The Emotional Root Behind Your Hormonal Symptoms with Dr. Sonya Jensen

What is the belief that you have about yourself that's preventing you from healing?

I had one woman and it broke my heart hearing her say this. We did a bunch of testing and came out that she had like Hashimoto's, she had a few other autoimmune things going on. And she looked me dead in the eyes and said, I'm not worth your help. And I remember that this was years ago, probably in the beginning of my practice. And I just like paused and stared for a moment. I'm like, oh, this is the block. We're so conditioned to help others. We're so, and it's our natural state to want to mother and to want to support others around us that we forget this vessel and this body that's giving us that ability to help others. And so I think the biggest mistake we make is not putting ourselves first.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Rooted in Wellness. Today I'm joined by a very, I'll call you my kindred sister. I feel like we've been friends for so long. Dr. Sonia Jensen, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

Of course. So you're a naturopathic doctor. You are South Asian, but you're married to a Danish man. So we share that in common, which is so special. Shout out to everyone from, from India and from Denmark. Um, let's start off with the intention of this podcast. It's really to merge the worlds of, you know, ancient wisdom with modern day medicine, but also really to remind people what it feels like to be rooted, rooted in yourself and your health and your happiness. And I believe when we're in that state, we awaken what we all have is our own ability to heal ourselves, this intelligence of the body. So we start off the podcast by, by asking, you know, what are 2 or 3 practices that you have every day that help you feel more rooted?

Yeah, I love that question.

Good.

Yeah, I— one that I have a non-negotiable, it's movement. And I have felt that since I was very young, um, being someone that danced and, um, watched that modeled by my father. And I saw even for myself, in order to feel rooted in my body and myself and my identity too. I just needed that movement. So movement's a big one for me. And nutrition is the other piece because if I feel good, then I'm gonna project good vibes out there too and be good with my kids. And the third one that kind of surprised me when I think about just like what my anchor is right now, it's relationship. And so being able to have a moment with my kids or have a moment with my husband and just feel really rooted in this human experience helps me move through the day, especially with everything going on in the world. I feel like that's probably the most important one right now.

So good. Not a lot of people mention relationships. And again, for listeners, I showcase these questions to point out that every expert that sits in that chair mentions modalities that are free. Yeah, they're all free, right? They're all things that we have access to. And I just want to hover on relationships for a second because I think that relationships should be moving up the pillar of wellness after sleep and nutrition and movement, right? Especially moving into this era where we're behind screens all the time, where we're losing connection and face-to-face time, which is so deeply powerful, right?

Yeah.

It kind of anchors us and reminds us that we're not in this wellness journey alone, because often our healing journeys can be really self-centered and we spin in our ideas and our thoughts. But then we connect with other people and we realize, oh, I'm not alone. Yeah.

And just like the bigger picture of life, you kind of start to to expand and see, okay, well, why am I doing all this? Why do I want to be healthy? It's because I want to be here for my kids. I want to be here for my grandkids if they choose to have them. I, I want to experience life, and relationships is number one in all of that.

That is the whole point. Yeah. Yes, I love it. All right, as a practitioner, you and I have both, both experienced drifting from feeling rooted. We know what the imbalances are firsthand, especially at this stage in our life. I have a feeling we're around the same age. Um, what causes you to feel uprooted? Do you notice that certain things? Have you really tuned into what those things are and what are they?

So uprooted, that's a good question. It's when I don't do those 3 things.

Yeah.

That will definitely do it. And I find fear and anxiety, especially in this stage of life, um, has been so amplified because of the changes in my hormones and where I'm at that things that I thought I moved through or things that I thought I wouldn't be afraid of, um, you know, being in that stage where my parents now are are getting older, this anticipatory anxiety. I feel like when that, those thoughts start to show up, I'm completely uprooted from my body and myself and even my knowing. And so when those thoughts start to show up, that is when I feel the most ungrounded. And that's where those practices have to come in even more deeply because if they weren't there, I could just cycle in that anxiety and it can turn into now future projecting with my kids or with my practice or with my relationship, all of it.

[Speaker:MELISSA] And what is it when life throws us those obstacles, our mindfulness practices, the practices that help us feel rooted, are the first things to go. And we know that we need those things at the most during those times. And we've got to be a mirror for each other to remind ourselves of that. So we're going to talk more about that anxiety that you mentioned, especially as women, because I think that, you know, women in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s, this anxiety feeling comes out of the blue. And I know for me, I can speak for myself, where it feels some days I'm spinning and it's overwhelming. And because I'm a practitioner, I can catch myself like, hey, this isn't normal. Um, but I think it's important that we really, we really hover on that. So before we do that, I want to get so much out of this interview. Let's do a couple rapid-fire questions. All right. What's one belief about women's hormones that you wish everyone would let go of?

Oh, that there's no control, that they're controlling us.

Oh, good one. Next, most underrated tool for hormonal balance that costs nothing?

Breath. Yes.

We're sitting having matcha and it's like, this is actually, this would probably be our, our like normal conversation. Exactly. Right. All right, next, one emotion women resist feeling that would transform their health if they allowed it?

Anger.

What's the biggest mistake that you see women making when trying to heal their hormones?

Not seeing that they're worth the healing.

Last one. One ancient practice that modern women desperately need to return to?

Community.

Mm.

Yeah.

As we started. All right. I see the trend today. I love it. So today, speaking of these things, for our listeners, for our friends, it's not uncommon for us to feel like we're doing all of the right things. Exercising, morning routine, cutting back on caffeine, finding community, and yet we still often show up feeling a little depleted. And you saw the study, so the World Health Organization now recognizes stress as this global epidemic, but women are more deeply affected by this. My question is, for all these women who are listening and feeling exhausted and feeling anxious and disconnected from their bodies and maybe stuck in a pattern that they've identified with, what are our hormones trying to tell us during that time?

Oh, I think that's like the big question, really. When we're feeling disjointed and disconnected and the hormones are amplifying all these emotions that we maybe have suppressed over the years and the stories that we've been carrying, they're amplifying our ability to actually hear the story, to understand the story so that we can actually transform it so that we're now in the driver's seat. I think for generations and for years, we have certain beliefs that are dictating our habits or dictating what we believe ourselves to be, our perception of the world. And then when we have these hormonal changes, whether you are in puberty and hormones are building, our whole outlook on life is changing. When you're pregnant, everything changes. Postpartum, you're going through other changes where you're grieving certain parts of yourself, then transforming into this whole new woman that you had no idea existed within you. And then perimenopause and menopause show up, and all of a sudden we're going through reverse puberty, and there's grief and there's changes, and all these things are showing up, and our old stories are starting to rise up and starting to inform us that there's this healing that still needs to happen so we can go into menopause clear and command the second half of our life instead of running through it because of conditioning from our culture or society or the stories we've been carrying on our backs.

