Episode 18

Healing As An Initiation

the fully nourished podcast | Episode 18

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Transcript

Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?

As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle. 

So in our Thursday fashion, this is really a continuation of the conversation we started on Tuesday. On Tuesday, we really dove into blood sugar and looking at the blood sugars representation of the sweetness of life, and how we do rely really heavily on our liver to manage our blood sugar and how our liver really is the director of the lifeforce energy that we all carry. We talked about how nourishment is so fundamental to deeper layers of restoration, and really just human expansion as a whole. Because it's very difficult to repattern our nervous system, or to change our behaviors when we don't have the energy to do so. There are tens of thousands of women in the Jessica Ash Wellness community that will tell you how much nourishment has changed the trajectory of their lives, their whole disposition, right, because there's nothing like going through life with that low grade hangry energy. There's so many of us that don't even recognize it's kind of like wearing a filter over our soul. And so there are tens of thousands of women waiting in the wings to tell you how much getting enough bioavailable animal protein, that really high quality protein, has made such a difference in their structure, or how getting enough glucose in the right amounts in the right increments, and within the right frequencies has really helped them restore a lot of balance to their body, or how changing their fat intake and really focusing on the fats they're consuming, not recognizing how much polyunsaturated fat exposure they had in their younger years, these kind of seed oils that don't have a lot of nutrition, and are this kind of imbalanced form of fat, and how much it has changed their life and their cells to focus in on these high quality animal fats with lots of nutrient dense fat soluble vitamins. And also these nice high quality mono unsaturated fats to balance out those poor quality oils that we were exposed to at a younger age. 

So there's no lack of women out there that will tell you this, because I am one of them. And our community is full of them. We know that nourishment is foundational, even minerals, you know, are kind of talked about at least as like the spark plugs of the body. But it goes so much deeper than that. They are the conductors of the electricity of the energy and it's hard for energy to flow without the right balance of minerals. And so I think a lot of us won't deny that nourishment is really the foundation. We can't reach new layers of detoxification of emotional health of behavior change patterns until we are nourished on a cellular level. It makes sense, I even talked about this in episode two and three with how when we nourish on a cellular level, you know, you can't really separate energy and structure because energy begets structure. So, the energy is going to impact the actual structure, but then the structure is going to impact how the energy flows. And as you focus in on a better generation of energy, the structure is going to shift and change because of the vibrations of the electricity. Everything on the structure is going to get better and so then the energy will flow through the structure better and then the structure will generate better energy and it will kind of be this momentum type approach to health. 

This is why my work is starting to expand because I think that what happens is as we nourish, our body really starts to invite us to go deeper. What I'm seeing right now is so many people are focused on one layer or one level, and their body is now asking them for more. And so there does come this point where if we are continually having to manually balance our blood sugar, we can't get out of the stress cycle, that there's something deeper, lying beneath the surface. If we're seeing a constant inconsistent need for this kind of gentle manual manipulation of blood sugar, there may come a point where eating massive amounts of sugar frequently becomes its own band aid. Because if you're trying to really take a root cause approach, and let's say you're stuck in a stress state, just because you're not getting enough glucose, well, getting enough glucose should push you out of that stress state. But for a lot of people out there, that's not happening, there's a level of stress reduction, but it hasn't reduced all of their stress. And that's what I'm after. 

Nourishment is Only the Beginning

What I'm trying to help women understand is that nourishment is a beginning, it is not an ending. So a lot of us see nourishment or “healing our body,” I put quotes around that because that's kind of what is popular in the health and wellness space as this pinnacle. It's like, once I get there, I will achieve what I've sought out to achieve. What we don't recognize is that this pinnacle doesn't really exist. And life is a series of invitations to go deeper, to expand. If you want to expand it is your choice. So you will have opportunities to expand. But you can choose not to and to remain where you're at. And what it's going to feel like is it's going to feel like you're continuously hitting a wall and like you keep making the same mistake over and over again, and you're not learning the lesson you need to learn. You keep having to learn the same lesson over and over. That's usually what it feels like when your body is inviting you to expand and you're not, you're not on board. 

