Ep6. Deep Nourishment with Clara Wisner | Why Most Women Are Under-Nourished

In this episode, Liv is joined by Clara Wisner for a rich and deeply grounded conversation on nourishment, female health, and what it really means to build a life your body can hold.

Together, they explore Clara’s personal journey from deep undernourishment and burnout into the work she now teaches, supporting women to return to the foundations of care, safety, and embodied capacity. They speak about why so many women are living from depletion, the impact of consistently under-eating, how nourishment affects mood, boundaries, self-leadership, and what becomes possible when a woman is truly resourced.

They also explore cycle tracking, feminine physiology, and the importance of learning to know yourself through the body rather than trying to live from the mind alone.

This is a conversation for any woman who feels stretched, tired, reactive, disconnected from her body, or ready to build a steadier and more nourishing way of living.

In this episode, we cover:

•  Clara’s nourishment story and how it shaped her work 
•  Why so many women are undernourished without realising it 
•  The impact of under-eating on mood, hormones, and nervous system capacity 
•  Self-leadership, safety, and feeling at home in the female body 
•  Why cycle tracking can be such a powerful tool for intimacy and self-trust 
•  Clara’s new programme, Deep Nourishment - to find our more about the live course starting on 30th March find it here. Use code OLIVIA for a 10% discount at checkout. 

About Our Guest:  

Clara Wisner is a mother, wife, and woman who has lived all that she teaches and guides. She is a nutritionist who teaches nourishment for embodiment and nervous system flourishing.

She blends her knowledge, experience and training around nutrition, minerals, cellular biology and feminine physiology with her deep practice of divine union in service to creation for Life. 

Find Clara Belize Wisner on Instagram. 

Find Clara's Substack Remothering here.

Find Olivia Lara Owen on Instagram here.

Find Meat & Monogamy with Olivia here. 

