Small Menopausal Rituals from the Timeless Science of Ayurveda with Nidhi Pandya

Ready to explore a gentler journey through perimenopause and menopause? Join us as we welcome the wonderful Nidhi Pandya! Drawing from the timeless wisdom of Ayurveda, Nidhi unveils her Inner Climate Method, sharing simple yet powerful practices to help you navigate hormonal shifts with greater ease and harmony. Discover the magic of resonance breathing, the soothing touch of sesame oil for body oiling, and the calming influence of evening routines for deeper sleep and overall well-being. This episode is brimming with practical tips that are easy to weave into your daily life. As Nidhi beautifully reminds us, perhaps it's time to reconnect with the innate wisdom our bodies hold. Whether you're seeking relief from menopausal symptoms or simply craving a greater sense of well-being, this episode offers nurturing, cost-free, and accessible tools to honor your body's natural rhythms and cultivate lasting wellness. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep289 Nidhi Pandya is an Ayurvedic Doctor, international speaker, educator and the author of Your Body Already Knows. Nidhi's passion lies in empowering women to become self-aware and live intuitively, achieving Mind-Body Balance. She's gained popularity online and has become known for distilling complex ancient scriptures into practical advice for the modern day with features in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, and more. Her 'Inner Climate' method, taught globally, focuses on realigning the mind and body for optimal health, healing, and longevity. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you Dr. Nidhi Panda. Now, this conversation is so fun and I'm really excited to bring it to all of you because you're going to be able to apply what Dr. Nidhi brings you today, like immediately. Like after I'm doing this intro, I'm actually heading to the store to go and grab the things she recommends to allow you to get a better night's sleep, to allow you to transition out of your daily routine. Like, there's so many gems in here. So, let me tell you a little bit about who you're going to listen to here, and then let's talk about what kind of concepts we're bringing to you in this episode.

• 0:46Mindy Pelz?

  So, Dr. Nidhi is an Ayurvedic doctor, a speaker, and she created something called the Inner Climate Method, which is a transformative approach that blends ancient Vedic wisdom with modern science. She just wrote a book that I highly recommend called "Your Body Already Knows." And what we talk about in here is really this hormonal transition, how we move from a place, and she, I loved it, she called it juicy, where we are like, when we're cycling, everything is moist, all of our mucosal membranes, our skin, our hair. She's like, we go from this juicy place to moving into menopause, which is we go more

• 1:26Mindy Pelz?

  into a dry place. And she talks about how we can do some daily routines to allow that transition into our menopause and post-menopausal years to be smooth. And it's really interesting because I've spent a lot of time here talking to you all, or if you've heard me on videos or read my books, I've been really struggling with the direction that the menopausal conversation has been going in, because it's either gone in a direction of medicate and you'll be fine, or it's gone in a direction of here are all the have-tos. Both of those have their upsides and they have their downsides.

• 2:07Mindy Pelz?

  What Dr. Needy is going to bring you here are some simple rituals. Rituals you'll be able to do right away and they're free and they're easy. And when you hear why they work, I promise you, you are going to want to do what I'm about to do and run out and get a few of these tools, these either free or cheap tools that you can use to make your journey from your reproductive years into your non-reproductive years smooth, because it should be, it's a natural journey. It should be smooth. So Dr. Needy, I'm so excited to bring you this episode. And those of you that are wanting to dive into her book, you can get her book.

• 2:51Mindy Pelz?

  It is called Your Body Already Knows. And the minute I hear that title, I think, yes, it does. Your body always knows. And that's the whole path to great health is honoring that your body already knows. So enjoy this conversation, Dr. Needy, and then find me on socials and let me know if some of the techniques work for you. Really excited to bring this one to you. Enjoy.

• 3:17Mindy Pelz?

  Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 3:42Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so for starters, Needy, let me just say, welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This is of all the places I go to talk about health, this might be my, my favorite. So I'm really excited to have you here today. So let me just start off by saying, welcome.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for the last few months. So I'm glad we're finally here together.

