The Liz Moody Podcast - Sahara Rose — Telling The Real From The BS With Ayurveda, Making Money Off Your Own Brand, And Manifesting Your Dreams (Even If Your Parents Don’t Approve)

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

Sahara Rose (@iamsahararose) is one of the world’s leading Ayurveda experts, but there’s so much more to her story than that. The daughter of immigrants, Sahara had to risk losing it all to find her life path—and while it was (obviously) eventually worth it, it wasn’t an easy journey. Now, Sahara is the best-selling author of The Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda and Eat Feel Fresh (both of which have a forward from Deepak Chopra—a crazy story that she shares in this episode). We sat down in Sahara’s gorgeous apartment to talk about how she followed her calling, even when her parents didn’t approve. We talk about the health crises that lead her to Ayurveda, including losing her period completely, and how Ayurveda helped her heal. I also make her answer all the nitty gritty questions I’ve ever had about the validity of Ayurveda—what’s worth applying to your life, what’s BS, and what should be tweaked a bit for the modern world. Sahara is a master female entrepreneur, so we also get into the nuts and bolts of building your own brand, including how she grew her following and what parts of her business really make her money. Sahara is a mover and shaker who’s changing the world—and she’s so so open about everything from her personal life to her finances, which you all know I love. I’m giving away a copy of Sahara’s new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh, over my Instagram—enter to win on @lizmoody. PS: Wanna come to my book launch in NYC? It’s on April 9. Snag your spot here. PPS: My book comes out next week!! If you want to pre-order, you can get a free 3 day soup cleanse—just screenshot your receipt and send to [e-mail]. More details here. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Siete Foods, one of my favorite brands in the country today. They make better-for-you Mexican American food, including drool-worthy grain free chips, grain free tortillas, cashew queso, and hot sauces. I literally cook with their products daily—the cassava grain free tortillas are my absolute favorites; they have a great chew and don’t break apart when you roll or fold them. I also LOVE the Habanero Hot Sauce, which isn’t too spicy but packs in a robust flavor that elevates whatever dish you use it on. You can find Siete products in stores around the country, or you can order them online at sietefoods.com using the code LIZ for an extra 10% off. Come tell me what you think on Instagram (@lizmoody)—I’m so excited for you to fall in love with the brand like I have! Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthyer Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody. I'm a writer. I'm a cookbook author. And that's actually why I'm really stressed out this week. My cookbook comes out on April 9th, which, as of the time of recording this, is a week away. So I have invited a special guest star onto this week's introduction. Special guest star, do you want to introduce yourself?

This is the person making me sane and calm right now. Hello. It's Zach Mitchell here. I'm Liz Moody's husband. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's pretty special. You guys might remember Zach from the first episode of the Healthier Together podcast,

which I kind of call my practice episode because I never interviewed anybody on a podcast, and so I was using Zach to get all my kinks out. And it was perfect for some reason. You thought it was perfect? Yes. Have you ever been interviewed on a podcast before, though? That time. Just, yeah.

So you're not a lot to compare it to? No, my reference points are very limited. All right. So what's the behind the scenes of the launch? a cookbook process that people don't get to see that you've gotten to witness meeting in real life. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me to be mostly a lot of self-care, a lot of like hanging in the baths with crystals and no, no. I'm giving him such a look right now. It's very stressful. There's like, there's so much coordination. There's so many kind of, I guess, balls in the air for

lack of a better turn of phrase that are trying to all stay up there until the ninth comes around. And then they all fall. Then they all fall. And then they continue on. And definitely as you start what is basically going to be a pretty cool national book tour. I know. I'm really excited. Yeah.

So actually, like, orders of business, I'm trying. Zach made me like literally, we're sitting down in our living room floor and we're drinking wine because he came home and it was like 10.30. And I was incredibly stressed out. And so he was like, we're going to do the podcast intern. It's going to be fun. So this is us trying to have fun. But orders of business.

If you are in New York City, come to my book launch. It's on April 9th. You can find all of the details on Liz Moody.com slash events. We're going to have wine. We're going to have cocktails. We're going to have snacks. You've got a signed copy of the book. And if you already have a copy of the book,

you can give it to somebody you love a lot or some of you don't love. Someone you want to get healthier together with. Somebody you want to get hashtag healthier together with. So yeah, if you're in New York City, definitely come out for that. And stay tuned for other events. Also, if you have not yet pre-ordered the book, this is the last week you can get the soup cleanse. Isn't that exciting?

Yes. I love the soup cleanse. Do you have you done it? Yeah, a couple of times. Really? How do you feel? Great. Regular.

It makes Zach regular. That's my tagline for the soup cleanse. It's a three-day soup cleanse, and I normally charge, I don't know, like 10 bucks or something for it, but I'm giving it as a free bonus to anybody who pre-orders the health together cookbooks. So if you do pre-order it from literally anywhere, like your local bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, whatever, just screenshot the receipt.

And then without like your credit card, you can just like some proof that you bought it. Or you can screenshot your credit card and phone. No, don't do that. You go shopping. And send that to Liz at Liz Moody.com. And I will send you the soup cleanse. Yeah, do it.

Anything else to say, Zach? Do you know anything about our guest today? You were kind of listening to that episode as I was playing it earlier to go over it. Yeah, I'm really excited about actually listening to it from the start. I listened to it the last quarter and a lot of like a lot of cool tips. Ayrvetic tips. It's Ayurveda. Yeah. Do you know about Ayurveda? What are your thoughts on Ayurveda? You like doll? And I know that I shouldn't be exclusively smothering Guy on myself as a solution to everything now. That's what Sahara Rose time. Yeah. So today's guest is Sahara Rose and she is one of the

world's leading Iyerveda experts. I love her. She's such a cool person and she's really bringing Ayurveda into the modern age. She wrote The Idiot's Guide to Iroveda and she also wrote a cookbook called Eat Feel Fresh, which is really a fabulous cookbook. And she has a podcast called The Higher Self podcast. You can find her at I Am Sahara Rose on the internet and also on Instagram. Have you, do you know your Dosha? Absolutely not. No, not at all. I have no, I know, what? She explains what your dosha is in this episode, but essentially we're all born with all three dosha,

which I didn't actually know. And then your dosha get out of balance. So I think when you're feeling like anxious, as I often am, your Vata's out of balance. And then if you feel like lethargic and tired, sometimes your other dosha are out of balance. Do you ever feel like you're lethargic and tired? Oh, yeah.

Or sometimes there's one I thought that was you where she was, it's the docha where you're like, why aren't other people getting this stuff done? I'm getting all this stuff done. Why isn't everybody else up on my level getting stuff done? That's like your cough out of balance, I think. So I've been sitting here this whole time trying to make a joke about your dosha being a dosa. And here we are.

Did you come up with one? No, that's it. That's the whole thing. You love doses. I do love doses. And they're very similar words. I love doses so much. Doses are like chickpea pancakes, crepes.

Like chickpeak grapes. And I'm obsessed with them. I think they're the yumiest thing. ever. So on this episode, it wasn't a good joke, though. No. No, that wasn't a great joke. Drink more wine. On this episode of the podcast, we talk about so many things. So I really, like, I have a lot of questions about Iroveda and particularly like what's valid and what's not and what's validated by modern science and what's not. And so I kind of grilled Sahara, for lack of a better word. I was like, wait, why do you think this? And what about this thing? And I was

kind of contrarian, but she dealt with it rather well. I think. So if you ever have any questions about Iyerveda or what's legit, I guess, and what's bullshit, I get into that with her. Also, we talk about her life story and how she lost her period at one point and she was fainting and just had a total health crisis. And then she found Ayurveda and basically turned everything around, which is a pretty incredible story. And then we also talk, she's, Sahar is like really a super hustler, which I found super inspiring. You know, I just left my full-time job to lean into my own brand. And she worked a full-time job very, very briefly.

But she's kind of leaned into having her own brand. And we talk a lot about the business of having your own brand and how to make money on it very specifically. I ask her very specific questions. And we also talk about how her whole life path was completely against what her parents thought her life path was going to be, which I thought was what you actually probably really relate to that, don't you, Zach? You know, my parents have been very, very supportive of my life path, but in general are sometimes

confused as to what I do. Because I work in technology. You work in technology. And I just think it is interesting when you feel like your parents sort of have one vision of what your life should be. And then you have to be like, that's not what my life. I'm thinking particularly about with you, like, moving away from California. Oh, well, those are just big lifestyle decisions. They are.

Yeah, it's hard. And it's hard to square what your loved ones have, have in mind for you. with what you need to do for yourself. Yeah, I think it is. And I think it's hard to listen to your own voice sometimes because you have so many other voices in your head telling you what's right and what's wrong. And Sahara's done a really incredible job.

She's a first generation person. Her parents are from Iran. And so they worked so hard to give her the life that she had. And then I think that it felt really intense and hard to move away from that. And so I found that to be an incredibly fascinating story. And then she also talks about advice detoxes, which I love. Do you feel like your person who asks people for advice a lot or no?

I feel like I'm often in the state of giving advice that I feel like I'm not remotely qualified in giving. But do you like, if you're going to send an email, will you send it to people to read before you send it? You do that to me sometimes, but I feel like not as much as I do to you. I love close reading other people's things. And as such, if somebody else loves doing it too, then I will give it to this. them, but very few people are really interested in reading my emails.

First of all, I'm sorry. I don't think I would want to read them. It's rough. Tom, if you're out there, thanks. But I do think it's interesting because I'm always more minds in the room, the better and stuff, but it's interesting the idea that you're not honing your own muscles when you're doing that and you're not honing your own sort of instincts and advice. So I find that fascinating.

Anyways, I feel like we should get into the episode. If you guys like Zach being here for my intros or if you guys want another, I guess it's not a solo episode. It's kind of like a duo episode, but like a healthier together, the OG, the Zach and Liz. Let me know on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody. Also check my Instagram because, as always, I'll do a giveaway with this episode. I think I'm going to give away Sahara's new book, which is Eat, Feel Fresh. It's this amazing modernized Ayurvedic cookbook and I love it.