Book a 75 minute Deep Dive to work with Olivia here. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Meat and Monogamy podcast. I'm a gracious host, Olivia Lara Owen, known by many as Liv, and known to my lovely guest today as Liv. So I am so excited we are in for a huge treat today. We have the gorgeous Clara with us. And Clara is a really dear and special person in my life, both as a friend and someone I have been deeply alongside on my own path over the last few years. And I'm so blessed to have Clara in my life. But also as a client, I have been the very lucky recipient of Clara's beautiful wisdom. So if you don't know who Clara is, I am just going to do a little uh bio read because I think I think it's important that we, you know, really own who we are. And so welcome, Clara. I'm just gonna say that Clara is a mother, a wife, and a woman who has lived all that she teaches and guys. And I can really attest to that because there is something so inspiring about Clara and just in the way that you you are all that you teach. And um Clara is a teacher and embodiment of deep feminine nourishment. And for those of you that are familiar with my journey, you know that this is so um so deeply the so deeply the thread that I care so much about. And it's also one of the reasons I created this podcast, a big part of the Meet and Monogamy podcast is we're in service to nourishment over here. So Clara is such a fabulous skeft, and you know, the the way that I've experienced Clara's work is she works with feminine physiology and feminine health in this really specific Clara-esque way, and we'll be speaking more about what that is today. Um, but there's a specific way that Clara works with the bioenergetic framework and specifically working with energetic principles in the realm of female health. And so if you're like, I don't know what that is, and I'm really curious about that. Um, my senses by the end of our conversation today, you will you will know more. Um, Clara is also a resident of Montana. I have yet to visit, but I will one day, and her and her gorgeous husband, Sean, have this really stunning home that they call the sanctuary, um, with their two beautiful girls, Alma and Maya. So welcome, Clara. It is so lovely to have you here. Finally, thanks for having me. Yes, we've been wanting to do this for for quite a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. So we have some threads we want to speak about today. And I think I'm sure we're gonna go wherever the wind takes us because that's really how we roll. But I just want to set the intention that, you know, we've been speaking in the lead up to having this conversation about what do we want to talk about? Because we really could talk about so many things. Um, but I I, you know, was saying to you that um, you know, there's a really important body of work that's coming through you right now around nourishment. And we've been speaking about it through the lens of how do you have the capacity to actually nourish yourself as a woman? And how do you live your life in integrity with that? And so that is sort of our frame of today. It's it's it's really bringing in some key key principles through Clara's lens about the key principles of being nourished as a woman. But we're gonna specifically talk about some of the elements of like capacity and you know, how do you build your capacity in a practical sense? And we're also gonna speak about my journey of working with you. We're gonna speak about um your nourishment journey and like what got you here. Um, and and then we're also gonna at the end speak a little bit about this really exciting body of work that's available that you are, you know, on the pre. I mean, I think it's like launching in a few days on the precipice of yeah, something brand new for you. Yeah. Okay. So, Clara, let's just dive right in. Obviously, I know you well, but for those of you that have never met Clara, never heard your story, what is important for people to know about nourishment? Like, what is like take us a little bit into your story around the specific theme and like how fundamental it's been for your life? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Well, I always talk about how I teach nourishment because of how undernourished I was. Um, you know, this idea of like your medicine being the hole you crawled out of. Uh, I really feel like there probably, well, there's always someone that's less nourished, I guess, but like I was very, very undernourished for a very long time. Um, I grew up actually with a father who did he was he's an agricultural economist. So quality of food, or at least uh like organic farming, for example, was like a big topic, like in our house, like around the dinner table. Um, my dad really wanted to be a farmer, but he became an agricultural economist to like make money. Um, and so I did have that kind of and and he loved cooking, he loved food, like he would never buy margin, he would always buy butter. He was like, that's insane. Like who would buy margin? Like he was super into quality, but also like just kind of a foodie, you know. Um, so I did have that growing up, but my mom didn't like to cook, wasn't really into that food. It felt like food was kind of an inconvenience. You know, if my dad was gone, we would a lot of times like just get fast food or something. Um so, and they weren't, you know, they were busy, they were both working full-time, like, you know, they we lived away from family. So it's very that very much that nuclear family, uh, you know, not a lot of bandwidth. And so I grew up eating a lot of like convenience food too, like bagels and cereal and frozen burritos was like my adolescence, basically. Um, so from early on, you know, not eating enough, not really being like shown or modeled, especially from my mother, you know. I do think that obviously my dad modeled some things, but um, but there is some, there is a kind of modeling that comes from the mother and nourishment really comes from the mother. And my work is in service to the mother because that's where all nourishment is derived ultimately. Um, and so yeah, so I think, you know, wasn't eating enough, started playing sports, you know, I had a long drive into school, I lived in a rural place. So it was like getting up super early, going to practice, um, you know, not eating enough at school or eating a lot of junk food, and then like coming home and you know, not sleeping enough. Like there was just there, the idea of nourishment wasn't even on the table. It was like, how do you just do all the things you have to do? You know, get by. Um, and then when I was 13, I really I had this obsession with the body, and I actually like would my parents had this book that I've told this story a lot, but like my my parents had this book that was called Where There Is No Doctor, and it was about how to do like surgery and like doctor things, like in the jungle. And I would just look at this book, I was like obsessed with it. I was obsessed with the human body. I was like, what you know, how what makes it work? Like, what are the organs? Like, how like I was really interested in like what how the body worked, and that healthy curiosity turned into an obsession around 13, where I started to recognize, like, oh, my body doesn't look like that body, and like I I want to look like the girls in the magazine. This was like, you know, the early 2000s of like um or like late 90s of like cosmopolitan things like that, all the workouts and the crunches and like that kind of stuff, and the you know, Britney Spears with her midriff showing, like that, that era. Um and yeah, so it so this healthy curiosity turned into this very unhealthy obsession. And I started controlling my food and I started over exercising and I started to be really harsh towards my body, and that basically just continued on until I was um like mid-20s. And through that, I also added, you know, substances, alcohol, men, um, all the ways that I could kind of uh yeah, control myself. And in in that way, it's like I was just so undernourished, right? Like that's going through like adolescence with controlling food, over exercising, alcohol and drugs, really stressing out my liver and kidneys. Um, and then like, yeah, not sleeping, continuing on into college, just really pushing myself, always being like pretty high achiever, even with all of the substances and things. So by the time I was like 23 or so, like I was burnt out. I actually remember as I've been through my nourishment journey, I remember being like 12 and not, or like maybe it was like 13, somewhere between 12 and 15, you know, that range. I just remember like feeling so tired all the time and like falling asleep on the couch. If we would go on vacation, or you know, anytime I got out of my normal routine, I was just like so exhausted. Um and I think that was like my first kind of experience of burnout now that I looked at hindsight and hindsight. Um, and then I think I was dealing with some level of burnout from then on. Um and yeah, by the time I was 24, I yeah, had been, you know, controlling my food intake, using alcohol and drugs, um, not taking care of myself on any level uh for like almost a decade, over a decade. And that's when I I kind of had like a spiritual awakening at that time, long story short. And I really heard like I have to learn to take care of myself or else I will die. Like that was basically the message. Um and that phrase, like take care of yourself, was really like I was like, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that I don't that's never occurred to me to take care of myself, other than maybe like, oh, let me eat an extreme diet so that I can be healthy. Uh this was deeper. It was like, it was like this thread of nourishment coming through for the first time. Like, how what would it look like to actually take care of yourself? Um and that was long story short, like there's many years in between of learning to take care of myself and motherhood and all this stuff, but that was the first time that I kind of I would say like nourishment spoke to me in a way and was like, you can do this differently.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