So let's say we're doing all the basic foundational work of managing our blood sugar, like eating protein and carbs together, really making it a practice to not eat them separately, eating meals and snacks at regular intervals at consistent intervals, I want to say regular and consistent. This is what I call blood sugar anchoring. So you want to anchor your blood sugar, kind of think about it as like your boat dropping an anchor at a certain point in the day. And you want to drop the anchor at the same time, pretty much around the same time consistently every single day to create some type of stability. You don't want to be grazing all day, that is not what supporting your metabolism is about. But for some people eating more than three meals is sometimes necessary to restore some type of metabolic balance. So you want to try to find a food frequency that really works for you. 

Also, if you're already prioritizing restful and restorative sleep by turning off screens, and winding down at bedtime, through gentle attention and self care, you know, you have a really good sleep routine. And you're getting plenty of potassium, which is a really important mineral for blood sugar reception of the cells. So a lot of people who have poor blood sugar control are very deficient in potassium and or magnesium because they're both really required to utilize sugar appropriately and properly. 

Let's say you have a really mindful movement routine, you know, you're not just doing one hour of exercise a day, but you're actually being really intentional with your exercise. So you're doing things that inspire a form of play, something you really look forward to, you really enjoy that brings you a lot of pleasure, something that keeps you moving throughout the day, you know, you're walking enough, you're moving enough. And then you're doing something that requires the use of your muscles,  whether that be strength training, or bodyweight training or something fun that really allows you and pushes you to use your body. All principles that I talked about in my Fully Nourished course. 

Let's say you're doing foundations, and you're really not “achieving the results” that you're trying to achieve. This is where a lot of times our body might be inviting us to dive deeper. And this is where I think a lot of people instead of recognizing that they're jumping to what am I doing wrong? What can I do differently? Oh my gosh, let's go consume more and more and more information until I'm so overwhelmed. They just freeze or we start to second guess, “Oh no, am I headed in the wrong direction? Am I wrong about everything?” And let's be honest, really in our stressful environment it just doesn't make sense to not give our body one of the most important tools needed to generate energy. Like, obviously glucose is not the problem. We've got other problems that we have our blinders on to. And most women see a level of internal change happen as they implement the right type of carbohydrates for their body and enough carbohydrates for their body. You know, as long as we're getting the cofactors to utilize that sweetness, we can see all types of things begin to happen. 

But this is where I think we get tripped up. Because we don't recognize that our healing journey or this journey, that nourishment kind of invites us on, is an initiation. We don't treat it that way, though. You know, healing is kind of an invitation, healing is an opportunity. As our body begins to shift, it's going to invite us to go to new heights, to go to new levels of being because once our structure starts to be supported, and our energy production starts to flow, the sky is really the limit with where our body can take us, right? And if we do believe, which I guess not everyone believes this. But if we do believe that our body is kind of a representation of our spirit, or energy on the energetic field is a biofeedback machine about energy, well, then we know that our body after it starts to do its initial kind of cleaning up routine, it's going to start to show us and reveal to us other ways our energy is being blocked, or energy flow is restricted. Because the body is designed to reach its full potential and to ask to be able to reach its full potential. 

But our healing journeys can be incredibly difficult, when we don't see them for what they are, if we don't see it as an initiation, if we don't see it as a beginning, and we think it's like a resolution, or we think oh, this is going to fix it, and then I'm gonna get back to normal get back to my real life, this is going to be the one thing that fixes me, and then I'm gonna just get there. And then I can go back, you know, a lot of us make the mistake of seeing healing as some type of destination, or a checkmark that we check off our to-do list. But it's not that at all, we're never gonna get back to life as it was before, because obviously, that's what led us here in the first place, our body has been trying to let us know that for a really long time. 

What Change Requires 

A lot of us are having a really hard time recognizing that our life and our habits and our behavioral patterns aren't working for us, and they are inducing more stress. And those are things that need to shift. But for a lot of us, we're stuck in such a freeze mode, or such a survival mode that we're kind of just stuck there. A lot of times we're just going through the motions, we don't have enough energy to shift directions, and we just kind of feel stuck in our lives. There tends to be this shift that starts to take place where that's not the case anymore. And as we start to nourish, as we start to bring balance and harmony to our system, our system begins to cry out for more, and then it starts to go so far beyond just the food. So far beyond just the minerals. So far beyond just the supplements, yet sometimes we are ignorant of that fact, or we're kind of trying to avoid that fact, avoid the parts of our life that our body is trying to call forth, call our attention to. And so we just kind of try to keep focusing, and there does come a point where then the nourishment, the physical nourishment, begins to become a distraction, almost a way to stay stuck in this survival response. 

