Releasing Armor Weight: Midlife Reawakening & True Self-Trust with Lisa Barwise

What if the weight you’re carrying isn’t just physical?

In this powerful and eye-opening episode, Rachel sits down with Lisa Barwise, founder of The Warrior Goddess Saga, to explore the concept of “armor weight”—the emotional, energetic, and identity-based weight many women carry, especially in midlife.

After years in the fitness industry helping women build strength, Lisa noticed a deeper issue: women were getting physically stronger, yet still feeling stuck, burned out, and disconnected. Her own experience with burnout, anxiety, and chronic fatigue became the catalyst for a new approach—one that blends biology, psychology, and spirituality.

This conversation reframes midlife not as a crisis, but as a reawakening—an invitation to reconnect with who you truly are.

💡 Key Takeaways

• Midlife is a reawakening—not a breakdown
  Your body is asking for alignment, not punishment. 
• Armor weight goes beyond the scale
  It includes emotional stress, trauma, identity patterns, and subconscious beliefs. 
• Hormones impact your entire system
  Changes in estrogen increase stress sensitivity and affect mood, energy, and weight. 
• Your inner dialogue matters
  Thoughts like “I’m not enough” or “I can’t stop” directly shape your experience. 
• Healing must be holistic
  True transformation happens when you address body, mind, and purpose together. 
• Quick tools can create real change
  Practices like EFT tapping, breathwork, and somatic movement can reduce stress fast. 

🧠 Topics We Covered

•  Burnout and nervous system dysregulation 
•  Why traditional fitness approaches fall short 
•  The science of cortisol, stress, and midlife 
•  What “armor weight” really means 
•  EFT tapping and somatic healing practices 
•  Identity shifts and rediscovering purpose 
•  Midlife as an opportunity for reinvention 

🔥 Key Concept

Armor Weight:
The invisible load of emotional stress, energetic fatigue, and identity patterns that can show up as overwhelm, exhaustion, and physical resistance.

🌿 Practical Tools to Try

•  ✋ EFT tapping for stress and anxiety 
•  🫁 Breathwork + humming for nervous system regulation 
•  🥤 Protein-first mornings (30–50g) for energy and balance 
•  💪 Strength training for longevity and resilience 
•  🌙 Magnesium + adaptogens for recovery and sleep 

🔗 Resources & Links

•  🌐 Website + Quiz: https://thewarriorgoddessaga.com
  
  
•  📘 Book: Unarmored
•  🎙️ Podcast: Goddess Got Goals
•  📱 Instagram: https://instagram.com/lisa_barwise

