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Well, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Wilded Wellness Podcast.
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I'm your host, Lydia Joy, and happy Virgo season, everyone.
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If you listened to last week's episode, uh, What Does Your Body Need Now, you know I've already been thinking a lot about this question of what our bodies actually need in the season that we are currently in.
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So if you haven't listened to that one yet, definitely go back, check it out because today's conversation really builds on it.
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Um, and I think it's interesting that we are, I am moving into this conversation with you right as we move into Virgo season, because one of the qualities I love most about Virgo is discernment.
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It's the ability to separate signal from noise, if you will, uh, to really recognize what's actually needed now, because not everything needs to be solved today or used today, right?
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And not everything needs to be intervened upon today.
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And every possibility that we can imagine about ourselves and our health doesn't deserve our energy simply uh because we've become aware of it.
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Now, Virgo is traditionally associated with digestion and the intestines, and I think digestion is such an extraordinary metaphor for this, right?
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We take something in, we break it apart, we discern what's useful, we assimilate what nourishes us, and then we just eliminate what we don't need.
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And we do this with food, obviously, but we're continually being asked to do the same thing with information, uh, experiences, ideas, even with just life itself, right?
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And another word that I've been thinking about a lot lately is distillation.
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Distillation is the process of separating what is essential from everything that obscures it.
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And I think that that's particularly important when we're dealing with long-standing or complex health patterns, because there's this very understandable temptation when something feels complicated to respond by adding even more complexity.
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Right?
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We could add so many things like more information, more supplements, opinions, testing, research, like things to investigate, more things that we probably need to fix, right?
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But what if the skill we actually need is the opposite?
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Right?
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Can we actually distill?
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Can we identify what actually matters now and separate any like signal that we're experiencing in our bodies or from the external places from noise, right?
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Like from something we don't actually need.
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Can we actually restore some kind of hierarchy to the process of healing instead of trying to understand and address everything at once?
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I spent this last year working with people in a longer term, much more intimate way than I ever have before.
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Uh, watching what happens week after week as people are actually living inside the process of rebuilding their health.
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And that experience has deepened something I already believed about healing.
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We have access to more information about our bodies than human beings have ever had before.
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But more information doesn't necessarily tell us what matters most right now.
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What do we prioritize right now?
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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Because when everything matters, what the heck even comes first, right?
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So almost everyone who comes to work with me arrives with a cluster of challenges that have become hard to live with.
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Usually there's a point in their story where they can say, this is when everything got really loud.
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Maybe it followed an incredibly difficult season of life, a loss, a relationship rupture, um, a major illness, uh, years of intense caregiving, um, you know, living in water damaged housing for a long time.
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That's a big one for many people.
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Maybe it's uh a postpartum period someone never really recovered from.
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Maybe a huge stretch of financial instability played a massive role.
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Maybe even just the upheaval since 2020, right?
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Like sometimes several things overlapped.
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So then once we start looking backward, people are often realizing, like, well, okay, if I'm honest, some of what I'm saying is a problem now.
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Of course it's louder, was already there before that.
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Right?
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They're realizing like maybe they were constipated their whole lives, maybe they didn't sleep well their whole lives, right?
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Like, um, or maybe their digestion had been off, on and off, and now all of a sudden it's like always the problem, right?
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Um, the energy piece, you know, everybody can relate back to like energy's always been weird, but like now it's just worse.
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But it's I can't say that I ever had awesome energy.
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Um, right.
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So there were things that their body had been managing or compensating for that simply weren't loud enough yet to demand their full attention.
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And eventually, though, they kind of reach this point where they know, all right, I need to pay attention to this now.
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Something has to change, right?
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And most people don't arrive into the work we do together without having already tried to help themselves, right?
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They've read, they've listened, experimented, they've searched symptoms, they've tried a whole slew of supplements, uh, tried all kinds of different ways of eating.
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They may already have test results uh or have worked with multiple other practitioners.
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And so we're living in this time when access to health information is unlike anything we've ever had before.
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Holy moly! You can read about anything.
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You can run so many tests.
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Like the amount of tests that we have available for our health today are insane.
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They're coming up with more and more and more all the time.
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And now you can listen to thousands of podcast episodes, you know, libraries, people have entire libraries of content, right?
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Like you can research every symptom you've ever experienced.
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And now with AI, you can take almost any piece of information about yourself and go down an incredibly deep rabbit hole in like no time flat, right?
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And in in a lot of ways, this is kind of amazing.
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And it's like, wow, okay.
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But there's another side to that.
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Like the more you search, the more you find like more of that information, especially if the algorithm is involved, right?
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And the more you search, the more you can create kind of more complexity and more problems.
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And before long, all of a sudden, anything that you're trying to learn or research is is, you know, you're on this, like, okay, it's this, this, and this, now it's this, and then this and so now it's this, right?
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So you could be learning about, you know, protein and macro, like how much you need, or like like back in the day when I first got started, everybody's talking about the thyroid, right?
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Like it was thyroid heavy.
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Um, you know, blood sugar, uh, like before the CGMs came out, like we were blood sugar was like a massive topic.
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You know, uh, if you look in the mineral space, it's like, okay, well, people are still looking at iron panels, right?
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Um, we're still looking at the gut in all these different ways, right?
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And there's so many layers because we're learning so much so fast.
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Um, and now all of a sudden everyone feels like they have to learn it all too, right?
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And the problem isn't that all of those things are not like it's not like they're nonsense.
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They're, they're, they're very real and completely relevant.
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And that's what makes this very difficult, right?
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Like you already have the life you've lived, you have your current circumstances, and you have symptoms.
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You have things that you've tried that genuinely helped, and you have things tried that genuinely didn't.
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Maybe you have test results that somebody told you were important and you just didn't know what to do with them.
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Um, maybe you have an actual diagnosis that absolutely needs to be a part of the picture.
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Maybe you're also moving through something like perimenopause, where the volume of conflicting information suddenly gets turned up even louder.
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And now you're standing in the middle of all that thinking, like, holy shit, what do I even where do I even start?
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Like, what actually comes first?
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Because all those things can matter, like blood sugar, totally.
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Your gut, absolutely, thyroid, hormones, minerals, movement, environment, your relationship, like all of it is true, valid, and important, but you can't put them all first, right?
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Like I was under thinking, like, I could probably run 52 different tests on myself, right?
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Because there's probably 52 out there that exist, and genuinely learn something very interesting from every single one of them.
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But that doesn't automatically tell me what to prioritize and what deserves my attention now.
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And it doesn't tell me like what can wait, doesn't tell me what's foundational, what's downstream.
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And it definitely doesn't usually, unless someone's looking at it this way, tell me how much change my body and my actual life can assimilate at one time.
