Unlocking The Inflammation Code: Ayurveda Made Modern w/ Author Dr. Shivani Gupta

Burnout doesn’t start with your calendar. It starts with inflammation. We sat down with Dr. Shivani Gupta to unpack a clearer path to energy and focus using Ayurveda’s elemental design—an approach that swaps one-size-fits-all advice for personalized daily rhythms that actually fit your life.

Dr. Gupta breaks down the three elemental types: Vata (air/ether), Pitta (fire/water), and Kapha (earth/water). You’ll hear how each type shows up at work and at home, the signature signs of imbalance, and the exact levers—food, sleep, movement, and nervous system care—that bring you back to center. We connect these insights with modern science on the gut microbiome, the gut-brain axis, and circadian rhythm, showing why the 10 pm to 2 am window is prime time for clearing inflammation and restoring mental clarity. If you’ve been living on caffeine, protein bars, and late nights, this reframe explains why your brain feels noisy and your body feels stuck.

We also get practical about “mental inflammation,” the chronic stress load that dysregulates the vagus nerve and derails digestion, mood, and memory. Dr. Gupta shares simple rituals—like mindful tea breaks and breath anchors—you can layer into busy days to cool reactivity, prevent the Pitta “volcano,” settle Vata’s whirlwind, and move Kapha into action. From turmeric and ginger to cooked meals and electrolyte hydration, we outline a small, doable reset for each type that compounds into better sleep, steadier energy, easier weight management, and a calmer mind.

If you’ve ever thought “this must be aging,” consider a different diagnosis: inflammation. Learn how to honor your circadian clock, feed your gut, and design your day around your nature, not the noise. For more from Dr. Gupta—her book The Inflammation Code, Ayurvedic teas, and podcast—visit shivanigupta.com. If this conversation helped, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find it too.

SoulTech with Shaman Isis Trailer

Shaman Isis Books, Magazines, Films & More 

Learn about the work of Shaman's SoulTechFoundation.org. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction
• 2:31 The Inflammation Code Book Reveal
• 4:13 Ayurveda 101: Practical Foundations
• 6:28 Six Pillars: Types, Clock, Gut, Rituals
• 10:28 Host’s Critique Of Western Medicine
• 12:19 Elemental Design Explained
• 15:06 Vata: Traits, Risks, Remedies
• 16:56 Pitta: Fire, Drive, And Cooling Practices
• 18:56 Kapha: Earthy Strength And Momentum
• 22:27 Calibrating Across Seasons And Roles
• 23:47 Rethinking Peak Performance
• 26:07 Mental Inflammation And Circadian Rhythm
• 28:52 Burnout By Type: Warning Signs
• 31:47 Simple Lifestyle Shifts To Reset
• 34:47 Intuition, Tea Rituals, And Self-Advocacy
• 37:37 Integrative Care And Finding Practitioners
• 40:27 Teaching Ayurveda Accessibly
• 42:42 Book Launch And TEDx Talk
• 45:47 Her Health Summit Announcement
• 48:12 Elemental Design As A Doorway Back
• 51:42 How To Buy The Book & Host CTAs
• 53:57 Post-Show Wrap And Production Chat

Transcript

Welcome & Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:53

With Shaman Isis and get inspired. Well, hello, hello, hello, and welcome everybody. This is Cynthia L. Elliot, also known as Shaman Isis, and you have joined us for Soltec with Shaman Isis, formerly Glow Up with Shaman Isis. You know, we had to upgrade the name so it fit with everything that we were doing. If you are not already subscribed, I'm going to encourage you right up front to subscribe. The show is really taking off and we're hitting some epic numbers. So you want to be a part of the party. I am delighted uh to introduce you to today's guest, Dr. Shivani Guta, who I know personally and I'm so excited. She finally agreed to come on the show. Welcome, Shivani. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. You have something pretty epic unfolding, a book from Hay House that is hitting pretty soon. Can you just before we get into all the good stuff about everything else, can you tell us uh about the book? Because I'm so excited for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

For sure. I'm so excited. It's like a baby being born into the world to have a book like this. And I'm holding a real coffee, which is just surreal to finally have received the first copies, the author's copies. This book has been two years in the making, and it's really been over 20 years in the making. I studied Ayurveda, which we'll get into, and I realized this wisdom must be shared with the world. We must learn how to transform our health. And so after working with thousands of people on their health and their inflammation, I thought, I want to show everyone that we can have a different playbook when it comes to our health. We don't have to just follow what we're talking about in modern trends. We can look back to the ancient wisdom and pull it forward and modernize it in a way that transforms our health. So that's what the whole book is about. It's called the inflammation code and it's about an anti-inflammatory lifestyle that we can build for true prevention because we want to prevent disease, we want to win at our health, but sometimes we're going at it in ways that don't actually support our body and isn't customized to us. So that's what I get into.