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Joy Unfiltered. I'm Rachel and this is a podcast about joy. Not the shiny performative kind. Not the everything happens for a reason kind. This is joy as a strategy. A way to stay steady when life feels loud. A way to stay human when things are hard. A way to lead, love, and live without burning out or checking out. Some episodes will be just me. Some will be honest conversations with people who have lived their way into a deeper, truer joy. No fixing, no bypassing, just real stories, real tools, and room to breathe. Let's get into it. Well, welcome to or welcome back to Joy Unfiltered. I am Rachel, your host, and I have a delightful guest with me today. So let me just go ahead and get her introduced so we can get on with this joyful conversation that we that we're about to have. So I have with me today Lisa Barwise, and Lisa is the founder of the Warrior Goddess Saga and the creator of the Wellness Alchemy Triquarta, a powerful framework that fuses biology, psychology, and spirituality to guide women through midlife reawakening. And don't we need some of that? Her work began with Warrior Goddess Kettlebell Training, which I love my kettlebell, where she spent over a decade helping women build strength, muscle, and confidence without punishment or pressure. But after coaching thousands of women, Lisa saw what most of the wellness industry ignores, which I totally agree. Women were getting stronger, but still carrying shame. So strength alone wasn't enough. So what started as a rebellion against the fitness industry, conditioning can became something much deeper. The warrior goddess Saga was born, a movement, a methodology, and a sacred path for women to release, which she calls, which I can't wait to get into, armor weight. The emotional, energetic, and identity weight no diet or workout can touch. So through her work, Lisa helps women rebuild safety in their bodies, reclaim their strength, and reconnect to who they truly are. So joy, confidence, and self-trust are no longer things they chase, but something they finally get to feel. Oh my goodness, so much in there. But just first, welcome, Lisa. I appreciate you spending time with us today.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Oh, I'm so excited to be here. I'm loving the conversation already about joy and finding joy. I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yes, well, we have lots to delve into, but let's get just a little bit into a little bit of background. So you started in the, and maybe you even started doing something before that, but started in the fitness industry. And talk us through a little bit about what you were doing and then that moment or moments that brought you to that realization that the fitness industry maybe didn't have it quite right.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah, so I've always been a bit of a rebel. I don't know if it's the red hair, um, but I've always been a bit of a rebel, a bit of a feminist when it comes to approaching things. And I decided to, you know, become a personal trainer at the ripe old age of 39, um, having been in more of a business consultancy landscape. And then started my wellness journey, then from everything. I went through every qualification, but came at it always from a bit of a holistic way. Um, you know, I became a health coach, then a personal trainer, I'm plant-based, so plant-based diet specialist, uh kettlebell instructor. Then I realized that maybe there was something, you know, more that we needed in terms of mindfulness. So I studied meditation, mindfulness practices. And then even though I was working with clients, I worked mostly with women. Um, myself, you know, just about to turn 40. Most of my clients were in their 40s and 50s, and some in their 60s. What I started to notice very quickly was I had a studio for I taught, I've actually taught over 5,000 kettlebell classes, believe it or not, in my time. Um, and what I found was, first of all, the classes were too long, and we spent most of the time chatting, which was fine. Um, we did the workouts, but some would do really well, some would burn out, some would not lose any weight, some would get very disheartened. Um, so there wasn't a pattern between uh, you know, put in the effort to get the results because effort and results weren't equating 100% all of the time, right? So that they were, and it was like, why is this person getting a result versus this person not? And you know, there was still this whole shame and trying to keep up with the young things, and you know, the questions I'd get asked quite regularly is surely it's not this difficult to lose weight. I got that question a lot. Um, and what I was finding was that women were burning out quickly, they were ending up with a lot of injuries, and then believe it or not, when COVID happened, um, I saw that as an opportunity to take my business uh business and completely pivot 100% online, which I did. I already had a lot of it built out because I provided a lot of my support online in between classes, because that was one of the key things our community had. And then I just recorded everything and did a lot of things in my living room like everybody did, and my business blew up. But again, the same thing happened. Like some people were getting great results and some weren't. And I was following a lot of the methodologies of the fitness industry, you know, counting your macros and doing your strength training and building the muscle and pushing harder and hustling and doing all of these things. And again, something just started to feel like not quite right, like it didn't really resonate with how or what I believed about, you know, feminine cycles. I'm also a complete health and wellness geek. I love to study things, read books, podcast listener, all of these things. And during that time, I had started my own podcast, and I just started to have conversations with other practitioners, doing the reading and the podcasts, and all of these different things started like little light bulbs started to go off that I wanted to do things differently. Like I saw that this wasn't working 100% in a lot of ways. But where it really, you know, the where the rubber hit the road, as they say, was when I had my own, it wasn't necessarily a full breakdown, but it was definitely a burnout of all burnouts. So, you know, as somebody with a late diagnosis of ADHD, probably coming into perimenopause at that time, all of us going through that collective, what I definitely think was CPTSD through COVID, um, not unresolved grief, unre like I had two friends pass during that time, one from cancer, one from suicide. I ended a long-term narcissistic friendship, which was almost like a sister uh hood with me, and all of that just came to its head when my body just stopped. It just gave up one day. I tried to put my feet on the floor to stand up and I couldn't. Like I literally just was like, nope, you're you're not going anywhere today. Wow, right, and that was my body literally saying no. Like when your body says no, your body says no. And even with my deck at that point, decade of you know, wellness industry, health coach, all the things that I knew, something else was going on, right? So it turns out, yes, it was um chronic anemia. Um, my nervous system was wrecked, I was having panic attacks from the severe anxiety. Um, I had gained 20 pounds. Um, all that I couldn't get, I couldn't shift it at all, even knowing what I knew. I didn't have the energy to be able to do anything. So it was just full-on chronic fatigue. So it was at that time that I was like, I need to think about these things differently, I need to do things differently. You know, what is out there? Like, what what else do I need to know that I don't know? And that's when I started to learn about stress, chronic stress specifically, but um beginning to understand a little bit about polyvagal theory, though I didn't know the name of it back then. Um, my friend introduced me to EFT tapping, which is emotional freedom technique tapping, and um she was like, just do these things, just do it. And I was somebody who would have meditated before, but with ADHD, found that very difficult. So exercise was a lot of my meditation, walking in nature is my meditation. But when I physically couldn't walk because of the pains in my legs from the anemia and everything else, a lot of things became very difficult. So through her saying, Yeah, try this, and then me being me, it was like, Oh, why is this working? Like, why is this working? What is this magical tool? And from that, I it was just an evolution to learn more, study more. And then at the end of last year, I just had an epiphany with trying to then implement this with my own clients or trying to talk about it. And I came up with the concept of armor weight. Now, does it come from me having a brand called Warrior Goddess Kettlebell Training and now the Warrior Goddess Saga? Yes, I love this concept of you know, we are especially that that feminist energy that I have, that fighting energy, the warrior energy. Um, that of course I was come, you know, carrying this extra armor, right? And the the the visualization, the the metaphor of that was so interesting to me. But then when I started to really dig deep, as I did in my little studies and research as I pulled my book together, OMG, it really did start to resonate that like there is this weight that is not just physical, but like emotional, energetic, ancestral, even based on our identity, based on our behaviors, our patterns, uh, subconscious, that yes, shows up as physical weight in the body, uh, as it did with me during that time, but also just like weight inside the bones, weight inside this tiredness, this fatigue that we carry, these you know, constant overthinking, um, constant overgiving, constant people pleasing. Um, and when we hit midlife, our brains and our bodies start to go, uh-oh, nah, no more. The buffer is gone. The buffer is gone. And that's when it really just was like, okay, this message needs to be heard by by many women in midlife going through the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yes. Oh my goodness. I well, I was like frantically taking notes about all the things. So I have got so many questions, but I just have to say, what an amazing I think the universe brings people together that are supposed to be together. I'm like, you're saying, okay, I became a personal trainer at 39. Same. I'm plant-based. I mean, this like we have like had the same, the same life. Not exactly, but I mean it was so interesting to think about A. And as you're saying, in gaining weight. Yes, I was training people and I had gained and I had gained more than 20 pounds of weight, it was about 40 pounds overweight about that that same, about that same time. So, oh my goodness. And I'm certain, Lisa, that there are other people, maybe not necessarily the fitness world, but other women who are listening saying, Yes, this is also me, right? This is also me. Like I'm doing all these things, and yet I am carrying this extra weight. I am trying to figure out what this means. I'm trying to figure out why joy feels different for me than it did before, like all of those things. So thank you for just being transparent and sharing that's that piece of the story with us. Um, love a couple of things that I really want to get into. I just last year um started doing the EFT tapping. So I'm enamored with how that works and how that works with our bodies merdians and the energy in our body. Um, but talk a little bit more about your um about this armor weight and how we can start to release that. And is that something that you when you talk about it, is it really something that happens to us at midlife and where do hormones play? I mean, I'm just curious about kind of all of the things that are wrapped into your thought around that.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

