Why More Wellness Isn't Making You Feel Better w/ Jasmine Jafferali

You've tried the diets, workouts, supplements, and wellness trends, so why don't you feel any better? 

In this episode, Jasmine Jafferali shares what she learned after more than 30 years in the health, fitness, and wellness industry. She opens up about chasing external solutions for healing while ignoring the wisdom of her own body. Jasmine shares why women are constantly searching outside themselves for healing instead of reconnecting with their bodies, and how that disconnect may be keeping them stuck in the same cycle. 

She dives into the powerful connection between breath, nervous system regulation, movement, music, and embodiment. Jasmine breaks down why real healing is not about doing more, but about learning to feel safe, present, and connected within your own body. 

So, if you’re ready to learn why breathwork may be the most overlooked tool for reducing stress, improving your health, and creating sustainable well-being, then this episode is for you.

Connect with Jasmine:

Website: https://healthyjasmine.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthyjasmine/

Chapters:

• 00:25 Why wellness trends aren't solving the real problem
• 01:35 The surprising link between breath and metabolism
• 03:15 Jasmine's wake-up call with breathwork
• 04:20 How breath impacts stress, sleep, and healing
• 05:30 Why nervous system regulation matters
• 06:15 Simple ways to activate the vagus nerve
• 07:15 How music became part of Jasmine's healing
• 09:00 Why movement is medicine
• 10:10 What embodiment really means
• 11:40 Why achievement isn't the same as worthiness 
• 13:00 Learning to trust your body again

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Business Chaser, your quick pour of strategy, clarity, and momentum. We skip the small talk and get straight to the strategy here in these bite-sized episodes. We're here to help you grow smarter, market better, and chase what matters all in 15 minutes or less. I'm your host, Lauren Najar. Tune in and let's chat.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

