Does Chronic Stress Cause Leaky Gut? With Miriam Jacobson​

Music. Hey, welcome back to the Pretty Well Podcast. I'm Lisa Smith.

Today we have an amazing guest, Miriam Jacobson. Miriam is a triple board certified functional medicine dietician. So you already know she's a girl after my own heart. She has more than 15 years experience helping people improve their physical and mental well-being through food, mindset, lifestyle, breathwork, and somatic treatment. Miriam's healing practice is greatly influenced by her personal journey of losing her father to 9-11 when she was just 13 years old.

Also, being poisoned by pollutants from the Twin Towers falling and surviving breast cancer. Miriam is writing a personal memoir on healing through trauma. Welcome, Miriam. Thank you so much, Lisa. I'm so happy to be here today talking with you. I'm so excited to talk with you. You have so much to share with us.

Let's start talking about your journey, your backstory, and how you've gone from victim to alchemist and become empowered to help other people. Yeah, absolutely. So as you had mentioned in my bio, I lost my dad on 9-11. He worked on the top of the Twin Towers. So sorry. Thank you. And at the time, I was 13 and didn't have any tools to manage the stress and trauma that was collapsing my personal life. But also, you know, my outer world. It was both inner and outer. And there was a lot of other,

Family trauma happening at that time. A few weeks later, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so my world really did collapse. I began emotionally eating. I started to absorb all of the emotions that I was suppressing and not able to manage as physical issues. I started getting back pain and migraines and stomach aches. And this all followed me into my 20s. it was through my upbringing and trauma that really led me to wanting to be an agent of change for people.

I really wanted to help people heal, probably because I was so desperate to heal myself. In that timeframe, I found a trauma specialist when I was 18 years old. I decided to address the emotional issues that I was experiencing and the PTSD that I was holding in my body, even through working, through that PTSD, I was still having physical issues. And that's what I finally was able to address in my 20s.

I was hungry, nauseous, in pain, tired all the time. And my doctor was like, oh, you're a woman. It's because you're a woman. I don't know. It's hormones. And of course, it's like the biggest eye roll moment ever. And at the time, I was the assistant to a functional medicine nutritionist, which is how I discovered functional medicine. And she's like, let's do some testing. That's when I discovered my food sensitivities, started incorporating functional

medicine into my body. And I was like, holy moly. And within two or three months, every symptom I was experiencing disappeared. I really do believe that it was the combination of finally addressing the emotional pain and trauma and healing my nervous system combined with, the power of nutrition and functional medicine and resolving what was happening underneath the surface. And I think those two things was really powerful in my journey.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I need to help people do the same thing. Yes. You have seen firsthand how your life was completely transformed. But how interesting that it took so many times, even in the functional medicine world, we see people who have been addressed in a conventional medicine way. They've gotten different testing done and different supplements, but they don't seem to get past that point of feeling really good again.

And you bring up such an important point that you had to heal your nervous system, too. It just didn't work to heal one of those things. So what would you say when you look at the relationship of trauma and stress, what is being overlooked right now and how can that change for people? I think that people really want to take action.

I think it's of two camps, but I think a lot of the people I work with and that are probably listening to this podcast are go-getters and they're proactive and they see an issue and they're like, okay, what's the next best action for me to support myself? And I think that's such a beautiful thing, right? And at the same time, sometimes there's not an action.

And sometimes we need to learn how to embody that work and take a step back and ground our nervous systems and get out of that action-oriented mindset. For me, a lot of that medicine was learning how to slow down and soften. It's not something that we can learn and do. The rest is the action, which can feel so uncomfortable for so many people. So what did that look like for you, learning that rest? What did that look like?

Oh, you know, I wish there was a meet before and after, but I have to say it's been a really messy journey. It's never very neat. We'd like to believe it is, but it's not. I'd love to tie a little bow on it, but I can't say that I grounded my nervous system in my 20s. I can't claim that. I was able to work through a lot of the emotional issues and ground it to an extent. A lot of life brought stuff up for me. I lost my mom when I was 25 years old. I had to settle her estate.