You know, yeah. You're describing like I think such a relatable, I want to call it like a problem, like women, you know, like us who are kind of living full lives and you know, doing, you know, on the kind of track of life in all of its uh busyness and all of its milestones, you know, kind of full of ambition, like doing, you know, I know, you know, some of your background and what you've achieved in your life and some of the things you've done, right? Like, and I find this with the women I work with, you know, you're not lacking in desire or ambition. There's kind of like a lot of that. Um, but what's often happening is you're like really under-resourced and really trying to build a life in a body, like this full life, this expansive life in a body that can't sustain it, in a body that's like depleted, neglected, under-resourced, undernourished. And then it's like at some point things just stop working. And like that, you know, that point you were describing, you're just like it just it starts to just not work anymore. And you know, what I see is, you know, women start getting really overwhelmed and just sort of stuck and not really knowing what to do, right? Um, and I think that um it's beautiful that moment you're describing of like, mm-H, like that thread of nourishment is starting to come in. And it's you know, someone might hear nourishment and think we're talking just about something like food, right? But I think what we're talking about here is something deeper. It's like, how do you build a body? How do you build a life that can actually sustain you and sustain creating what you say you want?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah. And I'm just thinking this, just as you were saying that, like it's such a it's such a mind-driven, like um this ambition, right? It's like I just have to get the good grades, I just have to be the good kid, I just have to show up in the way that society wants me to be. I have to, I have to get the good job. I have to, um, and there's such, it's this is really to me like the missing, it is the missing element of the mature feminine, the mother, the, the, the, the beginning of nourishment, like I said. It's like, no, you build, you build from the body up, like not from the mind down. Because if you build from the mind down, then it's you're it's a recipe for burnout. It's a recipe for um for yeah, this this kind of like disconnection from our true capacity. And I was just before this, I was explaining this concept to a client, which is it's a Chinese medicine concept of kidney energy versus digestive energy. And kidney energy in Chinese medicine is something that you're born with. It's very lineage connected, it's connected to like your parents' lineage, like what was their kidney energy like. Um, and it's also connected to like the weather uh that was going on when your parents conceived you and the energy between them when they conceived you. So there's a lot of kind of uh even more esoteric like things that go into kidney energy, but basically you're born with this finite amount of kidney energy, and people different people have different amounts, but it's finite in in Chinese medicine. You cannot build more. And this energy is for like extreme situations, it's for survival, it's for you know, you're in a car accident and you have to get a car off. It's this adrenaline, you know, like the mom lifting the car off her baby energy. Uh, or it's also just, you know, to get you out the door to like these little bursts that like you just have to do sometimes in life. And then digestive energy is like what you get from food. It's like our it's like I put in these inputs and this is constantly being re rebuilt, recirculated. It's not finite. Um, but what I see is so many, you know, this mind down idea. So many women are running off of kidney energy. And then in that framework, and again, I'm not like Chinese medicine is not my not what I was trained in, but I I love it and I pull a lot from it. Um but in that in that framework, it's like women are run using all of their finite kidney energy before they even have a baby, you know. And the idea is that you really can't age well unless you kind of have like stores of kidney energy. Um, because if you use it all up, and you know, just my life, that little bit I shared with you, all kidney energy, right? Not eating enough, working out all the time, doing a bunch of drugs, like drugs are definitely gonna use that kidney energy. Um and yeah, and then getting to, you know, motherhood, which is kind of where I am now, very much in that in that major point in life of motherhood with small with young kids. It's like there's just there's just such massive amounts of burnout and exhaustion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

What do you think these like really common ways that women are undernourished and like under-supported? Like what what would the what would the kind of basic things be that maybe someone doesn't even realize?

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Well, I and I've been heartbreaking about this, and it's almost like so simple that I think people just don't listen or don't hear it, but it's just eating enough. Like every almost every woman I see, unless they've kind of already been listening to me or someone that's speaking about this stuff, are not eating enough. Like, um, you know, they're eating about 1700 calories, I would say on average. And I have people, you know, they come in, they track their food for three days. So I'm getting actual data, and you know, there's all sorts of problems with that data, I know, but 1700 calories is not enough for a grown woman. That's like enough, that's like what a like six-year-old should be eating. And yes, a six-year-old is growing and blah, blah, blah. But they're also like 50 pounds. So if you're like 150 pounds, like, you know, imagine what you need to eat. So, so the main thing is is yeah, and and that it, I think it does come from this mind down, right? It's like if I just do all the things, then like I'll have what I need, and then I can take care of my body instead of I take care of my body, and then I get what I need, right? Like the so it's it's it's so many things. It's like, you know, forgetting to eat, like having lifestyles that do not center food. I mean, that's like it's so foreign to me at this point in my life, but I obviously work with women every day, and it's just it's a thing. Like, people are like, I just forgot to eat lunch, I just forgot to eat. Oh, I just, and it's just like, and I think back to like, yeah, like my younger days and even my family life. And it was like food wasn't centered. It's like get grab something to eat while you get on with the next thing. Uh, and because our food is so convenience centered, I mean, you can just get food so quick. Um drive-through, you know, Instacart. Like, you could, it's so quick nowadays to get basically anything you want. Um, which is maybe one argument as to like, why are we not eating? Uh, but that being said, there's so much going into like the preparation of your own food. Anyway, so I yeah, I think a lot of people just do not center. Maybe a better way to say it is people do not center food in their life. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

I think that is so true. What do you think? Like, what would you say is the impact of that? Not just like under eating, but consistently under eating, like a woman who's consistently under eating, not centering food, and you know, undernourished, like what what is the impact in the body? Like, what happens?