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So everything could that could matter here in what I'm saying, because like this is what a lot of people are doing, you know, it's like really what matters most right now.
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And that's where I want to bring you into what I mean when I talk about taking a rewilded approach to health, right?
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This is the Rewilded Wellness Podcast, after all.
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In case you're new here, I just wanted to quickly circle back to this because it's the larger philosophy underneath everything that I do.
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I don't believe that we can separate human health from the environment in which we as human beings are living inside of.
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And when I say environment, I don't simply mean like whether you live somewhere in the world, like whether you live somewhere with just clean air or with whether there's mold in your house, right?
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Like I'm not that environment specifically.
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I mean the entire set of conditions your biology is continually interacting with.
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That's a lot of things, right?
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It's obviously going to be the light you are exposed to, uh, the food that you're eating, how you're actually moving, how you're breathing, what you're breathing, right?
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Um, all kinds of things, your relationships, how you're sleeping, the work that you do, and all these variables, right?
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Your stressors, your resources, your microbes, uh, the season of life that you're in, and the experiences you've already lived through.
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Your biology is continually responding to all of it.
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And that's why for me, a rewilded approach isn't it's not, I'm not like anti-modern modernity, right?
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Like I definitely do testing, not anti-supplements or anti-intervention.
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Like when I think about rewilding, um, it's not like we have to return to old times.
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Um, I'm using functional testing, but you know, what I'm the distinction is what we're asking those things to do, right?
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The goal isn't to collect more and more information about ourselves until we understand every pathway in our bodies, right?
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And it's certainly not to create a life where staying well requires us to become increasingly dependent on all those things to constantly micromanage ourselves.
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I want the information to help us understand ourselves better, right?
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What are our bodies doing?
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What have they been adapting to?
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Where might it be, where might each of us be compensating somewhere and what seems to need the most support right now?
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And from everything that we could potentially work on, what can we actually sustain based on what our body needs now?
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Um, so ultimately, I'm interested in rebuilding the conditions that allow the body to become more resilient over time, right?
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Um, so that we have this greater pet capacity to meet changing conditions, adapt, recover, and keep going.
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Now, I did an entire episode back in March of 2025 called What is Rewilded Wellness and How Does the Body Heal Itself?
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Where I go much deeper into this philosophy.
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So uh, so definitely check that out in the show notes if you want.
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Um, I don't want to have that whole conversation again because I already did.
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Um, but today I just want to stay with the practical question of like, once we have all this information, how do we decide what actually deserves our attention?
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We're in the information age, and I don't think information is hierarchical.
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It's just out there, right?
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Um, and I think this is one of the things that we're gonna have to get much, much better at is how to take information and realize just because it exists doesn't mean it's structured in such a way that I can distill it.
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Like, right?
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We have to distill it.
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So just because we intellectually know something about the body doesn't automatically tell us where or whether it actually belongs in the order of what we need to be doing next, right?
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Because when I look at the hair test, for example, that's one functional test we could take as an example.
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Um, it can give us like so many pieces of information.
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And a lot of times people will be like, well, what does this mean?
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What does this mean?
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What does this mean?
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I'm like, it doesn't, it it does matter, but it also doesn't matter right now because we can't even go there yet.
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Like we really have to focus here.
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Like this is the start, okay?
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Right?
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And AI, we could put it into AI.
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Like I have people doing this now.
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Clients are like putting their stuff into Claude and wherever they're doing it, and that's fine.
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I, you know, it's like the new version of Google on steroids.
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Like everybody would used to Google their stuff, now they're using AI to do it.
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Um, right.
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And then it's all of a sudden intellectually, okay, this and this and this and this about my test, right?
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And AI can help you under like learn about them.
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Um, you know, but it doesn't help you understand how to actually implement and work with it, right?
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Like a practitioner is gonna look at, you know, that same person and identify, you know, 10, like maybe 10 completely legitimate areas that could use support, but none of that by itself tells us, like, okay, how do we chunk this down?
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What comes first now that we're gonna build on next and next, right?
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Like we've become incredibly good at finding things, right?
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Especially finding things wrong with us and all this information that correlates, right?
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So we can look at hormones, we can look at minerals, we can look at the microbiome, we can look at nutritional status, we can look at genetics, so much, right?
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And and guys, this is good in a way.
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There's a lot about this that it is good, but something being true about your physiology doesn't automatically make it today's project.
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And that's where discernment comes in, right?
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We have to determine like what's currently the most significant, what might be downstream of something else, meaning it'll get sorted if we sort this out first.
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What's foundational that's not in place yet?
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Um, that's actually going to help.
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Uh, what genuinely needs attention now?
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What can wait, right?
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Um, and even the question of like, what does this particular person actually have the capacity to implement and assimilate?
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And is there something we can work on that might create enough change that something else gets better without having us to have to directly intervene there at all?
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That's hierarchy.
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And this connects directly to what I talked about last week with mineral ecology, right?
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Like you look at your hair test or whatever test.
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It's not like a shopping list, if you will, right?
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Like, neither is any type of test, right?
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Like there are different windows into the human, into our system.
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They give us a lot of clues, they help us see some really cool stuff, patterns, it helps us track change, hopefully ask better questions.
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But the data isn't discernment.
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And our access to data is only going to increase.
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So I don't think the question going forward is going to be like, can I find more information about my health?
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Of course you can.
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The question is, what information is meaningful right now and what am I actually going to do with it?
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Sometimes the most useful thing we can recognize is yes, I see that.
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It matters.
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And no, it's not a priority.
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It's not the first thing I need to do.
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What a year of weekly check-ins has taught me.
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So this is something I have had the opportunity to watch much more closely over this last year.
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About a year ago, I changed the way that I work with people.
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Instead of primarily meeting, doing just like one-off sessions, like uh an HTMA review, and then giving them the work to do on their own, I started working with clients in a longer-term container with weekly check-ins.
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And that has given me a window into something that's really difficult to see when you're only looking at someone every couple of months.
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Um, like what happens like in between in the in-between, right?
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Um, because we're always healing inside of our actual lives, right?
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We're we're in the middle of our lives, right?
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Like this summer, a lot of people were traveling, right?
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And my clients are like traveling.
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Um, people are telling me they lost a loved one or a loved, a loved, beloved pet, or a season of their work totally just ramped up, got crazy unexpectedly, or something's going on with one of their children that has more needs and priorities in the moment, right?
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Like maybe you have an awesome week.
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Yes, woo-hoo! But then, like the following week, a little bit of shit hits the fan, and it's like, right?
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Or you go to travel and you eat like completely different food than you're used to, or um, you're starting a supplement, or maybe you started too many at once, so you don't know what is changing things, right?
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Or like something happens and the routine gets disrupted.
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Like I could go on and on, right?
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We're living actual lives and our bodies are responding inside of that.