So go over to Atlas Moody and you can enter to win that. Yeah, I think that's it actually. Let's do it. Let's do it. Here's the podcast with Sahara Rose. I hope you guys love it. All right, Sahara, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure. I want to ask first. I've always wondered, is Sahara Rose your real name? It is not. My actual name was Sara. So similar to Sahara, Sarah. And it's so funny, I've never been asked us on a podcast before. But when I was living in Bali, I was going through a lot of kind of spiritual awakening.

and I realized that I've never resonated with my name. And it always felt like it was this name given because in English, my name is Persian, but in English schools, they just call me Sarah. And I just never felt like a Sarah felt so, like basic and ordinary and just like not me. And in Bali, like, no offense, your name is Sarah. Right. But it just, it wasn't vibrating. And in Bali, a lot of people choose their own names.

So I'm friends with like Phoenix and like Kali and like, you know, all these people. Like in Balinese culture or people who kind of go to Bali on a spiritual, okay. There's that spiritual Ubud Bolly community and I was the first I was like I can't change my name like I can't do that and then I was in a breathwork session and it came through this like memory. I don't know if it was a memory I made up or a memory that actually happened in a past life but that I was this belly dancer in this harem and I was so suppressed and I wasn't able to share my beauty my radiance my sensuality I was just stuck and it was very kind of symbolmatic of where I was in my life at this time and I remember just like seeing like this vast desert of nothingness and a rose growing through it. And that rose was the opportunity, the beauty that exists in this vast nothingness. And the name Sahara Rose just came through. So now does your friend, your friend's family, does everybody call you Sahara? Everyone calls me Sahara. Yeah. My last name Katabi actually means author in Farsi. In Farsi and Urdu in Arabic and in Hindi. So my like ancestors were actually the first authors in the Persian Empire. And no one has been an

author like since then. So I keep my last name, Katabi on the books. But yeah, my mom and stuff, they'll still call me Sara, but most people, friends and stuff call me Sahara. Like your fiance and stuff calls you Sahara. He actually calls me Sarah too. Oh, interesting. Because when I met him, it's almost like an intimate thing. Intimate thing. Because when I met him, I was for some reason, I was telling I met him on Bumble, literally. And for some reason, when he asked me, he's like, oh, Sahara, your real name. I just want to be like, no, I want you to really know the real me where it's like other guys that I don't give a shit about. I'm like, yeah, sure, call me Sahara. It felt like this, like, almost a stage, a stage presence. And I feel like Sahara really resonates me and, like, who I am vibrational. But

Xara is like the child me. It's almost like a pet name. Yeah. At this point, that's interesting. I'm so fascinating. I changed my name. I was born Carrie Ann Elizabeth Moody. And then I go by, I changed my name to Liz when I was 13. And I kind of regret it because I feel like I could have gone more creative. You know what I mean? I like Liz. Liz. Liz. resonates for me so much more than Carrie Ann, but I'm always, I find names fascinating. You're like, why don't I go with rainbow or butterfly or something? I thought about blueberry. Yeah. Like very seriously, but a lot of people who are like, you got to do something that is related to, I don't know. But I like Liz more, but I just think names are fascinating. There's a bunch of

psychological studies that show that you're more likely to do something. My last name is Moody and my dad is a psychologist and my sister is studying to become a psychologist or like you do the thing of your name because it's familiar and something, which is really interesting with the writer thing that you said. Yeah. I think that's fascinating. Yeah, because it was never something that it was told to go be a writer, but it just came through. Maybe I just kept hearing the word kittab, katab. That was like my subconscious was like, write books. That's so interesting. Okay. So you've lived what I would consider. I like to think of my podcast is like that I'll have what she's having podcast and I really like what you're having. You've lived a very brave and exciting and different life. And I want to figure out sort of like where that started.

You grew up in Boston. And when did you sort of make this first big leap away from sort of a traditional life path? Yeah, I mean, I was always a weird kid for sure. That was always the word people would use to describe me. Well, when I was 12, I started practicing yoga. And from practicing yoga, I started to learn more about consciousness. And I started to read books of people by Deepak Chopra. Then when I was about 15, I begged my parents to let me go volunteer at a prison in Costa Rica.

So I lived in a prison and I was like helping the children of the inmates. How did you even know that that was like a thing to do? I would go on this website called idealist.org that still exists and it has volunteer opportunities around the world. So I would find then from there I found another volunteer opportunity in Vietnam and Thailand and another one in Nicaragua. And did you want to do these just because you had a sense of the inequality of the world or to have adventures, different, like what was the impetus?

I always knew that this life was for helping others. that was a thing I knew for sure. I'm like, this life is not for me. This life is for me to be in service. And I always looked up to people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi and I was like always looking for okay, how can I be the most of service person as possible? So that's what made me want to volunteer and just like immersing myself in another culture and living with the local people like sleeping on the floor at them, working in the rice

fields, all of it. I just wanted to be there. I didn't want this life to be easy, which is a weird thing to say. and then I was going to sign up for the Peace Corps and dip. I was like, I'm out of this. Before college journey? I wanted to not go to college and join the Peace Corps. And my parents were so scared because my mom was a refugee.

And she's like, I escaped a war. And so you could, yeah, from Iran, like literally left Iran on her feet, walked through Turkey hitchhiked to Bulgaria, got asylum in the U.S. And then my dad went to like MIT and his freaking like rocket scientist pretty much. Like a literal rocket scientist. Like literally his three PhDs from MIT. His three PhDs. Oh my God.

So they're like, no, be safe. Be educated. We like did all these things so you could be here and you're trying to go to like Zimbabwe. I'm like first gen thing though is it's a it's a lot of weight. I have a number of friends and they did go the more traditional doctored lawyer path because they felt like they owed that to their parents. So it is a brave thing unto itself. And I imagine a very hard thing to say no, that's not for me.

It's so hard. And it's a constant back and forth grapple because, yeah, looking back on it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I just dipped to Zimbabwe. But like, actually, there's a lot of feeling guilty and feeling bad and feeling like, am I taking this for granted? Because the projection that you're getting back is like, oh, because you had it so easy, you're trying to make it hard. But we had it so hard. And we now know how important and how incredible it is to have security. And I wasn't valuing security. Now I know that it's like Maslow's hierarchy. It's like when you don't have your safety. and your basic needs met, that's all you want. From the needs you want your wants. From wants, you go for self-actualization. And we here in the U.S. or developed countries are fortunate enough to have those basics needs met that we're going after self-actualization, which doesn't make sense for someone. You know, in a refugee camp, they're not like, let me follow my purpose. They're like, how can I live until tomorrow?

So did you end up doing peace corps? No. So instead, I decided I would become an international human rights lawyer because that would be the way for me to still help people in different countries, but in a professional way. So I got into GW and I went to their international relations program and started doing a lot of NGO work. And then from working in those NGOs, I saw this is not how I want to operate. It was so bureaucratic. It was so raising money for the next fundraiser and the next fundraiser and like kissing people's ass. And I wanted to be interacting with people and helping them. And during this time, that's when my health problem started.

So it started with really poor digestion. And from there, I tried to go raw vegan. Then the whole raw vegan thing. Were you living in America? Were you living in like some crazy part of the world when all of that happened? I was living in Boston and I started traveling back and forth to India a lot. So it happened really in Boston, eating a lot of raw foods, not realizing that those raw foods were the wrong things for me to eat. They're like pineapple and coconut water for every meal in Antarctica.

And the digestive problem started, start to feel really cold all the time, started to feel really cold all the time, started to feel really like faint. I'd actually faint. My blood pressure would drop. I stopped getting my period, six months a year, two years. And you were raw vegan at this point? Yes, yeah.

Two years went by, didn't get my period at all. I went to so many different kinds of doctors. I couldn't sleep at night, had really bad insomnia, had really bad anxiety. All of these issues were happening and I couldn't figure out the reason why

the gastroenterologist, like you have IBS, the endocrinologist, you have hypothalamic aminorrhea, which is basically your brain is telling your body it's not safe to have its period. Because why? So they say that they don't know. Now I could tell you that, one, it was related to me not eating warm and grounding enough

foods. Two, it was related to me not knowing what I was doing with my life and that mental projection. And three, when you're not digesting food, you're not actually taking in the nutrients that you would need to have a healthy baby. So it's blocking you from getting pregnant because that baby would have been malnourished. So even though I was eating, I was chronically malnourished. And from that understanding, I started to learn more about holistic. I tried every diet you can imagine.

I became vegetarian. I was like 15. I even stopped that. I tried anything I could. And nothing was really working. And when I was volunteering in India, teaching health and sanitation in the slums of Delhi, and I decided, okay, while I'm here, I'll just visit the Ayurvedic doctor. I had heard of Ayurveda, but I didn't really know what it was.

And can you speak a little bit to, I think, in a moment. America, Ayurveda is viewed very differently than it's viewed in India. Can you speak a little bit to how it's viewed in India? Yeah. So Iyerveda is the world's oldest health system and it's the sister science of yoga based off of mind, body balance. So Iyerveda is sort of this like incredible school, source of knowledge that encompasses science, philosophy, lifestyle, nutrition, self-care, meditative practices. All of this goes under Ayurveda. The word literally means knowledge of life. So in order to be, you know, healthy, you must have full knowledge of all areas of your life. So there's Ayurveda in terms of self-care and Pancho karma and the spa. Then there's Ayurveda in terms of surgery. Like actual, the first ever recorded surgeries, Chikidza comes from Ayurveda. Traditional Chinese medicine was based off of Ayurveda. So it started 5,000 years ago in northern India, but it spread throughout the Silk Road because there was so much trade. So in year like 680 Chinese scholars came,

turned into Chinese medicine, moved to Egypt, moved to Greece. became what we now know as herbology. So they are basically the first people ever to realize that we can use foods and herbs to heal our bodies and that our mental state is a reflection of our physical state. And is it viewed in India today as sort of how we would view wellness and more woo-wooey stuff here? Or is it viewed as like something that a normal businessman who doesn't believe in any of that stuff would go see an Ayurvedic practitioner? Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of Indians are practicing Ayurveda.

but they don't know. So if you ask a typical Indian, oh, do you know my Ayurveda? They're like, yeah, like my grandma does it. Like, yeah, I use an Ayurvedic cream. But they're not realizing that a lot of their daily practices are Ayurvedic, you know, having warming foods and ghee and tongue scraping and all of these things that they may actually be doing. There's a little bit of that disconnect. And the reason why this happened was Ayurveda was the leading health system in India until the British rule. And when the British rule came in the 1900s, they said Ayurveda. is barbaric and it doesn't make sense. You're killing yourself.