Healing needs to happen so that we can progress into menopause. That's powerful. And the other thing you touched on was grieving. Something that I thought of was, and I thought about this after I had my kids, because you wake up and it's like, oh, I didn't realize how much of myself was going to be lost having children. The children are gifts. I absolutely love being a mom, but oh, I was never shown that I could grieve. There's no more rites of passage that happen within our community or extended families anymore. And I'm back at that feeling now. I'm grieving a part of myself that isn't, you know, going to bear children anymore, um, that's now moving into this phase. And unfortunately, as grateful as I am for society now giving a lot more attention to women's health and hormones, which is overly due, um, there's still no conversation around grieving. And I think that still falls into this patriarchal view where women are trying to show up and just say, like, but What about the gifts? And what about the beauty? And you're strong. And there's no time to grieve. Just muscle through it and get better and be stronger.

Do one more thing.

You can do this. And yet I just wish that there was more echoing or resonance, like, it's okay to grieve. And it doesn't mean that you necessarily have to check out of life, but it's something that we're all going through. Yeah.

I just had this conversation yesterday with someone really important to me. And, you know, she's grieving this process of not being a mom and trying for so many years. Absolutely. Right before her period, she's like, I feel like a madwoman. Like I'm just crying. And I'm like, because you're grieving this dream that you had and your body is now leaving that, those reproductive years. So there's going to be grief. Like that's normal. It's okay to feel. It's when we start to suppress, that's when we get resentment. That's when it's imprinted into our bodies and we're not processing that grief. And that's when it's showing up later through illness. But actually, if we talked about grief and how in every stage, so even a young woman going through puberty, she's gonna be grieving her childhood. And when you become pregnant, you're grieving your body, you're grieving the life that of adventure maybe with your partner or with yourself. And then now we're grieving aging parents, we're grieving kids growing up, we're grieving our body, our mind, our memories, we're grieving that ability to recover quickly. Like there's so much going on in this phase of life and I don't think I don't think we're giving enough attention to the shadow part of it.

Yeah.

Because I think as a society, we're more comfortable talking about, well, okay, now do this, this, and this in your morning routine and you should feel better.

Right.

Do the cold plunge, you should feel better. And yes, these tools are important, but we have to look at the core of, you know, the feeling that we're all struggling with.

Instead of turning wellness into a checklist.

Yes.

Yeah. I should really have a grief counselor on this show who can kind of help merge these conversations together. If anyone knows a grief counselor, a holistic grief counselor, please reach out. Out and let me know. I'd love to have them on. Um, yeah, you know, our memory, our, our brain, the way that our bodies used to function. I feel like the shift into perimenopause comes with, um, subtle shifts that we're not so aware of. But would you agree that, you know, did it feel like one day you woke up and what is this body? These things were great— loose skin, sagging boobs. Like, you had all your medicine.

They talked about the 7-year cycles, and 42 is a big year. So between 42 and 49, there's a continuous change. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe this past week, and I was coming here, I'm like, I don't have pants that fit me. I need to go buy some pants and totally different size. And I had this moment, you know, outside looking in, somebody would be like, she's crazy, what is she talking about? But knowing my body and how it's changed, it's like I'm grieving this ability to just go into a store, know my size, and walk right out. And now it's like I have to spend an hour there trying on every style and everything to see how comfortable I feel within myself. Yeah, yeah, to change.

So I'm hearing from you really that hormones can really have a story as well within our bodies. And I think for a lot of us, we identify these— the story. And I'm curious, you know, I'm only speaking from my personal experience and maybe the relationship to some of my clients. When you mentioned healing needs to happen in order for us to move into menopause, it also feels like there's a certain part of our— my shadow, our shadow— that's come up from out of the blue, things that I thought that I had processed, which have more of an intense hold on me.

Yeah.

And I share that because in Ayurveda, um, there's a concept of holding on to emotions within the body, and I can feel that now. And again, society, media is telling us to go and, you know, band-aid that with more hormones.

Yeah.

With more checklists on the, you know, to-do for your wellness and get more sleep and do all these things that take a lot of time. Yeah. But instead, that shadow work that comes up In your work with, with your patients, do you notice that this is a phase of really identifying what those shadows are and seeking liberation and feeling liberation finally? Hmm.

This really is that opportunity because I think it's a non-negotiable now with your body and the reactions that we have, especially the emotional reactions. I was sitting at my parents' house just a few weeks ago and there was, I can't remember, you know, there's something going on with me and my husband about logistics on something. And then my mom came in and said something around me not calling her back and then comparing me to my sister. And the tears just started pooling outta my eyes. And in the past I would be able to suppress that and just kind of move through and not feel what I was feeling about like not being enough, not being the good daughter, not all those things, those thoughts that show up. But in this stage I'm finding I just, I can't ignore it. Those emotions anymore. And yes, it's still for me to discern, okay, where am I in my cycle? Is this just hormonal? Was it an overreaction? Or is there an underlying belief that I have yet to heal when it comes to being seen a certain way, or when it comes to feeling like I don't belong in my family, still feeling like that black sheep, or whatever it might be. But it brought up this conversation I was able to have with my husband after to understand myself more deeply and be like, okay, there's still work to do here. And so I think if we pay more attention to the signals that the hormones are giving us, our body's giving us, our reactions are giving us, we understand ourselves more deeply. And we may not 100% heal, whatever that even means. Yeah. I think we're always changing and evolving and understanding. But what you're going to do is you're gonna befriend yourself more and be able to move into this new phase with a very different vision of who you are.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's almost like identifying what the stories are or what the personalities were that you originally built to protect yourself, to be, you know, the good daughter, the one that was the perfectionist or the people pleaser, right? You witness these identities that had formed from a very young age that, huh, maybe I don't need to show up that way anymore. And there's liberation in that. But to your point, it takes a lot of time. It does. Yeah. So So the big question, or I'm sure you get this all the time, my labs look so perfect, doc. My doctor's telling me that my labs look great, nothing's out of range, but I feel manic, I feel anxious, I feel depressed, and I don't know what to do. For those people listening, for those women listening, what would you say are the earliest signs to tune into when hormones are becoming out of sync?

I think that is huge. And as a naturopathic doctor, we've always been trained to look outside the box and look at the labs in a very different way and see the person that's sitting in front of you. And so for yourself, when you're walking through your day and you're not feeling like you anymore, the memory pieces, you know, that word that you can't recall that was so easy for you. I was having a conversation with my cousin last night and trying to talk about the 4 basic needs or the 6 basic needs that Tony Robbins talks about. And I couldn't figure out the word certainty for the life of me, 3:00 AM. Woke up and I was like, certainty and uncertainty. Those were the words. But I sat there for 5 minutes. I'm like, I know, I'm like, it's not control. And so we have these little moments that show up. And when you're not feeling like you, like, you know, you're struggling with something, like your reaction is bigger than what it was before. Maybe you're reacting to your kids with impatience and that wasn't there. Maybe when your partner is chewing really loud and all of a sudden you're just feeling very differently about him. There's these subtle signs that your body and your mind start to give you that something's changing. And it could be maybe a little bit of weight gain around your belly, or it's harder to fall asleep right now, or your temperature regulation is changing a little bit. These subtle signs start to show up and they start to scream later on if we don't start paying attention.

