. So I would say, do an audit. So if Ribby and I were in your kitchen today, what would we
want to see? What would you know? Intuitively, like we probably would just throw in the trash.
Yeah, what you hiding? What you hiding? And you'll cover that you don't want us to open.
And always say your health, your kitchen is your primary source of healthcare. Healthcare starts in your kitchen. So fuel it like a medicine cabinet. Right when you go grocery shopping shop the outer perimeter of the store where there are more things from nature, the colorful red blue, purples, greens that I was talking about that come from nature, from the earth. Fuel it with that and become an
expert at reading labels. Right. Because of this, like you know, revolution of fast processed foods, we need to decipher the foods that are causing us to be sick and imbalanced. We know that these ultra processed foods are linked to diseases amongst adults and children, things like metabolic dysfunction, diabetes, and obesity and even cancer rates are going up. So
control with your dollar and make better decisions right. And it's not to say you've got to go full turkey, but just opt for more real whole foods from nature foods with no ingredient labels, and they know you're busy. But now at the grocery store you can get things that are pre chopped, pre washed to make things easy and use your Sundays as a food prep day to
prepare for the week. So chop store them in glass food containers so that they're just grab and go or grab and saute throughout the week and take away the ability to reach for the foods that you know intuitively are making you sick.
Planning and prepping is so important, Like I've started doing that whe whenever I'm making dinner or on the weekend, if I have some extra time, one I make sure things are chopped so that I know that I have like veggies, even if I want to dip into a hummus or something like. Instead of going to where there's packaged foods, the first thing I know I can go to is my fridge or my fruit bowl or something.
And I've noticed such a difference. I'd rather have food that I've made the night before then I want from a packet. I'd rather have chop up some fruit and eat it instead of going to pick up a protein bar or like something that is just you can open up and it's literally been there for like a year on a shelf. But I will say I think it takes a second two or a month or more to get your body used to having those foods, because if you've been used to it for so long, it shocks you.
It is a lot more preparation than you're used to. And so I think easing into it is one thing, but also giving yourself grace of like, Okay, if right now I am twenty percent whole foods and eighty percent packaged foods, the aim is to switch that around.
The aim is to be at.
Twenty percent maybe package foods, eighty percent whole foods. And I love what you said about things with no ingredient labels. Yeah, I never thought of it in that way, but it's so true. It's like you shouldn't need to read the back of a packet to you know, you can eat.
It Apple's spinach, just no ingrediently. Well, that's there, right.
And eventually you become more attracted to it. And I think that's the point.
Like I always remember this, and it's in regards to any part of your life.
My teacher.
Rather than that, Sammy says a lot, and he says, don't think about what you're taking away, think about what you're adding in first. So when you start adding in goodness into your life, in practices, in foods, in rituals, whatever it is, naturally the lower frequency things or the things that you actually don't shouldn't be having, will slowly fall away and.
You won't even be attracted to them anymore.
You got it.
And I remember that even when I was going through phases of like going out and doing things that I wasn't good for my body and I started meditating, it was like they were clashing. There were two wells that meant to be together. And so the more I did meditation, the less I even had the taste or desire to do those things. It was also when I became more
conscious about plant based eating and my body vibrationally. You know, I was born vegetarian, but even having the food that came from an animal that had been suffering felt uneasy to meet in my body. When I had experienced a
path of more compassion and love and grace. And so what I realized is, don't think about the things you're going to cut out, just start introducing more good things into your diet, and naturally it'll be like I actually don't feel like having that super salty, super fried for everything snack. I actually do want to have a crunchy piece of ceedary. And it sounds so crazy if you haven't experienced it, but I guarantee you, the more your body experiences the nutrient value of food, the more it's
going to crave that food. It's because we're not used to having that nutrient dense food in our life that we end up going towards the fast fixes, and so your body definitely gets used to it.