I will just say that I have seen that in people you know, as my work has shifted direction, we have seen a lot of people fall off, unfollow, say like, “we don't like this anymore. We don't like this information.” There are a lot of people out there that want to stay in this type of stress response, they want to keep being afraid of, of everything, they want to keep focusing only on the supplements and kind of be down these rabbit holes of nervous system dysregulation where we're running for our lives. They are really, in a way addicted or just stuck in that pattern, that nervous system pattern and that type of behavior and they don't want to get out. And the sad truth is nowadays, our brains have been so trained to consume, consume, consume, consume information, but we don't actually want to change because change is really hard and change is really scary. 

Change actually requires a shift in so many different patterns. Change requires work. And when we start to shift patterns in our physiology, especially if they've been stuck that way for so long, and they are in need of a shift, the body's going to want to do that slowly, in a way that makes physiological sense. It's going to make absolutely no sense to us. We're going to be like what is going on, but that is just our bodies being you know, a million times wiser than we will ever be. And so weird things can start to happen as we provide our body the energy to do so.

I have seen all types of crazy stories. And these are more of extremes. But I remember early on in my work, I had a client reach out to me and we had been working on nourishment. And I'd been walking her and coaching her through these principles. And then all of a sudden, she just, she sends me an email out of the blue. And it just says, I quit my job, I really realized I just want to be a stay at home mom, and I told my husband, he was like, Cool. And she's like, my life is forever changed. I don't think I need you anymore, because I'm not really stressed anymore. And I was like, perfect, done, you don't need me anymore. 

Or a woman that I was working with who was trying to get pregnant, and her and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for years. And then all of a sudden, I don’t hear from her for a while. And she reaches out to me out of the blue. She's like, “actually, you know, I left my husband, it was not working out. And I found the love of my life. And I'm now pregnant. You know, my body was just telling me that I was not safe. And that was what my physical symptoms were from.” These are more extremes, obviously, right? These types of big things can scare us. And we say, oh, that could never happen. But I think for a lot of us, we just don't see the whole picture. This is why I talk so much about letting go and surrendering. I kind of think of it like the Michelangelo painting where it's this representation of the creation of Adam. And you see God and man's fingers pointing towards each other. Right? And they're both reaching out for each other. And life all of life is a 50/50. Right? You do your part and the creator does his part or the universe does its part. And I know some of you get really your panties in a wad when I call God “the universe.” But remember that universe stands for one verse. And remember that God's breath or his words are what brought creation forth. So universe, God, you can call him whatever you want. It doesn't really matter to him. He is beyond names. 

But this Michelangelo painting is a perfect representation to me of how all of life is this 50/50, right? God reaches out to us. But we also have to reach out and understand that it's a 50/50 partnership. And if we're doing the work, then it's not all on us. One of my mentors, she's always like, “you make a move. And the Creator makes a move.” Whenever I tell her I'm having a hard time or it's like I'm hitting a wall and I don't know what the next step is, she's always like, “you make a move, wait for the Creator to make a move.” And I'm always like, ah, okay. And I am shown again and again how divine timing is so incredibly powerful. A lot of times we get ourselves into quite the knots, we get ourselves into quite the little tiffs, because we try to take everything on our shoulders, we can't surrender and let go. And when we're hitting a wall, we keep trying to force something to happen, instead of just saying like, hey, you know what, I'm gonna just take a step back and wait. 

And that is the reason why I talk so much about the feminine energy. Life is like dance. And if we're trying to kind of just like rhinoceros our way through life, where it just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, we're gonna create a lot of chaos for ourselves that we didn't have to create. I see this a lot in the health and wellness space, especially when people are on these journeys towards, you know, they're trying to resolve some issue in their body. They're really working on something health wise, they just start getting so overwhelmed with all the information and taking it all onto their shoulders, that it's just like, I'm trying this, and I'm trying this, and I'm doing this, and I'm trying this, and they can't take one step back, and one second to just take a deep breath and say, I need to just trust the process. And this is really where we can start to use our intuition. 

