Gut Instincts: The Practice of Radical Trust with Jennifer Juniper (Epi. #261)

🎙️ Gut Instincts: The Practice of Radical Trust

A Conversation with Jennifer Juniper

What if your body isn’t betraying you — but guiding you?

In this episode, Jennifer Juniper shares her journey from a life-altering Crohn’s disease diagnosis to reclaiming her health, intuition, and inner authority. Rather than treating illness or discomfort as something to suppress, Jennifer invites us into a radically different relationship with the body — one rooted in listening, curiosity, and trust.

This conversation opens March’s Month of Trust by grounding trust not in mindset alone, but in the body’s intelligence — the signals we’re often taught to override.

✨ In This Episode, We Explore:

• Why symptoms and setbacks can be messengers rather than problems to fix
• Jennifer’s experience being told her condition was incurable — and choosing to listen instead
• The connection between stress, trauma, unexpressed emotion, and physical health
• The science and wisdom of the gut as an intuitive center
• How trust becomes a practice — built through listening, not control

🧭 A Reflection to Sit With

What might change if you treated discomfort as information,
 rather than something to push through or silence?

🌿 About Jennifer Juniper

Jennifer Juniper is the author of Gut Instincts: A Journey to Radical Healing, Inner Knowing, and Rewriting the Rules. Her work supports women navigating health challenges and life transitions by reconnecting with embodied intuition, self-trust, and inner authorship.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Shilpa: What if the body isn't betraying you, but trying to tell you something you've been refusing to hear? Most of us were taught that illness is the enemy, something to fix, suppress, override that if your body breaks down, you fail somehow. But what if the breakdown is the breakthrough? What if the pain isn't the problem?

[00:00:25] Shilpa: It's the messenger and. What if the real work isn't silencing the signal, but finally learning to listen.

[00:00:38] Shilpa: Welcome to the Omni Mindfulness Podcast. I'm Shilpa, and this is where we learn to trust not just our minds, but our bodies, our gut, and the quiet knowing that arrives when we pause long enough to listen. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Jennifer Juniper, [00:01:00] author of Gut Instincts, a journey to radical healing, inner knowing, and rewriting the Rules.

[00:01:06] Shilpa: Over 30 years ago, Jennifer was diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease and told it was incurable. The best medicine could offer was management. Good days and bad days, just learn to live with it. But Jennifer chose a different path. Not defiance for its own sake, but radical trust. She stopped fighting her body and started listening to it.

[00:01:31] Shilpa: She stopped dismissing the pain and started asking, what are you trying to tell me? And what she discovered changed everything, not just about her Crohn's, but also about trauma healing and what it means to co-create your life instead of white knuckling your way through it. You'll hear how she followed her gut, literally and metaphorically to heal her gut.

[00:01:58] Shilpa: How excavation work. [00:02:00] Uncovering buried trauma became the key to physical healing and why trusting your body's signals isn't woo. It's the most rational thing you can do. If you stay with us until the end, you may begin to notice where your body has been speaking. And what becomes possible when you stop dismissing it and start trusting it as the messenger.

[00:02:24] Shilpa: It's always been.

[00:02:26] Shilpa: So let's step in.

[00:02:28] Shilpa: Welcome, Jennifer. How are you? Oh Shilpa. Thank you for having me. I'm doing great. It's been close to a year, which seems remarkable 'cause it feels like just yesterday you and I had a long, deep conversation. For the audience that, is listening, Jennifer and I met through a program where we were learning to develop deeper courses based on our core expertise through Amy Porterfield.

[00:02:58] Shilpa: Now, since [00:03:00] then, you've, been evolving in your, business. In developing the content and tell me where you're at and tell us about your book as well. 

[00:03:11] Jennifer: Oh yeah. Two of my favorite topics, I'm always developing and transforming, I feel like, and so where I started in, where we met, I was leveraging my expertise with healing Crohn's disease.

[00:03:28] Jennifer: Over 30 years ago now, back when it was weird and rare and I was using that and kind of really looking back, hiding behind that expertise and taking a very small bite. I was already working on the book and as I got the book edited and actually got into a online retreat about a year ago now with Jack Canfield.