So what I loved about it was that like my brain, which is you know, uh firing all of the time, the ADHD brain, the the neurodivergent brain, what I found with armor weight is that it's also very layered. It's it's it's got a lot of different nuances and also like layers or different interconnections. So the best way that I then try to make it make sense, as I always do, was kind of put it into something, right? So I called my my system the wellness alchemy triquetra for many reasons. One, I call myself a wellness alchemist because I like it, it sounds really cool, but also I like the transformational element of it, the mystical element. Um, the triquetra is a symbol in um Celtic traditions and in the pagan tradition for uh it's the trinity, the bringing together of all things. And the biology, psychology, and spirituality was um based on a book that I read, um, which was all about women in cycles, right? And this is where it becomes really kind of fun and cool is that when we look at a woman's life cycle, there are many cycles that happen within that. Not just the cycles of, you know, what would have been known as what the triple goddess uh in in pagan traditions, which was mother, maiden crone, but also every seven years, women go through a biological change or shift, right? Whether that's hormonal biological change or shift, whether that is an identity potential change or shift, um, and the the interplay with our spirituality, the meaning, the purpose elements, the identity purpose also goes through an identity change and shift. So, you know, we identify as maiden, young woman, career, or focused on those sorts of things, maybe seeking a partner to become mother. But then what was missing was the fact that, first of all, the reason why menopauses suddenly become a big buzzword and perimenopause become a buzzword everywhere, is that women are living now 40% of their lives post-menopause, right? Think about that. Whereas before we weren't, obviously. So we weren't actually expected to live this long post-menopause, and that's why we don't have the systems in place to uh well tap into that or you know, optimize that, etc. Which is a weird, horrible thing to say, but that's accurate, right? You know, weird and horrible. But so now that this is happening, we need an identity in there. So in her book, uh, she talks about the guardian identity between mother and crone. And I love this. I've adapted it so much that I've called it the warrior guardian identity inside my community. And it's really where we start to step into a different identity that has a lot to do with what happens in midlife when we, you know, they call it the midlife crisis. It's not, it's a midlife reorganization. Just as those neurotransmitters reorganize inside our brains, uh, which does happen, um, as oestrogen is linked to a lot of them. We're talking things like dopamine and serotonin and and oxytocin, all the things that we've maybe heard as words and buzzwords. Um, but that gets reorganized, right? We call that the estrogen's girl gang. It gets reorganized. With that, is the perfect opportunity for us to have an identity shift. So an identity reinvention, right? Think Madonna, think Taylor Swift and her eras, right? You know, we go through a different era. I like to call it the warrior goddess era, but whatever that might be for you, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:27

I love that. And I just read something that the Japanese culture, and I'm not going to remember what the Japanese word is for it, but their word for perimenopause or menopause translates more to renewal. So we're going through this renewal. And so I need to remember what that Japanese word is.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