Thank you. It wasn't until my breast cancer diagnosis that I came to a full stop. I was always going, going, going. I was always managing something, putting out fires or starting a business. I never was forced to stop. So I never took it upon myself. To take a really big, deep breath. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was 31 years old. I was still going, pushing. And then I had a double mastectomy that forced me into stillness.

I was always going to fitness classes, grocery shopping, making connections and building things. Then the double mastectomy totally floored me and where I was like, oh, I can't even lift a glass of water by myself. I can't drive myself anywhere. I can't exercise. I can't distract myself. So I'm literally have to sit here in my body. And I just cried. I just remember crying every single day and just learning how to breathe.

I was a breathwork facilitator already, but really learning how to breathe in a different way and less of like working out emotions and more just learning to be in my body. And I think that was such a transformative experience for me because I knew, again, we know all these things, but it was the actual forcing me to stop and be in stillness and be in my body, which was a huge transformation for me. And it's constant work. It's something that I'm constantly still reminding myself to do.

That's the hardest thing to do. That activity serves a lot of purposes. It's very productive. It helps us to concentrate when our mind wants to be scattered. It helps us to avoid things we want to avoid. It's very purposeful. So when you had to sit and just be still, we tell people to do that all the time, but to do that is the hard part, really. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, like you said, it does serve a purpose. Like we have to be humans in the world. We have to support ourselves.

But it's a fine line. It's when does are going, going, going become a coping mechanism and a way to not drop into the emotion. For sure.

So what have you found as you have done all this work? What have you found the effects of trauma are on the gut? Our gut and our mind and our nervous system are all deeply connected. Our vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body that goes from our cranium, from our skull, all the way down through our gut. We have 500 million neurons just in our gut. That's more neurons than we have in our spine.

When we're dysregulated, when we're going through stress, It's going to reduce blood flow to the gut. It's going to reduce digestive enzymes that we're able to produce because basically when we're under stress, blood needs to flow to our muscles and it flows away from our digestive organs. That compromises digestive enzymes and our microbiome and digestive health as a whole. If that response is ongoing as it is in trauma, we're constantly living our

stress. It's not that we're reminded of that or it's like a memory. It's a somatic experience that our body is reliving. When we're never able to heal that, then it's going to have prolonged effects on our gut. It's not just, you know, I ran for the bus and my blood's flowing away from my gut. You know, it's a sustained response that can then atrophy digestive health. And then that's a whole new ball of wax that we're dealing with too.

That really explains why if we're working as practitioners, we're working with someone or if one of our listeners is working with a practitioner and they're doing all the right things from a diet standpoint. Breath work, stress reduction, sleep, trying to get sunshine, all these things. But if that trauma is daily, first of all, our body's hanging on to it so it doesn't let go of it. But you can see why you might hit a wall in progress. You might be like,

oh, wow, I've discovered my food sensitivities. That's amazing. But that's not the end of the story. Exactly. And I think for each person, it's so different. But I remember when I was working as a functional medicine dietitian in New York, I had a really different patient population than I have now. And it's, I think, because New Yorkers, as a born and raised New Yorker, like you just, I absorbed the stress from my environment. And as did my patients.

I remember working with this one woman. Her diet was perfect. And we did all the testing and there was nothing else left on paper. And her gut was still so messed up. I remember being so frustrated because I was like, mom, what do you want me to do? I get an email from her. Like, I think it was like two years later, I get an email from her and she's like, Miriam. I just wanted to reach out to you because I finally moved away from New York. I finally moved to Pennsylvania.

She's like, my gosh, it's finally better. And it was really the change in her job, the change in environment for her specifically that was a missing link for her. And so it's not always just diet. I think the beauty of functional medicine is we're really looking at what's the underlying thing here? What's the pin that we're sitting on and the piece that we're missing? Sometimes there's a lot of different pins that we sit on.