It's food addic. Yeah, it's such a beautiful story to tell. I'll never forget at the ashtrom once you go through this period of just eliminating the foods that are processed and highly addictive, which by the way, come from a factory where a scientist was hired to make them hyper palatable to you, like you literally cannot why do I need to have it? Right? It's food addiction. It triggers
a reward center in your brain. If you simply eliminate it and go through this process, I'll never forget when I could actually taste like sweetness in spinach, Yes, which makes no sense whatsoever, right, But to your point, you retrain your taste buds and you start to crave those things. And ultimately what you're doing is you're starting to eat
like you love yourself. Right, You're nourishing your body. And this isn't to say that I don't have like the chocolate cake and go out and the baggy chips here and there. You know, I'm human, I'm normal, but I know that through my own healing journey. When you bring your body back into balance, when you're in balance and you're optimized when you go have those kind of you know, fun.
Foods, I guess it's done off that one time done.
I hate you could like, okay, let's get back to this again today, right, and you feel so much better. So the elimination process could feel a little bit intense, but start with that one category before anything else, and with the other big things like if you are suffering from digestive issues, looking at things that like are genetically modified. So you and I we eat soy as an amazing source of protein, right, but you have to look for organic soy that's not genetically modified. I promise the way
that your body will digest it is completely different. Corn is another one that tends to be a big trigger for people, dairy, which ties into the whole dairy industry thing,
which could be a little bit overwhelming. To just make sure you know where your food comes from exactly, because the other thing from our spiritual teachers is that if food has energy, think about all of the steps that it's taken for that food to go from where it was and for some people that's animal based products to getting to the supermarket and then onto your plate, right, like so many steps and different energy on the way, and chemicals that are used as ripening agents on the way.
And if it's in protein, well, how is that animal treated? Did it have a life? Was there fear in its body? Right? You ingest all of that, The hormones that we need to keep these cows lactating all the time, right, we ingest that. So just be mindful of what you're ingesting. And I wish that we could live in a world where we could just like trust these big food companies,
but even things like eggs. I just got a dozen people off of these eggs from this really reputable air quote brand who just responded with pride, saying that they feed their hens corn and soy. Right, So while you're eating that corn and soy that's going into your eggs also, and you're wondering why you have these inflammatory issues or the eggzema or bloating and stuff like that. You have
to become an investigator. And I know for people just getting started it's going to feel a little bit overwhelming, but start with one, two or three categories. Do your research. I always say you're like my role model because you were so great in the kitchen. I'm the nutritionist that throw I throw things together. Yeah, I just simplify everything. Being healthy is actually really really quite simple when you
avoid over complicating it. And if you really want to, just like increase the nutrient density of all of your food no matter what you're eating. Look at your herbs and your spices as nature's anti inflammatories. Your spice cabinet should literally be your medicine cabinet. Yeah, and cook with more of those every single day. Make it a priority. Put them out on your counter every single day, grow them yourself if you can even better.
Yeah, And so basically what you've said is eat more whole foods, strip things back and have more spices and herbs, and I feel like those are very manageable things totally.
Maybe a great analogy is, however, your great grandmother would have eaten eat more like her exactly. It goes for all of us.
Yeah, my grandmother definitely eats like that, and you still don't even know. She could probably count on her hands how many times she's eaten out right at a restaurant or anything like, she just doesn't. It also reminded me I've really started thinking of my body. You know, I think so many people go through extreme diets or you know, all the things that you've spoken about. And the thing that's changed it for me so much, the moment I'm putting things into my body is thinking about my body
being a gift from God. And I think, oh, gift from the universe or whatever you want to call it. If you see your body as a gift, the way that you interact with your body, you don't see as yours. You see it as something that's been given to you and that's borrowed. And I'm just like, every single time I think about that, I'm like, oh, I've been given two legs, two arms, two eyes that can see whatever
we've been given what a gift is. And the only way I can repay that gift is by treating my body with gratitude, treating my body as if it is temporary and been given to me, and I'm so grateful for it. And so every single thing that you do, every single thing you put into your mouth, every single person that you allow in the space of your body, you think about so much more because you're like, is
this showing gratitude for the life I've been given? Is this showing gratitude for the fact that I woke up this morning and I'm able to walk, talk, and live life. And so it really shifted my perspective on wanting to see things externally on my body and the shifts and changes that I want to see externally physically versus what I'm actually giving to my body for nourishment, and sometimes
it can be two very different things. Wanting to see things visually sometimes means you have to you know, so interesting, I kept being told I have to have more protein and more this and more that, and it was fundamentally ruining my gut. Like I was so unhappy, my body was unhappy in the way that I was feeding it, and I was trying to not to listen because I was like, oh, but I have to because I want to see more muscle mass and I want to see abs and I don't want this on my body and
I don't want this. And I made a decision, and funnily enough, going to the usherment over the holidays gave me the perspective that I needed. And I got back and I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm not eating
a protein bar. I'm not eating this. I'm not doing this, and my gut and my body not only did I see actually more changes physically exactly my whole body shifted in how happy I actually was and how I was feeling it was actually doing I was actually listening to what my body needed versus what other people were telling me. And a's me who also someone knows the fundamentals of I should be listening to my body.