This is not, this witchcraft. And they made it go underground. So it actually became illegal. Like you would get actually imprisoned to practice Ayurveda. So it moved from northern India to southern India, Kerala specifically, because there aren't really,

there's not really strong government there. It's more like, almost like these little small socialist city state type governments. So it was safe there, but they could no longer practice it in this like grandiose way that they could in a medical clinic. So it became a kitchen. science. So, oh, I have an eye infection. What can I do? Mm, gee. Oh, I have this. What can I do?

Oh, turmeric. It's just like whatever you could have you were using. So now, Ierva is almost like the one that we're doing now is not the original Iervita because the original Iervita had a lot more complexities because it was what we went to. It was like the doctor was Ayurvedic, whereas now it's more of self-care, nutrition, things that you can do yourself in your everyday home. However, Now there are clinics in India that do Ayurveda practices, but they're not the mainstream. The mainstream is now Western medicine in Ayurveda. That's so interesting. Okay.

So you were in India and you decided to go to one of those clinics. And what did they do to you differently than a Western clinic would have? Well, the moment she saw me, she's, oh, beta, beta, which means daughter. She's like, oh, you too pretty to never have a baby. I'm like, what? How does she know that I don't get my period? and she knew without me saying anything that my body was infertile, that I was at risk of Alzheimer's, because I wasn't getting nutrients in my head, and also a risk of osteoporosis.

And I was constantly getting injured at this point, constantly fainting, constantly forgetting things, no sex drive at all. So pretty much I was going into paramedopause, which is when your body's going into menopause, when you're not supposed to. And later on got confirmed with the blood test, I had zero estrogen and zero testosterone in my system. straight up was not creating hormones at this point. Why?

Because I'm following the wrong diet for my body and because I'm not in alignment with my truth. This is how much it's interconnected because those are the only two things I change and I've never had those problems again. Wow. And that's been confirmed by a blood test and all of that too. Via blood test that now my, after I found out about this, I felt so understood. She told me things that I didn't even know about myself. Is she just looking at you or what is when you go into the clinic?

is she like touching, like what is she doing to diagnose you? So yeah. So in Ayurveda, the first thing that we can tell is just your face. There's face reading involved. So she's reading my face. She's taking my pulse from the pulse. You can tell kind of the type of the docha of the pulse and the vitality of the person. And then a trained one can even tell specific imbalances.

She's looking at your tongue, which we see a lot in Chinese medicine, which is an Ayurvedic thing. And then you also do a questionnaire. So from that questionnaire, you're able to see the patterns. and mine was like vata, just all the vata. And I had heard of Ayurveda, heard of Vata, but I didn't realize like anxiety, insomnia, cracking joints, justice a problem with constipation, bloating, gas, low period, low sex drive, like dry skin, dry hair, dry hair falling out. Like I didn't realize all of these problems.

I thought those are just my problems. Not that they're all like under one category. So I'm like, oh my God, I need to learn everything about this. but at the same time her approach was so old school and just my science head was like that doesn't make sense what in what way what would she like yeah so i was plant-based and i still don't really eat ghee i still like my books don't have ghee in them i prefer to use sesame oil or plant-based oils and she's like pretty much just drink cups of ghee for every meal and eat all the kitchery always like forever um never can eat anything raw again not

even a raw fruit, 100% cooked. Everything has to be cooked immediately and consumed right after. I can't use a refrigerator at all. I can't meal prep, anything like that. A lot of different herbs and spices that I have to hand, like use a mortal and pestle to hand do. Like they can't even be previously ground before. The meal prep thing is interesting to me. Actually, I went to an Ayurvedic place in L.A. that a lot of celebrities go to. And the woman, there told me that you can never eat leftover food in Ayurveda because it's lost all of its like Agni, is that right? Yeah.

Agni is digestion, but it's like vitality. Yeah. Prana. Yeah. So she told me all that. I'm like, okay, I'll try. And, you know, in India, even it was hard for me to do, let alone when I'm coming back to Boston, being a college student, like, no way can I do this.

But I really wanted to follow the Ayurvedic approach. and there were also things that, so I decided I'd sign up for Ayurveda school, just learn everything about it. I signed up for this school, Iervatic nutrition and cooking. In Boston. No, in India. Yeah, in India. And while I was learning that, I was just like, okay, well, how does this work with what

I'm learning in science? And where did things that line up? And a lot of the things line up, for example, I'd said he's sports nutrition before. So endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph. It's essentially Votipatapha, endomorph. cava mesomorphous pitta, ectomorphous vata. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

So seeing those parallels, we're seeing 70 to 90% of serotonin is in the gut. We're seeing, you know, that people who are taking high-quality probiotics, their autism spectrum is decreasing. So we're seeing this mind-body connection. We're proving it with science. But some of the things like, for example, if you're making something called polyk panir, it's like a spinach stew, if you're cooking the spinach for like hours on end, and then you're blending it, like really are the nutrients of the spinach still left?

Right. Especially stuff like vitamin C, which goes away with cooking almost completely. Exactly. So I really longed for an approach that could take the best of Ayurveda and the best of modern nutritional science. And I'm looking for books, looking for everything, and there's really nothing. And I was like, I guess I'm going to have to figure this out and do it. And I'm like, okay, I don't even know about this.

I have all my own health problems. Like, who am I? But I figured I'd just put it on my blog. like whatever, five people would read it. And that's how this whole thing started. So that was in college? I was in college, yeah. Wow.

Okay, so let's do your health first. And then we'll do sort of the blog site in business. Let's start with the Vata, Pitta, Kafa thing. You said all of those were Vata symptoms. I think there's a lot of confusion about whether like I am a Vata, I am a kafa, I am a pita, or whether we're all just people and we go through phases of vatanness or pittanus or kaffanus. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah.

So the word dosha means energy, and we're all a combination of these three energies, Vata, Pitta, Kafa, and they reflect the elements. So Vata, mostly air, pita, mostly fire, kaffa, mostly earth. We're each born with a unique set of these three. So you may have been born primarily Pita, secondarily Vata, lastly Koffa, or whatever combination.

But you always have all three. So like you might be 70, 20, and 10, but you always have all three. Yes. There are some people who are like super, super, super vata and like hardly any koffa. There's some people like mine are actually pretty close, the ones that I was born with. Okay.

So some people may be even totally equal. That's about 10% of people. It's called Sama Agni, but most people, it's like a combination. That's pretty much your DNA. Okay. But then in life, you have your diet, your lifestyle, stress, all of these things that can knock our dosha's off balance. And that's called our vicaratee tea, the dosha constitution that we have today.

So when we're assessing our doci, when we're treating our dosia, we're treating what's out of balance. What is an excess? What is too high? So we would take a quiz at that point. I thought I was Vata, but actually I was just dealing with a Vata imbalance because now I see I'm not Vata. And Vata imbalance is the most common imbalance. I imagine particularly like in the modern Western world where we're very productivity focused and all of that types of stuff. Yeah. So Vata is air energy. So if you think about qualities of the air, it's quick. It's ever changing. It's moving. It goes from one thing to the next. So the multitasking. And quality is in air and food. You know, food that's cold, rough, dry, smoothies, salads, kale chips, granola bars. Pretty much,

think about, I would say what we deem as a healthy diet. Like, you wake up and you drink a cold smoothie and then you have a cold salad and then you have some cold snacks and you eat cold leftovers. It's all VATA. And then you're multitasking and all of this increases VATA. Traveling so much increases Vata. We're just ungrounded. So Vata in the mind, so we're born with different constitution. So Vata in the mind, when it's balanced, it's creativity. It's being eccentric. It's thinking outside the box.

So if you think about someone who's really airy, they're like coming up with ideas, and they dress cool and they're stylish, and they have like an edge to them. But then when the air gets excess, those thoughts can turn into a tornado. And that's the anxiety and the overthinking and the, and the, the insomnia and not being able to turn off. So if you're born though with your Vata at like 80%, are you just destined to be anxious and insomnia forever? No, it's just more likely that that's what the symptom when you're out of balance is going

to be. So someone when they're Vata out of balance, they're going to start noticing those things. A pita out of balance probably won't notice that. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. So different imbalances will show up in different ways. So some people, anxiety is like their go-to and they're off.

Some people it's anger. Some people it's sadness. And these are the different dosha. Is sadness, pita? Cofa. Caffa. Caffa. Anger is pita.

Okay. And how do you know what you're born with since it's all been messed up so much just by us living our lives? The best way is to actually work with an Ayurvedic doctor who can take your pulse. Okay. That's the best way to really know. Someone who really does a great job. Otherwise, you know, there's facial reading from the shape of your face like people, but it's not 100%. Because people with rounder faces like myself,

that's a kaffa face. So round face, full lips, big eyes, good skin, thick hair, baby-like features. Think, I don't know, Miranda Kerr or Oprah, like that type of skin, that type of face. That's koffa. Pitta faces, it's like angular. Think Madonna. It's strong jawline. Their bodies, they're muscular, they're fit.

They have this competitive edge to them. Think, yeah, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt. Jennifer Garner. Yeah, totally. then Vata, they tend to have like longer, gaunter faces, long. They're sometimes really tall, sometimes really short. They tend to be on like one side of the spectrum, but like lean, thin. Think Steve Jobs, Kira Knightley, Natalie, Natalie Portman, Ashton Coocher.

Based on my face, what would you say that I am? So you look like kind of a pita, like pita kofa to me. Okay. But you may have the Vata imbalance. So what's interesting is the face is not 100% because your body structure may be different. another way to tell is this wrist kind of assessment, I like to say. Put your hand around your wrist. And if you have a lot of, and this is to test your skeletal structure.

But if you have a lot of space, that's more of a vata skeletal structure. If it's like kind of just normal, maybe a little bit of space, it's like more pita. If maybe your fingers can't really touch, that's koffa. So I'm kaffa. Okay, so yeah, that's a kaffa skeletal structure right there. So yeah. I also have tiny baby hands. Yeah, kaffas are like babies.