Ayurveda 101: Practical Foundations

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yeah, I I I remember when you and I first talked about this and you told me about the book, I was so excited because um, Ryan, some of my listeners have heard me talk about this before. I didn't really understand the power, uh the influence that inflammation had in your life experience until I until I started the healing journey and started to fit to notice things. So I'm so excited about this conversation. Um, uh, particularly for our listeners who may not be aware. Um, in regard to them, I would love for you to tell us, like, particularly people who aren't familiar with Ayurveda, how do you explain it in a way that feels like practical and relevant to modern uh people today?

Six Pillars: Types, Clock, Gut, Rituals

SPEAKER_00 3:34

For sure. So Ayurveda is an ancient system of health healing and medicine from India that's over 5,000 years old. So just like we have traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture that came out of China and East East Asia, out of India, we had this thing called Ayurveda. And it's truly a natural lifestyle. It is root cause medicine, it is a way of life that you can live. Ayurveda means the science of life. So it's kind of like a playbook to life that shows us, okay, you could wake up and have some specific practices and rituals you do that are detoxing to yourself. You could go on with your day and time your day to the circadian clock. And so the six pillars of Ayurveda that I teach about that are in the book are number one, our elemental design, which Ayurveda originally called doshas. And I tried to take some of those Sanskrit words out of the equation so we'd all remember them. And so your elemental design-I love that. Yeah, your elemental design is you understanding are you more air, more fire, or more earth? And that really dictates your entire approach to your day. And so I kick off with like take the quiz, know your type, and then we'll customize everything that you do with your day. Then I teach about circadian clocks. So circadian rhythm, which we're talking about a lot in health right now, the circadian clock came from Ayurveda. And so as we talk in biohacking and longevity about modern tech approaches to win at Circadian rhythm, Ayurveda teaches those original first principles around this topic. Then Ayurveda was really obsessed with gut health and said gut health is the center of all health. And isn't it interesting? In modern day times, we're talking about gut microbiome, gut brain access. Our gut microbiome is more important than anything else. It's got more organisms in it than the than we are as humans. It has more cells in there than us. And so Ayurveda said, everything you do for the gut is what you are doing for your brain, your mood, your energy, your metabolism. And so I teach a whole big section on gut health, our diet, our self-care rituals. And then I end it on what I call the mindful medicine chest. Like, what are the spices and herbs and super spices we can use to transform our health? Because when I discovered Ayurveda for myself, I was in India, I was sick as a dog, couldn't understand why I was chronically sick and taking really high dose antibiotics. And as I sat in India, again, about to be hospitalized, I realized, you know, there's this other system of medicine here, and maybe it has tools I need in it. And that's what put me on a quest around India to study Ayurveda. And I was like, this thing is incredible. This is like the treasure chest we are all looking for for our health. Why is it hidden away in India? Like we need in Texas and in the United States where I'm from. And so that's why I brought it back and said, let me keep working to refine this and modernize this and show us how to fit it into our lives in slices of time. And that's really my goal to show us that in tiny slices of our day, we can create little shifts and we can win at our health. It doesn't have to be hard, but we totally lack awareness here in the West of these practices, you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, I uh I've written and actually taught pretty extensively about Western medicine, what a disaster it was that it was really um used by capitalists to make a lot of money via you know prescription drugs and the way that the you know, they they basically kicked all the holistic practitioners and anybody who didn't fit into that mold. They closed down uh uh schools um that taught uh people how to be doctors, uh particularly if they let in, you know, people of different cultures and women, and then they uh they monetized it, and it's a disaster. I mean, I I I just in my family alone, but I've had my mother and my sister both pass away from things that were perfectly diagnosable, but they couldn't be discovered because A, they were women, that's a whole other conversation. That is, and and B, because of the way Western medicine is handled. And I think that if they had had the opportunity to experience an Eastern medicine doctor uh or an Ayurveda doctor, then they would have um probably gotten to a solution tremendously faster. Um, so uh having said that, um you uh you mentioned the elemental design, uh, and uh I was a little bit curious about that. Like, you know, how does it help women move, or women and men, because we have both in our audience, move beyond like a one size fits all wellness and like really begin to understand uh their unique mind-body nature?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

For sure. So in Ayurveda, they taught us that there are five elements air, ether, fire, water, and earth. And this is actually something that's going to be in my TED talk because I want the whole world to know their elemental design. I think it's truly the foundation of how we can understand ourselves and make the shifts we need. And so understanding that earth, nature, our whole planet is made of these five elements is the first step. And then once you understand that, you can understand that we are made of nature. We are made up of those same five elements. And IRV that teaches that we're all born with our own constitution. And so I could be more fire, you could be more earth, a friend of ours could be more air, but that dictates our day and how we should run it. And so I have everyone go to my website at drshivani.com and they can take the quiz and it'll give you back an answer. And it's questions are based on your physical traits, mental, emotional traits, reactivity traits, things like that. And so once you take the quiz, it'll say, okay, well, you know, Cynthia, you are so fiery. You're a fire type, and let's talk about how to go about your day.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Shivani, can you hear me? Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I can't hear you.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Uh-oh, my sound went out. Can you hear me now?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

It's okay. I can actually cut this out so I'm not worried, which is one of the reasons I don't do live streaming very often because I've had these things like this happen. You're yeah, your your voice is gone.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Really?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Um, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Check your lugs.

