Realfoodology - Healthy, Happy, Sexy with Katie Silcox

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

116: Katie Silcox, M.A. is the New York Times Best-Selling author of the book Healthy, Happy, Sexy - Ayurveda Wisdom for Modern Women. Holding a Master’s Degree in Hinduism and the Ayurveda Sciences, Katie is an internationally-recognized teacher, mentor to women and inspirer of hearts and minds. She is renowned for her depth of study, her ability to present the complexities of ancient wisdom in a practical, life-affirming manner, as well as her unique capacity to distill the teachings with southern-belle humor and grace. Topics Discussed: What is Ayurveda  BioHacking History of Ayurveda  Importance of laughter and joy  Duality of masculine and feminine energy  Yin and Yang Younger people are having less sex  Loss of rituals in our society  Shadow work  Finding your soul purpose  Emotional triggers  Check out Katie: For the $100 discount code off of her Ayurveda School use code POD100 Book: Healthy, Happy, Sexy - Ayurveda Wisdom for Modern Women Instagram Sponsored By: ION - Intelligence of Nature www.intelligenceofnature.com Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 15% off all one time orders Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Cured Nutrition www.curednutrition.com/realfoodology REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Check Out Courtney: Courtney's YouTube Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Further Listening: Eat More Salt

on today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. You are a physical, energetic, mental, emotional, wait for it, intuitive, inner teacher-filled, wait for it, last one, bliss being. Those are all of the levels of your bodies. And if we're not living from all seven of those levels, we're missing out on who we are. Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I am Courtney Swan, your host, and I'm so grateful that you're here. On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Katie Silcox. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the book, Healthy, Happy, Sexy Ayurveda Wisdom for Modern Women. She has a master's degree in Hinduism and the Ayurveda sciences, and she's an internationally

recognized teacher, mentor to women, and inspirer of hearts and minds. She's renowned for her depth of study, her ability to be present to the complexities of ancient wisdom in a practical, life-affirming manner, as well as her unique capacity to distill the teachings with Southern belle and humor and grace. I can personally speak to this. I even said this to her, I believe it was on the episode, it might've been off recording, that she has such a beautiful way of taking really ancient teachings and modernizing them and making them really relatable to our modern lives. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask her about Ayurveda and we got to some of them,

but the conversation went in a totally different direction than I had anticipated, but I just let it flow. We were talking about the duality between masculine and feminine energies. And this is not about your sex. This is about the energetic realm of masculine and feminine energies that all of us

have inside of us. And it's something that I have been really interested in recently. And so we got to talk a lot about that. She's such a beautiful person, is full of so much wisdom. And I really enjoyed this conversation a lot. And I know I say that very often, but I really love the conversations that I'm having on this podcast. And I hope that you guys are enjoying them as well. So with that, let's get into the episode. Oh, before we go into the episode, I forgot. They actually shared a $100 off discount code for the Ayurveda school, Shakti school. So if you guys want to enroll and you're interested in it, we talk a little bit about it in the

episode as well. But go to the shaktiscoolcom slash slash Ayurveda dash school, and then use code POD100. If you guys missed this or you didn't have time to write it down, just check the show notes and you can click on the link and you'll see the code. And before we dive into the episode, I just want to remind you very quickly of the giveaway that we have right now for the podcast. So this month I am giving away a higher dose sauna bag, an Aqua True Carafe, which is their new glass carafe water filter, an Aqua True Classic, which is the classic water filter that I had before the glass carafe, an Aroma True,

and an Air Doctor 3000 air filter. And all you have to do in order to be entered for the giveaway, it's so simple, you guys, you just need to rate and review the podcast. And once you've done that, screenshot it and email it to realfoodologypodcast at gmail.com. It's important to note this needs to be on Apple Podcasts because that's where you can leave a star rating and a review. Super simple. Email that in to us and that's going to be your entry. Now, if you want a bonus entry, you can go to Instagram and share any of my reels. I'm at realfoodology. Just make sure that you tag me if you share any of my reels in your stories. And then I would go ahead and do a little screenshot of that in your stories and just send it to the email. It's realfoodologypodcast at gmail.com, just in case if I miss it. And that's it. And then you guys are

entered to win and we will announce all the winners on November 2nd. Good luck. With that, let's get to the episode and I hope you guys enjoy it. I talk a lot about glyphosate on this podcast, as you guys know, because it is a huge concern of mine right now, especially considering that the World Health Organization has deemed it as a probable human carcinogen. Something you may not know about glyphosate though, which is equally as concerning, according to peer-reviewed articles, toxins like glyphosate as well as gluten actually can degrade tight junctions in the epithelial layer of the gut lining. And because we know this, I have been taking something called gut support from ION or intelligence of nature daily. It was developed by Dr. Zach Bush, and it has been shown to strengthen the