[00:03:55] Jennifer: He was like, I think it's too small what you're doing. [00:04:00] Like really what your book is about. It's not just about healing Crohn's, it's about overcoming any obstacle. So that seed got planted and I've been catching up to that seed. For a while and changed the subtitle of my book to broaden it, and so consequently changed the focus of how I can best serve and what is really my passion, and that's transformation.

[00:04:24] Jennifer: That's helping women overcome any obstacle and giving 'em a blueprint for how they can live their lives and actually co-create their lives. 

[00:04:37] Shilpa: I love the word blueprint because it sounds like, uh. This framework, so to speak, that grew from your own experience. But moments before I hit record, you were sharing that that framework or blueprint has now been either consciously or unconsciously applicable to different areas of your life.[00:05:00] 

[00:05:02] Shilpa: I think that's the 

[00:05:02] Jennifer: gift of age. I went through a real wobbly time where, you know, it's easy to compare ourselves to our younger years and always come up short, and that's a really bad way to use time. And what I've grown into and really looking at, you know, a woman going from like maiden to Crone and how Crone is short for Crown and how.

[00:05:32] Jennifer: You don't, your memory doesn't even change, like we say it does. Like when you're young or doesn't, you don't lose it. It changes. So when you're younger, it's short-term memory. You're learning to draw, you're learning to add, you're learning to draw. You're remembering things you read to put it out on a test.

[00:05:50] Jennifer: But what science says is as we get older, it just changes to long term. That's where wisdom comes from, and that's the [00:06:00] gift of age is that I can look back over my life now and say, oh, these were not standalone segments. These were a pattern and you start to look at all of the things you've overcome, you realize that was not luck.

[00:06:19] Jennifer: I had a certain way of living and going about my life. That led to these things and it's worked. And if it's worked this long. I mean, I've had a lot of field testing. I've had decades of field testing this. There's a certain rest in that and go, okay, every new thing that comes, I don't need a new solution.

[00:06:42] Jennifer: I have the solution. Bring the new situation into solution, and then it works.

[00:06:53] Shilpa: I was just saying yes. I really love the arc that you brought in the arc [00:07:00] from your younger years and those experiences and now, and looking at it with perspective that you recognize the patterns and where you are at and where you are now. , 'Cause when I met you, it was at a different place and you had a different lens on it.

[00:07:20] Shilpa: But now it looks like you broaden the book and do you feel like the book now provides a greater gift to more people? 

[00:07:30] Jennifer: It's a much bigger container. So Jack's comment was, I loved it. It's brilliant. It reads like a 

[00:07:39] Jennifer: Like he goes, I don't have Crohn's or colitis. I would've missed it and I would've been sad to miss it. So it's still gut instincts, but now it's a journey to radical healing. Inner knowing and rewriting the rules, which is a bigger container. So when I look at like who I could put my [00:08:00] arms around in the ecosystem that I could build, now that's a bigger ecosystem with many different entry points.

[00:08:08] Jennifer: Like somebody could be going through menopause, a divorce, a job change, kids going off to college. It's any of those moments where you're like. Now what kind of come to the end of the road and now what I do? Or maybe the road is looping around and you're like, wow, this looks familiar. How do I get out of this loop?

[00:08:33] Jennifer: And, and that it's been with me since childhood. You even looked at as we are as kids, and a lot of those interests ends up being true, right? So I was always somebody who was questioning and looking and wondering and diving. It's pretty interesting that I'm still that 

[00:08:52] Shilpa: same little girl. Absolutely. We are often the same individuals and we keep [00:09:00] evolving from that.

[00:09:01] Shilpa: I can totally relate. I think my bookshelf was always filled with, self-help wellness books and I, it's not too surprising. I'm still in that space as an adult. Right. 

[00:09:14] Jennifer: I even look back, you know, now I'm back in my hometown for the summer and.

[00:09:19] Jennifer: I look back at like, oh, we used to go to the Echo Tap after work. Oh, I remember. And I would try to process my friend's problems and I was really into, I mean, before there was Netflix and binging, there was Little House on the Prairie and syndication, and I'd seen every episode and I was watching it again, and I could find an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

[00:09:42] Jennifer: For any problem they were going through and one friend would be like, alright, one more little house on the Prairie reference and no more drinks for you. Like, so it's, it's, it's, I'm mean, we're a natural. 