You're working with women throughout this journey. Yes. So you really see the progression from, from one end to the other. Isn't it wild that we weren't taught about that in school?

Like, that's my dream. Yeah, was to get into the school system.

Oh, what a dream.

And start really teaching young women to start to understand their bodies and especially their hormones.

What a dream. Yeah, I think about, obviously through my daughter's eyes, she's, she's really young, but for her to be able to understand and how empowered she may feel understanding that her emotional well-being could be directly related to her hormones. And being able to investigate. Yeah.

And I think what you said earlier, there's no ceremony. Yeah, there's no like passage. There's no like understanding that what's happening to you, these changes are actually really beautiful. If anything, they're shamed in many cultures. Yeah. And so when we have that relationship of like, okay, these hormones, this bleed that I have every month is actually disruptive. It's uncomfortable. I don't want it. So we have this negative relationship. But if we start to teach them that, no, that's your body's way of communicating with you, it helps you understand you better so that you can make the right choices in the month so you're not uncomfortable and you know exactly what it is that you need and you understand your emotions throughout the month. They're not going to be the same. We're emotional, we're women, and that's how we express. That's what gives meaning to a lot of our experiences. So if we help them understand that, A, they're not alone and that this is normal, then they're not going for that quick fix. Or they're not shaming themselves, or they're not feeling bad in their bodies. And imagine that, learning that when you're young and being able to do that for the rest of your life.

Imagine, you know, as you were speaking, I'm thinking, you know, if there was a checklist in the morning to tune in, how am I feeling today versus yesterday? Because that's how quickly things can shift, right? And for all of the women out there who, you know, I was the introvert. I went quiet, but I have friends who are louder than I am, or extroverts. And for the girls who were told that they were too much, right, because of how they were, not really understanding that part about themselves, it really brings on a different sense of ownership to really understand the power and the connection between hormones and emotions and how you're feeling. Yes. Yeah. And not identifying with it because we tend to identify like, oh, this is it.

This is who I am.

This is who I am.

Yeah.

Yes, I'm quiet, I'm angry, I'm sad, but too much.

Yeah. And you know, I coined that the quiet, like the silent struggler who often becomes the people pleaser in order to fit in, in order to belong, in order to feel loved, all those things. And when you're like the loud, vivacious one, often over time that gets like pushed aside so that also you can fit in and you can belong. And so when we're suppressing who we are, who our innate self is, that is when disease starts to take place because we're having this inner battle. And that's why I think women have more autoimmune disease, cysts, fibroids, all of those. I've been able to see that there's always some emotional link, especially resentment. When we're not able to express who we are, resentment follows, and that gets buried, and that gets stuck inside of the body.

You're getting my brain going. I'm thinking about, you know, if as children we were told or taught or mirrored to really own our archetype, right? If we lived in villages together, we all had an archetype that we had to own to be part of this village, to make it function and to hold space for other women and families. If we were told that it was okay to be that in the world from other women, I wonder if we would identify less with people pleasing towards our parents and stuff like that, right? Because I still feel like in this era of womanhood and women's rights, and there's still so many women who criticize and judge and put other women down for being different, right? And I think that that's something that needs to end, but it could be associated with their perimenopausal anger, right?

So it could be all those things.

Yeah, it could be all those things.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's hone in on stress just for a second. When we look at all the studies that are emerging from psychoneuroendocrinology— that's what I was trying to say— um, and the relationship to cortisol patterns, to cortisol patterns within the body that adjust our nervous system. And for our nervous system, when we get sort of locked into one mode of being and not recognizing that that's not not normal. In your work, when you talked about the stressors that are repressed or the traumas that are repressed, how does that really alter— like, biologically, how is that altering the hormonal landscape?

Yeah, and the fascinating thing is that it can be generational. So there's studies that are done on past generations where they've been through a trauma, and the infants of that generation all are born with adrenal insufficiency. So it was a specific study that Rachel Yehuda did on Holocaust And so when you think about that, if you have adrenal insufficiency, that means your emotional resilience, your ability to adapt to stress is diminished. So you are going to be more reactive. You are going to have immune dysfunction. You are going to have metabolic disorders because of that change in your adrenal function. There has been studies on women during pregnancy and like measuring their cortisol levels and women that had higher cortisol levels and more stress had preteens with higher cortisol levels and more stress. And so what decisions we make, what we go through lives forward in the generations to come. So we're not often holding just our own story. We're holding the lineage before us and the women that came before us, not just physically, but also what we've witnessed. The beliefs have been passed down too. So physiologically, it's literally changing how your hormones are going to function for the rest of your life. Life. Cortisol comes from progesterone. So every time the body needs cortisol, it's taking it from progesterone, and progesterone's our anti-anxiety hormone. It helps to regulate GABA, which is that like neurochemical that helps us feel calm. It creates regulation in our cycle. It's an anti-inflammatory. And so if we're constantly depleting that, and then we go into perimenopause, we're already depleted going into a phase that naturally brings decline to our hormones. So I think it is important to understand that story of how do I react? And sometimes I'm reacting in a moment, and by pausing, I can discern, is this actually from me? Is this something that was learned? Like, where is this behavior actually coming from? Who's been the narrator of my life and the thoughts that I'm having? And when we start to understand and unpack that, we can sometimes see, oh yeah, that's grandma. Us, that I've been carrying hers for all this time, and now I get to heal that. I get to change that story for the next generation.

I love that you brought up generational trauma because this is something that I think, you know, intuitively as women we know about, but now science is finally backing it. Johns Hopkins— Johns Hopkins has done a lot of clinical research and published studies on this as well, which is fascinating. And how does it show up in practice then for you when you're addressing this? Because, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, one more thing that we have to think about.

I know, doomed because I was generation—

I think of this all the time, and I always have through the lens of my mom and her autoimmune disease. She's had rheumatoid arthritis. My grandmother passed of, you know, she was on so many medications for her rheumatoid arthritis in Denmark. And I can see the emotional trauma that my mother and grandmother held, swallowing everything, showing up as strong women and muscling through it, being everything for everyone else. And when I did my yoga teacher training, the Swami would often say that for women, we hold on to our traumas in our joints. So instantly I think about my, my ancestry. So when you're in practice, then how are you working with this? You have a beautiful section on chakras in your book.

Yeah.

What else are you recommending?