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You're going to save 15% and you go to intelligenceofnature.com. So Katie, how did you get into all of this? Like how did you get into Ayurveda and kind of end up on this path? Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of the furthest you can get from Ayurvedic. I grew up Southern Baptist in Tennessee, a child of the eighties and grew up eating probably like a lot of our listeners, like hamburgers and processed food and got really into yoga in college and found out that this incredible practice of yoga had this sister science that was all about healthcare and how to stay younger and literally the ancient teachings say juicy for as long as possible. And, you know, like so many of us that grew up in the eighties that kind of got sprayed with Roundup. Um, I had

gut issues, anxiety, um, just a whole host of things that didn't seem to be healing with just yoga and meditation and eating like a vegetarian lifestyle. And so I moved to India and was really fortunate to study with the most incredible people and continue to feel very much like a student of Ayurveda. And I'm also really big into biohacking and all the fun new emerging stuff. I'm sort of a scientist by nature, but I was saying to my sister, who's sort of a foodie and nutritionist, we just keep coming back to Ayurveda because these principles really work. So the short answer is I came to Ayurveda because I was in a lot of pain and it helped me. I feel like many of us come to these practices seeking healing. And so that's really beautiful. So I'm

really curious to know, how does biohacking and Ayurveda kind of converge? How do you make biohacking, I guess you would say, more intuitive? Very well said. Yeah, I actually just spoke at the biohacking convention and I was really honored to be invited. And I came up with a talk that said Ayurveda is the original biohack. And if we believe in reincarnation, I think that the people who are doing these cutting edge biohacks were probably ancient Ayurvedic people and yogis because they're just doing so many of the same things, only they're using the vehicle of technology. That said, you know, one can get really obsessed about the details and forget about the bigger picture. And that's what I call the realm of the feminine. It is the realm of the

intuitive. It's the realm of the body, the emotional. It is by nature, the unconscious, and it is not often able to be measured in a scientific laboratory and it often shows up in our dreams. And so this whole spiritual realm, I think more and more of us are becoming really awake to the fact that just taking the right supplements and doing the right biohacks isn't enough if we don't touch into the trauma or the emotion or, you know, again, if you believe that this is a spiritual journey to the karma, right? Like what is it that I'm bringing with me that's made me the way that I am? And I think that's when things start to get really powerful and start to unravel. Yeah. And I feel there's this really large energetic shift that has been happening where

more and more people have been waking up to this and becoming more spiritual and trying to really tap into their intuition and their ancestral wisdom, which I think is really, it's a very important component of our overall health because we can be addressing the simple biohacking things like the sleep and the food and all that. But if we're not addressing all the underlying stuff that's there, we're not going to make much progress. So that's really interesting that you said that. I want to dive into that, but before we really get started, for people listening that are really not aware of Ayurveda, can you kind of explain it for them? Yeah. Like on one hand, Ayurveda is this some say 5,000 year old tradition from ancient India that was a convergence of thousands of years of people converging different cultures and it kind of all localized in India

and it was later became a lot of the influence of Greek medicine and Egyptian medicine and Roman medicine and then it mixed with Chinese medicine and so what's really cool about the roots is this really could be some of the roots of our Western medical system. And so on one hand, we want to like deeply honor India and the culture from which this comes. And then the ancient teachings of the Charaka Samhita actually say that Ayurveda will spread out into the future and it should be adapted to the time and the place and the people in which it's being presented. Otherwise, it will become poisonous to them. And so what these old school yogis that were super wise were saying was like, hey, yo, you got to make this shit cool for people and digestible. Otherwise, people will hate it because they'll feel like so many of us feel in the wellness world overwhelmed, right? That it's not applicable to our lives.

And so on the one hand, I like, you know, lived in India, have the parasites consider, you know, so many beautiful people in India, my great gurus and teachers and feel it's really important not to culturally appropriate. You know, we need to always be kind of aware of that. But at the same time, Ayurveda means the science of life and the science of living and how to live a life with what you put your finger on just a moment ago, which Courtney was the absence of meaning in our modern technological lives, our industrialized lives that are so separate from the goddess of Ayurveda,

which is the goddess of all of us, which is mama nature. Exactly. So you said it, I want to go back to what you said, which was if we only start taking, you know, GABA and theanine and, you know, all these things for my insomnia, but we don't address the hypervigilance and the neurosis that is underneath the reason we're waking up in the middle of the night partially, right? It's not just a biochemical thing. Then we're starting to operate Ayurvedically, which says you are a physical, energetic, mental, emotional, wait for it, intuitive, inner teacher filled, wait for it, last one, bliss being. Those are all of the levels of your bodies. And if we're not living from all seven of those levels, we're missing out on who we are. And that is what often wakes us up in the middle

of the night. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'm dealing with this right now. I've never really dealt with any sort of like intense insomnia and I'm dealing with it pretty heavily right now. And literally no herb under the sun that I'm taking is helping right now. And so I'm at a place where I'm trying to address it from an emotional and more spiritual sense because there's something else going on there. Well, let me tell you, as someone who's struggled with insomnia since my 20s, I'm 42, you lick the floor of hell if you've known a lot of insomnia. And yeah, so yeah, definitely there can be a deep emotional component. Maybe we'll talk later. We'll have a session.

I would love that because I keep making jokes with my friends that I feel like I'm being sleep tortured right now. So yeah, I mean, what you said is pretty spot on. So you talk about tapping into your intuition. So for people listening that are feeling confused about how they can really do that, or maybe you're not feeling super connected to their intuition, what are things that they can do to cultivate that practice? I'm giggling a little because I always make the joke, like, go on Instagram. It's like, oh my God, just follow your intuition and everything will be fine. I'm like, fuck that. Sorry, I hope I can cut some. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. I'm like, wait a minute, but you're complex and there's like this ancient teacher, Shankacharya, and he's like, sometimes I know what I should do

and I don't do it. And sometimes I know what I should do and I do do it. And there's just so many times in our life, especially when we're younger, right? Where we are certain we're moving from our intuition. And then later we're like, that was a hot mess. And no, I shouldn't have dated him or taken that job or like, you know, gone there. And so this big question that you're asking is, is the central question of the Bhagavad Gita. And that is

the meaning of life is spiritual discernment. And so knowing what my intuition is, is a lifelong spiritual practice of being able to parse and discern the conscious intellect, the persona that you wear, the masks that you wear, the personality that you identify withvable sun inside of you that is your soul, that is your spirit, that could care less about New Year's resolutions and getting the perfect body or all these things that our modern culture is quite obsessed with. Practically, what that looks like is taking time to begin to form a relationship between you and the inner divinity of your own heart that is compassion. It's why the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Christians, we all talk about this. There is an inner witness to the experience that holds a frame of reference for you to you of openheartedness. And I know I do not live in that world of being openhearted to myself. I can do it a lot easier for other people, but especially for my own inner emotions and my own inner experience, openheartedness is not the default position.