[00:09:56] Shilpa: Yeah. And you naturally gravitated towards [00:10:00] taking those life experiences and making it into even your life experience.

[00:10:05] Shilpa: Some people could take the Crohn's disease and the conditions as a crutch, but you were able to go on a more, I would say, somatic and spiritual level and come out of it, , being able to heal others 

[00:10:25] Jennifer: well and help them heal. Like Hippocrates, the first doctor right, says.

[00:10:31] Jennifer: Innate healing forces is the most powerful healing force.

[00:10:37] Jennifer: Not the pharmacy, not the workout routine, not how many hours of sleep you get. Those all contribute, but the strongest thing we have is those innate healing forces, and I think this is the gift of. Being raised in trauma. Two things. If I look over the arc of my life, I can see that trauma and physical [00:11:00] manifestation of illness went hand in hand always, especially when you're little, you know, at two and a half, I didn't have the words to express it, so my body expressed it for me through my ears and chronic ear infections.

[00:11:18] Jennifer: But the other thing that happened was. There was always a spiritual, so there'd be a trauma spike and it would spark salt. That from a pretty young age in the age of eight, honestly was divine. No doubt about it. Like there'd be a human experience that I couldn't manage and was devastated by, and then there would be a power greater than me that would show up and it wouldn't like, poof, you know, magic wand and [00:12:00] everything would be rosy and I'd get what I want.

[00:12:03] Jennifer: But I had a companion. I had something I could trust, I had a stability. And those things have just, I call it like. The double Dutch jump rope of my entire childhood. 

[00:12:20] Shilpa: I would consider all of those things like,, subtle lessons like it's part of you, but we as children don't have a vocabulary.

[00:12:29] Shilpa: Like you knew how to help a friend through, different life problems and you gravitated towards stories. That case was Little House on the Prairie, and somehow that was just part of you. You came onto this earth like that, and then you had a companion to help you through the hard times, and then you went through something.

[00:12:52] Shilpa: When you were older with the Crohn's disease, can you step me through that period?

[00:12:58] Shilpa: Some people may [00:13:00] have thought of that as a setback. You took it upon yourself to heal from it. 

[00:13:06] Jennifer: Well, I think that's another gift of trauma is one, it turns you inward.

[00:13:12] Jennifer: So I didn't have external supports or representations of help unconditional love needs being that, you know, sometimes even literal physical presence of my parents. And so it evokes something inside us. To get through, and I understand those are very often survival mechanisms, but what I see is that, I guess I was even turned onto the mystical by my father when I was a senior in high school, you know, and he had books like, man Search For Meaning, you know?

[00:13:55] Jennifer: Well, that was written in Auschwitz, like how do you explain that? [00:14:00] Oh, a concentration camp means this, well, not to Viktor Frankl. So, and then you look at, you know, the Little Prince. You know, my dad loved that book and how he says, you know, the greatest things in the world cannot be seen with the eyes. They must be perceived by the heart.

[00:14:22] Jennifer: So there were just all these little seeds and I think we all have those. I don't feel special that way. We all have them, but did we water them or did we just sort of like brush 'em off as nothing? That's how powerful belief was, is I needed them. I clung to these seeds, my spiritual experiences as,

[00:14:47] Jennifer: ludicrous as they may sound to somebody and fanciful compared to my physical reality, they were the more logical, steady thing. [00:15:00] And so I cultivated them, I watered them, they comforted me, they made me feel good, and there weren't a lot of things making me feel good. I just kept gathering and I shared.

[00:15:13] Jennifer: People. I didn't go and tell people about these experiences. I knew they'd probably tell me I was crazy, so I would tuck them away and it all culminated in high school, I got a huge trauma blow. And it started to get reflected in my stomach and I got these intense stomach aches. Um, I told nobody about them.