Yeah, so when I sit with a woman, I'm often sitting for about an hour in the beginning and just trying to understand her story. And usually I just let her talk, and so I can understand, you know, what she's feeling in the moment. And through body language and just knowing how she's talking about herself often gives me clues. Okay, is she still carrying something that she's actually not expressing to me? Um, an example, I had a couple come in for fertility work and she was told by the Western system that she would never have a natural birth. So they were trying to do all the things. They were gonna go to Germany and do a bunch of testing. They were even gonna go to New York, like they were ready to do this other work. And I just sat with them. I'm like, okay, let's try a few other things. Let's detox, let's change some things. She was on a whole slew of medication for other things, autoimmune, thyroid, like lots of different things. And so as I started building trust with her, I knew the moment she sat in front of me, the way she spoke and everything, like there's something. That she hasn't expressed yet and find out later that there is definitely some sexual trauma there that we started to talk about. And so when I'm able to find that out from a woman, that's when I have like my team, right? Like I have a counselor or like somatic therapist or someone that I can refer her to so that she can do that awareness work as well in conjunction with working on the physical. So in the hierarchy of healing, I think you do have to work on the physical first. So understanding, okay, so this trauma or this story that she's carrying in her body, how is it representing symptomatically? So then I'll look at tests, I'll look at her hormones, I'll kind of relay her story through that testing. I'm like, okay, let's get you feeling a little bit better. Let's get you, let's get your progesterone higher. Let's do this work. And as we're doing that, now there's capacity to look. Look at the emotional. Now there's energy to actually look at it. She's on baby number 2 now with natural births. And, you know, it's not 100% of the time that a story is going to work out that way. But when you start to really see the deep connection of like all you're holding on to, and if your body doesn't feel safe, it's not going to feel safe to birth a child into this world. If your body doesn't feel safe, it's not going to feel safe to actually let go and heal, or even let go of a story that we've been holding on to for a long time because it's our identity now. And so discernment is probably the number one thing that I teach women. They might come in thinking, I'm gonna get a meal plan, I'm gonna get this and that. And all of a sudden the conversation's very different because I wanna understand her, I wanna understand her lineage, I wanna understand the why behind her habits and her choices.

What a beautiful share. Thank you for sharing that story. And, you know, for the work that you and I do, I want to put this now through the lens. If you're listening to this and you've never worked with a practitioner, um, you might think that when you have a consultation with us, you're going to ask, tell me what to eat, how do I work out, what supplements do I take? And, um, for me, in my intake forms, 9 times out of 10, the way that I am able to get a woman or a man to open up is through their gut, their digestion. And when we think about the last time— maybe think about this right now— when's the last time that you felt good in your body, that you felt your digestion optimized, that you could sleep through the night, or that you felt a sense of peace or calm altogether. And 9 times out of 10, I'm often met with tears and, you know, memories flooding back to when they were 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. And that just opens the floodgates to people then understanding, how can I give you a protocol when all of these emotions are so deeply stored within your body still? Let's go there first. Yeah. And in my practice, I don't know about you, but I'm really moving away from over-supplementation. And, you know, I love that Ayurvedic herbs and things like that are having a rise. But, you know, like if you were to work with an Ayurvedic doctor, they are so personalized and, you know, given at a certain quantity for a certain duration of time. And here we are in the West— on your constitution, the season of the year. And here we are giving them to everyone. So I think it's really tempting for people to go out and supplement with things like GABA, which you mentioned also, or ashwagandha, rhodiola. But where do you say, like, where do you draw the line? Is it worth starting with that? Do you say pump the brakes on that first until you can feel a sense of ease? Where does that enter the practice for you?

I love that you brought up digestion, um, because I do feel how you digest life is reflected in how you digest nutrition.

You got it.

And so when you just start there, that is often where we start as naturopathic doctors too. We're gonna look at the gut and try to understand, and it's everything that you said. It's, is, is she more vata, pitta, or kapha? So I bring in a lot of Ayurvedic in there too. So understanding her, okay, maybe she's more vata. Okay, there might be some constipation, there might be some dryness there. So then I'm gonna give her specific things to help support that. So physically she feels better, physically she feels a bit lighter, and then has the capacity to do the emotional work. But if you bombard a woman with 10 supplements and then she's looking at social media and saying, well, this person said I should take this, should I take this with this one, or what should I stop? And there's so much confusion in the world. So I do start to take away things before adding so that she can start to hear herself a little bit. She can understand that, okay, when my bowels are slow, like, what am I not digesting? Like, what am I holding onto? Like, what do I need to let go of? What nutrition do I need to bring in? Like, go back to the basics first. And then bring in the other elements, 'cause it's so nuanced. And when we're telling someone to take turmeric every day, I mean, if you talk to my grandfather, if he was still around, he'd be like, "What are you doing?" And you know, especially growing up in an Indian household, we were brought up with Ayurveda on our plates. And you know, I'd have a cough, they would boil licorice, it was malaak tea. I had no idea it was licorice. You know, I just knew I was drinking it. And so there's a season for everything. So I think the number one thing is really discernment. What do you actually need?

Yeah, I think I hear often that, you know, women are taking all of these supplements, but they can't really feel a difference. And I think that statement in and of itself is enough to say, okay, let's get you out of your mind and into your body so that you can really start to feel the subtle shifts that are, that are being benefited. So in practice then, what do you really want women to understand? I am getting a sense from a lot of women that there's still a lot of confusion, even shame that comes up for their bodies not working a certain way. Their body's not healing the way that they used to. Now, you know, a lot of people are supplementing or using HRT to optimize, and it's still feeling like a Band-Aid solution. So how do we get these women unstuck?

Yeah, it's a good question, especially today. Yeah. So I've been working with BHRT for many, many years. I studied under an OB-GYN back in 2012 is when we really started to get into hormone support and working with menopause and women. And what I've noticed over the years is when there wasn't social media, there was a— it was a little bit easier to discern. It was easier for a woman to come in and share her story and have a protocol and do the thing. Now what I'm noticing, well, I saw I should use this patch and then do this this. And so they're coming in already armed with a bag full of things that they're on. So the first thing that I do is, okay, let's talk about how you're feeling in this moment. Is it fatigue? Is it low libido? Is it an irregular cycle? Do you have cysts or fibroids? Like, what's your body trying to tell us right now? And then from there, there might be some support that's needed for her to feel okay. So there might be like a supplement or two. Maybe she needs progesterone right now because she's estrogen dominant. But for her to understand, all of it is a Band-Aid. You, in order to really get to the core of what's happening, is understanding your patterns, understanding your body's pattern, understanding your mind's pattern, your thought pattern. When we understand that, that's when we get to the core of, like, the why behind everything that you're experiencing and feeling. What identity has this given you? So it really is going back to the core and the foundation. So I strip strip everything away. Like, okay, let's eat well, let's move well, let's think differently, let's sleep well, let's look at mindset, let's do these foundational things, and then we can add in what we need. I don't know if I actually answered your question. I feel like I went a bit historical. You did.

No, no, no, that's great because this, it opens the door.

Yeah.