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I mean, yeah, it's like it really could be the root cause of anything and everything, like from mood stuff to true diagnosis to um uh insomnia to uh injury, pain in the body. Like you could trace, I'm not saying all of it is, but like you could trace think about it like this. It's like food is life, like food is we need food to survive. If we don't eat, we'll we will die. We know that everyone knows that on some level. Um but your body is rebuilding itself all the time, so it's you know, we're not just machines, like we are we can heal ourselves. So there's you know, trillions of processes happening in the body that all require energy. And if you don't eat enough, then you don't have enough energy to do all of those processes, right? And so it will, your body will triage and it will say, This process is important, this process is not important. As to like what those two processes are in any one person, it could be different, like um, and the extremity of under eating, extremity of under eating too. Like, you know, obviously someone who's full-blown anorexic is gonna shut down much quicker than someone who's eating, you know, 1700 calories every day for a decade. Like they may not get that sick immediately, but they're gonna start to have thyroid issues, they're gonna start to lose their hair, they're gonna start to get aches and pains and have psycho abnormalities, maybe have fertility issues, they're gonna age quicker than uh. Someone who didn't. So it's just like this is called a low energy availability state. That's what kind of you know people talk about it in LEA. So a low energy availability state is literally related to so many, so many health issues, so many mood issues. And I'll just give an example. I recently have been doing fat loss phases, and that's a whole other subject that I'll just put over there. But basically, I'm intentionally consciously going into a calorie deficit as someone who has intentionally consciously eaten enough for years. Uh, but I do this short term for six weeks. And immediately the change in my capacity to be with my kids was my kids are six and four. Um, like my patience, it was like night and day, like just within a few days of having. So I'm just thinking to myself, what about all these women who, you know, don't know, they don't know, they think they're eating enough. Maybe they're eating three meals a day, and like they're like, Well, I think I'm eating enough. And they're constantly on edge. They're constantly like, ah, that noise, like, stop it. Ah, ah, and they're and they feel like they're such bad moms, you know. They're like, oh, like I'm always angry at my kids, I'm always like yelling at them. What's wrong with me? I just need to like shape up. And it's like, maybe you're just hungry. Like uh that was that was just an extreme example that I just noticed so quickly, like going from eating enough to a calorie deficit and how much it changed how I was with my kids, how I was with my partner, how I thought about my life, you know, and I know I'm doing this consciously, so it's not like I'm aware, but I'm still like there's like depressive thoughts. There's like it's just it's so hard on the body to not have enough food, yeah, not be eating enough.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Yeah, I had this moment yesterday where um, you know, I I live with my nieces and nephews, and you know, they are six, nine, and eleven. And and on Wednesdays, I'm now doing the dinner. And so we usually all eat together around like four o'clock when they come back. And I noticed that when I am the one cooking rather than the one just receiving the food because my mom will cook and my brother will cook, it's really hard for me to sit down with them after preparing the food and dishing up for everybody and sitting with them while they eat their food. It's really hard for me to sit there and eat enough food. Like there's some kind of stress that I feel in the responsibility of making sure everyone else is having their food that I'm okay, on days that I'm cooking, I think I need to eat separately because I know that I'm distracted from what I need to eat. And then an hour later, I was at a meeting and I was like, I'm gonna have to have a second dinner. Like, I'm absolutely fucking starving. But I didn't want to. I was like, oh, what a drag having to eat again at like nine, 10 o'clock. But I was like, I did not have enough dinner because I my mind was on everybody else. And so it it's a it's a kind of like response to stress. And if you know that certain times of the day where you are in that like childcare moment or you're in that like fast-paced dinner time moment, or maybe it's the school run, that can you carve out another time to sit down and eat? Can you eat first, like before they get home, or can you eat before they wake up and like actually make sure that you know you are taken care of before you start taking care of everybody else?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yes, yeah. And I think like the more you, you know, because it's like, yes, that heightened. I've definitely had that experience where you're like cooking for people and then you're like, I don't even want this, because I'm like, oh. But like there is a baseline of nervous system regulation, I think that happens when there's consistent food coming in that you don't that you just you get hungry, like, yes, you'll have these days that are stressful and you don't feel hungry, but yeah, just lack of hunger when you're eating 17 to 1400 calories a day, like that's not you're not not hungry. That's stress hormones, like very clearly. Um and yeah, if if you're not so it's like I just heard this recently somewhere, but it's like if you don't eat and you get to the point where your body has to start to break down tissue for blood sugar regulation. So one of those things that's really important for your body to do, that it will always triage, is blood sugar regulation. You know, think about diabetics, those are deadly diseases because our blood sugar being balanced is very, very important for all sorts of functions in our body. So if we don't eat regularly, like about four or five hours for someone who's healthy, you will run out of your glycogen stores for the most part, and your body will have to start to break down tissue to balance your blood sugar, basically to make glucose. So to break down blood sugar or to break down tissue, your your body has to excrete some stress hormones. So, and the adaption is, you know, if you were in a cave and you know, you couldn't go get your berries or your tubers or whatever, because there was like a saber-tooth tiger, right? It's like our bodies adapted so that we could have some energy to go and get food, yeah. You know, so this so we don't get enough food, and then the saber-tooth tiger's there and we're waiting and we're like hypervigilant, and then it goes away and we have to go out and we have to get food. You know, there's like there's we have energy to go and get the food. So if we're not going and getting the food, then our body thinks uh there must be a saber-tooth tiger, like there must be something going on that you don't need that food. So it's an adaption to not feel hungry when we're stressed. It is, but it's it's really not serving us in uh this day and age when food's like readily available all the time.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah, it's so good. I uh it reminds me of the like three coffees before lunch, no breakfast. You know, they're like, I never feel any hunger. Not hungry till like one o'clock in the afternoon. And um, you know, there's such a switch. Uh, when that was I I certainly was that at some point in my life. There's such a switch when you start waking up and you start eating and how hungry you actually become when you are used to having breakfast and you're used to having your coffee after, like you stimulate after you're nourished and you've met your baseline, like how different that experience is.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

