Divas That Care Network

Menopause, Balance, And Becoming You

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 52

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Come and listen to our Host, Tina Spoletini, as she chats with today's guest, Kendra Irvine, for our “End of Year, Beginning of Me” Podcast Series.
A powerfully themed mini-series helping women close the year with clarity and step into the next one with grounded self-love and vision.

Kendra Irvine is a Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist and Happy Body Guide helping women in their 40s and 50s reclaim their health—no prescriptions needed. Through her Living Light Ayurveda method, she teaches how to restore balance, energy, and purpose using time-tested Ayurvedic wisdom.

https://kendrairvine.com

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We explore how Ayurveda helps women in their 40s and 50s reclaim balance by addressing root causes instead of symptoms, and why slowing down, organizing life, and leaning on community create steadier energy and clearer minds. Kendra shares daily practices, seasonal wisdom, and an invite to her Happy Body Club.

• root-cause approach to perimenopause and menopause
• doshas explained and how “like increases like”
• why quick fixes stall healing and how to slow down
• community’s role in accountability and results
• organization as a path to lighter energy
• simple morning rituals that set the tone
• seasonal living over calendar deadlines
• making harmonious choices without perfectionism

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

SPEAKER_00:

It's Divas the Care Radio. Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas That Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit divasletcare.com after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to Confidence in Bloom, the podcast that reminds you that confidence isn't about becoming someone new. It's about coming home to yourself. I'm your host, Tina Spolotini, and this season we're embracing the end of year at beginning of me theme. A time to pause, reflect, and let go of what no longer serves you. Together we'll explore real stories and soulful insights to help you quiet that itty bitty shitty committee, release the shoulds that weigh you down, and step into the new year grounded in self-love, clarity, and confidence. Let's begin today's conversation. Today I'm chatting with Kendra Irvine. Kendra is a clinical Ayurvedic specialist and happy body guide helping women in their 40s and 50s reclaim their health. No prescriptions needed. Through her Living Light Ayurveda method, she teaches how to restore balance, energy, and purpose using time-tested Ayurvedic wisdom. Welcome, Kendra. Thank you. I'm so excited. You and I have had many chats over the last, I think it's been about five years that we've known each other. And I know that we have the tendency of going down many rabbit hills at many times, right? I can ask one question and somehow we can go down many different tunnels. And so we're gonna we're gonna attempt this. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so my first question for you is what does it look like in your practice? How does Ayurveda fill the gap that modern medicine often leaves for women in midlife?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, when it comes to Ayurveda filling the gap, if there really isn't any gaps to be filled. The gaps have really been something that has been established by the modern medical system, as it were. And I know something that I'm gonna say might be controversial, and maybe there may be people that disagree with that. However, if we look at the origins of Ayurveda, it really is the oldest text that ever existed on this planet come from Ayurveda. Um, so when it comes to modern medicine, there are a lot of gaps and a lot of holes because it doesn't address the root cause. So that's one of the tenets of Ayurveda is looking at not what the band-aid solution is and providing um more like um reactive care to a symptom and treating the symptom. It's looking at what the cause of that is and tracing it back to its root origin. So if we're talking about filling gaps, it's more so going back to um the start of how a symptom or a disharmony in someone's body began and looking at treating that with natural with natural approaches and looking at at um the laws of nature.

SPEAKER_02:

Cool. Now, now I know many women in their 40s and 50s were talking perimenopause, menopause. Um I I'm wondering when you when you say you're going back to root cause, I mean we all know, like when we, you know, become women, right? That that is going to disappear, right? We all know that menopause at some point is going to happen. When you say root cause, are we going back to when we were 14 and became women? Or is it something like are the menopause symptoms that we're feeling or perimenopause symptoms? I don't even know what the the proper you know title of them are. Is that something that we are like I don't want to say ignoring, but it are we dealing with them in the incorrect way if in Ayurveda or right? Like, do you understand what I'm saying? Like, is it are we dealing with the wrong issues, I guess is is my question.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, there's a few ways that you could answer that. When it comes to dealing with the wrong issues, I think it mostly has a lot to do with giving in like giving the individual blanket advice. Um, so saying that your experience of menopause is going to be the weight gains, gonna be the mood swings, it's gonna be the um hot flashes. That's a big, you know, trait or symptom that occurs with the process of menopause, and we'll and we'll call it menopause just for the sake of argument. Um, menopause can be made worse or better based on your lifestyle. So it's not a dis-ease. A lot of marketing material makes it sound like it's a disorder that women go through. It's not, it's a natural process. Um, so we first go through menarchy, which is our menstruation when we bleed and all that stuff, and go through the cycles. Um, and then when when menopause happens, is basically you start to see the symptoms happen gradually over time. And I call this stages when our bodies start sputtering out, right? And so um our periods start to change, the length of them, the consistency. Um, we start to notice all sorts of symptoms occur, and that can happen in early onset, um, in in women's 20s and 30s, even. I've I've heard of cases where that's that's their experience. Um, but the symptoms that women experience are actually more um imbalanced and they're more severe if they've already been living a life up until this point out of balance and not in alignment with what their natural constitution is. So where Ayurveda comes in, for those who don't know what it is, is Ayurveda is life science. So it really looks at how to um work with the workhorses, the doshas, vada, pit, and kava. So each one of us has a different constitution that we're born with. And if we're doing things in our lifetime that create imbalances, we oftentimes don't even know that's the case. And we've developed these habits or this particular lifestyle that we've been living in this constant state of disharmony. And when we when we notice that our digestion is off, we're not sleeping properly, our energy is off, we're gaining weight, we're losing weight, all these sort of fluctuation fluctuations keep happening as a result of living out of harmony with what your natural constitution is. With the process of Ayurveda, it clears that up. It tells us what's your constitution? Are you more vada, are you more pitta, more kafa? What does that mean in English terms? Are you more, um, if we look at the five basic building blocks of all creation, we have air, ether, fire, water, and earth. So if you're more of a Vada type, you're more air and ether. If you're more pitta type, you're fire and a little bit of water. And if you're kapha, you're earth and water. So each one of those constitutions, if they're doing things in terms of their lifestyle that are imbalancing to them, say the fire types are eating lots of spicy foods, those two will create further imbalances. So if we live our life in a constant, you know, ebb and flow of imbalance, what happens as we start to move into our 40s and 50s and we start to experience menopause symptoms, they can become more severe because of the life that we led up until that point. Getting sick, getting better, getting sick, getting better. And what Ayurveda does is it helps to smooth out that transition so you so you reduce or remove the disharmonies as a whole. And then the symptoms that we experience when our bodies are changing and moving into that different phase of life are either non-existent or they're significantly reduced for each one of the body types.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so I have a quick question about um like you were saying the pittas, if they're eating lots of spicy foods. So that like the fire, like the fire and adding the fire. So is that the like attracts like type of thing, right? Like I'm like, okay, so we uh you and I both know I'm considered a kaffa. So that's heavy, uh dense, slow moving. I mean, I can I that's me, right? Slow moving, heavy, all the things. And I love breads and pastas and all the heavy, dense foods, right? So is that like the fire, the spicy is attracting the more of the fire and the like that's kind of what you're saying, right?