It's an inner critic. My lifelong journey has been really making, finding that inner stillness, that inner quiet, that inner compassionate watcher, the cornerstone of my life of openheartedness to you, you to you, you to other people is usually way more calm, wise. And here's the great part, funnier. It has a sense of humor. It's not taking this whole charade of life as seriously as we are. And so when you can find a still calm, quiet place, that's kind of like having a sense of humor about your life, you know you're getting there or you are there. Is that what they call the cosmic giggle? Or is that different? I've never heard that, but I love that. I call it like the cosmic wink.

It's like, hey, you're, yeah, I would say maybe. Yeah, I love it. Oh my gosh. Okay. I love that so much because that is something that I have really been working on. I would say most of my life because I, humor is a huge part of my life. And I think for a lot of people, you know, like we love to laugh, like what a gift to be able to laugh, you know, and bring joy. And it's something that I have really tried to cultivate on Instagram as well with people where I find that people get so serious. And my response often is, life is too short for us to be this worked up over something that really isn't that big of a deal.

And when you kind of have that lens and you move through life that way, it just makes life a lot easier and more fun. We're supposed to have fun while we're here, which I think is so important. And I'm so glad that you brought that up. And I love too, that you brought up discernment. And the concept of these masks that we all wear is something that I've really been thinking about a lot, probably over the last year, because I have started really becoming aware of the masks that I wear. Because we know, we all do. Like there's no judgment. We all have insecurities and fears and certain personas that we want to uphold with our friends and online. And I think more than ever, we're seeing it with social media because people are wanting to portray this one side of themselves. And so we're hiding behind all these masks. And part of my journey

over the last year has been really trying to surrender that mask and just be who I am and be vulnerable. And part of that takes a lot of vulnerability. But I found that when you can surrender that mask and be more vulnerable with the people in your life, you cultivate such deep, amazing relationships that are so nourishing and connective. And I believe the true reason that we're all here on this planet allows us to be connected and realize that we're all here together on this planet at the same time for a specific reason. And it just helps kind of bring perspective to life, I think. Thank you. What a gift, your words. And vulnerability is the thread through which we feel like we belong to each other. And yet we're in the world of weirdness and duality, which is normal, right? And so there's like yes to everything. And it's okay to wear a persona, you know? Like you don't necessarily

want to show everyone on Instagram what you would show your beloved or your mom or your best friend. And so the great Carl Jung said, you know, the persona has a role and not everybody gets to come inside and be with the soft inner gender center. And yet we can acknowledge its existence and then we can sniff out who is really worthy of accessing that place. And so in this way, every part of you, even the part of you that does have a mask on, we all do, gets to be a part of the story. I love the way that you put that. And it also makes me feel a little better because I think I do have a bit of an inner critic judgment around having that. And, you know, if I were your big sister, which, you know, sort of am, cosmically speaking, I would say, and you know, you have a huge following, you know, and not to make this a therapy session, but I too, as a person who's quote influencing what's super important for, for all of us, if you have 200 or 200 million followers is that there is an aspect of privacy that is actually what enables us to feel stable and

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and this is another concept, not concept, but thing that I've been really thinking about a lot recently, because I started following a couple accounts that are talking about the duality of the masculine and the feminine energies. And I want to be really important for people listening to be clear that doesn't necessarily mean your actual sex. Like there's a masculine and there's a feminine energy. And something for me personally, and I don't want to make all this about myself, but I can only speak to my experience. Running a business, having my account, doing all these things, I find myself often very much in my masculine. And I feel uncomfortable in it to a certain extent. There's a certain level of it that I get a lot of momentum from,

but then I find that I get really exhausted. And so for me, a lot of my journey recently has really been trying to cultivate more, getting back into my feminine energy more and allowing myself to go to that softer place and allowing people to help me. And I'm so intrigued by all this because it's very new to me because I wasn't even really aware of all of this happening behind the scenes for me. And I want to hear kind of how, yeah, kind of how Ayurveda maybe plays a role in this. And I want to hear your thoughts on it. Well, before I was an Ayurveda student and teacher, I was a Tantra teacher. And this is sort of where a lot of these ideas emerge

from. Well, they emerge everywhere in ancient culture, this idea of the yin and the yang. And you said it really well, this has nothing to do with our parts. Traditionally, women were known to hold more of this. And I think in general, that tends to ring true for a lot of people's experience. But the Tantra teaching says that you have both of the yin and the yang inside of you. And that the really interesting, powerful, maybe evolutionary individuals on the planet definitely have both. And so it doesn't surprise me, right?

That people with a podcast, that a woman with a podcast, right? And she's kind of moving. So what is the masculine? The masculine is the thrust of ambition. It's the fire. It's the drive. It's also got a shadow side. And that is, it fills up its calendar. It's slightly obsessive. And if you mess with it, it'll go to war with you. Let's be clear, okay? So the masculine has all this upward thrust beauty. It's why we have skyscrapers and electricity and steam trains and iPhones, right?

