Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Traditional Chinese Medicine & Fertility: Healing Trauma and Restoring Vitality w/ Nicole Lange

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Traditional Chinese Medicine & Fertility: Healing Trauma and Restoring Vitality w/ Nicole Lange · Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to today's episode of the Healing Her Story Podcast.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: I am so excited to be here with you today with a very special guest who came into my life in a very serendipitous and divine way, as things usually happen, especially in my world, I find.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was writing in my journal one evening before I went to bed, and it must have been a new moon because I was writing on my special new moon page, and I had been really dreaming about who I wanted to call in for the show, different guests and collaborators and people who are really aligned with this work.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I had reached out to quite a few people who stood out to me as potential good fits, and then didn't that didn't really get very far with that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, how can I approach this differently?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, you know what, let me just put it out there and sit back and kind of wait and see what comes to me.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if you follow human design at all, I'm I'm a projector, and so that's part of my strategy is waiting and being more in a receptive energy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: And interestingly enough, the very next day I checked my email and I had an email from this woman.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I get quite a few of these emails, and I'm very um, yeah, very particular about who I have on the show because I want to make sure it's people who are aligned with the mission and the work that we're doing here on the show.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did some research and I'm looking around and I was like, wow, this woman is literally a perfect fit for the show.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we were just kind of sharing that, just the magic and all of that before we hit record.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really excited to have Nicole on today.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Nicole is an acupuncturist, holistic educator, and pioneer in women's reproductive health care.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Based in Minneapolis, her practice Life Healing Life weaves together traditional Chinese medicine, Western science, and deep intentional care.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Over the past two decades, Nicole has supported women through nearly a thousand embryo transfers, countless fertility journeys, and life's biggest transitions.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Her own healing journey after trauma shaped her belief that adversity can be a doorway into growth and that true wellness is always bigger than the sum of its parts.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Nicole, welcome to the show.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! Thank you for having me, Reva.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy to be here.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Happy the universe brought us together.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, me too.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: We journal it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I know.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's quite magical.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have to be honest with you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I love traditional Chinese medicine, and I'm so happy you reached out because it's not something that that I mean, it's something that I practice for myself, but it's, you know, it's obviously not my area of expertise.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And one other aspect that I use um or that I practice is feng shui.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I had recently done some adjustments um where I sleep at night.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And there's yeah, I have some crystals, and I I don't remember.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh well, I guess I do remember.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was malachite, citrine, and garnet.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's uh an adjustment that I found from uh a practitioner that I follow.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: I listened to her podcast, and uh it was just interesting.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like I that was like my first night, like journaling in that spot.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, whoa, that worked out well.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I I we I don't put that this isn't on my website or anything.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked about it in a few podcasts, but my grandpa was a motivational speaker, and his big thing was just putting it out there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he he did some wild things in his life, and he always said it's not so much about the universe just delivering it, it's just like setting the intent and then noticing the things that align with it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that his his big thing was our brains are more powerful than any supercomputer and so much more nuanced and so much more customized.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so just that idea, I think that's really truly how I got to do the work that I do is I went and saw him.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I paid to see him because he was old school and didn't teach it to his girl grandchildren.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole nother topic.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I did.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was very similar.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, what can I do that is these very broad things?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden it was like it hit me in in installments almost, but I ended up doing this work, which you could not have gone back in time and told me that I would do this work, and I would have thought like that was even legit.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And here I am loving it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, all of it.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful, love that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you just kind of told us a little bit about your story, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about your story, Nicole.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So how I got to that audience paying to see my grandpa do a motivational speech um is the sort of the the prequel to my story is a lot of generational trauma, a lot of childhood adversity stuff.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then the sort of cherry on top was uh sexual assault at 17.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that um really in at this point in my life at 47, I'm so grateful because it shook up and totally unmoored everything that I really was a very black and white thinker and really thought I knew.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when that happened, I just I had to question everything because that was not in alignment with how I thought the world worked, or I thought if you did XYZ and were right and good, then that's how your life would be.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not how it works.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so yeah, I I went from really black and white, very concrete Western science uh thinking, which is what I thought I was gonna do.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was gonna be a geneticist and very reductionistic, science-minded.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't have any idea what I would do, but I just knew from my experience of I I attempted suicide and was in the intensive care unit and then the hospital and then the psychiatric hospital.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I just saw how Western medicine, A, saved my life, but B, didn't connect any dots, didn't see me as a person.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't know that there was this alternative.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, if you went back in time and told me that I would be doing this work, I would have been like, what?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's not even real.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but after enough time floundering and not knowing, it kind of cracked me open and broke down some of that black and white thinking.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I eventually went to my grandpa's talk.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, I have no idea.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm accepted to a master's program at this point in creative writing because I had gotten my undergraduate and just take took classes that sounded appealing, and then ended up uh in this, you know, accepted to a master's program, knowing that that's not what my heart wanted to do.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I set this intent that was let me do something that speaks to all my gifts and all my passions.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what that is, I have no idea.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And saw bod, saw that that was not a master's degree.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was on a trajectory to get a master's degree, kind of came into what else is like bod, but a master's degree came into Chinese medicine and without having ever really experienced Chinese medicine, applied to get my master's in it.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Which makes me a really weird acupuncturist because I was very clueless about acupuncture when I decided to give a master's degree.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh still in recovery from that mode of being.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So wow.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, what an incredible journey you've been on.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for for sharing all of that and really hearing all the adversity that you've you've grown through, as one of my sisters always says.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And also really, yeah, acknowledging your resilience and to be able to go through all of that and still follow that little part inside of you that that knew that there was something missing and knew that there was something more.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So really celebrating you following that and taking that big giant leap into the unknown of traditional Chinese medicine, like wow, because it's completely different than Western medicine.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's the opposite in so many ways.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 10:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: So how was that for you?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Was it challenging to kind of just dive in that deep so quickly?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was a shock, but it's so intuitive.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was such an outlier, and I mean, I literally had people in my class that fantastic people that were like, I've just come back from wild harvesting herbs in Australia, and I've been helping deliver babies in India, and I grew up on a, you know, in a in a cooperative kind of farming situation.