SPEAKER_01:

So many people will know what Ayurveda has known for thousands of years, and they'll they'll refer to it as the law of attraction. So what you say is is correct in terms of um the different quality types. You mentioned like khaffa being more heavy, dense, um, and not very mobile, and also tends to attract things that are similar qualities in their life, even the things that they like enjoy, for example, heavy, dense, and very like cloudy, thick kinds of foods. So, what happens is we're just we're just talking about qualities. So a lot of the the operant um ways of Ayurveda come down to what the qualities are. And so if someone is more kaffa-type and they have more heavy and stagnant qualities, and they like things that are heavy and stagnant, or even lifestyle habits that tend to be like that as well. Like lots of kaffas don't love exercise, right? And so that tends to be more of a stagnant type activity. So, what happens is that it is if you get too much of those qualities, you get an imbalance. It's um uh like an overgrowth, if you will, for lack of better terms. Uh, the same thing with the fire types, they get too much fire in their life by being too competitive, um, experiencing burnout because they want to like do all the things and be the leader and eat like spicy foods and things that are like sour and increase their fire. And then there's the vada types that tend to be the go-getters, and they're our lightest and driest of all of the all the doshas, they tend to um want to have a very like um more spontaneous type lifestyle. They tend to be the creators, they tend to not want to have any sort of ritual or anything like that. But what happens is that if you bring on too many of those qualities of which you already are by your nature, an imbalance is sure to move in. So the next question is what do we do about that, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And so, okay, so then I'm I'm thinking ahead here, but if we're like this in our 20s and 30s, when life is like what we call normal, right? When we hit the perimenopause stage and we're getting all these menopause symptoms, that is is that the imbalance you were talking about earlier, where you know, now we have to go back to the you know the root cause. You know, like your symptoms are gonna be worsened. I'm not gonna say worsened or heightened, I guess is a better word, um, depending on how you lived in your 20s and 30s. So if if you're a PITA and you like lots of spicy foods, then your menopause symptoms could be worse than if you didn't. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, if you spend a lot of your time in this imbalance, then your symptoms become worse. Here's the thing, though, is that PITAs can be imbalanced in not just inflammatory conditions. They can get congestion, they can get um excess gross, they can have mucus in their body, they can also suffer from anxiety and overwhelm, which are not PITA conditions. Those are morvada conditions. So as a result of the way that we um choose to live our lifestyle, in if it's imbalanced and it's creating issues via symptoms, or what we call rupa in Ayurveda, um, it doesn't matter if you're if you're PITA, a PITA is not going to be subject to increased menopause symptoms because they've done too many PITA things, or they've lived in in excess of PITA, they can get those symptoms regardless. Like if they've got, they've experienced a lifetime of anxiety and they haven't processed a lot of their emotions or they haven't changed anything about their digestion, they can still experience symptoms of menopause that are that are the same, if not greater, um, when they come to that phase of their life.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so like everything, right? It could affect them, it could not, right? Like it's it it's not, and I I know menopause, I mean menopause is the big talk with women between you know 40 and 50. I I get that. Like that's not the only symptom we're you know, we're having. And the thing is we're like I'm starting to realize that you know, uh all the symptoms are the same, right? Like every disease seems to start with, you know, the same kind of symptoms, the brain fog, the lack of energy, the you know, the the gut issues, like it's all uh kind of the same, right? And so I know like with Ayurveda, I mean, I think it's almost impossible to follow this Ayurveda. Like I've been trying it for five years, right? There's always that slide, right? And you know this. I mean, you're you're teaching me, right? You're teaching me how to do this, right? But there's I mean it's impossible, right? In our world, it is impossible to follow it 100%. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because in the Western world, we've become so acclimated to a certain system that has actually not been in our best interest. So without going down that rabbit hole, um, the way we are word intentioned on living our lives is living to our true potential. So, what that means is that we are supposed to be living freer than we are. However, if we have a system that does not support the free and sovereign individual, then um everything that we put in place to be able to create um the most harmonious bodies possible is it's been it requires a lot of extra work because we live in a system that is not conducive and not natural to our um to what nature has designed for us. It completely undermines what our our our rhythms are. And so many people are living out of alignment. In fact, I would argue just about everyone is, as a result of the system that was created based on um based on order, based on creating, you know, uh I'm look I'm losing the words right now, but it's it's not designed for the individual to be able to come into their fullest versions of themselves, because if they did, then that person could not be controlled. And then the system that has been developed based on profit would lose their profit, right? So you have to look at this, and some of it you may not like what you come to when you start doing the deep digging. Um, but in order to be able to live our potential, um it requires a little bit of rebellion and revolution on our part. That's like, are we gonna keep living the way that we are if it's if it's conducive to all of imbalances that we're experiencing in our guts, in our um in our minds and our nervous system and all that? Or it is it a matter of bringing in um the habits and the tools that we need to live as peacefully as possible and really take a hard look at how do I want to live the rest of my life based on what the system says I should do or based on what is actually good for my body? And oftentimes what we find is that what's good for my body is not good for the system. The system doesn't care about that, right? But I have to care enough about my body to say, you know, I'm actually going to start making decisions that are good for me, not based on what someone else tells me I need to do for my body.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, right. And I mean, when we we hear that, we think, I mean, there's so many different things that that, you know, qualifies under. But I mean, diet culture is top of that list for me, right? We're all like, this is how you lose weight, this is how you feel better. This, you know, and and really, I mean, every single person is different, right? If you know, like I have this argument with my son all the time that mom, all you need to do is cut calories and move more. Well, no, it doesn't work like that, right? Like sometimes I can lose weight without moving more, and sometimes I can eat more, right? As long as I'm, you know, moving more. Like it just depends on your body, right? And and that's only one. I know that you know, the whole Ayurveda system is, you know, we could break it down into every, you know, lifestyle, like every or every life area, I guess is is a better term.