It will also sacrifice itself for others. And people tend to think that women are the only ones that are doing that. And that's also like a cultural thing. Oh, women are just, yes, that's true, but men are doing it too. My brother, my father, your brother, your father, and all of our ancestors, still to this day, if we look at the war in Ukraine, the people mostly that are dying on the battlefield are the men. And so we have to really be clear that the masculine does sacrifice itself. Now, what is the feminine? If we think about making a baby, what happens? That thrust? And then what? There's an empty space called a womb, and that emptiness is what allows something to be filling it, to create. So the feminine is an

emptiness that waits to be filled. And so Ayurveda says the feminine needs rest. She needs, the queen needs to have her throne. That is you being a podcaster and a business boss bitch. And the queen needs to have her bed where she like does what we do in bed. Right. And for me, it's like watch Netflix and like snuggle a puppy and like maybe let someone in every now and then. Like this realm where we are empty on a physical level, we can talk about rest, digest, have healthy hormones and such. But guys, we can take it to this energetic level where I can be talking to you and you can feel all my masculine energy. And then I can just go through my body, through my voice, and I can go empty. And do you see how it totally changed my energy? And I can work and be with you and I'm empty and I'm ready to be filled.

And so there are meditations, energy meditations specifically like that you could do that are really about getting empty. And so the feminine is the extent to which you have emptied out your heart of any judgment about you to you. And then you can watch and make sure you're trying not to do it with other people. We're not launching any arrows when we're in the feminine. We're holding back. And what's super, let me tell you, I know you have lots of probably questions, but this story is- No, this is great. This is banana sandwich. And I've told this story a few times and like people lose their mind over

this story. So I have a women's school, it's called Shakti School. We only have women or people who identify as women. And so in school, I said, ladies, try this out. Go out on a date. It could be your husband. It could be your girlfriend. It can be a dude you met on Tinder. Go out on a date. It's even better if you don't really know him very well. This is what happened to me. I decided to go out and completely do a feminine form energy practice, which is super easy and anyone can do it, where I'm just channeling my energy, meaning moving my attention down my legs and into the ground and then moving my attention from the ground earth up into my belly. And I'm doing that over and over again. And I can still talk to you and I can be here

now, right now I'm talking, but on the date, I happen to be with a guy, by the way, super hunky. I was like, Whoa, he's cutie. And I can feel all my insecurities coming up like, oh God, am I good enough for him? Is he going to like me? All these things we say to ourselves. And instead of moving into that thought realm, I did this energy practice. And this guy is talking, talking, talking, which sometimes happens and we can be okay with that. We don't have to be like, oh, this asshole man. The masculine, remember, is launching arrows. He wants to fill me up and he's doing it with word vomit. And so instead of being angry, which I used to be like, why is he vomiting on me and not asking me? Because a lot of times,

the feminine, we know how to ping pong back and forth. And when I say feminine, I don't mean, I mean, me and my gay male best friend know how to do this, right? Even men, friends that are heterosexual, right? There's a ping pong. When you're with a really masculine energy, they're just coming at you like a freight train. That's their language. So I'm just doing the energy work. I say nothing basically the whole date. And at the end of the date, normally I would feel so drained, right? I felt so full because I'd been doing a meditation the whole time,

but with him. And at the end of the date, this super hunky guy ends the date and says to me, pulls his hand across the table, reaches for me, and he goes, I just want you to know you're incredible. I would love to go out with you again. And I'm like, mystic, magic, unicorn, glitter bomb. I'm just like, what? And now I went out with him again and it wasn't a good fit. But the point is his perception was that he was in the presence of something really rare in the world right now, which is

a heart that's open and empty and holding someone else. And it was intoxicating to him, even though he didn't ask me one question about me the whole date, which is unsustainable, of course. But this is what it means to be in the feminine. You're waiting to be filled and you're learning how to fill yourself up through your own means. The definition of a yogini, by the way, a female practitioner of the spiritual arts of making myself more aware and conscious. The definition of the yogini is she who needs nothing and no one. And it's not that you're some monk on a mountain. It means you're so tuned to your own heart and the energy of the earth and the heavens that you aren't waiting on someone else to fill up your cup. You're empty and filling your own. Oh my gosh. I love that so much. Well, and I think that energy alone makes you more magnetic

because when you really have that sense of pure inner peace and that you get everything you need from yourself, that there's not that, that graspy kind of needy energy that, that tends to push people away. And here's the even crazier part about that when you are in that space and this is like a higher level of the practice but it's it you everybody can do it you have room to hold the annoying needy you that may be with us until we die we don't know right like because i'm like oh i just want to get rid of the needy me. And in this realm of the feminine, she's actually welcome.

Oh, and that's so healing for someone that really struggles with that. I mean, I'm sure all of us have gone through at least phases of feeling that way, you know, until we really learn that we have to get everything we need from ourselves, which is a really hard lesson, I think, to learn that you really can't get anything else from others. You have to learn how to get it from yourself. That's so beautiful.

