The Difference between Advice and Understanding Yourself - Doshas & Dysfunction: How to Finally Recover From a Damaging Past.

The year was 2003.
I was in my early twenties, And I was exhausted.

For as long as I could remember, my body had felt like it was working against me.

Every meal I ate left me bloated and in pain. I had constipation. My skin would have occasional breakouts, I would experience brain fog. My lower back went out for the first time when I was only eight years old. Officially, I’d been diagnosed with three autoimmune diseases: celiac, IBS and endometriosis; but looking back, I probably also had SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) which was leaking into my entire system - but it had not become part of the conversation yet.

I’d tried everything I knew about; functional medicine, naturopathy, elimination diets, and clean eating programs. Raw food, vegetarianism. Every new approach felt like it might finally be the answer.

Nothing worked. Even foods that were considered healthy often made me feel worse. I could not understand it. It seemed like everyone else's body knew what to do, and mine was constantly struggling. I felt so abnormal that everyone else could eat whatever they wanted… Not me.

Then I found myself sitting across from an Ayurvedic doctor. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much. But I was hopeful. And curious…

He took my pulse, looked at my tongue. And in what felt like a mere second, he said:

Then he started describing things. How could he know?

My digestion​
​My back pain​
​My menstrual cycle​
​My moods​
​The places I carried stress

It felt as though someone had finally understood the language my body had been speaking all along. For the first time in my life, I felt understood and seen.

He told me everything I was experiencing.

I went home and decided to try what he had said. I put away the raw salad. I got rid of gluten and yeast. I began cooking warm vegetables, and I learned to use spices like cumin, coriander, fennel, and turmeric, not because they tasted good, necessarily, although they do, but because of their digestive support. I made dal. I changed the rhythm of the way I ate.

A different balance on the plate.

I sat down for my first meal, I still remember it.

And for the first time after a meal -- maybe the first time in my life -- I felt settled. Not just “less-bloated,” or “not-uncomfortable.”

Settled.

It was as though my entire body exhaled.

It was different to anything I'd ever felt before. Like a warm soothing wave was flowing through my body, calming my nervous system.

Like a settling, an exhale, a calm that I had never felt after eating.

My nervous system quieted, and looking back, I don’t think I was only discovering a different way to eat. I was discovering something much deeper.

That every human being has an innate intelligence, and our bodies are constantly communicating with us through it. Often, the stress in the system is trying to tell us something.

Ayurveda was a game changer for me. It helped me understand how to give my system the right things so it could relax, feel nourished, and receive support in a way it understood- by learning to understand its nature.

That meal, that experience, and what Ayurveda offered me changed my life.

To understand why, I have to take you back much further.

To where my relationship with food and understanding and listening to my own body began.

My dad’s father was diagnosed with cancer, and died when I was ten years old. His sickness and his death changed my father. My Dad became obsessed with health and holistic medicine; Looking for the thing that would protect the people he loved and himself from this same fate.

My Mom expressed her love for us differently. She fed people, with full plates: potatoes and desserts, breads, comfort food and sugar.

Looking back, I can see they were both trying to love us in the only ways they knew how at that time.

We were church goers, pillars of the community. And From the outside, we looked like a loving family.

From the outside…

But behind closed doors, life felt very different..

As I shared in my 4th July newsletter, my father is a Vietnam vet who lived through both a deeply traumatic childhood and the experience of a deeply traumatic war.

Today I see a man carrying an enormous amount of unprocessed pain.

He loved us, he worked incredibly hard, he wanted the best for his family, but he simply did not have the tools to understand or work with what he was carrying in a healthy way.

My Mom was doing the best she could as well. She was raising six children, exhausted and feeling overwhelmed in stressful dynamics, and food was one of the only places where she found comfort, pleasure, and love from people.

What I experienced growing up was not bad people. It was two human beings who had not been developed in a healthy or adequate way, attempting to navigate life without the emotional awareness, tools, or support that many of us do finally have access to today. Children don't just watch that; they absorb it.

The dinner table became a place of conflict and mixed messages: "Finish your plate. Don't get fat." Food became tangled with fear, shame, control, criticism, comfort, and love, all at the same time. How do you build a healthy relationship with food and nourishing yourself, not to mention listening to your body when the emotional environment surrounding it feels so confusing, and how do you digest well when the climate at the dinner table is so unsettled?

You don't. At least I didn't.

Looking back, I realized I wasn’t only confused about nutrition; I was confused about how to hear myself.