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I have Doritos in my lunch, and I don't know a thing about this.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: I have been on antibiotics monthly for my entire existence.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So very shocking, but so intuitive.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a huge part of what I do in my practice is the what I learned in my master's degree, I think is way more powerful long term than the acupuncture.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Acupuncture is great for acute resets, and we can talk about that.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the ideas and the paradigms and the connecting of the dots was the most powerful.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned as an outsider studying was that we weren't trained to teach that part.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were just supposed to do the training and understand it and then do the needles and the herbs and the modality that goes with it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wait a second, no, it's the ideas way more.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I love getting to talk on podcasts and meet with other people that want to explain and explore, like you're doing on your show, because I do think the acupuncture can be really great when well placed.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a springboard, it's a reset, but you can't springboard and reset five times a week for the rest of your life.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have to like change your understanding and the way you relate to your body and health and the world.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can really see that you value education and and I do as well.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's really important.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that we just are not taught, specifically women, about the female body and our menstrual cycles and just how to take care of our bodies and the modern world that we live in certainly does not make it any easier.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that the more um, yeah, the more filled with with knowledge, the more empowered we can be.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking of a uh a former guest who came on the show.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Her name is Michaela.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she's mushwoom on Instagram, and she really values education too.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, education is liberation.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is because otherwise it's just we're stuck in this doctor-centric, patriarchy, reductionistic kind of disempowered place.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we can get really good care from really good people, but if we're not in on it, it's it's not nearly as powerful as it should or could be.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can think of like that that drama triangle.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've ever seen that diagram where there's always um a perpetrator, um, victim, and a saver.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of times I'll see people kind of, and I've I've been guilty of it myself before I really understood the psychology and the attachment behind all of it, but we can get in this victim, kind of in this bottom side where it's just like, oh, why is this happening to me?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I can't do anything to change myself.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and when we go to look, we look for a saver.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes as a practitioner, if we're not um attuned to our own attachment and our own history, then we can fall right into that saver role.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, totally.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's just this dysfunctional dynamic of this person feeling disempowered and this person feeling fulfilled by coming in and fixing and saving.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's so good.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hadn't I haven't seen that idea, but that's so true.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is, it's sort of the ways that the doctor practitioner-centric stuff sneaks into even holistic, quote unquote, holistic medicine.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I call it faux holism, where it's like it's still a weird power dynamic.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's still really about somebody doing things to you, it's still about somebody telling you what you should be doing.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's that it could be natural.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: It could technically be evidence-based and correct, but if it's done in that way where it is not giving you a choice and being centered in your desires and your worldview, it is it's very it's all that guru-y, yeah, save savor kind of thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's a quote that I love by uh one of my biggest influences in in my practice, is um Rachel Naomi Remon.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she has this quote that is um, when you help, you see life as weak.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: When you fix, you see life as broken.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when you serve, you see life as whole and beautiful, and you enter into service to that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like what I saw, you know, 20 years ago when I was starting my practice, a lot of people, even in the fertility world, there's a lot of, you know, the Nicole Lang program, then Nicole Lang.com, Nicole Lang, and that's like, I do not want to be that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to need me less and less.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm one spot to like jumpstart and get some information.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: But life healing life is my practice name.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because it's like all of my trauma, all of my lived experience, all of yours, all of each person I enter in with, and I get as much and and benefit and change and learn at with every interaction as well.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think it's so good to just be in service to one another.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: I've never heard it kind of positioned in that way, and I I really resonate with that a lot.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for sharing that.
• 15:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know you say you really love doing things differently, as we've already kind of here a little bit.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering how that mindset has shaped the way you approach women's reproductive health.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So education is the foundation.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So education is liberation.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great line.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think of education as good medicine.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I am all about the education piece.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm also about just flipping the ratios.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times it's about doing and and you know, fixing and helping all those things that that quote speaks to the harms of.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we really can get sucked in, especially if something's so deeply personal and it the whole trajectory of our life is hanging on the fertility struggles piece that I do a lot of work around.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's so easy to get into that, just trying to, I call it putting on the baby blinders.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you could put, you know, putting on the fixing my gut blinders or putting on the chronic fatigue blinders.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, I'm just the I just focused on that.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I need to fix that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do the things that I am told by my algorithm and my savers and my doctors to try to fix that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all of our energy, all of our time.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it just again, it can be technically correct often, but it's done in such a way that it's one step forward, two steps back, because the ratio is so it's so sort of myopic and short-sighted that it ends up being like not rooted in evidence or sorry, education, not rooted in what we actually have the energy or the time for, not rooted in sustainability, not rooted in our cycles and our the ebbing and flowing of our energies as people with hormones or people with different kinds of parts of our life and ways that people without the um typical female hormones are rooted in.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I think it's really about flipping the ratio to uh really focus on the whole person and being in service of the wholeness.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then the, like I say, it's about 25% of the thing that you think you need to work on, and 75% uh being resourced, being safe, being educated, being connected, all of these things.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the thing that you're wanting to fix is much easier to get at and much more responsive to those sorts of treatments.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I'm different is the ratios and the education piece, and things just work better in more ways that way.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really a joy and a really cool thing to just witness.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's really beautiful.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: It reminds me of one of the principles of trauma-informed care, and that is less is more.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll have women come to me all the time, and they're like, they're in EDR, EDMR therapy, like going to AA and they're in a NA meeting, and they got the like they're working on their meditation and they're trying to read and they're trying to.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like and they're reading every label of everything they eat and they're detoxing, and they're oh, we could we could do a whole podcast listing things that people do again, various levels of evidence-based legitimacy, but it all together, it's I've had people in tears in my office, like, and I'm like, what's going on?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, I just have been running around all week doing all it's just I don't know how much longer I can do this.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you don't have to zero, zero more minutes.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's prune what you know, and like what doesn't spark joy, you know, like Marie Kondo that, you know, it's just like you can say no.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I often I I don't know if you watch the show Shits Creek, but there's a cafe on Shits Creek where the menu is just like comically huge.