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And so when I get to see those changes week after week, I'm much less interested in reacting to every fluctuation, as though it requires more research, more intervention, right?
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So when I'm watching this on a weekly basis, some weeks it's like, okay, let's keep observing and keep implementing the things you're already doing.
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Or sometimes we genuinely might need to stop something that we started and give hit the pause button.
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Sometimes we actually need to change a variable.
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Um and sometimes something that we aren't certain if we need to prioritize it right away because other things seem more important, um keeps showing up.
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And it's like, okay, actually we have space now, and this deserves more of our attention.
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Um, and sometimes something we were watching resolves without ever becoming its own healing project.
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Okay.
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And so in some weeks, I my answer to a client's check-in is like, okay, great, keep going, right?
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Um, and this is also what I mean when I say the phrase that I try to say a lot because it's I I bring it up every now and then again.
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It's you can only go as fast as the slowest part of you wants to go.
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Now, that isn't an invitation to stay stuck at today's capacity.
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We are trying to build capacity.
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But we have to work with our, like, I have to work with the human being who's actually right in front of me, not some imaginary version of them with unlimited time and money and bandwidth to work on everything all at once, only, right?
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Like, um, and there's all these different variables.
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Like, one person could be eating an incredibly nutrient.
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Nutrient-dense diet already, right?
00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:15.599
And even eating really decent mineral uh minerals in their diet, but they could have digestion and absorption that are still quite limited at that time.
00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:23.680
And so therefore, you know, the way they're able to build with what they're eating isn't quite the same or isn't quite ideal or optimal, right?
00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:28.319
Somebody else maybe has done like a lot of gut work, right?
00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:31.279
And it's genuinely better.
00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:37.680
Um, but their physical capacity like is still not there yet.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:41.920
Like, so that's a really the next layer that needs attention.
00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:55.519
Um, you know, and sometimes someone's life currently is just consuming an enormous amount of available capacity just to survive inside of what's going on, right?
00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:58.079
And so the slowest part can change.
00:22:58.160 --> 00:23:13.759
And I think that's really important because we've become so accustomed to interpreting symptoms as evidence that something's wrong that we can forget that a responsive body is supposed to respond.
00:23:14.240 --> 00:23:18.960
It's supposed to have what we call a symptom, right?
00:23:19.599 --> 00:23:25.759
So the adaptation part of the story is not inherently a problem at all, right?
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:45.440
So, like if you're traveling in the summer more than you do the rest of the year, a lot of people are, or experiencing grief, or moving through an intensely stressful week that kind of like, you know, you don't recover from fully for a month or something like that.
00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:53.599
Um, or you have to change your food like suddenly for whatever reason, um, right?
00:23:53.839 --> 00:23:56.480
And then now your body has to like adapt to that, right?
00:23:56.799 --> 00:23:57.839
I could go on and on.
00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:01.599
You maybe you're in a new hormonal season of your life, right?
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:04.400
This is all part of being alive.
00:24:04.559 --> 00:24:10.480
What I'm interested in is what happens after any type of adjustment period, right?
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:13.839
Can our bodies adapt and find its way back?
00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:16.000
Do we actually recover?
00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:23.599
Um, or does the adaptation begin requiring additional compensation elsewhere?
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:28.559
Does it keep costing the person more and more capacity just to maintain where they are?
00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:35.599
That's a very different question from how do we make this symptom disappear immediately, right?
00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:38.720
Like that's our preference, right?
00:24:39.279 --> 00:24:44.720
And so these weekly check-ins have made me much more respectful of time as information.
00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:51.359
Sometimes we genuinely don't know what something means on a Tuesday, right?
00:24:51.519 --> 00:24:53.039
Like we have to give it time.
00:24:53.599 --> 00:24:55.279
And we don't always have to know.
00:24:55.519 --> 00:24:57.920
We can support what clearly needs support.
00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:01.359
We can keep the foundational pieces in place and watch.
00:25:01.759 --> 00:25:05.759
And the following week, sometimes the picture is completely different.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:13.920
Um, and this is why I think healing happens much more in layers than according to some perfectly linear protocol, right?
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.839
We want to work from where you actually are and build from there.
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:23.440
And as one layer becomes more stable, something else becomes possible.
00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:33.119
And sometimes a thing that looked like your biggest challenge or bottleneck six months ago isn't your biggest challenge or bottleneck anymore.
00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:38.400
And you can build enough capacity that you eventually reach a new edge.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:44.240
And then maybe mistake that edge for evidence that you're still not getting anywhere.
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:47.839
But maybe you could even, you couldn't even get to this layer before.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:49.519
And that's progress too.
00:25:49.759 --> 00:25:52.960
And this is where I heard this phrase on a show I'm watching.
00:25:53.119 --> 00:25:54.640
I'm watching this show called Fire Country.
00:25:54.799 --> 00:25:55.519
I love it.
00:25:55.759 --> 00:25:58.240
Um, they say it multiple times.
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:01.359
So I I just was like, it's it was sticking with me.
00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:04.319
And I was like, I gotta say this to people, right?
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:08.400
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:16.880
And I know when you're already you've already been struggling for years, nobody wants to be told to go slower.
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:18.400
But hear me out.
00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:28.240
Slow doesn't mean passive, it doesn't mean doing nothing, it doesn't mean endlessly observing yourself because you're afraid to make a move.
00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:37.119
It simply means slowing down enough to make a coherent move instead of reactive, a reactive one, right?
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:44.880
We are going to be doing something, but then we're also going to observe and learn and adjust, right?
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:55.359
Sometimes that means like, okay, we tried this thing, it gave us information, it wasn't working great.
00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:59.039
Okay, it does it mean it was bad for us.
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:00.559
Not necessarily.
00:27:00.799 --> 00:27:02.960
Maybe it's the how of how we did it.
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:05.440
Maybe it's not the first thing we need right now.
00:27:05.519 --> 00:27:07.440
Maybe we need something else.
00:27:07.759 --> 00:27:15.519
Um, and sometimes what we really need to do is the same repeated boring, it's like I'm saying boring.
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:18.319
I don't think it's boring, but it feels boring.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:28.480
Um to many people, like the repetition of habits, doing it over and over, do it for a whole nother week, right?
00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:32.559
Your body needs enough time to build with what you're actually giving it.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.880
That stability is huge.
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:42.960
And so I always believe that action creates clarity, but more information doesn't always create clarity.
00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:50.400
And after watching people closely for the last year, I think that's one of the biggest things this work has reinforced for me, right?
00:27:50.799 --> 00:28:02.480
Um, because healing is much less about finding the perfect intervention than learning how to remain in relationship with your body over time.
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:07.119
I think that is one of the hardest things for many, many people.
00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:09.440
And there's a lot of things about that, right?