Host’s Critique Of Western Medicine

SPEAKER_01 9:33

You can hear me correctly. Okay, she's gonna log back in.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Please work.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Okay, your volume is working, but I can't see you now.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Okay, let's get the camera.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So we turn on your just click on the camera.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Okay, I clicked it. Let's see. Let's click it again. I like mess with the plug and now it's choosing to be weird. That's not good.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

It's okay. You know, the the good thing is I've got my episode for the week is up, so if we end up having um a challenge, we can just re- try to shoot later or something like that when whatever is going on. It's it is what it is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

I have the whole day I have to be on camera, so it needs to work no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, it's strange. It's like I can't see you at all. The screen is black. So when you go into the settings and you hit, let me see, just I'll do it with you. When you go into camera, is your camera camera? Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Okay. Okay. I like swap.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Oh, there you are. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So let me change my mic back to the mic.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Perfect. So I'll pick up.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

You can ask the elemental design question again.

Elemental Design Explained

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Okay, let's do that. Uh, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna actually say something to you before I forget. Uh, I wanted to note that you're okay. Never mind, let's just do that and then I'll mention it afterwards because I want to bring up the TED Talk thing that you're doing a TED Talk.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Um, although it does make it not evergreen.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Okay, then yeah, don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, let's leave it evergreen that way. I will still very timely. Okay. Excuse me. I love that you share the history of Aureda, which I would I'm gonna work on being able to pronounce it as beautifully as you. Uh, I love that you that you share that. You know, I'm not a fan of Western medicine. I think it's caused more issues in our country, in America in particular, because it's been all about monetizing uh people's health and uh putting putting way too many people on, way too many drugs that I don't think they should be taking. That's my personal opinion. And I I love to see these influences uh making their way into America. You brought up um elemental design, and I am I'm curious to hear a little bit more about uh elemental design. Like, how does it help uh people move beyond like a one-size-fits-all wellness and really begin to kind of understand their mind-body nature?

Vata: Traits, Risks, Remedies

Pitta: Fire, Drive, And Cooling Practices

SPEAKER_00 12:29

For sure. So, elemental design is one of the most central concepts out of Ayurveda. We want to know are you more air, fire, or earth? And that first step in understanding what you are about and what makes you up is the key. And so we teach that everyone is born with their constitution. It's a combination of your parents, natures that creates you. And so, for example, I'm born to two very fiery people, and so I am born a fiery nature person, and then it's about how do you navigate with that? And so the five elements are air, ether, fire, water, and earth. And we have three main constitutions, and as I talk about them, you might think, oh, I'm two of those. Well, that's totally normal. When you take my quiz, you learn that you are a primary, you have a primary and a secondary constitution. And some people are actually balanced in all three, but that's kind of rare. And so when we're talking about these constitutions, you can take the quiz at my website, drshivani.com. And everyone who takes the quiz, you get an immediate answer, but you also get all the like prescriptions for what your type is. And the first one we call vata, or here in the West we pronounce it vata, and a vata person is air and ether. So this is someone who's lighter, this is someone who's maybe running a little more dry. You can imagine air and ether, ether meeting space. Air has this property of movement, and so it's someone who's always in motion. It can be a beautiful breeze in the forest, or it could be a tornado if it's out of balance. And so kind of knowing that about yourself is really powerful. And so physically, a Vata person is taller or shorter than anyone in their demographic, small boned, petite, leaner. So this is your person who has a hard time gaining weight. This is someone who can run through their whole day and not eat. They'll be like, I have I had my coffee, I had a green juice, I'm good. I didn't, I forgot to eat today, which is unusual for the other types. This is someone who mentally, emotionally is always in motion because it's like air. There's never a stopping point. So they like a job where they don't sit down, where they're up on their feet and moving. This is your endurance runner, those people who can run the marathons. This is someone who's lighter, so they're more creative. They have more access to art and the ideas of the universe that they pull down for us. And then health-wise, they can tend to suffer with things around dryness. So dry skin, dry hair, dry nails, constipation, dryness in the colon. They can tend to suffer with insomnia, really poor, light disturbed sleep, and then anxiety because of that constant motion. And the mind never stops. So it can lead to this anxiety. And so that's a Vata person. And my homework for Vata is always everything that's grounding. So we want to put them on three square meals a day, grounding root vegetables, healthy fats, and really create a shift so that whatever they start, they complete, they feel more centered and grounded, they can let go of that overwhelm anxiety feeling. And then we have a lot more homework we can give to a butta to really ground their energy. And when you know someone's constitution, you know what their health issues typically are. So when someone tells me their health issues, I'm like, first of all, I know your constitution, but I also know the best way to help support you in fixing it, because it's going to customize to that body type. Then the second one is called bitta, or in the West we call it pitta. And so a bitta person is someone who's fire with some water. So you can imagine the traits of fire, hot, red, inflamed. And so a pitta person tends to be medium-bodied. They can have toward, they can have a tendency towards early graying. They tend to have reddish hair, reddish skin. So anyone who's reddish, you're like, oh, that's a pitta person. And this person tends to be passionate, driven, organized, tend to be a leader, very sharp in how they speak, very direct in how they speak, very perfectionist in their tendencies as well. And so a fire person can be a beautiful campfire. It could be a bonfire that brings people together. They tend to be charismatic, but it could also be a volcano. And so when a pitta person's out of balance, they erupt like a volcano. And everyone around them is collateral damage. And so, and it's always funny because most podcast hosts are pitta. So I'm always like, I was about to say, I'm like, I'm always looking at a pitta and describing pitta, and then I'm a pitta and I have to laugh. So I'm like, yeah, we we basically get frustrated, angry, we erupt, we burn out. Like every fire word you can think of applies to the Bitta crew. And so we have to treat ourselves like a nuclear reactor, cool, calm, collected. We need those spiritual practices, we need the meditation, the breathing, we need the moving in nature to cool ourselves off. We have to eat summer foods, we have to hydrate. We can't just caffeinate all day and pound the caffeine, which is what we need to do. We have to like consciously hydrate with electrolytes. And so there's a specific set of homework for the pittas because bitthas can tend to be inflamed, heartburn, like everything is fire, skin coming out with hives and skin issues. That's fire and over fire in the gut. And so bitta has that homework, and then finally you just marked me.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

