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Ayurvedic Support for the Transition Into Menopause with Maria Gabriela Guevara | The Holistic Pharmacy Podcast · Pharmacy Podcast Network

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy podcast Network.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Holistic Pharmacy Podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Marina books of and I'm a functional medicine pharmacist in
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  Speaker 2: New York. I'm also a clinical herbalist and an integrative
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: health coach specializing in mindfulness and empowerment. I'm on a
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  Speaker 2: mission to transform the way we approach healthcare by bridging
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  Speaker 2: the wisdom of traditional medicine with modern practice. And in
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: this podcast, I will be highlighting guests who do just that,
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  Speaker 2: inspired by them, and I know you will be as well.
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  Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Welcome back to another amazing episode of the
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Holistic Pharmacy Podcast. And I have an amazing guest with
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  Speaker 3: me today as I usually do for you guys, and
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  Speaker 3: her name is Maria Gabriela Gavada and she is a
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  Speaker 3: certified Ayurveda health counselor, also a doctor of Pharmacy like myself,
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  Speaker 3: and a two hundred hour certified yoga teacher and founder
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  Speaker 3: of Intuitive Ayurveda. She helps people in perimenopause and menopause
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  Speaker 3: feel better in their bodies using Ayreveda science backed tools
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  Speaker 3: and intuitive coaching so they can celebrate this phase of
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  Speaker 3: life instead of dreading it. The Eastern and Western perspectives
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  Speaker 3: of medicine each have something to offer us, and Maria
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  Speaker 3: Gabriela understands this dance. Her goal is to educate on
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  Speaker 3: aerveda tools that can and should be individualized to each
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  Speaker 3: complex person.
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  Speaker 4: She strives to help her.
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  Speaker 3: Clients tune into the messages their bodies are sending them.
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  Speaker 4: Ultimately, she believes.
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  Speaker 3: That every person is the expert on what is best
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  Speaker 3: for them and can be empowered to hone in on
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  Speaker 3: which tools they need to support themselves in mind, body
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  Speaker 3: and spirit.
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  Speaker 4: So welcome to the show, Marie Gabriella.
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  Speaker 5: Thank you so much. I'm super honored to be here.
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  Speaker 6: Yes, yes, we met a while back and we spoke
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  Speaker 6: all about your journey. So I'd love for you to
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  Speaker 6: share with the audience a little bit about what got
• 2:29
  Speaker 6: you into this work, how you became first a pharmacist
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  Speaker 6: and then an iravetic, an intuitive coach, and what you're
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  Speaker 6: up to now. I know it's a load of questions,
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  Speaker 6: so why don't we start in the beginning?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, and of course, it's been quite a
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  Speaker 5: journey for me. I did actually practice pharmacy for about
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: fifteen years, and when I first went to pharmacy school,
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: I completely was I actually started out working as a technician,
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: and I was passionate about helping people with their health.
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  Speaker 5: And I truly believed at the time that like allopathic,
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  Speaker 5: western healthcare system really helped youeople take care of their health,
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: including the prevention and management of disease. And so after
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  Speaker 5: I finished pharmacy school, I did residency training and I
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: specialized in pain management, and I worked in a hospital
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: for a few years doing that, and then I moved
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: into a corporate job and industry working for a lab.
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  Speaker 5: Never went all the way to pharma. I'm actually kind
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: of about that, but I feel like, you know, I'm
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  Speaker 5: sure that a lot of us in this holistic world
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  Speaker 5: sort of resonate with us, but we, like I saw
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: the back end of the healthcare system and I just
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: realized it was so broken on so many levels, and
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  Speaker 5: I honestly just got very disenfranchised. I barely believed that
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  Speaker 5: I was helping anybody anymore. And I was traveling a lot,
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  Speaker 5: I was working in long hours. I barely cooked. I
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: was sort of drinking to cope with some anxiety and
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: at the same time, like on the surface level of
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: you know, what's like great in our society, I was
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: like this very like high functioning, dynamic individual, like who
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: could get it done? You know, like just you know,
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: she's the one doing the thing. I was like very
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: outwardly successful and so like. Not surprisingly, a decade later,
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: I was like burned out, bloated, in gassy, having brain fog,
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  Speaker 5: having gained like about thirty pounds over ten years, and
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  Speaker 5: I'm a very like little short person. And then I
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  Speaker 5: luckily I had a really wonderful have still a really
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  Speaker 5: wonderful doctor that I work with. She's a doo and
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  Speaker 5: she was like, hey, I think you have a dreamal
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  Speaker 5: fatigue and also, by the way, you're in perimenopause probably,
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  Speaker 5: And I was like what, Like, I'm a pharmacist and
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  Speaker 5: I don't know about this perimenopause thing, Like why is that?
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  Speaker 5: That doesn't make any sense to me. And at that point,
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  Speaker 5: every day felt kind of like a struggle to keep straight,
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  Speaker 5: like what needed to be done to show up? I
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  Speaker 5: felt like I was performing all the time for my
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  Speaker 5: job and in presentations. It didn't feel authentic anymore. I
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  Speaker 5: really loved what I was doing, and I just somebody
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  Speaker 5: in my circle reached out to me and was like, Hey,
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  Speaker 5: there's this Areveda program that I think you might like.