SPEAKER_01:

It's our environment, really. Like, and when it comes to women who struggle with weight loss, for example, a lot of people make that the problem. It's not the problem, it's the symptom of another problem happening, and that's a disharmony that that occurs in the body. And a lot of us will want to put band-aid solutions on that, we'll want to throw prescriptions at it and pills and and magic dust and machines and you know, expensive therapies and specialists and all those sorts of things. But what has that got us? If you look at the evidence around you, with all that we have and advances in the medical system, with all that we've thrown at cancer research and and um all sorts of different organizations, does the evidence suggest that with that approach that we're getting healthier or that we're getting sicker?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a really good question because I mean, we're all everybody's sick, right? Everybody's sick. That was rhetorical.

SPEAKER_01:

That was rhetorical. Everyone is getting sicker because the system is not designed for you to be successful. So you have to look to origin, you have to look to nature, you have to go back to what makes us human, what are the basic building blocks and look at the look to what has been in front of us this whole time that we have been removed from and go back there. This is the journey back home, and we have to do it not by ourselves as we've been told, but we need to do that um in community and with our with our sisters, with our brothers.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I love that. And that that's I'm I want to talk a little bit about community, actually, community versus isolation. So, I mean, the isolation topic has come up a lot, you know, in conversation over the last five years. You and I both know that we both have our own sets of opinions, and we're not gonna get into that because you know, we're just gonna create a lot of you know, that's how we can turn and turn into a very long one, long. Yeah, exactly. So I want to know what your thoughts are on how does connection or support from others, like your community, impact women and their ability to restore their own balance and energy.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I find oftentimes if we seek out this the sense of healing on our own, we as human beings aren't built to um grow and become harmonized all on our own. If we were the if that were the case, there would be one person living on this planet, right? We are designed to um to live in cooperation for one another for the evolution and growth of not only our species, but all living things on this planet. And what we're seeing right now is quite the opposite. And what we saw saw over the past five years went in the opposite direction of that. Um, and it goes against our our intuition. Um, when it comes to healing in community, we if we think about it, I'm I'm not gonna be able to just find the resources that I need that make sense, try it out, see if it works for me or not, if if I'm by myself. I need to look to resources to be able to create that. So, where am I gonna look in modern times? Um, I go onto Google or I go into magazines or I'd attend a podcast or I'd attend a ceremony or I'd attend a talk or a networking event or something like that if I'm searching out what's gonna work for me. And then it's up for me to decipher between what's real and what's not, what's gonna benefit me and what aligns and what doesn't. But I I require other entities to make that happen. That's not just gonna come out of the blue by myself and be self-created. That's gonna be because I've reached out to others in the in the community. And sometimes I'll come across a person or a podcast or a networking event that doesn't align for me. And then I know what not to do. So it's a process of elimination that can only occur when we seek that out and other people that are like us because we don't heal when we feel this stress all on our own. Think about if you've been in a conversation before where it's like, oh my gosh, that person's so like me, I'm not alone. And right there, the stress and all that stuff that we've been carrying and thinking that we're by ourselves all of a sudden starts to melt. And it's like, oh my gosh, this other lady who's sharing her story and all her vulnerabilities is going through the same thing that I am. And I need to have a conversation with her. We we don't solve wars with violence, we solve it with conversation and moving ahead. And that was a lot of what Gandhi's work was about, right? And why he stood so firmly on that hill was that we're gonna move forward with the evolution of our species by cooperating, not by competing. And we cannot do that if we try and do it by ourselves.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. I like that's like, you know, I think it's becoming more and more evident now than like just three, four years ago, right? Yeah, I think we we all kind of went into the whole pandemic with you know, we can do this alone, right? We I can do this alone, right? But the reality is no, nobody can do this alone, right? You can't raise a you can't raise a child alone, right? We are, I mean, I've heard for you know all my life that it takes a village, right? But it's not just a child, right? Like it's not just your family that we're we're living, we're we're raising so many different things that we need people. We need to know that there's others that have, you know, struggled in some way, and you start comparing notes. Well, you know, maybe I'll try that. Maybe that won't work, right? We don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and remember that child turns into the adult, right? So that child never disappears, never goes away. There's the inner child that lives in the adult, but the child becomes the adult. So it's not just child's gone, and then there's this adult, and then all of a sudden we don't need to be, you know, raised anymore, but we do need to be supported 100%. I think the statistics I looked into when I was when I was building uh the club were like how much better is community at helping people to um get their results faster than it is to try to do it by yourself, and the result was 60%. We are that much more likely to be.