I'm definitely fire because I but I will be really nice, and then eventually, once I'm pushed to a limit, I'm terrifying to be around.

unknown 17:41

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

We're nice up to our point, and then you meant the volcano version of us that we don't want anyone to meet, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Oh, I know. Yeah, you'll warn them, but they never listen. Oh, this is so fascinating. And what's the third one?

Kapha: Earthy Strength And Momentum

Calibrating Across Seasons And Roles

SPEAKER_00 17:53

The third one is called kuffa, or in the West, we pronounce it kuffa. And a guffa person is earth with water, and so this is that person who is sturdy, bigger boned, they're solid, they're of the earth, they can lift heavier, they tend to have round eyes, round face, maybe curly, oilier hair, oilier skin. They're more luscious. This is someone who is very one thing at a time, kind of like if an earth energy was gonna move one step at a time, one word at a time. They're very deliberate in their actions. Their energy is very caretaker energy. So they care about everybody else first. This is that person who's always thinking about friends and family first and themselves last. In a woman, it can be this very grandma energy, like loving and feeding everyone. In a man, I've seen it as a very mountain energy. They're very solid, very strong. You're not gonna budge them. Like there's no budging a guffa. And a guffa person can have a tendency towards congestion. That's that water element in them, tendency towards a sluggish metabolism, tendency towards uh very good sleep. They get the deep slumber, but they can tend towards congestion and being very like resistant to change. Like they don't want to move. And so we support guffa by showing them move your energy in the morning, eat cooked small meals. And so nowadays we talk a lot about cold smoothies, ice protein shakes, icy cold salads, everything icy and cold. Guffa is not served by that because they need that digestive fire to be ignited and moved. And so that's why we say small cooked meals. And that's an easy way to shift them, move them in the morning. They're already gonna get the deepest best sleep out of all of us. And then show them how to like find a workout buddy or a buddy who wants to do new different things to create more change in their lives. And so those are the three constitutions. And here's what's interesting: I'm a bitta by nature, I'm fiery, but I also, when I'm a mother, I'm holding some gaffa energy because I need to be caretaker energy and slow life down with the kids. But then my mind, because we're in the West and we're in modern day life in the world of AI and speed, my mind is very vata at times. And so it's interesting to kind of study this and understand the nuance, and then you can constantly calibrate to yourself. So if you have a day where you're like, gosh, my Vata mind is going 200 miles an hour, I'm so ADD distracted, I can't focus. You know exactly what to do to ground yourself, which will help support your mind being more grounded. Or physically, if you're inflamed, you're like, I just need cooling things right now. Cooling will undo the heat. So that's where Ayurveda is such a beautiful art and science because it shows you how to self-navigate and recalibrate through your entire day based on how you're feeling.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

It's so fascinating to hear that. You've described everybody I know, one of the I think every accountant I know is the last one.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Right, it's funny the jobs and careers we choose based on our constitution, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Right. So true. Um, so you know, I talk a lot about I used to be a big proponent of the hustle and flow culture. Like I did that for 25 years, and and until I drove myself to burnout. Um, so when you when people talk a lot about, say, peak performance, we hear a lot about you know getting up at 4 a.m., the hustling and all of that. Um, how does um Ayurveda and elemental design like redefine peak performance?