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like they, and I'm like, think about the options that you have for fill in the reductionistic thing that you're trying to fix, you know, for your energy, for your gut, for your fertility, for your period woes, for your, you know, and you just open up this giant menu, and it's like, here's the Nicole stuff, here's the Reva stuff, here's the my doctor said, here's the HRT person, here's the nature path, here's the, and it's like you will be so sick if you try to order like even one thing off of each part of that menu.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to look at it.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I say I have people do this as an exercise, like write your menu and then like circle the thing that you're craving and just order just that thing.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe the thing you're craving is like boundaries with a family member or a connection with your partner or rest, deep rest.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that, that's the thing.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Order that, see if see what you're hungry for next.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Order one thing at a time.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Such a wonderful metaphor.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So doable.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, love that.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'll have to use that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Please.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we've already kind of been talking about traditional Chinese medicine, and I do want to acknowledge that maybe not everyone knows what a traditional Chinese medicine is or or what it's about.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, I've talked to clients before about, oh, you know, have you ever tried acupuncture?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, oh no, I don't want to stick needles.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, okay.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, could you tell us what is traditional Chinese medicine?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll I'll start with the part of it.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I always say we have we are evolved to not want to be harmed, you know?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so to the idea that it's like, I'm gonna stab you a little bit.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, believe me, it's gonna be relaxing, it's gonna do all these amazing things to your body, to your brain, to your nervous system that are very well established at this point.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a leap of faith.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was just listening to a podcast, and there was a philosopher on a professor of philosophy, and she said, um there's this thought experiment where they have uh they ask people, like, imagine that somebody lives in a world that's only black and white, and they've been they've been taught about the idea of red.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: They've learned everything they can about red in theory, and they know what's red and what red feels like to people and what how color works and stuff like that.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then, do you think they know red?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like the answer is no.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, you're shaking your head, like, no, they don't know red.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is so perfect.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, that's how it is for acupuncture.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I can say all the things on all the podcasts and on my website about it, but it really is just like you kind of gotta try it, and it is a leap.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're the person that like has done acupuncture or the person that's never done acupuncture, and they're just two very different people.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's such an experiential thing, which I love.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a lot of science on how it's basically if I distilled it down to an analogy, acupuncture is like closing all the tabs and restarting your nervous system.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it is in a way that really good meditators and kids can naturally do, and most of the rest of us cannot do at all.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in that way, it's quite magical and amazing and such a gift.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but again, if you walk out the door and you don't uh have any tools, you don't have any education, you don't understand your body, like what are you gonna do?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Five times a week acupuncture and have a couple hours each time where you're reset, and then you go back into opening all the tabs and getting activated and continuing.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Continuing to have a nervous system that's maybe really influenced by trauma and things that are making it have even lower thresholds.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the acupuncture piece.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then Chinese medicine, like I like I already alluded to, Chinese medicine is really a philosophical, intuitive, observation-based experiential medicine that has been around for thousands of years.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it does two very distinct things that I like to talk about.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing that it does is it it, as all sort of indigenous OG medicines do, it has never separated the mind and the body.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and modern Western medicine has never integrated the mind body.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to reverse engineer it back into the medicine right now because we have enough science saying that that is evidence-based and good medicine.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it really, when we started the scientific revolution in medicine as we know it as mainstream medicine, the church got the mind and the science got the body pieces.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we know now that they're not separate things, but that's how they were treated from the 1500s until now.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Chinese medicine, uh as well as Ariveda and many other indigenous medicines never separated the mind and the body.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's lovely.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it never separated the systems of the body in other ways, too.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the immune system and the gut and the circulatory system and the endocrine system are all interconnected.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we have our own language, our own paradigm for understanding that that, of course, predates dissection and anatomy and um a lot of the modern science, but it it works and it's so elegant.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And again, here we are trying to reverse engineer some multi-systemic kind of care into a medicine where that has it's always been about smaller and more reductionistic from the get-go.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that has served us.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we wouldn't have a lot of the life-saving, dramatically life expectancy improving things that we have, but that's not the same as a lot of the subclinical, chronic, multi-systemic stuff that most of us are dealing with, also.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in in bigger ways, in bigger chunks of our life, you know, we might have a life-threatening infection or antibiotics save the day.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, yeah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yay.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: But most of our lives are these sort of mind-body multisystem sub-clinical things.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yay, for holistic medicines.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's it, I don't know.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it just really kind of like stumps me to to see how we got here.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just I don't know.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just baffled because it just makes it makes so much sense to me that we have these beautiful philosophies and and practices and ways of being and existing in the world that have been practiced for centuries and have worked for centuries.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then modern man comes in and thinks that it has to be done in a different way.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: I just, I guess, just for me, obviously, it's just my own bias, but it's why it's so frustrating sometimes.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of, I don't know, there's there's the S and L skit where Jimmy Felon was the the IT guy and he was always like, move, and he's like, let me get in there too.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like Western medicine is like that with like microscopes and reductionists at like move, I'm gonna look at it.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I know the coding, I know the and then I mean like that's how certain things really are improved.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so enamored with Western medicine actually, but if that's all you have, that is really deeply lacking.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so we need to have like somebody to come in and and do the microscope stuff, do the the little things.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And also that's the 25%, not the hundred percent.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: So just really hearing the um, yeah, the gaps that traditional Chinese medicine can fill that Western medicine isn't otherwise able to.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I in listening to your show, I love I love that you talk about cycles and hormones and moon cycles and kind of connect together the life cycles.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think one thing that comes up for me as a Chinese medicine-specific practitioner is there's another layer that Chinese medicine, and again, Ayurveda has its own version of this and lots of medicines have its own version, but Chinese medicine will add another layer of um like for a differential diagnosis.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, we all have estrogen and progesterone, and yes, they're cycling throughout our if if we're if our ovaries are online and functioning, they're gonna do different things and there's gonna be cycles.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then you added like a Chinese medicine pattern, might be like one person might have um under their like digestive kettle not enough fire.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so how being estrogen uh dominant in a follicular phase feels for that person is very different than how it feels for somebody whose fire is turned up too high under their kettle.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we add this extra layer of like, how much fire do you have in your digestive kettle or how clenchy is your energy?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you tend to constantly get your energy stuck and dammed up and kind of pooling in certain areas and under-circulating to other areas?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's another classic Chinese medicine pattern called liver chi stagnation or wood stagnation.