[00:15:39] Jennifer: I mean, some close friends knew I kept them secret because that's what I was taught you, you know, handle it yourself. You don't complain. All of those things. Then in college it got so bad that I ended up hospitalized. I couldn't, I couldn't keep it secret anymore. My body was demanding to be [00:16:00] heard, and so once again, huge trauma being hospitalized as a junior in college, huge divine experience, the biggest divine experience that I had felt to that point and.

[00:16:17] Jennifer: I believe that set the stage for the doctor I had and his approach. So I already got a really great doctor, a gastroenterologist, but I believe this divine experience for proceeded. His approach, like he gave me the gloom and doom. Incurable. Don't know what causes it, can't take it away. Best we can do is manage it.

[00:16:46] Jennifer: Good days and bad days. Anyone with a chronic condition has heard the spiel, right? You just have to learn to live with it. Well as if you could live with a severe case of Crohn's, like that's an oxymoron right there. And. [00:17:00] He goes to leave my hospital room, you know, he lowers this boom, uh, rest of my life.

[00:17:06] Jennifer: Boom. And I'm 22. That's a long time at 22. And I look out the window. I'm just absorbing the impact. I'm tucking into the divine experience I had for comfort. And then he says, you know, and he seemed to be thinking about it almost for the first time. Or, or first time he'd said it. He's like, you know, or maybe he was reading the room, but he goes, you know, I seem to have two groups of patients with this disease.

[00:17:36] Jennifer: One listens to everything I just told you, and it's true for them. They suffer. But I have this other group, they ignore everything I say and they get better. Um, and when you look back over medical history, the story of two groups is very prominent. Um, [00:18:00] and then he leaves and the nurse is like, so which group do you wanna be in?

[00:18:05] Jennifer: I'm like, seriously? Like, why would everybody choose the second group? That's a no brainer. And, and then she gives me a little snippet of where to start. I, of course ignore it because I'm busy and I want the easy way, but there is no easy way, and that's also a gift. Um, I'm really grateful for my Crohn's, and I think that's the arc of transformation.

[00:18:30] Jennifer: The thing that was the worst thing in your life becomes the best thing. And I was already getting a psychology degree anyway, so I was already learning of the placebo effect. I knew the power of the mind. That's why I chose a psychology degree because I'm like, the mind is powerful and I want this power, you know, I, I want to heal myself and I wanna help other people.

[00:18:52] Jennifer: So that spearheaded this. What I would not have called it at the time, but [00:19:00] developed. You know when, when there's not a solution to your problem and you make one, that was that moment I pieced together just like an experiment, just like a lab rat. I was lab rat and I was experimenter. I, you know, freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose because I was already in, out of emergency rooms.

[00:19:26] Jennifer: I was already so sick from the treatments and what do I have to lose? So I just tried things and the first thing I did was I listened instead of trying to get rid of this thing, it's like, what if I tried to find out why it came and what. It's trying to tell me instead of just slamming the door in its face,

[00:19:55] Shilpa: I am curious about two things. One [00:20:00] is that curiosity, because you already spoke of that innate nature from a young age, that curious child who. Just naturally was gifted with the ability to heal and heal others. But about, you know, I don't know how long ago this was, this hospital visit, but even now, we barely get medical doctors and people in most mainstream to understand the boohoo stuff.

[00:20:34] Shilpa: But the stuff you're talking about. The borderline Woohoo stuff, which is why you and I probably connected so well because we get it, but in those days, that was still a little bit out there. How did you, how did you naturally just gravitate and just say, you know what, I'm going to go into this, but this didn't even have a label at the time.[00:21:00] 

[00:21:00] Jennifer: No, I remember, and I write about this in my book, it starts a chapter where I talk about going to the library. What really tipped it for me was hearing about the placebo effect. So I think we're all curious as kids, the world has a way of beating that out of you, right? Don't touch that. Don't say that.

[00:21:20] Jennifer: Don't think that. Don't feel that. Don't express that. But we don't have to listen. We can get it back. We are naturally curious, and I think we all have these gifts that I have. I just. Utilized them, you know, and necessity is the mother of invention, Benjamin Frankland says, and it was a necessity for me, um, when I learned about the placebo effect, that 70% of people got better on a sugar pill, being told that it was [00:22:00] medicine.