All right. So I have been in the health and fitness and wellness industry since I was 19 years old. And I started teaching fitness classes at 19 when I was in college. And I got my first job in corporate wellness, worked at some really bougie health clubs, and I learned a lot of things about health and wellness throughout my years. And primarily what I realized is that I was chasing things to help heal within myself. And I spent years searching outside myself for the perfect protocol while ignoring the wisdom inside my own bodies. And the wellness industry profits off of the same nervous system dysregulation it claims to heal. And I realized that I was living really disconnected from my own intuition. And what I didn't realize was that, and this is with a lot of women, is that women continuously chase diets, they chase exercise protocols, nutrition programs, every single trend out there to get themselves well and healthy. And one of the big goals I want to start teaching women is how to come back home to themselves. And one way is doing that is through breath. And it is the most important aspect of our metabolic health. You see, we can go weeks without eating, we can go a week without water, and we can go a few days without sleep, but we can only go four to five minutes without air. And our breath runs the entire show, and no one is letting us in on the secrets of breath mastery. And here's a fun fact I want to share since we're talking about that how breath is the most metabolically healthy thing that we can do to support our overall metabolism. So for every 10 pounds we lose, 8.4 pounds are eliminated from the body as CO2 through the lungs, and the rest is converted to water. That is also what we breathe out. So, ladies, weight loss is not another boot camp. It's not another HIT class, it's not burning ourselves out to exhaustion with exercise. It is all how well we breathe. And so when I teach Pilates classes, I always start my classes with breath. And the reason why I do that is because nobody really truly has how to breathe. And it may be the only time in their day that they actually spend a few minutes understanding and getting connected to their breath. One of my mentors has said to me that the fastest acting adaptogen to lower stress response is not an appeal. So it's not ashawanga, it's not magnesium. It is how we breathe. It's breathing techniques. And so, full disclosure, when I first started my very first breath lesson with him on a group Zoom call, I had to turn off my camera because I was having a mini panic attack. And it really scared me because I was like, I'm trying to breathe, and all of a sudden my breath was getting more shallow and I was like, my heart was starting to palpitate. And he said that my flight and fight system was kicking in to protect me because my body didn't know how to breathe. And that was a really big wake-up call for me. And now I spend every single night before I go to bed breathing. And I'll get into this, like, I'll lay on my back with my feet together in a butterfly position. And it's a yoga pose as well to help the help the adrenals relax. And I'll just sit there and I'll put my hands on my belly and just breathe. And I get connected to my breath and it helps me to fall asleep. And what I'm learning is that our nervous system regulation all comes from our breath. And the better that we can breathe, the more we improve our lymphatic system. We will also depuff and de-bloat our faces and our abdominals. And we can also decrease the bandwidth of our bra. And why is that? Well, because so many people live in their chest and the rib cage stays expanded and they just kind of breathe, but they don't know really how to expand and then really get into the ribcage, letting it try to close in like a corset and letting it slide down so that you can get into the breath. And everything will start to get more snatched, let's just say. That's what the cool kids say these days. And so less pill in any form is also better for your body and your system. So we tend to oversupplement. And I'm not anti-supplement at all. I still take supplements for the things that I am missing in my bodies through, you know, hair tissue mineral testing and all the things that I do. But we can oversupplement and that can be very taxing on the liver. And as women enter into their 40s and 50s, liver can get kind of like what we say, congested. And our hormones and weight loss all runs through the liver. So we don't want to over-tax our liver, but we still want to support our body in what it needs, but we don't need to oversupplement. So there's so many people that waste money on taking too many supplements. And here's the thing is that not only when we breathe and we get connected to that breath, it not only regulates the nervous system, but it helps the body realign itself. So the spine wants to get into alignment, the heart rate starts to relax and regulate, blood pressure starts to drop, you know, the amygdala of our brain starts to kick in and getting the body's senses to start relaxing so that we can get more into, let's say, that meditative state. And when I walk around my classes and Pilates, I can totally see so many people and how they're dysregulated. Their shoulders are up to their ears and they're trying to like breathe, or they're crooked, or they're just sitting there very uncomfortable because they don't know how to just sit still and be. Because everyone is busy being a human doing, and they're not being a human being. And we are meant to be, just sit still and just be. So there are literally thousands of opportunities to breathe every single day. And here's the other thing: it will snap your jawline. So, how is it that we breathe, right? Well, breathing, we know that regulates our nervous system. So we hum, humming, hmm, gargling with water stimulates and activates that vagus nerve. So gargling for at least a minute, a yawn, a sigh, laugh, cry, a really good scream are all ways that we can find a way to use our breath. And if you like to sing, sing. And if you're not a good singer, sing in your car by yourself. So no one's listening to you. But it's all these things that are activating what's inside and behind our throat. So when we start activating those things, it stimulates that vagus nerve, which helps control the nervous system. It's the longest, like the longest nerve in our body. So it runs behind the ears and it controls everything from, you know, into our throat, our heart, our lungs, our digestive system, and all the way down into our pelvic organs. And we shared a lot