That's such a good micro example of what I was saying, like the mind down versus the body up. It's like we were brought up in this culture where like we just we go and achieve the things and then we get like to have the rest or whatever. Yeah, but it's like no, you nourish first, like that's true capacity, is like I'd say it's like it's like what's in overflow? Like I'm overflowing with creative energy. I'm overflowing with nurturing energy. I'm over, and obviously, like realistically, we're never gonna like that's not the true all the time. But that should be that should be the intention, you know, is like how can I fill myself up so that I have enough to give instead of how do I just give, give, give, give, give? And then hopefully down the line, someone fills me up, you know, and that's like the call, like just chugging three coffees and getting to work instead of taking the time to make yourself breakfast, and then you could have the simulating coffee and get to work.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Well, let's talk about like what becomes available when like what becomes available to a woman who is nourished, like properly nourished versus when she's not. Like, how does being nourished change your capacity? Like, what does shift? What becomes possible? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Well, I mean, just speaking from personal experience, um, I mean, my entire personality changed. Like the first, and there's a lot of stories and you know, ups and downs, but the first time I actually started eating enough. So 13, I started, you know, controlling my food and I would binge and I would starve and you know, all sorts of things in between, but never was I consistently eating. Um when I went when I first went to nutrition school and I learned about blood sugar and things like women's hormones, I started eating. I started eating more of like a paleo diet. And but for the first time, it was like I was still controlling food, but there it was like I could eat as much of these things, like I could have as much raw milk as I wanted, I could have as much meat as I wanted, I could have as much almond flour fucking cookies as I wanted. Um even that was like I was like, wow, I'm not this moody bitch. Like I just thought I was crazy. Like I was like, I am so emotionally unstable, you know. That was my story. Um, and you know, drugs and alcohol just exacerbated it. And um, I just always felt so uncomfortable, you know, was like uh like frustrated, sad, emotional emo. And um, and yeah, when I first started again eating a plethora of certain things, I was like, wow, my mood just completely stabilized. So doesn't mean that I don't have ups and downs. It's just like since then I have been so much more grounded and stable. And that then leads to my relationships being grounded, more grounded and stable. And that leads to me being able to, you know, set boundaries. That was huge. Like that kind of came after that was like, oh, I can I understand what boundaries are, I understand how to set them. There's obviously so much learning that goes along with that, but like I could my capacity to set boundaries, yeah, increased. Yeah. Um, and just like to to to like do the work, you know, I've always been like a very spiritual person and a big seeker. And I feel like there was like so much desperation in the seeking, and it was like, let me read this self-help book, let me do this, let me and like when now it's like it, it's like I actually have the capacity to take things in and integrate them. Like there's an there's a space for integration when we are nourished that just isn't there. Um, and you know, a simple way to say it too is like I can respond versus react. Yes. Right? Like I am so much more responsive to my life than reactive to my life. So these are like high, I guess, like zoomed out things that happened, but those obviously affect all of these little microwaves to that life.

unknown 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, it really reminds me of like self-leadership. And I speak a lot about self-trust and self-leadership in my work. And there was so much in what you just shared that reminded me of that, like your capacity growing to trust yourself, to make solid, mature decisions about your life, to become a self-led woman, right? Well, you're not at the mercy of your emotions and you're not at the mercy of your reactions, and you're sort of cycling through survival cycles and being stuck in that like dysregulation, round and round and round you go. Like you might claw yourself out of the hole, but you end up back in it. Like, you know, what you're describing is is actually building your capacity to the point where this becomes the baseline, which is I hear a lot of women say, you know, this is really desired. This is deeply desired. You know, a lot of that I meet are kind of really done with that old, dysregulated, can't seem to get out of the cycle way. But they are like seeking and looking for guidance and initiation into the kind of mature, nourished, sovereign woman. Where is it? Like, how do I, how do I, you know, most of us weren't raised with these kinds of mothers. Our mothers weren't raised by this. You know, we were a lot of women I speak to, and I I have this story, and I think it's also weaved into your journey. Like, you know, my mom has really struggled with this. You know, she's the kind of mom who doesn't eat dinner and feeds everybody else three times a day. Like, that's just who she is. She's still like that now. And it it's if you've not had the imprint, like this kind of self-leadership can feel a little bit foreign. And I and I my my desire for anyone listening to this is like this is completely possible. And like what you're saying, and and this is certainly something that I also personally believe, is that nourishment through food and through eating enough is a really simple way. It's not necessarily easy when you first start out. I can attest to that. But it's um, and I say that because if anyone's followed my journey, you know, there was a good chunk of time where I was really in the trenches with eating enough, and you know, it still pops its head up. Um, so I know this isn't an easy transition to make for some people, but it is so deeply perfective, and like what you're saying is so much becomes available, right? Your entire personality changed.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