• 4:05Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing, amazing. So you know, it's interesting when I think about the experience that women are having right now with perimenopause and menopause. On one hand, I'm incredibly grateful that the conversation has opened up. And on the other hand, I'm incredibly concerned because we are now looking at menopause as a medical, a condition in which a medicine is needed, a condition in which we can stop the suffering that women are going through, which we never want women to suffer. But we have, we have looked at it through a more

• 4:45Mindy Pelz?

  conventional medicine lens. And I see it in all the research I've done as an incredible transformative process that a woman goes through that should be honored. So when I first heard about your work and how you've taken Ayurvedic medicine and applied it to this journey, I was like, wow, this is exciting because we need to go back to the ancient principles. So with that in mind, can you just, because I don't even know the, the all the, the depth of Ayurvedic medicine, but can you start off by telling us, what is so powerful, what is Ayurveda and what is so powerful about this approach to health?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to start at the basic, like the basic definition of Ayurveda. So Ayurveda means literally the science of life. Ayu means life, Veda means science. It's also the sister science of yoga. They both come from the same Vedic tradition. But now being the science of life, it covers everything that has to do with life, which means, yes, treatment and prevention of diseases and conditions, but also lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, fertility, menopause, childcare, social conduct, how do you choose a mate?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  If it has to do with human life, yep, yep. If it has to do with human life, Ayurveda has it covered. And some of the current trends, Mindy, like intermittent fasting, I mean, you're the queen of fasting. So, you know, a lot of them have their roots like turmeric, ashwagandha, oil pulling, dry scrubbing, tongue scraping, they all have their roots in Ayurveda. There were other traditions who may have offered similar practices. But Ayurveda also has strong, has strong beliefs and a strong foundation. It's lead for these practices in tremendous detail. But you know, what is Ayurveda to me and how is it that I practice it? It's the only, it's literally the only science that I've seen, Mindy, that understands the rhythms and the patterns, basically the energetics. What separates what's animate from inanimate, right?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Like my back statue would be different for me, simply because I have the vibration of the cell. I have the beating of a heart and my, and my breath and a pulse and all of that. These energetic patterns, right? Even outside in the universe, the seasons, the rotation, the revolution. This is what really makes the universe happen. And Ayurveda understands this science of seasons, of day and all of this so precisely. And this basic understanding that when

• 7:23Speaker 01

  when we see a season, like when we see snowfall in spring, you and I both know that we'd be concerned. We're like, oh my God, what's going on?

• 7:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  But Ayurveda understands what allows you to stay in balance, what takes you out of balance. And it also understands the nature of everything that exists on, on the planet. And it has a certain framework that defines it. So it uses a framework. It uses the patterns of these, you know, the understanding of these patterns. And then it says, how do we bring everything back into balance? So it sounds a little vague right now, but it's a very, very precise science.

• 7:57Mindy Pelz?

  So the way I would look at that is if I'm looking at metabolic switching, we, part of the challenge we had with the metabolic crisis is everybody was just staying in their sugar burner system. But when we brought fasting to the world, then all of a sudden people were in that fat burning metabolism. So now they're back into a natural rhythm that has them more in balance. Would that be like an example of what Ayurveda is trying to do is, yeah, okay.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, but you know, like this is how I would would talk about it, right? We were all overly building, you know, we were building, building, building.

• 8:32Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  In our bodies, high fat, high carbs, you know, extreme carb. And your body always had to deal with those those sugary refined foods all the time. And then what is the opposite of building, right? There are three cycles in nature and we can get into that. Building, transformation and and decline, decay, you know? And everywhere, whether it's spring is building and summer is transformation. Because there's all, everything transforms into fruits and flowers and all of that. And then there's autumn, which is decline, right? So if you're building excessively, there's excessive building, then you have to give it the antidote, which is now you you stop building, you let it go. So you can actually start cleansing. And of course, after all the refined foods and the sugar and all, everything goes out. Then any excess tissue that you've had.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So I would start looking at cycles as patterns and then antidotes accordingly.