I've been thinking about this a lot because I, like I mentioned, I follow a couple accounts that have really been talking about this because I've been seeing it. You know, there's this one account I'm thinking of in particular, that's really doing it from a dating perspective where both men and women are really having a hard time, for the most part, dating. I don't want to speak to everyone, but it kind of seems to be society-wide right now that there's this missing polarity of, you know, women are, many women are being forced

to be more in their masculine, whether or not they want to be. And there's, you know, men are confused because of, you know, this whole Me Too movement and everything. And don't get me wrong, I think all of it is good. But at the same time, I think this confusion is making it really hard for the masculine and the feminine energy to come together because when they come together, it's so beautiful and powerful. And we're all kind of confused and maybe not tapping into the energies that feel most aligned for us. Yeah. And it's okay to say, actually, it's not all good. And normally big revolutions that need

to happen and evolutions and deconstructions that are necessary, like me too. I mean, I was like, hell yeah, let's, right? We were all like so happy because we were realizing we weren't alone. And then weird shit happens. And that's the natural life cycle of a very human expression, right? And so, and I think we're now kind of coming

on the other side where you and I can even have the conversation. And so that's really, really important. You know, I'm a student of Carl Jung. And in depth psychology, one of the central themes is that we've lost our rituals. We've lost our rule book. And that, again, it's like probably a good thing that we threw out some of these old school, religious fundamentalist type things.

But in that we also lost something that where there was a clear delineation of like, this is a man and this is a woman. And now we're like, yeah, that doesn't really fit for us anymore. Great, hallelujah. But yet those structures, especially the wisdom structures of our ancient foremothers and forefathers, especially of indigenous traditions,

including white people, white, by the way, white people do have indigenous ancestors, the Celts, the Druids, the Vikings. I mean, we have our own indigenous wisdom. And what's so amazing is when you study all these indigenous cultures that lived on all completely different parts of the world, so many were saying the same things in terms of their magic with nature. I agree. I mean, it's just a statement of belonging to say all of us are feeling, I mean, I'm currently, I don't say I'm single. I say I'm love available. And I too, I'm like, I don't really think dating apps. I mean, I really want to at some point do another movement beyond Ayurveda, which is a statement around what I think dating apps are

really doing to the whole setup of the most alchemical, magical thing, which is eroticism and courtship and how it's not to say, again, that people haven't met their soulmate on. Of course, it's possible, but the medium is the message. And so when you're looking at a person on a nap and you're seeing them as a picture that you can literally discard in less than a second. There's a devaluation on both sides, men and women, but particularly it's deleterious to the ways in which many women like to feel in the dating expression. Yeah. Wow. That was really beautifully said. So how do we get back to this place of eroticism and magic in this realm? Oh, Lord, lady.

You're touching my, I mean, I feel like an armchair anthropologist. I'm like, well, let me tell you all my theories while I like sit alone as an introvert. But what I really think is that it doesn't matter in the sense that if I'm clear, so here's a central premise of tantric medicine, and it's not fashionable right now, okay? So take it or leave it, listeners, but here's what the ancients say, and Jungian psychologists as well. The unconscious mind is operating in all of us. And the tricky thing about the unconscious is that we're not aware of what we're not aware of inside of ourselves. And so the outer world, this is a central premise, is a reflection of what's going on in your inner reality. Your perceptual apparatus is not only perceiving the

world and having an emotional reaction and a thought form but this is insane this is so rad you're also such a powerful mother effer that you are attracting the perfect scenario be it people in your life of any ilk right but? But especially sexual partners, dating, et cetera, partnership, like on that intimate realm is attracting the very people through which you can shoot out and project the stuff that you haven't dealt with yet in yourself. It might be your greatest gifts, and it might also be your deepest repressed shadow side. And so for me now, it's like dating for me is sort of like, well, let me take away the burden of is this my one and true picket fence only love

and see what is going to arise within the field of my experience that allows me to move deeper and deeper into the relationship that I have with spirit. And paradoxically enough, you become way more attractive and you attract everything. You don't just attract light, you attract it all. And so, yeah, I could say more, but I think that's a good place to stop.

I mean, I love that. If there's more you want to say, because, yeah, I think this is really important for people to understand that, like you said, your, your unconscious mind is operating, um, often on an unconscious level and you could be manifesting or bringing in people, scenarios, experiences that you may not even be aware that you are controlling for lack of a better word, that you may not even be aware that you are controlling, for lack of a better word, that you're creating that experience. And you know, we're on a spiritual level speaking. Now we can drop down onto the human level.

If you're in an abusive situation, get the F out. If you grew up with a crazy narcissist abuser parent, doesn't mean you have to kick it with them all the time, right? It's not to say, oh, I have this horrible traumatic situation and I attracted it and it's my fault. None of that. Although if you continue to follow the spirit path long enough, be it any of them, what people report over and over and over again is that the very things in our life that defined us, that we're the most traumatic, are also the most liberative if we're able to liberate ourselves from them. And so, you know, this critical moment in time where I don't think women and men have ever felt more discontent. I mean, I don't know. Each generation tends to

think we're the most special. But I do think there's something, there's some science around it. We're our generation. You're a little younger than me, I think, but like, we're having the least amount of sex of like any people on the planet, more and more people reporting, not having had sex in years that are like in their twenties and thirties, and maybe even thinking that they don't want to, I mean, this, the younger generation in their teens and twenties are even saying they're avoiding it, which maybe is good in some ways. But I think it really is this great chaos that comes before the reconstruction. And I do have a ton of hope for us in the future. I do think it's going to require that we take really seriously what the internet is doing to our brains and our relationships

and figure out how to, you know, maybe smoke one cigarette a day instead of like 50,000 cigarettes a day. Yeah, seriously. And it is interesting when you look at those stats and it is a bit concerning. And I think social media plays a role. I think people feeling less connected to each other, that loss of rituals, I think is a really important thing to note. This is something just for my own personal day-to-day, I've started implementing a little ritual that I do every morning and it really has helped me throughout the day. And I would encourage everyone listening to find some sort of ritual that you do every morning. And it really has helped me throughout the day. And I would encourage everyone listening to find some sort of ritual that you do in the morning that speaks to you and feels aligned. But it really can make a difference of a good and a bad day.