They, they, you know, if you think about a child, we're highest in koffa as children because we're literally creating like the stepping stone of who we are. So we're, we have baby fat and we have round cute faces and we get like colds and flembs and mucus and sinus issues. These are all imbalances of koffa. Yeah, can you just talk quickly about common, a few common imbalances and then what imbalance for Ayurveda that would sort of map to? Yes. So for Vata mentally. it's insomnia, anxiety, physically, bloating gas constipation. Think of the air, excess wind, being cold, frigid, rough skin, eczema, oftentimes is vata related. Hitta, it's fire. So it's,

when you're on point, you're disciplined, structured, you know what you want, you're goal-oriented. They're the kind of people who are like, I'm going to do this, and they really go for it. The other side of that is sometimes life doesn't give you what you want. And sometimes you may really want something you set up your manifestation sheet on it and your roadblocks on how you're going to get there, but it doesn't happen. And that's when Pitta, when out of balance, can show up as frustration, anger, impatience, being like, why don't people care as much as I do? Why aren't people going as fast as I am?

Are there physical symptoms for Pita too, like anxiety or bloating or stuff like that? Yeah. So the physical symptoms of the Pitta would be heat, excess heat in the system. So heat and we call your digestion, like your agni, your fire. So excess heat in the stomach would be hyperacidity. So heartburn, inflammation, ulcers. And then heat in the system is irritation, inflammation, rosacea, hives, rashes, being really sensitive, sensitive to food, sensitive to skin. The acne, these are all signs. And just feeling hot, sweaty, if your sweat has a really strong, pungent smell, that's also

related to having a pita imbalance. Then kofa, the mental imbalances, when balanced, you're calm, supported, loving, caring, just had like that earthy energy. Again, think Oprah. But when out of balance, it could be longing for the past, stuck, resistant, depressed. Because think of the earth. Like the earth moves slowly and things are slow to change. So you could get really stuck in your routine and not want to change it up. And the most important thing for them is stimulation and trying new things as well as in the body,

feeling stuck heavy, gaining weight, especially people who are born with a lot of cougha tend to gain weight in their hips, thighs, lower body. Oh, yeah. No, I'm like all those things. Yeah. So for coughas physically can also lead to mucus. So anything that's related to mucus, like sinus infections, et cetera, even hypothyroidism is a long-term imbalance of koffa. So think anything that's stuck, heavy, dense, sluggish. For pita, think, flamed, angry on edge for Vata thing, overwhelmed, scattered. So do you correct, if you have a Vata imbalance, a pits imbalance or a cough imbalance, would you correct it in the same way?

Because I read a lot of Ayurvedic stuff and everybody seems to kind of be like, eat the kitchery, drink a lot of ghee, ground yourself more. But it would seem like since they're also different, if you had different balances, you'd want to do different things. Yeah. So how I put it in my book, Eat Feel Fresh is there are baseline things that you can do. and then there's customizations that you can do for the dosha. So let's say you're having a kitri.

Well, there are certain spices that are best for Vata, like doing more ginger and warming. Certain ones that are best for pita, which are the more cooling, the coriander fennel, certain ones that are kaffa super stimulating like cumin. Anything you do, you can do that further customization. Like we could all do a bianga self-oil massage, but Vata imbalance would be sesame oil,

pita imbalance would be coconut oil, coffin balance would be mustard seed oil. So taking that same practice and catering it to your dosha, which you can do with anything. I mean, there's long lists of foods that we could talk about for hours, but the best foods for balancing Vata, the best for Pita, the best for Kha. But then, yeah, there are some foods that can work for all three, but the whole diet won't be the same.

Okay. So when you were all Vata messed up, what did you do for that? Yeah. So I actually did stop eating raw foods for probably a year I didn't eat raw foods at all. And the second year, I was like literally none. Like literally not. Yeah. What does Ayurveda think about enzymes?

Just like taking digestive enzymes? No. A huge reason people make arguments for raw food or even including a little bit of raw food with every cooked meal is because it has enzymes in it that help you digest the rest of your food. Right. What does Ayurveda think about that? So Ayurveda says that it's all about how easy it is for your digestion to break it down. So something that's raw is going to have like cellular fibrous walls essentially.

and these walls require a great deal of energy for your body to break down. A lot of us don't have that energetic capacity in our digestive systems to actually be breaking it down and absorbing the enzymes and all of the nutrients. So they're saying, like, yes, in a perfect world where you are absorbing everything in it, that would be good, but the fiber is oftentimes too strong for our guts to digest. Also, keep in mind that in India, it's not really safe to eat raw foods. There are a lot of bacteria in the soil. there are amoebas, single said parasites in the soil.

In ancient Irobatite times, there were not refrigerators. You could not properly store your food. So everything had to be really cooked with spices, and you have to eat it immediately because you can't safely store it. So I think that's one of the big things that I talk about and eat feel fresh that needs to change because, hello, if you didn't have a refrigerator or a safe way to store your food, of course your suggestions are going to be different. So I do think that there is a safe way to eat raw foods, and I do eat raw foods now.

but I notice if I just came home from being cold all day, no, I'm not going to eat a salad. But if I'm feeling like it's a summer day and I'm like hot or if I'm talking and podcasting my pittas up, that's what I want. Okay. So you don't know raw food for a year. What else did you do? Yeah. So no raw food.

Even my exercise, I used to do a lot of just like spinning and like running and really fast. And I stopped doing that. I only was doing like really slow weightlifting and just like noticing the imbalances in my body that I had been skimming over. A lot of VATA especially have muscular imbalances, irregularities in general. So I was doing that a lot of ginger tea. I was drinking CCF tea, which is cumin, coriander, and phenyl seeds. Just steep those teas and steep those spices in water for about 10 minutes. And I was drinking that warm throughout the day.

And is that particularly for Vata imbalance or is that good for anybody? It's Tridosic. Yeah. Yeah. And what is it? What? Why do we drink that? Yeah.

So CCFT stands for a cumin imbalance. coriander and feral seeds. And the reason why we drink that is because it's the ultimate healing tonic for our gut. So the cumin seed helps reduce air, reduce gas. That's why in Indian and Mexican culture, they always use cumin with legumes with beans because it helps eliminate the gassiness. So that's why the cumin's air is a warming. The coriander, it's the seed of cilantro. So it's a very cooling, cooling kind of herb-y seed. So it's balancing for the pit. It's going to help cool it down, but it also has a lot of digestive and detoxifying benefits. Fennel seed, you know, it's also from the fennel.

So it has that cooling. It's going to help balance with the pita as well, but it's highly stimulating as well. So that helps with the kofa. So you add these three together. So if you only did cumin, it would have been too hot for pita. If you only did fennel, it could have been too cooling for vata. So that's why you want to do all three.

You put it in hot water. You let it steep. There are 10 minutes. I like to just do it the night before. just let the seeds steep in the water so it gets really like spicy and then just take like a hot thermos with you throughout the day and keep adding some of your spice water with the hot water and just drink that throughout the day and I even did this test that you can do on yourself to see if you're chronically dehydrated so you can set a timer in your phone for every 20 minutes like a little

alert and take a sip of the warm water particularly the spiced water and if you're thirsty after like three days every 20 minutes you realize you're just thirsty on your own that means that you were chronically dehydrated. So most of us were going after quantity of water instead of frequency, but frequency is actually more important because if our gut is, you know, our gut can only take in that certain amount of water at a time. So if we're constantly giving it, especially warm water, which requires no energy expenditure from our body. If you think about your temperature, it's 98 degrees. So if you have something that's really cold, it's a lot of energy for your body to bring up the temperature, which is going to take away energy from digestion.

So if you have that warm water every 20 minutes, in Iervita, they say that it's eight times more absorbable when it's warm and spiced water versus room temperature regular water. So try that. It's something easy and pretty much free that you can do. It's delicious. It's delicious. I mean, it's definitely a taste that at first you may be like, this is really weird. I think I'm drinking Indian food, but it definitely grows on you.

You could actually add some cinnamon. I do that a lot of times because I like the taste of cinnamon and cinnamon. And that doesn't mess it up. It doesn't mess it up. And cinnamon also has blood sugar balancing benefits. But I did that, really staying away from the raw food, staying grounded, walking outside with my feet on the earth in Boston. No, now at this point I had moved to L.A. when I was doing the healing.

Yeah. I was like, well, I also moved out of Boston, which is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, I had gone to IA.N. I was working as a health coach. Okay. Walk just timeline me. You were in India and then you kind of realized all this stuff, but you didn't put it into practice

right away. I was learning. I went to Iyerveda school in India and it started when I was in college. So that probably started when I was like 22. And then after I graduated, I decided to move to India. And then I lived in India for another full year and I completed everything there. Then I lived in Bali for a couple months and moved back to India for another probably eight months or so. And then by then I had enough of living in India. It's really tough, especially as a girl by yourself. And then I then I, wasn't sure where I was going to live and I kind of was in L.A. figuring it out. And then as I was telling you, then I ended up meeting my fiance and staying here. But like, yeah, the first year in our relationship,

I was in an intense healing. Like we cannot go to restaurants or anything and he's stuck by me. Wow. That's like a testament to a good man. So do you, have you ever worked a traditional nine to five? I had an internship at an ad agency when I was like in college for like a month and I was like, oh, I can't. But it was just, it's just not for me. Yeah. We'll get to the business. seven a second, but to finish the health story, so you, you were doing all of that. And it took you, did it take you a year to really feel different? Or did you feel different sooner than that? It took me probably a year to start to, yeah, digestively feel better. It probably took me closer to two years, though, to get my period back. Wow. Because getting your period back is tough.

Like if people listening have hypothalamic aminuria, which is essentially your brain, for some reason, is telling your body to not create eggs, that it's not safe. So you're not ovulating at all. You're not ovulating at all. That's sort of, you don't know exactly what to do. You can try the food angle. You can try the lifestyle angle. But it's like something that like your brain is just like sensitive to that until I think

it required a massive spiritual upgrade for me because, you know, it could have been my internal fear of having a child. Like who knows what it could have been? I really to this day won't be able to. tell you I did this one thing and that's, I took so many herbs. I did everything. And then I think what helped was I stepped into my femininity and into my womanhood. And in me like really stepping into that energy, I feel like that actually helped me embody it and create the hormones for it. You're listening to the healthier together podcast. Okay, I want to take a brief, brief break to

introduce you guys to a new sponsor who I am so, so, so, so excited about is one of my favorite food products in the world. I love them so much. And if you follow me on Instagram, you've probably already guessed who it is because I post about them literally all the time. It is Siette foods. They are Mexican-American healthy food brand that make some of the best most delicious food that I have ever had in my life. I grew up in California and Arizona. So I grew up obsessed with casidias and tacos and enchiladas and all of that. And when you start trying to eat better, it can be tricky to incorporate those types of foods into your life. And then, and then finally, Ziette came along and they truly changed the game.