SPEAKER_02:

And so when you say community, like yeah, yeah, of course. And so is that is that more like yeah, yeah, and we're gonna talk about your community for sure. But I I'm wondering, you know, like when you say that 60%, what does that really include? That's not necessarily like, you know, I'm gonna hire this this coach to help me through this. It's more about you know, having you know, uh discussions with one or more people, and we're talking about this is what I'm going through, right? This is what you've gone through. How did you handle it? How can you know, can you have ways for me to handle it? Or you kind of sit around and you have a glass of wine and you joke around about it, right? It just relieves a little bit of that stress, right? Is that kind of what you would say the community is beneficial for?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I mean, it's not just resources from from a founder or a leader or uh like an Ayurvedic specialist such as myself. That's not the main reason people would people join community, whether it's online or offline. Um, it's a sense of that that camaraderie. The number one thing people say that's most important to them in their lives is their family, not my money, not um, you know, whatever reason, not athletic ability or anything like that. It's my family. And it's because I feel a certain way when I'm around them. So people don't care about any of that other stuff. They care about how they feel when they're in the presence of other people. And so we we have an energetic field. We can tell if someone is generally not going to be good for energy or not. And that extends, I think, about six feet from our bodies. So one of the reasons why people enjoy getting together more so than they do online. And I heard that so much throughout the pandemic. Um, about like, yeah, I want to do this online thing because it's the closest thing I can get, because they're basically getting us into trouble if we try and get gathered together. But I am zoomed out, and that's because there's an energetic field that is that is felt when you're in the presence of someone else. And so intuitively, your body can pick up on that so much better when you've cut away a lot of the fluff, all the things that are ailing you, you're not even thinking about, you're not even thinking about personal growth or anything like that when you're dealing with you know gut issues that have you doubled over going to the bathroom when you're in public all the time. You want to fix that right away, right? But how do you how do you come to that knowledge? How do you come to those conclusions? Because you're putting yourself in in situations where you're where that are that are social and you're amongst other people because we we learn not necessarily not necessarily by the words that people say, but how we feel um when we're when we're around them. So and they don't have to even say anything. They just are, they have that that an initial energy that makes us say, hey, you know, I want some of that for me. How do I how do I connect with that? And that's kind of important. Wow. Yeah. So that can come from students, fellow students, or that can come from from a leader or a specialist or or whatever it is. And I find more than anything, you know, I've been a part of of groups myself. I've attended meetings, I've hired coaches, I've done all that stuff. Um, and in many cases, I've learned so much from the other students that are in the class. Um, sometimes what they say stands out more than than the education that I'm receiving from the teacher at the time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. And I I'm sure, I mean, I think most people can relate with that. I know myself, that's totally how I've learned in the past. I mean, not 100% for sure, but a majority of what I'm learning is like, oh, she gets it that way. Like I understand it the way she worded it, even though the you know, the teacher or instructor just said the exact same thing, right? That's kind of how yeah, yeah. And and I'm a people person. The more people I have in the room with me, the better I feel, the better I, you know, my energy gets. So I I can can relate with that. So in a world now that glorifies hustle, I mean, that's the system we're in. You teach that slowing down can actually lead to more sustainable results. Yeah. How do you how Women make that mental and physical shift without feeling like they're falling behind.

SPEAKER_01:

In incremental steps. So you can't, you know, can't put out a fire with fire, right? So if I say, oh, like my method is so much better, you should follow it and everything, and then I and I give them a whole bunch of um, you know, homeworker recommendations to do, that's really just giving them this the same sort of medicine that I'm telling them to not um go after anymore. So um when we say in incremental steps, I think we're used to instant gratification, and that has been conditioned in us over a number of years. This is a slow burn, if you will, right? So we have become conditioned to expect things um as soon as possible. I can literally pick up my phone and do my banking and order pad tie in less than like a minute now, if I wanted to. Whereas before the advent of cell phones and things like that, I literally have to get in my vehicle, go to the bank, take the money out, go to a restaurant, order pad tie, get that, and that would have taken me what, like two hours? And we can do it in less than that less than a minute. So, what we're talking about right now really is the third cause of disease. In Ayurveda, we call it parinama, and that really, in a matter of words, is the speeding up of time. And so the faster that we're going is actually the faster that we we let me put this another way, we decay at a faster pace because we're speeding up. Our body gets older faster. We're literally speeding up time. Um, so when we talk about slowing down to more effectively heal our bodies, our bodies do not heal in a state of fight or flight. And so when we're constantly hurried and we're walking around and we're eating our dinner and we're just shoveling it into our mouths because we got to get to the next thing, um, we're doing that in a fight or flight scenario. So our bodies aren't gonna do anything with what we're consuming, even if what we're eating is a kale salad, right? It's supposedly supposed to be healthy for people. It's it's not for all body types, by the way. Um, but if we're doing that in a state where we're in fight or flight, that healing does not occur. That healing gets put on hold like it does when we just throw pills at it, for example. And we we basically stall the natural healing process that was already coming, already coming down the pipe for us when we were starting to experience that imbalance. So the faster that we try to speed everything up actually undermines nature's intelligence. If you look at a tree that's just been marked up or scarred, or someone took a, you know, an axe to it, um, the tree's natural process is it doesn't put you know gauze around it right away. That's not its its process. What it does is it starts to create, it it bleeds too, but it takes a while, and that blood is sap. And the sap eventually overcomes that fresh wound from the axe. Um, and that takes time for that to happen because nothing's intervened with it, the body will heal and eventually become stronger as a result if we honor it, listen to it, and first pick up on the symptoms that are that often actually come through our emotions before they show up in the physical body. So if we ignore that in favor of what we need to do next, where we're taking the kids, the activities, the the to-do lists, and everything like that, that actually impedes healing. It slows it down. So when I say in incremental steps, it's sometimes a big ask for uh for people that have been conditioned to think that everything needs to happen right here, right now, instantaneously. And especially for our VAT types that are that are more built for speed and moving around all the time. That's that can be especially challenging for them. So the answer is in slowing down to improve our body's capacity to heal long term, not just heal for a little bit and then we get sick again or we get injured because we aren't getting sleep because we haven't looked at the root cause, right? But is going to require a slowdown process and for us to come to terms with what is actually important? What are my foundational needs and how do I honor them? And how do I make that a non-negotiable and protect the foundational needs that keep my body from getting out of balance in the first place?