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  Speaker 5: And it was really random, you know, like these things
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  Speaker 5: sometimes are, like these synchronicities are. And I had learned
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  Speaker 5: a little bit about air beta in my yoga teaker
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  Speaker 5: training in twenty fifteen, but it was presented like these
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  Speaker 5: very linear rules and I was like, no, that's not
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  Speaker 5: for me. I don't want to do that. But this
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  Speaker 5: was more a feminine form irveta, and I completely like
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: fell in love with Arveda, and it, honestly like just
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  Speaker 5: brought me back to the passion of why I went
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  Speaker 5: to pharmacy school in the first place. And Aoveda taught
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  Speaker 5: me how to optimize my sleep, cook food that felt
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  Speaker 5: good to me, manage my anxiety and my energy levels
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  Speaker 5: with daily routines, breathing practices, yoga, nindra, and like, as
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  Speaker 5: I continued on my perimenopause journey, I used Aureta helped
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  Speaker 5: me with hot flashes, vaginal dryness, like insomnia, energy levels,
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  Speaker 5: like all these things that shift at this time of life.
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  Speaker 5: And also like brought me back. I feel like more
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  Speaker 5: to myself as we as I continue to uncover who
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  Speaker 5: I am during this like midlife journey. So anyway, I'll
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: had to say that that's what like was like, Okay,
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  Speaker 5: I'm going back to school. So I went to two
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: years of AOTA school and did this Aureta you know,
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: health counselor program with the intention to start my own business.
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: And then right around that time, I got laid off
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  Speaker 5: from my job and it was like a kick in
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  Speaker 5: the pants, like from the universe, like okay, it's time.
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  Speaker 5: So from there, you know, I it like it felt
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  Speaker 5: very clear to me that I wanted to specialize in
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  Speaker 5: helping you know, people in midlife, in managing and preparing
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: and celebrating this huge transition that unfortunately is like not
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: right now culturally recognized and celebrated. And I know there's
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: been more chatter, which is great, like there's more you know,
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  Speaker 5: awareness that's coming forward about this time of life, but
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: it's still very much like this, this sucks. Just take HRT.
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  Speaker 5: So yeah, I'm super excited about all this. I feel
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  Speaker 5: like I in some ways I feel better in my
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  Speaker 5: body than I have than when I was like in
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: my twenties and thirties, so and I've continued to like
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  Speaker 5: help I think probably the best part is that I've
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  Speaker 5: helped other women really reclaim their their health in midlife
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  Speaker 5: and feel better in their bodies.
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  Speaker 4: Wow, Maria Gabriella.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many things and pieces of that
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  Speaker 3: story that I want to like tweeze apart a little bit.
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  Speaker 5: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: So first of all, the outward journey of looking like
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: you're successful towards like that inner exploration of you know what,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: this is my health. I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled.
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  Speaker 3: That is very, very familiar. So why do we talk
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: a little bit about that, like, because I'm sure a
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: lot of people are listening and maybe are also thinking,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: you know.
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  Speaker 4: I should be happy. I have everything. You know, I'm
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: so blessed.
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  Speaker 3: I'm you know, I have a house, I have a
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: good career, I have all these things. But you know,
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  Speaker 3: I'm not happy. I am stressed. I am you know,
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  Speaker 3: just go go go all the time. And I'm not
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: actually doing the things that I enjoy. I'm just doing
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  Speaker 3: the things that.
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  Speaker 4: People think are successful. So how do we kind of
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  Speaker 4: reconcile that?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's I think it's a hard line
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  Speaker 5: to reconcile because especially I would say, especially for women,
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  Speaker 5: or we tend to want to do what's expected of us,
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  Speaker 5: and those are us things, those of us particularly that
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  Speaker 5: I think went down the path of pharmacy. We have
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  Speaker 5: this certain like rule following thing. It does serve you
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  Speaker 5: to a point, right, Like, if you're going to be
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: a pharmacist, you have to be very analytical, you have
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: to be very detail oriented, you have to be almost
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: a perfectionist, like you don't want your pharmacists to get
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: your hospital order wrong, you know. But then these things
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  Speaker 5: can also unfortunately tip over into not being of service,
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  Speaker 5: where we push ourselves past our own boundaries and to
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  Speaker 5: your point, like, I think that one of the things
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  Speaker 5: that unfortunately is very pervasive in our culture is pushing
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: ourself ourselves past the point where we need to rest.
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  Speaker 5: Because productivity is like the thing that's celebrated above all.
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  Speaker 5: So how do we start coming home to ourselves? I
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: think that's a in some ways a really tough question.
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  Speaker 5: And then for I your beta itself, the definition of
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: perfect health is actually being firmly It's the word called
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: in Sanskrit swasta. It's very beautiful and essentially it means
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: being rooted, deeply rooted in the self. So it's actually
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  Speaker 5: not even about absence quote unuot app since of disease,
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  Speaker 5: although I are a ready to actually promote being beyond
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  Speaker 5: absence of disease, but being like, you know, having vitality
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  Speaker 5: and like being this kind of radiant light that shines
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: out from you. So I mean, I could, I feel
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: like I could think about this for a while, but
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  Speaker 5: I think for me, the start of thinking through how
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: do we start to come into alignment with the deeper
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  Speaker 5: needs of our of our our soul and our bodies.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: From what you're talking about when we're stuck in this
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  Speaker 5: like hamster wheel of what's expected of us is honestly
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: to start slowing down, and that sounds it is. It
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: is hard, but also once you start doing it, you
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: start to actually find it's slowing down and finding presence.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: I always there's this like quote that's coming into my
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: mind from a song that's like that says, rushing is violence,
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  Speaker 5: And I do think that there is a violence to
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: ourselves when we're rushing through our lives because we're not
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: present for what's actually happening for us we're not to
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: your point where like I should be happy, but I
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: can't even stop to enjoy this thing that's in front
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  Speaker 5: of me because I feel like there's too many other
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: things competing for my attention.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so important, especially during these times when there's so
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: much happening outside of us, and we have access to
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: all this instant barrage of information that you can just
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: tap into. It's like really a deluge, right, It's like
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: you can drown in it, honestly, and so it is
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: even more important to, like you said, slow down so
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: we can actually.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Start to process all those things.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like a computer screen too that like
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: has all these million tabs open, and I am definitely
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: guilty of that, and then it kind of slows down
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and you have to do a reboot, right, and you
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: have to restart it, and you have to close down
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: all the programs. And we're much the same way where
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: we actually need just as much rest as we do
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: the go go go, and our society really honors and
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: celebrates only one of those things, and that really puts
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: us at a disbalance and a disadvantage. And why I
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: think the plants are really helpful for people is just
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: by observing right nature and how it has seasons and
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: cycles for all things, and yet it gets everything done,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and it takes time to blossom and to grow a
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: flower and fruit right, and you have to go through
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: all the stages. But each stage is beautiful in its
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: own way and it's necessary and its own way. And
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I feel like in our society we kind of only
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: honor like you know that young adult professional and everybody
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: else you know, kind of doesn't even have a place
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: in society. And they're to your point, like we're not
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: celebrating every phase of life. We're just celebrating and focusing
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: on the most productive phases of life. And the word
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: rat race and the hamster wheel that you mentioned definitely
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: you know, passed by in my mind as you were speaking.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And it's truly like slowing down even by having this conversation,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: that we can start to realize that, wow, you know,
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: whose standards am I following of success? And is that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: really aligned to me and my desires and what is
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: fulfilling to me? So just giving us and creating really
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: this space to reflect on those things can give us
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: that awareness and the opportunity to start navigating in a
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: different way.