My body would tell me one thing, and the people around me would tell me another. Like so many children do, I learned to override my own experience. I stopped listening to the quiet intelligence of my body and began looking outside myself for answers: fitness magazines, “nutritional advice,” whatever the latest expert happened to be saying.

I was searching for certainty, clarity, and knowledge because I hadn’t been taught how to trust my own inner signals.

I understand now that this wasn’t a failure. It was an adaptation for survival.

So much about the way I was parented pulled me away from my inner voice. It created interference between me and my body’s signals, between me and my own innate intelligence.

I was actively encouraged to ignore what my body was trying to tell me.

I see versions of this in people every single day. Not because they’re incapable, but because somewhere along the way, they learned to disconnect from themselves in order to belong, stay safe, survive, or make sense of a world that felt confusing.

Adaptation.

Years later, I came across the ACE study. Actually, taking the assessment was required as part of my Master Coach training.

ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. The score quantifies the stress and trauma a child experiences before the age of eighteen and correlates those experiences with long-term physical health, mental health, and lifespan outcomes.

A high score doesn’t guarantee that someone will carry suffering throughout their life, but it does significantly increase the likelihood that those experiences will show up in the body.

My score is nine out of ten.

That score does not define me, and it does not determine anyone’s future, but it helped me understand something important.

The symptoms I had experienced throughout my life were not random: my nervous system, digestion, immune system, and relationship struggles all began to make sense through another, more objective lens.

I could give you a list of everything included in the ACE assessment, but suffice it to say that my result reflects painful levels of abuse within my family, not all of it solely at the hands of my parents.

It also points to emotional immaturity, stressful relationship dynamics, control, rigidity, and ancestral patterns that extend far beyond the dinner table.

Most of my siblings have struggled deeply as well. And I can see now that, in so many ways, this was one of the forces that led me to dedicate myself to this work and to rebuilding my life.

I can also see how that work has allowed me to support other members of my family in becoming healthier too.

In my later teen years, it was suggested I become a model: first in California, then in Chicago.

For a young woman who'd spent most of her life feeling uncomfortable in her own body. It was both flattering and also deeply confusing.

My father didn't approve.

So, for a time I modeled in secret. 

But the more I stepped towards that world, the more conflicted I became. It wasn't that I dislike beauty. I've always loved beauty, nature, architecture, gardens, clothing. I've always loved fabric and the way garments are cut and the way light moves through a room. Beauty has always deeply nourished me.

What felt uncomfortable was my value being connected with my superficial appearance. I didn't like feeling objectified, and again, it was a separation from myself.

I didn’t like the feeling of commoditization. It simply didn’t feel right.

It felt almost as though I were selling myself in some kind of messed-up way.

And yet… it was the ’90s. The age of the Supermodel: Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and my absolute favorite, Christy Turlington.

Without even being fully conscious of it, I did what so many women do. I measured myself against these women to see if I was “good enough.”

And like so many women, I compared myself to an impossible standard-one created through lighting, styling, and the illusion of the image itself. It disconnects us from our inherent, intrinsic value and pulls us away from cultivating our own unique beauty, instead pushing us to become something else.

I was caught in a dichotomy: feeling the disconnection this commercial world created while also aspiring to be part of it.

And I realize now that I was repeating the same patterns I had been immersed in growing up- confusion around food, confusion around the body, confusion around worth. All the things nobody ever teaches us about being a flesh-and-blood woman, a multidimensional person.

I was trying to solve deep questions with external answers. If I could just eat the right way, look the right way, and become the right version of myself, then maybe I could finally feel at ease.

What I didn’t yet understand was that it wasn’t about having the perfect diet, the perfect body, or the perfect career. I was looking for a way back to understanding myself.

That’s one of the reasons Ayurveda has given me so much, and so profoundly. For the first time, I was introduced to a system and way of understanding that wasn’t asking me to become someone else or view myself through an external lens, but to deeply understand my own unique nature.

Up until then, it had all been a mix of disconnected pieces: me trying half-baked ideas with no understanding of Eastern wisdom, hot and cold, cooked and raw, the microbiome, digestion, or unique constitution—nothing.

So why, you may wonder, am I baring my soul in this way to you, here now, today?

Well, regardless of your past or personal experience, there are so many layers of confusion, especially here in the States.

But when you look through the elemental model of Ayurveda, so much begins to make sense. It gives you an incredible framework to build from.

A huge part of this for me was taking what I learned from that Ayurvedic doctor that day and beginning to understand my Doshas.

Ayurveda is one of the oldest systems of medicine in the world, an original form of natural medicine developed in India more than 5,000 years ago.

