EP097 | The 13-Day Gap: Why I Built EHC

What happens between sessions?

Not in theory. In the actual life of a woman managing a chronic condition, raising children, carrying the invisible work of her household — what happens in those 13 days between one appointment and the next?

For most women, the answer is familiar. A breakthrough happens in session. Clarity arrives. Then life gets in the way. By day thirteen, everything has quietly unravelled. And the story she tells herself is that she wasn't committed enough.

Anindita saw this for almost ten years before she understood what it was. Not a commitment problem. An architecture problem. 

What she built to address it started as a sophisticated advice-giving machine. The first pilot user called it controlling. That word restructured everything that came after.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why the 13-day gap between sessions isn't a willpower problem — it's a structural one
• What happened when the first pilot user used the word "controlling" — and why it became the turning point of the entire build
• How fear can be clothed in kindness and still feel the same
• Why the most important thing the Companion sometimes does is not respond
• What a founding member's words — "I'm simply exhausted" — revealed about what women actually need between sessions

She didn't fail the model. The model wasn't built for her life. 

This episode is an invitation to consider what support could look like if it started from that truth.

The Daily Body Check-In (free) This isn't designed to get you answers. It's designed to practice the quality of attention that makes answers possible — slowly, gently, without demand. 

👉 Access the Daily Body Check-In

If you've been trying to hold it all together between appointments and watching it slip away by the second week — pause. Your body is already present. You may just need a gentler way to meet it there. No performance required. Just presence.

P.S. The Effortless Healing Companion opens to a new cohort in August. If you're curious about what a consent-based, nervous-system-safe healing companion actually feels like, join the waitlist below. No pressure. Just an open door. 