Rethinking Peak Performance

SPEAKER_00 21:40

For sure. So we think of peak performance right now as what you describe, like the 5 a.m. club and work all into the night. And we had a whole season around new new tropics. Like, how do we stay up all night to work and code and do all these things? But I think there is this awareness of coming full circle and realizing circadian rhythm, nature's clock, the circadian clock is the key to having the health that we want, feeling the way we want, being more productive, honoring sleep, honoring the body's natural cycles. And so Ayurveda shows us certain body types need to be careful if they try to do that. You will burn out, you will lead to like anxiety and different health issues if you go too far too fast. So there's an awareness of your type and how to navigate and leverage your type, which is very powerful. And then Ayurveda also teaches something that I wrote about in my book. I talked about a topic called mental inflammation. And that term came to me when I was writing this book, because I wrote the whole book about how to win at inflammation. I thought, okay, I've got it. I if they just apply this, we're gonna win. But Ayurveda said, if we're gonna sit in a state of chronic stress 24-7, we're gonna do such damage to the body, we're gonna cause inflammation. Nowadays we have terminology like dysregulation of the vagus nerve, and we're just so dysregulated and vagus nerve toning. These are just ideas that say your gut and your brain are connected. And if you are gonna sit there in a total stress state 247, you will damage your gut, and thus you're gonna see the impact in the brain. You're gonna be inflamed. And then what happens? Brain fog, we can't focus, we're not the same in terms of what we're. To do. So that's where Ayurveda said you have the ability to build peak performance in a completely different way. It can be built by honoring your circadian rhythm, leveraging your elemental design, managing mental inflammation with an awareness of the toll it takes on the body. And thus you have more energy and more ability to get more done. And so that's how I look at Ayurveda is how do we leverage Ayurveda to do more? Because we have an awareness of how to protect our health, our body, and what matters. So we're not going to lead to that burnout and crash that then leads us to not working and doing what we love.

Mental Inflammation And Circadian Rhythm

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Right. I'm glad you brought up burnout. So I think for those of you who've listened to me for any number of years in the different podcasts I've done, I've talked a lot about waking up five years ago and I was 80 pounds overweight and absolutely miserable. I did not know about inflammation. I didn't understand its impact. I was buried in my work. And then one day I woke up and I was like, I literally could not function anymore. Went from type A person who was constantly busy working 12, 14 hours a day. That's all I ever did. Didn't go anywhere, didn't have any real friends unless they're work-related. And then one day I woke up and I was just so I was so burnt out that I could not keep an appointment for two years. I couldn't remember the appointment. And then if I if it came up, I would forget about it 10 minutes beforehand. And I started to learn a lot about the body. And I went on a I fasted for really my body just naturally did it. One day I just woke up and I couldn't eat. My body just didn't want it. And I think I went 30 days without eating and eating food. I was drinking water, and of course I'd lost a ton of the weight and immediately began to feel better. And that's when I started to learn about inflammation. So, um, how does burnout like look um to different the different elemental design uh uh types?

Burnout By Type: Warning Signs

SPEAKER_00 25:16

It's a great question. So if you are of the elemental design called vata and you start to on that path of burnout, the body's gonna go straight towards constipation because it's stress on the gut, insomnia, you're not gonna be sleeping, anxiety and those types of symptoms. And so those are your warning signs. What I find is nowadays we've got the warning signs, and I think even Oprah mentions this. She calls it like a feather. First, it's a feather, then it's like a truck hit you, and then finally you hit the brick wall. And I feel like in the West, what we do is we just we blow past the feather. We're like, yeah, I heard the alarm bells. I have no time for that. Okay, next one, a truck hits you, and you're like, that hurt. Uh uh was not a good one. But you know what? I have no time for that. And then we wait until we go ramming into a brick wall at full throttle before we make changes. So if you are a Vata and you are feeling anxious, your gut is off and not working, your stomach is sending you signals, and you're not sleeping and you're anxious, that's your sign. Like, hey, everything has gone haywire. How am I gonna start to walk this back? In bittas, we are angry. I caught that myself this year. I was so angry at my team, and I was like, what's wrong with my company? I'm gonna burn this thing to the ground. And I was like, that's a sign, honey, that your bitta is so overblown. If for the first time in your life you're like, I can't do this anymore. That's burnout. How are you gonna walk yourself out of that fire situation? Because bitas will always go all the way till the end before they start to take steps back out of it. And then Guffa, Guffa would say burnout looks like really feeling overextended and stuck because a guffa will just stop moving. They'll say, you know what, I just can't. I can't do anymore. I can't do any of this. They can have a tendency towards having a low mood, maybe depression, they'll sleep a lot. Like that's their sign that everything went a little too far and they need to come back to self-care movement and the things that move their energy in a positive way, and then finally feeling supported because they put everyone else first. So sometimes they have to learn how to put themselves first. But yeah, I mean, I think as a society, we are allowing mental inflammation, which is this chronic state of our mind being in overdrive, meat are being off our circadian clock. We don't honor the circadian clocks. We're dysregulated already, we're not matching nature's rhythm. On top of it, we're inflamed. All of society is chronically inflamed right now, just from how we're eating and how we are living. And when you combine those things, what are you going to have? You're gonna have a society that's burnt out. And what are we doing with our time? We're numbing out on social media. We are going to the doctor saying, Hey, can you undo all of this? And they're like, Uh, I can give you some pills, but I I'm not your life coach. I can't like undo all the things that started that for you. And so it's it is a little complex, but in IRV that we go back to the basics sleep on time, wake up on time, move in nature, nature heals all things. Know your constitution and start eating right for your constitution and navigating your daily rhythm to your constitution, your elemental design. And then all of a sudden things feel lighter, things feel better, the body is less inflamed, the mind is less inflamed, and we can move forward healthy and clear. And that's how we can unwind from that situation or that experience called burnout.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah, I think one of the main issues with Western medicine is that it's not a holistic approach. And and and frankly, when somebody needs help, unless they have um disposable income, which the vast majority of Americans don't have now because of the situation we find ourselves in, it's like we start to books become like a great way, uh uh podcasts become a great way for people to finally begin to discover. Um, which leads me to like the Soul Tech Foundation, which is the 501c3 charity that uh uh I founded. We we focus on that, the nexus of like soul, technology, consciousness, and the whole the lifestyle practices, the holistic practices that will actually help a person live the best life that they can. And uh, and so it's one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on the show because what the work that you're doing is such a powerful part of just those lifestyle practices that someone can take on. Um, so I'm curious, like, how does your work help people reconnect with inner intelligence and intuition and also taking down their inflammation?