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They're all kind of game changers in their category, but there are a few that have like a special, special place in my heart and in my kitchen. And those are the tortillas and the hot sauces. The tortillas, they have a couple different varieties. They're all completely grain-free. They're super clean and green. I love reading the ingredient lists of Siette products because they're like four or five ingredients and you know each one of them and you can understand all of them, which is great.

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And then you can roll it and make something like an enchilada and it won't get that like icky break that ruins everything. So I love the cassava one for that. And then there's also an almond flour one that has a little bit less chew than the cassava, but it also has a very nice texture and a little bit of a sweeter, nuttier flavor. So I love that one too. And then finally I'd say the cashew is also really really. really up there for me.

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hot sauce taste like? Message me on Instagram at Liz Moody. And I will talk to you for hours about Ciette. I love them so much. All right. Let's get back to the interview. So what was the inspiration for all that? So the Indian, the Ayurveda came from having this experience in India and needing a

solution for all your health problems. but you are so empowered in your femininity and more spiritual. Where did all of that come from? Your MIT dad? You know, I really believe that everything is bringing us to the same place. So your gateway drug could have been food. It could have been yoga. Could have been meditation.

But we're all here to raise consciousness. And for me, it started with how can I do Iervated to heal my gut so I can feel better? And then once I started feeling better, I'm like, what else is there to this? I mean, I've just spent all of my energy towards healing myself. And now that I'm healed, what do I want to do with this energy? And I think that's where a lot of people who are especially on a healing track, you almost lose your identity in the process. And I'm like, and now what?

And then I realized that just a lot of the emphasis I had put over like, should I eat this? Should I do that? Like imagine if I could put that energy towards something else. Imagine if I could put that energy towards service, towards really knowing myself, towards like really like embodying why I'm here. And also at that point, I knew I wasn't going to be the, the international human rights layer. And I was doing the health coaching, but I was also,

I feel like this is like, I don't know where this is going to go. And I honestly just signed up for IIN so I could like learn how to heal myself. I didn't even really want to be a health coach. And I think from there, getting that energy that finally I felt like my true self helped me understand, okay, well, what else is there to Iervita? and interestingly enough, Iyriveda is deeply connected to spirituality. So I started to learn about the chakras. I started to learn about more of the mind-body connection.

And then at that same time, letting go of a really hard relationship, having a really difficult relationship with my parents, letting go of identity, all of these things that everything in my life was shifting, that the only thing that I could really connect to is my soul. And now for me, it's like so much more of a spiritual thing than a food thing because I truly realize that at the root of so many different health problems is like a deeper, like spiritual yearning, something that needs to be looked at. And I really believe that this is the way that medicine and health is going.

And if I had known that earlier and if I had looked at that earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time about stressing about what kind of diet I should be eating. So do you think you need to do the diet first? Because in your case, you needed to feel physically good to be able to take the mental journey. So do you think you need normal people? Like everybody needs to physically heal their body first? Well, I think ideally they'd go hand in hand. Like ideally at that same time, I would be like questioning my soul and my purpose, but I didn't have that awareness at that time.

I don't think that we can like eat junk food and like think good thoughts and we're going to be fine. I think it's both. Like we have this physical body. We're here on this planet. Like there are actual things. But at the same time, it's not just the physical. So super pragmatically speaking, what did you do to bring?

your brain and to the next level and go on this spiritual journey. Yeah. So for me, I've always really learned kinetically, like through my body. So I started to do a lot of ecstatic dance. And that actually was like probably the biggest thing that changed things. I walked into this ecstatic dancing. I was like, what is ecstatic dance? Yeah. So ecstatic dance is essentially this like silent dance party where you're not allowed to talk. And the reason why you're not allowed to talk is, you know, if you're on a dance floor and someone's having conversations, you're not really getting deep into your, your groove. But in that, it becomes way more than dancing. It's very, very cathartic. You're just moving in these ways and, like, connecting to music. And oh, my God, like, that saved my life.

Like, I was in such a, like, dark and horrible place and feeling like a lot of verbal abuse coming from my parents, like no friends, no one around me. And just having that church, it was church for me that I could go to and, like, dance and cry and move and shake and just, like, release. And is everybody doing that? Everyone is doing that. Yeah. Everybody's like crying and dancing. I mean, not everyone's crying. Some people are hysterically laughing. Some people are moaning.

Some people are rolling on the floor. What kind of music is it? Like 80s? It's everything. There could be an 80 song. There could be a world song. There could be a twerk song. There could be everything.

But it's more like instrumental kind of music than like not really like your top 40. And you didn't feel weird or embarrassing at all the first time you went? The first time I felt like I was like, I mean, the first, a lot of times I felt like I was like kind of doing choreography. I was like doing like dance moves, you know? Because it's like at a dance. you're still used to perform. And I was actually a dancer growing up, so I'm used to like performing.

But you know, you quickly just realized like no one is watching you and it's just here for yourself. And that really helps me connect deeper to my body. And then from there I started to learn more about kinesiology and like how we store trauma and about the womb. And I remember my whole story that I kept telling myself was, am I actually supposed to like follow my dreams and follow my heart or is that like bullshit they tell you as a kid?

kid because as a kid I'm told that and now that I'm doing that I'm considered a failure to my family. So I remember this one woman, she just brought that on. She was like, is that story really true? It's the work of Byron Katie, which I highly recommend for people. And I was like, story, true? Like I hadn't even thought about that stuff yet. And then from there just like following, okay, what does that mean? What is the work by Byron Katie? And then so many different Avenue. So it was like really like an eat, pray love experience of trying different things and seeing what worked for me. But for me, it was always going back to the body and the body's wisdom. So what were a few other things that worked for you, even in the sense of the body or the mind?

Yeah. So I met this woman there who she taught African dance and this thing called Five Elements Dance, which is like a shamanic dance activation. And in that, you dance the elements, which is funny because Irobeda is about the elements too. So I kind of manifested this crazy African woman. And I started to train under her. I had no real money. I'm like health coaching, but like barely making it to survive in Bali.

So I'm like, I'll just be your like apprentice and do things for you to like take your program. So I did that. And in that, I mean, it's so much about like how do you connect to the fire within you? And I was realizing I was really lacking in that fire. So you're literally dancing to like,

tribal music and you're shaking and people are screaming and how does that feel or the water really flow and like touching people and like that was another area like how do I really feel like connecting to strangers I felt like I was always don't talk to strangers don't make eye contact don't look at people um and that and like the air which is like your ideas and so like dancing those and I created something called dance your dosha which is like literally dancing them and so that that body work really helped me I think also stepping away from what I was used. used to stepping you away from my routine and my every day and the people around me and having that space to think for myself. I remember like going back to just like my my beliefs, things I'm told

and I'm like, do I really want to still believe in that anymore? For example, if you like a guy, play hard to get. And I'm like, really? Does that make sense? Because all I'm going to attract are people who want to pursue people who are ignoring them. Like all of this stuff like that I was just rethinking, having the space and then deciding like what do I want to do? moving forward. How is your relationship with your parents now? Yeah, it radically shifted. So even when I was writing Idiot's Guide, it was, I mean, it got to a point that I couldn't even have a conversation with them because it would get so intense that I would just text the word alive. Like when I was living in India and in Bali, I would just say alive, alive. Just so they would know I'm alive because anything passed there would get, it would get violent.

Even though you were working on a book, which is by outward standard successful at that point? Well, to them, a book? Who are you to write a book? You don't have a, who's paying you to write this book? You think you're going to be an author? Do you know how many people want to be authors out there? You're going to be another starving artist. That was the dialogue.

And I had never met an author in my life. I had never seen anyone that does it. Everyone around me is like a dentist. So like, I guess that's actually what I'm supposed to do. But at the same time, knowing. that I do have this purpose here and this work can help people. And if this book had existed, it could have helped me. But how am I going to get paid for it? And then that's how the money thing really started with me too, which I love talking about now. Because I thought that you either have

the things you like to do or you do the things that make money. But I thought like very, very few people got to do both. And then finally I finished writing this book, which I was going to self-publish. And that was the idiot's guy? No, it was called. right for your mind body type. And then when I was done, I was like, I wish I could see this book and Barnes & Noble is on shelves, but like, I don't even know how to do that. And then I just started to, I had just kind of moved to L.A. and I started to try to network, which we were just talking about, which was just so awkward for me. I would literally go on like meetup.com and be like, entrepreneur meetup and like show up and be like, hey, I'm like an author. Do you have a book to I'll know?

Like, you know, and I would just talk to strangers and I would meet one friend and then somehow make another. And I eventually met a friend who had a book deal and she connected me to her literary agent. And the agent sent the book out to like 30 publishers. They all said, no, no one cares about Iyerveda. You're too young. This isn't going to happen. 23, 24.

Yeah. So they were like, this is not going to happen. And then serendipitously or not, that same list. literary agent got approached by Penguin Random House because they were looking for someone to write the official Idiot's Guide to Iroveda. And she was like, well, I know this one girl, but I don't know if you're going to be digging it. And they're like, I don't really know. So this is part of the Idiot's Guide series. And normally you have six months to write a book. They had someone who four months in, it was too much work. And she quit. She didn't turn anything in. So they needed someone

to start to finish to write like a 400 page textbook. In two months? In two months. Yeah. Wow. So they were like, okay, well, if she were to write a table of contents, what would it be? You have a week to do it. And they gave me the old table of contents that she had written. They're like, you can edit it if you want. And I literally just totally scrap that, wrote an entirely new one, like super detailed because I just knew like this is my chance. Like maybe this can go somewhere.