Kind of tracking it back to Ayurveda, the true spiritual mother of Ayurveda is yoga, is the Sanatana Dharma, this way of aligning our lives with, you know, one of my teachers, Dr. Claudia Welch, she said, your morning routine is a ritual that makes a very clear statement in nonverbal terms about what you want your life to be about. It is not about one more thing on our to-do list of wellness. It's about my body's a temple and I want to do the best I can to open and honor the temple so that I can live on the planet longer and healthier so that I can do the practice of awakening to my soul. It's harder to do. It's not impossible, but when you have like, you know, pain in your body, it can be harder to follow a spiritual path. And so ritual is the realm

of the symbolic and the symbolic is the realm of the feminine. It is the part of all of our brains, men, women, and everyone else on every spectrum. It is the part of our brains that is 100% not the intellect. It is nonlinear. It is nonverbal. It is not the intelligence that we are all, we're really bloated in. And then we have this other side that's totally atrophied, that ritual and particularly symbolic life. You know, one of my teachers says,

not too long ago, our ancestors in the medieval times in Europe, I'm assuming you're European, but this is in every tradition. But I was like, oh, this is so cool to learn about medieval ritual. Our ancestors believed that there were gnomes and fairies that lived in the woods. Now, we can't go back necessarily there, right? They believed there were spirits that lived in their tools. And that when they would make something as a blacksmith, that the power of the spirit and the tools could be invoked by honoring the tool.

And that the power of their ancestors, who were shoemakers or blacksmiths before them, through a simple ritual, they were connected with their ancestors and they were connected with the power of the tool. Now, what does that do? What it does is it de-centers your ego. It de-centers you and it nests you within the whole realm of the ancestral world and the material world that also has the right to be here and has a spirit. And so I'm speaking of medieval Europe. Ayurveda says the same thing.

When you travel down the road in India, there's a tiny little stone that represents the Shiva Lingam, the masculine force of the phallus, right? There are rocks and stones and representations of symbols of the masculine and the feminine of all the faces of the gods and goddesses. They're everywhere. In India, I took a little tuk-tuk, you know, a little taxi. And I remember I paid him the money and he did a ritual before he put it in his little

cash box to Durga, the divine mother. You know, like we've lost that, especially as Americans and Westerners. And so this piece of, and we've lost the tradition of it. So what's the answer? You can go back to your tradition and save your own tradition from the bullshit that it should let go of, right? And, or make your own new ones. And so I think that's a tall order, but it's what we're called to do. Yeah, and you said something earlier that is pertinent to this,

which was magic with nature. We've kind of lost in losing these rituals and our connection to the spiritual world, whatever your beliefs may be, we've lost this connection to nature, to mother earth. And this is something that I talk about a lot from, you know, more of a food perspective, but there is a spiritual realm to that, that I think is really important because the more disconnected we become from Mother Earth and our food and the soil and just that there is something bigger going on around us, the more disconnected we become with ourselves and with our community. Because we've lost that sense of connectiveness. And I think when you start to tap into that again, I mean, for me, it sounds so simple, but it really started for me as going on daily hikes and just putting myself back in nature

and realizing how much I was really craving just that reminder of just how small we are in this world and how important it is just to get on nature and how important it is for your mental health and not only your mental health, but just your overall wellbeing and your wellness. That's a beautiful remedy. And Mother Nature's the master nervous system and she's homeostatic.

She has moments of fight, flight, freeze, like we all do, but she's the master regulator of the nervous system. And so I want to just share with your listeners something that has been really helpful for me in regard to crafting routine and ritual. It's available. The realm of nature and spirit is available instantly. And I think that's really important because we can feel so

disconnected that we think we have to go on a yoga retreat or go out, even go out on a hike, which I encourage us all to do, but it's always available. The teachings say that the divine is waiting for you and you have to take the first step, but then the divine runs at you a thousand steps. And so just stopping before we eat, putting the hand on the heart, or before I do the podcast, like spirit divine, you know, I say the word God because it resonates with me. Like, let me be of service to this moment. And let the ancestors move through me and let, let, let me do honor even to the borrowed tradition of Ayurveda. Like, like use me. Just, just that tiny, I call it like this holy pause.

Right now, I'll send it to my mom. So don't worry. She loves this, right? I talk about my mom on my podcast all the time. So I'm on vacation with my mom for five days. And I'm like, wow, that was a tall order to go hang out with your mom for five whole days straight. All your shit's going to come up. And I'm like, whoa, I was ready for this, right? And before we kind of started our journey, I just said, mom, can we just, and I'm already feeling anxious, right? I'm like, mom, can we just pause? And I want to just hear

what your intention is for this trip. And she was kind of like, what? And I, and then I said my intention and I said, you know, I don't know how many more trips I'll have with you. And I just want to be with you and want to know you more, who you are now. And then I thought I said this really beautiful thing. And then she said, I want to just try to understand how you're an introvert and I'm an extrovert. And you just don't want to do anything fun. You want to stay in the house and I just need to try to understand you. And it was like her way of being like, I want to have compassion to the way that you're weird. And I, and I want to have compassion the way you're

weird. Right. And that little tiny intentional one could call a couple's ritual. It happened to be a mother-daughter event. Really shifted the whole timber, a tone of the experience together. And so sacred ritual is of dire need in the world right now. You know, my friends and I, every time we get together, pretty much voice what our intentions are for the hangout. And it's become a really beautiful practice. It obviously doesn't happen all the time, but I've found myself in a really amazing group of very intentional humans. And it is really incredible to see how much of a difference it makes in your life and your connectedness with your friends or,

you know, anyone, your family. Yeah. Okay. And one more important one. Mother nature is also waiting. So very simple practice that you can do is just go out to the ocean or the water or the woods or your backyard. Or if you live in LA and you can't get soon, just go to your house plant, right? And you just, it sounds super hippy dippy, but you thank this thing for its existence and you ask it to be in communication with you. Like I'm here and I'm listening.