Simple Lifestyle Shifts To Reset

Intuition, Tea Rituals, And Self-Advocacy

SPEAKER_00 29:43

For sure. So, you know, the book is exactly that. The book is a guidebook and it's a playbook on winning at your health, but also the whole point of IRV that is to show us how to be more intuitive with our body, mind, and spirit. And I talk a lot about living this lifestyle based on rituals for ourselves. And a ritual can be anything. Like my favorite ritual in life is called tea time, it's me time. I pause five times a day, have a cup of tea, and use it as an anchor moment. You can call it a mindful moment. You can call it a sacred pause, depending on what level of spirituality you want to get into and what level you're at in your life or moment of life. And so if you took this as a mindful moment, you could also pause and ask yourself powerful questions. Like, how am I feeling today? What do I need for today to be better? What am I doing this week that doesn't work for me that I need to change? And my mind, my intuition will come through and say, you need to cancel on that person. You need to move that time. You can't even do something at 8 a.m. Why'd you say yes? You can't do that. Or say no. Just say no. Everyone's a no. Like yesterday, I sat there, I canceled my entire rest of my week. I was like, I'm done. And I need a mental health break if I'm gonna survive the next few weeks of what I'm doing in my business. And that's called us actually tuning into our intuition and doing what we actually need. And so I think it's so important to give ourselves that space. For me, the ritual of tea time is me time, does it? But I find that when we go to Western medicine, and it's interesting because I'm married to an all-western medicine family here in South Florida, of course. So I always like have to navigate that line. I hate on them in many ways, and I love them. So it's it's funny. I think there's so many great doctors out there, and there's also a system that can only help us up to a point. So when I go to Western medicine and I say, hey, my hip hurts, what I'm saying is I need your visuals and your diagnostics on what's happening. Unfortunately, as women, you're right. We are so gaslit. We oftentimes get a zero answer and we have to push and fight and find a new doctor and go a new way. And that's where the more expensive road has come about, which I I love and I get frustrated with, called functional medicine. So I have to go to functional medicine. I have to say, no, I don't want to do, you know, a mammogram every year from 40 to 90. That doesn't make sense to me. Do I can I do this differently? Or can I do a full body MRI? No one's giving me the answers I need on my body. And so I think we as women have to remember how strongly we have to advocate for our health if we want to get any results. And we sometimes have to get really creative, like you said. We have to reach into integrative medicine, whether it's naturopathic, Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, chiropractic, homeopathic. I love all of them. And I think they all have a role in our health and different points of our health. But when we go to Western medicine, we're usually like, I have this laundry list of problems. Can you fix me? And they've got seven minutes or less to deal with us. And so they're gonna say, okay, well, I can solve for A, B, and C. The rest, you're on your own. Like, I don't know. And so that's where I've had to really kind of support people a lot over the last decade is when people come to me, it's usually a laundry list of issues. And I'll say, okay, I think we need to go to functional medicine for all of this. I can help you on lifestyle on this piece. I see where I can support you. And let me find you the best practitioners. And that's been the greatness of owning the supplement company I've had for the last 10 years is I've met thousands of doctors. So I now know who is good at what and how they can help us. And that's kind of how I navigate with people because we are living in a moment, like you said, that's really challenging. And oftentimes, if you go to the doctor and I find this, if I go to the doctor, I'm like, hey, this is the problem, and I don't get the answer I need, I also don't have time to go fight again. And so then we fall kind of through the cracks when it comes to a lot of our health struggles. And so my whole point in the book was let me teach Ayurveda in every way I can that's approachable and doable by everyone. The book, it's easy. You buy a book or you download it on Audible. The entire Ayurvedic system I can teach you in a doable, bite-sized way is in the book. I have my own podcast, and on the podcast, I share all of this stuff. I go on YouTube, I teach it there. So I'm trying to teach Ayurveda everywhere I can. And then if people want to come to me for supplements, I have that solution too. But my goal is to show us for free, we can all build a lifestyle that's completely opposite to our current Western lifestyles approach to our health. And that is the code and the key to winning at our health overall is understanding how to intuitively tune in.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that uh allow women in particular, I think, um are have been trained into to behaving in a particular way that is appealing and pleasing to a lot of other people. We're breaking away from that in many ways, but um, I think encouraging women to tap into their intuition uh is important because that's what keeps people continuing to search, particularly if they're getting gaslit. True. Um is the knowing, knowing that you haven't got quite the answer yet and knowing knowing that what you're being told doesn't quite fit with what you know. And I think that that would have been if my mother and sister had been taught that, uh, I think that would have helped tremendously for them to understand uh that they needed to keep going to find the answers and to create a program that really works for you. Um, I'm excited, so I'm gonna try to make this as evergreen as possible. Uh uh, you are your book, your book is coming out, and if you're hearing this after the book comes out, go check it out. Uh, it's it's incredible. It's an incredible book, incredibly helpful. You are launching that at uh TEDx Meisner Boulevard um yeah, during our reception uh and the break. People get a chance to get copies of them signed. So if you haven't already gotten your tickets for TEDx Meisner Boulevard, uh go check it out. You just have to Google the phrase TEDx Meisner, M-I-Z-N-E-R, and you can find tickets. Um so uh uh if you if you're hearing this and it's uh after February 4th, uh you can go check out uh Shivani's video online. I'm sure she'll have it linked on her website. But uh tell me really quick uh about your talk.