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I love that, and a few things that
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: you said really actually really all the way back to
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: your veta, and maybe in a minute, I can also
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: define it for us, because I feel like there might
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: be some folks out there who are like, what is arveda?
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: And I know that you know because you've studied some
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: of it, But you know the idea too, like you said,
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: of observing nature is very much aligned. So aerveta is
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: a nature based system, and we are not separate. We
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: are made up of the same things as the planet,
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: and so when we observe, like you said, the seasons
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: and the plants, we are observing essentially ourselves and learning
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: about ourselves the way the seasons move. Like you said,
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: like we very much celebrate quote unquote the end of
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: spring and summer in terms of the seasons of life
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: and for perimenopause and midlife and beyond, whether you're a
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: man or a woman or anything any other way that
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: you identify that midlifetime is pretty much akin to summer
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: going into the fall, and then beyond that the fall
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: and the winter times of life. We're talking about past
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: your middle years and into the elder like you said,
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: are totally just not acknowledged, and we actually if we're
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: and Irrada said that we should live one hundred and
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: twenty healthy years this toxic world. No, but you know,
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: if we're lucky, we spend as much time in the fall,
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: in the winter seasons of our lives as we do
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: in the spring and the summer. And how do we
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think that we're missing out so much
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: too on elder wisdom in our culture as well, like
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: I would really love to hear more elder wisdom, and
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: even the elders that I do know, we're like, oh,
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: I don't know, I don't really have anything to say,
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: And I'm like, yeah, you do, Yeah, you do. Experience
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: teaches us. And then on this on this space about
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: again coming back to the idea of slowing down. Part
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: of the reason for that is to help us in irate.
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: One of the cornerstones is digestion. And we're not just
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: talking about digestion at the belly level, but digestion on
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: every level of the being. So we're talking about digestion
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: on the cellular level and at the emotional and mental
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: level as well. And when we're rushing, we're rushing, we
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  Speaker 5: don't have the time to actually digest not only our
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: food that also happens, but our lives. And so that's
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: part of the reason we see too these symptoms in
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: midlife and when we come through perimenopausas, because we have
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: this accumulation of all the things we didn't digest in
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: our twenties and thirties. The sex hormones where they're supporting
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: that now they're reducing down and we're just revealing an
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: accumulation of things that have happened. Yeah.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I love that you mentioned the time and also the
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: capacity to digest and absorb the things that were actually
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: bombarding ourselves with, including but not limited to food. And
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: so it's another reason why slowing down is a medicine
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: in and of itself. And I often think about the
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: phrase like, if you don't have time to meditate, then
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: you need it twice as.
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: Much, you know, you twice as Yes, that's so good.
• 17:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So, could you tell us a little bit about
• 17:04
  Speaker 7: the pillars of are Veda and maybe you know some
• 17:08
  Speaker 7: common themes that you've learned about and apply to yourself
• 17:12
  Speaker 7: and your clients.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely so, And I'll and I'll back up and
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: start by defining what ar beta is again, just to
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: give everybody kind of a broad idea. But you know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: Irveta again is the Sanskrit word. You know, Sanskrit is
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: an ancient language and it is a sister science to yoga.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: The word itself so is broken down into two parts,
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: I which means life, and veda, which means science. So
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: it literally means the science of life. And it has
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: something to say about everything from conception all the way
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: to death and everywhere in between. It's such a it's
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: such a beautiful system. It actually is a complete medical
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: system as well as a guide for all the stages
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: of life. So it's very, very vast. So what we're
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: talking about here is just a tiny, tiny part of it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: And the Ayrbta originated in the Indus Valley of India,
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: and it's said to be somewhere around five thousand years old,
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: depending on who you ask. Some say it might be older.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: It hasn't been written down that long. And the whole
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: system was said to have been given to ancient Rishis
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: or sears meditating and given to them from the divine
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: and all the medicine of Aurbda has been passed down
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: in oral traditions by women in kitchens, so like cooking,
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: medicine is food, herbs. Woon't care all these kinds of things.