[00:22:00] Jennifer: I almost fell out of my like desk. I was like, that is huge. Okay. I need that. Like I am, I am lassoing that and I am pulling that into me. That seems like the best news I've heard in a while, right? Way better than the. Just keep trying this medication. I mean the same medication that failed and brought me here.

[00:22:23] Jennifer: Yeah, it's all we got. Like you're just on a merry-go-round. Something gives you like an off ramp. Take it. Take it. If you don't like it, you can always, the merry-go-round is going nowhere. You can always get back on the merry-go-round. But again, what did I have to lose? So I remember going into the library at school and I felt like I was asking for porn.

[00:22:48] Jennifer: I mean, this was the, was it even the nineties? Yeah, maybe late eighties, early 90. So, yeah, you didn't just have a plethora like you do [00:23:00] now. So I was like, do you have any books on like self-help? And me, you know, I shared with her about the placebo effect and she's like, yeah, there's some over there. And there was really only a couple, but I just.

[00:23:16] Jennifer: Took them and well, they spoke to me. This is why it's really good to know our gut instincts and to get in touch with ourselves internally. I believe, as Lao Sue says, at the core of our being, we know who we are and we know what we want. That is not the problem. Most people know what they want. It's all of the noise.

[00:23:41] Jennifer: It's all of the stuff buried on top. It's our mother's voice. It's what that boyfriend said. It's what that boss told us who was a crappy boss anyway, right. Those things, it's like a frequency you got that turned up so loud and you've got [00:24:00] your inner voice turned down so low. Need to turn down the outside voice and the thing about a and turn up the inside.

[00:24:09] Jennifer: And the thing about a signal like a radio, that station broadcasts all the time, 24 7. It doesn't change because you tune into it or not. That's the beauty of it. So this innateness, this inner wisdom and guidance that we all possess is always broadcasting. Just gotta turn it up and you can learn to do that.

[00:24:30] Jennifer: Turn down the rest and start to find what works for us, because we're all individual. We're cookie cutters. Don't work because you're not a cookie. 

[00:24:45] Shilpa: Tell me more about how you learned to listen to what some people, at least in Western world would be like. Why would you wanna listen to something so physical called the gut? 

[00:24:56] Jennifer: Well, I think the gut's having its time in the sun and I'm here [00:25:00] for it. Like you have a gut brain, you know, it has its own nervous system.

[00:25:05] Jennifer: These things that were Woo. Now science is saying this is legit entrepreneurs, the top entrepreneurs, when asked what made them so successful. They'll all have a different kind of an answer, and then they all have the one answer. They listen to their gut. The gut knows. And so it's interesting that it was a gut disease that made me li I, I say I followed my gut to heal my gut is what I did.

[00:25:33] Jennifer: So it's like arguing with your mail person about your electric bill, right? Like, what about this electric bill? It's too high, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, I just delivered the mail lady. Like, I don't know what to tell you about what's in the envelope.

[00:25:48] Jennifer: So when we dismiss the messenger. Which was my Crohn's, when I could dismiss that at least to some degree, and start looking at the message, it [00:26:00] just guided me and it was a time when I was definitely in the minority, but I took that to be a really good sign because traditional medicine could not help me.

[00:26:11] Jennifer: So again. Why I'm gonna do it until I, but I'm gonna cultivate when they said we can't cure it because we don't know what causes it. Then my mind went, well, I gotta figure out where this came from.

[00:26:25] Jennifer: Again, my life showed me that my body was manifesting trauma, so I kept digging and that's one of the things I got to was after giving it attention, which was the first step, instead of telling it what it was, you know, asking what it was.

[00:26:40] Jennifer: The second one was nutrition. I got into proper food combining, which gave me a quick win and eased the, eased the stress on my system and told me, Hey, you're on the right path here. And then the next step was excavation. So I got into therapy. And I really [00:27:00] started to get, I started digging like what was at the root of this?

[00:27:05] Jennifer: It felt like medicine was snapping the weed off, right? And it looks good for a while, but we all know it'll grow back. I thought, I've gotta get to the root, and if I can get to deep enough to the root, just like a we, I can pull it out, it'll never come back. So armed with those two books, which was Bernie Siegel, Love Medicine and Miracles.

