Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - You Have Everything You Wanted. So Why Don’t You Feel Okay? With Koya Webb

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

What happens when you finally have the life you worked so hard for and you realize you’re not okay? My guest Koya Webb knows this contradiction intimately. Koya is a globally recognized wellness leader, bestselling author, speaker and founder of Get Loved Up, whose work has helped people around the world build healthier, more connected lives. She’s spent years teaching yoga, meditation, movement and holistic wellbeing, working with major brands and bringing these practices to audiences around the world. She had built a successful career doing work she loved. She was traveling, teaching and helping thousands of other people take better care of themselves. From the outside, her life looked like it was working. Behind the scenes, she was losing herself. At one point, Koya was literally putting vodka in her green juice. That image says so much about what we talk about in this episode. You can exercise, meditate, eat well and know all the “right” things to do and still use achievement, busyness and even wellness itself to avoid what’s happening inside you. Koya shares what was really going on during that period of her life and the moment she had to admit that the way she was living wasn’t sustainable. Her book, Wellbeing Rituals, grew in part from what she learned: there’s a difference between doing things that look like self-care and actually knowing how to care for yourself. And sometimes that means disappointing people. We talk about people-pleasing and what happens when being loving, helpful and dependable slowly turns into ignoring your own needs. Koya opens up about learning to say no and what happened when people who were accustomed to getting a yes from her didn’t like it. We also get into grief, emotional honesty and why some of the feelings we’re quickest to push away may be trying to tell us something important. Koya shares the rituals she uses to reconnect with herself, and I share some of mine too, including one that leads us into a pretty unexpected conversation about our bodies and what changes when we stop constantly trying to manage or fix them. In this episode, we talk about: How Koya built the life she wanted and still found herself struggling The story behind the vodka in her green juice and what it finally forced her to recognize The difference between practicing wellness and actually feeling well How people-pleasing can slowly pull you away from yourself What happens when you finally set a boundary and someone pushes back Why the emotions we try hardest to avoid may have something important to tell us Stress, nervous system regulation and how they affect the way we feel and connect Koya’s CHBT method and seven areas of wellbeing How to create rituals that actually support you instead of turning self-care into one more thing to accomplish If your life looks good on paper but something inside you still doesn’t feel right, I really want you to hear this conversation. You don’t have to wait until your life falls apart to pay attention to that feeling. And having a lot to be grateful for doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to admit that something is missing, hurting or needs to change. Sometimes we get so busy building the life we think will make us happy that we forget to stop and ask ourselves: Am I actually happy living it? Connect with Koya on her website and Instagram, explore her Wellbeing Rituals tour, and check out Wellbeing Rituals: Science-Backed Practices for Sustainable Healing and Living to go deeper into the practices we discuss. If you’d like to ask a question or get some advice, email [e-mail] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your own question answered in a future session. And if grief or loss is part of your story, come find me on my other podcast, Crying Out Loud. I talk with leading experts, healers and people who have lived through profound loss about what grief does to our brains, bodies, relationships and sense of self, and what actually helps us find our way through it. You can find Crying Out Loud wherever you’re listening to The Language of Love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love.

You exercise. You eat right. You meditate. You take care of everyone around you. You keep showing up, and yet underneath it all, you're exhausted, you're overwhelmed, you're disconnected, or just simply not okay. I feel like that's happening with so many of us. and my guest this episode, Koya Webb, knows that experience firsthand. She has spent more than 25

years in the wellness world, but it was during one of the most difficult periods of her own life that she began to understand the difference between practicing wellness and actually feeling well. Koya is a wellness visionary, an author, a speaker, and the founder of Get Loved up. Her new book, Well-Being Rituals, Science-Backed Practices for Sustainable Healing and Living, brings together more than 50 practices designed to help us regulate our nervous systems, reconnect with ourselves, with others, and heal all that we're carrying and begin to create lives that actually feel really good on the inside and look really good on the outside. Today, we're talking about why high functioning doesn't necessarily mean healthy, the subtle ways we

abandon ourselves through people-pleasing, over-giving, not setting the boundaries that we need to set, how our nervous systems affect our relationships, our intimacy, the difference between another thing on your self-care checklist and a ritual that can really change the way you feel. And Kaya is going to share a lot of the rituals that can help you get there. I'm so excited to share Koya Webb with you on this episode of Language of Love. Koya Webb, I'm so excited to have you on Language of Love. It is such an honor. I love you. I love your work. It is such an honor. Yeah, I feel the same way. You know, I was thinking about it this morning as I was preparing and thinking about our time together that we may have met in the clubhouse stratosphere, but I feel like

we met for the first time in person at a, I think it was a Mindvalley event that I was speaking at and we were in the green room and you were just like this luminescent being, you know, I don't normally, like I have this thing, my friends know this, that sometimes some people light up when I see them. And I have learned that is a sign I'm supposed to connect with them. So I think I sent to you something like, you know, we need to be like, I'm pretty open. I don't say always you lit up, but I'll say like, I think we're supposed to be friends or, you know, and I don't just say that to people unless they lit up or unless we've had like a two hour conversation, you know, for some reason, but we hadn't had that. And so what was interesting at the time is that I think I was