• 9:19Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, I I love that. You know, one of the biggest things that I noticed when I started teaching fasting was when fasting first went out to the world, everybody got so excited, they got so many results. And then they started fasting all the time. And this is where Fast with a Girl even came from. I was like, no, no, no, no. The goal wasn't to go from eating all the time to fasting all the time. The goal was to create a rhythm that works with your body. And that's where the principles came from. What's intriguing to me about what you're bringing forward to the world is the idea that there's a rhythm that's happening for us when we go into perimenopause and menopause.

• 9:58Mindy Pelz?

  And I think this is really like that idea is so important to bring forward. Because it and I'm so curious your opinion on this. Because there's a part of me that's like, are we meant to just go from hormones to no hormones? And now we're trying to add hormones back in exogenously? Like, what is the rhythm that we're missing right now in that conversation that Ari Veda can bring forward?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  See, Madi, thank you for doing the work in terms of the fasting like a, like a girl, you know, that we're not meant to do either, you know, yo-yo between these two extremes. But you're absolutely right. And can I, can I start by addressing what you said, right? You know, right when we had this, started this conversation and you said, one of the things you said is that we're looking at menopause like it's disease.

• 10:48Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  And there's another half that's looking at menopause like it's aging. The truth is, menopause is neither disease nor aging. I mean, can you imagine if women started thinking that we're aging in our forties, we're spending half of our lives thinking that we're aging?

• 11:02Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Yep. Yep.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Right? So it's, it's neither. It's just a, it's a neuroendocrine transition. And unfortunately, we understand menarche, right? Like, menarche comes with its own, own, own challenges. And menarche, or, or even when young boys start moving into adolescence, there's a change of voice, there's sudden acne, and there's this discomfort, you know, getting comfortable in this new skin that they've developed. So, yes, every transition, every neuroendocrine transition that a human being will experience will be uncomfortable. And some will be more challenging than others. But I'm going to put the Ayurvedic understanding and lens, the way I see it on this.

• 11:39Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  And Ayurveda looks at your life in seasons as well, right?

• 11:42Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Like, your childhood is, is the spring of life. And in that spring of life, in the spring of life, you're building, building, building. It's a moist phase. And which means your body is prepared, it's geared up to continuously build cytoplasm, new cells, you know, and building our cells, excessive cytoplasm, fluids, juices, all of that. Then you come to the second, the summer of your life. Now, this is really what will explain menopause is your menarche. When you start, right? After that building phase, when a young girl is thirteen, fourteen, hot hormones start to set in. The body heats up. We know the mind of the teenager, we suddenly have a reproductive function, the body is able