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:15.759
We don't have people sitting with us, like doing this with us, right?
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:19.839
Um, so discernment is very much part of healing.
00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:24.000
So maybe this is what I'm taking with me into Virgo season this year.
00:28:24.160 --> 00:28:25.920
It's that that, right?
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:43.519
Like the discernment piece has to be part of our healing where we're noticing what's happening, we're discerning what matters, and then we're choosing an action, not 52 actions, right?
00:28:44.559 --> 00:28:58.640
And then actually take the action repeatedly over many, many, many days and observe what happens and then let that inform whether or not you need to adjust.
00:28:59.599 --> 00:29:04.720
We don't always have to intellectually understand everything before we move.
00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:11.519
And we don't have to make every single symptom that we have its own healing project.
00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:20.799
And then even more so, we don't have to turn everything we can discover about ourselves and our health into another assignment.
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:27.759
Even if like what we discover could be true, remember, not everything can be first.
00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:35.119
And so, you know, honestly, this is also why the way that I work with people has evolved so much over this last year.
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:48.319
I don't think most people who find their way to me need another person handing them an enormous list of everything they need to do, everything that could be wrong and everything that they should be doing about it.
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:52.640
Okay, most of them already have plenty of information.
00:29:52.880 --> 00:29:57.279
What they're struggling with is what does all of this mean for me?
00:29:57.440 --> 00:29:59.599
Like, what actually matters right now?
00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:02.400
Like what comes first?
00:30:02.559 --> 00:30:03.680
What can wait?
00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:05.920
What am I doing that is helping?
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:12.480
What am I doing that might just be creating more noise and not necessarily be all that effective right now?
00:30:13.279 --> 00:30:23.599
And then, like, how do I actually build from where I actually am without turning my entire life into this micromanaged, crazy intense thing, right?
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:26.240
That's the work I want to do with people.
00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:34.400
And after a year of working this way, I decided to expand minerals and microbes where you can work with me.
00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:40.880
Right now it's just a four-month um container, but now I'm going to have an eight-month container as well.
00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:44.160
So four months is really a good amount of time for some people.
00:30:44.720 --> 00:30:48.079
Um, and other people simply just need more runway.
00:30:48.799 --> 00:30:52.400
Not necessarily because they have more problems or whatever.
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:54.319
Like, I don't, that's not why.
00:30:54.400 --> 00:31:01.279
It's just, and I don't have like eight months of protocol sitting around waiting, sequenced out already.
00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:09.759
Like, but the thing is, is our bodies don't reorganize according to any kind of protocol calendar, right?
00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:21.759
Life happens while we're doing this work, and sometimes more time gives us room to work through the layers without rushing simply because we're approaching some kind of arbitrary end date.
00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:26.880
So, again, just really quick, I use HTMA and the biome effects.
00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:28.640
Those are my two test tools.
00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:31.519
They're just windows into what's happening.
00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:46.480
But the work is about you, your patterns, your symptoms, your history, how you're currently nourishing yourself, your daily rhythms, and the actual like life, your like lifestyle that your body is living inside of.
00:31:46.559 --> 00:31:47.359
Do you see?
00:31:47.759 --> 00:32:00.960
So if you've been trying to piece your health together on your own for a long time and you're sitting on a mountain of information, but still aren't sure how to turn it into a coherent path forward, this is the exact kind of work that I do.
00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:04.799
Definitely check out the link in the show notes about minerals and microbes.
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.799
Um, and if it sounds like the kind of support you've been looking for, I'd love to work with you.
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:12.480
You're welcome to email me with further questions if you have them.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:16.960
And um I appreciate you guys all for being here.
00:32:17.119 --> 00:32:23.839
If this episode landed for you, I have that text link in the first of the first link in the show notes.
00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:27.119
You can direct text me any thoughts you had about the episode.
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:28.640
I love hearing from you.
00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:32.160
And until next time, stay wild and stay well.
00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:15.679
Well, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Wilded Wellness Podcast.
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:20.000
I'm your host, Lydia Joy, and happy Virgo season, everyone.
00:00:20.239 --> 00:00:32.560
If you listened to last week's episode, uh, What Does Your Body Need Now, you know I've already been thinking a lot about this question of what our bodies actually need in the season that we are currently in.
00:00:32.799 --> 00:00:38.159
So if you haven't listened to that one yet, definitely go back, check it out because today's conversation really builds on it.
00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:51.840
Um, and I think it's interesting that we are, I am moving into this conversation with you right as we move into Virgo season, because one of the qualities I love most about Virgo is discernment.
00:00:52.079 --> 00:01:08.480
It's the ability to separate signal from noise, if you will, uh, to really recognize what's actually needed now, because not everything needs to be solved today or used today, right?
00:01:08.879 --> 00:01:13.280
And not everything needs to be intervened upon today.
00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:25.200
And every possibility that we can imagine about ourselves and our health doesn't deserve our energy simply uh because we've become aware of it.
00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:35.599
Now, Virgo is traditionally associated with digestion and the intestines, and I think digestion is such an extraordinary metaphor for this, right?
00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:45.200
We take something in, we break it apart, we discern what's useful, we assimilate what nourishes us, and then we just eliminate what we don't need.
00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:59.519
And we do this with food, obviously, but we're continually being asked to do the same thing with information, uh, experiences, ideas, even with just life itself, right?
00:02:00.079 --> 00:02:04.400
And another word that I've been thinking about a lot lately is distillation.
00:02:04.959 --> 00:02:11.919
Distillation is the process of separating what is essential from everything that obscures it.
00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:27.599
And I think that that's particularly important when we're dealing with long-standing or complex health patterns, because there's this very understandable temptation when something feels complicated to respond by adding even more complexity.
00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:28.639
Right?
00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:40.800
We could add so many things like more information, more supplements, opinions, testing, research, like things to investigate, more things that we probably need to fix, right?
00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:46.879
But what if the skill we actually need is the opposite?
00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:47.919
Right?
00:02:48.159 --> 00:02:49.759
Can we actually distill?
00:02:50.319 --> 00:03:04.159
Can we identify what actually matters now and separate any like signal that we're experiencing in our bodies or from the external places from noise, right?
00:03:04.319 --> 00:03:06.719
Like from something we don't actually need.
00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:18.639
Can we actually restore some kind of hierarchy to the process of healing instead of trying to understand and address everything at once?
00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:26.319
I spent this last year working with people in a longer term, much more intimate way than I ever have before.
00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:33.599
Uh, watching what happens week after week as people are actually living inside the process of rebuilding their health.
00:03:33.919 --> 00:03:39.759
And that experience has deepened something I already believed about healing.
00:03:40.879 --> 00:03:47.599
We have access to more information about our bodies than human beings have ever had before.
00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:54.800
But more information doesn't necessarily tell us what matters most right now.