like maybe six months or something after losing my son. Like I was still in such a fugue state and I wouldn't have even been speaking, but you know, they asked me to come and I was doing a project with them. And so I was so out of it and so not, and this is relevant to our conversation today about, you know, your new book and about wellbeing in general, that I just didn't have the capacity to connect. So you lit up and I think I maybe sent you a text or an email afterwards, but then I did the La La Land thing, like love your baby and didn't follow up. So I just want to apologize that I never followed up more because I was just not in good shape to really follow through on anything back then. Thank you for that. I appreciate your honesty. I think it's

so important for us to give each other grace we never know what someone else is going through I've had so many times where people have come to me like this person goes to me and I was and I always say you can never know what they're going through so try not to judge it as hard as it may be because they could be going through grief they could be going through a hard time you never know until you talk to them no I appreciate you saying that because now that we're speaking and now that your book is out, you're back and you've gone through it. And it sounds like you're more well in this season. Yes, I'm more well in many ways, ironically, than I was before he left. Not that I wouldn't give it all back. But yeah, I mean, I think it's really relevant because your book

is called Wellbeing Rituals. And I know that you had a lot going on in this year of writing it, right? You had, I think you got married in the same year that you wrote this book, in the same year that you lost your mom. So that's a lot in and of itself. Lots of transitions. And I just can't believe how much I held. And, you know, I have definitely self-diagnosed myself with high functioning depression. And, you know, it's nothing that I'm proud of. It's something that I just have to be aware of is easy for me to slip into. It's easy for me to kind of stuff down my emotions, my pain, my stress, my grief, and just keep functioning highly and getting things done for myself, for others. And it's something that I've really had to be compassionate with myself

and even honest with myself that that's not okay. It's not okay. And, you know, without beating myself up. I just have to get clear. I'm better at noticing it now when I'm like, okay, you're not processing your pain. You're not processing your grief. You're not processing these things. You're just moving on. And so now I take much more time every day to process the different seasons of life, just like you did. And so, you know, I want to dig into that a little bit more in a moment about this idea of the difference between being high functioning and well, because I don't think most of us and certainly most women understand that. But, you know, you describe really almost at the beginning of the book, this kind of turning point where, you know, and maybe this is part of

the high functioning, I'm sure it is part of the high functioning thing that, you know, we're at the top of your game professionally and, you know, had all these, tell us about that, all these people working for you and running these big events and traveling around and in your genius and at the same time you know you write that you were putting vodka in your green juice you were trying in the in the bathtub and it all came to a point you know where you were like something is going on which is what happens I guess for us high functioning people is that eventually there's the geyser blows right absolutely you know success doesn't equal well-being success does not equal well-being and a lot of time we sacrifice our well-being for success and if you would have

asked me then if I was doing that I would say absolutely not I'm well I work out I eat healthy yeah I put a little vodka in my brain juice but that's not a big deal yeah and it really took me those tears in the tub to realize, girlfriend, you're not okay. You're not okay. And it almost brings me to tears now because most of us, we don't, it's not like we're trying to do it. We have normalized overextending ourselves. We have normalized abandoning ourselves. We've been taught it generations and generations of women self-abandoning that we don't even know what it looks and feels like. And so my goal here with my book, Wellbeing Rituals, and even on this conversation is to help people become aware. Number one, help people become aware of how they

self-abandon. Number two, give them rituals to return. And number three, just make space for their own personal transformation. So it really is a three-step process of like awareness, rituals to help you rise, and then, you know, just allowing yourself to evolve with no rush and no hurry. Yeah, I want to get into your CHBT process as well. But, you know, I think that's so important, this idea of, because we, I think most of us aren't taught. So much of what I know you speak to in all of your work and in your book is the same thing I speak to and something I've gotten really serious about in order to facilitate my own healing, which is the embodiment piece, right? And so for those of us, many of us who, you know, have been hitting it hard and working hard and fixing and managing and controlling so many things and managing so many things and making so many things happen, a lot of that is possible. In part, we've learned it doesn't have to be this way, but we've learned to just not feel what doesn't want to be felt and focus. You know, we're not in our bodies, right? That's what allows us to be in this, quote, unquote, high-functioning, disconnected state until things unravel, right?

It's not sustainable forever. Eventually, there's a breaking point for everybody. You know, I see this with grievers, too, who don't want to feel their pain. So they're like, I'm going to change the laws. I'm going to create a foundation. And they do all these amazing things, and they're going, going, going, going, going, in part because they don't want to feel what doesn't want to be felt. And then eventually there's a reckoning. And so what was it in that moment in the bathtub?

I don't know. I mean, you don't have to maybe private, but like, what was it that caused that reckoning to happen? And then what then kicked into gear for you in the embodiment piece that became a key element? That's such a good question because no one's asked me the depth of the moment and what really caused the tears. And I think what really caused the tears in the bathtub was just realizing, like, how lonely I was.