Integrative Care And Finding Practitioners

SPEAKER_00 36:00

For sure. I'm so excited. I have wanted to do it to do a TEDx talk for over five years, and it's been something I've wished for. It's been on my vision board, and it's so beautiful that it came to be so serendipitously with you and here in my hometown of Boca Ratone and surrounded by family and friends who I love. So, my TEDx talk is about how Ayurveda's lifestyle of elemental design and mental inflammation is the key to us winning at our health in the long run. Because societally, I could talk about a lot of things. My my whole PhD dissertation is on turmeric. So I do love talking on turmeric. But I thought long and hard about what is an idea worth sharing that would land and all of like all eight billion of us on the planet could benefit from these core topics out of Ayurveda, that mental inflammation is causing a lot of our burnout and frustration and anger. And if we know our elemental design, we can navigate from a whole different place. So that's the whole TEDx.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

It's it's already it's so exciting. Uh yeah, if you if you didn't get a chance to hit the TEDx Miser Boulevard, go check out um Dr. Shivani Gupta's TEDx talk online. Um, we are also, I have to mention this, I haven't even uh announced this on the podcast yet. Uh October 28th uh in Florida. It doesn't matter where you live, you can come hang out. We are uh Shivani and I are part of a fabulous, amazing team of women who've come together as the executive committee for the Her Health Summit. It is all about women's health, and we are covering the full gamut with keynote speeches from amazing, everything from you know, uh Dr. Shivani Gupta to uh yoga influence, so influential yoga force, Judy Weaver, and uh we're talking about kindness from the fabulous uh Laura Waldorf Reese, and we've got some incredible doctors, female doctors who are coming in to cover all those really, really important topics that affect women's health. So if you um uh like to be a part of community and you'd like to be a part of a powerful network of women who are influencing the way that women's health is being addressed in uh this country and in our world, uh uh go check it out at soultechfoundation.org. You can learn more about it. I'm super excited about it, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00 38:14

I am so excited. It's gonna be a great event. There's gonna be so many fun vendors. I'm excited about the speakers, I'm excited about serving tea there, Ayurvedic teas. Like it's gonna be incredible.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, if you uh if you like tea, uh Shivani has got amazing teas. Oh my goodness. Like not only are they beautiful, but they are absolutely divine and and wonderful for you. So go check them out on her website. Last question for women listening who feel inflamed, exhausted, disconnected, uh burned out. I'm gonna add that too, or burned out. Um, how can elemental design, how can elemental design be the her doorway back to herself?