👉 WAITLIST LINK

Transcript

Before we begin today, a quick note I'm opening 50 seats on August 3rd for the next cohort of The Effortless Healing Companion. August 3rd is also my 50th birthday, and this cohort feels like the most honest thing I could build to mark that if this episode resonates with you. The waitlist link is in the show notes. No pressure. Just if you feel it, follow that. Okay. Let's begin. You have a session with your practitioner and something shifts because you find, uh, some aha moment, maybe a point of charity that you hadn't thought before regarding your health issues, regarding some symptoms that you've had and you now know what needs to be done, but then life gets in the way. Maybe your child falls sick. Maybe, uh, somebody said there is another family emergency, or there is a work related deadline that crops up, and all your well-thought-out plans and strategies just fall by the wayside, right? If and by the time the day 13 arrives, which is your next session. And typically I've found that it's about two weeks between sessions, uh, two sessions, typically in the functional medicine world where we are looking at addressing finding the root cause of disease, that's what functional medicine is about. Or whether you're seeing a health coach or a similar practitioner. Everything is sort of, you know, unraveled. Right? So and that's that's what I'm talking about. That's the 13 day gap that I saw. And this is something that I saw for almost ten years of my coaching practice of, uh, in the early days when I was, uh, just doing the basic coaching, which meant lifestyle changes, behavioral changes, dietary patterns, and even later on in the last 5 or 6 years where I have been actually, uh, delving deep into complex chronic conditions like autoimmune disease. And even then, it's the same situation. And I find that this, uh, time gap between the two sessions, uh, is really, really tough. On my clients, especially those because, you know, I'm dealing, uh, I am working with clients with very, very complex and chronic health conditions which affect them on a day to day basis. And, uh, initially I used to think that maybe she's not as committed, maybe she's not committed enough or not following the protocol properly. But very soon, very early, I realized that that's not the case. The architecture was wrong. Not her. Welcome to Embrace Your Healing Journey, a podcast for women living with autoimmune and chronic conditions who are done being overwhelmed by everything they're supposed to do to get better. This show is built on one belief your body is not the enemy. It is wise, responsive, and on your side even when it doesn't feel that way. I am a functional medicine certified health coach, founder of Body Wise Healing and creator of The Effortless Healing Companion. I've spent a decade working alongside women with chronic illness, and what I know is this healing doesn't require more protocols. It requires coming home to yourself each week. This podcast is a place to do exactly that wherever you are in your journey. However, heart this week has been. If you're ready to embrace healing with compassion and awareness, not hustle and self-blame, this show is freeing. And this is especially women who are holding up most of the invisible work in their family, who have a lot of the emotional burden that comes along with having a family. Having children I can speak from for that because I have two kids, and this is typically how a woman takes on a lot of the invisible work that may not be visible to the others, including her partner. And this biweekly model of meeting every two weeks gives the woman a 60 to 90 minutes of support. And that's really, really important. Gives her the path, gives her the strategy, the roadmap, but then it gives her. It leaves her with 13 days of, you know, just living with that, um, by herself and especially if, you know, and then no practitioner can really feel that spot, not in a very practical way, not when a very ethical way. I mean, that could really lead to burnout being being available every single day. And that actually affects a lot of doctors and Medical professionals. But and this gap that I'm talking about, the 13 day gap, it's not empty. It's actually filled with a doubt. It is filled with the nervous system, figuring out whether it's safe enough to, uh, actually recover. And, uh, without somebody holding that space for 13 days, it's very, very hard for most women to even continue on that path. And typically when they come back to the next session, they probably gone a few steps back. And I used to think that this is not something that can be really solved. This problem is not something that can be really solved. But, uh, then, uh, things have changed. And, uh, this is where I built the Effortless Healing Companion. And this is built, uh, to fill that gap, uh, to sort of scale what I was doing, the results that I was seeing with my clients. But initially I actually built the Effortless Healing Companion, or the companion, as I call it, uh, to fill the gap with information, like with the answers that the what I thought the clients would need, or that these women would need, and to have the right answer ready. So basically, what I had built was a very sophisticated advice giving machine, and that's not what these women needed, especially in between the sessions. The first person who actually used an early version of this told me that this was very controlling. And that was a big shock for me, because here I was thinking that, you know, I had I had built in self-compassion. I had built in no judgment holding space support in a way that is very unique. And here is this person where she was one of the pilot users, and she used the word controlling. And it really opened up my eyes that, you know, a lot of times, uh, fear can be clothed in kindness and it can still be the same. It can still be giving advice from that place. And it's not really helpful, and it can seem controlling. So I had to go back and, uh, you know, reorganize, restructure and the whole architecture of this companion and, uh, that's, you know, that. It basically changed everything that I built after. And that was that was really, really, I think, a turning point of this companion. And because basically the gap does not mean more content. That's not what it needs. The content, the education piece, the awareness comes in your session that comes in when you are meeting the practitioner, when you are with a doctor, uh, you know, whether it's a functional medicine space or the conventional medicine space. Uh, that is when you get the information, you are aware of what your body needs, and that is more than enough for that. It does. But that gap doesn't need more of the reminders, more of the streets. Uh, it actually needs someone to be there. Someone to just hold space for you when things are sort of falling apart, which they do. Uh, you know, many times. And that's what I built. I built the companion to hold the space, to listen. And sometimes they'll not even speak. It's got silence inbuilt, which goes contradictory to most of the wellness apps, especially AI based apps out there and sometimes them. So sometimes the most important thing is not to respond, right? Just to hold the space. That's what holding space means. And in fact, it follows the, the the care model or the framework that I have built over decades, you know, over almost a decade of coaching. It's a C, a R, e model connect, allow release and ease. And it's what I found is that allow piece, which is usually what is missing from many of these kind of wellness tools, where you are just allowing things to be. You give your permission yourself, permission to be, whether it's an emotion, whether it's something that you're going through, just allowing that to remain without trying to analyze it, without trying to judge it. And actually, uh, recently somebody used this, uh, the companion, she is, uh, one of the founding members. And it was very interesting because she was sharing what she was feeling, and she was going through a lot at work and personal life. And one of the things I found that she said that I'm simply exhausted, and the companion answered beautifully, as it should, that you are allowed to be exhausted, even without getting to know why or even trying to analyze why. Because sometimes we are so overwhelmed. There's so much going on. Last thing our brain and our body needs is to now get into the analysis and in try and figure it out. And sometimes we just need a moment to just pause and just be with our exhaustion. Right. And just and a lot of times, just by grounding ourselves in that way can be liberating, can actually free us up to then take the action that we need. So that is the model that the companion follows. And I think it's doing a marvelous job of that. And I'm really, really excited because this is the gap that I found that was lacking and the kind of support that was lacking in between sessions. And now, with the advent of artificial intelligence as a technology and the framework that I have built and the experience over the last ten years of coaching, all that is blending in beautifully and powerfully. And it's already working. And I'm really, really excited that, you know, the way that the Effortless Healing Companion, uh, has been built. And, uh, the next cohort will open on my 50th birthday on 3rd August. It's 50 women for 50. And I'm going to share the link below the waitlist. So if you if this is something that you think that you're ready for and you're tired of losing your breakthroughs in between sessions and your, you want someone to be there to hold the space. And it will also be a mix of the, uh, you know, the wellness or the companion, plus a community, plus a structure that will be provided by real humans. It's a beautiful and a very, very powerful combination that you will find over 12 weeks of that. And, uh, details will be shared with you closer to the launch. But yeah, I'll be sharing the link below. And that is the 13 day gap that I am looking to sort of narrow down going forward. And I'm really excited, and I hope to see you there in, uh, on the waitlist and in my next live session soon.