Even with such a successful event that I just completed, 8,000 people on an online retreat is a lot of people. That's a lot. And, you know, having people like Anthony William, Medical Media, Marie Voix, like having these incredible guests was a blessing. People showing up for me, I was so grateful. It's like, after all this, you build, you set a good job, like, why are you still sad? And the thing is, when you have a business and you have a company, most of the time you're building for other people. If you're really a self-abandoning person and a people pleaser, most of the time it actually journeys away from yourself and you start building to satisfy others. You want to satisfy your guests.

You want to satisfy your community. and it really you know now there's a lot of people who do opposite and I'm inspired by them and can really like focus on themselves but I was a person who often focused on others before myself which is why I built my company Get Loved Up it's supposed to be love yourself love others love the world in that order because I know and the reason I set that mantra is so I could remember three months ago. But you didn't? I kept self-abandoning and I kept putting others before me, putting my work before me. I wasn't getting my sleep. I, you know, was putting vodka in my green juice, trying to cope because things were happening behind the scenes. People were taking

advantage of me. I was losing team members, like, you know, deals were falling through. So there was just a lot that was happening that I wasn't processing. And I was overwhelmed. I didn't have a therapist. The George Floyd incident had happened and I was having really bad flashbacks of my brother being mishandled by the police. And so I had all this success I was holding, but I was also holding an equal amount of grief and anger and rage and loneliness. And so when I talk about it, like it's, it's no secret method to knowing how much you can handle. What I know for sure is that your rituals have to outweigh your work. Your self-care has to outweigh your work. So no matter if you're doing a little or doing a lot, if you're doing a little, you can

get away with a little self-care. If you're doing a lot, you need a lot more self-care. You need a lot more rituals for well-being. And so I hadn't, even though I was, you know, working out every day, I was coping with, you know, the alcohol. I was coping with the bubble baths, but I wasn't dealing with my emotions. And that's why in my book, Well-Being Rituals, one of the most profound chapters is emotional well-being. It has been my weakest area of well-being for decades. Being an empath and a sensitive soul, I just wasn't dealing with my emotions. And at that moment, I had a breaking point and I was like, I need to deal with my emotions. I got a therapist, you know, I cried, I decided to move to Atlanta and I just started to make some tanges to do some

deeper healing on myself. Yeah, I think that's so beautiful, both because and this is something you hear all the time and like little Instagram memes or whatever. But your story is such a beautiful living example of this idea that success does not buy you happiness. And you talk to anyone who is at the top of their financial work, whatever you deem success at the top of their game, And they will tell you it does not make you any happier. In fact, in some cases, bigger life, bigger problems, right? Because there is not a correlation necessarily between quote unquote success in the external sense and happiness, peace, embodiment, solidity inside yourself. And so that moment in the bathtub is such a beautiful, like, I hear that from, you know, my clients so many times, like, I should be so happy. I just got this raise and this promotion that I've been dreaming. I just got my dream job. I'm married to a great person. I have health, like, why am I so miserable? And it's because you are not home with yourself and you aren't caring for yourself and you aren't attuning to all the other things that you don't want to look at that are coming with you, whether you're making a gajillion dollars or not. And so this idea, let's talk about what well-being means, you know, as you define it.

In particular, I mean, we know like the physical, you get into all of this, but let's talk first about the general categories of well-being, but take a deeper dive into emotional well-being. Absolutely. So there's seven areas of well-being. Spiritual well-being, breathing, connecting with the breath is my favorite spiritual well-being ritual. And then emotional well-being is really learning that your emotions are your best friend. They are guideposts to what you need to lean into and heal.

So a lot of times we try to embrace the joy and the enthusiasm and the happiness. And we want to feel like that all the time. And when we feel anger, envy, jealousy, rage, we want to just shut those out. But really, those emotions deserve our attention too. And if we're able to lean into the anger, lean into the sadness, lean into the envy, we get to understand ourselves deeply and know where we need to heal or be supported and so sometimes it's healing we need to look at childhood wounding we need to look at relational wounding or sometimes it's like we just need to look like where we need to talk or have some support or have

a friend hold space or even take time my favorite ritual and emotional well-being is transformational letter writing and it's where you write exactly how you feel like all the angry words you say it you get it out and then you do a little breath work and then you write an apology to yourself. So many times we don't understand how we can give ourselves the apology that we need from the other person who may never give it. And you can give it to yourself. You can give it to yourself. So that's my favorite emotional well-being ritual. And then mentally, we have to affirm ourselves more. We beat ourselves up so much, especially as women, my hair, my body, my menopause, my, you know this and we are just like chronic complainers we are you know not myself included

and I have to catch myself as a girl you're good you're blessed beyond measure you're beautiful your hair is good yeah and I literally when I massage my body and when I'm in the shower I'm just like I love myself I love myself I am well in every cell I'm well in every cell I wash my hair and I touch my body and I just love on myself and I just think I want to get people used to how to affirm themselves with juicy words that just make you feel all good inside it's so important and there's all this cool research coming out where they've been able to demonstrate that actually talking positively to your body helps the health of yourselves yes one of the test that i invite everyone listening to try you can see this on youtube is the rice test