Because, and I swear it's the intention of this podcast, for me, my greatest challenge is that I keep getting sucked into science and Western medicine and biohacking and all the cool stuff that's happening over here and longevity and prevention, and the studies are there. But then I'll meet with an Eastern medicine practitioner and they'll just say, too, too much, slow down. And even in the lens of BHRT, bioidentical hormones, um, the feedback from two practitioners out now is that I'm, I'm too young. And I thought that that was really interesting. I feel better taking hormones Yeah, but it begs the question, is it society that's not set up for me to really focus on the foundations? I've become accustomed to maybe feeling too stressed and being a woman that juggles everything at the same time. Or is there really an opportunity for us as women to just like stop, turn down the noise? We're hearing about optimizing the terrain, we're healing about the intelligence of the body to heal. We hear from brilliant practitioners like you around the foundations of health. Health first as the priority. Otherwise, they will be Band-Aids. If we're not doing that, how are we going to tune into whether, whether or not it's a Band-Aid or not? Yeah, I think a lot of us too are now operating out of fear. I gotta, I gotta start hormones now because they're saying I'm going to age better and menopause won't be so rough.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's all of that. Yeah, I think we have become accustomed to a busy life, living a certain way, and wearing that as a bit of a badge of like, you know, I'm always busy doing something and not realizing how much of a toll that's taken on our intuition or ability to understand our intuition and actually hear it. Because we know, we know what we need. We even know— so my goal always with patients, I want to get them to a point where I have a visit and I'm saying nothing. They're telling me how they feel, they're telling me what they need, and at the end of the day, I'm like, Yes, that's exactly it. And when I start to see that, I'm like, okay, now I've done my job. I've helped her discern and understand her own body. And so when you start to understand, like, if you look at Ayurvedic medicine, your actual constitution. So in perimenopause and menopause, we're moving towards a vata period, a very dry period. If you're already vata, if you're already more anxious, you're gonna feel a bit more anxious over here. What are the practices I can do to help support that. So I do think longevity prevention, every science, all of it, like I'm a cell biologist, that's my background. I love science. I love all of it. It's just when we forget who we are, we forget the wisdom that we actually carry. I think that's where there's a mismatch. I think it's great that there's studies on turmeric and yet we've been using it in our cooking for thousands of years. I think in the West what happens is we take something and we kind of run with it instead of looking at the nuance. So even hormone therapy, it's a tool. It's not the answer. It's a tool that we can use, and it's a tool that we can not use for a little while and come back to it, understanding our body is first. So we know when to do that and how to do that.

I have a program called Build Your Ashram. As much as I would love people to go away and experience what, you know, how you feel when you're there. With my experience growing up and living there, I know that everything that they cultivate at an ashram, you can build in your own life. But we often just get too sidetracked, or we don't set the stage for healing to happen. And maybe there's a real opportunity for us to just like stop for a second and say, when I'm away, when I'm in a peaceful environment, when I'm on vacation, when I'm on vacation, how do I feel? Do I need all the modalities that I take when I'm back home in my busy life, or do I not? And if you're you're answering no, I think that begs the question that now might be a good time for a pattern reset for, for what you're doing.

And like assessing too, like the season that you're in, in your environment, like what your body's telling you so you can understand what you need in that moment. And that ashram piece too, like it's the feeling that's given meaning to that experience. So if you can bring that feeling— what I'll tell women to do when they're feeling really good, I'm like, grab a smell, grab some sort of like essential oil and anchor, and anchor into that. So when you're not feeling off, you remember what that felt like. I do think we live in such a world where, like, the busyness, the stress that we carry, the self-inflicted stress that we carry, the generational— I think we do move into these stages depleted more so than generations before. And so I think there is this, you know, time— it's necessary for us to have some sort of external support. But I I think we've just overdone it.

I agree.

We've forgotten.

So in clinic then, can you tell me, how do you like testing for hormones?

Yeah.

Are you using a Dutch test?

I'm using a Dutch test, a combination of blood tests. I don't use a lot of saliva, but sometimes I'll look at cortisol and DHEA through saliva, but I'm mostly doing Dutch and blood.

Do you think Dutch is necessary?

So if a woman comes to me with fibroids, um, history of breast cancer in her family, cysts, things like that, the Dutch test helps me understand how her liver is affecting her ability to transform her hormones. So that gives me an understanding, but also her. When we look at blood work, it's just a snapshot because they're coming out in pulsation. So I can give you a bit of a snapshot of like where things are at right now. I don't think you have to do a Dutch test.

Yeah.

Often just symptomatically, I already know.

Yeah.

And sometimes Sometimes it's the opposite of what you think it is. So if you have too much progesterone, it looks the same as too little progesterone, too much testosterone, too little, like all of it. So I think in those situations it can be helpful. I had one patient who had quite a traumatic history that I was working with, and she was thriving on progesterone just for sleep and everything. She went to her, um, GYN and he's like, oh, you're doing well, just double cause she was feeling just a little bit anxious that day, she went into psychosis.

Oh my gosh.

So when I showed her her Dutch test, I'm like, you're— you had enough progesterone. We were using a very small dose because of what you are experiencing right now. And this just threw you into a loop in a different way. So I think hormones, it's an art. It's very nuanced. And so I found the Dutch test has helped me that way.

I think it's data. I think women have a different relationship when they can see what— it validates validates, I guess, what they're, what they're feeling.

It validates their story that they're already experiencing.

Yeah. And it really lessens the grip. It's like, oh, okay.

Yeah, I've got something wrong with me.

We can fix this.

Yeah.

Yeah. I can't—

I just—

I can't wait till that test is $25.

Yeah. Accessibility.

Yeah.

Of testing. That is what's not allowing a lot of women.

You got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what would you say are some of the most common mistakes that women are making over and over and over when they're trying to balance their hormones? There's that word balance.

Yeah, doing more to try to balance. And also, I think, um, not pausing enough and not really getting into the why. So when we're looking to social media or other thing, people outside of ourselves, we're still looking for that band-aid because we're trying to still cover up how we're feeling. So we're feeling uncomfortable, we're trying to cover it up through a solution. So I think the biggest mistake really is trying to understand that it's a story that's being told. And the more intimate I get with that story, the more deeper healing I get. We don't have time for that healing. I think that's the biggest challenge that women have. And I think the other challenge is women think you need a whole, a lot of time. Time to make a change. It could be a few minutes in the morning.

Yeah.

Where you're actually offering yourself some time to breathe, giving yourself an affirmation, looking in the mirror and actually seeing yourself, like, look in your eyes, not your body, because instantly we're gonna have things to say, but just looking in your eyes and like asking yourself, like, how are you? So these like little moments throughout the day, like a cup of tea throughout the day, can make a huge difference because you're pausing. So I think the biggest mistake really is thinking that we have to do more and spend more and spend more time trying to heal. But really it's just remembering and letting go of a lot that we think we're supposed to do.

Even saying those words out loud, I don't have time to heal. That's so gross. It's so sad.

I know. I had one woman and it broke my heart hearing her say this. We did a bunch of testing and came out that she had like Hashimoto's. She had a few other autoimmune things going on and she looked me dead in the eyes and said, She said, "I'm not worth your help." And I remember that this was years ago, probably in the beginning of my practice. And I just like paused and stared for a moment. I'm like, wow, this is the block. We're so conditioned to help others. We're so— and it's our natural state to want to mother and to want to support others around us that we forget this vessel and this body that's giving us that ability to help others. Others. And so I think the biggest mistake we make is not putting ourselves first.