You know, it can be food sensitivities, but it can be stress and trauma, or it can be emotional eating. So it's like, what is really the root at it and how can we compassionately meet ourselves in that place? That's really helpful. Many of us know deep down inside some of those pins, but it's easier to address the easiest ones. The easy ones are, let's get some testing, let's get some supplements,

change that diet. But sometimes there's this little small still voice that comes up and says, well, you know, have you thought about this? And you just shove it down and you work a little longer and harder on other things. Oh, and just for background, guys, Miriam has moved from New York City to Southern California, Los Angeles. Yes. Yes. Nine years ago. So when she's referring to moving out of New York City, that's where you are now. And so you're in sunshine, you're near water.

It's just a different environment completely.

You work with a lot of women who do it all, kind of like what we've already been talking about. They're high achievers. They may be moms, their spouses, daughters, sisters. They're doing all of the things. What's one belief that you've come across that may be quietly holding them back? One belief that they just don't really verbalize very often, but when you do some digging, you find it. I think women across the board have been conditioned to put other people before themselves.

We're the caretakers, the caregivers, not only for children disproportionately, for the most part, I guess, but also for parents as we get older. And I know a lot of women I work with are in this sandwich generation where they're taking care of their parents and their children. Yeah. And so what I find is most women put themselves on the back burner where it's like, oh, what's the leftover time for myself? You know, and it's like, oh, I'll eat whatever.

And they do it. It's like, I'll eat the leftovers of my kids. They don't even make themselves food. Or it's like, oh, this meeting is more important than taking the lunch. And then they're shoving their lunch over the kitchen sink. You can't digest properly when you're doing that. When you're stressed and shoving your food down and not really chewing it, that's not good for your body. I think there's this belief that a lot of women have that other people are more important than themselves.

That gets translated in so many different ways. We need to start flipping that script because it's the one we're well taken care of. And when we can create space for our own well-being, we can show up in greater ways for the people around us. And I know it's so basic, but it's like, who has the time to eat? I know so many women who skip meals because there's no time or they're shoving a bar in between. Like, that's not self-care.

And self-care doesn't need to look like a bubble bath. It could be literally sitting down to lunch? Great point. First of all, I feel a little creeped out, like maybe you've been spying on me for many years.

I was the mom who ate the leftover grilled cheese sandwich on my kid's plate. Oh, I don't need to make my own lunch. They won't eat it all. I'll eat theirs. Oh, there's a little tomato soup left there. I'll have that while I'm at it. I resonate with that big time. I was the practitioner who would work straight through seeing clients from 7 a.m. And I wouldn't get home till 8 p.m. and I never took a lunch and was exhausted because who had time, right? You're trying to do all the things.

And in retrospect, that is so self-sabotaging. Maybe as a mom, you get enough to eat, eating off your children's plates. But what's the subtle message that you're reinforcing that you're not worthy to take a little extra time for yourself? and that is a ripple effect that that affects everything. Oh, absolutely. And you might be eating off your kids' plates, but is that the food that's really going to actually make you feel uplifted and nourished, vibrant?

And also the irony, like I used to do this all the time and I'm trying to flip the script again. It's constant work. The irony of being a healthcare provider and a nutrition provider and of not having time to eat for yourself. I comment myself out on it all the time because I was like, I am not doing what I preach. Well, even in the being still part that we talked about a few minutes ago, how many people have you counseled? Slow down. Are you chewing your food? Are you breathing?

Are you taking a little bit of time for yourself? And then do you ever look in the mirror and you're like, oh, shoot, like that is I'm not taking my own advice. I'm really good at helping other people. But it's a true struggle to slow down and be quiet. Right. Make food for yourself. It may take you an extra 15 minutes. or 20 or 30, but it's so worth it. Honestly, it sometimes takes me five minutes to put together my lunch yesterday. It was a beautiful salad.