where you put a cup of rice in a mason jar with some water and you label one love and you label the other one hate and to the one that love you say i love you i love you i love it you put in the cabinet and then the one with the hate all you say i hate you i hate you and the one with the hate molds and the one with the love crystallizes so that lets you know energetically you'll matter it matters i mean they're also i don't know if you've ever looked at have you ever looked at matsuriamoto's work with water crystals yeah that's wild too i had to get an ovarian ultrasound because i had a little cyst there and they were worried about it you know anytime i was playing ovaries something might be on there blah blah blah and i was in the

bathroom before and i was i was had a conversation with my body i was like listen they're gonna go in there with a vaginal ultrasound. It's going to be a little invasive. You know, you are healthy. We are good. I just want you to be, I prepare my body. Anytime something's going to happen to it, I let her know what's going to happen. Reassure her. I'll stare into my own eyes and be like, you got this girl. You're amazing. You know, like I do the same thing. I think it is so important. It's so important, not only when things are going wrong physically, but as you were saying, even just for sensual connection to really constantly attuned to and love up on your body.

I love that. I love how you prepare yourself. I've never done that before, but I'm going to add that to my rituals. Like, no, it's really good. We're about to have sex.

It's going to be a little rough, but it's also going to be, you know, or like I had one woman who I was seeing clinically and she all of a sudden started having tremendous jaw pain when orally pleasing her partner who she'd been with for, I don't know, years and years and years. I don't remember how long, but it was a long time, over a decade. And she didn't have a problem for a long time. And then something happened where it started to be painful and she could have, you know, she didn't have pain any other time.

She had her mouth wide open or anything else. But during this, I won't get into the details of what we discover was the connecting point but one of the key elements that started to change it was that she would talk to her body and her jaw before it happened and be like listen we adore this man and we are going to give him which was true i mean she wasn't making it up but we are going to so much pleasure and express our love this way and it is totally safe and totally okay and I it worked wow it really changed things for her y'all kind of good rituals today right I'm gonna give you all kinds of mine you can oh I think we should make like a sex ritual book right like all the rituals before sex okay so we're digressing now from all right so we have spiritual

progressing our sex life i'm gonna talk to my lips before they come to you all lips that's my next book okay all right so we have spiritual emotional mental what other well-beings nutritional how we nourish ourselves like what we put into our mouths like it's not about being perfect but just understanding that everything you eat is energetic and you know with all the things coming out with all the herbicides and pesticides and things they're putting on the food you know i think people are getting a little bit overwhelmed and just completely giving up and so i think it's important to know do the best you can and eat the best you can and when you do eat pray over your

food if that changes the frequency even if it does have chemicals on it even if it's the fruits the vegetables, the animals, all of it, right? Just pray over it. And, you know, our ancestors did the same thing and we know they've gotten through the worst of times. And so I just think it's so important to bring rituals into your nourishment, you know, and in my book, I talk about vegetables and fruits and juicing and all these things that are really going to nourish your body. But even deeper than the actual food is the ritual around the consumption of the food. Take time to smell it, take time to pray over it, take time to be grateful for it and practice gratitude, I think that enhances the frequency of everything you consume, no matter what it is.

Amen. You know, I was back during the pandemic, I was doing, being asked to go to New York for these television appearances that I really wanted to do and were exciting opportunities, but I did not want to get the COVID vaccine, but I had to in order to do these opportunities because the networks required it. So I was talking to my friend, Anita Marjani, who wrote the bestselling book, Dying to Be Me. She died from terminal, like horrific cancer, tumors all over her body, like totally gone, came back and had a complete, you know, went to the other side, decided to come back, complete recovery out of the hospital in a couple of weeks. It was 17 years ago. Cancer never came back. So she is an amazing inspiration to me on

many, on many levels. And she was saying to me, look, just have a conversation with your body ahead of time. And before you get the vaccine, you let it know what's going to happen. And you say you are going to process this. All the things that don't serve are just going to come straight out and be transmuted to love. And I did not have any complication. I mean, who knows? Maybe if I were, who knows? You know, they're still talking to see

what the side effects are. But I think there's something really there to it. And it reminds me of what you're saying that like, because we can get really psycho. I see a lot of people go real psycho about what they're eating. Because if you start doom scrolling about all the crap they're putting in our food

and all the stuff that's going on, you will like want to never eat again. or spend your entire salary on the farmer's market in your neighborhood or whatever. And, you know, if you have that privilege, then that's amazing. But most people do not. So I feel like this, it's not an excuse to eat Twinkies at every meal. But, you know, if I really love this idea that you share, and I know there's, I don't know, something like 50 rituals and all the,

if you combine them all and all these different categories we're talking about. So there's lots more than even what we're talking about here, guys. But I love this idea of really mindfully attuning to your body and your heart and your mind and your soul, constantly attuning and being like, hey, we're going to be present for this. We're going to pray over this. We're going to talk internally about this. We're going to attune, you know, because it really does change the vibration of things. I mean, we talk about vibration here a lot, frequency a lot here. So I'm drinking the same Kool-Aid, organic Kool-Aid that you are drinking about this.

Okay. So what other physical well-being? So moving your body, it doesn't have to be always going to the gym. It could just be taking a walk outside in nature. Then you get physical well-being and spiritual well-being because you're connecting with nature. And then you can, you know, dance around your house to your favorite tune in your birthday suit. You know, just. Oh, that's my favorite.

