SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
Ayurveda 101: Balancing the Five Elements & Your Dosha for a Healthier Life
In this episode of She Asked: Where Healing Meets Practical Hope, I share my journey of discovering Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old science of life, and how learning to balance my fiery Pitta dosha transformed my health, relationships, and sense of self.
We’ll explore:
🌿 The Five Elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether — and how they shape your mind, body, and spirit🌿What it means to live in alignment with your dosha for greater balance, vitality, and freedom
🌿Modern science that supports ancient Ayurvedic wisdom (circadian rhythms, gut health, personalized medicine)
🌿Simple practices & journaling prompts to help you reconnect with your natural rhythms and restore balance
💫 Have you discovered your dosha yet? Ayurveda teaches us that we’re all made of the five elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether — and our unique dosha (Vata, Pitta, or Kapha) shapes how we think, feel, and live.
In this episode, I share my own journey of balancing my Pitta dosha, letting go of what no longer served me, and aligning my life with my true nature. 🌿
✨ Comment below: Which element or dosha do you feel most connected to right now?
I’d love to hear your experiences and questions!
And always, reach out to me at anna@annamcbride.com
#Ayurveda #PittaDosha #DoshaBalance #FiveElements #AyurvedicHealing #HolisticHealth #MindBodyBalance
Today's episode is a story of returning to your nature through the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda and the five elemental forces that live in all of us. I'll begin by sharing my personal story of Ayurvedic journey and how learning to embody my fiery pitta dosha with balance and how it changed my life, and then we'll explore how you can apply this sacred system to align your body with the life that you want. So let me begin with my story. So it was 30 years ago, a little over 30 years ago, when I realized I wasn't happy, not in my marriage, not with my life. I was a young mom of twin daughters and in a marriage that I since felt new, I didn't fit in. Yet I wasn't ready to do anything about that. I didn't feel courageous enough or ready to do anything about that and, bear in mind, I was hiding this secret of having an eating disorder. So, with all that going on, I decided instead to explore mind-body things yoga, meditation which were becoming very popular, and I started practicing yoga. I started practicing meditation and I did this for years and eventually that led me to want to deepen it by becoming trained in meditation, trained in Ayurveda, which is the life science related to yoga, and it all led me to travel out to the west coast of this country to study with a couple of prominent teachers, one for Ayurveda and one for meditation. And I remember having a conversation with this very famous Ayurvedic doctor and asking him what should I do? I want to study Ayurveda, I think, with you, and I want to study meditation with this other teacher. What should I do? And he said to me you should do that. And I said do what. He said you should do what you want to do, because to have balance in life you need to be content. I didn't even know what contentment meant, I just knew that I wanted him to answer that question for me and I felt perplexed by the fact that he didn't.
Speaker 1:So then I went to study with the meditation teacher and I fell in love with the way he taught and his life and what he was doing for service. And I approached him and said I want to be like you. I want to help all these people throughout the world. I want to have this big life like you have. And he said, okay. He said yet I know you and I know your life and everything involved with it. What are you willing to give up to have this level of service. I said nothing. I want to have everything, I want to have it all right. And he said, honey, it doesn't work like that. Life at this level of service requires you to let go of so much in order to be able to be of this level of service.
Speaker 1:And I was confused by that answer. I was frustrated by that answer, and yet let me tell you that conversation happened 12 years ago, I think 11 years ago, and in these 11 years, my life, because I had the intention of wanting to be of service at a high level, intention of wanting to be of service at a high level, wanting to be healed and ready to help people with mind, body related stuff, ayurvedic stuff that my life is pared down. So much of what was big or taking up my time, my distracting me, in other words fell away. I'm not a mother raising three kids right now. They're adults. I'm not married to the person that I was so unhappy with. I'm not chasing a career right now. I'm not a business owner right now. Not that any of those things were wasted, because that's the other thing Ayurveda teaches us is nothing is wasted. Everything is fuel for the fire towards what we're growing into becoming. In other words, I just didn't understand how it all worked. So that's my story, and I want to tell you that letting go of things like the addictions that were plaguing me, the beliefs, the perfectionism, letting go of the relationships including my marriage, others and to prove myself, that was what I had to begin to let go of to be ready for what I'm doing now, and all of this is in alignment with Ayurveda's lifestyle. I now say with gratitude I love my life, I love my body, I love my mind, I live in alignment with my Pitta Dosha. I honor the fire and I know how to cool it when needed. That balance is freedom.