And I still got swayed.
And so it's such an interesting world that we live in where we can get just shifted in mindset so easily.
This is my constant work. I'm so tempted. I work with so many incredible doctors who are doing these exciting, incredible things, and these educators that are coming on my podcast talking about these great things. Now I should try this too, or should try it like oh this insane protein amount every single day? But does it feel good for you? Just because it's good for somebody else doesn't
mean it's really good for you. And I love what you brought up because I think that if like the biggest takeaway I could give any of my clients, If you can make your healing journey your greatest spiritual journey ever, a lot of your issues with will dissipate. The urges that you have to go and be a certain way because you want to get to a certain macro level or number on the scale. Like it dissipates and you shift from that feeling of like do do do doo doo too? How do I want to be in my body?
And if I could just feel really good in my body, my choices will align. I'm turning down the noise on what everyone else thinks that I should be doing, and I'm coming into my own wisdom of what I know to be true and what I know to feel good. So, yeah, is there a time and a place, you know? How I work with people like once a year, twice a year, go understand your physiology. Understand your biology, Go do a full panel blood lab, find a doctor who is your
partner in healing. Hey, maybe you do a stress test, Maybe do a Dutch test to understand your hormones. You know, DNA test is really great. It helps us really understand your constitution. Maybe you're doing a stool test, which is like so informational because there's so much information for your healing. And then on the other side, really do that inner work. And I think ultimately what we're talking about is coming
into your own consciousness. Right if you're so conscious of who you are and how you want to be in this world and how you want to feel, with practice and with coaching and some guidance, aligning key rituals in your life every single day that are going to align that. I really do think that, like habits come and go. We always try these new things on and a new habit,
and they come, they go, they come, they go. But when you find a ritual that feels really really good, so you with your mantra meditation, me with my warning visualization and meditation, it becomes me like I don't forget it. That would be like forgetting to brush my teeth before I leave the house. So for someone else, that could be journaling, it could be walking outside, it could be going for a run, It could be so many different things.
What's your thing that's going to align you with your consciousness and stay on that spiritual path of like just getting to know who you were? I think I don't know about you, but growing up was always you know, trying to fit in, trying to be better, be like someone else, and even at the Ashram, the spiritual kind of knowledge of like trying to become one with God
or become one with consciousness. And I'm lifting my hand up outside of myself, like it's something outside of me that I'm trying to get to instead of recognizing that everything is within. And when you get to that point, then you're like, oh, I get one shot at the same called life. My dad would always say, your body is just a vessel. Yeah, how are you going to
treat this vessel in this lifetime? And then it just shifts our perspective from healing like being on a diet or a protocol, into no, the diet is actually the unhealthy process, highly addictive food, that's an unhealthy diet. There is no diet, and just eating like you love yourself and eating whole foods from nutrition. That's just wholesome, nourishing foods. Right, there's no diet, it's just eating.
I honestly have so.
Many more questions, but I actually think we might have to have you on another time so that people can really digest this information, because I think what we've already covered has been so impactful, so simple, yet so needed and necessary, and I think just letting people appreciate what we've given them this far, I think will be formal beneficial than me going into some detailed questions. So I feel like we definitely have to have you on against.
I can ask the other how many cars do I have left? One, two, three, four? I basically made it through the first card, so we definitely have to have you on again.
But I honestly think what we've covered has just been so useful, and you've are so eloquent and just I feel like your energy can not many people's energy can be felt through a microphone, but I definitely feel yours can.
So thank you so much. This has been phenomenal.
Honestly, one of my favorite episodes and we're definitely going to schedule you to be back on very soon.
I cannot wait. I adore you, which is probably why this is so easy, so we'll definitely do it. Yeah. Thanks, thank you, Van