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so when you have that, like those those points where you're talking about transitioning, like ovulation and starting menstruation, those can be extra hard because you have this tendency to not circulate quite as smoothly as readily.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you add that extra layer on top of our understanding of general cycles and moons and and cycles and seasons of life, and it's just that much deeper.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: I already started having all of those kind of tabs opening and it's really cool.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm so happy that you mentioned that because our our cyclical experiences are so unique, and there is this underlying um, yeah, kind of regulation and flow of energy that is deeply personal and unique to our own bodies.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something I really had to come to accept as I was going deeper into my menstrual cycle awareness work because when I first started, I would go on like Pinterest and see the like, okay, it's your follicular phase, cardio workouts and salads and meetings.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, cool.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds good.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I just went for it and and I found um, you know, it didn't work for me at all.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: I started having a lot of um just kind of flare-ups during that time that transitioned to spring to ovulation, and I've had to completely rework the inner spring for me, and it's not of time for cardio for me.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, yep, no, yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still kind of like, I know it is a transitional energy, but I find I kind of work more with the yin energy during that time.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and my body really benefits from doing that.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm glad that you mentioned that because everyone's so different.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and it is, it's like it's transition, but it's peak yin at the same time.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, which one is it?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like there's if you if you have low fire under your digestive kettle, that's called um earth qi deficiency or spleen chi deficiency in Chinese medicine, then that peak estrogenic pre-ovulatory phase is just can bog you down and feel like very, it's just it's damp, it's wet, it's cold.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about what, you know, cervical mucus is wet and and um the BBT temperature is gonna dip down.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, yeah, it's a big transition, and you could use a lot of movement there for some people, but some people are like, oh, I am so damp and cold and boggy.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: I need a bunch of warmth and conservation and heating packs and doing less so that I can handle all this boggy estrogeny yin stuff here.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's going to be in service to them.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, and there's the equivalent for every single, every single part of the cycle.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so fascinating.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: I definitely want to go talk more because I was listening to your last um one of your podcast interviews, and you were talking about the patterns and how practitioners are aren't always talking about the patterns.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the things that you're mentioning now, are those the patterns that you're talking about?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Those are patterns.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like um, a good example would be like polycystic ovarian syndrome.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So one out of 10 people with ovaries has polycystic ovarian syndrome.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a true syndrome.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's if you meet two out of three criteria, the criteria would be um having irregular or lacking ovulation, having ovaries that look um like chocolate chip cookies on an ultrasound because they have lots and lots of follicles.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're not actually cysts, they're follicles that can sometimes turn into cysts, but they're lots of pods with lots of eggs on deck, and then high androgen, so higher than average male hormones.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And each one of those pieces is a different Chinese medicine pattern.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then within that, each person has their own family history and lived experience.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, I could take a hundred people that all come to me with PCOS and all trying to get pregnant.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if one is a higher androgen, they might have a totally different pattern than somebody whose androgens are not as high, and add, you know, two people that have high androgens, but one has a lot of childhood trauma and one doesn't.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one is more resourced and one has more scarcity and one doesn't.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: One has um, you know, a living child that they're also taxed in parenting and the other one is not, and they're really clenchy in reading every book with all their extra energy because they're not distracted by parenting.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we do then for each of those people is very different, even if they're the same subset of the same subset of the same subset, it's still like what when they open up their big giant menu, one of them is gonna want to order something different, even if they're looking at the same section.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is where when I work with people, I give um and I do this in my 90-day program too.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's an entire module that's just a deep intake that breaks down what your patterns are.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you know what they are, and then there's a video that goes with each main pattern that explains it in depth and then goes into what the DIY layers are, how you can think about it, how you can relate to it in a in a um more sustainable, long, long-term way.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I do this with my one-on-one patients.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: My forms take about an hour to fill out, and then I'm I'm doing a report and explaining it back to them.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I use the analogy that your body's like a bank account.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I explain your body back as a bank account.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we do handouts like what's under your kettle?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a lesson on just your kettle and your digestion, and there's a lesson on just how clenchy and stuck your energy is, and things like that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we can break it all down and get that much more nuanced, which is so fun.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's like the part that when I was in school, I was like, oh my God, this all makes sense.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything about everything in me connects.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I want to go and get just poked with need as good as that can feel, as wonderful as that is for reclosing all the tabs?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I want to understand this stuff.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to relate to my body and know that.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, as we've kind of named, it's it's so empowering to be able to like really understand what's happening and to really know what you need, not just because someone told you that you needed it, but because you you have this understanding of what's actually happening inside of you.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like, oh, eat only warm foods and put heat on your feet during this part of your phase versus like, here's what's going on, listen and you figure out what feels right to you.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, beautiful.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, oh man, we could just on that all day, but I did bring you on here to talk about kind of one of your specialties, and that's fertility.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, maybe we could start to transition into that.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering how traditional Chinese medicine views fertility beyond just getting pregnant.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think just your in your question, there's the answer.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it is beyond getting pregnant.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like if we're just doing that 25% whack-a-mole trying to troubleshoot and get a pregnancy to happen, that ends up making a person less and less balanced, less and less resourced, less and less safe feeling cycle by cycle.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they're doing all the things, they're showing up for all the appointments, they're doing all the medications, all the supplements, all the food therapy, all the everything.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and yet it's not showing up because it's extremely threatening, extremely overwhelming, extremely taxing, extremely clenchy, nervous system activating.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden it's like, well, the last thing your body wants is to get pregnant in that place where you've been in threat for, and it's not, it's like chicken and the egg, right?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: So some people get really upset about the idea of like just relax, and that is deeply insulting, because that's not what this is about at all.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is about like, how do you look at trying to get pregnant as a way that's not just relax and stop caring, but like I care deeply.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And because I care deeply, I need to think about what I need to prune.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: I need to think about what is in service to my wholeness, what and like 25%.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I might need to troubleshoot blocked fallopian tubes with a very specific medical intervention.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: But if that becomes 100% of my energy and my existence, it's not gonna work as well.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if it does work, it's gonna be what I call bare minimum situation, where it's like, and like hallelujah, bare minimum pregnancy is still pregnancy.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: People have, you know, generations of fertility treatments have been like, okay, best case scenarios, you get pregnant and you put your life back together afterwards.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And those those babies, those families are amazing and blessings.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: But we could do so much better, and it's such a disservice to not talk about it and and demand better and do better as providers, demand better as patients, expect better.