Speaker 1:Ayurveda is one of the oldest healing systems in the world over 5,000 years old. Think about it Before we even had a word for science, there were people in this world coming up with systems to help us identify and create balance between our minds, our bodies and the spirit within us. They didn't have x-rays, they didn't have any means of seeing pictures, they just knew it. And that just fascinated me when I first learned that and it comes from India the word Ayurveda means the science of life. It teaches us that we are all created from the five main elements Earth, which stands for stability, structure, groundedness. Water, which represents flow, feeling, nourishment. Fire, which is about transformation, digestion and action. Air, movement, breath, creativity. And ether. Or space, which represents expansion, intuition and silence, which represents expansion, intuition and silence. From these five main elements come the three doshas that make up what Ayurveda is based on Vata, which is the combination of air and ether, so it's light, quick and creative. Pitta, which is the combination of fire and water, which focuses on focus, intensity and ambitions. And Kapha, which is the combination of earth and water, which is about being steady, nurturing and calm. Now, each person in the world is born with a unique dosha construction, an elemental fingerprint, if you will, and so we all have variations of these elements in us and these doshas within us, but they're uniquely ours, right, and when we live in ways that match our dosha, we thrive.
Speaker 1:Let's face it, most of us don't. We don't live in alignment, and so, therefore, whether it's our thought, our food, our routine, our relationships, we are suffering imbalances and dis-ease, and so what Ayurveda addresses is how to identify what your dosha is, and then practices that will help you create balance or come back to balance, restore balance in yourself, and I love the fact that it's all based on something natural. It's not something in a lab, it's not something in a bottle, it's something within us and something that we can naturally attune to. I remember my Ayurvedic teacher taught me that what we want is ojas. Ojas is that it's the sugary, sweet sweetness of life, and you know you're in ojas when you feel at peace, at ease and in flow with life.
Speaker 1:Then there is the opposite of that right. There is the thing that is the byproduct of agni and it is just so toxic and most of us live in toxicity and we don't even know it. We don't realize it because we think it's normal, right? Particularly, I live in New York City and everybody's going really fast in many different directions. There's sounds like the sirens that are going on all the time and we think like this won't create a problem within our systems, and yet they do. However, ayurveda teaches us that you are living in the world, so we need to be able to adapt to what is right in front of us. It's not like we're going to go off and live in a cave like some yogis did way back when. It's just that we're going to do this lifestyle, real time, wherever we are, and it is possible.
Speaker 1:You might be wondering is there any science behind this ancient system? Actually, yes. So let's take a look at three key areas where modern research beautifully aligns with Ayurvedic wisdom. So one area very simple is about the circadian rhythms and daily routines. Way back when, before we had electricity and modern technology around clocks and computers and even manufacturing, which changed the way we actually have our workday, we used to get up when the sun was up and go to bed when the sun went down. That's known as natural circadian rhythm, in alignment with nature. However, we don't do that. Ayurveda teaches us to follow the rhythm of nature, especially the sun, in our daily lives. It's called Dhanachara. Modern chronobiology research confirms this.
Speaker 1:Nobel Prize winning studies from 2017 uncovered how circadian rhythms govern everything from metabolism to mood. Think about that body, your metabolism, the way you digest food, thoughts, feelings are in flow naturally with nature, not with your watch, not with your work week, none of that right. It's with nature, and so is your mood. So when we try to force ourselves to adapt to a schedule that leaves us being tired and worn out, it's no wonder our moods are crappy. I know that when I don't get enough rest. I am really anxious. I don't know how you are in response to low sleep, but that's my nervous system response. And I gotta tell you today, last night, was the first night in a while where I have slept eight hours. Eight hours that's amazing to me. When I woke up and it was 5 am and I went to bed, lights out at 9, I was like, wow, something's working. And I had been working on my sleep pattern because I noticed years ago how off it was. But anyway, disrupting this rhythm that is natural to us is linked to things like inflammation, depression and disease. This is how important rest is Proper rest, proper schedule that isn't out of sync with nature. So Ayurveda tells us that aligning with natural cycles is essential for health, and I just want to pause for a second, because I know there are people who have to go to work and schedules that are off from circadian would be great if we could all just readapt our work schedules to the nature. I just want you to keep in mind that if you are feeling off at all, if your sleep schedule is off at all, there are things you can do that can get you as close to a natural rhythm for your body that keeps in mind natural cycles. I don't need to go into all that now. I just want you to know that there are ways Ayurveda is just pointing the way towards. Get as close to nature as you can.
