The Expert In The Room Is You

If you’re exhausted by conflicting wellness advice and constantly wondering what’s actually “healthy” anymore — this episode is your permission to come back to your own body.

In this episode of Up Your Total Glow, we explore why true wellness is not about blindly following trends, protocols, or expert opinions — it’s about learning to trust your body’s own signals again.

Through personal stories, Ayurvedic wisdom, and nervous system insight, we talk about:

·       Why something healthy for one person can dysregulate another

·       The hidden cost of overriding your body’s signals

·       Coffee, cold plunges, supplements, and wellness trends through an Ayurvedic lens

·       The difference between fear-based wellness and genuine nourishment

·       How to reconnect with your body’s natural wisdom and self-trust

Plus, reflective coaching questions, a grounding body connection practice, and a powerful affirmation to help you tune back into yourself.

✨ Vitality Imbalance Quiz:
 https://www.ithriveforhealth.com/ayurvedic-dosha-quiz/

✨ Vitality Reconnection Session:
 https://tidycal.com/ithrive/vitality-reconnection-session

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome back to I'm your Total Flower. I am so happy that you are here today and taking this time for you. Today I want to record something that I've been wanting to speak about for a while. Partly because I think this is a super important topic, and partly because I genuinely also think that so many of us are quietly really exhausted. Exhausted by trying to do the wellness thing right. Exhausted by constantly being told what's healthy and what's harmful and what we should avoid and what we should optimize and cut out and track and fix. It's a lot. Sometimes it's you, it's your body. And actually, not only sometimes, I believe, it's always you. You are your expert. You know best. But before we dive in, here is my gentle reminder: this podcast is for education and inspiration and not personalized medical or mental health advice. So please make sure that you seek professional support where you need it. Not because coffee is actually the point here. So if you just make yourself really comfortable with a beautiful mug of coffee, or you are on a walk having a beautiful latte with you, don't worry. I'm not shaming you. So I'm using coffee more as the perfect example. I feel it's the perfect example of what we see in modern wellness and modern health daily. Because depending on who you ask, coffee is either the most amazing longevity miracle and the best metabolism booster, and of course, completely healthy. So you must drink coffee, or it is the worst thing that you can do. It's so hormone disrupting, it's a true disaster. And if you're drinking coffee right now, you're drinking liquid anxiety, so basically poison in the mug. So honestly, sometimes trying to keep up with all of this health advice feels just too much. Nor is this just me. And there are so many examples. One week old milk is wellness, and the next week it's inflammatory glue, and eggs are in, eggs are out, the same with meat, even with vegetables and cold plungers were life-changing two years ago, weren't they? And this year, no weight. Now it's all about nervous system softness. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that any of this is right or wrong. Rather, with the way they are used. And sometimes when I see new things coming out, I'm really picturing this person standing in the kitchen and being completely disheartened by all of the advice and wondering, you know, what should I do? What's right for me? And I feel that this question points to something much deeper. Because underneath all of this conflict and advice is the fact that most of us have stopped trusting ourselves. Instead, we are outsourcing our wisdom. We are trusting experts and research and protocols and podcasts and Instagram reels more than ourselves. So it's crazy. We are trusting some man with a cold plunge at a microphone more than the signals that our own body gives us. And that's what I really want to talk about today. Because here's the thing: you are not a general case. You never were, and you never will be. You are a very specific human being with a specific constitution and a specific nervous system, a specific history, and a specific level of depletion or resilience right now. And your body already has a very clear opinion about what serves it and what doesn't. The question is whether you have learned to hear these opinions. So my first story is truly about coffee, and this again, this is my experience. I'm not trying to say with this, you should stop drinking coffee, not at all. I rather really want to invite you to listen into you, feel into you, and notice whether what you're doing is serving you or not. So here's my story with coffee. So I stopped drinking coffee during my first pregnancy, and then I didn't really go back to it while I was breastfeeding, and then I conceived my second daughter almost immediately afterwards. So by the time that I tried coffee again, my body had been without caffeine for years. So one morning I decided, oh okay, let's let's do the beautiful adult thing again and have a beautiful morning ritual. This is how I