This reawakening, this remembering who we are before all of the responsibilities and the overgiving and the over, you know, all of those things. Exactly, 100%. So when it comes to understanding these cycles, it's important that we understand that. But then there's the biology, which you talked about there in terms of hormones. Like, where do hormones fit in there? Well, with the trichretra, you have the biology, you have the uh, which is the hormones, which is the nutrition, which is the movement patterns, which is trauma, stress, anxiety stored in the body. Um, but then you also have the psychology part, right, which I'm gonna speak to, as well as the spirituality, because that becomes, believe it or not, more meaningful and impactful in the midlife cycle because of the identity shift. So we're gonna talk about that too. But the psychology part, this is the bit that I think is really, really cool. So the neurotransmitters all have a little reorganization. We like to say that you know, Eastergen hands the mic to other people in the in the room, and each of these transmitters gets a chance to have their say. But also the story that we have that we tell ourselves becomes so prevalent during this time. What do I mean? The I am not enough story we tell ourselves, the I am too much story, the I don't like to feel or feelings are scary story, the um, if I stop now or if I rest now, everything will fall apart story, right? Whatever these stories that we've told the tell ourselves, then has the knock-on effect of all other parts of that. So what that can look like, and how we how we talk about it inside our community is I have a warrior goddess archetype quiz. Helps women to see themselves as a character in this story, right? Or as an archetype in this story. But in each of these archetypes, we all have, you know, strengths and we all have things that are uh make us who we are, but we also have self-sabotaging patterns, we have limiting beliefs that are patterns that work in our brains and the subconscious. But for example, let's give you an example. So the I am not enough one, right? We can all feel into that. We're like, oh, that one's a heavy one, right? But for our warrior archetype, who tends to be experiences their their survival mode through fight. We were talking about fighting, you know, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. But the fight pattern, right? The armored up warrior, you know, they have the the they tend to burn out. They are the the ones that will burn out, get injured very quickly. But they also are the ones that find it very hard to sit down, they wear busy as a badge, they um they take on all the responsibilities, they hear themselves things, say things like, I've had a lovely day, but yet still feel really hollow inside. So joy, let's bring it back to joy. So joy for them, you know, can feel very meaningless, right? What once brought joy before, yes, they feel like they've had a productive day. I got the things done, you know, but where is the joy? Is that joy? Where's the meaning? Where's the deeper feeling? It can be very superficial. So I hope that kind of answered a lot of your questions in terms of where hormones work, where neurotransmitters work, and where the identity piece comes into play.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Yeah, no, that is fabulous. And is that then what um this is kind of a little off, not off-topic, but is that then what your book is about as well? Do you write about all of these things in your in your books?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