SPEAKER_02:

So, like you make it sound very simple, right? Like it sounds like ah, you know, we need to have a little bit of patience. Life will, you know, it'll eventually just kind of fall into place. But that's not the reality, right? Like, I mean, it is the reality, but but like you said, we're also conditioned to, you know, I want an answer, I want a solution, and I want it right now, right? And that is sometimes the magic pill, right? Like sometimes it's like just give me a pill, just give me, you know, give me the secret, right? So that tomorrow I'll feel better or I'll look better and I can move on.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. But what happens to a person in that process, then, is I'll just add on to this, is that we automatically the next step is the definition of insanity. So if we haven't come to terms with, you know, I want this, I want a pill to solve this, and I want it right now. And it, you're right, it isn't a reality for a lot of people. But then what happens is they end up moving down another vicious cycle, is they want it solved right away. So they keep doing what they did before because they were conditioned to do that, only to find themselves spinning their wheels. Because if it's working for you, keep doing it. If you're healing, keep doing it. But if it's not getting you the results that you want, and you're and now you've got this other disharmony happening, and another disharmony because you've solved it with a pill, that's because you haven't healed the root cause. And that requires a shift in our um in our paradigm. It requires a big change in that in that aspect. And a lot of people say, Oh, I fear change. Well, your body is always changing, that's what it does. Um, what's what's happening is you know, I think because we've bought into this conditioning that, you know, if if I can't heal it right away, then it's not working, right? And that's not the case. Look to nature and how nature heals, and that's where your answers are, and they always have been.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, it's not in a pill of any kind, right? I mean, some of us need it. Like, I mean, I know my dad had heart surgery, he has to take heart medication, right? But he probably doesn't, and I don't even know, like, really, the the details of this medication that he takes. I know that you know the doctors say, Yeah, you need to take this, right? Or your heart will stop. I don't know what that means exactly. And that's that's on me, right? Like I need to look into that if I want to know, right? But at the same time, there's we don't have to take pills. We don't have to take pills for every little you know symptom that we have. Sometimes if you sit on it and you figure out, okay, this is what's wrong, right? These are the real symptoms that are coming that have come along. You know, what can I do? What what what else can I do without taking? And like you said, look at nature, right? What are the symptoms? How does nature handle that? And now let me do that, right? That's kind of the basics of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I mean you can integrate um modern medicine into the process, it just can't be the answer for everything. Because remember, when we when we reduce everything to a pill, for example, we're undermining nature's intelligence, right? So we can we can use it in the meantime as something that is temporary, but if we don't address the lifestyle and the nutrition and all the other things that that led to an imbalance in the first place, then we're we're undermining what what was what is natural in God given to us.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, right. Yeah, and it's not, I mean, it's sounds simple, but you know, when you have to go back many years, like it's it's not easy, right? Like it's okay, so maybe that's the whole simple but not easy button, right? Like it's it's just not an easy switch often. And I want to talk a little bit about organization because that's one of my passions, and you and I've had this conversation. Now, organization isn't usually the first thing people think about when it comes to Ayurveda. It was not when you and I had the conversation, I was like, what? Right? Like I was totally a little bit, you know, dumbfounded. Um, but how how would you explain um in Ayurveda the wisdom that help women get, you know, and stay organized and bought in their bodies and in their life?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think it comes down to identifying what is a priority to you in your life and what you value most. Because when we live out of alignment with what we with what we value, that's when we become disorganized and unhappy. Um, so let's go to Maslow's hierarchy for needs. At the very bottom of the pyramid is our need for um for uh shelter, um, food, um, water, um, procreation, that's all at the bottom, right? So if those needs aren't being met, then we've moved up to the next level of like, oh, I've got to meet this deadline first before I take care of myself. What happens is then you've skipped the very foundation of what keeps you in a harmonic or harmonious um state of being. So when it comes to to becoming organized, the way that you you help to structure your day so that it doesn't feel that it's so overwhelming and chaotic is that you look at creating healthy rituals that that nourish your foundational needs. So if you don't know what that is, then it requires clarity. Um so and identifying, you know, what is most important to me to keep me whole so that I can show up a hundred percent of you know of me rather than giving 50% because I've you know I've I've directed my attention towards something else and become disorganized, right? And so there's there's a whole other field um or arm up irregularity called Vastu. And that's you know, when we talk about like organizing spaces and closets and you know, garages and things like that, your environment is very much a part of your or reflection of your organization and how healthy your your inner spirit is as well. So we start first with with identifying um what are are our values? What do I need to be the kind of person that I want to be to show up first of all for myself and for others? Identify those as your foundational needs, honor those, protect them, and create those healthy boundaries. And whatever you do, do not cross the boundaries because then what happens is that you start to make other things a priority over your yourself. So get that established first, then move on to the next level. It's sort of like a game, I guess, if you will. And do the other things that are not that have not been identified as non-negotiables after and only after your non-negotiables have been taken care of. And then once you start to do that, then you have a structure. And if you have a think of it as scaffolding, for example, if you have that scaffolding for your day, it allows you to stay in a state of organization and um attending to what your rituals are that keep you more um resilient to disharmony. And when you're in that state of mind and you practice it day in and day out with consistency, and remember there's that easy saying, consistency is key. It's an easy saying, but it's not easy to do because we're we're talking about, you know, a um you're re-educating your body to look at what its priorities are versus what we tend to like, you know, get distracted with on a regular basis. So, in terms of us being able to keep um well organized, and PITA types are awesome at this, our fire and water types, that's their one of their natural go-tos, is they love their to-boot lists, they love goals, they love checking off um items on the list type thing. Um, so they're really good resources to um to get support from when you're looking to become organized yourself, especially if you're Maravada type, um, who tend to be more disorganized when they're out of balance. And especially if you're Kafka type too, where you have an idea in mind, but you have a hard time getting to that and the motivation isn't quite there, and you need that that little bit extra fire or push. Um turn to the different doshas for that, but organization is something that's that comes naturally when you honor your foundational needs first.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I love it. And I know when you and I had the conversation the first time, I remember thinking, why is she telling me to organize? How is that gonna help me get energy? Right? I remember thinking that and I'm thinking, what the hell? But when I did it, like when you gave me the job, you know, the little chore, and you said I want to see pick pictures before and after, I was like, this woman is crazy, but okay, I'll do what I gotta do, right? And after, like so when I took the before picture, I was like still thinking like this you were crazy, right? I'll be honest, right? But as I was doing the project, and the project wasn't big because I like to keep my things organized, but as I was doing it, I started to feel better, right? I started to feel better about my environment, about myself, about how I was actually like disciplined to do the, you know, the recommendation that you gave me, right? And then I saw like how it was a like a ripple effect, how it kind of like you know, it slipped into all the different areas of my life without even really putting any thought into it. It was like it made me feel better, so I'm gonna do it again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Did that mean that you were I I say this all the time. You guys walk right into this, right into this one. Did that mean that you were living light?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, yeah, right. And I guess I mean, you know, and I think, you know, when you really start to think about the little things that you do in your day, right? That is what creates that harmony that we are all looking for.