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: And the men were the ones that had the time
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: to write it down. So it got written down in
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: ancient texts by men. And there's two main texts, the
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: Karraka Samhitashtanga Hidayam that give us this information. And it
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: includes things you know, even from like the earliest surgeries psychiatry,
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: but it wasn't called psychiatry dealing with the with the
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: health of the mind. The whole system was affected by
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: British colonization and went underground for a while. Luckily did
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: not get totally you know, stuffed out, and has had
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: a resurgence probably in the last like one hundred years
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: or so, and has been starting to make its way
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: more and more to the west, obviously, but we have
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: you know, some big teachers that came over from India,
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: like doctor basant Lad. One of my favorite things that
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: is said in the text about Iireta is that it
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: must be adapted to the time, place, situation, and people
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: to which it's being presented, otherwise it will be useless.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: So we have to adapt it to our modern lives.
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: And when I'm working with people in midlife. Typically, as
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: you mentioned, I'm working with the three pillars of health,
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: and this is all on the prevention side, and the
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: three pillars of health are food, sleep, and sex, and
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: sex is really relating to energy, vital energy, immunity, that
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: kind of thing, and also your connection to spirit, because again,
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: being holistic means we look at all of you. We
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: look at mind, body, spirit. It's not separate, and holistic
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: doesn't mean we're just I mean, I love herbs, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: it's not like we're just doing herbs. It's like we're
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: talking about every single thing about you. And in this
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: case particularly, I tend to work in the realms of
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: diet and lifestyle, and for me, I think, you know,
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: I have like this really cool pyramid where I show
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: kind of like the layers of how I work with
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: this and mindset is at the bottom because aging is
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: hard in our culture, and how do we turn turn
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: it so that we're looking at how this is a
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: wonderful thing for us to be moving into this new
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: stage of life. We're losing our physical physical fertility to
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: start to move into spiritual fertility. We have more capacity
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: for that as we age, and then the next for me,
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: so a lot of times in classic Aureta, the three
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: pillars are talked about in the order that I mentioned,
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: But I than in midlife it shifts to sleep being
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: more the most important because we tend to start to
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: have trouble sleeping as we move into that kind of
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: fall slash with the three doshes like vata stage of life,
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: and it's more there's more air and ether coming into
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: the body, and so a lot of times there's a
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: lightning and people have trouble sleep, more trouble sleeping, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: it just becomes even more important to like take care
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: of being able to do the things we need to
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: do to sleep, which includes you know, winding down at
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: night for example, which has been thrown out as a
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: thing in our again popular culture, but it's been around
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: for thousands of years as part of this system.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: And.
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: So sleep is definitely a cornerstone. Then we move into
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: food and digestion, and now you're dta. The how of
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: everything we do is just as important as the what,
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: but in particularly when we're talking about you know, eating food.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: And then as we move up kind of into the
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: sort of treatment pyramid that I'm thinking about in my mind,
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: we look at sex and energy, and of course all
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: it's all connected. Right, you do one thing in one area,
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: like if I get your sleep really good, you're gonna
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: feel so much better. So now you can make better
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: choices during the day when you eat your food, and
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: then your food makes you feel so much better. Now
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: you feel like you can sit and meditate. You know,
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: now you feel like you have the like capacity to
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: do those things. So everything affects everything else. And I
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: tend to talk about working particularly in the way that
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: I work more from you know, we can do like
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: kind of bottom up and top down work. And you know,
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: for example, like if you're working with the mind, like
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: if you're a therapy a therapist that does talk therapy,
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: you're working more kind of top down, and everything that
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: you do still affects the person, right and everything they do,
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: but we're working more bottom up, so it's more grounded,
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: practical kind of things that seem they're small a lot
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: of times, but a lot of small changes make a
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: huge difference typically to people.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love how you're saying that the pillars stack
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: on each other, but they're also interdependent, and so we
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: want to get all of them maybe from different angles
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: even and help them help each other and sustain the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: quality of life that you are looking to maintain or
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: create even at the stage of life. So I would
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: love to hear how are your beta views that mid
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: life and transition period and how you mentioned that it's
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: celebratory and then there's the bata doosha associated with that,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: so could you talk a little bit more about how
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: it's described, and also how you mentioned you can turn
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: something that is a good quality into like sometimes overdoing
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: it and then it becomes not so helpful, and then
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: vice versa. You may think, you know, aging is not
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: so great, but then there is a gift in there
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, those are great. Question is I'm going to
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: try to address everything that you just asked, So let
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: me just go back then to the idea of stages
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: of life too and talk through that a little bit.
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: So in a your veta, we have what order called
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: the three doses, and if a lot of people that
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: I have heard of at your radar are like, oh, yeah,
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: I know what the doshes are, and they kind of
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: know what they are at the surface level. And the
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: doshes are shorthand for the elements, and even more, they're
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: shorthand for qualities. And so when we're talking about in
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: every stage of light, the stages of life all correspond
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: to the doshes. The way that people's bodies are made
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: to correspond to the doshes, nature seasons correspond to the
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: doshes because it's all about the five elements. The five
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: elements are you know, ether, air, water, earth, and fire.
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: And so when we're talking about stages of life, the
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: first stage of life is going to be corresponding to
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: the spring. That's childhood, and that's kappa and that is
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: a shorthand for earth and water, and so Kappa is
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: very earthly if you think about it's a building quality.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: So you're you're building in childhood, the kids are like,
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: you know, full of mucus and earthiness and gooey cheeks.