Trusting the Process

We can find that if we create the space, it will be filled. We don't have to fill every ounce of the space with our own understanding. Because we have a very limited understanding of all things in life. We don't really have big picture energy here. And this is why true healing, when we're actually on a real healing journey, and we're not just kind of surface level jumping from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, it can feel kind of like opening Pandora's Box. To be honest, coming out of patterns of stress can feel very uncomfortable. It can be very weird, especially if you're someone that is so used to running on adrenaline or running on cortisol or running in the survival place as you begin to nourish yourself on a deeper level and bring some harmony and balance back to your system by providing it the fuel it needs, it can be off it can feel really off. 

You know, restoring balance to our physiology absolutely can feel like it's getting worse before it's getting better. I can't tell you how many people have begun eating more and balancing their blood sugar and just being more aware of the concepts that I teach in Fully Nourished, and they'll reach out and they'll just be like, Oh my gosh, like, I'm just so tired, something's wrong, I'm so tired. And I always take a step back and remind them, you know, are you tired? Or are you just resting from 10 years of never allowing your body to rest. And a lot of them are like, Oh, we have been trained to really operate on a quick fix kind of level. We want quick fixes and are trained for quick fixes. We want 90 Day transformations. And we want things available to us. Now, I think sometimes even more than ever. Now, we're only willing to watch a minute and a half video on it. And if you can't solve my problem in a minute and a half, I'm moving on to the next scroll. 

And so a lot of women expect healing to be linear or their journeys to be linear. What it often looks like is a little better and a little worse and a little better and a little worse and a little better and a little worse, and it can definitely feel like whiplash, it can definitely feel like a roller coaster. Some of us really underestimate how much we were living most of our lives or our whole lives in such an undernourished and metabolically suppressed state and such an imbalanced state or an imbalanced place that as we work to restore balance to our system by eating enough nutrient dense foods and replenishing our minerals, and actively lowering our stress or becoming more aware of our stress and our physiology begins to shift. It's almost kind of scary, because we may not even realize we're in this place. 

You know, a lot of us are just like, I got period problems, or yeah, I got headaches or yeah, I got digestive issues, or, oh, I got skin issues. We just kind of use symptoms to detach from what state of being our body is in. And we love our names and our culture, you know, we like to put names on everything. And it kind of can disconnect us from our overarching body feeling. A lot of times when you have conversations with people, they'll say, like I have skin issues, but then as you dig deeper, it's like, oh, yeah, I have super big mood swings all cycle long. I had this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and you start to realize that their quality of life has really affected. They're not living the way that they deserve to be. The sad truth of it is that we really may or may not realize that we are in this place. But this is where many of us have gotten used to operating from a low energy state. It's kind of like a, you know, sometimes referred to as a hypometabolic state, where it just often feels like our normal where, you know, the world is kind of gray. I think of the book, The Giver, I love that book. If you've never read it, woof, woof. It's hard. It's hard every time. But it's such a great representation of “everything is gray.” And when you start to nourish, you start to see glimpses of, oh my gosh, the world is not gray, it's color. I see things in color now. And maybe you don't see everything vibrantly in color yet, but you're starting to get glimpses of man, I can start to see the world in color. And this is the beauty You know, every single one of you who's listening, regardless of if we admit it or not, our body is constantly speaking up for ourselves, and therefore really our spirit itself, right? That's why you're here. 

The Body Listens

Usually, something sparks us to start seeking or searching for something more, something deep within us says, this is not enough. This is not it. I'm hungry for it. But what is it? And our body often speaks a language that is difficult for us to understand, especially in our modern world. You know, it uses feelings, it uses signs, it uses symptoms. Sometimes I've referred to these as whispers and we're kind of this culture that's like speak up, you know? If you don't speak loud enough, you're not gonna get noticed or paid attention to. And our body does start with whispers. It kind of says like, hey, you know, I have a headache or this happens or little things happen here and there, but we don't listen. And so it does exactly what we asked it to do, which is start to scream louder, and louder and louder until it's screaming at us. And we cannot ignore it any longer. Because the body works on a completely different plane of wisdom. Not only is it always listening to our psyche and our consciousness, it's always doing exactly what we asked it to do. Even if we think, “you have betrayed me, body, you're not doing what I asked you to do.” And it's like, actually, I've been doing what you asked me to do this whole time, you're feeling shame. So I just made it so that I covered your face, or, you know, you're feeling this way. So we worked really hard to make this happen for you. And here, we think, Oh, my gosh, these symptoms are, are unbearable. And a lot of times, we don't even recognize that it is our body doing exactly what we have asked it to do, whether that be through the information that we send it via our mind, or through our habits, our body is always listening. And everything that we do is information. 