So the book I have is called Unarmored. Um you've started to understand that I do things a little differently because I am a little um little fairy, little, you know, we we bring in the spirituality from a um more mystical and magical thing. I love all things, you know, mystic, magic, DD, you know, that sort of sci fi fantasy world. So I wrote my book, and that's what it kind of the vibe is with the warrior goddess saga. You know, we have the queen. Which helps you to do that. We have the quickening, which is an introduction into this unarmoring process. And then each of them also has a quest. So, you know, it's it's kind of making it more fun. There's joy in there, um, making it more about the story, the saga as it unfolds. Um, and my love of all things sci-fi fantasy books that I read constantly. I thought, you know what, I'm gonna kind of pull these two things together and stick it in there. Um, but Unarmored is also very much geeky and nerdy enough for the science because I want to bring the science and the research so that you under, you know, understand that this is now, you know, they are now doing research um and there is science for women, which there wasn't up until the 80s and 90s. They're starting now to put the, you know, to put that in place, but also um that it's being backed, you know, that more spiritual or woo-woo stuff is now being like we talked about EFT tapping. A lot of people find that really woo and really out there, uh, but it's not. It's scientifically proven to reduce your cortisol by 41% in a single session. Like that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Amazing. So for those people that are listening that one have never heard of EFT tapping, or maybe like me who had heard about it for years and years but never experienced it, although now I have and now I'm I'm a believer. Can you walk us through what like what it is, what's the protocol of EFT tapping, and then maybe a little bit more about why or how it works?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yes. So if we think about the unarmoring process, take it back to there, right? So armor weight being that physiological weight, yes, but also emotional stress, trauma, everything all bundled in together. You may understand it more from like excess cortisol. Cortisol is a big buzzword right now. Um, and and that is a key part of it. You and you talked about hormones earlier as well. It's a very key part of it. Um EFT tapping is actually falls under the bridge of what we call energy psychology. I just know that because I went and got certified in it because it sounded also really cool. I'm a big one of energy psychology. Like that sounds so cool. So it's really about polyvagal theory, again, very kind of um a lot of word salad here, but it's what we understand as fight-flight, right? Fight or flight. And that's all about the stress response that's hardwired into our bodies, right? So even though we're in 2026 right now, we, you know, still see something, perceive it as a threat, and our body has a reaction to it. So, you know, and that's the same as if it was a saber-toothed tiger from the ice age, as it is in 2026 when you see a police person and you suddenly think, What have I done wrong? Because that's how we're hard rired, right? So it's still a bat. But for women, and especially women in midlife, our stress is very sensitive, right? Estrogen, for all of its wonder, was a buffer for us. So as estrogen declines, we become more stress sensitive. So, what that means is do you ever just feel like you're more startled? Like everything can startle you. Like, I know you have a cat, so like the cat's just doing something, and then you're like, right? Yeah, anything like that can just startle you and it wouldn't have before. And like, why am I so like raging about whatever, right? So that's that stress piece. So, what cortisol does in the body, okay, stress, this stress and cortisol pretty much interchangeable is a word. Although it's not a bad thing because we need some stress, you know, to do certain things, like cortisol um governs our get up and go. So, why we sometimes feel very stressed in the morning because our get up and go is got up and gone and it's still going. Right. But right, it stays up there the whole day. Um, we do need the cortisol, but too much cortisol in the body leads to a lot of things, okay? So, um, give you some of the short things, you know. We know about cortisol belly, maybe, right? Is that swim ring area around the midsection that won't go away, which is cortisol just pooling in that area. It can also give us a really, really puffy face, which is what happened to me. Um, but also what's happening inside the body is that it's causing things like collagen, which we need so much in midlife. We have like 30% like decline very quickly uh of our own collagen. And uh stress will stop collagen production. Okay, it'll also stop healing. So anything from a cut or a wound, it will stop that. But also how it shows up you can't sleep, you're wired and tired, um you're constantly jittery, all of those things, right? Weight loss resistance, it's not fun, it's not fun. So, what EFT tapping does, emotional freedom technique, is it uses the body meridian line, similar to almost like chakra points, if you ever do some yoga and things like that. And you uh use acupressure, gentle tapping. I always use this hand, I don't do two hands, but say, for example, the two finger points, and then you would tap on the edge of the eyebrow, there's different points on the on your eye socket, etc. Um, so it's a culmination of meridian lines, the acupressure, right? But the other bit that's really cool is that it uses uh emotional discharging for want of a better word, in that you use a phrase that is emotionally charged for you, and you release that charge through saying it out loud and then almost swapping it over or changing it. I'll give you an example. Even though I feel uh fat and pudgy, which is what women say to ourselves quite a lot, I completely, so while I'm tapping, I completely love and accept myself. So we're saying the negative thing out loud, we're releasing that charge, and we're reaffirming it with the affirmation, we're reaffirming it with the acupuncture points, tapping it in, and the breath that you do, all of which scientifically proven to reduce cortisol by up to 40%, which in turn can reduce the stress, the anxiety, all of the things. And a lot of the times the anxiety specifically is because it's that perceived threat, right? So if you're saying something that is negative, but you're trying to take the charge away from it, that's what I find works really well. And it also really works really well if you're in the middle of a panic attack to use that uh tapping. I think anxiety specifically is the karate chop point, uh, which is this one. I'm just tapping so you can see me. Um, and I would have used it during my deep trenches of anxiety and panic attacks that I was having during that time. I am since panic attack free and anxiety. Wouldn't say anxiety free because hello, it's perimenopause, it's not going away 100%, but it's definitely reduced for sure.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah, absolutely. I would say my experience with it, um, one, and I am all for going into the woo-woo and being being that, but I I personally was shocked about how quickly that it worked and how quickly and you know, like how quickly my stress released and my cortisol went down. And I I was, I mean, I had heard amazing things about it, and I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna try because I'll try whatever, but it seems silly because I'm just tapping my tapping myself. And I I had done years of you know, healing touch and all the things. So I believe in how energy moves through our body, but it for me was one of the most impactful um things in terms of the quick response that it gave me. Um, so yes, I'm a I'm a I am a firm believer. So those of you who are listening, if you haven't tried it, want to try it, you know, certainly there's enough research you could do it by yourself. I had a coach kind of walk me through. I'm not certified in it, but um it's look it up, try it.