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: And so that is that stage of life. And then
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: we move into the second stage of life and a
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: little bit of fire comes in and that's when you
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: see puberty, and all of a sudden, that fire is
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: transformative and you see them, you know, potentially like shoot
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: up and lose their baby fat and have acne and
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: be moody and and although other things that go along
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: with being a teenager, with the raging hormones that are happening,
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: and that is a long transition, right, It's not you're
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: not immediately going from spring to summer. You have this
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: transition in between, and all the seasons have this, and
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: the seasons of life have this, that transition, you know,
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: for example, like a woman when a woman, when a
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: girl Fritz gets her first mensis, she's not immediately, She's
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: not immediately a woman, right. It takes a little bit
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: of time, and it also takes some time for that
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: to regulate and for her fertility to regulate. And same
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: with boys, like when they start to come into they're
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: not immediately like men. So then we get into our
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: second stage of life, the summer stage, and that's our
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: fertility stage of life. And again that's very celebrated in
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: our culture. We like what we were talking about. So
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: during the fertility stage of life, we are able to
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: have babies and then at some point we come again
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: into a transition. The transition for men is there, but
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: it's much more subtle. It they start to drop, have
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: their testosterone decrease, and it's just linear over time. I
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: shouldn't say linear about just like a kind of sloping
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: craft to be a little more exact, and for women,
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: it's a kind of reverse puberty that they are going
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: through when they come into this perimenopause time of life.
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: And so that is like coming from the summer into
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: the fall, and it is a long transition again, about
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: three to twelve years for that perimenopause time. And even
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: when you're full menopause, which is that one day one
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: year post your period, that doesn't mean that you're all
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: the way into elder stage yet. A lot of times
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: there's still some adjustment happening there. And in that adjustment time,
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: we are still trying to there's a whole rearrangement because
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: with the changes in the hormones, the body has to
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: basically remodel itself completely. Those hormones affect every tissue in
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: the body essentially, the especially that the estrogen and the
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: progesterone is really what we're talking about when we're talking
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: about this transition. And so again long transition. And then
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: probably somewhere around sixty is where women come into their
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: full elder and men a little bit later, typically you know,
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: sixty five. Somewhere between sixty five and seventies, probably a
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: little bit more where the men come into the elder
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: stage of life, which is winter. And so again I
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: think that there is there's more capacity because we are
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: we are going. One of my teachers actually describes the
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: stages of life as coming earth bound to spirit bound.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: So there's a few things that are true but also
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: kind of hard for us in our youth obsessed culture.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: One is that we start off very juicy. We're like
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: juicy grapes, and we end up like raisins, dried out.
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: And now your Veda has all these techniques for trying
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: to keep us as juicy and lubricated as long as possible,
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: which is why there's a lot of oil typically used
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: in every way. And now your Veda and we all
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: but in the gifts of this is the fact that yes,
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: we're very earth bound initially, but then as we start
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: to move towards that sort of sky bound, you know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: going up back up to be returned to the earth
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: essentially as spirit going kind of back up to depending
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: how your beliefs die, be recycled, death and rebirth, we
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: start again like we have that capacity, that higher capacity
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: for the spiritual fertility and for reaping the wisdom of
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: the experiences that we've had throughout our lives, like you know,
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: most of us if we really kind of stop to
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: think about it, you like, this is the perfect moment,
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: Like right now, right here, I couldn't be here without
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: all of the experiences I had behind me. And so
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: that's where some of the beauty starts to come in.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: But it's very hard. We have to we have to
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: find acceptance for the changes in our bodies. We have
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: to actually almost learn how to love ourselves even deeper
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: and know that it's it's we Now that we've lived
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: this long, we know that it continues to be dynamic,
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: you know, we know that it's not going to be static. Yeah.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: I love that, And I think that's probably one of
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: the mindset mindset shifts that you were mentioning. That's important
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: to start to change your perspective around how we view
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: this time.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: And I think a lot of people may fear.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: That this is like, you know, a static thing, like
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: once you're there, you know, you're metopausal Like that's like
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: a box that you put in and then that's kind
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: of like the beginning of the end. And that's maybe
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: like in some ways very scary because it feels like
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: it's not going to be dynamic and it's just going
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: to be like shoved into a corner somewhere and forgotten about.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: And so I think it again goes back to the
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: societal expectations around this. And there's just so much noise
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: too about like the medicalization of some of these different
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: stages and transitions. Yes, and how there is suffering and
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: there are symptoms, and there's concerns either with HIT, which
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: you mentioned the hormone replacement therapy and without it as well.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And so where do you kind of land, you know,
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: and how do you start this conversation and decision making
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: with your clients and all of these factors.
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great question. And I do want to
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: say one thing when you were talking that came into
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: my mind that the other thing that I think happens
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: as we age and as we are going through these stages,
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: if we are paying attention and we're mindful and we're
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: on this kind of growth path, which I know a
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: lot I'm sure a lot of the people that listen
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: to your podcasts are. I actually think that there are
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: things falling away that are no longer ours and that's
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: it's hard because there's a lot of grief with that.
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: But at the same time it's free, so we become
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: more and more our own authentic selves. And so I
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: actually lost the threat of your questions. I didn't want
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: to answer, Oh you were asking me with all the
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: noise the with with this like medicalization, how do we
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: how do I direct people? That's a great question, because
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: there is a lot of noise, unfortunately, and I think
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: I guess one of the main things I want to
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: say too is I'm not like I had a client
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: ask me recently, like, you're against HRT, right, and I
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: was like, no, not necessarily. I think it's a tool
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: in the toolbox, just like actually all drugs are a
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: tool in the toolbox. But I feel like we need
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: to use it like this much, and we're using that.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: I mean for listeners, I'm like doing the little like
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: little pinch instead of like, ah, like we use them
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: so much. They're just like this, Oh, something's wrong, Like
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: here's a drug and to your point, like you're suffering,
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: you're having symptoms, here's a drug, and it's all band
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: aids and not getting to the root cause of the problem.