I sometimes refer to our journey as cleaning out a closet. And that's how I like to look at it because I think it's a perfect picture. Which one of us has not cleaned out a closet for I don't know, if you like to organize things, I love to organize things. So I can get really caught up in like things being really organized and efficient. It brings me such pleasure and joy to take something that is chaotic, and then reorganize it. So I always say you know, imagine you have a messy closet, and you want it to be really clean and organized, you want it to be efficient, you want it to make sense, it's accumulated a ton of junk as we usually do. And you really do wish you could wave a magic wand and have it become poof, organized, you know, I would love it to be able to become organized immediately. But you can't, that's not real life. No quick fixes here, no magic bullets. And so you really need to create a little bit of chaos by taking everything out, throwing out the trash, organizing everything that you're gonna keep, getting rid of the waste, letting go of those things, and all the things that you don't need any more. And then you bring in organizational tools, right? And if you bring in bins, you bring in baskets, you bring in tools, and then you slowly start to organize all the bins and baskets, and you start to put things away in an organized fashion. And then you kind of oh, that doesn't go here, that's gonna go over here, actually. 

Imagine if somebody walked in in the middle of that process, right? When you had everything everywhere, you had pulled everything out of the closet, it was all on the floor, just disaster chaos, as most of these types of projects usually are. And they may think it's a disaster, right? They may look at this and be like, Man, this is a disaster. This is worse than I've ever seen. This is awful, this is chaos. But, you know, even though they think maybe it's worse than before, and maybe they might convince you, man, this is maybe worse than before, what have I done? You know, as we sometimes think when we start a big project like that, we're like, what have I done to myself. But this is just a perception, and you know exactly what you're doing, and so does your body, you trust the process, and you take the time you need to get the job done right. That timing can't be forced, it can't be rushed. In fact, if it was forced or it was rushed, it wouldn't be done the same way. And so we have to remember that when our body is stuck in a survival state. 

For so many of us, like I mentioned before, we underestimate how many of us are stuck there. When our body is trying to survive in the here and now, many things tend to go by the wayside. Our body will cut all types of corners when we're stuck in a sympathetic nervous system state, or even that dorsal vagal, where we're kind of in that frozen mode, because our body's just trying to conserve energy and focus on survival. And it will utilize energy for the purpose of survival. So things like cellular repair and detoxification and regeneration, elimination of metabolic waste, digestion, processing, even big emotions or life experiences or traumas are just a few examples of things that get put on the back burner for the body. I always say that the body tends to begin to clean out all of her closets the moment she has the energy to do so. And nourishment is the energy, right? Glucose is the energy utilization of glucose with the right proteins, right fats or carbs, making sure we're fed we're not hungry. We're not in a constant low grade hanger. When we start to gently nudge our physiology away from that low metabolism, high estrogen high nervous system dysregulation, high adrenal output state to a more metabolic and hormonally balanced place, our body is really going to start cleaning out hundreds of closets, right? We have hundreds of closets that need to be cleaned and organized. And because it's so wise and it's programmed and wired for survival. It is going to do this at its own wise pace. 

So this can be hormones, this can be metals, this can be minerals, this can be fats, this can be emotions, this can be oxalates. This can be histamine, this can be fungus, parasites, this can be bacteria, this can be SIBO, this could be injuries, this could be scar tissue, memories, trauma, you name it. And this type of stuff cannot be rushed or forced. You know, when I first created Fully Nourished, I call this the estrogen detox period, because for so many women, we had this monumental movement of estrogen and the minerals associated with it. And it seemed to put pressure on the detoxification systems for a period of time, usually a couple, a few cycles, usually around three to six cycles. But it really is so much more than that. As our body goes through these closets, it usually isn't going to do it all at once. But usually there's like this initial period where yes, the body's like, oh, I have energy. And so there's this initial wave, as I like to call it. And there kind of becomes this ebb and flow, where healing comes in waves, energetic shifts, and physical shifts come in waves, as what's going on in the tissues and cells really starts to move and make its way to the surface, we must feel it because we are feminine beings. 