Right? And just have a good time and just like, you know, feel good. And but the movement is really important because we hold, you know, stagnant energy in our body. And if we want to raise our vibration, moving, shaking, somatic movement, either tapping, all of these things like in our body are really important. And not only in our body, also in our home, you know, physical well-being is the physical body and also our physical home.

And being able to keep our body as clean as possible, eat as well as we can. And if we can't pray over it, same thing with our home, keep it as clean as we can. And just make sure that we really are honoring our bodies and our home is what physical well-being is all about. Everyone's different. And, you know, as women, we understand now as we mature, we work out differently. Like I was an athlete. I was working out four hours a day. I don't need to work out four hours a day now.

I want to work smarter, not harder. That's extra stress I'm going to have on my day, which I don't need. So I think it's really important to understand what season you are in your life, especially for women, and that we need to work out differently depending on our cycles, our physical bodies, our wombs need different things at different times, whether we're bearing children or going through a perimenopause or menopause, you know, just getting married or we're an athlete, like our body needs different things. So I think it's just so important to respect the body, like really respect the beauty of it. And just like you said, when you speak to your body, you let your body know we're about to do this. We're about to birth the baby. We're about to make love. We're about to run. We're about to hike and just preparing it. We're about to do this thing and we're about to enjoy it. And I think most of the things we go through, we kind of go through dreading it like, oh, I'm going to I'm going to suffer through, you know.

And I just say, that's not really living. If you have to suffer through some things, you know, it is a little bit suffering, you know, no one can escape suffering, I believe. But I believe when we do practice the ritual of awareness, we can choose to have the ritual of affirming ourself and speaking positively on every experience we have. Amen. And so like, where is the line, especially around like, you know, some of the things around working out.

And I love this idea of attuning to the season you're in or even the time of the month you're in or whatever. I think that's so important. But what turns an ordinary routine? Like I get it with the food. Is it the intention behind it that turns an ordinary routine into a ritual? It's not only the attention. What really turns a routine into a ritual is the feeling, right? It's, You know, when you say, you know the truth by the way it feels. You really connect with someone, you make them feel something. So when it comes to your own personal life, if you feel good when you go on a hike, that's the thing for you. Some people feel great going on a hike.

Some people hate it. Some people feel great running on a treadmill. Some people hate it. Do the things that you love. You know, and some people, you know, it's hard for a little while, but they're like, I really love that. So that's good. But I just think it's important, like, if you really, really, truly hate it, then that frequency of disgust in your mind, even though your body gets where it wants to be, that feeling of like, oh, this is so dreadful is not helping you emotionally. So I want to say, like, whether you're running or jogging or biking, do something, find something, try all the things and do the things that bring you joy.

Yeah. There's so many ways to move. I love it. I was having a conversation with a law, I think, 20 year, 25 year friendship with this wonderful friend of mine. And she lives very differently than I do, both in location and lifestyle, whatever. I mean, she lives a great life, but it's just different than mine. But we were talking, she's like, you know, there are often times where you just got to do things you really don't want to do. i was like honestly i don't think i have any times like that and she was like what what are you

talking about i was like no especially now that my kids are grown and out of ass i mean there might have been parent-teacher conferences and sports team crap that i didn't feel like doing that i did but at this point in my life which is her same age and her kids are out of town it's like at this point in my life, there is, I can't think of anything that I do that I don't want to do. I think there is a wisdom. And I think this is where in athletics, women actually get better as they get older because we actually know how to advocate for ourselves. And so I think what you're speaking to is so important because as we age as women, we learn that I need to speak up for myself. I need to advocate for myself. And if I don't like it, I'm not doing it. And so we start

to eliminate the things that we don't like. And we have to, because if we don't, we'll get irritated. And I do feel that as part of our innate wisdom, people look at this heightened sensitivity as a curse. And it's a lot. I admit it's a lot. But I do believe the sensitivity is so we can follow our intuition and stop aligning with things that are out of alignment for us and our families and the world. And we are sages and intuitive guides for not only our families, but our communities. And if we look at it in that way, we fall in love with this heightened sensitivity that we have as women. It's a guidepost. And your anger and your resentment is telling you something doesn't serve. But I love how you speak so beautifully in the book

and in all of your work, because I am right there with you around the nervous system and nervous system regulation. And I don't remember where it was I was reading or listening or whatever, but you were sharing, it was such a beautiful example about how there was this event or something that you were doing and they send you the contract like 24 hours before. And there was all this stuff that was so out of alignment. And I could feel my nervous system activating as a sister empath, activating as I was listening. And it really made, I was laughing to myself as I was listening because I was like, I am so guilty of this and try to do the same thing as you ended up doing. But this idea of like, we get activated about something often when we're being treated

unfairly or when someone is asking something of us that doesn't serve or when we're being pressured to do something that just doesn't feel in alignment. And either we push through our resistance, which never goes well, or we get really mad about it or resentful about it. And then we act from that resentment. And there have been so many times where something like that happens and I start shitting. And then I'm like, whoa, like you gotta calm your nervous system down. And so it was so beautiful the way you explained. I mean, you can use that example. You probably know what I'm talking about or another one, but I'd love for you to speak to a little bit about the way that the nervous system regulation allows you to be and flow in your life

to be doing less of what you don't want and how all of that contributes to wellbeing? Absolutely. Well, I feel, you know, our nervous system is just here to protect us. Our nervous system is here to keep us safe. We got survival mode, emotional, survival state, emotional state, and executive state.