[00:27:27] Jennifer: About cancer patients not dying like they're supposed to. Crohn's was bad, but it was not as bad as cancer, so people could not die. I should be able to overcome Crohn's. I never look at something outside of me and go, well, that's them. This is me. I don't do that. I go, if they can do it, I can do it. And that's a mindset hack that we can all do.

[00:27:52] Jennifer: And so armed with that, and then Louise Hayes, you can heal your life. Louise was about childhood. [00:28:00] Something that some, a probable cause from childhood, a conditioning that came from that, and then how do you override that conditioning? She also, with her title, set me up because I was just trying to get rid of Crohn's and she is like, you can heal your life.

[00:28:15] Jennifer: And I was like, oh, whoa. Wait a minute. She said life, like just my whole life, me healing. So then I went from like this microscopic view of my Crohn's to like panoramic, and that connected some dots and I thought

[00:28:31] Jennifer: Stuff that had been covered and buried for so long started to come to the light. And helped me understand myself so much better.

[00:28:43] Shilpa: What Jack was sharing with you, the message he gave you, the wisdom, the same type of message that, Louise was also sharing and helping you connect the dots. Right. Going outside of the concrete dis-ease. [00:29:00] To the bigger picture. Yes, yes. Even the 

[00:29:04] Jennifer: way she's separate a hyphen, look at what a hyphen can do from disease to dis-ease.

[00:29:13] Jennifer: Wow. Seed planted. 

[00:29:17] Shilpa: Absolutely. When you and I spoke about this topic where you were. In my words, I feel like it was like self diagnosing something that was deeper unraveling it. And in the process not only healing, but also understanding the layers of modalities that you're able to use to heal on a bigger picture.

[00:29:40] Shilpa: It reminded me of one of the anecdotes in my life in my late twenties, early thirties I, was chronically for years having. Got pain and, it was nothing that I could ever resolve or truly understand until before Google was even that powerful. I researched [00:30:00] and found that I was probably having pain in my gallbladder, and so I literally started doing things basically did simple stuff like, papaya seeds and papaya shakes, and next thing I knew I was going to the gym. Next thing I knew, I was feeling like really vibrant, and then I was at the top of my game. Emotionally meant my husband, but it caused this change, like this thing that was painful in trying to solve it led to a blessing.

[00:30:31] Jennifer: I think that you've nailed it. That's how life works. You know, I think of it like, well, first of all, to the papaya seeds. It's interesting to me that we call alternative medicine alternative and traditional. Traditional, because every pharmaceutical. Comes from a plant. It's just really hard to monetize mother nature.

[00:30:55] Jennifer: So they chemicalized it. So it's actually [00:31:00] reversed. Traditional medicine is the alternative. Yes. And if you can learn that. The duality of this world that nothing is all bad, nor is nothing, anything all good. That there is inherent in both things, and if you look at life as say, a puzzle, right?

[00:31:24] Jennifer: If you just, what we tend to do is look at one piece of that puzzle, like your stomach pain or my stomach, and we just try to figure out from this one piece and we go, I don't get what the big picture is here. Yeah. 'cause you're looking at one piece of the puzzle. You've gotta zoom out and you need something that has the picture on the box, and that is a power greater than yourself.

[00:31:52] Jennifer: Now that can be God, but it does not have to be God. Uh, sometimes it's our higher [00:32:00] self. Um, for some of my journey, I would've considered myself atheist. For another part of it, I would've considered myself agnostic. You know, it doesn't really matter, it's just that everything isn't in your hands. Holding this little piece of the puzzle for some people, I mean, I felt it a Grateful Dead concert like that expansion, that I am something greater.

[00:32:25] Jennifer: Then this little, you know, ant really scurrying around the planet with this little problem. I'm trying to figure out that once I figure this out, I'm just gonna have another little problem and I have another problem. You can view life that way. It's a very defeatist way to do it. I much rather like the step back and defer to whatever has that bigger picture.