Oh, that's good. What is the belief that you have about yourself that's preventing you from healing? Yeah, that's a big one.

It is.

Do you know that I didn't set one goal this year? In my community, um, we set a word, you know, the word for the year, and for me it was presence. The one idea that I had, if I was going to set one goal, was to seek stillness every day. The pause that you were I've epically failed at it, which is so sad. But this past weekend, I took it a full day, which I've never done. Full day to be present, be with my kids. I read a book, I sat on my, my BioMat, used my red light. And during that time, I remembered my monkey mind saying, you should be doing this. Get ready for Monday. Busy week next week. You should get up. You should do the laundry. And it was like, you know, this constant pulling myself back. Just be, just be. It's okay. Just be. And, you know, when you mentioned looking in your eyes, um, first thing in the morning, when I was saying just be to myself, I was really mothering myself, right? In the same way that I can look at my children, look at them in the eyes first thing in the morning. A day would not start unless I look them in the eyes to start their day. And yet we don't do that for ourselves. That's a really powerful practice.

Practice. Yeah, it's not something we're taught. Yeah, not something we've been modeled from the generation before. We've been modeled a lot of sacrifice. And so I think it's a story that we get to change now, and it is through those subtle moments.

Yeah, and I share that as a practitioner because I never want people to think that I've cracked the code or figured it out.

We're still working on it.

We're still working on it. And a lot of the things that we talk about and share and coach and teach on are often the things that we're working on ourselves. Themselves. And just to share, it's, it's not easy, but it's possible, right? And it's so worth it.

Yeah, we teach what we need the most.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in your eyes, you know, the, the systems that are happening out there that are teaching women to really treat hormones instead of seeking support with their emotions and how they're feeling every How do you really merge all of these three together for, for healing to actually happen?

Yeah, I think it's, um, with that pause, it— the first thing is the awareness, right? Like having that awareness of like, okay, I'm being triggered. There's an emotion that's being stirred up, whether it's rage or anxiety or it's depression. Talking to that emotion and understanding it, like anger and rage, I feel like are action-oriented. That is actually when we're ready to heal. Anxiety is forward-thinking and depression is often about the past. So when we start to understand what this emotion is trying to tell us, we start to understand where the story is still needing some healing. And so when we know we're in that fiery rage, maybe in our luteal phase or just perimenopause, and they're usually moments where you normally wouldn't feel rage, right? There are moments where maybe your child has asked you something and you're in the middle of something else, or I always go back to the chewing because I have that with my husband.

Oh, the chewing.

The granola chewing and the clicking of the fork on the plate or whatever. Like that sound, rage is what shows up right away. And I have to pause. I'm like, where is this actually coming from? Okay, this for sure is hormonal that's showing up. But that inner rage that can show up for women that usually expresses itself through the body, body. And what I have seen— there's actually been a study where they looked at fibroids, and they followed 66,000 women for a series of like 16 years. And they saw that every woman that had a fibroid had some sort of sexual, emotional, or physical trauma in her childhood. And she had been carrying that story and the emotions from that story in her body for that long. And this is hands down in my practice what I see all the time. And so when you start to understand that connection, like, your mental health and your hormonal health are not separate. There and they're the same. And so when your hormones are off, they're transitioning, your emotions are going to be off. So I think it's befriending your emotions. That's the first step.

What a miracle your body is to think about your fibroids as a means of protection. Yeah, right. What a different story that is instead of hating part of yourself.

Yeah.

Best way to check for fibroids is still through ultrasound.

Yeah. And like I said, the Dutch test can give you an idea of your, you know, what type of estrogen is dominant. Like for hydroxyestrone or what your liver is doing to give you an idea, but ultrasound. And often, you know, a woman will feel fullness that shouldn't be there. She might be eating well, moving well and everything, but she's feeling bloated, especially around like ovulation. That's usually where cysts are showing up. And so those kind of symptoms give you clues of like, I didn't eat anything and I'm feeling bloated. Oh, I'm ovulating and I'm feeling bloated. Okay, there must be something. So it's time to get an ultrasound.

Um, this is probably— this relates to your labs are normal. I'm sure there's many practitioners— I've been told this myself— oh no, you're fine, you're healthy, there's nothing showing up. And then all of a sudden you push, or you find a practitioner who's an actual partner, and then you do the ultrasound and something shows up. So you really have to be an advocate for your health. You do, right?

Because you know your body best, you know how it normally would feel, if you even know I wonder about that too. I think we have to spend time with ourselves to even understand what normal is for us.

Do you know the Human Garage people?

No.

Body Maneuvers. Yeah. So I just had a session and what I love about them is they work on the body's fascia, but they do it in the way where they also associate emotional trauma and release. And so in the depth of your specific pain point, just as you kind of climax before the release, they'll whisper to you, say, "I forgive my father. I forgive my mother," or, "I trust myself again." And if you look at these videos, mine are on my wall, just waterworks completely. Like, it's the greatest emotional release. And what I felt afterwards when I stood up, it was a completely foreign body. I felt free. I felt light. I felt so light that I couldn't feel the ground beneath me. I felt like the crown of my head was lifting up towards the sky. And this is after a session working on my body and treating emotional release. So to your point, if I'm one of those women and I'm pretty tuned in, to remember the feeling of greatness in your body again, it's worth finding the practitioner or the modality or whatever it takes to get there. It's worth it so that you remember. I think it's it's a, it's a process of remembering.

Yeah, I often take people through this journey where I take them back to their younger self when they felt free, right? And that feeling, because something along the way happened to take that freedom away.

Yeah.

And so I had a traumatic event around age 8, I think it was 7 or 8. And my cousin and I were talking last night just about personalities. She said to me, she's like, I feel like all the years I've known you, you've always been like the quieter one that like holds everything in. And like, I know, and it showed in my body, and that's I do this work. And she's like, what happened? I'm like, I think, you know, because that day took my innocence away, took my ability to be that child.

Yeah.

So it took away that freedom to express. And so we all have stories along the way. Something's happened or we've witnessed something or it's been passed down from the generations that's taken our ability to be free in ourselves. And I think perimenopause actually gives us the freedom to find that again, or to find her.

Yeah, yeah. And for our listeners, let's put this through the lens, because when we work with people, that story that you just said is so common. What happened when we were 6, 7, or 8? For me, I was 6 years old. I witnessed something within my family and a woman that I loved where in that moment I couldn't be a child anymore. I had to become an adult, and my heart broke. And sure enough, I led to— that led to 2 heart surgeries, right? There was something so deeply rooted in emotion And for some of our listeners, maybe nothing traumatic happened to you, but there could be something that's generational or maybe something that was said by a bully at school that made you, you know, identify with a belief that wasn't true.

Yeah.

That you're now ready to let go.