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It's it's and I have I have yeah, EFT, um tapping audios and uh demos, both in my free community, but also in my quickening, which is the little first step and start understanding the unarmoring process, and EFT is in there because it is, as you say, one of the quickest ways to suddenly feel lighter, feel a shift. Um, but we also do like, and then there's somatic-based practices, and some of those can be even more woo. Uh, for example, in my free community today, we did humming, barani humming uh for toning your vagal nerve, which um vagus nerve, reset, vagus nerve, again, very buzzy words that you would hear now, but all you need to know is that that's kind of where the fight or flight um you know system is triggered from. So you want to look after the vagal nerve. Um we did humming today, and I'm sure there were people out there thinking, what the hell is this woman doing? Humming on the internet. Um, but I actually have to say it's one of the things that I like to do because it's something I would have done naturally. And what you'll find with a lot of these practices is that they're actually a lot of them are really ancient, right? From breath work, from sound healing, which we use a lot as well in our community, uh, humming. Um, you know, so a lot of the shaking that we do with the somatic uh practices, um, you know, again, if you have a cat or a dog, watch them. They shake and shake themselves off regularly from standing to sitting. They'll move in a way that just takes away that that little um that little negative charge or the the you know stress stored in their bodies as they move and they do that naturally. But I remember the first time, you know, looking at these things, going, okay, you're shaking your hips there, that looks really weird. I'm not doing that. That looks really weird. And then I realized, first of all, nobody is watching because you do this in your bed before you get up. And what if it did work, right? What if trying to release the you know the trauma stored in my hips? All I had to do was a little bit of this, you know, shaking and moving and rocking motion, and then I'd feel better. And then I thought, right, well, I'll give it a go. And then when it worked, you're like, okay, well, okay, fine. I guess it's something I'm gonna add into my, you know, my daily uh routines, and that's that's how it starts, right? Is that if you believe in it and you can, you know, convince other people that you know what, just try it. You're sitting in your bed, what are you gonna do? Um, and then they start to feel the sense of the relief, the lightness, the unstuckness feeling, um, you know, and then it's compounding that. So EFT in isolation, is that gonna completely remove your armor weight? No. But is it gonna have an impact and make you feel lighter? Yes. Are the somatic practices gonna help? For sure. But again, you know, there's there's that whole layering of the elements to it. You know, you still need to look at, you know, the inflammation in the body and maybe how you're eating or strength training. Are you building the muscles to help to stop, you know, the injuries reoccurring, for example? So it is, as I said earlier, like intertwined. It needs to be holistic.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah, and I love, well, so many things about what you just said. One, yes, a lot of these practices are ancient practices. It's not new things. We are just rediscovering, or maybe in some senses, renaming, but rediscovering what actually worked. And I also love the fact um, you know, that you said, yeah, look at our look at our animals that we that we live with. I do happen and I talk about Sam a bunch. Um, I live with I live with a cat. Um, and honestly, I I think about now that I'm thinking about, you're right. He gets up and he stretches and he shakes, right? I hadn't thought about that before. So I'm gonna look into that whole shaking, but clearly releasing some energy. What I do often talk about, and he is different than any other cat that I've ever had, which I suppose I'd needed right now because animals choose. He actually chose me, right? When I went to the Humane Society, told me his name was Sam. I'm like, okay. Um, but every time he walks anywhere, he puts a little leap. Like he'll just like be walking and then he'll just leap. And he is the leaping for joy. He's he's leaping for joy, seriously. I mean, it makes me giggle every time that I see it. But it's these things again. I said we were meant to have this conversation with the synergies that we have. I'm Sam chose me for some reason and that does this little joyful leap all the time. But um I was coming to something else, coming back to what you were saying, and that wasn't a very good transition. But I love the things that you were saying and layering all of these things together because I do believe you're right, it's not just one protocol that is going to solve our problems or get us to, we can't be holistic without layering all these pieces in, right? What are we putting into our bodies? How are we, how are we directing the energy? What are we thinking about? So all so I love the I love the trifecta, I love all those pieces. And that so you talked about you talked about humming, you talked about EFT, you talked about the shaking, breath work. Are there other tools that as you are working with women that either are on your free part of your free community or that you think about like here are things to look into or things that we could be trying?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah, so um in the free community, I do a tune-up Tuesday. So anybody can come in and do that and do a little practice with me. I also have on a Tuesday my what I call my wellness alchemy kitchen, which is um in my stories, and that's where I do talk specifically about um products, though I want to put a caveat in with the products. Products and different supplements and things like that. Yes, they are the optimization piece in a lot of time, like we still need to do the basics well. We need to move well, we need to sleep well, we need to um have our gut health be good, right? Those are the three, especially for the unarmoring process. But we also can do with the help, right? If there's a little bit of a shortcut that's gonna save us some time or energy, then I'm all for it. So inside the wellness alchemy kitchen, I talk about um specifically about three major things that have really revolutionized things for me. So we talk about protein before caffeine and how to get more protein. So um there's a meme going around the internet about how you know uh people are feeling more peer pressure to have protein in midlife than they did of taking drugs in their in their teenage years. And I'm like, yep, hi, I'm the problem. It's me. I am the protein dealer here because I have been talking about protein for years and years and years, um, especially as somebody who's plant-based, that was a complete game changer for me. But I've created um a tool, I suppose, called our green goddess pruthy, which is a protein smoothie as a way to help boost the protein and get our greens in and get some fabulous things in there. So that's you know, since I've been doing Warrior Goddess Kettlebell training, the Prouthi's been there, but the concept of protein before caffeine is definitely an armor weight read, as we call it inside inside the the guides. So um I talk about the different proteins, you know, the one that I take personally, but more about why it's important in midlife specifically. Um, collagen and collagen, again, very buzzy uh word, and trying to get that right. So for me, and I'm sure for you, finding a plant-based collagen was impossible because it didn't exist. Um, so I had looked at different sources of collagen in the wild. So I took a lot of spirulina for a very long time, which is a natural-based kind of collagen per se, when taken with uh alongside other proteins. Um, but I found a plant-based collagen and I'm in love with it, and it's been working really well. So it is something that, but again, not an isolation because although we need to ingest the collagen to increase our collagen, we also need to work with the stress. So I created an audio which is also free if they want to grab that, called my restoration audio, which teaches us about collagen production from a we need to consume it, but we also need to put our bodies in restoration state rather than survival state, so that the collagen is actually working because cortisol will just block collagen production, doesn't matter how much you take or what it's going on. If you have a really high uh cortisol, it's just gonna eat through the collagen basically, um, and not actually serve you. So there's things like that that you know, if they want some free advice or free ways to uh find out a little bit more. Of course, the book is a very low-cost way for them to start to learn this process. Um, and as I said, I have the quiz. Um, if you want to learn a little bit more about your own warrior goddess archetype, um they can come along and enter the warrior goddess saga and start with the quiz. Uh, then we have the quests and the quickening. And yes, I chose Q words because it sounds really cool, but it also worked out really well.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