That's yeah, yeah, and um there's a threat I'm just feeling into. Becoming, you know, you have to feel safe in your body to do all the things that you were just saying, to trust yourself, to lead yourself, to be a mature woman who still uh you know exalts the feminine. Like I feel like sometimes the mature woman is like just a masculinized woman, but no, I mean like a mature, like feminine woman. Uh and I just don't think you can ever get there without feeling safe in your body first. Like feel safe in your body, and then you can feel safe with God. Like that's how it goes for me. And if your needs, your basic needs aren't being met, this is like the thing I harp on over and over. Your body has needs, it needs sleep, it needs rest, it needs food consistently, it needs touch. Um, it it has needs, and you will never feel safe, like you will never open if you don't feel safe in your body. And this is you know, I do a lot of hair tissue mineral analysis testing, HTMA, and there's a pattern on there that's very common in like my demographic of women, it's called sympathetic dominance or the pusher pattern. And this pattern, especially women who have this pattern, really need the embodiment work, they really need to like remember that it's safe to be in our bodies, and I think that that's generally generationally, like you said, like so many women have not felt safe in their bodies for so long, and we've taken that on, and there's so much body, you know, judgment and hatred and just so like wanting to leave the body, wanting to be like this pure like thing, and it's like bodies are messy and they have needs and they aren't perfect. And if you want to be self-led, be in your like be a mature feminine woman, like you have to feel safe in your body, and you have to figure out what that looks like for you too. Like it's also not a one size fits all. But that's what nourishment gave me was like I started to feel safe in my body for the first time, and I still work on this, I'm not like perfect, but um, but yeah, I definitely feel so much safer in my body than I ever have.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that in. I I think it's key. I think it's really key. And I and I I you know I could go down a whole rabbit hole um about my own journey with that. But what I want to ask is around like, you know, why why do you feel like so many women resist this foundational piece, like especially around safety and you know, make you know, what is it, what is the resistance? Why is this difficult?

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Well, there's probably as many answers as there are women in the world in some ways, and I think I think some like generalizations are um you know, our bodies have been I mean, we don't have modeling, I think is huge. Like we've already said, like there hasn't been models for a woman who is safe in her body for most of us. Uh most of us don't have a woman in our lives that, or maybe we have one or something, but it's not like there's these elders who are like women safe in their bodies, like walking around, you know, leading us and giving us wisdom and helping us with our babies and all of that stuff. Um and I think that there's a lot of grief, you know, in the body. Like, I know that was definitely my journey of descending into the body was like feeling a lot of my grief. I think there's a way that we have to, in some sense, feel all the ways that we've abandoned ourselves when we come back into our bodies, and that's really hard and worth it, so worth it. But also like the resistance, like the crunchy layer of resistance that is like if I come into my body, I have to feel all the times I left my body kind of vibe. It's like oof, like that's you would, yeah, without slowing down and really softening there, like you you can just stay above it forever because it's it's pretty difficult and gnarly in a way.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Yeah. I so, I so I so been my experience. And I I've spoken people that know my journey over the last few years is is there was a period of time for me when I was sort of starting to become aware of some restrictive, pretty quite severe restrictive eating patterns. And I think the resistance that I had was I I didn't know how to sustain my life without overriding my body. I didn't know how to do anything other than stress. And I had so much at stake, you know, I was I was living overseas, I was a business owner, I was holding people. I didn't, I was like, well, if I just start feeding myself, and and and I did, and I started falling falling apart emotionally, and I all this stuff I hadn't felt was you know rose to the surface, and and it was a real loss of perceived control of my body, and I had to really let my body do its thing. Um, and that did take some courage, you know, and it took some hand holding. I, you know, I needed to hire some support because it was a scary time of feeling like I was deep in the in a process and probably a long overdue process of coming into my body and sort of like, you know, adding a couple of layers of fat that was needed and eating enough and and feeling and crying and detawing, you know. I I kind of hadn't really realized, you know, my journey was goes back to childhood and being an athlete and like never ever being able to eat as much as I was as I was expending. And and that just carried on. I replaced sports with work and adventures and intensity in all these ways. And so there was a massive change of of uh and a transitionary process to shift from a chasing sort of peak experiences and and and and a sort of living in a high stress state, that honestly felt pretty good because I wasn't feeling much to a more like sustained, steady, cyclical capacity, which I would say is more of my baseline now. It's not perfect, but it's like it's very different. And I and I I really think that it's really great to be held while you go through that, because as we've just identified, and you said so beautifully, like we don't have great modeling. And there are great practitioners and women that are doing this. And and I would love to bring in a little bit about the work that you've done and um the work you do with women. And I know this you you actually are so rare, I think, in your your skill set. Like I obviously know you deeply. I've also worked with you in a few different capacities. And, you know, I call it like the Clara, there's like a Clara Way, a very specific Clara Way. You have this like deep knowledge, you know, deep embodied and intellectual knowledge of your craft, right? And you you talked earlier about the the early life and the book and the child and the sort of real deep curiosity about the body. And and I and I you're really that kind of practitioner where you're this is your, you know, like you're like a beautiful geek for the like obsessed with the content of like sort of and I and I've really witnessed you grow and keep growing and growing, and then your practice gets bigger and bigger as your knowledge grows, but you're also so skilled in the practical application of how do you hold a woman through, you know, one of the things you do is HTMA. And if people aren't aware of that, hair to show mineral analysis. Um I'm surprised sometimes people haven't heard of that, but I've done it with you, and you know, it's a series of tests where you test your hair and it gives a very deep read over a multi-month period of your um mineral levels, energy levels. I hope I'm doing this justice.