I ended up buying a rotisserie chicken and a slice of stuff of cucumber and a tomato and put some chickpea croutons on it. It's delicious. This took me five minutes. It really doesn't even take that long when you think about it, you know, when you plan accordingly and make it a priority. There's the lesson. As dieticians, we teach people how to meal plan and prep for the week. and you're well on your way.

There's stuff in your fridge. You can pivot at the last moment, but you're not running to the store or punting and ordering pizza or whatever. But even for ourselves, just that self-care, that little bit of planning on a Saturday or Sunday for the rest of the week, how am I going to take care of myself this week? That maybe should be one thing in our protocols. We start a little self-care box. On Sunday or Saturday, you need to carve out

this amount of time just to prep for your week. How will you treat yourself well and care for yourself? Something that I have been getting into the practice of doing is when I do that, me in the moment is always like, Miriam, thank you so much, past Miriam. She loved me so much that she put all this effort and thought and energy into preparing for me now. And me now is so grateful.

When I make the good choices for myself and then I experience the benefit of it, I always make sure to thank my past self because it's reinforcing that. So smart. You are reparenting. Yeah, it is. And it's a way for us to nourish ourselves, not just physically, but also emotionally, energetically, because nutrition transcends the physical. And I think that's where the conversation gets really fascinating.

How does food not only nourish our physical bodies, our biochemistry, et cetera, et cetera, right, which is fascinating in itself, but then how does it nourish our spirit? How does it nourish our sense of well-being, our reparenting, our spiritual self, our cultural self, our emotional self? There's so many layers that food can't have beyond the physical. Yes. If we're dieticians, then food is our love language.

My kids, I have a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old, and they're like, quit pushing food. And I'm like, it's my love language. I can't. I have to push food. That's what I do. That's why you love me. But it's so funny that you say that because it's true. Food is an expression of love. If we're making someone a nice dinner, whether it's for someone else or ourselves, it is an outpouring of love. It's not just something that you do mechanically.

There's heart and spirit and energy that goes into that for whoever you're making that for. Yeah. And so when we really think about it, it's how do you center yourself as another character in your life, as like another child that's sitting at that table? Yes. And you being kind to yourself, just want to dive a little deeper into that point. You saying, thank you, Miriam. Thank you. I find another hidden saboteur in women's health is how they speak to themselves.

I feel that nobody hears it but them. It's in their own head. But it's that, oh, you're so stupid. You're not fast enough. Look how you look in the mirror and pick apart those things.

That script if we begin with shifting that script to how we would treat someone we cherish with all of our heart and we say Miriam that's amazing you did that today by the way you're looking awesome just that kindness what you would say to your best friend or a little kid or someone you love so dearly and if we start there that is foundational a thousand percent yes I think we're just like, yes, women and each other.

Yes, yes. Like that inner critic, right? That's the voice of fear. That's the voice of resistance to change, right? But that is social conditioning. We don't, we're not like born hating ourselves. We grow up in families. We're exposed to media that profits off of our insecurities. We are exposed to religious organizations that want to control. And so there's all these voices that aren't our own, really. We've been truly conditioned. So when we can understand, like, where are they coming from?

How are they actually draining us? And what are they really costing me? And what would my life look like if I were to change the conversation? That's really the first step in shifting those voices. And then really remembering, like, you're a badass. Like, you know, like, look at all the things that you've done in your life. I'm really beginning to celebrate yourself and reinforcing each tiny little decision.

Like so many times we're like, oh, I shouldn't eat sugar and I'm so stupid reading sugar, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Instead of that, what if you go like, I had a beautiful salad for lunch today and I'm so proud I made that choice for myself. When we can start talking to ourselves as that loving character... It can really begin to change things. It's a game changer because then we begin to change our identity. We get shoved into these molds of people pleasing from a very early age.