Speaker 1:Scientific research comes out about gut health and digestion this thing called Agni. So I remember when I first started studying Ayurveda there was this quote that my teacher said, which is in our culture. We say you are what you eat. From an Ayurvedic standpoint, you aren't what you eat, you are what you digest, because if you can't digest it, you're not really benefiting from it. And that took me a while to understand what that meant, because I'm digesting things not only in my body, physically, because of the food I eat. I'm digesting thoughts, I'm digesting feelings, and there's a lot of digestion that our bodies go through, our minds, our bodies, our spirits, and I don't know that I really understood that a lot of the imbalance I was experiencing in my life is because I wasn't allowing myself to digest. If you're like me and you're someone who avoided feelings as much as I did, or if you had an eating disorder or withheld food or undernourished yourself, whatever the circumstances were, that's a form of non digestion. The other thing that I also learned through Ayurveda is this concept of not eating when you're upset, because if you're upset, if your central nervous system is upset, if your mind is upset, your body is actually upset also and not ready to digest. So my Ayurvedic teachers taught us, if you're upset, better to wait before you eat. Get yourself calm and grounded as much as possible and then have the meal, even if it is hours later. Do what you can to reground before you eat. And so recent research has taught us that gut microbiota and the gut brain access supports this, supports the idea that your digestive fire, agni, is central to the idea of digestion.
Speaker 1:Poor digestion is said to be the root of most illnesses. Think about that Poor digestion. So we have a lot of things that kind of get stuck in our gut, so to speak, that we haven't fully digested. Whether it's emotional or whether it is food related. Either way, that poor digestion may be behind a lot of the illness that we may be suffering, and the studies show that our digestion influences our immunity, our mood and inflammation. Ayurvedic practices like warm food, spices of a particular type and mindful eating support healthy gut flora. So these are some of the things that Ayurveda taught me in order to heal from my disordered eating patterns, as well as how to get my gut back on track, because even though I was no longer practicing my eating disorder it's probably now been 20 years disorder, it's probably now been 20 years I had a long way to go to heal my gut, heal my digestive system, and Ayurveda helped me with that. So science is echoing Ayurveda. How you digest is how you feel.
Speaker 1:And the third area where Ayurveda has really stood out from a research standpoint is personalized medicine and dosha typing. So Ayurvedic systems of doshas is a form of personalized medicine. There are many practitioners and this is all based on thousands of years of research, basically before we even had that term meaning medicine. A 2015 study in Nature showed dosha types correlate with genetic expression patterns. Think about that. Doshas that were identified and prescribed thousands of years ago now are being aligned and shown to match genetic expression patterns. I think this is incredible how vata, pitta and kapha types have distinct biological markers. Ayurveda understood constitution and customization long before modern science did. We're finally catching up. It really blows my mind how this stuff that was created based on nature over 5,000 years ago has stood the test of time. It's truly the only science that has, quite frankly, all right. So now I want to give you some practices for realignment.
Speaker 1:Whether you've studied Ayurveda or not, you can begin listening to your body and exploring your elements. So I want to give you a few journaling questions to explore in your own time, and we'll put these attached to this episode so that you can reference it. But listen and ponder these. The first one is which of the five elements and ponder these. The first one is which of the five elements earth, water, fire, air, ether do you feel most connected to right now? Which of those? Don't overthink it, just identify it. And then, where in your life are you feeling imbalanced? Through habits, people like relationships, or maybe your belief system? It's important to get clear there. And then, thirdly, what does a balanced life feel like in your body? Have you ever felt it? Could you imagine what that might be like for you? Could you imagine what that might be like for you?
Speaker 1:So, with those prompts, that will begin maybe creating some curiosity within you to want to seek more information about this. So here's an affirmation I want you to just close your eyes for just a moment, take a long, slow, deep breath with me, in through the nose, exhale out through the mouth. Just let your body settle in and this information sink into you. As I say this affirmation I am made of earth, water, fire, air and space. My body is wise. My spirit is clear. I release what pulls me out of balance and return to what restores me. Let those words wash over you, Let them sink in through every tissue of your being and know that when we align with nature, we align with life.
Speaker 1:So if something stirred you in today's episode a remembering life, so if something stirred you in today's episode a remembering, a curiosity, a desire for more balance I want you to know Ayurveda is a gentle, powerful path to lead you back to who you always were. It's not a detour, it is the path, and if you'd like to explore more of this, understand more about doshas or receive personalized guidance on Ayurvedic living, I'd love to support you. Reach out to me, either through this episode or you can email me directly at Anna at AnnaMcBridecom, and let's set up a moment where we can talk about this, because this is something I'm very passionate about and want to be able to provide more information on to you and, of course, share it with anyone you think that might benefit from knowing more about how to balance themselves, balance their life. Thank you for being a part of today's episode of she Asked, where healing meets practical hope. Until soon, be well.