And everything that our body throws away for us or put away for us, especially if we didn't feel it as we could have because we were so undernourished at the time. I see this happen a lot with women who go through really traumatic experiences, when they are, you know, really undernourished, or even when they're on hormonal birth control, they'll tell me these stories where it's like, they go through these traumas, and they're just so frozen, that they don't really feel it when it happens, like they just kind of are already stuck in a frozen state or kind of a fight or flight state that they just don't process it. It just kind of stored away in their bodies. Then when they start to nourish, they start to notice that whatever experience they went through is kind of demanding to be felt. And they almost feel it harder now than they did before. This is kind of that “disaster” part of cleaning out the closet where we think, Oh, my gosh, this is such chaos. I'm feeling so much, what's going on, there must be something wrong, I must fix this. 

But healing is really not about seeking out all of our broken parts and being like, Okay, this parts broken, I must fix it, or what we see happen a lot in the health and wellness space, where it's like, okay, I have this symptom, like, I'm going to put this outside thing and I'm going to fix it, we have all these priests, right, we, we need this priest to find healing, we need this priest to talk to God, right? It's kind of a similar thing, where we have all these priests where we think you need these outside sources, to be able to reach a type of physical restoration we're after. But in reality, we've had it in us all along. This is our body's capability. It's the thing that's doing the work, we are just there to gently support the process when it asks. We don't heal our bodies, I'm sorry, but we don't have the capabilities to do so, we are not that wise, our bodies actually are the ones that are always doing the healing. And we often are the ones just getting in the way of the healing. 

A lot of the times this initiation I'm talking about and saying that healing is an initiation is that this is a lifelong process of learning to listen to your body and speak its language, and learning how to meet and interpret your body's needs. And understanding and believing that your body is there for you, guiding you deeper into your life experience or what I should say higher and higher and higher to who you really are. Healing really rips away the layers of you that are not really you and that are keeping you from who you really are. Like I talked about in my own burnout episode, when I talked about how burnout really took me to a different place, this is what I'm talking about. 

What the Initiation Might Look Like

And so on a more reality level, what does this look like? Well, a lot of times, you know, especially when we start nourishing - and for a lot of you that have been practicing Fully Nourished principles or nourishing your bodies being intentional about nourishment for a long period of time, you might may or may not have experienced this - but usually the first three to six months when you start to really provide your body with what it needs, it can result in really big shifts. When you support your progesterone function or your thyroid function and lower your metabolic stress, it really often will lead to mobilization of a lot of things like estrogen, iron, certain types of things that are stored within our tissues. And sometimes those can be like heavier periods, low energy, our skin can start to really act up our digestion can start to get wonky, we can feel really restless, we can have low stress tolerance, we can be tired, like we just need to rest more, really big emotions come up, really big life experiences, kind of big, almost like a ethereal shifts where we have these big cries are this big rages like, we really feel like we are our bodies moving through a lot. Sometimes we just catch up on years of sleep, we just need to sleep a lot. 

So a lot of times, these first initial shifts can be really large. And then I really feel like after that there's this new kind of balance that is achieved, or this new kind of homeostasis. Oftentimes, when we're focusing on something in our journey, it's what we've been striving for, we finally are like, Oh my gosh, I made it, wow, I finally reached this place that I've been after. But when we're in this place, we often get this gut instinct that we have a little bit more healing to do, right? Like we have gotten to this new place where we're like, we're very happy with where we're at, we're feeling so much better. But that's where those butts come in. It's like, but I'd like to see this happen. And I promise you, that is the small part of you that knows that your body is going to invite you to go deeper or go higher. That's not something that you have to force or worry about. Because eventually, you will get to a place where you're almost forced in that direction. 