[00:32:51] Jennifer: Now, I would very much call it, I mean, I love the word God, it just has a resonance to it for me. But I can appreciate what's happened [00:33:00] to it. And so for me, it's very much my higher self, you know, or even my higher vision for myself and for my life. And that can even be what holds that big picture. And you have to appreciate that.

[00:33:18] Jennifer: A tree puts down roots, like everything puts down roots. Here we are back to the roots again, but things put down roots before they bloom. So like meaning your husband would be like a bloom, right? Or a sprout, but you had to do that seed, that root. It's not sexy, it's not even fun. Sometimes it's not visible, so it can feel like nothing is happening.

[00:33:44] Jennifer: Where's the fruition of this work? Well, a plant or a tree is only as good as its root system. So to me, that root is like, that's that inner anchor work, and that's how the divine [00:34:00] operates. It doesn't operate out here on the limbs and the trees. It doesn't try to control the wind. It operates on the anchor and the root so that whatever storm life blows my way and it will.

[00:34:15] Jennifer: I've got something solid and steady that can match that so that I do not topple over. I may sway, but I will not drift. 

[00:34:28] Shilpa: That is absolutely beautiful. Now, this is a great segue. I mean, I could talk to you for another 10 hours. That's how it was the first time you and I spoke a year ago, and that's why we were talking about having you back on my podcast.

[00:34:41] Jennifer: We probably could have 

[00:34:42] Shilpa: recorded that first conversation and made that a podcast. We should have. Oh, I kept telling you during our conversation, I should have hit record, but Okay. For today. For sure. I'll need you back. 'cause we can go much deeper on different facets. Especially I would say even now, the next [00:35:00] evolution where you're at what you're doing with the wisdom you've gained.

[00:35:03] Shilpa: But one good segue to almost wrap up our conversation is you had mentioned that experience with a divine. Now when this podcast is released, there's a lot of conversation around the holidays. About healing, gut, social connections, food and the divine. And that can mean different things like you and I probably resonate more with God, universe, but tell me about if it's not too private, your connection to that divine experience you had when the doctor gave you that prognosis and how you've carried that with you.

[00:35:47] Jennifer: Oh, this is my favorite thing. Talk about keeping is great. I mean, I am grateful every day to be free of Crohn's disease, , but what it really [00:36:00] gave me is total creative freedom over the design of my life. That's the real prize.

[00:36:12] Jennifer: So we, we are co-creators with that higher power. And the way I like to look at it, the formula for that is that our job in co-creation is what do we want and why do we want it? Our job is the what and the why, what we tend to do. Most people do is go, well, how will I get it? Well, when is it gonna show up?

[00:36:45] Jennifer: Where is it gonna take me? And because we don't know the answer to those three things, we shut down our what and our why. Our job isn't the how, when and where. [00:37:00] That's the Divine's job. Let the divine take care of the logistics. My business is the what and the why. So I live from a place of offense with my life, not defense.

[00:37:13] Jennifer: I call the plays. I decide what I want and why, and I clean up. All of the blocks that are in the way, all the, all chatter that comes up with why I can't have that, who am I to ask for that? You know, nobody else has done it. Why should I be able to do it? That's why you should do it,

[00:37:38] Jennifer: we're all here with unique gifts to create a unique path through this life and one of the greatest disservice. We do to ourselves is think that we have to be in line with everyone else. You have no measurement. It's just you, and you've never made it this far before. So let go of all of the [00:38:00] expectations, keep your standards, but lower your expectations.

[00:38:05] Jennifer: And I love November because it's my birthday month. It's when my book's gonna come out, but it's also Thanksgiving and what we appreciate. Appreciates. So if there's anything to do in November to honor that and to get you closer to that divinity and that co-creation that you do together, it's appreciation.

[00:38:30] Jennifer: It is the most powerful thing that we have, and we under utilize it all the time, increasing that appreciation. Getting to know ourselves better. It's a time of a lot of extroverted activities, but there's also time to tuck into ourselves in quiet moments. I love to steal little moments like standing in line or being in the bathroom or washing my hair.

[00:38:59] Jennifer: [00:39:00] Seemingly mundane things like you don't have to make time for these things. You just have to use the time you have when you might be worrying or wandering in your mind and go, I'm gonna use brushing my teeth. To think of all the things I'm grateful for. I'm gonna use washing my hair to ask what kind of a date do I wanna have?