unknown 45:10

Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

Just do that.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Um, but it and then it gives you a lot of information, uh, and you, as the practitioner, has all of the knowledge of understanding how the patterns all work together. And so you get this very deep, holistic, sort of scientific read of what's going on physically, and then you can make subtle lifestyle changes, supplementation, food nourishment. Um, there's specific things you can do to gently and slowly address the root cause of something. And so you and I had done that in a one-to-one capacity. And then last year I joined your fertile program, which is one of your deeper offerings. And um I just want to say that um when I joined Fertile last year, um, you know, we did an intro and it was like, you know, what are you hoping to um, you know, what's your intention for these two years? And I was like, well, I would really love to, you know, be in a long-term partnership, have kids, get married. Um, and then I had this like, you know, deep desire for my health. And then literally within like a week, I met my partner, my now long-term partner. And um, and and then that became, you know, I went from sort of like being celibate to having a lot of sex to tracking my periods and to, you know, really, you know, having this sort of um desire that was sort of outside of me, then become a very inside of me desire. And like within a few short weeks of us working together, um, which I just think to Clara, like that's just so funny that that's been that was our uh working journey. But I wanna, and I I'm so grateful to have got to experience it. Um and you know, and I think that sort of speaks to the power of what you offer. And I'm just curious to ask you, like what like what's the why for you of doing this work with women? You know, like you have obviously the knowledge, the skill, you you lead yourself, like why hold other women through it? Like, what's the kind of um yeah, the deeper call for you to to to to be supporting women through those these kinds of initiations?

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Hmm. Well, that was all like so beautiful and so flattering, and thank you. I was just like, oh she's talking about me. Um yeah, I think, well, I always say this, and it's not just something that I say, it's something that is felt so deeply, and it's you know, that I'm in service to the mother, and um and why do I work with women? You know, I'm not sure that I always will, but I feel like this is how I serve her, you know. This is I I I think if there's a hill I would die on, it is that we need more mature feminine energy in the world. We need um, we need women that know what that energy feels like in their bodies, uh, and know how to hold like that feminine structure, which is kind of seems paradoxical, but I've also heard it called like the tower feminine. This um, like Mary Magdalene was the tower. That was like another word for her. Um but uh yeah, this tower feminine, the structural feminine, this mature feminine energy, which is a woman in her body who can say no, and who can say like that's enough, and who can say it's time to eat, and who can say it's time to rest. And we don't have that in our it's just like a fucking runaway train, you know, it's just like up and to the right forever. Um and I am yeah, I'm just so deeply feel that, you know, and it feels like I don't know, my purpose in this life was to like, no, like I'm just a person um that is here, that is, you know, doing my best to live in alignment and in integrity with what I know. And for me, like that's me living in integrity is to serve this tower feminine aspect. And I don't know, you know, we talked a little bit about wisdom keeping, like in our messages before, and oh, like what a honor and a blessing to be a wisdom keeper of some sorts, and I don't necessarily think that I can claim that yet. I hope to be that when I am, you know, a crone and an old, an old woman. Um, but I do think that we like we need practical modeling of like there's so much about the feminine and you know, the spiritual feminine, the divine feminine, it's all great. But what about like the practical stuff about feeding families and bearing children and holding the structure of a household and um not in like a trad wife way, but like in a way that like this is what we were made for, and this is what is most satisfying. Doesn't mean we can't also have incredible businesses and uh you know, full lives. It's just like um, yeah, there's there's wisdom, there's there's just this practicality of like food and the body that I just have to have my hands in, you know. Yeah, and wanna and want other women, you know, this course that I'm that I'm launching right now called Deep Nourishment that is gonna be basically like my body of work, like all of my clarified teachings on like nutrition and movement and and hormones, and you know, it's it's all got this kind of like spiritual twist on the practical, but like it's called like foundational care for the female body, and that's that is the wisdom keeping is like how you touch yourself, how you prepare your plate, you know, how you um track your cycle, how you know yourself intimately in that way, and you don't feel scared of it. Like you're not like, oh my god, I'm I got cramps this period, and what's happening? Like that's that's all up in the head, you know. It's like, oh, I have this grounded connection to my cycle, and I'm curious and I'm I'm responsive, not reactive. Um so anyway, it's a long version of saying, like, that's what I'm in service to. And so I just keep serving that, you know, through the through the women I work with now, and you know, through my writing and uh through my motherhood, most like in the most definitive way, through like the model that I hope and you know pray that I can be for my girls. I have two girls, so um a heavy responsibility to mother women to mother girls.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

That was so beautiful, like really touched by how that felt in my heart to just hear you say all of that, and I really gotta ask the question. That was beautiful, really, and I get it, and I'm so grateful that you choose this and that this is your path, and that people, you know, there are people like you in the world that care and and are taking that the stand for the mother and holding the mother in you know in our hands. And I think of the mother as like, you know, the great mother, and not just like whether you're a biological mother or not, but like the mother. Um and I I I I share the I share it. I share this commitment to it, you know, this commitment to the thing that we need more of. And so I just love that, you know, you have your your way that you're doing it. And if somebody is listening to this and you know, they've listened to this conversation today, and you know, maybe there's a woman listening to us and they recognize themselves in everything that's been shared. I'm I'm curious, you know, what's one place they could begin? Like, where would you have somebody begin?