about my own healing journey and my dark night of the soul moments. And just remember one day I was sitting at home, just sitting there, and I decided to stop taking all my supplements except probiotics. And I just started listening to music. And it was all kinds of music. Like I remember we were visiting, we were doing a college tour in Knoxville, and we're visiting an old friend, and she had like fall jazz music playing on in the background. I was like, wow, I really like that. And I got started playing jazz music at home, like on Sunday mornings, drinking my coffee. And then during the day, I've actually always enjoyed listening to classical music. My grandma always had classical music on playing, and Mozart can actually really get into that part of to help you focus. So I start listening to focus music or classical music during the day, country music. And I realized that music is what truly began to heal me. And when I was coming into my own, I was listening to music while I was dark showering. I was dark showering before it was a thing. And I started like dancing again and dancing in the shower and singing and doing things that I had suppressed for years. And it just felt like it just felt good because dancing is a form of somatic therapy. And I danced for, you know, 12 years of my life. And part of that was like going into group fitness and so kind of like still scratching that itch of dancing. And I was listening to music that was bringing me joy. And the one thing I found myself really coming home to was house music. And I was kind of embarrassed to listen to it around like my family because it's different, right? If you're from Chicago or New York, you know what house music is and you can just feel it inside your soul. And house music is truly what saved my nervous system because I found it difficult like just to sit and be and meditate and do all the things that the gurus, like, you feel like the guru is like, well, you gotta sit and meditate, and you gotta journal and you got to do all these things. And I was just like, I can't do that. And it was house music. I also discovered something called healing house music, and healing house music was set to like certain frequencies that actually activate alpha and theta waves, which fosters healing in the brain. House music is amazing because it's better than antidepressant and it actually decreases your age by six years. So I was just listening and being in house music. And so every time I teach a Pilates class, I'm always teaching it with house music at 128 beats. And I love the way that I'm starting to blend music and movement and making it into medicine. And it's so, so healing for a lot of people. And what's beautiful about it is like when the beat drops, everyone begins to move in unison. And because of the beats per minute that are playing in the music, everyone's heart starts to sync up and starts to move together. And it's a really, really, really just like kind of like it's such a good feeling to have and just so fun to watch with people. So a lot of people think like real transformation happens on a treadmill or it happens when you're, you know, you're maxing out at, you know, 125 pounds as a female, whatever that is. People think transformation happens on a yoga mat or an ayahuasca ceremony. And real transformation doesn't come from the mind, it comes through the body. And this is what it means to be living in embodiment. And the healing path for many of us who come from like a burnout or just burnt out, overworked, is that we tie in that achievement to worthiness, but it's not. It's safety and presence and connection and sustainable success. And embodiment teaches us is that I can have rest and still be worthy. I can have needs and still be loved. I can receive support and still remain powerful. I can listen to my body without losing my ambition. So when we're looking at really like truly like how we want to feel good and heal within our bodies, the goal isn't to become less driven and have more rest and think that we're not worthy. The question always becomes and to ask ourselves, what kind of life am I trying to create? Because when you know your why and where you are going, your decisions become more clear in the path that you are trying to forge forward. And I just want to remind everybody that not every opportunity needs to be chased, not every timeline needs to be rushed, and not every dream needs to be built through force. And slow doesn't mean stagnant. And for these last few years, I just felt like I was slow, I was behind. And I took like a teen turnity, I call it a teen turnity, it's a term, to take care of my teenagers. And it's the busiest time of your life as a mom. So I took a teen turnity and I'm coming back home to my own because rooted things grow deep. And I believe that many people are craving that right now is that a deeper connection to themselves and a deeper connection to finding the community to which they belong. And this is what I just love about, you know, the path that I have, you know, when I look back at the last 30 years of being in the wellness and fitness industry and how it has changed so much. But then it's going back to the whole analog way of being. And it's going back into our own intuition. Do we need an aura ring to really understand how we slept, or can we just feel how we slept? Do we need an Apple Watch to tell us everything? Or can we come back home into our bodies and say, oh, this felt good or this didn't feel good? Maybe I'm too tired to really push it through today. I can still, you know, go through a yoga session. So the body's not meant to be forced, it's meant to be moved through. And that's what it means to start living in an embodiment and in your body. And what it means to live within your body and feeling safe, secure, seen, heard, and understood. All the things that we crave as women and all the things that we deserve as women. And this is what it means to be embodied.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

That's your quick hit of clarity and momentum for the week. If it sparked something, share it with a friend or tag us in your stories at Business Over Cocktails and or at Lauren Majar. We love seeing what resonates. Don't forget, Mondays are for full-length episodes with rich conversations, and Fridays are the Business Chaser episodes. These are bite sized insights pulled from our guests to keep you inspired and aligned throughout the week. Do you have a question or takeaway? DM us at Business Over Cocktails. We just might feature it in a future episode. Cheers!