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: I like what I want is I call it whole kit and caboodle.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I want a pregnancy from a place where the body wants the pregnancy, and then that pregnancy is better resourced and safer.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so things like the placental formation is more robust, which sets up the health of the pregnancy and fewer complications and fewer preterm births and things that set up the baby to be healthier and the parents to have less stress in parenting and the family to be healthier and that and to change some of the epigenetics, right?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: What we're flipping on and off in our genome that makes us more or less stress resilient, um, especially in people that have a lot of generational trauma.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: We can start to undo some of that when we're doing this a more holistic, more um nuanced way.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we can we can honor that, we can heal as the person who's pregnant from some of these things versus just having that reactivated and and just keep going in our bodies and in our lives.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's exactly what you said.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's more, it's so much more than getting pregnant.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if all a person cares about is getting pregnant, which I understand many, many people come to me and that's like, yeah, Nicole, that sounds lovely, but a F that.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like just get me pregnant.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like we have to get to the point that like, if even if that's the only thing we care about and the rest seems like woo-woo, we have to understand that this flip, these things that I'm talking about, education, flipping the ratios, that actually just purely from a getting pregnant perspective makes it way better and more likely to work.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just like say you don't even have to care about the rest.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: It can be bonus add-on.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's still the way to do it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's really beautiful.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I I'll be honest, this isn't something that I've um started down yet and wanting to have children.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have any children yet.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I've just been kind of observing, you know, some of my friends and even some of my clients um kind of start to have babies, and um, some of them have used IBF, others haven't.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been really interesting to see some of my friends who I'm thinking of one in particular who's in her late 30s.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and she just had a baby, and she did it without IBF, and she's also a life coach, and she does hypnosis, and you know, she's she's very much um in this kind of world and sandbox that you and I play in.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it was interesting to see how easily she got pregnant so later in life.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, yeah, it really kind of makes sense with what you've shared here about, you know, when we're it's a tower approaching things and the way we're looking at it, and if we're coming at it from a very um activated way, then it's gonna be stressful and taxing to the body.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: But if we can just kind of like soften and relax into it, then it makes the process a whole lot easier.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And for sure, genetics and egg quality as we age is a factor.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: But when we hear it's the only factor, go, go, go, go harder, go faster, go more threatening, do more.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the the the 15 things that you can control in that equation compared to the one thing that you can't, your age is you're you're missing all of those layers versus this person that you're talking about.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And like, and some people might need um that 25%.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, if you have no sperm in your partner or if you have um totally blocked fallopian tubes because of a history of eggtopic or pelvic inflammatory disease or things like that, like it can be so important to not just say, okay, I'm I've got the reframes, I've got the felt safety, and I don't care about this, but it again has to stay in the right ratio.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: It has to stay within that bigger context of these ideas, and then you tolerate those treatments if they're necessary better, you're more clear, you're more capable, you're less activated along the way, and you need less, which is great.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm curious, is is IVF something not that you like discourage people, but I'm I'm curious like if there's when someone comes to you and say they're wanting to get pregnant and you know, maybe they've been struggling and they are ready to go to IVF, are there things that you might explore with them before going to IVF?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I meet people where they are.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people are already in IVF that I'm working with, and I it's such an honor to work with that.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's so many places that there's um iatrogenic harm, harm from the medicine that doesn't need to be there that I can I can offset and balance and change.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really, really powerful and really important.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it is a very different thing than somebody who's like, I got three months, or I, you know, I'm just thinking about this.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's different work that we're doing.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so if that's where a person is for sure, I want them to know what IVF can be helpful and useful and what it can do, and also where there's myths and misinformation and ways that it can cause harm.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: If it's, I say Western medical fertility treatment is kind of like taking out a loan.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: If your body's like a bank account, sometimes a loan can be really helpful.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're like, I haven't looked at my budget, I've never run the numbers, I don't make any income, I uh spend wildly where I shouldn't be spending, I don't save at all.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm gonna take out five loans in a row to do IVF, it's like that you could do that.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you in that context?
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to do that?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know that, like we can make your income better by making your respiration or your gut better, we can help you spend less by pruning and having downtime and more deep rest restorative stuff.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: We can we can get what you have currently back into circulation instead of in a Ponzi scheme of threat and fight or flight activation, chronic, you know, and unrelenting stress cycles.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, like if we can do that and then you still need to take out a loan, it'll be a lower loan.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll know why you're doing it in that much more clarity.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and there's so many layers that's like very high level.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But like I I just was writing uh uh I just wrote a newsletter where I was saying like 30% of people ovulate in the normal ovulation window.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: 30%.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is totally some men just decided that was the normal when it's like if 70% of people don't regularly ovulate that way, that is not normal.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so like people come into me all the time and they're like, Well, I have this really bad problem.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like I I had my two kiddos when I was 31 and 33, not exceptionally old, but also like I was totally in ovulatory for two years in my mid-20s, did not have a period after coming off of birth control, had 90-day cycles, had prior to going on birth control for like however many years straight.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had flooding, miserable endometriosis periods.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was so much information and so much data saying uh what my body, you know, what was going on reductionistically and holistically was showing up in my cycles.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was way more fertile in my early 30s than I was in my mid-20s because obviously I wasn't ovulating in my mid-20s.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: So so so yeah, there's just there's just more, right?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's more and there's a lot more that we can control than we think of.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: We just think age and time and go, go, go.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just not how not it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I know for me, I really believe that like the patriarchal Western kind of culture that we live live in is maybe not the sole cause of you know these issues that we're seeing with women's infertility, but I think it contributes.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think it contributes to it?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh for sure.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much that is just we're we're I've heard you say the soup that we're in.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like with the air we breathe it's the soup that we're in and it it we don't stop to think about like why don't we value yin things?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like why you know like let's get into it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know first wave feminism is like basic women's rights.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Second wave feminism is is like women should be able to do what men do and be you know and it's like where is the like we need the feminism that's like we value what is inherently feminine and and like that pays the same like caregiving and nurturing and downtime and nature.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: So like we're we're swimming in that and the capitalism that comes with that and the you know the young doing doing doing going going going harder is better all of it and yeah that absolutely informs every aspect of us because it's not how we're built and like true true equality is about equal value and being seen and having a place in the culture and in how the culture is set up not just oh I can work as much as you can and also carry the mental load.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: So no that's not I mean like it is a win in the grand you know bigger cultural context of like where we have been as people with ovaries but like that is not end game win.