SPEAKER_01:

You're practicing it. You're you're doing it, you're creating that consistency. And it's not, it's not a magic exercise that you do or a magic food that comes along because everyone's looking for that and the superfoods and all that kind of stuff. It's the consistency in how you choose to live according to what you say are your most important values, right? How we do one thing is how we do all things. So that practice of organizing, I think it was your pantry at the time. The practice of organizing your pantry is more to do with the practice itself as opposed to having a clean pantry. Because you practice that and you actually live it and you start to embody that, then you carry that knowledge that you just gleaned for yourself, and then you can apply it to how you would create a peaceful and organized and lighter day for yourself as well. So that's the training grounds, my friend.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, now I want to know when for just in general, our listeners, what are some simple daily practices that they can begin today to start feeling a little bit lighter and more aligned?

SPEAKER_01:

Your best bet for living more aligned starts in the morning. So this is the practice of what we call Dinacharya. So this is healthy daily routine. So if you start your day off that way, that's actually what gives you the most success throughout the day because then you live your day in the rest of that energy. So your first hour is when you're the most at your greatest potential. So we call that um the hour of power, not Ayurveda's term, um, but just a term I've I've adopted over the past few years, might have come from the 5 a.m. club, who knows? Um, but some things that you can do to create that throughout the day and set the tone for how you live the rest of the day out, um, they will begin in the morning. So, what you can do is upon waking is have and have a um warm, salted lime water first thing to clear out all the gunk that is accumulated over the meeting, over the over the evening, the night. Um so what you're doing is you're you're going back to the the root and honoring your where your body is when it wakes up. It's in a state of getting rid of stuff. That's why you go to the bathroom first thing, um, and like why you have to pee. Um, and you're facilitating that with a flush and you're helping to move a lot of that gunk out of the body. So that's one thing that you can do. Another thing is through scraping the tongue. So that's a process of removing accumulated toxin or coating that happens over over the night. Um, and so a tongue scraper is a device that you use to literally pull the coating off the tongue to create a um, well, to get rid of any sort of toxic buildup that has happened, the sludge that happens overnight. Um, and then another thing that you can do is in terms of starting your day with intention, is really to set the tone for the day. So that's moving your body and because it sits, it lays all night long. It sort of sits in that energy. So you move it and you start to like fire it back up again because it's slower moving in in the morning, as we all know. All the doshas know that. Um, and then you can move into a meditation or set the intention for the day. How am I gonna be, or who do I need to be for the day in order to create um the kind of life that I want to live? What is one thing that I can do? And pick something that's small and easy to do, that doesn't feel daunting. Um, the smaller the better. Remember, this is incremental steps. Uh, you can begin the morning in in study as well and learning more about yourself. The more you stack that in that first little hour, half hour even, um, even if you started with five minutes of doing one of those things, you're already setting the course for the rest of the day to be more successful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's not as difficult as it sounds, right? I mean, the tongue scraping is part of like you instead of brushing your teeth first, you scrape your tongue and then brush your teeth, right? I mean, you're already gonna brush your teeth. So it's just a matter of getting yourself a tongue scraper, sitting it beside your toothbrush, and it's there. Yeah. Yeah. I have I do have two more questions. The first one I'm gonna ask you is how does reclaiming physical balance open the door to emotional and spiritual clarity?

SPEAKER_01:

Can you reword that physical balance? Like what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02:

Like actual like so I'm gonna say like I okay, so I that means like the way I feel in my physical body, right? The what I'm feeling when I want to feel more balanced, right? How how will that open the door to feeling more emotionally balanced as well as spiritually? Or understanding what I'm feeling emotionally and spiritually.

SPEAKER_01:

So to recognize balance is often balance is almost romanticized. It's it when we look at how you create um homeostasis in the body, which is the nerdy term for basically saying balance um or more harmony, the the terms that we use in Ayurveda is either you're harmonious or disharmonious. So when you make choices that um create disharmony, then that creates disharmony physically and emotionally within the body. Um, but you can ask yourself the question: is what I'm about to eat going to bring me more harmony or less harmony? It's one or the other. There's no gray area, right? And so you start asking yourself that those questions or how I'm behaving in the next moment in response to my you know erratic child, is it gonna create more harmony or less harmony? And then your choices will ultimately reveal what your results are, right? So if you choose a less harmonious one, then you're gonna get less harmony, which will also impact us emotionally. There, you can't really separate the two because they are a template uh template for one and the other. So if you're disharmonious in your emotions, it's gonna show up in your body in symptoms, and it sort of works in that order. Um, so to create that sense of balance, and we'll say harmony in this in this case, it's every decision that you make, ask yourself is it bringing me closer to who I'm becoming and harmony, or is it is it a disharmonious um decision? And then go from there and work your way down the algorithm and start practicing. Remember, none of us are experts at being humans. This is a giant school, and we are students. And so every day, you as a parent or you know, a woman going through the different phases of your life, and you're in menopause, for example, those questions that we ask ourselves never stop. We just get better at answering them all the time because it goes from a space of logic choices now to second nature, and then once we've got that established, then it makes us um it gives us the capacity to reach higher versions of ourselves, which help keep us from going out of balance physically and emotionally.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. You know what's going through my mind right now is Kendra, don't take away chocolate, right? I mean, that's what's going through my mind. I love chocolate, right? I mean, you we've had this discussion over like too many times, I'm gonna say. But, you know, and that's part of it, right? Like there, you see this chocolate bar and Halloween just finished. We know that, you know, the chocolates were out there. We all indulge, you know, probably way too much, you know. But the that is the question that we need to be asking ourselves. Okay, do we really want that chocolate? Yes, my mouth wants the chocolate, my you know, but maybe even my physical body wants the chocolate, but is it really what my body needs? Right. And I think that's kind of the question that you were sort of hinting at like, is this gonna bring me harmony or disharmony? Yeah, it's gonna bring joy to my mouth, right? For the next minute, maybe two minutes, and then what? Right? Then, you know, my ass is gonna be bigger, you know, I might get a headache, I might feel, you know, really tired tomorrow. Like, you know, when we look at at the whole picture, right? Two minutes, is it worth the two minutes?