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: And so in this context, unfortunately, again one of my
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: one of my teachers is we're not living in Uh,
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: we're not living in healthy times right, We're like, we're
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: this is a toxic world that we're in. And so
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: it's very hard sometimes, especially if we haven't woken up
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: to how to take care of our bodies up until,
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: like I didn't. I pushed through. I did all that.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: I have so much accumulation from my twenties and thirties.
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: We always accumulate back, and I'm dealing with that now
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: and I'm towards the end of my forties now, and
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: so sometimes we need to bring in things like HRT
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: and I think because and I think that if those
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: are brought in, like a speaking back to my kind
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: of pyramid or herbs, I love herbs as well. Herbs
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: and HRT are at the top. They are helping and
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: supporting everything else. But it's like a bridge, and we
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: need to do all of the other things, all the
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: things that change our lives because unfortunately we can't. We cannot.
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: We cannot out drug, out supplement or out biohack are
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: actual everyday lives. We have to address that. And so
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: when I work with clients, the way that I start
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: with them is I look at first, I look at
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: their constitution from an ioretic perspective, because that's very important.
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: And then I look at the accumulations that they've had
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: over the years, like where are the imbalances, and then
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: I work to bring those things back into balance. And
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: it's also based on their own goals. So if they
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: come in a lot of people come in because they've
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: had you know, they have weight gain that they don't love.
• 34:22
  Speaker 5: And weight gain is usually a secondary symptom to something else. Again,
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: remember I talked about how the air and ether that
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: BATA comes in more into the body at this time
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: and the slowing down, So usually weight gain is actually
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: the body saying like, hey, slow down, I'm putting some
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: earth on you, Like I'm putting some extra weight on
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: you to make you slow down. We cannot keep this
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: pace up anymore. And bringing in like some self care
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: practices and some love can really and when I say
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: self care practices, things like bringing in like you know,
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: oil massages to the body, bringing in a little bit
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: of routine where we have some like slowing down touch
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: points and we're talking about you know, ten minutes at
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: a time. To try to just bring these touch points
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: in three times a day, those things can make a
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: huge difference, and then paying attention to the natural rhythm
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: of the day. So for example, we eat our biggest
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: meal at the middle of the day because when the
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: sun is the highest in the sky, so toowards our digestion.
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: So again it comes down to these like practical things
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: like that that just sort of seem when you start
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: to learn about it, you're like, so common sense, but
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: you're like, why didn't I know this?
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the principles that are just showing up
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: again and again with Ayurveda. They're very consistent, right, so
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: you would just apply them to the situation and the
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: person in front of you, like you were saying, and
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: it's highly customizable when you understand the elements and the
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: qualities and everything that we were sharing today. And I
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: also love how you brought up authenticity. And I've often
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: heard it said as well that this elder time is
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: the time when people stop caring about like societal opinions,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: and then they're just kind of free, like more free,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: more liberated, like you said too energetically, and also just
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: free to be themselves because they don't really care anymore
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: about the judgment. It's it's kind of like looking a
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: gifted horse in the mouth, right. It's like we're like
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: walking around and we're thinking everybody you know, is appraising
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: us and like looking at us at our you know,
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: productive and those fertile years. But then when we kind
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: of pass over that hump and we're at the other side,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: we're more like, Okay, well, what was I so worried
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: about with the judgment and everything else?
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: Like now I'm just gonna be me and I don't
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: care who sees the real me.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of like what I see with perimenopause
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: and menopause, and even like the PMS times of the
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: month when we are still cycling, it's like the time
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: when our foremones and our bodies like, you know what,
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: I'm fed up and like I'm not at capacity to be,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: you know, playing anybody else's game, and this is me,
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: So I love that.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Gift as well with perimenopause and menopause, Yes, absolutely.
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: And the thing is too, you know, we all do
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: this where we're like we look back and we're like,
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: I was so beautiful when I was young, white, and
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: I appreciate that, and honestly, I think that all young
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: people are so beautiful. They have so much kappa, so
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: much earth and water, and then the you know, they're
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: just like it's almost like a cheap beauty that we
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: don't realize, like every all the young people are so beautiful,
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: and then when when you look at the elders, because
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: I feel like I've been looking so much more now
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: at people in midlife and beyond, I like observe them more,
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: and I think sometimes it weirds them out because we
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: quote unquote ignore them and there is some gorgeous beauty.
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: I know that you've probably seen this, that like radiance
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: from the inside out when you really like just know
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: who you are and you just are that you can
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: see that with elder people if you're observing it, if
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: you're looking for it, those that have really taken care
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: of themselves and cultivated that.
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: So it sounds like you have a very balanced approach
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: with Ayurveda. And you also mentioned the intuitive pieces and
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: the more feminine practices.
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: Could you talk a little bit about.
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: That, Yes, So I think that that probably the way
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: that I bring that in the most most is this
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: idea of teaching people how to really be mindful of
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: their own patterns and what they're doing and how they're
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: thinking about it. And it's interesting because when I work
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: with people too, one of my goals is that at
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: the end of the time that we work together, you
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: don't need me anymore because you understand how you are
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: working with things, Like if something comes up, you're like, oh,
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: I know how to respond to that now, Like I
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: understand what that means for my own body, and I
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: know like if I like have this food in front
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: of me, this is going to be nourishing or it's not.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Or I am taking in this practice and this is
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: going to be nourishing for me or not specifically for me.