00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:56.879
What do we prioritize right now?
00:03:57.039 --> 00:03:59.039
And that's what I want to talk about today.
00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:03.919
Because when everything matters, what the heck even comes first, right?
00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:12.560
So almost everyone who comes to work with me arrives with a cluster of challenges that have become hard to live with.
00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:20.319
Usually there's a point in their story where they can say, this is when everything got really loud.
00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:40.160
Maybe it followed an incredibly difficult season of life, a loss, a relationship rupture, um, a major illness, uh, years of intense caregiving, um, you know, living in water damaged housing for a long time.
00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:42.000
That's a big one for many people.
00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:46.800
Maybe it's uh a postpartum period someone never really recovered from.
00:04:47.199 --> 00:04:51.759
Maybe a huge stretch of financial instability played a massive role.
00:04:52.399 --> 00:04:55.279
Maybe even just the upheaval since 2020, right?
00:04:55.839 --> 00:04:59.120
Like sometimes several things overlapped.
00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:10.480
So then once we start looking backward, people are often realizing, like, well, okay, if I'm honest, some of what I'm saying is a problem now.
00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:14.240
Of course it's louder, was already there before that.
00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:14.959
Right?
00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:21.839
They're realizing like maybe they were constipated their whole lives, maybe they didn't sleep well their whole lives, right?
00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:31.920
Like, um, or maybe their digestion had been off, on and off, and now all of a sudden it's like always the problem, right?
00:05:32.399 --> 00:05:41.839
Um, the energy piece, you know, everybody can relate back to like energy's always been weird, but like now it's just worse.
00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:45.120
But it's I can't say that I ever had awesome energy.
00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:46.160
Um, right.
00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:57.439
So there were things that their body had been managing or compensating for that simply weren't loud enough yet to demand their full attention.
00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:03.199
And eventually, though, they kind of reach this point where they know, all right, I need to pay attention to this now.
00:06:03.439 --> 00:06:06.319
Something has to change, right?
00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:13.600
And most people don't arrive into the work we do together without having already tried to help themselves, right?
00:06:13.839 --> 00:06:24.959
They've read, they've listened, experimented, they've searched symptoms, they've tried a whole slew of supplements, uh, tried all kinds of different ways of eating.
00:06:25.199 --> 00:06:32.079
They may already have test results uh or have worked with multiple other practitioners.
00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:38.800
And so we're living in this time when access to health information is unlike anything we've ever had before.
00:06:38.959 --> 00:06:44.079
Holy moly! You can read about anything.
00:06:45.199 --> 00:06:48.160
You can run so many tests.
00:06:48.319 --> 00:06:53.040
Like the amount of tests that we have available for our health today are insane.
00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:56.160
They're coming up with more and more and more all the time.
00:06:56.959 --> 00:07:05.680
And now you can listen to thousands of podcast episodes, you know, libraries, people have entire libraries of content, right?
00:07:05.920 --> 00:07:09.120
Like you can research every symptom you've ever experienced.
00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:19.920
And now with AI, you can take almost any piece of information about yourself and go down an incredibly deep rabbit hole in like no time flat, right?
00:07:20.399 --> 00:07:24.000
And in in a lot of ways, this is kind of amazing.
00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:26.399
And it's like, wow, okay.
00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.639
But there's another side to that.
00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:38.240
Like the more you search, the more you find like more of that information, especially if the algorithm is involved, right?
00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:44.160
And the more you search, the more you can create kind of more complexity and more problems.
00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:58.639
And before long, all of a sudden, anything that you're trying to learn or research is is, you know, you're on this, like, okay, it's this, this, and this, now it's this, and then this and so now it's this, right?
00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:08.560
So you could be learning about, you know, protein and macro, like how much you need, or like like back in the day when I first got started, everybody's talking about the thyroid, right?
00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:10.560
Like it was thyroid heavy.
00:08:10.800 --> 00:08:20.160
Um, you know, blood sugar, uh, like before the CGMs came out, like we were blood sugar was like a massive topic.
00:08:20.399 --> 00:08:26.639
You know, uh, if you look in the mineral space, it's like, okay, well, people are still looking at iron panels, right?
00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:30.319
Um, we're still looking at the gut in all these different ways, right?
00:08:30.399 --> 00:08:34.159
And there's so many layers because we're learning so much so fast.
00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:40.639
Um, and now all of a sudden everyone feels like they have to learn it all too, right?
00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:46.559
And the problem isn't that all of those things are not like it's not like they're nonsense.
00:08:46.639 --> 00:08:51.360
They're, they're, they're very real and completely relevant.
00:08:51.519 --> 00:08:54.000
And that's what makes this very difficult, right?
00:08:54.240 --> 00:09:01.200
Like you already have the life you've lived, you have your current circumstances, and you have symptoms.
00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:08.320
You have things that you've tried that genuinely helped, and you have things tried that genuinely didn't.
00:09:08.639 --> 00:09:14.799
Maybe you have test results that somebody told you were important and you just didn't know what to do with them.
00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:20.960
Um, maybe you have an actual diagnosis that absolutely needs to be a part of the picture.
00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:30.720
Maybe you're also moving through something like perimenopause, where the volume of conflicting information suddenly gets turned up even louder.
00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:38.000
And now you're standing in the middle of all that thinking, like, holy shit, what do I even where do I even start?
00:09:38.080 --> 00:09:39.679
Like, what actually comes first?
00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:42.799
Because all those things can matter, like blood sugar, totally.
00:09:43.039 --> 00:09:56.480
Your gut, absolutely, thyroid, hormones, minerals, movement, environment, your relationship, like all of it is true, valid, and important, but you can't put them all first, right?
00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:00.799
Like I was under thinking, like, I could probably run 52 different tests on myself, right?
00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:10.799
Because there's probably 52 out there that exist, and genuinely learn something very interesting from every single one of them.
00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:17.679
But that doesn't automatically tell me what to prioritize and what deserves my attention now.
00:10:17.759 --> 00:10:24.480
And it doesn't tell me like what can wait, doesn't tell me what's foundational, what's downstream.
00:10:25.919 --> 00:10:35.279
And it definitely doesn't usually, unless someone's looking at it this way, tell me how much change my body and my actual life can assimilate at one time.
00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:47.519
So everything could that could matter here in what I'm saying, because like this is what a lot of people are doing, you know, it's like really what matters most right now.
00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:53.440
And that's where I want to bring you into what I mean when I talk about taking a rewilded approach to health, right?
00:10:53.679 --> 00:10:56.320
This is the Rewilded Wellness Podcast, after all.
00:10:56.399 --> 00:11:04.480
In case you're new here, I just wanted to quickly circle back to this because it's the larger philosophy underneath everything that I do.