remembered it pre-babies. So I sat there and drank coffee. And within a short time, everything was going crazy inside of me. I was sweating profusely, and my heart was racing. It yeah, felt more like I don't know what, but it was absolutely not beautiful and didn't feel good at all. And I felt so strange in my entire body. So my body was very clear, very straightforward, and there was no confusion whatsoever. I was so fascinated by the fact that this level of stimulation that the coffee was giving me used to feel completely normal to me before I had had that break from it. But now that my system had returned to baseline, it wasn't normal anymore. This was completely overstimulating for me. So for me, that was it. I stopped drinking coffee here and there, and I genuinely never looked back. And again, this is my body and my story. Okay, and I'm a little bit ashamed about what I'm going to share, but I will share it anyway because yeah, I absolutely want to, and I feel I always do so, walk my talk. So here we go. I think it was about two years ago, or maybe three, anyway, I became completely obsessed with cold water swimming. And when I say obsessed, I mean fully committed to swimming every single morning in my outdoor pool, even in winter. And yes, in Australia it doesn't get as cold as it gets, as for example, in Europe or in Canada, but the pool was cold, like four degrees or something, and I loved it. The buzz I got out of it was incredible, and it made me feel so alive and so electric and clear and powerful and strong, all the things, and because the immediate feedback that I got from it was so positive, I completely missed what was happening underneath my vata energy. And if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you are probably aware of the fact that I've got quite a bit of vata energy within me. So this vata energy was becoming more and more aggravated, of course, cold water. So I was becoming more and more cold, and my skin was getting drier, and I was losing weight, obviously, without trying, and also my digestion was changing. So underneath all of this acceleration, there were clear signs of depletion, and obviously, I've studied this, I know this stuff, but because the buzz was so loud and the depletion compared to it was quiet, I kept overriding it. And if I'm really honest, there's another reason why it was easy for me to override that because there is an old pattern inside of me, a pattern that I had learned early in my life, and that pattern is to push through and to keep functioning, and to disconnect from my body, even if it's slightly, and to not stop long enough to fully feel what's happening underneath. And no, I'm not proud of any of this. Obviously, I'm teaching body awareness, but truth is that I can only teach it because I've come a long way. Not only have I studied the theory, but I truly, there was a time where I was so disconnected from myself. So, in saying that, clearly, I was still occasionally overriding my own body in real time, and even now I still catch myself sometimes. It's way shorter, and the situations are less harsh, but I still catch myself, and this is humbling, it's so humbling. Anyway, back to my story. So eventually the feedback that my body gave me became impossible to ignore, so I stopped. Hallelujah! And I've learned from it. Now I swim only in the warmer month, and instead I choose deep nourishment, for example, from going into the sauna. Obviously, my system responds completely different to that. So, yes, I still have the same love of water and I still have the same desire to feel alive, but I now choose to do both of these in a way that my body can actually sustain. So, thank you for listening. If you're still here, I do think that both of these stories are saying the same thing. Both are saying that your body always knows. The question is whether you are listening and also whether you trust what you're hearing when you're hearing it. And this is the part that I think we forget sometimes. Most health advice is very general, it has to be. Research, of course, looks at trends and at patterns and at averages across groups of people. And I'm not saying that that information doesn't have value, it absolutely has, but your body is not a population study. It's your body, your nervous system, your history, your constitution, your current level of stress, your current level of nourishment, which means that something can genuinely help one person and completely dysregulate another. And we've talked about this before in previous episodes. Ayurveda understands this through both your natural constitution, your prakriti, and also your current state of imbalance, your vikriti. And yes, this distinction matters enormously. So something that supports one constitution beautifully can aggravate another. And also, there can be a time in your life where you are beautifully supported by one thing, and then not anymore by another. And also, you might absolutely love and benefit from doing something once, but not every day. And all of those distinctions matter enormously. So coffee can feel grounding and energizing for one person, but it might overstimulate another. The same thing with cold emotions. And it's not because the information in itself is wrong, it's