And even in schools, we want to be accepted. So we tone down parts of our personality that may be too much or too whatever from a societal standpoint. And then we become this image of what we think everybody wants. And it takes a while to figure out, wait a minute, that's actually kind of not who I am or what I think. It's time to dismantle that and begin that self-kindness and identity, building yourself back up like, oh, you did a great job today. That's amazing.

When you mentioned we're not born, not liking ourselves. How many little kids? I love this. Little girls, my daughter, I used to say, Abby, like, you look so pretty today. And she'd look up at me and go, I know. I was like, I love that. I know. I do look so pretty today. You're right. Little kids, they don't have that baggage stuff. And that's a beautiful thing. Can you imagine if we got a compliment? We'd be like, I know. But we can start saying thank you instead of like, no, no, no.

What if we were just like, thank you. Like the lesson that we're receiving. Yes. Thank you. My hair does look really good today. I was pretty excited about it myself. So good. We should just all reach out to each other and start shooting messages like, you look amazing today. Just building each other up until we begin to do it ourselves.

So let's talk about somatic therapy because that is not something that people know a lot about. Share with us how you help people from that standpoint. Yes. So first clarification for people who have never heard of somatics before. Somatics basically means happening in your body. So when we go through something traumatizing or stressful or just honestly how we're conditioned in the world, we overthink things. We want to think through stuff. We want to reason.

We want to understand it as best we can. But when it comes to trauma specifically, we hold trauma in our bodies. For anyone who doesn't know the book, The Body Keeps the Score, it's an amazing book all about how our bodies hold on to trauma. When it comes to overthinking, that's how we want to deal with it. But with somatic work, it gets us out of those overthinking thought loops and gets us into our body to speak the language of the body.

What's an example of what that looks like? An example would be, what sensations are you noticing? You're feeling stressed out in your body. What sensations do you notice right now? And you can start doing that. If I'm tapping in, what sensations do I notice? I notice my hands are a little clammy. I'm excited to be on this call. So I notice like a little sweat in my hands. I notice my heart beating a little faster. I notice heat rising to my skin, right?

Oftentimes when people are asked about sensations, they want to tell you about their feeling about it and they want to reason through it. But the somatic work is really staying with that sensation. Is it cold? Is it warm? Is it bubbly? Is it bright? Is it sharp? Does it hurt? Is it pleasant? Is it neutral? And so really toning into where is it happening in the body? Does it have a color? Does it have a quality? And so putting names to it is how you start connecting with that sensation.

And when you stay with those sensations, they oftentimes will move. That's traditional somatic work and how I was trained from the Somatic Institute in Boulder. That's fascinating. But there's a lot of different ways that you could do somatic work. I also lead people in breath work. Breath work is a different type of somatic work that helps people get out of their heads and into their bodies by focusing on the cadence of their breath.

Let's walk through what that would look like. You have a client come in and meet with you or you meet with them virtually. How do you help them with breath work? It depends on what's coming up for them and how they're feeling. There's different types of breath work. that can support you through different states of being.

If someone's extremely overwhelmed and they're scattered, doing a breath work that really slows down the breath and really getting them to focus on their inhales and exhales through their nose. Sometimes we'll do breath counts. One of my favorite breaths for calming down the nervous system is an inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of seven. And then exhale for a count of eight. Okay. And then to repeat that a few times, if that feels like too much, you can start with a 4-4-4.

Oh, good. I see. So it would be inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four. And what that does to your physical body is it activates your parasympathetic nervous system and it calms the system down. For someone who's feeling like stuck or frozen or like they're looping, there's different types of breath work.

There's an active breath work that I'll sometimes lead people through, where I guess when people hear holotropic breath work, that's probably more of what they think of, where it's active inhales and exhales through your mouth. It's extremely activating, but it helps to complete stress cycles. I guide people through it laying down on the ground. They'll be pumping air throughout their body. And after five minutes, they'll usually start experiencing body sensations, tingling.