And most of us live in survival state and we're reacting before we respond. We're getting triggered. we're going off and we're validating that. And I feel like what I'm learning, you know, as I do the work and do my own healing is that everything is a choice. Everything is a choice. And so when that email came through the day before the event, stating things that were out of alignment, I had a choice and the choice, I could have accepted it and been angry the entire experience because I allowed this person's urgency, last minute, lack of preparation,

and I can add a whole list, but I already did my transformational letter writing. So I'm just going to let that go, you know? And so I could have let that really true me, or I can say, absolutely not yeah and I chose to say absolutely not absolutely not like I'm not going to sign this it's the day before the event I should have had this a long time ago it's not in alignment with how I operate and nor how I work now I've had times where I've not signed things and gone on with the event I've had some times where I've not signed things and not done the thing so I've had both of those experiences now and I feel very validated in all of them when I was younger I wasn't emotionally strong enough to make those decisions. I was scared I'm going to lose a deal,

lose a partnership. But I think now that I'm more aware about how the energetics of the world works, nothing for me will miss me. And if that was for me, it will be in alignment with me. And if it's not in alignment with me, it's okay to let it go. And there will be others that are, there will be so many others. And I think that's hard, you know, when you're, especially when you're new and you're growing. You're scared. You don't know when the next opportunity is going to come. So I would say to my 30-year-old self, everything that's for you is going to come. So when I said yes to way too many things that were out of alignment when I was growing, and I'm like, well, I'm paving the way for others, so I have to do it, and I'll make it easier for someone else. I was like sacrificing

myself. I'm being a martyr. No, no, no. The world doesn't need a martyr. The world needs more sovereign embodied leaders. That's what we're rising into as women. We're rising into embodied leadership where we're no longer self-abandoning. We're no longer self-sacrificing. And we're saying, I am here to love and be loved. And I demand to be respected. And if you don't respect me, and if it's out of alignment, I'm not doing it. Yeah. Amen. And you know, you did it in a respectful way, right? And then, but you were very clear and they pushed back at you and you didn't bend and then what happened well i feel like when people press your boundaries because first of all it's hard enough to set a boundary and i want to speak to this in stages because

that's how people will experience it okay you set a boundary and you expect them to respect that boundary then they don't respect that boundary and they push back and you have to go back and say actually i'm sorry no that's just the absolute you know so you have to hold the frequency and this is people like well you we're used to loving others it's like you cannot love others to the detriment of yourself so if saying yes to them is saying no to you it's better to say no to them because when you say no to yourself that is what self-abandonment is and your body is keeping score and when you say no to yourself and then yes to your husband when you say no to yourself but then yes to your friend you say no to yourself but yes to the job guess what your body's like girl

So I'm going to scratch at the door and then I'm going to knock at the door and then I'm going to blow the whole house down. Exactly. And so and then we're sick in the bed and we don't know why. It's because you've been into yourself all week and your body is tired. And it's like, I need some love and I need some respect and I need to quit over giving and over loving. And I need to quit performing to be loved. Because the thing is, if someone gets you to do something for them and it's out of alignment with you, it's self abandonment and it's not loving yourself. is loving others to the detriment of yourself and at the end of the day if someone's loving you because they do that as soon as you don't do it then they're not gonna love you and you do not

want those type of people in your lives and i wish someone told me this when i was 30 if they don't love you when you've said no and if someone calls themselves your friend if you haven't had a disagreement or said no i don't know we don't know if they're your friend yet we don't know yet we don't learn a lot you learn a lot when you say no hold the boundary yep yep you say you learn a lot when you go through grief whether people show up or not I had to load those lessons the hard way and boy was it hard my heart is heavy like the last three years I mean boy when I tell you my emotional well-being has increased 50 percent by just letting myself go through it and being honest with myself about nah nah girlfriend this is

not love and it's not self-love to do whatever somebody else wants you to do it to watch yourself get abused and you know it's abuse and you still saying yes that is not love yeah yeah that's so important I'm so glad you said that and you know to complete the circle of that story as you held that boundary and this doesn't always happen but in this case they came back and were like because you held the boundary not disrespectfully you were just like no like this is not okay here's why you just let me know. I'm sorry. And the key in setting the boundary is that you're so committed to the boundary. Like in this case, you're, I'm not saying if you set a boundary with your husband or wife, you got to be ready to walk away if they don't agree to X, Y, Z. You know,

sometimes that's the case, but with most daily boundaries, that's not. But in this case, you were ready to walk away knowing that if it wasn't for you, it wasn't for you. Something else will be. And they came back and said, we're so sorry. You know, and I think that I find that that happens a lot. And someone else is another one like you who tends to be over empathic, people pleasing, recovering, codependent. It was super hard. It probably wasn't until I was in my forties that I really went into recovery for codependency and started. And it's not easy when you've never really held boundaries to set them and hold them, but it's so powerful. So I love that we're talking about this. Now let's dive into your CHBT method, connect, heal, build,