So, and I send it back to them the next day. They're like, okay, if you were to write the first chapter, what would it be? I literally went to Barnes & Noble's. I probably read 40 idiots guides, like to understand their. tone because it's very specific style. And then I stayed up that whole night. I wrote that first chapter and I sent it back. And then two days later, I was hired. And then I was like, oh shit, now this really sucks because now I have to write a whole new Iervated book. And I can't repeat how I've even worded anything because of copyright stuff. And I'm trying to make my modern

Irobedic book happen, not this idiot's guide book. So I actually just screwed myself up even more. But it was a book that would be in Barnes & Noble and also instantly establishes you in such an expert in Iervita. Right. So that's why I was like, okay, I have to do it, but how am I going to explain Ayurveda again without repeating myself? And then that was even harder. It's way harder to write a book that you're like trying to like not give your all to. And then I realized like, what if I die next year? What if it's the last thing everyone's going to read from me? So I'm just going to give it my all. And I did. And then the whole Deepak Chopra thing happened. There's a whole other story. Wait, can you some right? I've always wondered how he wrote the advance or the introduction for

that. So, again, I started reading from Deepak when I was 12. And I really, like, in Bali, like, when I'm like, the worst times of my life would, like, fall asleep listening to his audio books and always such a figure in my life, maybe one day in my life, I'd meet him. And I remember when I wrote Idiot's Guide, I think, I was thinking, oh, wouldn't it be so awesome if, like, Deepak to have wrote a quote or something for the book, but how am I ever going to have access to him?

and I met this random person from Instagram that we didn't even meet and we hadn't met in real life. And I was in New York. He was like, oh, come to this yoga and science conference while you're here. I was like, okay, sure. I went to the conference and I didn't even know who the speakers were. It was no one famous at all. And I'm sitting at the conference and it's kind of boring.

And I remember thinking like, oh, the only thing I can make right now super lit is if Deep October just like walks on stage. And then they're like, oh, okay, it's our lunch break. And a note from our sponsor, Deepak Chopra, and he walks on stage. He just goes, hello, everyone, and walks off. I'm in a crowd of a thousand people. And I knew this is probably the only time in my life I'm going to see Deepak Chopra in person. Granted, he's like 10,000 feet away.

So I need to just walk up to him right now. And something greater than me, I still don't even know how. I walked through that crowd of a thousand people up the stairs onto stage. And I just stood next to him. And he's having a conversation with someone. one and I'm just staring at him. I'm like, well, I should. That's Dave Oktober. Holy shit. That's two October. And he like looks at me. He's like, hey. I'm like, hey, Dr. Chopra. I'm your biggest fan. And I wrote this book, Idiot's Guide to Iir Veda. You're such a big

influence. And I would love to send you the PDF to look over. He's like, sure. Now that I know him, he gets this 10 bazillion times a day. And he gives me his email. And I'm like, whoa, I got Deepak's email. And it was literally, it was literally Deepak's email. Well, I didn't know because it was kind of weird email. So I was like, I don't know. It didn't have his name. It was like a very random thing with numbers and stuff. And I was like, okay. But no part of me even thought could this be a fake. I was like, for sure I got his email. Like, yes. Maybe that helped too. I was like super on the positive about it. And then I remember thinking, okay, how am I going to write him an email to write a quote for my book considering it's going to print on Tuesday and it's Saturday?

So he's going to have to read the book and somehow deciding he wants to write a quote for it. And he met me for one minute and probably he's like in a room room by the time I email him. So what did you say in the email? The most stuff in email. Oh my God. I should like find on my computer and read it out loud and like write a book on the email. I don't know. It's more energetic than the email.

But pretty much I, it's going to sound weird. I just really connected to his heart. And I just connected just to really feeling like who's he all about. Like he's someone who's devoted his whole life to sharing this wisdom. Like he's so giving. he's so altruistic, just like connecting to that. And I sent him the email and I was like, it was so lovely meeting you. As I told you, here's the PDF of the book.

You were a huge inspiration for it. I didn't even ask him for a quote, actually. I was like, let me know what you think. I just wanted to send him the thing. This is like a 400 page PDF. Like, how is he going to read it? And then I sent him that email and I was like, okay, I don't know when he's going to respond, but we'll see.

And I was in New York City running late for meeting. eating while I'm walking, all the bad, bad I or vated advice for myself, stressed, trying to get to this meeting. And I remember I'm halfway crossing the street. This is in the Upper West Side. I'm like in that middle area. And this homeless guy behind me is like, can someone help me cross the street? And I remember something in my head was like, sorry, you say you're such a good person,

like help this guy cross the street. Turn around. I go back. And I'm like, sir, where do you want to go? He's like, oh, I actually want to go like two blocks down into the subway. I'm like, okay, sure. I'm already so late for my meeting. So I can still smell him today.

I take him by the arm. He has this like pungent, foul, like the worst smell you can ever smell in your life. And really like a lot of stuff on his skin and not a sightly person. I take him by the arm and he's like holding on to me for dear life. And I'm like, so how's your day? And we start chatting. And turns out he had like two sons that lived in L.A.

And one's a doctor. One's a lawyer. And he's like, was a refugee from Iraq. and we were having this lovely conversation. I put him in the subway and the elevator is about to close. And I'm like, sir, by the way, where are you going? He's like, oh, I'm actually a doctor of physics at Rutgers University. I'm like, huh, doctor of physics.

I remember thinking, turning around being like, wow, I would have never guessed that. You thought he was homeless. I thought he was for sure homeless. And he's doctor of physics, a physicist. Wow. I remember turning really pleased with that interaction. Like, how beautiful is New York? He got connected with these people.

I open up my phone. There's an email from Deepak. Like the moment I let go of this guy's hand. And it says, what's your number? I want to call you. I'm like, the voice of God wants to call me. It's like Morgan Friedman calling me. And I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. DeBongot wants to call me. What is like, did I screw something up? Is he mad? And then I'm like, sure. So I give him my number. He calls right away. And he's like, what are you going to be doing in like two days from now? And I was like, oh, I'm actually going to be back in L.A. I don't actually live here. And he's like, oh, great, because I'm going to be giving this, like, four-hour lecture in San Diego.

And I would love for you to come and to meet with you and speak with you after. I'm like, okay. So I literally, like, fly back to L.A. I'm like, emailing the publisher. I'm like, hold the book. Hold the book. I'm sure they were happy to. No.

No. They were like, we're not holding the book. Like, we have things. Like, they were like, you don't need a forward from. Like, you don't understand how much I fought to get this in the book. Like, that's why I'm like, oh, God. this publishing industry needs to change. Yeah, I agree.

But yeah, so I come back to L.A. I drive down to San Diego and there I am sitting in front of him as he's giving a four-hour lecture. I'm just like shaking in the crowd, even being this like close in proximity to him. It's like for how people felt about the Beatles probably. And after he like walks off stage just points at me, he's like, you, come on. I'm like, okay. So we go into this like meeting room with a couple of people at work with him and they just

start asking me all these questions. It's like, why are you at the yoga and science event? Where'd you go to college? How old are you? Ask me, like, interrogation. And I'm like, I actually wasn't even invited to the conference. And from Instagram invited me. Like, yeah.

And then they're like, Dufox, like, I went through your book and I absolutely love it. I love how you made Iervita really simple and are keep in mind at this point, I had also been blogging about Ierva. I also been sharing about Ierva. It wasn't because when I share this, I want people to know, it's not. just luck. It's also preparation. So I had come up with this book, but then also the work of the universe connected me with him. And he's like, I love this book so much. I would love to write the forward of it and share this book and have you on faculty of Jaya, which is his organization. And just like

have you on part of the team and collaborate with you. We love what you're doing. And I was like, what? And we took an Instagram video, which is like still on both of our Instagrams, I think. and I was like so nervous. And even at that point, my blog name was still Eat Feel Fresh. I wasn't even going by Sahara Rose yet. And so many things shifted. So we ended up doing a 31 day challenge together, which like the only challenge of other one he's done is with Oprah.

And yeah, we ended up filming like this whole thing together. And he wrote the forward now of Eat Feel Fresh also and we're buddies. And I've seen him like a billion times now. Is he different at all behind the, do you get his different sense of the man? Literally the nicest person ever. I've never met someone who's just so kind and so caring and like just a want he's super koffa. Like he's pit to koffa, but I think like now he's especially koffa. He's 74 years old now.

So he's just like 100% in service. And like that's not a facade. That's actually who he is. And how much did it change your career to be affiliated with him? You know, considering that was my first book and I don't know what it would have been like had I not had his endorsement, but I definitely think that it does help. because when someone sees, you know, for me, another really big thing that I was doing energetically when this whole process was happening was I was taking myself out of the equation. I was like,

why do I want Deepak Trober to write a quote for my book? Because this is going to help other people believe in Ayurveda because they believe in him. So if they see that he's involved, then they're going to trust this more. And this doesn't have to do with either of us. This has to do with the work reaching more people. And my approach to manifestation is doing exactly that, because the universe is benevolent. The universe wants what is best for all. So if we can pose this as what is going to uplift all people, I truly believe then that will happen. So has it changed my career? I'm sure people look at the book a different way because he's involved. But at the end of the day, it's a freaking good book. And it's the best selling Ierva book globally that ever has been.

And it's brought so many people, like hundreds of people have become Ayurvedic practitioner, are now living these Ayurvedic lives because the book was made in this modern way. So the exact things that they said were my issues that I'm too young, too modern, to this, to that, I believe are the exact things that have made the book successful. So did you, was that pay for play or did you get an advance and royalties that book? No, they gave me an advance in royalties. It was a small advance. I mean, granted, I didn't even know, I would have probably written it for free,

but it was like an advance in royalties. So are you, does that fund much of your lifestyle these days since it's the best selling? Honestly, like publishing is not a lucrative thing. Like I make $1 a copy off each book. So let's say it's like what, 60,000 copies a year. It's like, okay, that's like one thing. But that's not my whole whole life. Personally, at least not in L.A.

It's not going to pay for your whole life. So for me and I talk about this super super openly, but I believe your book is like your business card. And it's like what you put out there. And, but it's how you choose to monetize it, which is actually what's going to make your income. So I've created a 12-week program, my Eat Right Fure Mind, Body Type program and have a bunch of different programs. Wait, it's eat right for, so it's based on that. I turned that book and I turned into a 12-week program. That's so full circle.