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah no not at all yeah wow I'm noticing like just a little bit of emotion come up from me as we're kind of naming all of that it just is yeah it's so it's so frustrating because to me like the female body is one of the most powerful magical things in the entire world and the fact that we don't value it and the qualities that are associated with it is just it's so frustrating.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I do the work that I do and I'm I'm sure that's part of why you do the work that you do as well.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad to do it together.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know I think that's another area that so much just in the 20 years that I've been doing this it even within holism we've been kind of siloed and just you know just keeping our heads above water and so to get to this place where we're connecting you know I watched your video and just you know seeing women in nature hugging and dancing and you know to have conversations like this and to to connect the dots in bigger ways.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's really my goal is you know I I have a very niche focused practice which I am totally in love with and totally grateful for but as I get older I'm 47 I just think it's so like my energy is shifting like in Chinese medicine your energy shifts from your reproductive kind of kidney energy up to your heart energy which is like wisdom and community and it is I just feel that and it's like I just want to like be in the woods with you know go for hikes with friends and go to documentary screenings and have conversations like this and go out for happy hour and have karaoke parties with my friends and like and I just think like that if there's a world where we've really reached a place where we value inherently feminine energy like that would be valuable things in society.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes and it is to me in my body and in my core and I think it is to most of us who identify as as female and so yeah let's like bring that absolutely yeah little bit bit by bit huh yeah small and cumulative exactly yes one of my mantras I teach people is like it's not it's not sexy.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry small and cumulative is how you get where you want to go I promise you yeah yeah that is the way and that is the more feminine way too it's like that water changing stone you know it's like it's not you're not gonna wake up well you know you might journal it and somebody might email you but in general there's a lot that came to that moment that was small and cumulative.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah and I think that can kind of um come from some of the you know traumatic experiences that we we have as well and so I'm curious what traditional Chinese medicine kind of says about trauma or what it understands trauma to be.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it can show up in all different patterns.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you know somebody who has a lung qi deficiency a metal kind of deficiency it might be more chest respiratory things and you know that sort of panic attacks that show up there or heart palpitations and if you're blood deficient trouble sleeping and um heart palpitations and feeling dizzy and overwhelmed and if you're uh spleen chi deficient and earth deficient it might show up as uh bloating and loose stools sometimes and really constipated sometimes if you're very livery and uh got wood energy patterns it might be headaches it might be again so it's like every single pattern has a different way of manifesting trauma and the beautiful thing is it's like that's everything else that you got going on too.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's all interconnected and we don't have to just chase the trauma or just we don't even have to like go after the trauma.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes people come in with some of the some of the more uh real like acute PTSD episodic kind of experiences in their life and they're like I don't know that I want to I'm like not needed we don't need to you don't need to like crack yourself open and lay bare uh who Bessel van der Koek I think talks about you know uh like people's trauma porn like you don't as a practitioner like don't you don't need trauma porn like that's gross like just show up and if somebody's having heart palpitations and they're blood deficient in in my world I treat I teach them about blood deficiency and how to nourish their blood and how to conserve and how to and like that can work on any kind of trauma they have.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they want to talk about it and maybe there's a point where there's something that needs to be done there to you know remove a block or to process or to but it's not the the only way and it's not a necessary way.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so many one of my professors said it's like you're kicking a soccer ball towards a goal and it's like there's so many different players you can kick it so many like you're just moving towards it.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't need to like do the money shots directly booted into the you know right above the goalie it's like that's you know sometimes that can work sometimes there's some accelerated resolution therapy or something that feels like that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: But also if that's not where you're at you don't have to do that version.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: Totally yeah so it sounds like you're able to kind of like enter through these other pathways that maybe aren't so direct and can maybe be like a softer kind of more gentle um yeah way to work with it.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah and it's nice because it again it meets people where they are if somebody's like oh I've been I know that I you know I I dissociate and I do all these things and I've worked on it and I've I'm doing this therapy and I've done this many rounds of EMDR and I know all these tools and stuff and they want to talk about it and that's the way that they want to think about acupuncture and what we're doing, great.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody has no idea what any of that is and don't even recogn they don't even recognize some things that they're maybe talking about in their childhood that would qualify as complex post-traumatic stress kind of factors it's like it's okay we don't need like I don't need to make you feel bad about having that we just need to be like this is what we're gonna this is how we're gonna talk about in this context.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I love that especially because I think sometimes people um you know there's still so much we're learning about trauma and sometimes people don't understand.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know I didn't understand for for many years and I thought that I just the way I felt was just the way that everyone felt until I learned otherwise and I realized that emotional neglect is also oh my gosh a type of trauma and that's something that I experienced yeah as a child and it completely shaped my nervous system and the way I relate and um yeah it's been a long journey of kind of unwinding from all of that.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes people don't have that understanding and so it sounds like you can they could potentially go work with maybe someone like you and still get the benefits and still kind of like work on the trauma without like working on the trauma.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly exactly and I just want to say childhood emotional neglect is such a I mean I think it's kind of a lot of how we've learned to parent or how parent you know it's kind of what's woven into the culture but it's so hard to recognize something that wasn't there.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know it's it's really easy to see oh yeah it felt violent in my home or there wasn't enough food but like emotional neglect is just a pretty wicked one and when it I remember when that layer of my childhood experience became apparent to me it gutted me.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: It it was entirely and it was I was so solid I thought and and so you know and I was to the point where it made sense for that to come up in my own experience um and I had the resources but it still it was like oh my gosh there's this other this is thing and this and it explained so much and all it was like the coins are lifted off your eyes and for many many years you know there there's now I can look back and say lots of aces and lots of generational stuff but like I was like I was assaulted I was assaulted I tried to kill myself and that's my trauma and it's like that was just the the the the the aftermath of the initial of all the things that led me to that and of like those things can happen totally randomly to people that have no history similar to my history but it was just like the perfect it was like just teed up you know so perfectly and Stephen Colbert he has his own trauma and he's he's a beautiful voice on trauma actually and he talks about how he through doing improv and doing uh the things that he does as a comedian he learned to love the bomb and like love bombing and and that that applies to like your trauma like you have to learn to love the bomb that like detonates and explodes everything.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: And like for me that was the assault but like that was the bomb that allowed me to to question and to like open up to all the other things that were so much more deep in my nervous system honestly yeah yeah I really hear that and yeah I relate to that as well as like the things that did kind of play out in in my teenage years and into like my sort of mid-twenties I really struggled with with drugs and alcohol and partying and you know I attributed it to just being kind of young and reckless and just having fun and when I look back now I'm like whoa you're doing a lot more than just having fun.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to numb pain and escape and not lead my body because I had all this unprocessed stuff from such early years that I didn't I didn't know what to do with it.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I was really just coping.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how amazing and resilient that we can we can do those things and then how amazing when we can realize that they're no longer in service and needed it's there's a there's a um meditation teacher that I really love Mark Nunnberg he teaches in the Twin Cities and he first place I've ever heard this I don't know if he heard it from somewhere else but conditions being what they are how can it be anything other than what it is so sometimes people are like I wish I would have and it's like no those weren't your conditions then like if only I could nope those weren't your conditions like these are your conditions now and like oh but I want to be it's like okay then how do we start to align some conditions that are pointing you towards that not magically you're that you know it's just think about your conditions kindly compassionately our conditions are moon phases and cycle phases and seasons of our lives and patriarchy and consumerism and capitalism like these are all our conditions and they're all different ways that we can see and and understand and and enter into something that slowly shifts the conditions for the better and small cumulative yeah that's beautiful yeah I guess we can kind of wrap up this little section but before we do I I wanted to ask if you feel that adverse childhood experiences and and trauma influence fertility is that something that you see kind of um again maybe not directly causing but do you do you see correlation there in the work that you do?