and thrive. In particular, I mean, all of it, but in particular, the connect part, because we talked a lot on this show, I mean, about a lot of things, but metaphysical stuff comes up a lot. So let's talk about the connect part first. Absolutely. And we were going through the seven areas of well-being in the last two. I'll just mention social and financial. But people can pick up the book and dive deeper into those. And they are part of the CHBT method. So we'll talk about them there. But specifically, connect is about your spiritual connection. It is about your relationship with absolute consciousness. Some people call this absolute consciousness, God, Jah, Jehovah, you know, it doesn't matter. Universe, spirit, whatever. It doesn't matter what you call the energy as long as you understand it's important to tap into it. It's important.

And I give seven different rituals that personally helped me tap in from prayer to meditation to time in nature and breath healing, which is one of my favorite ones. and that time to connect it helps you tap into your highest consciousness and then I talk about the science behind how it triggers you know your subconscious it taps into your prefrontal cortex like I give you the science because yeah my dad doesn't believe anything without the science so I really did it for him not knowing I was doing it for all of us because when you have science backing up the woo because you know we're the wooest of the woo I'm the wooest of the woo I Oh, I'm big on the science behind the woo. But the science behind the woo, it really lets people know, no, this is scientifically proving.

It's not just because it feels, because people will feel it. But the people that are a little bit scared to even try, I think the science helps people be open to try. So you'll notice when you take that deep breath every single day, your mind starts to calm down. You feel good. You notice when you spend time in nature and you get some warm sun on your skin, you feel more balanced. You notice these things. So that's what the connect part is when it comes to the CHPT method. It is a spiritual well-being.

And then the H is heal. So that's really the mental and emotional. It's really diving into the anger, the rage, the self-abandonment, all those things that come up when we're not feeling love and joy and peace. And looking at those emotions as our friends to where we need to be supported or heal. And that's what then, you know, that's part of the heal part. And then mentally, most of us are unwell because we just talking negatively about ourself, about our world, about our government. I get it. You know, it's a lot going on.

But if we spend more time talking about the problem than we do talking about the solution and acting on the solution, we will be unwell. so I'm not saying it has to be perfect I'm just saying when it comes to percentages you know the solutions and the talk of the solutions and the acting of the solutions have to outweigh the griping about the problem the watching of the problems then trauma of looking at the problems over and over on social media and the news it will take you out it will take you down yeah so that's the heel portion and then we get into the build and that's really where the physical and the nutritional. We build ourself up with food and nutrients and herbs and supplements. A lot of people are scared of supplements because there's so many supplements out there that are not good

for you and not working. But it is really important that we find the right ones because the quality of our soul is decreasing. Our fruits and vegetables and even animal products are of a lesser value. So it is important to, one, try to find the best value that's been grown nearby, local, from local farmers and support them. But it's also important if we're not getting the nutrients we need to find the herbs and supplements that can help us get the nutrients that we need in our body to thrive. And so that's part of the building of the body. And then also the movement. And in my book, I even talk about dry brushing, the movement, not only of the body for fitness, but moving up the lymph and things like that, that we don't often talk about. Massaging of the body and the skin and how important that is. And I think that is part of the building and also building a home that is non-toxic. like I was so overwhelmed when I watched this documentary the plastic detox and I'm like I'm on my fertility journey because you know I just got married and we're thinking about

expanding and family and I go in 21 years vegan super healthy but I got polyps I'm like well how did those little suckers get in there and I just realized but girl you've been wearing straight up polyester for 15 years as your main yoga pants and you've been wearing yoga pants and them tight sports bras and I had no idea and I knew you know I had some cotton things I had some natural textiles I changed my yeah I'd done some things here and there and I knew of the healthy stuff I just did not know how bad and how detrimental wearing polyester and as a vegan I'm like oh it's not animal products, but I didn't know that, oh, stroke, palliature is worse, you know? And so, yeah, it was, it was a big eye opener for me. And now I just want to encourage everyone again,

you don't have to be perfect, but do pay attention to these things. And I wish someone had told me like exactly how bad that our food has gotten and our clothes have gotten, that we really have to pay attention because these things are being done without our health and wellbeing in mind. chemicals are being added into foods intentionally without our health and well-being so we have to become aware we can't just be like oh whatever i'll be fine yes pray yes affirm and also be aware that be aware things are not set up for our well-being and we have to pay attention and then we go into thrive which is the last two i was talking about when you have that connection that spiritual connection you've gone through your healing process your mental emotional well-being

and you've gone through your building your your physical and also your nutritional then there comes social like really learning how to connect and maintain relationships a lot of people when no one has a rule book that's why we have we talk so much about relationships because most of us don't know how to maintain a relationship I wasn't taught when I was growing up how to maintain a friendship my mom and dad really didn't have friends that were around us we were isolated in the country so we I didn't even have a best friend growing up until I got to high school and so I just think it's really important to understand social well-being is about communication it's about connection it's about being able to talk to people to respect people to create healthy