It is built on the understanding that everything in nature—including every human body—is made of five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space.

These elements combine into three primary constitutions:

The Doshas.

Vata

Vata is air and space: movement, creativity, and speed. When in balance, Vata people are quick, inspired, alive with ideas. When out of balance (from too much cold, stimulation, or irregularity) they become anxious, scattered, and depleted. Their digestion becomes erratic and their sleep can be disturbed..

Pitta

Pitta is fire and water: drive, intensity, and precision. In balance, Pitta people are sharp, focused, and transformative. But out of balance (from too much heat, pressure, or competition) they can become inflamed with gut issues, skin issues, and anger that runs hot, and close to the surface.

Kapha

Kapha is earth and water: stability, groundedness, and endurance. In balance, Kapha people are the ones everyone wants in a crisis -- they’re steady, nourishing, and deeply loyal. But out of balance (from too much heaviness, stillness, or rich and sweet) they become sluggish, congested and resistant to change.

Most of us are a combination of two, with one dominant. And the foods, lifestyle, and daily rhythms that support one constitution can actively undermine another.

Each one has its own gifts. Each has its own vulnerabilities.

Each flourishes under slightly different conditions, and that is revolutionary for me because until then, almost everything I learned about health assumed there was one right way to eat, one right way to move, one right way to live.

Ayurveda introduced a completely different perspective: not what is the healthiest way, but what is the healthiest way for you, and that distinction changes everything.

Which is why it’s so crucial to uncover yours -- and understand what your own unique constitution is.

The truth is, none of the good I have in my life now, none of my recovery would have been possible if I hadn’t visited the Ayurvedic Doctor that day 23 years ago.

None of it would have been possible without meditation, coaching, and applying the principles of the East to my life. None of it would have been possible, if I hadn't been able to unpack my childhood, or learned how to digest what happened in my home, what my nervous system was holding on to, or what survival states I was in when I was growing up.

And that’s why I want to say: my parents are not bad people.

They simply didn't learn to process these things. They did not have the tools, and they did not have the education, and they did not have the developmental ability. It’s what I said in last week’s Audio Edition, and it’s important to state, because we now have both the frameworks and the capacity to actually stop these generational patterns from being passed down.

So, let me say it again, they're not bad people. They were panicking, providing for 6 children of their own (and two more of my father’s) and they just didn't know any better.

But unless you do this work, unless you choose to change generational patterns, you will carry whatever happened to you with you. If you don't grow, or learn to develop yourself, (like my parents didn't) the same loops, the same behaviors and mechanisms will repeat.

Because digestion is not just about food, it's about what's in your environment: what you see, feel, touch, taste, and hear. All of the five senses contribute to what we have to metabolize and digest. It's not just physical, it's emotional, psychological, energetic -- everything connects to each other.

I still remember the feeling of that first Ayurvedic meal: when your body's innate intelligence knows it's getting what it needs, when it's soothed, nourished, and settles a part of your innate intelligence system that you can’t even comprehend cognitively -- you just know it’s working.

It's a settling, a soothing, an exhale. A nervous system calm like nothing else.

Learning to understand your own nature. Learning to recognize the intelligence of your own body. Learning to discern what is actually true for you.

That is the work that has transformed my life, and it's the work I now have the privilege of sharing with others.

And I can’t tell you how much I would love this for you.

So, if you’d love to learn what your own unique Doshas might be, if you’d like to unpack some of your past, and uncover what the familial patterns are that are keeping you stuck, please, go here and take my EVOLVE Assessment now.

The EVOLVE assessment brings together many of the frameworks that have most shaped my life and work. Not to put you in another category, but to help you to see yourself more clearly, because when we begin to understand our own nature with compassion instead of judgment, everything starts to change.

And from that place, we can begin creating lives that aren't just successful on the outside but deeply successful from the inside experience.

I’m with you, every step of the way.

Take the EVOLVE Assessment now.

Love and Blessings, 

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P.S. You don’t need to have had a traumatic childhood, or carry mortal wounds through life to benefit from this Assessment.

You don’t need to have a dysfunctional homelife, or diagnosed autoimmune condition.

As I said, there are so many layers of confusion -- especially in this country -- around food and health, it’s always worth seeing where you stand, and how you can benefit.

Then (as I did) you can experiment, and step by step rebuild your health -- and your life.

Take the EVOLVE Assessment now.

P.P.S. If you’d I'd like to hear more about why I believe we can all turn our stories into wisdom, freedom, and a more beautiful way of living, go here now and listen to this week’s Audio Edition.