They may see different images. When I've done it, I've had waking dreams before, or I see colors, or have different body sensations, temperature changes. Different intuitive messages that come to you. And so, again, depending on what someone's going through, there's different tools that we can then offer them. That's so interesting. I was part of a group that did breathwork. I don't remember what it was called. You will know. Actually,

I was in San Diego when I did this. and they had someone come in, lead breath work. It was similar to what you were talking about. It was to actually activate your sympathetic nervous system. So you would do fast breathing and then you would hold your breath for long periods of time. After that, people would literally be crying and wailing in this group. They were crying because they were processing trauma. I remember I was processing things, but hearing people cry, it was very powerful.

Yeah, absolutely. And that sounds very similar to the breathwork I'm doing. I don't usually do breath holds, but it is a similar emotive experience. And it does activate the sympathetic nervous system. What I found and what science shows is that we don't burn out from stress itself. We burn out from not processing that stress and not giving ourselves ways to process that stress. Interesting. So breath work is one of those things that can activate the parasympathetic.

When you're breathing in that way, especially you're pumping, inhale, more in than out, breathing through your mouth will also activate parasympathetic. Doing that activates us, but it gives us a way to complete our stress cycles in a safe place. When you're in that room in San Diego, you're in a safe place. You have full autonomy over your experience, which is often something that when you go through trauma, you have no autonomy, right?

So you have autonomy over the experience. You're in a safe place. You have full control. Right. And so you're then able to move through that. It's like moving through the tunnel rather than getting stuck inside of it. So burnout is related to not being able to complete the cycle. Like you're still stuck in a pattern of high stress. Is that what it is? Rather than I go through the stress and then I put closure to it and then I go through another one and I put, is that right?

Am I understanding that? Exactly. So our bodies are supposed to be able to be activated. That's a healthy nervous system. We're supposed to be able to be stressed. That's what helps motivate us. That's what's making me excited right now on this call. That's what helps me work out, have exciting conversations, and feel sexual. There are so many different ways that stress does support us, but stress isn't supposed to be turned on all the time.

We need to be able to come back to a sense of safety in our bodies. When we don't, that is what contributes to burnout. There's lots of different ways to help our bodies come back to safety.

Breathing is a really powerful self-regulating tool, but there's other tools that we can utilize. We can co-regulate with people. Our nervous systems are wired for connection. When we are connected with people, when we open up to people we trust, When we hug our partners or kiss our partners, cuddle our dogs, that grounds our nervous system. When we get into nature, those negative ions ground the nervous system. We do something creative or we play just for the sake of playing.

That is really supportive for the nervous system. All those things signals the body to come back to a sense of safety. That is great information, Miriam. Just the fact that we think about chronic stress keeping us on this state of, you know, elevated cortisol all the time. But you just put a different spin on it. It's not that because we know that stress never goes. We always have stress every day. There's stress.

There's good stress. There's not so good stress. But if you put closure on it, grounding that cycle so that you can bring yourself back to somewhat of a level playing field before that rise begins again. And you think about how well-intentioned, but it just seems so ineffective when people say, just take some time to relax, get some stress management skills, go for a walk. Those are all important.

But if you realize that grounding that cycle for you, that little tiny shift in understanding may make all the difference. And, you know, there are so many times that I'm like, I'm going to sit down and relax and I can't because I'm so stressed out. You know, sometimes just sitting down to relax isn't enough. We're still so activated and turned on. We need to be able to understand what tools resonate with us. There are different tools that are going to be helpful for different times.

You don't always need a hammer for something you need a screwdriver. I'm not a handy person. I don't know why I use that analogy. But, you know, like there are different tools for different things. It works. You and I know that. We don't know what a hammer is. That is very helpful. Just to think that through. I've been working on learning to be still. I've got a long way to go, but I try every day to take 15 minutes. I'm just going to be still. That's all I'm going to do. It's very hard.