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how it couldn't you know I mean the body wants to rest digest and reproduce when it's not threatened and do those things less robustly when it's not having a sense of felt safety and childhood adversity really deeply shapes our our kind of nervous system, our buffers, our ability to tolerate as does generational trauma and the epigenetic stuff of how we're coded to have bigger or thinner stress coping buffers.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that's really interesting to me is that uh black women have significantly more fertility issues and are underserved and it's like wow think of about the generational trauma.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah think about the you know to be a woman coming from enslaved people that like that that level of trauma and so and one of the types of um diagnoses that women of color tend to get more is uh blood stasis pattern which is like a deep stuck fibroids and endometriosis and blockages and it's like I mean I can't imagine anything being more deeply kind of clenchy and stuck and threatening than having that generational trauma and that lived experience passed down.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it is so important that those elements of what we're doing culturally and on our individual menus and collectively as a community are a part of this conversation because it's it's all of ours.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's all of our histories it lives in some bodies in way different and unfair ways but like we need to think about this element too.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's good evidence that when you look at that statistic that's pretty big data that I think trauma really is a factor.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Wow wow I had never heard that before thank you for sharing and thank you for naming that too I think it's important um as you said to acknowledge all of the populations that are affected and some more so than others.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely yeah and I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong but is there a do you see a lot of infertility work being done for black women I mean within within their own communities there's amazing because that's how it's always been so there's I have a blog post that has some of some of the resources that I know of of of um different minorities and LGBTQ and and black and queer and you know single by choice and um because I think that is there's there's work that can be done there that obviously I am not at all in the space to do.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to lift that up and promote it and talk about that.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it is sorely lacking as a you know in my 90 day program one of the neighborhood modules is is talking about this and and it's and I you know as a white clueless privileged in all sorts of ways personally I was like how how do I put this in my program and then I'm like how do I not put this in my program how do I you know and it's all the both togethers and the both hands and the paradoxes and it's like okay just own that and do it is in whatever way you can because it's it's it's more important to actually act and do and not just give lift lip service or ignore like we do with so many other trauma things.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah it needs to be much more and accessibility and all the privilege layers that go into good health care and ability to access good health care and is is woven in there deeply too.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: So both together there's some amazing resources and there's not nearly enough.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah okay I'll definitely link um yeah I'll give you that link page yeah in the show notes.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well let's um we're kind of like approaching the hour so we can slowly start kind of making our way towards the end of a conversation I feel like I could talk to you forever.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_03: Same has been great.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I'm curious from your perspective how can women begin to reclaim their agency after healing or experiencing trauma loss or infertility?
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think just flipping the ratio I think that's been my thing lately.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on where I'm at in my head but I think flipping the ratio and just seeing the importance of that and the value all of a sudden there's all these things that open up as in service to our wholeness in service to our fertility in service to our fill in the blank again.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we do that we start to see like I said the karaoke parties the community the nature the things that you don't you know the paying attention the journaling at night the setting intentions the the things it's like okay 75% versus 25% I'm just gonna keep drilling down in that and put all my energy there.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's what I would do and I would just do small and cumulative yeah I love that and so when you say flipping the ratio are you talking about the just I mean I I think I understand yeah just so people understand what I'm saying.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking about the the amount of time and effort that you put towards let's say infertility because that's kind of what we focused on today versus the other amount of time that you're just like living and enjoying your life.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes exactly like the wholeness I talk infertility I'm using a lot of analogies today but I love it I love it.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nursery is that reductionistic your hormones your anatomy your partner your you know those conditions and then your house is your Chinese medicine patterns and your digestion and your mind and your body and your multi-systems um your foundation is your felt safety and your how resourced you are and how much sort of education and and ways you you have to like navigate the choices about these other layers.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you got foundation got nursery you've got house and then you've got neighborhood community friendship social justice purpose career and so it what most people coming in are like 95% of my energy is nursery or if you're trying to fix your gut 95% of my energy is on my kitchen or if you're trying to fix your insomnia 95% of my energy is on my bedroom.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we can just say just put 25% of your energy there and then work on your foundation work on your the rest of your house work on the rest of your community your neighborhood your closest neighbors all of a sudden what we're doing in that specific room shows up in a better way.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's flipping the ratios yeah I love that thank you for breaking that down it makes perfect sense.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for clarifying yeah something that I really try to encourage with my clients as well and you know we'll do a big session and you know I'm like try to tell them go do something you enjoy for the weekend versus thinking that we you need to still continue working on what we've worked on here today.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: We've done enough yeah put it aside and let it sink in yeah enjoy life yeah I love that beautiful and I think you know part of the work you know that I do at least is like we we do the work so that we have more capacity to enjoy life.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think that's it it's a chicken and an egg yeah you know and the more we do the life the less you know we have to do in the in the work and the more we do in the work the better the life piece gets and yeah it's just it's really it's really life giving and building a person up yeah beautiful well your episode is kind
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_02: To be airing during Virgo season.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_02: And as I love to really work with the seasons, I'm I'm curious with this kind of energy of Virgo that we're inviting in, if there are any rituals that you can recommend around ovulation time to support fertility or to um maybe not necessarily to work on the fertility, but to invite in some of the other qualities that you were saying are important as well.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: So thinking about so, first of all, give me a few other qualities of Virgo because I'm not well versed in that.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: So Virgo is um service is a theme of Virgo, um, ritual.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's also this sort of maiden energy that is associated with the archetype of Virgo.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Virgos also really love um routines and being organized.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm saying this is like a blanket statement, but this is just the general themes.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and also health and and wellness and vitality is a big theme of Virgo.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_02: And a shadow of Virgo is perfectionism.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that young maiden and that ovulatory switching energy in your maximum yin, coldest, wettest, dampest kind of energy flipping into the minimum of young, which is the activating, moving, traveling, and it's a big flip.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the maiden energy, I think, is like that that sort of young driven doing, and the the um perfectionism as the shadowy side of it.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I would that would be good.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: What element is for like what what um like is it earth?