because you are not a category, you are a person. And yeah, sometimes I think that the wellness industry has forgotten about that. There's so much focus on what is good or what is bad in a universal way, and I feel this is completely beyond the point. So nothing, in my opinion, is good or bad. It just is. And the more interesting question is: what is this doing in your body? And not theoretically, but actually. Because theory again can only go so far. And I feel also there are two very different ways that we can approach wellness. So we can approach wellness from fear. So, of course, we can try to prevent aging and we can try to force energy and optimize ourselves into safety or into the imagination of safety. And we can try to control every possible outcome. That's one way, or we can approach things very differently, we can approach things from attunement and from relationship, from genuinely noticing. Do I actually feel better when I do this? And one relationship creates dependency on all of those external voices. And this is not what I want for you. This is not empowering, it's not very effective and efficient on the long run either. To be quite frank, it won't work. The other relationship, and this is the one I'm inviting you to, this one builds self-trust. And self-trust is one of the most healing things that we can cultivate. Okay, I can hear you asking. Awesome, but so how do we begin trusting our bodies again? If maybe you've spent years overriding it, and yeah, I totally get it. Obviously, I've been there. So the first thing is to notice and to notice what happens after. So not during the stimulation, not during the buzz, not during the adrenaline, but after. So a few hours later, the next morning, or after a week of consistency, because trust me, your body does speak. The thing is, usually at first your body is not speaking dramatically, but more in patterns. So if you slow down enough, you will start seeing them. You will notice if your energy is more stable or less. You will notice if your sleep is better or whether it's more disrupted. You will notice if your digestion feels happier or more reactive. And you will notice if you feel more like yourself again, or quietly more depleted. And the other thing I'm inviting you to is to truly notice the quality. Of your reaching. So when you go to make that coffee or order that supplement, start that protocol or try that new wellness trend, pause for a second and ask yourself Am I choosing this because my body genuinely asks for it and responds well to it? Or am I choosing this because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't? And these are two very different things. And I feel that this question reveals a lot. And there's something else I would like to invite you to, and this is to give your body enough stillness that its signals become actually audible again. Because if you are constantly stimulated and rushing and scrolling and multitasking and optimizing and consuming information, it becomes very hard for you to read what's actually going on inside of you. And not because your body is not speaking to you, but because the noise has become too loud for you to hear it clearly. And I feel this is the perfect moment to pause and to invite you into your body. So think of one health habit. Maybe it's a supplement, maybe it's a food or a practice that you are currently using. Or maybe it's something that you are considering. So just hold this gently in your awareness and then place one hand on your belly and simply notice when you think about this thing, does your body feel more open, more settled, or is there a subtle anxiety underneath it? Or maybe pressure, fear, or the sense that you should be doing it. And then take a slow breath in and as you exhale, quietly ask yourself what is my body's actual response to this? Not the internet's response and not how you would like it to respond. But your body's true response and you do not need to change anything immediately. Just notice this response. Okay, and here are a few questions to carry with you this week. Is there a health habit or a supplement or a practice in your life right now that you continue more from fear than from genuine nourishment? And are there places where you may be borrowing energy instead of building it? And when was the last time you slowed down enough to truly feel your body's response to something beyond the trend, beyond the hype, beyond what you think you should feel. And I want to leave you with this affirmation today, and you can repeat it silently or aloud. I am not a general case. My body has its own wisdom, its own signals, and its own truth. I am learning to slow down enough to hear it and to trust what it tells me. So breathe that in and out and let it settle in every cell of your body. And if today's episode resonated with you, you can find my free vitality imbalance quiz in the show notes. And this is a beautiful place to begin understanding your own imbalance and what your body may genuinely be asking for right now. And if you feel ready for a deeper personalized support, you can also find the details about my vitality reconnection session there. Never ever forget, always remember you are love, you are light, and you are already whole. Much love, keep going.