SPEAKER_01:

There is no failure if you learn from it, right? So even if you picked up that tiny little bite-sized mini coffee crisp that came to your house somehow or that was left over because the trick-or-treaters didn't come and pick it up, and you have it anyway, but you know that it's going to create disharmony. If if you can create a learning moment from that, it's not lost. You're still moving in the right direction because what have you done? You've all of a sudden become more conscious of the choices that you're making. Whereas a year before, the Halloween before, without that knowledge, you might have just unconsciously ate it and then been like, oh my God, I'm surrounded by coffee crisp rappers. What the hell have I done? Right. Now yeah, so now it's all about making these choices in more of a conscious framework and being accountable for the choices that we're making, right? And okay, so I had that little mini coffee crisp, but you know, like at the end of the day, this isn't making excuses, but like if I had a full-size coffee crisp and the mini one and I chose the mini one instead, I'm already making a step in the right direction because I know they're both disharmonious because what's in them is is garbage. It's not nutrition, there's no life force in those foods. However, there's a lesson in that mini coffee crisp right there. And if we choose to ignore it, then we will be called to account again to relearn that lesson until we get it.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I that's a that's a question that you know you and I discuss many times, and I always feel the same way. Like, why did I even ask her? But you know, I think it's important that we remind ourselves, right, that this is how it works, right? You know, what do you call it? Failure of the intellect when you know better, but you do it anyway, right? So that's absolutely you know, we and we're all guilty of it. Every single human on this earth does something that they know is going to harm them in some way, right? Some some it's you know really serious, and some it's just you know, it's a simple little chocolate bar. But right, that's and we need to remind ourselves in order for us to feel our very best, we have to understand what's good for us and what isn't.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_02:

What brings harmony, what does it exactly? Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth. Right, exactly. So my last question. So our theme is you know, end of the this year, 2026 is coming to an end. And we're now beginning of me for the new year. I want to know. So Ayurveda doesn't see like December 31st as the end of the year. It's just like you said, a system. It's just a like it's more of an organization system more than it is anything else, right? Just to keep everybody on the same, you know, page so that we're all working on the same date. What is Ayurveda's um take on the whole new year thing? Like we, you know, many of us set you know new goals and intentions for the coming year. What is Ayurveda's take on that?

SPEAKER_01:

There is no beginning and an end. So we tend to think of January 1st as the beginning and then December 31st as the end of 2025. Now, when we look at time, it's it's this idea of um the way Ayurveda sees this is that it's the continuation of an energy and we move into different seasons, and that doesn't start on January 1st and end on December 31st. That's not nature. That is that has been systematized, that is a human paradigm that was put in place to create order and structure in society and for whatever other reason, right? So when we look at coming to the close of 2025, we it's not actually closing, it never has closed, it's all an example of energy and 2025 are numbers, right? So um we can look at it in in terms of seasons, right? And so if we go back to the building blocks of nature, that comes down to the natural flow of how things have always been, how they are and how they always will be. Um, and nature will always win, right? And and the the wisdom of nature will win. So when we move into thoughts of seasons, that extends beyond December 31st. So it doesn't end at that point. We look at the different seasons in terms of their doshas. So right now we're in we're in vada season, or what we call the fall moving into winter because we've got some snow happening here in Canada. And then we go into um early winter and then late winter, and then we go into early spring, late spring, early summer, um, late summer, and we fluctuate throughout, and that's a like a continuous infinity, if you will, neither created nor destroyed because it is just energy. So when we look at the new me, like uh it's uh January 1st, it's like new year, new you. That's actually fundamentally incorrect. Um, and it's just based on the on the system. Every day that you wake up is a new opportunity to become a newer. Version of who you are. So that is your new year. Your new year is your new day. In fact, the moment that we're done, you know, this podcast, for example, after that is the new moment that we move into. It's a succession of moments and it doesn't have a beginning or end. So when Ayurveda looks at that, is how do we transition, you know, seamlessly from one season to another? Well, as we move into fall, we say goodbye and to and and release the fun season of the summer, the summer being fire and water, and we release that and we start to move into what are the qualities of the fall? Okay, things are getting cooler, it's getting raw, it's getting cold, it's getting dry. So we move into that season. And then if we have the knowledge of Ayurveda at our backs, it teaches us that like attracts like. So we're going to be more likely to experience imbalances of light, dry, and cold in that season. Ah, but something that we were talking about earlier on that we never got to talk about in terms of the solution is in the opposite. So the solution is in the opposite quality. For dry, we have um we have moisture. For light, we have heavy. So if we look at those, for chaotic and frenetic and mobile energy, we have stagnancy, we have calm, we have peace. So we look to bring in those qualities in the season. So we're in the fall season, we're moving into the winter season. We create that harmony and that that center, that balance by bringing in those opposite qualities. And that's gonna shift and move in past December into January in nature, in the natural cycle, in the order of things. This is natural law we're going back to. Um and so the new year, new you is misleading, I guess, for lack of better terms. It's who am I going to decide to be in harmony with myself in this next moment? And so if people want to put this more practically, it's in terms of making those shifts long term and making them sustainable, is who does Kendra want to be today and in the fall, uh, November 12th, 2025, and every successive moment that moves moves along. So we can practice that on a daily basis by acknowledging what is true, what is do we know to be true around us right now? So if you're looking at shifting that paradigm and making it more natural, why not start with the season? What is the season that I'm in? And what is the truth about the season that I'm in? And who am I in the season? We're different in the summer than we are in the fall and the winter and the spring. So, how do I start making those shifts? Once what's one small thing that I can do to create the new version of me in the next moment or in this season. And then give yourself grace because you're a student.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And and with that, we know, I mean, you know, of course, that you know, with every season, there's not, it's not just one, it's not just one thing that we're changing. We're changing our the food that we're eating, we're changing the activities that we're doing, right? And it's learning all this stuff. Like you're not gonna do it all at once, you're gonna do it slowly, right? And if it's one thing at a time, right, then it might be one food and it might be one activity, it might, you know, like that's and I and I mean I love all this stuff. I love learning all this stuff because it's just so I mean it's real, but it's also like you can't unknow what you know, yeah, right. We we follow like you know, the system, but uh when we learn all this stuff, we're like, how did we not know this? Right? Like it's kind of right there in front of us, right? And we just we have been so trained, like you said, to almost ignore that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's moving from unconscious conditioning to now I'm taking accountability for my experience and I'm creating my reality in a consciousness, not an unconscious teaching from some system that is outdated and not working for us at all as a species. Right. So, in order to be able to do that, we have to be at a point where we're ready to take accountability and we're ready to commit to ourselves. And when we come to that point, that's when we'll be able to really experience the fruits of what we're of the choices that we're making every single day.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. I love it. I love it. Well, I want all of our listeners and I want well, really, everybody I know to come work with you. Um, I want you to share with us, you know, you have a membership, you have um the Happy Body Club, right? I want you to explain that a little bit and any offers that you have that you can offer to our listeners.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so um I recently started a membership. I've been at this for 10 years now, Living Life Iurvita just celebrated its 10-year um anniversary. And in the past year, I came to a realization that I think in order to be able to reach more people and serve more people, was through um through community and through group uh coaching, as opposed to the one-on-one work I was doing with individuals, which is how I met you. Um so I started the Happy Body Club, and that came from a series of different events that I was doing, retreats and masterclasses and even summit under the same name. That I'm like, what do people want more of a happy body? How do we get it in community? Um, and with other other people that want similar things for their body. They they want to live lighter, they want to be free, sovereign beings that are healing themselves. Um, so really, you know, there's lots of wonderful features to the club that help facilitate that. But more than anything, the benefits of being in a community are not only to have exclusive resources that you wouldn't get, but it also eliminates a lot of the confusion of where you might be putting a bunch of information together from Facebook and from Google and from podcasts and things like that. Whereas this community serves to um to offer the resources for you to be able to curate it and make it make sense for you rather than take blanket um, you know, resources and try and piece it together without even knowing how to do that. Um, so it's it's nice in that respect. Um also that you're held to account as well, because there's other members that are either like they're they're experiencing their own successes and their own challenges. And when you're part of a community, you're by by default asked to step up to the plate and become more accountable for your health. Um, and so we have we have processes in there that that facilitate that for you. Um and I think just being able to practice that on a regular basis and having that access 24-7 through membership is is a a tool that not many know even exists, right? And so um so with this membership and being able to heal in in a group and do live classes together as well, that's humongous because we can we can offer um you know our perspective as as fellow students, and then I can offer guidance as as the teacher. Um, and so we're always learning, um, but making things make sense for us and taking what is most valuable for us out of that based on that experience and based on how we feel around other members as well. Um, cool that we have access to like food and eating resources there too. We've got an online cooking class that we do once a month, um, which again creates another level of experience and adds a lot more value to the experience rather than just going on Pinterest and finding an Ayurvedic recipe, we can figure out ways to apply it as well. Um, so for people that watch the podcast, watch andor listen to it, um, so I'm gonna extend the offer to you as well. Uh it's a three months at$10 off our very affordable rate. We have it's$49 a month. Um, but for you, if you're listening to this podcast, um, there is a link and a code that will be put in the show notes for for you to be able to enjoy it at a gift of$10 off for the next three months of membership. Something tells me that you may want to be a part of it for a little bit longer, but we'll just start with that, right? Um yeah, so that's one of my offers. And I believe one of the other offers is is um, you'll see that in in the in the show notes as well. But if you're looking at getting clarity, um start with an assessment. That's what we do, and then that's how we figure out what your your body types are, which leads to your your um capacity to live in better harmony.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. Thank you so much. I want, like I said, I want all our listeners to reach out to you because I think I have learned so much about my body. And, you know, I'll be honest, I think a little bit more about nature, right? And how it how it relates to what my body is doing. You know, the last five years has been completely eye-opening for me as far as my own health, right? And I want everyone to experience that. I want people to realize that, you know, it's all within us. We just have to be open to learning it and realizing it. And of course, with your help, because you have such an awesome way of explaining everything. I, you know, you and I are always okay, we need to cut this short. We've been chatting for a really long time now. So yeah, and yeah, and I I'm yeah, I love talking with you, so it doesn't matter. But thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01:

It's been my pleasure. Um, couldn't think of a better way to spend an hour in great conversation with you.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me and Kendra today. Uh confidence in Bloom is uh it is definitely something that I am truly enjoying. I hope today's conversation reminded you that you're not alone on this journey and that your confidence grows every time you tell that itty bitty shitty committee to hush. If you're ready to take this even deeper, I'd love to invite you to the Bloom Room, a nurturing community where women come together to release self-doubt, reconnect with themselves, and bloom into the truest version of who they're meant to be.

SPEAKER_00:

Until next time, remember, confidence isn't something you find, it's something that blooms from within.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.