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: And that's kind of the idea where I come into
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: with like you're your own highest guru, and that's a
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: very feminine form concept of almost like the divine is
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: inside of me and external to me, and so and
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: also having a dynamic flow with your life, knowing that
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: it's not always going to be the same and we
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: have to also give ourselves some grace. I also work
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: with this concept where I'm like, it has to be
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: about like eighty twenty eighty to ninety percent of the
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: time you're doing the things that are nourishing for you
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: and the other ten to twenty. Let there be some leeway,
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: you know, like, Okay, maybe that piece of cake isn't
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: my most nourishing choice right now, but I'm at a
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: celebration and I'm going to really enjoy it, knowing that
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: if you make a choice to enjoy something that isn't
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: going to be so nourishing for you in the moment,
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: you really choose to do that, because if not, the
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: mind is fighting the body. Right Like, if you're like,
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: oh my god, this is horrible, I'm eating this. I
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: shouldn't be eating this, then it's going to be harder
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: for you to digest it.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: So I love all the wisdom that you've shared so far,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: and you've already given us great tips about foundational things
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: we need to change or improve in our life so
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: that we can have a healthier menopausal transition. So I
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: would love to hear any other tips or advice for
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: women that may be concerned about hot flashes and what
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: does this tell them about the body and how do
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: they think about managing it or how do they start
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: like preparing if they're there before.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: This period of life, how can they start preparing their body?
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: And if they're already dealing with it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: What can they do? Yeah, that's a great question. It's
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: a really big one, so I'll try it. Just give
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: some kind of high level things. Hot flashes. I love
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: that you brought that up, because that's actually like the
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: number one symptom in paramedic I mean, other than the
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: irregular periods, but like eighty percent of women will at
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: some point experience hot flashes. And half flashes are in
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: a yourveta a combination of vata and pitta. So pittas
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: the fire and a little bit of water and vatas
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: that air and ether. And because we're moving from the
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: pit to time of life to the vata time of life,
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: we have all this accumulation of pitta and the vata
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: comes in and blows air on the fire and then
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: you're like, oh, I'm like burning up. So because it's
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: that combination, really, when hot flashes are there, well, there's
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: a couple of theories. None of these are like, not
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: necessarily are your beta, but there are some theories that
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: I've heard about hot flashes that are interesting. One is
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: that they're burning up things you don't need anymore emotionally,
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: and because in yoga there's this concept of tapas of
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: the heat burning off things that we no longer need.
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: And I kind of love that kind of love that
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: I have to say. And it's a very interesting sensation,
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: like nothing you've ever experienced. If you haven't had one
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: of these yet, I have. They're very Some people describe
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: them as like a heat from the belly out and
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: they can be so they can be so intense sometimes.
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: One time I ran out in the middle of it was,
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: you know, like snowing outside, and I was having a
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: hot flash, and I just like ran outside and like, oh.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: But and in the Western world it's supposedly a dysregulation
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: of you know, the thermal regulation in the brain with estrogen,
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: but that hasn't been proven. You know, there's so many
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: associations that like just haven't been proven in the Western world. Anyway.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: In Ayrveda, the thing that we're trying to look for
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: here is the quality bringing in the quality of grounding
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: with cooling. So because it is airy, we want the ground,
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: and because it is heat, we want the coolness. And
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: so things like laying on the ground and putting your
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: legs up the wall, oh helpful, doing alternate nostril breathing.
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: It can be preventative for hot flashes and doing it
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: like five to ten minutes a day is a big one.
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: And then depending on the person. Bringing in that sort
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: of same sort of concept to the diet where we're
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: doing things like things that tend to be a little
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: bit cooling and sweet and grounding, you know, like sweet
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: potatoes can be. It would be an example of a
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: food that does this, and so we would just kind
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: of we'd play with that as well, again just depending
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: on the on the woman. So that's kind of an
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: example of, you know, how we might think about hot flashes.
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: There's honestly, for every single symptom, everything is related as
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: we've talked about, and there's going to be like twenty
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: things you could potentially do. You know, we can also
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: bring in like alo at night actually that's another really
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: nice one. Alo and tumeric at night before bed can
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: be really helpful because we are also wanting to support
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: the liver. When we have hot flashes, we have indications
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: of heat, which means the liver is involved. And if so,
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: if you are pre perimenopause and you're preparing, the thing
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: that we want to focus probably on the most is
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: the current menstrual cycle. Because that gives us so much
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: information about what's happening in the body, and so we
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: want to be as in tune with that as we
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: possibly can in terms of like having that be regular,
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: having it have as least amount of symptoms as possible.
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: And honestly, a lot of the concepts will apply just
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: slightly different. Like if you have a very heavy period,
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: for example, that means that we have a lot of
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: heat in the body. We want to try to handle
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: that before we get into perimenopause because a lot of
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: times then that accumulation will get worse. And I feel
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: like prevention is so I mean, I would love When
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: I first started this work, I was like, I would
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: love to teach women in their thirties how to prevent
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: and so they'd like sail through the transition. But even
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: me thinking about myself at thirty five, I don't know
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: if I would have listened, you know, because if you're
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: doing you have so much support from the hormones at
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: that point, and unfortunately they're doing a lot of work
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: to keep up our stre like keep us you know.
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: So progesterone, for example, is the hormone that transitions to
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: can be made into cortisol from the body. We shunt that,
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: so we use our sex hormones to support this like
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: go go, go, go go, And that's part of the
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: reason you hit a wall when you start to lose
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: them in the perimenopause phase. And again that we're revealing
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: that accumulation. So it's going back to the idea of
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: how do we get these like this slow down and
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: this more holistic kind of living earlier in our lives
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: so that we can then go through this transition more naturally.
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: It is a natural transition to your point, it's not medical.
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: There's no diagnosis. It's hilarious when I read I have
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: a book, like a you know, the Menopause Society book
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: on this whole thing, and it's like we're all we're
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: trying to put up these like criteria and they themselves,
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: like the Western world does acknowledge that menopause is a
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: natural sustain of menstruation. It is not avovulation, it's not
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: a it's not a diagnosis. There's no disease happening here.