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I I would do a ritual in impermanence because it's a big change part of the season.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I would do, I love this.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: I do this a lot when I'm just sitting at parks or on the side of the Mississippi River or whatever, like in the campsite.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you um just go out in nature and you collect little things that catch your eye.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: So like a little piece of bark that fell off a birch tree and a pretty leaf and a flower.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: The rule is um, you know, don't take anything that will be missed.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if there's a certain number of things, take, you know, a small percentage of it.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's like a pretty flower, you can pick one flower or whatever.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then make like a little uh like do a ritual of arranging it into something really pretty, like a little altar.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you could set the intent of like how you're feeling, so or what you want in your life, and you make this little um nature arrangement and put it somewhere where people may stumble upon it and be like, whoa, somebody made this little thing, but also know that it is constantly changing and the wind's gonna come and the rain's gonna come and the sun's gonna beat down and it's gonna be totally impermanent, it's gonna be something totally different, and maybe it's in a couple days or maybe it's in an hour.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but just kind of like create that moment and then walk away from it and let it the experience be something.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's really beautiful.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, ooh, I want to try that.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's fun, it's fun, and I this is so bad because this is not impermanent, but sometimes I take pictures because I'm like, oh, it's pretty I don't like post them on social media or anything, but I'm like, just when I'm looking through my photos, it's like, oh yeah, that was at the side of the hat lake, or oh yeah, that was when I was with my lady club up north, and we were all walking in our different ways together.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's okay.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: I love built together about letting it just yeah, putting it somewhere where one I love where people can see it, yeah, cost kind of also inviting in this this theme of service as well, because how fun is that when you're like out on a walk?
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_02: I know I get really delighted, but I'm like, oh my gosh, look at this cool thing that someone did.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's just like this little floral arrangement on a bus stop.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I love it, love it, and then just to kind of let it go and let it be what it is.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's really beautiful.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't clench if you can help it.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, throughout the ritual.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to keep it, I wanna take it.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to be forever.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the sort of softening into the impermanence of it all.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you could give one piece of guidance to women navigating fertility trauma or big health transitions, what would it be?
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've already done so many.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think how about let's go with small and cumulative.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just think about small and cumulative.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Bring it home again.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's so not sexy.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's not what anybody wants, but it really gets the job done.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so sustainable.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've been doing this work in myself since I've been, you know, 17, sorted therapy, and I'm 47.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a long time.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Three decades of small and cumulative, and I swear, like there's very few big sexy moments.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's where Western medicine saves my life, basically, which is a big deal.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: But almost all of it is just small, cumulative, not very sexy, but really meaningful, beautiful, life-giving again.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just it's like, I don't know, when you start doing this, it's even when you have a hard time, even when something isn't gonna do what you want it to do, right?
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've got body, weird body stuff.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's got weird body stuff.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a partner with um some neurological stuff.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's like it doesn't mean that like our 25% is just like magically perfect, but it just makes it like you can hold it so different and you can feel so different with your life.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's like it it matters, but not in the same, not with the same weight, not with the same energy.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's just like, gosh, I feel so lucky, so Midwest.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I feel so lucky.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I love that you make a good point.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really resonate with that too.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I know when I first started doing my really deep trauma work, um, I was kind of like in in the darkness for a while, just kind of, you know, doing my therapy sessions and trying to do all the all the work.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um I really had to like be reminded how important the joy is as well.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that was kind of a big theme for me last year.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was like finding my joy again.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I still go to therapy and still you know, take acupuncture and I still do my meditations and I also work with plant medicine.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I love doing my microdose sessions, but even that I I don't need that as often anymore.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: I can go um, you know, month or two.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a busy couple months.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't been able to to sit with it in the way that I like to.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been okay because yeah.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there really is a lot of um, yeah, just a lot that we can get when we remember that joy and love and connection are are just as important as the hurt and the pain.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And small and cumulative, it sneaks up on you.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, oh, I could just register more of those things because I've just kind of chipped away at it.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a uh this summer my mantra has been like, make everything a delight.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, how can I make unloading the dishwasher a delight?
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I didn't hand wash those dishes.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: My kids loaded the dishwasher.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm unloading the dishwasher.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I like this glass.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know, it's like, and it's still unloading the dishwasher, but it's like you you just eventually there's this critical mass kind of tipping point where it's like I can have really shitty things pop up, really frustrating things.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's just like it's it's in the ratio is different, like it's not a hundred percent.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's like, okay, it's in that 25% or whatever, but it still is floating in 75% of like skillful, capable perspective.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's it's okay.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Nicole, if people would like to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything I've got is linked to my website, which is lifehealinglife.com.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you some specific links to put in the show notes for um different resources and different specifics, but I love not being a bottleneck.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a page with all the podcasts that I'm on that the show will be on.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have a YouTube channel, I have fertility freebies, and I have three paid courses.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if people want to understand their Chinese medicine patterns and work on the um full house and foundation and neighborhood, I have had friends and people that I know do it who are not dealing with fertility, like people that get cancer diagnoses and um or just are like, I'm just really struggling.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And now every time I talk to you, I like your ideas, and I'll be like, here, do my program.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so yeah, fertility, the nursery is one of the modules, and that will break down and teach everything about hormones, which can be applicable to things like perimenopause and pregnancy and things like that too.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: But three-quarters of my program is all the big picture stuff.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's all on my website, and I would love people to talk about it and share it because I really do.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I I don't know anybody else who's teaching fertility in this way, um, and has the resources to back up the ideas.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I my goal is to change the world.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Just you know, not at all, not at all lofty.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad to be doing it with you.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful and it's important work.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I really admire the way you're you're approaching fertility in a different way.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's been the first that I've seen.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so thank you for your work and we'll link all your stuff in the show notes.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a delight.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks again, Nicole.