No, I love it. I love it. I do have one question though. Like, so when you say, and because I agree with the whole protein before before caffeine, do you have you found or do you recommend an amount of protein that that women are getting before their protein or just Yes?

SPEAKER_00 39:26

So, well, my I have um, so the other program that I still have is my sexy strong program. So it is for body shape change and building strength, and it still has kettlebells in it, but a lot of the time women aren't ready for that yet, right? They haven't got the capacity to be consistent enough to follow a a wellness program, a fitness program, right? So that's where my other programs have come into place, the consistency coven, for example. But one of the methods that I teach in there, other than the four-step uh formula for body shape change, um, is about the 3030-31 method, right? So 30 grams of protein at every meal and one extra shake should do it, right? But that doesn't have to, that's minimum. So, for example, I talked about it this morning on my wellness alchemy kitchen. I would take nearly 50 grams of protein first thing in the morning because it happens to be two scoops and maybe a bit of peanut butter and almond milk, and before you know it, you're at 50, easy peasy. There is no study, and before people come at the oh, too much protein, there is no study out there that says the body can't metabolize that much protein if it's good protein, and if so you're getting a good source, um, and also specifically for women in midlife. Tim Ferris, if you know any, you know, maybe know Tim Ferriss, he wrote a book called The Four Hour Body, which was a lot of my stuff that I did back in the day with trying to get protein and understanding protein for metabolism boosting. He did a study on his mother, so not a study, but like a you know, worked with his mom. And uh, she was in her 50s and she couldn't lose the weight, and he was like, hmm, there must be something about this. So he went deep diving into that and found that when he changed her first meal to up to 50 grams of protein within one hour of waking specifically and not being blocked by the caffeine, for example, um, in addition to strength training, which he used kettlebell training, which I thought was awesome, um made her body change very quickly. So I like to say if we aim for 30 grams of protein at every meal plus an extra shake, that's about 120 grams a day. But minimally, women need to be getting at least 100 grams a day of protein to even be like, you know, in good stand for everything from building lean muscle, which is about survival and longevity, you know, um, but also nervous system regulation, also blood sugar regulation and insulin, you know, regulation as well. So um, protein is our friends, ladies. We have to get our heads around that. It's not for bodybuilders. Don't even get me started on creatine, which I also talked about today, but you know, it's not for not just for bodybuilders, you know, protein is important, and you can make that taste awesome. That's why we have um today's mine was uh peanut butter and you know, chocolate. So hello. But I also added some cacao in there, some flaxseeds in there, and some creatine. So it can be like a it's a whole meal, but it's ticking all the boxes.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

I love it, and you are speaking my language absolutely, in terms of getting that getting enough protein in right away in the morning, right? Creatine for sure. But yeah, so I am I am a hundred percent, a hundred percent with you on all of those things. I and I tell everybody about the creatine. I'm like, it is it, and I love the research about creatine, not just for our muscles, but clearly our brain is a muscle too. So it is for brain muscles.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

So everybody, everybody should be taking creatine, especially if you're in perimenopause and if you're neurodivergent, those two categories, and if you're overlapping on both of those, 100%. Please, please, please take it. Um, the other thing that I would also suggest if you are looking at, because I I you know, do I take a lot of supplements? You need to and I don't know how to answer that, but uh I take the ones that I need. But the one that I've also been trialing recently, which has been amazing, is an Ashwanganda and mushroom complex together, and it has revolutionized again my brain. So um, stress levels, I'm just a lot less spiky, is how I describe it. You know, I am a redhead, so fieriness is in my veins, but I'm a lot less want to kill everybody type five, and I think that's definitely the ashwanganda, and then the mushroom complex. I talk about mushrooms all of the time. I've talked about it on my podcast. I love me functional mushrooms, I think mushrooms are the way forward in a lot of ways. I know. Again, they're very buzzy right now, but there's a reason because they're working, because they work right in midlife. But again, choose quality, choose how you're getting it. Um, but like the lion's mane, the quadriceps, the rishis, you know, whether you're having it in like a little coffee blend. I know a lot of people do that. I just take it as a supplement because otherwise I'll forget because hello, I have a slippery brain. So for me, it's that's my that's my morning, you know, it's collagen, it's you know, the protein, uh, the creatine, and then I take my functional mushrooms. And then in the evening, it's mostly just again, magnesium. Every woman needs to be taking magnesium. Um, and then depending on if you're going through extra stress, um, L-theanine can I I wouldn't tell I take L-theanine as well as ashwangandha, kind of pick which one, but I couldn't find a good ashwangandha for a while that wasn't a part of everything else and quite costly. Um, I also wanted it for my son who is also ADHD and was high anxiety at the time, and I was like, hey, let's share this, let's try it out. Yeah, and that really worked for him too. Um, I think I need it more because my brain right now is it's it's adjusted is the reorganization process of whatever's going on in there needs as much help as it possibly can. And I think um that's the little happy little, you know, group that I found that is doing the job.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