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: But yeah, they have criteria to try to figure it out,
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: and they're like, we really can't pinpoint it. We have
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: these like criteria because it's not a disease. Like if
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: you go into a doctor, they don't have a like
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: even if you take a blood test, they can't tell
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: you for sure ever that your impairment a cause.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, it's really interesting because again of the
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: concept of wanting to be in summer forever, and we
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: can't have that.
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: We can't be in summer forever. The seasons at some
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: point have to shift.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: And so it's back to the idea that we really
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: need this kind of information and wisdom so that we
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: can be prepared, and we can't have that mindset reframe
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: that this is natural and there is a way to
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: age gracefully and we don't have to necessarily bio hack
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: or suppress our symptoms to the point where we are
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: not even sure what's going on. And so one last
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: question I'd love to get your opinion on is how
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: do we support bone health at this time?
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: Ah, great question. So bone health, because we are concerned. Obviously,
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: estrogen helps to build and in nyrveta, there's actually a
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: specific name for bone tissue. It's called osti which I
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: love because it sounds so much like you know, ostioblasts,
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: ostioglass and estrogen, as we know or you know, helps
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: to build and sustain bones, right, and so this is
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: a concern as we get older. So there's a few
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: things that we want to do. We want to make
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: sure to alcoholize our diet, which means more plant based eating,
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: and we want hopefully again do this earlier in our lives.
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: And because these things alcalizing the diet helps to keep
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: the minerals in the bones, helps to keep them strong.
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: Anything acidic, so we're talking about things like meat, alcohol, soda, coffee.
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: Coffee is a big one. Coffee is hard. I actually
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: got off caffeine actually it's not just coffee, but caffeine
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: in general, a couple of years ago, and it was
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: one of the hardest things that I've ever done in
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: my health journey. I still love it, but I do
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: it very sparingly. It's very heating, it's very drying. It's
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: also not great for the bones. So those things can
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: actually leech minerals out of the bones. So that's one
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: thing that's one place that we approach it. The other
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: is we want to make sure that we're doing weight
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: bearing exercise and strength training, so anything that strengthens the
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: muscles and also does weight bearing on the bones helps
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: to build the bones, keep them strong. It actually breaks
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: it down a little bit so that you're stimulating building
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: of the bones. And there's also a yoga series out
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: there that has been shown. There's a guy named doctor
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: Fishman who has a series of twelve poses that people
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: can do and that actually he has done studies that
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: have shown that it reverses osteopenia and osteoporosis. So that's
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: also really helpful. But generally speaking, we build bone I
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: think until our thirties, like into about thirty five or so,
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: and then unfortunately we start to lose it. So it's
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: really important for us to focus on ways that we can,
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: you know, keep our bone health, keep our bones healthy
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: as much as possible.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: Well, Maria Gabriela, thank you so much for your wisdom.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: I'd love to do or wrap it round with you
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: if you have another minute. Yeah, okay, So what's the
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: number one thing someone can do right now to improve
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: their health?
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: Find time to breathe, even if it's I'm telling you said,
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: a timer for three minutes. It doesn't matter what kind
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: of breath you decide to do, even if you're all
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: you're doing is just in wow, I mean and.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, love that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Question two, what do you wish more women knew about
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: as they enter this time in their lives?
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: I think that I really wish they understood how much
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: how you live your life impacts you during this time.
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: I mean it always has. We just we were able
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: to have more capacity to the point of everything that
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: we've talked about up until now, and it's just it's
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: just going to become more and more important as you
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: get older. And HRT is not the answer. It can
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: be a support. I'm not against using it as a support,
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: but it is not quote unquote like lead capital T capital.
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: He answer, Yeah, I love it.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: And a last fun question, what do you like to
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: do for fun?
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: Or what's like a fun fact about you?
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: So fun fact? I live in Colorado, but I am
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: a beach curly and so I'm like I'm mermaid on
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: the on the book any ocean. Just give me, give
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: me water, give me the beach. I love to swim
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: and I light up in the sun and in the water.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: Beautiful.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: Well again, thank you so much for everything you shared today,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: and please let us know how we can get in
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: touch with you. Learn more about your work, and I
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: think you have a free gift for the audience as well.
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: Yes, so you can find me. It's intuitivevir Veda, which
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: I know as hard as well, but I'm sure that
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: you will you put that in the notes for us.
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: My website is intuitive Urveda dot com and I do
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: have a free gift, and it's this beautiful compilation of
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: things that I've put together. I have a whole workbook.
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: It's a starter kit for women in midlife and perimenopausemenopause
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: where you can go through the three pillars of health.
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: And I also have a whole workshop in their recorded
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: workshop that will lead you kind of through some of
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: the basics of the things that we've talked about today,
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: more a little bit more in depth, and if you can,
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: if you go through this workbook, it is quite akin
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: to working with me, and you can really see something
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: shift in your life. My business coach is like, you
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: shouldn't give that away, it's too much, but I like,
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: I love it, Like it's quite a work from the
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: heart and I'm really happy to, you know, give it
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: to people in support so that they can start doing
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: the work for themselves.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: Wow, thank you so much. And you all heard it
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: here first Rabbit. While it's free, she might decide to
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: charge for it later. Well, thank you so much for
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: coming on, and I hope to keep in touch in
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: the future.
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: a pleasure.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Likewise, Chow Well, thank you for tuning in to another
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: episode of the Holistic Pharmacy Podcast, and I truly hope
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed the show. If you learned something useful in
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: this episode, please consider give the show a five star
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: rating and a sincere review so that more people can
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: find it or share it with a friend directly. To
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: get in touch with me, you can find me on
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: social media by looking up my name Marina books Of,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: or email me at Marina at rawfork dot com. Take
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: good care and see you soon.