This unseen world is waiting on us to say to it, I'm here and I'm listening and I want a relationship with you. The same thing can be said about you with your dreams. Hmm. Nature is, is an, is a, in a way more connected to the realm of our dream psyche than our waking psyche. And so I did a lot of work in Hawaii with going into water a lot and communing with water and it would show up in the dreams as messages, you know? And so this whole thing can start to take on this very mystical, sacred quality where you're like, damn, I'm way more complex than I ever knew. And those are just some simple little things before you go to bed at night, say to your dreams, I'm here. I don't think that you're just the mental detritus that I just throw out each night. I believe that

you have sacred value and are communicating with me and I'm willing to listen. And you will be astounded at how your dream life absolutely starts to increase. And if you can even write them down the next day, it's even better. So I feel like you already answered this question just now, but what I was going to ask you is, I think a lot of people right now are struggling to really tap into their own personal gifts and their power in the world. And it shows up in ways like of, you know, not really understanding what their soul's purpose is and, you know and whatever, however you want to call it. So how would you say people tap into embracing their power and figuring it out?

Would it be kind of what you were just saying? Are there other ways to do that? I think there's this idea that we're all going to figure out our soul's purpose and then all the clouds will open and we'll be like manifesting money and sex and abundance and beauty. And like, this is all fine.

It's the realm of Lakshmi, like the goddess of love and abundance and sex and babies and bonbons and all of that. And that like the soul's, what is my purpose? What is my purpose? And I think what can be more helpful rather than zero, because I'm, I'm, I think I'm somewhat, this is going to sound super haughty, but I'm somewhat of a master at being able to really hone in on people's purpose. I'm really good at it.

That's cool. And over years and years of working with people one-on-one in our school, I've come to realize that that's like not super be more important than finding your sole purpose is to be in contact with all of the ways and all of the parts of our personality that continually would make us believe that we aren't worthy of that purpose or that are unconsciously dragging us away from that purpose or are, okay, so what I'm saying is shadow work. What I'm saying is going to the dark may be more helpful in, quote, unveiling the sole purpose than honing in constantly on what is my sole purpose.

There are ways to get to our sole purpose through the pathway of light. So, you know, what do you love to do? What would you be doing if you had all of the money in the world? That's going to give you a really good idea, like what you're kind of here for. And it might be like making wax, beeswax candles,

or like taking care of old people in a retirement center. Like it doesn't mean being famous or being big or known, right? And so there are light-filled ways of working with it. But I've found that getting rid of the, or not getting rid of, but being aware of what is actually in the way of that already happening can liberate the thing that you mentioned, which is power. We need a lot of personal power to be able to do this work in the world. And so if we're carrying around all this repressed stuff that is very intent on keeping it in the darkness, it's going to be really hard to do that purpose. And so what does

that look like practically? It looks like get a really great therapist, right? Like spend the money on that, you know, join communities like ours. It's not to sell my course, but get in any kind of coursework where you are being deeply prodded and inspired to open up your perspective outside of that which you are being fed by the news media and social media and the parents that you grew up with and the culture that you lived in get in communities that foster greatness and foster individuality of all beings and in that context need support. That's the community aspect. And then the missing, and then the last missing piece is have some kind of daily practice. It could be go do your Catholic church, go to your Jewish synagogue, get down on your yoga mat. For me,

it's waking up and I have a non-negotiable. Every morning I wake up, I read my spiritual books and I meditate and I write down my dreams and I attempt to work with them and I meditate. That is the way that I am tuning in to that proclamation of what I want my life to be about. And here's the other thing. I just could talk about this forever, as you can see, but what I just want to share with people so badly is that it can change a lot over a lifetime what you're meant to be doing. Every single day is an opportunity to interface with other beings and yourself that is going to reveal to you all your emotional triggers with help. We sometimes need if we've had a lot of trauma, and that's most of us, right? We can learn to digest that stuff. And the purpose is revealed through that initiation daily.

Does that make sense? It's just not so simple as just figuring it out. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. And I think it's hard. We can only give people guidelines on how to kind of navigate this, but ultimately it comes back to what you were saying earlier where ultimately you have to develop a deep relationship with yourself and really get to know you. And then you will learn that you have the answers,

but you have to cultivate a very deep relationship with yourself and be willing to look at the shadowy parts and look at the dark parts and address the traumas. I say this often that we've all been dealt the cards that we've been dealt. We've all been dealt the traumas that we've been dealt and all of us have them. We all have hard cards that we've been dealt with, but the true test of life is what we decide to do with those cards. You know, like we say, okay, this happened to me and I can make two choices. I can either decide to become a victim of the trauma

that I, you know, of the card that I was dealt, or I can say, okay, this happened to me and now it's my responsibility to do something about it. And I think that's a big piece of it is learning to love all parts and all sides of ourselves and addressing the traumas that we have and learning how to have kindness and compassion for ourselves and learn how to quiet that inner critic and yeah, and learn to love ourselves. What can also be beneficial to that journey you spoke of is, and this is very,