Little moments too. Like my youngest son, he creates stories. And the other day I had to have a conversation with him because he's like, you, all three of you gang up on me, which is not true at all. But in his little mind, because of the experience he's having, he's feeling left out. And so we had this big talk around like, you know, the stories we tell ourselves and the perceptions that we have. And because I have that awareness, I'm able to talk to him, hopefully shift that for him, or it might be the thing that he carries with him that is his healing. But I don't think we had that in the generation before because they were just surviving. They were just moving through the day and making sure that we had our basic needs met. And so I think the more work we do for ourselves, the more we can do for the generation ahead. And then hopefully the one ahead of them is equipped with those tools.

It's really doing the work ourselves, right? Motherhood, it's gnarly. It's the hardest thing in the world. And, you know, in those moments, recognizing that our kids have to go through their own path for whatever you can call it, karmas that they came into this world with, and that it is their journey, and maybe holding the space that is so powerful that, wow, okay, Okay, this is something that they need to go through to feel— to really feel a sense of freedom in their life, and I have to honor that.

Yeah.

And just shower them with grief and the letting go that you can experience. So tapping into rage just a little bit more, and, you know, neuroscience is also having its moment when we understand nervous system regulation, and that's also something that's trending in social media right now. What are some simple recommendations that you give people for daily nervous system regulation?

Yeah, so I think first is identifying what the emotion is. So if it is rage and anger, there's gonna be something else that you're gonna do. Knowing also that anger actually increases pro-inflammatory cytokines in your body is really important to know. So anger is fire, right? It's transformation. So if someone is dealing with anger as an emotion, I'm gonna get them moving. You're gonna be putting on loud music and dancing, or you're doing some breathwork that's like breath of fire and you're like punching the air, or you're doing something to move and transform that into a different energy. If you are looking at anxiety, then, you know, you're coming back into the present. So whatever that, what that might be, for me it's dance. Like that's the thing that really helps me land in the now. And so for you, it might be going out into nature. It might be that cup of tea with a friend. It, you know, finding that thing that really supports you in the present is important. If it's depression and sadness, I think first understanding what sadness actually is. There's this great book called "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" that I love, and I look at it every single day because it has all these different definitions of feelings that we don't often have words to express. For example, when you finish a novel and the grief that you feel after that story has ended, or a good movie. Yeah. It has a word for that. Oh, good. And in there, yeah, it defines sadness. Sadness as fullness. So it comes from the Latin words, I don't know if I'm going to say it right, satis, I think it is. So it's fullness and satisfaction. So if I'm feeling sadness, I often ask myself, okay, where am I not feeling satisfied then in my life? Or where have I felt so full and that I'm grieving that fullness? Because maybe that sadness is a reminder of the love that I had for somebody and I'm missing them. Or that sadness is the memory of an experience with my kids And seeing that my 14-year-old now is taller than my husband and, you know, is growing so big, but I can still remember like the first time he actually looked at me as an infant. And so I think when we have that relationship with our emotions, we, the tool comes, we know exactly what to do.

So the beauty behind the emotion. Yeah. The emotion is there to show us something and yet most of us are afraid to feel it.

Yeah.

That's huge. All right. The book of Obscure Sorrows? The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Yeah.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah. Everyone should have it on their, like, coffee table and just look at it every single day.

Yeah. You wrote a phenomenal book called Heal Your Hormones, Reclaim Yourself. Who is this written for?

Oh, well, my dedication is actually to my nieces. I think it's for every woman, any woman that's not felt like herself, has felt alone. I open up with a woman saying, "You saved my life." When she came into my practice and I had no idea that those few words of hope that I gave her were the thing that like actually gave her this ability to stay in this world and not take her life. So I think it's for every woman that's felt any sort of pain or disconnect from herself.

And it's clear, you know, I went through this briefly Yeah, you go through the ride of identifying with inflammation and mood and hormones to shifting gears into the spiritual aspect of it. Do you believe that the evolution, um, as women go through this process from puberty to menopause, is there a spiritual essence behind it?

Oh, everything. Absolutely. And especially menopause. I think the reason why we move past our reproductive years is when we're in those years, everything's about the outside world. Everything's about being of service to whether it's your children or your job or your partner. It's all about everything outside of us. When we lose that, we're going into this stage where we finally get to connect with ourselves. And when we connect with ourselves, we connect with source. And so I think that last half of our life really is about reconnecting and going home, getting ready to go home. And I think in the West, we have such a different relationship with moving on and with dying. And so the longevity movement, I think it's amazing, but I also think there can be two sides to that movement. Is like, is it about your lifespan or your healthspan? Is it about like relationships and longevity of that? Or is it because we're afraid of dying? Is it because we're afraid of aging? And so I think I think that spirituality piece, we forget that in the noise of life, and then we get to remember it when we're— there's not so much noise left in our bodies.

The fear of dying is a big one. I think that's a very masculine way to come into this world of longevity, the fear around what's gonna happen. I wonder if instead, if what we could make go viral was soaking up the juiciness of every single day, loving on life so hard, and our friends and our family and the food that we're eating on nature and on our neighbor, that that whole concept would just dissipate. And this is a story that we often hear from, you know, countries that are part of the Blue Zone, from our ethnic background as well. There's just more of like vitality and aliveness that comes with living, that there's no fear around death.

Yeah, just being content. I think that's huge because we're always chasing something here, and when you're chasing, that's where you're suffering, and then that's where you're losing time, and then you're like hurried about like, oh, I better do all the things so I have more time here. And so I think we're just always in this heightened state of doing. And what I learned from my grandma, she lived with us and she had dementia in the last part of her life, but just like witnessing her, the joy on her face every single day, just being, just being with her family, just having her cup of tea and watching her Indian shows in the afternoon, just like the simple things would give her so much joy.

Yeah.

And that's, I I think what we're missing a lot because we're always trying to like strive for something or we're trying to prove something. And I know my story's been a lot around like being good enough. And so what success looks like, I had to redefine for myself. I had to look at my life of like, am I still living for others or am I actually living for myself? And so I think when we start to understand that about ourselves, we can land, we can be rooted in that feeling of being Fascinating.

I wonder too how many of us had a different relationship with our grandmothers than our mothers had. Yeah. My grandmother, when I would go to visit her, and this is like, you know, the bad type of rheumatoid arthritis, her body was failing her, so many meds, teeth falling out, you name it. But she would just emphasize every time, like, "All right, have you gone to a discotheque yet? Are you going to dance? Go and have fun." And I love that so much about her because here this, you know, you know, you know, 70-year-old woman was asking me about having fun and being in life, and it had nothing to do with disease or suffering or planning or wisdom or any of those things. It was the act of having fun, which I cherish.

Yeah.

And this kind of is probably a good segue to go back to how we started this conversation around community, loneliness, the epidemic that's happening around there. And now even the science, the science that's validating loneliness loneliness being directly associated with mortality risk. You talk about this often on your amazing social page that I am a big fan of. When does community become medicine, and how do we really need to start understanding that community is medicine?