[00:39:20] Jennifer: You know, I'm gonna make my bed and I'm gonna make up my mind. How is this day going to go? Not the details, I don't have control over that, but I do set the ball into motion and I can do that. And I can do that anywhere. And I've made a little helpful gift for your audience to help them do that because tucking into ourselves and finding our inner, it's like we have an inner GPS and it knows where it's going.

[00:39:54] Jennifer: And if we can. Lock into that life becomes easier [00:40:00] and way more fun. There's a lot more to celebrate that way, 

[00:40:06] Shilpa: I love the fact that you remind the audience that all of us have this inner, GPS, and whatever we need to navigate, whether it's Crohn's disease, a physical alignment of any type., There are signals we learn to listen.

[00:40:24] Shilpa: Your gift for, the techniques to learn to listen and navigate. 

[00:40:31] Jennifer: Exactly. It's, it's like, it's like you wanting to learn a language.

[00:40:35] Jennifer: You can do that, you can learn Italian, right? If you give yourself a little bit of time a day to learn it and practice it. I look at this exactly that way to have communication with myself is learning my bodies and my soul's love language. We always have choices and we can always choose again, and we can choose something greater.

[00:40:59] Jennifer: I mean, our [00:41:00] standards are just the lowest level, and we can raise that. And then watch how life raises it as well. It's a really fun game. 

[00:41:14] Shilpa: Now Jennifer, um, for the audience, I might be curious, two things. Tell us about the book that's coming out and where you are in your own journey now, in the physical part of the healing.

[00:41:24] Shilpa: Sounds like the spiritual part is just keeps you're expanding, you're growing, you're helping others, and in the physical part, , I know you talk about in the book, but just maybe you can share a little bit about that as we wrap up. 

[00:41:37] Jennifer: Yes. Uh, the book is very much an interactive journey, so. I walk you through.

[00:41:44] Jennifer: It's almost like the, the seeing the onset of things. I mention a lot of trauma because I want people to have the opportunity to go, I didn't think of that as trauma, or, you know, maybe that's where my physical symptoms were coming from. So it's very [00:42:00] story-based. And then it's, I always say, I'll go first.

[00:42:03] Jennifer: You know, I'll go first and I'll say all the icky stuff that nobody wants to say. I'll say it. And then at the end of every chapter, it's very interactive. There are reflections and actions and insights for the reader so that you're coming along for the journey as well. Information is great, but implementation is way better..

[00:42:25] Jennifer: So, and from that I also have, uh, coaching services that I do. I'm going to be doing a group coaching program. So at the time of this recording, I will be accepting people in on a wait list for my, uh, January cohort. A very small group. Of women that wanna work this out together and get the support and the empowerment and the tools to do it so you don't have to go digging for it, and you don't have to be alone in this.

[00:42:56] Jennifer: I love the magic that can happen when two or [00:43:00] more are gathered, right of like-minded, like sparks just fly and the book will be out November 7th. That'll be available. Uh, gut instincts, a journey to radical healing, inner knowing, and rewriting the rules for all my fellow rebels out there. It'll be on Amazon, it'll be in bookstores, again, helping you get the blocks out of the way so that you can live the life that you imagine. 

[00:43:29] Shilpa: That's beautiful. I, encourage everyone to look the show notes for a link to her book. Timing is impeccable 'cause it's all coming together beautifully. So this is excellent Jennifer. I'm so honored and we will need to have another follow up conversation 'cause I can see us easily going deeper into different facets.

[00:43:52] Jennifer: I would love that. Transformation is my jam, and sharing it with others and helping them do it too is my absolute [00:44:00] joy. And I love this platform that you curated and created and this audience of mindfulness. It's just beautiful. Shilpa. Thank you for inviting me into it. I will come back anytime.

[00:44:14] Shilpa: I will definitely have you back and I am so honored to have you here today. Thank you so much and have a lovely holiday. 

[00:44:22] Jennifer: Yeah, thank you. You too. Lots of gratitude. Lots of Thanksgiving, lots of gratitude.