And it will be divine timing, that is a part of that feminine surrender that is so important. You don't have to stress about next steps, the next steps will slap us in the face, I promise. There have been so many times where I'm like, oh, man, I need to work on this thing. But I'm not really sure which direction to go. That is not when I go start seeking, that's not where I go start scrolling Instagram and be like, Okay, I have this issue, like my big toe has a little fungus on it. What am I going to do about it and throw a bunch of stuff at it. Usually, what happens is I just say, well, I'll work on it when it's time to work on it. Usually, the answer slaps me in the face. It's so in your face that I can't even ignore it. I don't need to attach stories to it or prophecies to it. I'm not going to prophesy that this is going to happen. And this means this. And this means this and this means this. Really at the end of the day, I don't really know. So I'm just going to chill out about it. And usually what happens is, as we tune into our body over time, and we're better at providing it with what it needs, sometimes what will happen is we'll have this wave, and will be led to this thing to try. Or let's say we're like, Oh, I think I really need B vitamins. And so start taking bee pollen or whatever it might be, that's just a random example that I pulled out. All of a sudden, we'll have this wave, this other wave, which just when we thought that we had taken our deep breath, we've survived the last wave, it had crashed over us, we couldn't breathe there for a second. But we found a new place of balance. The tide had gone out, just when we thought oh my gosh, I've found a new place of equilibrium. That's usually that next wave will crash. And it just means that we're ready. If you believe that life is about stretching you and growing you it's just when you start to get really comfortable and want to stay in one place and say, “no, I'm happy here I'm comfortable here,” is when life will start to push you in a direction. 

And it is your choice, right,? The energy will break up regardless. That's why it will feel like chaos. And it will feel like you're hitting a wall. You can either choose to have the energy just kind of restructure the same way it was before. Or you can take that step in trust, and have that kind of trapeze moment where when someone's swinging from one trapeze to the next there is that moment where you have to let go of the one that you're swinging from, to be able to grab the one that you're swinging to. And that can be a really scary moment. That's why it's a 50/50. It's not just you that has to be doing the work, it's a dance. The cool thing is, oftentimes when we experience this wave and we don't fight it, we just roll with it and peel back this new layer to our health or our body and go through another healing wave. We often settle in a place that we could have never gotten to without it. We settle into a new place that we probably couldn't have gotten to before. Every wave brings with it a new sense of wellbeing, a deeper sense of well being, a deeper sense of being home in our body, and belonging once we're through that wave. 

It also reminds us, it gives us evidence of two things: it gives us evidence of how trust and surrender always works out for our good and to how powerful, strong and resilient we are. And that's something that we need to remind ourselves over and over again, especially for feeling like the woman who's stuck in a bubble, you know, and is so afraid of any little stress and little thing that's going to happen, we have to remind ourselves continuously how resilient we are what we have already survived, that evidence is right in front of us. So it's so important to remember that as we provide the body with the nutrients it needs from whole food sources, and nutrient dense foods, you know, sometimes we can see that pickup in our detox pathways for the first three to six cycles. The skin, the uterus, the colon, and the liver, the kidneys, and the lungs are all ways that the body is going to move things from the inside to the outside. And this is not something that really needs to be pushed or forced. That's probably where I differ from a lot of people in the functional health space. I just don't think forcing these things is a good idea. Gently supporting, inviting, maybe, but usually, the body lets you know when it needs that. You don't have to push it or force it, it usually starts to happen naturally. And then that's when you start to gently support it. So you know, this can often look like periods of burnout or breaking up old patterns of behavior. 

Really, at the end of the day, I want to remind you that the reason I talk about this stuff, and that it's an initiation, is people tend to get stuck. We all are human beings, we like comfort, we like safety, we don't like change, that's normal, that's natural. And so we tend to just get stuck in the same patterns of behavior over and over and over again. But there does come a point where a body is trying to push us towards more. And we are usually presented with a choice, which we can take or not. But at the end of the day nourishment and nourishing yourself on a cellular level, really giving your cells what it needs, it's an initiation, and that's when your life truly begins because you can start to see everything differently. Your experience in life changes. And as it begins to change, your structure will begin to shift as well. I have experienced it, thousands of other women have experienced it. We have all been initiated into this process or into this journey. But some of us are just unaware that that is what has happened. And so we're kind of bumbling around aimless and confused as to why the thing we're after is not happening. We have forgotten to realize that there's so much more to what's going on than just what meets the eye or just what our perception is of what's going on. 

Episode Links

In this episode, I mentioned:

Check out Araza Beauty* (use promo code fullynourished for 15% off your next purchase)

Check out Kossma Beauty* and get 10% off your order (discount automatically applied at checkout)

• Episode 2: My Health Journey & Having a Meaningful Nutrition Philosophy

• Burnout Episode: How to Get Out of a Rut: Let’s Talk About Burnout

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