Yeah, I think it's always medicine, no matter what stage of life you're in. Because if you think about as a child, you always want to be around your friends. And for my boys, luckily I have a pretty big family where we are, and I've always reiterated that we are here, we're your parents, we're here to we have this whole extended family to support you if we are not here. And to anchor in them this idea of community and supporting each other. So they— I'm hoping to model over and over again for them that if someone's in need, we're there for them. And when we're in need, we ask for help. I think in our desire to be independent, we isolate ourselves and then we're not asking for help out of maybe not wanting to be judged or feel shame or whatever. Any of those types of uncomfortable emotions, and we forget that community actually supports us. And so I think it's important all the time, but I do think especially in this later part of life. My husband and I go to the community gym every morning, and so it's an elderly population, which we love. And they're there at 6 o'clock in the morning, and, you know, half of them are just chatting in the corner, or they're like doing their little machine and then they're chatting in this corner. I just love seeing them do that because they're showing up every day for each other. Then they all walk out together, go for coffee, or they're playing pickleball afterwards. Like, this is what's keeping them going. That's the gift of life. And, you know, my dad would often say, like, you know, we come alone, we leave alone. But in between is where we get to cherish that relationship. We get to cherish community. And that is the whole point of being here. And so that medicine to help support our oxytocin for women, to help our dopamine. Like loneliness literally depletes our dopamine, and then we look for it by shopping or scrolling or, you know, drugs or alcohol, whatever it might be. And so if we just talk to another human, it just takes away all of that.

Such a great point. And that's a beautiful story as well. But I notice now, um, it's a bit of a struggle to commit to go out and seek community and be at events and, you know, be at the party. And I think it's important to own staying home when you need to. But more often than not, when we go out and we're part of those experiences, we feel lifted. We feel empowered. And it's an opportunity for us to be present in an activity outside of our busy You almost have to schedule it in now. You do.

Yeah.

Yeah. And for me, I think about, gosh, if our children now are living and growing in a world where everything is digital, like my kids are interacting with their cousins and friends on their screens now more than in person, which is crazy because they're in Canada. I have to model that for them so that they know that that is normal, that screen time is not normal. Otherwise, that will become the new norm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And I do think we are wanting it more and more, especially with the rise in social media and especially with the screens. I think the desire is there, but because of the busyness of our lives, we do have to schedule it. And my younger cousin has actually done that for us. So once a month, at the end of the month on the Sunday, we get together no matter what. So it might be an activity or brunch or dinner. And so we're trying to model that for our children of like, okay, we're making it a point because this is important.

Yeah, standing non-negotiables. I love that. Yes, I love it. All right, so for listeners then who are feeling inspired and are really curious around turning down the noise on supplements and protocols and to-do lists, what would you say are the top 3 things that really support them in moving the needle towards wholeness and balance?

Yeah, so the first thing I would say is spending time with yourself to become aware of your triggers, your reactions. So like almost having a— I don't want to give you a checklist, but like a tracking.

Yeah.

You know, whether it's like internally you have some tracking of like, how does like a scan, like a body scan every day.

I love that.

Like, how do I feel in my body? How do I feel in my gut? How do I feel in my mind? Where is my energy? So I think the first thing would be, yeah, the body scan. The second thing would be like, how do I connect. So is that connecting with myself or connecting with others that day? But make it a point in that day you have some form of connection. And then the third thing is to seek out help. So seek out that support that's going to allow you to clear the noise, that's going to give you space and time to feel and heal and all those things. So I think asking for help is probably one of the biggest things that women struggle with, but it's what we need.

So good. And how does this tie into the HER Method and how you formulated that?

Yeah, so that's over my 15+ years now working with women and starting to see patterns within their healing. And so HER basically represents like her as a woman, but also like hormones, emotions, and relationships. So there's this whole cycle where your emotions are feeding your hormones and vice versa, and then they're feeding how you show up in your relationships.

Relationships.

And so within the HER Method, you have this hierarchy of healing. So first looking at your physical, so that's where the tracking, the testing, the understanding yourself comes in. And then you have your emotional, so understanding what are the emotions that are rising within me. And then you have your mental, like understanding your mind. And then from that you have like the spiritual where everything— the relational where everything starts to shift. And so you kind of go through these pathways ways through simple things, rituals every day that you do in the morning or in the evening, movement, nutrition. The last M, I call it mojo. So that's connection. And then mindset. So like these 5 areas of your life, when you start to focus on them, you start to see that you start to create this new pattern. You start to disrupt the old ones and you start to invite that health back in.

Incredible. That's so beautiful and so refreshing. I swear rituals are my love language.

Oh yeah. That's what keeps me going.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just falling in love with the things that you do that just make you feel whole, even if they're not trend-worthy on Instagram or coming from a practitioner. Just owning what makes you feel good is so key.

The simplicity of life.

The simplicity of life. And I finished my matcha. This is like the best podcast matcha. I'm like sitting back talking about these things that feel really empowering for me as a woman. Because I'm surround— I'm choosing to surround myself with women who've got the wisdom, the experience, but also the ability to portray a picture around aging that is about a return home and the beauty and the awakening that happens in that time instead of the doom and gloom, instead of the suffering that's bound to come, and instead of the fearmongering that's happening to force us into to supplements, protocols, etc. Whether they may be validated by science and it might be good for you, but there's certainly not one protocol out there that's, that's the best for all of us. So it's about identifying that. And I'm so grateful for the work that you do for that. So Heal Your Hormones, Reclaim Yourself. I get the first copy of this book, foreword by our dear, dear friend Dr. Mindy Peltz, who was here last week. Tell me, where can people find you on Instagram? Yeah, you have a great page.

Thank you. So my handle is @drsoniajensen, and the book you can find on healyourhormonesbook.com.

Beautiful. And you just launched a free community as well, right? Yeah, is that right?

Yeah, there's a free community on Instagram as well that you can join.

I love it. All right, we'll put all the, um, the details in the show notes for everyone, but I'd love to wrap this up by asking you something that excites you about the future of women's hormonal health?

Oh, this, like, the self-love, like falling in love with yourself again. And I think the awareness is starting to show up. Women are starting to feel more empowered and asking more questions. And I think we are going to go through some bumpy periods with that, with that confusion. But I think what's on the other side of it is this, like, true empowerment this true capacity to actually love who you actually are.

I love that. And if you could leave our listeners with just one takeaway around what they could do to feel more rooted again in themselves, their health, their happiness.

Just wake up in the morning, look at yourself in your eyes and ask that question of how are you today?

I'm going to do that with my kids tonight. That's like so powerful.

And it's so simple.

And so simple.

Yeah.

Yeah. An actual check-in.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you'd be surprised So what would show up?

Beautiful. All right, Dr. Sonia Jensen, thank you so much. Till next time. Thank you for making the trip to do this in person.

Oh yeah, thank you.

My fellow Canadian. Yeah.