That's a hard thing to do. Stillness without the scrolling. Yes. Without the distractions. It's just being with yourself. Yes. And I have two dogs at home. So they think if I'm being still, that is code for I should be playing with you right now. And I'm like, no, I'm trying to be still. But it is definitely challenging. I just think that shift of saying there's purpose in it. But if I can make it a little more concrete of I'll just tell myself now I'm

just grounding my stress cycle. This is one tool in my toolbox to do that. That might help me to stay more consistent. And I don't know if this resonates, but to pick something that is grounding and helps you to breathe, you know, if you can put it at some kind of label like that on, maybe it would be helpful. Yeah, I know a friend of mine when I was recovering from my double mastectomy, he told me rest is an action.

That became a mantra for me. Every time I was uncomfortable with the stillness, I was like, rest is an action. My body can't heal unless I'm able to rest. I understood that from a physiological perspective, right? Because even physiologically... If we're running around, again, blood's flowing to our muscles. It's not flowing to our internal organs. We can't heal when we're in a state of stress. Rest is an inaction, and it's an essential action for healing.

That is a great quote from today. Rest is inaction. Tell your friend. That's going to be our tagline for today. That's fantastic. Well, what are some of your favorite things? If someone could take one thing away today, we've talked about, As dieticians, get this, we barely talked about food. We only talked about the fact that it's our love language. But we did talk a little bit about food. We talked about stress management. We talked about the role of trauma in healing and addressing that.

What's one thing somebody could take away from today? It could be a stepping off point in their healing that maybe they haven't tried yet. One of your favorite recommendations that isn't what people hear all the time.

I think creating more space for yourself. I think that there are a million things that we can do for our health and well-being. And there are so many different shiny objects, especially today, that we can be following. But I think you said something really poignant earlier about how we know what we need to be doing, but it's usually the easiest things that we want to do first. But when we can create a space for ourselves, we usually know what the next best thing that we could do.

And it's going to look different for every single one of us. But I think creating that space and finding a little bit of stillness to get that intuitive understanding and then to take that first step is going to be really, really powerful. And again, it's going to be looking different for me than it's going to be looking for you. And that's the beautiful thing about healing and functional medicine and nutrition. There's no one-size-fits-all. I love that you create this space and stillness.

Whatever that looks like for someone, for me, it might be sitting with quiet music and staring out a window. For someone else, it might be going for a walk. For someone else, it could be a combination of things, deep breathing or anything. I love it that in the sense that once you create that space, that still small voice reminds you of one of those pins you're sitting on that you haven't yet been willing to examine.

Yeah, and it's uncomfortable, but it's probably the biggest catalyst for change for so many people. That's excellent. So how do you work with people? Yes. So I work one-on-one with clients, but I also do corporate wellness programming, which is something that I have been loving.

I work with companies and I come in and I educate employees and we do nutrition programs. So I just launched one last week. I'm doing a four-week series for a global beauty brand. It's been so fun. Tomorrow we're doing a live cooking class. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So we're like, to fuck not meal prep, then we're also cooking together. And so like everyone got ingredient lists and they're joining me in my kitchen. But it's really fun and really playful.

A way to improve wellness at work and team building. That's something I absolutely love. That is amazing. So you have a four-week program going now for this particular brand. Oh, yeah. And if anyone's like, oh my gosh, I want to have that in my workplace. That is something that I love doing. so please reach out. And how do people find you? Yes. Oh, so my website is everybodybliss.com and I'm also on Instagram at everybodybliss. Those are the best ways to connect with me.

Everybodybliss.com. That's your website. Those are your social handles. I'll have those links in the show notes, but we all want to know what are you cooking tomorrow for you? Oh, what are we cooking at the class? We are doing homemade almond milk from scratch. And then we're doing a zucchini and eggplant curry. That sounds so good. I'm so excited. Those are two of my favorite recipes. So I'm excited to share them. That's going to be a blast. Music.