00:11:04.799 --> 00:11:11.840
I don't believe that we can separate human health from the environment in which we as human beings are living inside of.
00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:24.720
And when I say environment, I don't simply mean like whether you live somewhere in the world, like whether you live somewhere with just clean air or with whether there's mold in your house, right?
00:11:24.799 --> 00:11:27.120
Like I'm not that environment specifically.
00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:34.559
I mean the entire set of conditions your biology is continually interacting with.
00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:36.559
That's a lot of things, right?
00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:51.039
It's obviously going to be the light you are exposed to, uh, the food that you're eating, how you're actually moving, how you're breathing, what you're breathing, right?
00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:59.440
Um, all kinds of things, your relationships, how you're sleeping, the work that you do, and all these variables, right?
00:11:59.519 --> 00:12:08.320
Your stressors, your resources, your microbes, uh, the season of life that you're in, and the experiences you've already lived through.
00:12:08.559 --> 00:12:11.600
Your biology is continually responding to all of it.
00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:18.559
And that's why for me, a rewilded approach isn't it's not, I'm not like anti-modern modernity, right?
00:12:18.639 --> 00:12:22.080
Like I definitely do testing, not anti-supplements or anti-intervention.
00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:28.159
Like when I think about rewilding, um, it's not like we have to return to old times.
00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:38.480
Um, I'm using functional testing, but you know, what I'm the distinction is what we're asking those things to do, right?
00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:45.279
The goal isn't to collect more and more information about ourselves until we understand every pathway in our bodies, right?
00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:56.399
And it's certainly not to create a life where staying well requires us to become increasingly dependent on all those things to constantly micromanage ourselves.
00:12:56.639 --> 00:13:00.960
I want the information to help us understand ourselves better, right?
00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:02.480
What are our bodies doing?
00:13:02.639 --> 00:13:04.080
What have they been adapting to?
00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:10.320
Where might it be, where might each of us be compensating somewhere and what seems to need the most support right now?
00:13:10.559 --> 00:13:19.759
And from everything that we could potentially work on, what can we actually sustain based on what our body needs now?
00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:29.840
Um, so ultimately, I'm interested in rebuilding the conditions that allow the body to become more resilient over time, right?
00:13:30.559 --> 00:13:38.879
Um, so that we have this greater pet capacity to meet changing conditions, adapt, recover, and keep going.
00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:45.360
Now, I did an entire episode back in March of 2025 called What is Rewilded Wellness and How Does the Body Heal Itself?
00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:47.519
Where I go much deeper into this philosophy.
00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:50.720
So uh, so definitely check that out in the show notes if you want.
00:13:50.879 --> 00:13:54.480
Um, I don't want to have that whole conversation again because I already did.
00:13:54.799 --> 00:14:04.639
Um, but today I just want to stay with the practical question of like, once we have all this information, how do we decide what actually deserves our attention?
00:14:05.039 --> 00:14:10.639
We're in the information age, and I don't think information is hierarchical.
00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:12.240
It's just out there, right?
00:14:12.639 --> 00:14:26.399
Um, and I think this is one of the things that we're gonna have to get much, much better at is how to take information and realize just because it exists doesn't mean it's structured in such a way that I can distill it.
00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:26.879
Like, right?
00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:28.240
We have to distill it.
00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:39.840
So just because we intellectually know something about the body doesn't automatically tell us where or whether it actually belongs in the order of what we need to be doing next, right?
00:14:40.240 --> 00:14:47.120
Because when I look at the hair test, for example, that's one functional test we could take as an example.
00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:52.559
Um, it can give us like so many pieces of information.
00:14:53.039 --> 00:14:55.840
And a lot of times people will be like, well, what does this mean?
00:14:55.919 --> 00:14:56.320
What does this mean?
00:14:56.399 --> 00:14:56.799
What does this mean?
00:14:56.879 --> 00:15:03.039
I'm like, it doesn't, it it does matter, but it also doesn't matter right now because we can't even go there yet.
00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:05.919
Like we really have to focus here.
00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:07.919
Like this is the start, okay?
00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:08.720
Right?
00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:10.960
And AI, we could put it into AI.
00:15:11.039 --> 00:15:12.159
Like I have people doing this now.
00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:17.039
Clients are like putting their stuff into Claude and wherever they're doing it, and that's fine.
00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:20.320
I, you know, it's like the new version of Google on steroids.
00:15:20.399 --> 00:15:25.200
Like everybody would used to Google their stuff, now they're using AI to do it.
00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:26.320
Um, right.
00:15:26.480 --> 00:15:31.759
And then it's all of a sudden intellectually, okay, this and this and this and this about my test, right?
00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:36.720
And AI can help you under like learn about them.
00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:45.120
Um, you know, but it doesn't help you understand how to actually implement and work with it, right?
00:15:45.200 --> 00:16:02.559
Like a practitioner is gonna look at, you know, that same person and identify, you know, 10, like maybe 10 completely legitimate areas that could use support, but none of that by itself tells us, like, okay, how do we chunk this down?
00:16:02.799 --> 00:16:07.679
What comes first now that we're gonna build on next and next, right?
00:16:07.759 --> 00:16:12.080
Like we've become incredibly good at finding things, right?
00:16:12.399 --> 00:16:16.799
Especially finding things wrong with us and all this information that correlates, right?
00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:25.919
So we can look at hormones, we can look at minerals, we can look at the microbiome, we can look at nutritional status, we can look at genetics, so much, right?
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:28.879
And and guys, this is good in a way.
00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:36.960
There's a lot about this that it is good, but something being true about your physiology doesn't automatically make it today's project.
00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:39.200
And that's where discernment comes in, right?
00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:49.360
We have to determine like what's currently the most significant, what might be downstream of something else, meaning it'll get sorted if we sort this out first.
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:52.639
What's foundational that's not in place yet?
00:16:52.799 --> 00:16:55.279
Um, that's actually going to help.
00:16:56.159 --> 00:16:58.879
Uh, what genuinely needs attention now?
00:16:59.039 --> 00:17:00.559
What can wait, right?
00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:09.279
Um, and even the question of like, what does this particular person actually have the capacity to implement and assimilate?
00:17:09.599 --> 00:17:19.200
And is there something we can work on that might create enough change that something else gets better without having us to have to directly intervene there at all?
00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:20.880
That's hierarchy.
00:17:21.039 --> 00:17:25.519
And this connects directly to what I talked about last week with mineral ecology, right?
00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:28.640
Like you look at your hair test or whatever test.
00:17:29.359 --> 00:17:32.079
It's not like a shopping list, if you will, right?
00:17:32.240 --> 00:17:35.599
Like, neither is any type of test, right?
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:40.480
Like there are different windows into the human, into our system.
00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:51.119
They give us a lot of clues, they help us see some really cool stuff, patterns, it helps us track change, hopefully ask better questions.