I love it. I love it. Well, oh my goodness, we could talk for hours, I'm sure, about all of these things. You are a wealth of knowledge. And what I again, why I really appreciate that you have um, it's not just about the um the movement, it's not just about what you're putting in your body, but combining that with a psychology piece of it, with a spirituality piece. I think as especially as midlife women, we are complex enough to know that it's not just one thing that is going to bring us um well, longevity, joy, back in a balance, whatever, whatever words that we want to use, but that we need we need a holistic um solution to where we're to where we're at. So I love that your um that your protocol, if I can call it that, your methodology covers all of those spaces. So is there anything else that um kind of as we wind down that either we didn't cover or that you just are like this is I want to leave people with this?

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Like, what is your I think the thing that I hear all the time with clients, um, and I wanna like really help women to realize is that I hear this all the time. I don't feel like myself. Things that were easier before are not easy now. Um, what brought me joy before doesn't bring me joy now. Um, what was something that was meaningful is you know is more difficult, or all of these things, right? Or my body's not moving in the way, you know. I'm looking in the mirror and I don't recognize myself, whether my face doesn't look like myself, my body doesn't look like myself, all of these things. So the first thing I want to say is you are not alone. This is the transition, right? This is the reawakening that you're going through. Um, and it's not gonna be like this forever. I think we also need to hear that, and everything is gonna be okay. We also need to hear that. Um, but that I like to see this more as rather than that midlife crisis, it's the midlife reawakening, it's the initiation, it's the transition. And with that comes opportunity, with that comes um maybe a call to rise, a call to arms, whatever that might be. Because the piece that we don't often see is that or hear about is that now, you know, as we go into this transition and on the other side, you know, what are we gonna be doing with that energy that first of all, you know, hormone cycles we're taking up. As our roles as caretaker, etc., changes, what are we gonna do with that energy and that time? You know, as we evolve through all of that, it is gonna open us up to this new identity of who are we now? Who do we want to be, what is important to us, and that will have a deeper meaning, a deeper connection to something. And what that could be is the calling that that you've always wanted to do, the the hobby, the activity, the adventure, the new changing career, the writing a book, the you know, the traveling the world, the the maybe, you know, it's the cause, the fight, the social justice, the whatever that might be. And this is what I want for us as women. I want us to move into this new whatever adventure, let's call it, together, and together is stronger. We regulate better together, we we we know that we're stronger together, but also you know, understand that there is this role for us, um, just as, and the example I'm gonna give in in matri, you know, matri cycle rather than the patriarchy, the matriarchy, um, you know, groups or where you see it in nature, let's look at nature again, and orcas, pods of orcas, for example, post-menopause, the orcas become the caretakers of the whole pod, right? They are still strong, they are still able, they are still, you know, the the caretaker. And when there is a grandmother postmenopausal orca in a pod, that pod is stronger, it lives longer, there's less death or injury or issues with that pod. So, what is the pod that we could be protecting? And that is what I want you to think about today. So, as you step into this new era, whether that be the warrior goddess era, whether that be your warrior guardian era, which is like the extra level of who do I want to be? Uh, what can that look like from you? Um, and what can what can that be in this world and who could you be in that world?

SPEAKER_02 50:16

I love that. I what a beautiful way to end. And I really just want to invite everybody who is listening that feels as though they are in that space. Um, I love the words that you used, but that they have this opportunity to explore where their energies are currently and where their energies are gonna be, and what a what um what an opportunity that they have to explore that with you. So if they are looking to do that and they are ready, where do they find you?

SPEAKER_00 50:49

So um, my website is like a fun little choose your own adventure. So uh you can enter the Warrior Goddess Saga at thewarrior goddess sag.com. No W's, we're just going straight in there, the warrior goddess saga.com. Um, you can choose from the quiz, the quest, and the quickening, and of course, you have the unarmored book in there. Uh, we have a free tribe community, our warrior goddess tribe community, uh, where I go live every week with our Tuesday tune-up, and also I have a podcast called the Goddess Got Gulls Podcast, uh, which is all things to do with armor weight, uh, but we'll also talk about body shape change, midlife transition, nutrition, strength training, all of the above as well. Um, and of course, you can come and find me on Instagram, Lisa underscore barwise. But I think the best first step is do you want to find out your warrior goddess archetype? You know, is that gonna help to shed some light on a little bit about who you are, your strengths, your self-sabotages? And you can start by taking the quiz.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Beautiful. Well, I invite everybody to take that opportunity. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with us today. Um, I will put all of that information in the show notes so you can check that out. Um, and once again, this is Rachel with Joy Unfiltered from my heart to yours. I am celebrating you today and every day. So have fun, live well, enjoy.