Yeah. And my blog, which was Eat, Feel Fresh, since like the raw vegan days is my new book. Yeah. That's, oh my gosh. I love how that's all. That's a great testament to even if you don't feel like the stuff you're doing matters or you feel like it's like a failure now, it can come back around later and be like a huge success. 100%. Yeah. So with that and it is, and now like with that,

you write for your mind, body type, when people like review my podcast, I just like send them that book because it's not published anywhere that I'm, it's like a gift for them. So I believe that anytime you put your love and energy into something, you're going to reap the rewards. It may not be immediate, but it will happen eventually. So how did you know how to make money off of your own brand? Yeah, it was really hard for me because I didn't have that business background. I've never taken a finance or business course in my life. But I knew I had to figure this out. Otherwise, I'm going to have to become a real estate agent, which was like what my parents were trying to force me into, even though I would have been the worst

real estate agent of all time. I'd be like, you know, you should probably move to Bali, but buy this house. So I'm like, okay, if I want to do this full time, I need to figure out how to monetize it, even though it feels really heavy and stuck and weird and ugh. So I started to learn about online and I would watch YouTube videos, I would just Google things. And I learned, first of all, that an online course can be the most monetizable if you record it in advance. I'm like, well, I don't really have money for a whole like videography. It's literally me in front of my laptop. So it's me in front of my freaking laptop talking. Sometimes the sunsets in the videos and I'm still talking. But the program, it's all about the content, you know, and I think that we

overthink things. We think that it has to be perfect and beautiful and this and that. like, no, it's about the content. So I used a platform called Teachable, which I like. And even when I didn't even have the money, because it's like $39 a month, but you can even use it for free if you give like 5% or something of your fees. So it's something everyone can do. And just upload it. It's done for you. So I use Teachable and my course is still on that. Then from there, I started a Candida course, which I just did as emails. So it was like a weekly YouTube Live webinar. that people would get sent and they could ask me questions on, and then I would email it to them after.

And how much are these types of cases? That was 99, and it was like a four-week course. And each week I would send them a new, like, meal plan with different herbs to take for Candida specifically. The Eat Right for Your Mind, Body Type program is 285, and it's 12-week program with meal plans, grocery shopping lists, like tons of videos and resources, like everything you need to know about pretty much living in Ayurvedic lifestyle.

And then I would just start testing different things. Like, you know, I did one called the Abundance Mindset Masterclass, which I just wanted to do something that was really affordable. So I just made that $20. And it's a video all about abundance and mindset and a webinar. And then it leads into a program, which is about how to create passive income in your business and how to build business funnels. So I've done so many different kinds of programs.

And it's really exciting for me now to help other people figure out how to make money in their brands because I realize that's what's keeping people from doing it. full time. Which one of those is the most lucrative? The most lucrative probably has been my abundance mindset masterclass. And that's the cheapest one. It's the cheapest. It starts cheapest. And there's the upsell. But I think why it's the most profitable is because people tend to sign up for courses more if it's business related. I have found. I have found just like being in the health place myself, it's so much harder. And it's so weird. Like I could be like, here, pay $200. I'm going to help you live a better life. You're like,

oh, I don't know. I don't have the money. If I'm like, here, pay $200, I'm going to teach you how to make more money. Oh, sure. You know? And it's sort of like we shouldn't invest in themselves in that way. Exactly. So I do think that that's why a lot of people sign up for more abundance and business stuff, but it's interconnected. You know, you're not going to have your wealth if you don't have your health and vice versa. And is that the bulk of your income? From online programs, yes. So you could kind of stop doing anything day to day and that money would just kind of keep rolling in. Yeah. I mean, all I do now is create media and my program. I don't do any one-on-one consultations at all anymore. I refer people to other people because I just, for me,

like online business is, it's not that you're not doing anything. I mean, you're still creating the content and stuff like that. And I believe that different dosha are different in business. Like if you're very VATA, you should be more in the creative space, but maybe have a partner that's more in the day-to-day management. If you're more Pitta, you're really good at the management stuff, but maybe you need a kaffa for customer support or you need the Vata for like the branding. If you're very kaffa, maybe you're really good at one-on-one connection. Maybe doing an online business is not your thing. I was telling you, I was on the Hugo Boss podcast earlier and he was saying how there's all these online fitness coaches and that doesn't resonate with him because he just

wants to like really sit with people and talk to them and interact. And we need that too. We can't have everyone run away to an online business. But I think it's really important to know your dosha also in business because it's going to help you make sure you're living your day-to-day life in a way that's aligned with you. Do you think everybody can do their passion as their job? Or do you think that the world wouldn't function if that were the case? I believe that genuinely everyone could. And I've gone down this like rabbit hole myself in my head. Then I'm like, well, who would like clean the toilets? But the thing is, there are a lot of people that love to clean. Like there are, like, like, the woman who cleans my house, I'm like, please go home. She's like, she's just like,

OCD about cleaning. She actually loves to clean. So there are actually people who love to do everything. I do think that oftentimes we're stuck with things that we don't want to do. I don't think all cleaners actually like to clean. I don't think all construction workers like to. But there are, I think, enough people. And with the way technology is going to, now we can automate kind of the things that no one wants to do that we're giving more people a chance to follow their dreams. And do you think there's a way, so you think anytime, anybody like comes to you and they're like I'm passionate about this you would be like you should try doing that as for a living yes if you're actually passionate and I think what happens is we're passionate

until blah blah blah blah and we always have well I can't do it because x y z and and a lot of times the reasons are good reasons and I don't think that we should quit our jobs per se and like go into that thing but start the side hustle you know start that thing in the afternoon that you're doing and then maybe that thing is going to end up paying you some bills, but we need to talk about the monetization of it because if it just remains a hobby that you never monetize, it's never going to turn into your full-time thing. Well, and I also think sometimes people are passionate about the lifestyle.

Like we were just at Blog Her and a lot of the people there, I think, were like, oh, I want to be an influencer and you would be like, why? And they'd be like, oh, so I can like go on these fun trips and like get all this free stuff. But there's no other why or there. Exactly. And I think you need a there or there. Everything you do needs to be to be of service. Like there is no greater reason to do anything.

Like if what you're doing, if you're a DJ, if you're a crystal decorator, whatever. And if you're doing it truly to be of service, I believe the universe will fuel you with the energy that you need to make it happen. But if you're doing it for any other reason for cool trips or pictures or whatever, it's not going to happen. Then how do you account for there's so many influencers that I've met who are hugely successful and they are doing it for a cool trip? And then you have politicians who are evil finding a lot of success. How do you account for that with that mindset? Totally. Yeah.

So I think that the people who are, for example, an influencer who's just doing it for the limelight, one, you can always feel it. You can always feel the authenticity. Two, a lot of times the truth comes out later. And we see that happening a lot with people who are very, very big influencers. That suddenly we find out that a lot of what they're doing is not in alignment. I do truly believe that people can feel things. and as we're shifting into becoming a more intuitive society that's coming up.

I mean, look at our political system. So, yeah, you can probably get by for a period of time, but are you really sleeping at night feeling fulfilled? I don't think so. Is there any parts of Ayurveda that you think is bullshit, like that your science mind can't reconcile? Yeah, like I think that a lot of the, almost the solution to everything is ghee, it's not the best solution.

You have an eye infection, ghee, or something's in your ear, gee, this, gee. it's like I did a punch of karma there was ghee in every crevice and I was just like I don't you know and the thing is if you think about it it made the most sense for those ancient times when you didn't have access to anything. Gee was you had a cow and the cow gave milk and you could burn the milk and it turned into ghee and it's the only kind of fat you have. So yes, it can do a lot of things that you weren't able to do otherwise. But granted to all of the other options we have today is ghee the best. I would say sometimes maybe not. So that's one. In terms of like, you know, the great thing about Ayurveda,

Iyerveda is, it's not like a radical system. It is very what take it what you want. Like tongue scraping. I don't think there's anything wrong. Like oil pulling. Like these things all have real benefits to it. I think the only way that it can become harmful is if you start to think of Iervita as one specific way.

And a lot of people who don't truly understand Ayurveda look at Ayurveda is just kitchery and just this and just that, whereas Ayurveda is a living and breathing science that has always been changing and is still changing. It's differently practiced in North India, South India, Singapore, everywhere. So what is it to say that now it shouldn't be changing either? So sometimes I receive feedback criticism from people being like, she's modernizing it, she's saying we don't have to use ghee for everything. What's wrong with her? And it's like, you're not truly understanding what ierveda is we're such a different population than we were 5,000 years ago, even 50 years ago. So we have to account for the fact that there's more toxins in our food

that we're on the go, that our stress levels are higher. We're different people. In ancient Ayurvedic times, even 100 years ago, even today in India, they're farmers. So no wonder they're going to say, like, don't, don't stress yourself out, don't exercise too much, just sit. Yoga's just sitting and breathing. Now we're sedentary. We need to sweat and move because that's not part of our lifestyle. So I do believe in looking at everything from today's lens. It's just, I think it's scary because when something's been going on for thousands of years, we're like, oh, we trust it. And when you try to change it, people are like, well, who are you to change it? Right. And I think that's, do you ever have imposter syndrome? I used to for sure. And I think even right before Eat Feel Fresh came out,

because Eat Feel Fresh way, this is the traditional Ayurvedic way, and this is the Eat Feel Fresh way, and this is why scientifically I'm telling you why fermented foods are actually good for us. And for example, Ayurveda says no fermented foods. I kind of debunked that or no raw foods or whatever. So I did have a lot of fear before that. But the thing is, nothing really bad happened. I mean, the few people who are like private on Instagram with like zero followers who are like, you know, fake accounts who just like send hate to like everyone they can find. It's like, okay, thanks.

But I think what really honestly helped was having the support and endorse. of people like Deepak Chopra and Dr. Suhaz Kashir Sagar, who are really the forefathers of the Ayurvedic movement into the U.S. And the fact that they're supporting this book and they're like, yes, this is how Ayurveda is supposed to be moving for it to reach more people. Kind of made me feel like I was supported in this. Okay, I have like 8 million more questions for you, but we're running out of time. So I'm going to ask a few of the questions that I always ask everybody.

Is there a place in the world that you've been where you were like, these people really got it right in terms of health or happiness. Bali, I think 100%. People in Bali are so just spiritually connected. Just every morning they give offerings of these beautiful flowers to every single store and home. And like, there's just such beautiful ceremonies there and such great reverence for the ancestors and the land.

Like that's my true home. I really feel like that's where my soul is from. And when I'm there, I feel so just connected to source. And it doesn't, I feel like. I want to go to Bali, but I feel like all of that's been sort of co-opted by like influencer culture and people being like, oh my God, I'm going to like go have a retreat and I'll show you where to go in Bali. And that doesn't ruin the local culture that that whole like, I'm going to go find myself

in Bali, which so many Western people are doing. You find that the local culture is still really intact. It is. I mean, Bali is a very big island and there are still a lot of local people. The place that I stayed, it was called OmunityBali. OmunityBali.com tell them Sahara sent you. They are my little Indonesian host family. They're literally this family in the north of Bali by the Guit waterfall in the middle of the jungle.