very important in Ayurveda and many, many religious traditions is not to have a guru like, ew, gross, right? Like we're beyond that time. We're not interested in just blindly bowing to people and giving away the power. But to have a wise person, maybe an elder in your life who can act as a helpmate to you, seeing the parts of yourself that you're unaware of, I think can be for my own journey. I wouldn't be sitting in front of you if it weren't for my mentor and my teachers. I meet with my mentors and teachers two and three times a week. I just pray God keeps blessing me with enough money to afford my therapists, right? And I don't have shame around that because we say that word therapy as if, as if we all have, I don't even like the term mental illness. It's complete crap. Nobody has, I mean, there are people with legitimate

mental illnesses, right? But most people are just freaking out and anxious for very reasonable reasons. It's a completely natural response. If you put a mouse in a maze and feed it shit and cocaine, it's going to act like a crazy mouse. That's what's occurring. I really want to spread that message that we don't have a mental illness. We have a natural response to a society that has lost symbol. It's lost its connection to nature. It's lost its eldership and indigenous roots. Most of us, especially, I mean, in Australia, Canada, the United States, but all over the world now, we've been ripped from our motherland. When you're ripped from your motherland, it causes you to forget your ancestral stories.

These are natural responses. And so to have a mentor, an elder, it can be your grandmother, it can be your therapist, it can be your teacher. But to have someone, especially those of you who are listening that are younger and even older, but especially young people that can hold you and mirror back that which you're unaware of. Because even if we have all the good intentions in the world and we're all fired up and we wanna bust through our limiting beliefs and just choose the path of goodness,

like sometimes it's really hard. And so having support is super, super valuable. And hopefully, you know what a great mentor will do is they'll support you in you being able to find and access that internal teacher. That was really powerful what you just said. Thank you for sharing that. Before we go, is there anything else that you feel is very pertinent for people to know about Ayurveda, about modern times that we're living in, really anything that you find helpful. I've said so much.

I just want to end by saying, Courtney, to you, with your real foodology that I did a little light cyber-stalking of this morning, you're a closet Ayurveda goddess in disguise. You are a yogini in disguise. You are doing goddess god work on the planet because you're making, you are ripping the Band-A're making, you are ripping the bandaid off and you are bringing truth serum to what is going on in the food industry. And as, you know, just your sister that you never knew you had, I just want to say good job and that keep going, like blow it up, be honest, you know, and I just think you're doing, you're really doing that work.

And for everyone out there listening, you know, just the more we can take a holy pause in our day, put our hand on our heart and just say, for me, the mantra a lot of time is like, what if none of this? And most of the time I'm talking about myself. What if none of this were a problem to be solved? And my heart opens and my energy shifts

and then I can get up and solve problems. Wow. Yeah, also thank you for what you said. I was brought to tears with that. I really appreciate that. I felt very seen. Thank you. You seen. Thank you. You are.

Thank you. Before we go, I ask all of my guests this question, and I'm very curious to hear what your answer is. What are your daily non-negotiables? Or they can also be weekly, but things that you prioritize to take care of your health. I just had the crazy, I'm like a goofball in case you haven't noticed. People ask me this a lot. Wouldn't it be just so funny? It's like, I wake up and take a shot of whiskey, y'all, I smoke half a joint, I get on Tinder, and then, yeah, no.

I actually have a funny story if you want to hear really quickly. Yeah, of course. I had Rikki Lake on recently. And her original health non-negotiable, I think it was something about going on hikes. And then right before we finish recording, she goes, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no. I actually need to change that. She goes, you know what my number one daily non-negotiable is? She's like eating an edible with my husband and having amazing sex every night.

And I was like, awesome. The real truth comes out, Ricky. My non-negotiable, I already shared with you. And you know, unless I'm really sick or it's, you know, I try to also break my own rules. So like one day I'll be like, fuck it, man. I'm not going to meditate. And I do that as a spiritual practice because I'm so disciplined. You know, Gabrielle Roth says you have to be really disciplined to be a free spirit. And so my discipline is that morning thing, you know, of just sitting down and trying to open my heart into a creative force that's bigger than me and getting my heart right with God, as we say, like in the Christian tradition, you know, and then asking to be used. And then I'll tell you, there are some days when I am cray cray inside where I have so many thoughts and worries and,

you know, resentments and all that storm and, and to be able to really be with myself in that, not just when I'm feeling good and feeling peaceful. That's been really powerful, that morning meditation. There's a reason why the Ayurvedic texts say that if you want to change aspects of your childhood, meditate in the morning because it is the birth of the day. And if you're afraid of death, meditate at night because it's the birth of the day. And if you're afraid of death, meditate at night because it's the death of the day. And so want to work out your childhood issues, meditate in the morning. That's probably a lot of us. It's definitely me. So that speaks to me. Well,

please tell everyone a little bit about Shakti School and where they can find you. Thank you. Yeah, we have a website, theshaktiscool.com. We run a yearly, once a year, we start on January 18th, 2023. We have a school for women and people that identify as women. And so we're an Ayurveda certification course, but really I call it like lady life, good witch school. We're all about wise women's traditions from all over the world. And we have 15 different teachers from different disciplines, primarily with an Ayurvedic lens,

but also Western medical doctors on staff who are kind of coming together with ancient medical Ayurvedic medical wisdom. So they can find us there. We're on Instagram, the Shakti school. And yeah, we hope that any of you that resonate just come join us in January for a year. I want to join. We'll have to talk about this later. Oh my God, I want you there, mama. You would love it. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this episode. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship.

I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.