boundaries and so I talk about that a lot in the social well-being chapter just about because after emotional well-being social well-being was my next lowest role on the thing because I just did not know how to maintain relationships. And the last is financial well-being. When you work on all the other areas of well-being, you become abundant in every area of your life, not only the bank, but also in relationships and health and all the things that go with it and the finances just flow. And so that's the CHBT method and the seven areas of well-being all in one. I love it. A whirlwind tour. I had so many thoughts as you were talking. One of them is that I should introduce you to this woman, a good friend of mine named Bobby Vogel. She's the healer

to her, but she goes in and energy. I bring her, you know, whenever I move, I'm like, Bobby, get over here. And we, she energetically heals the house and we moved into this house and I hadn't cleared it yet. You know, I always kind of clear the house when I move in and I was feeling like, and then I cleared it. I did all the sage and everything. And then I was like, something is off. It just feels really heavy and weird. So I called Bobby and she came over and there was some way that the house wasn't fully grounded and there was something, I don't even remember all the details, but she put these crystals around and did these rituals. And I swear to you, not only did I notice a difference, but my husband, who is like your father, who doesn't believe in any of this

stuff. And I didn't tell him what we did, but he noticed the difference. So I love that. And also I wanted to share with you one ritual I do for tapping into spirit because I was raised I don't know if you were raised with a connection to higher self spirit I was and I want to mention that what you what happens here is it's called dowsing and I actually do it for my friends because there can be stagnant energy yeah energy blocks and things in the house because energy lives and everything is energetic that's what she was saying yeah I mean I knew that but there was some sort of male stagnant leftover energy that she needed to move out. Yeah, you guys would have a field day with each other. One of my favorite rituals, because I was not raised with any kind

of spiritual beliefs at all. I mean, I always joke that my father was God and he was not a very nice God. But I didn't really learn to have until I was much older. By choice, I started cultivating a relationship. But one of the things I would say over the past year that has changed my life is when I wake up in the morning and pretty much, I don't know, maybe like 15 times a day, like if I'm changing settings or shifting gears or something, it's just become a habit, a ritual slash habit, where I just say, I kind of ground into myself, get present in my heart, mind and body. And I just say, I align my well with divine well. I am my divine self and I align my well with divine well. And it's like, I can feel it right now. Every time I say it, my ears

pop. I just kind of sink in. And it's a reminder to kind of surrender to the guidance that is there and to trust. I feel like very often that, I know you share so many rituals and you talk a lot in the book about breath healing, which I'm a huge fan of. And also for a lot of people, it's like this amorphous abstract thing, you know, but there's something so beautiful about like, I love that it's the first step because when you are grounded in the support and guidance that's always available to you, then you're resourced for diving into that healing craziness and resourced for the building. I feel like that piece is so important. I agree. I feel like we are innately spiritual beings having a human experience. And I truly believe once we leave this body, we go back

into this collective consciousness. And so I feel like if we're able to tap into our spiritual self daily, then we will be divinely guided on the highest path and the highest frequency we can express in our humanness but if we get caught up in our minds and our fears and things outside of ourselves and this quest for success and then we can often get distracted from true expression and true enjoyment and I truly feel like we're not here even for a purpose we have and we can have a purpose but I feel like we're here to fully express and just like plants and animals just live and express and I feel like when we have goals that's good when we have ambition and those things are good but if every day we're missing the the juice in the journey you know

I think that we kind of miss the mark and we get away from our true reason for being here and I feel like if we slow down and breathe every day and connect spiritually then we start to see the little things like the birds and the flowers and that twinkle in someone's eye or someone's sad and you just smile at them and give them a compliment and it lights them up. And I think those things are really the juice in the journey that we can sometimes overlook if we're questing too far outside of our spiritual selves. Amen. Yes. Is there anything I forgot to ask? I know The book is Well-Being Rituals, Science-Fact Practices for Sustainable Healing and Living. Koya is going to be on tour in the United States and the UK, right?

You're heading to the UK? Yes, I'm here in New York now. I don't know when this is coming out, but the 22nd of August, I'll be here in New York. I'm having an event at Moonrise in Tribeca. And then I'm going to the UK September 17th. It's on a Thursday. We're going to be in London, and that's going to be really exciting. And then October, I'm heading to L.A.

So the 17th of October, I'll be in L.A. And then November, I'll be in my hometown of Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. So it's been a really juicy and warming tour. Like, it's something that I'm just going with the flow. I don't have any big, you know, big goals with it other than just to connect with beautiful leaders around the world and regulate together, breathe together, practice these rituals together. And so this sounds like your vibe coming out with me, coming out with us. Yeah. And so we'll put all of it in the show notes, but they can find out where you're going

to be in dates and everything on your website, I'm assuming. Yes. Everything's on the website. And on social media, you can follow her. We'll put all the info there as well as a link to the book. You are such a beautiful inside and out soul. Thank you so much for joining us and for all that you're doing to lift up the world, Koya. I really appreciate it. And I'm going to come. I'm going to come when you're in LA. Yay. I can't wait to see you and just hang out with you and love all you. It's going to be an incredible time. Beautiful. Thank you, love. Thank you. Thank you for having me on podcast. I went to the doctor.