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Well, that's also like so many, so many, it's like depends on the woman, depends, you know. But just because you kind of brought it up, I do think that cycle tracking is a really powerful way to build intimacy with yourself and the feminine if we're really moving on that thread, right? It's like, well, you could definitely start eating enough, you could definitely start uh just paying attention to yourself a little bit more. Like maybe, you know, time. I I I love like data, like it's very masculine, but like, you know, like write down every hour of the day and write down how you feel. Like, oh, like I felt really tired in the morning. Oh, I also felt really tired in the evening. Oh, I also, you know, you might be like, yeah, I feel tired all the time, but like also maybe you don't. Like maybe there's times like get to know yourself, you know, get get curious. Um, and you know, you could also track your food and see how much you're eating, might be surprised. And then tracking your cycle is this beautiful way of bringing in some of that structural feminine, right? Like, I'm gonna have to take my temperature every morning, I'm gonna have to write it down, I'm gonna have to uh be like attuned to myself. But it's the first, it was the first, I think it was the first lesson in Fertile was cycle tracking. Yeah. Because it's like that important, you know, it's like um we need to get to know we as feminine beings, we are in motion by design. We are nature embodied. Nature is never the same. Every day is different, there are seasons, just like that. This is like, and this sounds cliche because people say it all the time, but this is your nature if you're a woman to change. It's not like how do I not change? Like this is the math, this is like the patriarchal, you know, is like that we shouldn't change, or that being a good being a healthy woman means we don't change. Nope. Nope. Opposite. We are supposed to change. Do you have to be in pain? No, like do you have to have like extreme mood swings? No. But there is this cyclical nature of yourself. And what needs to happen is women need to know that, like, know themselves in each piece of that cycle. So they have to know their needs in their luteal and their needs in their ovulatory and their needs in their follicular, like they there will they will be different. And it's just so, you know, science and data, everything is all based on the masculine version of, you know, the 24-hour cycle or the yearly cycle. We are in Freudian rhythm and we need to know our 28-day cycle. If you're not cycling, like if you don't have a period or or bleed or you're men pausal, you're still cycling with the moon. So I think people sometimes can write me off when I talk about this because they're like, well, I I don't bleed anymore. You're still you're you still have you're still a woman and you still have these cycles that you go through. So I don't know. Overall, I think it's like just get to like get to know yourself better, like take some time to get to know yourself, like be that tracking your energy, tracking your food, tracking your cycle. Just like be like sitting in in quiet with yourself and like really reaching into your heart and asking, like, what do what do I need? What what do uh what do I need to know right now?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Oh, so beautiful. Yeah. And what I'll add to that is I I sense that like the person listening. I I sense that when you do check in, you will find that you do know. Yes. You do know, you know exactly kind of where you're not fully supporting yourself and like where to start. Yeah. Yeah. I think our bodies will give bodies give us a lot of information when we we slow down and we're present.

SPEAKER_01 58:27

Yeah. There's like some saying that like every answer is only an hour and quiet away.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

Oh so it's like, I don't know, I only had an hour and quiet in uh ever.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

So it is so lovely. Well, I want us to you know bring this gorgeous conversation to its completion. I mean, sadly, because I feel like we're just ramping up here. But honoring endings, and I just want to say that, you know, I know Clara, you briefly you briefly mentioned this new uh program that you're offering. And I know that you do work um predominantly with with groups at the moment, but you do do one-to-one work. But there's this something very special about what you're offering. And I think you mentioned that this is sort of your body of work in a course. And I know that there, I know that this course is um a shorter course and it's an accessible price. And for anybody that's listened to this and has resonated with you, I really encourage you to check it out. I will be putting the link in the show notes. And this episode is probably gonna go live live right as it starts. Is there if they miss the start date, like what happens if someone misses this Monday, the 30th start date?

SPEAKER_01 59:48

Yeah, so it's called deep nourishment. It's eight weeks. I teach for 75 minutes every week for eight weeks. Um, there'll be a 15-minute embodiment practice, a module. So, like, you know, um women, new nutrition for women, cycle, cycle health, movement exercise, um, diet design. Um, there's eight, eight modules, and then we'll we'll have some extras as well. Um so it's really like gonna be really fast and fire hosey because it's like eight weeks. Here's like 75 minutes of content. So the live version is awesome because I will be teaching it live, and there's something that definitely comes with that, like transmission-based work and you know, being able to answer questions like ask questions live and get answers live is obviously beneficial. But the course itself is is going to be available to purchase at any time. Um, it will go up$50. So it's$299 right now, and it'll be$349 uh after the 30th. Um so a little bit of a price difference, but other than that, you can come in at any time, get all the calls, um, and just go through it. It's really being created to be something that people can go through at their own pace. And there will be integration calls ongoing. So there will always be like options to come on and talk to me live as well, just once a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:20

Brilliant. Okay, fantastic. Well, I think some people listening to this are definitely gonna be interested in this program. So I'm gonna put it in the show notes. And I'm gonna give you a code Olivia, just Olivia for 10% off.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

So great.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

Okay, Olivia Code. And just finally, where can people find your writing?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

Yeah, I'm on Substack Remothering, Clara Belize Wisner. Remothering. And Clara Belize Wisner on Instagram as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

Perfect. So yeah, all of these links for those of you that are just finding Clara, lucky you, there will all be in the show notes. So you can find her on our Instagram, you can find Deep Nourishment, the new course going live next week, and you will also find her gorgeous writing on Subsec. And I'm sure we will have Clara back on the pod because you know this is one of many topics that we talk about regularly together. And I know that um, I know that this would have been really um, I think it would have been interesting for some people here today. So we're really curious to hear your thoughts. Please um send us a message if you listen to this and you have some reflections or um, you know, leave some comments on the pod. We appreciate that. And Clara, just thank you so much. This was everything and more. And I just so appreciate you, and I so appreciate your deep care and your like gorgeous human way of the way you hold this work. And I I find it personally so accessible because of the way you hold it. And I think for something as important as this, like we need that easy gateway in. And I think that you you have that. Baby steps, baby steps. Sounds great. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.