00:17:51.440 --> 00:17:53.599
But the data isn't discernment.
00:17:53.759 --> 00:17:58.319
And our access to data is only going to increase.
00:17:58.559 --> 00:18:03.359
So I don't think the question going forward is going to be like, can I find more information about my health?
00:18:03.599 --> 00:18:04.720
Of course you can.
00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:11.279
The question is, what information is meaningful right now and what am I actually going to do with it?
00:18:11.519 --> 00:18:17.680
Sometimes the most useful thing we can recognize is yes, I see that.
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:19.200
It matters.
00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:21.680
And no, it's not a priority.
00:18:21.839 --> 00:18:24.160
It's not the first thing I need to do.
00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:27.599
What a year of weekly check-ins has taught me.
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:32.640
So this is something I have had the opportunity to watch much more closely over this last year.
00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:35.440
About a year ago, I changed the way that I work with people.
00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:49.440
Instead of primarily meeting, doing just like one-off sessions, like uh an HTMA review, and then giving them the work to do on their own, I started working with clients in a longer-term container with weekly check-ins.
00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:57.839
And that has given me a window into something that's really difficult to see when you're only looking at someone every couple of months.
00:18:58.079 --> 00:19:03.440
Um, like what happens like in between in the in-between, right?
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:08.880
Um, because we're always healing inside of our actual lives, right?
00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:11.759
We're we're in the middle of our lives, right?
00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.599
Like this summer, a lot of people were traveling, right?
00:19:15.759 --> 00:19:17.680
And my clients are like traveling.
00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:33.759
Um, people are telling me they lost a loved one or a loved, a loved, beloved pet, or a season of their work totally just ramped up, got crazy unexpectedly, or something's going on with one of their children that has more needs and priorities in the moment, right?
00:19:33.839 --> 00:19:36.559
Like maybe you have an awesome week.
00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:43.920
Yes, woo-hoo! But then, like the following week, a little bit of shit hits the fan, and it's like, right?
00:19:44.799 --> 00:19:58.559
Or you go to travel and you eat like completely different food than you're used to, or um, you're starting a supplement, or maybe you started too many at once, so you don't know what is changing things, right?
00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:02.079
Or like something happens and the routine gets disrupted.
00:20:02.240 --> 00:20:03.839
Like I could go on and on, right?
00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:08.400
We're living actual lives and our bodies are responding inside of that.
00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:22.000
And so when I get to see those changes week after week, I'm much less interested in reacting to every fluctuation, as though it requires more research, more intervention, right?
00:20:22.799 --> 00:20:31.359
So when I'm watching this on a weekly basis, some weeks it's like, okay, let's keep observing and keep implementing the things you're already doing.
00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:38.240
Or sometimes we genuinely might need to stop something that we started and give hit the pause button.
00:20:38.400 --> 00:20:41.200
Sometimes we actually need to change a variable.
00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:53.759
Um and sometimes something that we aren't certain if we need to prioritize it right away because other things seem more important, um keeps showing up.
00:20:53.839 --> 00:20:59.200
And it's like, okay, actually we have space now, and this deserves more of our attention.
00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:06.079
Um, and sometimes something we were watching resolves without ever becoming its own healing project.
00:21:06.640 --> 00:21:06.960
Okay.
00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:12.880
And so in some weeks, I my answer to a client's check-in is like, okay, great, keep going, right?
00:21:13.680 --> 00:21:23.759
Um, and this is also what I mean when I say the phrase that I try to say a lot because it's I I bring it up every now and then again.
00:21:23.839 --> 00:21:28.400
It's you can only go as fast as the slowest part of you wants to go.
00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:33.920
Now, that isn't an invitation to stay stuck at today's capacity.
00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:37.440
We are trying to build capacity.
00:21:38.079 --> 00:21:53.279
But we have to work with our, like, I have to work with the human being who's actually right in front of me, not some imaginary version of them with unlimited time and money and bandwidth to work on everything all at once, only, right?
00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:56.880
Like, um, and there's all these different variables.
00:21:57.039 --> 00:21:59.680
Like, one person could be eating an incredibly nutrient.
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:02.400
Nutrient-dense diet already, right?
00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:15.599
And even eating really decent mineral uh minerals in their diet, but they could have digestion and absorption that are still quite limited at that time.
00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:23.680
And so therefore, you know, the way they're able to build with what they're eating isn't quite the same or isn't quite ideal or optimal, right?
00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:28.319
Somebody else maybe has done like a lot of gut work, right?
00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:31.279
And it's genuinely better.
00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:37.680
Um, but their physical capacity like is still not there yet.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:41.920
Like, so that's a really the next layer that needs attention.
00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:55.519
Um, you know, and sometimes someone's life currently is just consuming an enormous amount of available capacity just to survive inside of what's going on, right?
00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:58.079
And so the slowest part can change.
00:22:58.160 --> 00:23:13.759
And I think that's really important because we've become so accustomed to interpreting symptoms as evidence that something's wrong that we can forget that a responsive body is supposed to respond.
00:23:14.240 --> 00:23:18.960
It's supposed to have what we call a symptom, right?
00:23:19.599 --> 00:23:25.759
So the adaptation part of the story is not inherently a problem at all, right?
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:45.440
So, like if you're traveling in the summer more than you do the rest of the year, a lot of people are, or experiencing grief, or moving through an intensely stressful week that kind of like, you know, you don't recover from fully for a month or something like that.
00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:53.599
Um, or you have to change your food like suddenly for whatever reason, um, right?
00:23:53.839 --> 00:23:56.480
And then now your body has to like adapt to that, right?
00:23:56.799 --> 00:23:57.839
I could go on and on.
00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:01.599
You maybe you're in a new hormonal season of your life, right?
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:04.400
This is all part of being alive.
00:24:04.559 --> 00:24:10.480
What I'm interested in is what happens after any type of adjustment period, right?
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:13.839
Can our bodies adapt and find its way back?
00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:16.000
Do we actually recover?
00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:23.599
Um, or does the adaptation begin requiring additional compensation elsewhere?
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:28.559
Does it keep costing the person more and more capacity just to maintain where they are?
00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:35.599
That's a very different question from how do we make this symptom disappear immediately, right?
00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:38.720
Like that's our preference, right?
00:24:39.279 --> 00:24:44.720
And so these weekly check-ins have made me much more respectful of time as information.
00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:51.359
Sometimes we genuinely don't know what something means on a Tuesday, right?
00:24:51.519 --> 00:24:53.039
Like we have to give it time.
00:24:53.599 --> 00:24:55.279
And we don't always have to know.
00:24:55.519 --> 00:24:57.920
We can support what clearly needs support.
00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:01.359
We can keep the foundational pieces in place and watch.