You're going to stay in a bamboo hut. There are zero tourists around you. And I just found them on Airbnb. And I got there and I was like, can I just like live here for a while and like help you guys around? And I ended up doing that for like a month and learning so much about Balinese culture. So that really still exists. But yes, you could go to Ubu'd and you're going to see tour buses, people who want the eat, pray, love experience. And it's not sad that that's happening because it's just like this is how it's,

things move, but you'll still find real Bali if you just go outside of the Chengu and Semayok in the big cities. Okay, I feel like I know the answer to this for you based on what you've said, but how do you know when you're successful and what does success look like to you? So for me, success feels like living in Korea. The word Korea means flow. So in Vedic spirituality, we're each born with our Dharma, which is our life purpose. And it's not just one purpose. It's like a beautiful morph of different purposes, our color, our wave, or our instrument. And imagine a highway and Dharma is at the end. So when you're cruising down this highway and things are just flowing,

you're meeting the right people at the right time and doors are opening for you. And it's almost like you're not even doing anything. You're like taking a passenger seat in your own life. That's living in Korea, effortless flow. But when we start to go off the path, we're like, oh, being a real estate agent is going to help me make money or, oh, I should do this because they're doing it. Then we start to notice the bumps.

And that can feel like a tap, tap, tap, tap. Then you don't listen. that feels like a punch, punch, punch, punch, and you don't listen, and it can feel like an accident or a catastrophe. And still a lot of times people don't listen. So when I'm living in alignment with myself, I'm noticing the kria, I'm noticing the flow, I'm noticing things are just happening for me and I'm not even striving after them. And the moment I get off that, when life is feeling a little bit too hard, because it's actually

not meant to, then that's how I know I'm living in karma and I need to shift the direction again. Do you feel like you're living in korea right now? Absolutely. What's one big mistake you've made and what's one thing you really feel like you got right? A big mistake that I made, which I couldn't really change, is just the amount of anxiety I had while I was doing things. For example, like while writing the book, just being anxious about how it's going to turn out or like just like being an exotic dance so many times like stressing about my parents. Like, what was the freaking point of that? You're going to do what you're going to do.

So like, why carry the thoughts? And it's something that I've noticed. Like I have to have a conversation with my mind. I'm like, okay, you've talked a lot today. Thanks. Later. Bye. I like give it a name. It's Beatrice. I'm like, Beatrice, you can sit down now. We'll talk later. Peace. So if I had just been able to just be more present and you don't know because at the time you don't know if it's going to work out or not, but if I could just let go of some of that anxiety and stress and just enjoyed myself more, I would have probably been happier. And something you really got right? Something that I got right was to not listen to my parents or anyone and to just really tune in and follow my heart. And I know that sounds like, oh, so corny. But I say, I go on an advice detox. I'm still on this advice detox. I don't ask people for advice about my

own stuff because so many of us, especially as women, we're so used to, something happens. I asked this person for advice. My mom, my friend, my this, my that. And I had caught that in myself. And I was realizing I wasn't making my own decisions. I was like consulting with other people and then letting their perspective, not fully knowing myself, to alter my decision. So I went on that advice detox and that has helped me so much because it's allowed me to use my own intuition and just to feel it out. And still, sometimes I'll have a conversation with someone, but it's mostly after I've made that decision that maybe I'll want to talk about it, hear a second opinion, but I try to not make that my go to anymore. Yeah, I do think the intuition,

I'm working on this myself because I do tend to be a person who like, tries to get all these different, these different bits of feedback. But I do think intuition is like a muscle and trusting your gut is like a muscle. And when we don't use it and don't use it and don't use it, we can't use it. We can't use it. We lose the ability to. What is your relationship with your parents? I feel like you never said that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So after the book came out, they were like, oh, we don't really know. It's going to work. And then I started to actually create a business and like do talks and stuff. And now they're like, they were just in Iran. They brought like a suitcase of my books. So like, oh, this is my daughter's book. was my idea. But it was like just from a place of fear. It was just from a place of, it was just from

a place of fear 100%. And, you know, I think that your parents, they genuinely do want the best for you, but what they believe is the best for you is what's the safest for you. So now that all this has happened, they're like, it was my idea. I was the influence here. And, you know, and I tell my dad, I'm like, oh, I communicated with your dad who's like, dad. He's like, oh, what did he say? Like, you know, he would have like thought I would be crazy, but so much more open. And I really believe that we choose our parents. We as souls, we choose our parents because they're going to give us the lessons that we need. And what they gave me was to really be strong and to believe in myself.

Because from them not believing in me and them, me being like the kid who wants to impress my parents and not having that really made me go inward. And if I could have the strength to have no relationship with my family, I was literally living to live the rest of my life and not have a family to spread Ayurveda is like, I don't give a shit what you say to me on Instagram. Like, I can survive. So, and then I think in tune that they chose me because I opened them up and showed them that like, yes, it's possible to follow your dreams. And it doesn't just have to be going by the book and playing it safe. I love that. What is a purchase that you've made that's made your life, healthier,

happier? Ooh, a purchase. I mean, I think living in a good home, it's a big one, but it's important living even just in a city, an environment that you like. Like, we were just talking at how you live in New York. I used to live in Boston. That was just never my place. Like, granted, I didn't get to choose that I grew up there, but I could feel like this ice, this cold. It's so not me. And it's it's hampering me and it's making me feel heavy and not energetic because the moment I went somewhere warm, I felt like, like, I want to go outside and I want to socialize and da-da-da. So I think, you know, when I moved to L.A., I lived in my grandparents' extra room because I didn't have money and then was just health coaching and side hustling until I was

creating an income. So if you could just do anything to live in an environment that makes you happy, it's going to make all the difference. I do think it's interesting. I've moved a lot and I always have this notion that like I'll be a different person if I'm in a different place. But then I also feel we live in a culture where everybody is moving all the time and trying to sort of be different people. And that's one of the reasons that we lose community, which is so, so important to our lives. When you move to L.A., was it hard to, and also you were moving around so much before that, how did you create a community. Yeah. Well, moving to LA was probably the hardest because when I was in Bali and India, they're small places and it was pretty easy to find a community there. You just got a couple

ecstatic dances and there they are. But it was very transient too. A lot of people coming in and out and a lot of people coming there with real problems that they were escaping from too. And that's when I was like, I can't live the rest of my life here. Then coming to L.A., everyone's in their car. Everyone had earphones on. I'm like, how am I going to talk to anyone? So that's why I resour to going on the eb.com and just go on eventbrate search for things that I would like to do. Did you make real friends from that? I would go to the most random meetups. I'd go to like shaman meetup and we'd be in like someone's backyard like around a fire

and it's all like six year old woman and me and I'd make friends with them. Yeah, that's literally how I created my community of just me showing up at random places. That's amazing. I love that. Well, Sahara, this has been really extraordinary. I really feel like I could talk to you for like four more hours. But I'm going to stop it here. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Oh, my gosh. That was quite an episode. She just packed in so much information. What did you think, Zach? It was amazing. I loved the story of how she hustled Deepak Chopra to write her intro.

I know. It's such like I love it because it's like a hustling story meets the universe has your backstory. And it just like shows you can go after what you want in life. And I love what she talked about about being in the flow or when she's not in the flow to and I feel like that story perfectly exemplified that. As always, if you guys love this episode, please, please leave it a rating or a view on iTunes. It really helps other people find the podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I don't care if it's anywhere that allows ratings and reviews, please rate and review it there. And also, if you liked it, share with a friend

who you think would be interested in Iroveda, it was maybe trying to start their own business or somebody who's been experiencing health problems that were similar to Sahara's. I love the idea of the healthier together podcast building community both online with all of you guys here and I love talking to you but I also love the idea of it taking it offline and you guys can listen to the podcast and have a coffee and tea together and talk about what you took away from it. I just think that that warms my little old heart and if you guys want to get together offline with me again, my book launch is on April 9th in New York City. You can find out information about it at Liz Moody.com slash events. I would love to come and see you and give you a big

old squeeze and sign your book. So definitely if you're in the New York area, come and hang out there and check the events page if you're anywhere else because I'm going to be having events all over the country. My book tour is extensive. It's L.A., Seattle, Portland, Chicago, blah, blah, blah, like all over. So definitely check out the events page and keeps checking it to see if I'll be coming to a city near you because I would love to give you a hug. And that's all I have for tonight. Next time I see you, my book will be launch, which is crazy. Oh my gosh. Gosh, that was quite an episode. She just packed in so much information.

What did you think, Zach? It was amazing. I loved the story of how she hustled Deepak Chopra to write her intro. I know. It's such like, I love it because it's like a hustling story meets the universe has your backstory and it just like shows you can go after what you want in life. And I love what she talked about about being in the flow or when she's not in the flow, too. And I feel like that story perfectly exemplified that.

As always, if you guys love this episode, please, please leave it a rating or a view on iTunes. It really helps other people find the podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I don't care if it's anywhere that allows ratings and reviews, please rate and review it there. And also, if you liked it, share with a friend who you think would be interested in Ayurveda, it was maybe trying to start their own business or somebody who's been experiencing health problems that were similar to Sahara's. I love the idea of the healthier together podcast building community, both online with all of you guys here. and I love talking to you, but I also love the idea of it taking it offline and you guys can listen to the podcast and have a coffee and tea together and talk about what you took away from it.

I just think that that warms my little old heart. And if you guys want to get together offline with me, again, my book launch is on April 9th in New York City. You can find out information about it at lizmoody.com slash events. I would love to come and see you and give you a big old squeeze and sign your book. So definitely if you're in the New York area, come and hang out there and check the events page if you're anywhere else because I'm going to be having events all over the country. My book tour is extensive. It's L.A., Seattle, Portland,

Chicago, blah, blah, blah, like all over. So definitely check out the events page and keep checking it to see if I'll be coming to a city near you because I would love to give you a hug. And that's all I have for tonight. Next time I see you, my book will be launch, which is crazy. Have a great rest of your day, your night, your week. I love you guys. Bye. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena,

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