Teaching Ayurveda Accessibly

Book Launch And TEDx Talk

SPEAKER_00 38:56

For sure. So so many of us experience inflammation as those symptoms that you're talking about. Maybe our gut is off, maybe it's brain fog, fatigue, don't have the energy we used to, can't focus or remember things the way we used to. And as we enter these seasons, maybe it's perimenopause, maybe it's menopause, maybe it's even before that, and we're struggling and not feeling the same. What most people don't realize, what most people tell me is I guess this is just aging. I guess this is just how it is now. And I always say, no, no, no, it's not aging, it's inflammation. That's inflammation. I like that. Inflammation is a root cause issue. It is a forest fire that's burning inside of all of us. There's a lot of things that cause inflammation. And you're you're saying I'm aging, but if you reduce the inflammation, you would see that these are just symptoms of the inflammation. And so that's why I wanted to teach everyone the IRV, the lifestyle, and how to live on our circadian clock, how to detox seasonally, how to use self-care rituals that detox us daily. These are all part of the IRV, the lifestyle. And so then when we talk about elemental design, we can start to understand that, okay, yeah, I Shivani am a Bitha. I am all fire and I like to run into my day at full throttle, give myself no breaks, and then crash at the end of the day. Well, that doesn't serve me. Certainly doesn't, it doesn't serve me as I age, that's for sure. And so I've had to learn how do you shift these practices? How do you do a few rituals in the morning? How do you eat a really healthy lunch, like pause and eat your lunch? How do you eat dinner on time so you have three hours to digest it? How do you invest in really high quality sleep? Sleep is when we clear our inflammation and live according to that circadian clock. The Ayurveda circadian clock says that sleeping from 10 to 2 on the clock is when we will clear inflammation, clear the lymphatic system, the brain's lymphatic system as well, called the gymphatic system. And so a lot of these might sound like new words, but really it's just ancient wisdom. Ancient wisdom says rise with the sun, set with the sun, honor nature's clock so that you can win at your health. And so in the book, I get deep into literally charts and daily schedules for each elemental design, like what you should eat in your day, when you should wake up. And once you try this lifestyle, the elemental design lifestyle, you can start to see those shifts happening. I have so many clients who say, My whole life has changed now. I can focus, I have more energy, I feel better in my body. Losing weight is not as hard. I wake up refreshed and energized. And that's my dream for all of us is we should all have this incredible quality of life, incredible levels of joy, so that we can live a beautiful, intuitive, healthy life with more joy. I know that for my family, inflammation affected everyone significantly. And that level of suffering, that is not something that anyone else should deal with. And so the whole point of the book is let's win at inflammation, but let's also win at our health and build a life of such such deep, vibrant health that we feel good every single day.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

I love that message. Congratulations, Shavani, on the inflammation code. You guys, and this is Rob, this is being put out by Hay House, which, if you know anything about the iconic Louise Hay, you know that Hay House is really the place uh that publishes the most influential books across the spiritual, wellness, uh, uh mental health world. So I'm so I'm so delighted for you. Uh and uh I want everyone to go run out there and buy your book. So if they're going to buy the book, how can they get to it?

SPEAKER_00 42:34

For sure. So my website is my name, shavanigupta.com, s-h-i-v-a-n-i-g-up. And on there you'll see the links to the book, to my podcast, to my tease, to my turmeric. Everything that I do is on that website.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. So, to you guys who are listening, if you have not gone to my website, uh shamanisis.com, um, you can go there and check out my my three books: Unleash the Empress, Memory Mansion, which tells my really rather wild life story, and uh uh A New American Dream, which talks about how to get America back on its feet through artificial intelligence. Go check those out. And also you can learn more about my new book and pre-order Soltec, The Art and Science of Higher Consciousness, which comes out uh this fall, which I'm very excited about. So go check all those out at shamanisis.com. And if you want to support the work of the Soltec Foundation, please visit SoltechFoundation.org. We are bringing um education and events to communities to help navigate the age of AI, everything from our um AI literacy uh certification courses to well-being programs for kids and adults that help teach emotional and mental uh mastery, which we really need because we have a massive mental health crisis on the planet, and the only way to address it, I believe, is through spiritual practices. So go check it out at soultechfoundation.org and make a donation, please. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you've not already subscribed, what are you thinking? It's intelligent listening. Please subscribe. Thank you, Dr. Shavani. I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Thank you so much. Hi guys, all right.

Her Health Summit Announcement

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Let me exit here. All right, so in recording. Okay, cool. Um it's gonna take me a little bit to edit it. This will go up. Um uh actually it'll go up the day before the the TED talk.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Nice, February 3rd. That's my book published date. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

So thank you, Shavan. All roads lead to that day. When you you uh mentioned to me one day that podcast uh agency that you use, yes, can you text me that because I've been looking at some and I just I I don't trust a lot of the ones I'm seeing, like they talk a big game, but I I uh I I only want to work with people who actually do what they say they're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Sure. What I'll do, I'll connect you to two people. One is this girl, Arielle. Ariel is who introduced me to Pod Populi. You might love to meet Arielle because she opened a new place next to Meisner called Social Arts Studio, and she's all about like connecting, you know, helping women have a space for their events, um, photo shoots, video shoots, all that kind of stuff. And then she is the one who originally put me with Pod Populi. We are about to renew for our fourth year now with Pod Populi. It's really Inexpensive. Like they they build a spreadsheet, they give you a Dropbox folder. For example, when I'm not recording right now for my podcast because we're good. But what I do, I just we we take the representative file, put it in Dropbox, in the spreadsheet, where like, yeah, this is the order. These are the titles and the descriptions, and they post it. And so we can do that because we might forget to post. So it just keeps us consistent. Um, we were thinking of taking it in-house recently, but I just worry about the consistency.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

I didn't want to be in that agency honor. That is an age of the job.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Exactly. And it's just why we pay for that. Like, yeah, we pay for them to handle that. And then my VA in the Philippines is who makes all the art. So when you see the podcast go live every Tuesday, she made the YouTube title, the Spotify title, the social media all titles, and she's posting it everywhere. And then we do one email blast per podcast. Do you need anything else?

Elemental Design As A Doorway Back

SPEAKER_01 46:35

I know you put a fabulous uh crew. And then we've got the red carpet crew, so uh I'll let you know something comes up. Cool.

unknown 46:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Bye, sweetie. All right, bye.