00:25:01.759 --> 00:25:05.759
And the following week, sometimes the picture is completely different.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:13.920
Um, and this is why I think healing happens much more in layers than according to some perfectly linear protocol, right?
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.839
We want to work from where you actually are and build from there.
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:23.440
And as one layer becomes more stable, something else becomes possible.
00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:33.119
And sometimes a thing that looked like your biggest challenge or bottleneck six months ago isn't your biggest challenge or bottleneck anymore.
00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:38.400
And you can build enough capacity that you eventually reach a new edge.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:44.240
And then maybe mistake that edge for evidence that you're still not getting anywhere.
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:47.839
But maybe you could even, you couldn't even get to this layer before.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:49.519
And that's progress too.
00:25:49.759 --> 00:25:52.960
And this is where I heard this phrase on a show I'm watching.
00:25:53.119 --> 00:25:54.640
I'm watching this show called Fire Country.
00:25:54.799 --> 00:25:55.519
I love it.
00:25:55.759 --> 00:25:58.240
Um, they say it multiple times.
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:01.359
So I I just was like, it's it was sticking with me.
00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:04.319
And I was like, I gotta say this to people, right?
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:08.400
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:16.880
And I know when you're already you've already been struggling for years, nobody wants to be told to go slower.
00:26:17.119 --> 00:26:18.400
But hear me out.
00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:28.240
Slow doesn't mean passive, it doesn't mean doing nothing, it doesn't mean endlessly observing yourself because you're afraid to make a move.
00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:37.119
It simply means slowing down enough to make a coherent move instead of reactive, a reactive one, right?
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:44.880
We are going to be doing something, but then we're also going to observe and learn and adjust, right?
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:55.359
Sometimes that means like, okay, we tried this thing, it gave us information, it wasn't working great.
00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:59.039
Okay, it does it mean it was bad for us.
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:00.559
Not necessarily.
00:27:00.799 --> 00:27:02.960
Maybe it's the how of how we did it.
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:05.440
Maybe it's not the first thing we need right now.
00:27:05.519 --> 00:27:07.440
Maybe we need something else.
00:27:07.759 --> 00:27:15.519
Um, and sometimes what we really need to do is the same repeated boring, it's like I'm saying boring.
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:18.319
I don't think it's boring, but it feels boring.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:28.480
Um to many people, like the repetition of habits, doing it over and over, do it for a whole nother week, right?
00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:32.559
Your body needs enough time to build with what you're actually giving it.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.880
That stability is huge.
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:42.960
And so I always believe that action creates clarity, but more information doesn't always create clarity.
00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:50.400
And after watching people closely for the last year, I think that's one of the biggest things this work has reinforced for me, right?
00:27:50.799 --> 00:28:02.480
Um, because healing is much less about finding the perfect intervention than learning how to remain in relationship with your body over time.
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:07.119
I think that is one of the hardest things for many, many people.
00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:09.440
And there's a lot of things about that, right?
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:15.759
We don't have people sitting with us, like doing this with us, right?
00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:19.839
Um, so discernment is very much part of healing.
00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:24.000
So maybe this is what I'm taking with me into Virgo season this year.
00:28:24.160 --> 00:28:25.920
It's that that, right?
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:43.519
Like the discernment piece has to be part of our healing where we're noticing what's happening, we're discerning what matters, and then we're choosing an action, not 52 actions, right?
00:28:44.559 --> 00:28:58.640
And then actually take the action repeatedly over many, many, many days and observe what happens and then let that inform whether or not you need to adjust.
00:28:59.599 --> 00:29:04.720
We don't always have to intellectually understand everything before we move.
00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:11.519
And we don't have to make every single symptom that we have its own healing project.
00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:20.799
And then even more so, we don't have to turn everything we can discover about ourselves and our health into another assignment.
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:27.759
Even if like what we discover could be true, remember, not everything can be first.
00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:35.119
And so, you know, honestly, this is also why the way that I work with people has evolved so much over this last year.
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:48.319
I don't think most people who find their way to me need another person handing them an enormous list of everything they need to do, everything that could be wrong and everything that they should be doing about it.
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:52.640
Okay, most of them already have plenty of information.
00:29:52.880 --> 00:29:57.279
What they're struggling with is what does all of this mean for me?
00:29:57.440 --> 00:29:59.599
Like, what actually matters right now?
00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:02.400
Like what comes first?
00:30:02.559 --> 00:30:03.680
What can wait?
00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:05.920
What am I doing that is helping?
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:12.480
What am I doing that might just be creating more noise and not necessarily be all that effective right now?
00:30:13.279 --> 00:30:23.599
And then, like, how do I actually build from where I actually am without turning my entire life into this micromanaged, crazy intense thing, right?
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:26.240
That's the work I want to do with people.
00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:34.400
And after a year of working this way, I decided to expand minerals and microbes where you can work with me.
00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:40.880
Right now it's just a four-month um container, but now I'm going to have an eight-month container as well.
00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:44.160
So four months is really a good amount of time for some people.
00:30:44.720 --> 00:30:48.079
Um, and other people simply just need more runway.
00:30:48.799 --> 00:30:52.400
Not necessarily because they have more problems or whatever.
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:54.319
Like, I don't, that's not why.
00:30:54.400 --> 00:31:01.279
It's just, and I don't have like eight months of protocol sitting around waiting, sequenced out already.
00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:09.759
Like, but the thing is, is our bodies don't reorganize according to any kind of protocol calendar, right?
00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:21.759
Life happens while we're doing this work, and sometimes more time gives us room to work through the layers without rushing simply because we're approaching some kind of arbitrary end date.
00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:26.880
So, again, just really quick, I use HTMA and the biome effects.
00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:28.640
Those are my two test tools.
00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:31.519
They're just windows into what's happening.
00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:46.480
But the work is about you, your patterns, your symptoms, your history, how you're currently nourishing yourself, your daily rhythms, and the actual like life, your like lifestyle that your body is living inside of.
00:31:46.559 --> 00:31:47.359
Do you see?
00:31:47.759 --> 00:32:00.960
So if you've been trying to piece your health together on your own for a long time and you're sitting on a mountain of information, but still aren't sure how to turn it into a coherent path forward, this is the exact kind of work that I do.
00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:04.799
Definitely check out the link in the show notes about minerals and microbes.
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.799
Um, and if it sounds like the kind of support you've been looking for, I'd love to work with you.
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:12.480
You're welcome to email me with further questions if you have them.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:16.960
And um I appreciate you guys all for being here.
00:32:17.119 --> 00:32:23.839
If this episode landed for you, I have that text link in the first of the first link in the show notes.
00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:27.119
You can direct text me any thoughts you had about the episode.
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:28.640
I love hearing from you.
00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:32.160
And until next time, stay wild and stay well.