• 12:25Speaker 01

  to reproduce. Without heat, there is no transformation that happens. So there's sudden heat and the hormones bring heat. The way I like to define it is, think of an oil lamp filled with oil. So the flame is, the flame is beautiful and it's sharp, and the oil is really, really full as well. Now, throughout the period of our youth, we kind of use up that fuel. And then when you arrive at this menopause and perimenopause, it is the depletion of that fuel. And you come to that point, right? So just think about it like it's it's drying. It's a process of drying. Our entire period of youth is a process of drying.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  And if you've ever, if I tell people this, if you've ever worked with an oil lamp, when you notice that the oil lamp is at its tail end, the flame will become very volatile and the oil starts to deplete and there's smoke. And that is exactly the experience that people have at menopause and perimenopause. There's a dryness, there's an increased heat, there's a volatility, and then there is all, you know, smoke, fire. And that is really, it's like using up your fuel and how are you drying? So there are ways that you can do to have this as a gentler journey because the truth is, menopause is so difficult. Mindy, because we're all drying sooner, we are using our essential resources, we're all burning out quicker.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  And that's why we're burning out quicker, burning out harsher without replenishing our fuels in many, many different ways. And we can talk about what Iva that talks about, how you replenish your foods, fuels. But after that point, after you go to the other side of menopause, right? Three years after that, something wonderful happens in the body that nobody talks about, right? There is this U-bend research that women in their fifties, right, like your amygdala changes the way it responds. So it responds very positively to positive experiences, but it doesn't respond strongly to negative experiences. The emotional control center changes the way it works in your brain. So women actually become happier in their sixties and seventies. They start to take things much more lightly.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And you, it's the first time in your life, you're not dating, you're not mating in the same way. At least you're not dating and mating in the same way. You're not in your nesting phase. Most people are out of their nesting phase. Today, things are a little bit different, but historically, we're out of a nesting phase. And we have this tremendous opportunity, you know, where women can, for the first time, like truly be free to exist and find themselves and make, it's it's it's a second teenage. Honestly, that time, three years after menopause, is a second teenage. And of course, then on the physical level and the lifestyle level and nutrition level, there's a lot that can be done. That can continue to support you because the rest of the journey is drying. It's autumn and winter.

• 15:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  You know, but you can have a beautiful autumn. I mean, once you know, I mean, if you're a skier, you're you're sailing through that winter, you know, for example, right? So if you know how to care for yourself through these phases and most importantly, even through your perimenopausal years and even like I have two young daughters, Mindy seventeen and thirteen, and I want I've been I'm teaching them how to care for them at this stage.

• 15:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, right.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  And that's what I was taught. Because if you do that and you don't dry out quickly, I like always say drying is dying, you know, so you you preserve your fields. And if and and then when you're at that stage, it's not quite as harsh.

• 15:43Mindy Pelz?

  I love that explanation and it especially the three years out. That was literally, I just got done researching the whole neurochemical system for the for age like a girl and very similar that I saw is that you have a whole system change, oxytocin system changes, the autonomic nervous system changes and it changes for the better, which is a part of this of the menopause conversation we are not having. It's like we went from a place where we didn't talk about it. Everybody suffered in silence to talking about it all the time. And everybody's confused, but what is not being talked about enough is what an incredible process this could be.

• 16:25Mindy Pelz?

  And where you're going in those post-menopausal years is someplace that you you have never really experienced as a woman and and a place that you are sitting in your most powerful part of your life. So I loved the way you explained that. I also like this idea of the drying out. So then that leads me to to question, when we go into perimenopause, is there a lifestyle shift that needs to happen in order to adapt to the drying out?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely, right. So maybe I think we can all successfully agree that today's urban woman is burning out quickly.

• 17:06Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Right. Except for the fact that we only associate, the problem is that we associate burning out only with work. And that's not true, right?

• 17:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Burning out is many, many things. I mean, in my, in my book and in the way I explain it to people I work with, it's like we are very solar lifestyles. And I mean, all of the Vedic sciences, right, by yoga and Ayurveda comes from, the macro and the micro are very connected. What's happening in the macro is happening in the micro. So global warming is not very different from inflammation. Burning out is not, they, they, they all come under the same set of things. But the thing is, what are the things that we are doing, right? Besides working, working too hard, working out too much.

• 17:42Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Excessive caffeine. I mean, we, we all know caffeine is dehydrating. What is dehydrating? Hot, hot and dry. That's the meaning of dehydrating. It's hot and it's dry. The sun is hot and dry. So it's like very solar. I call it very solar. So excessive caffeine, excessive alcohol, working, you know, I said, working too much, working, working out too much, staying up too many nights. Skimping on fat a little too much, intensity in our minds. This is all too solar for our own good.

• 18:10Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  And just as there is global warming, we are, there's no, no wonder inflammation starts much earlier. Earlier inflammation was related only to aging. Today, inflammation is, it can happen at any point in our lives. So we are overly solar. So the first thing that I say, right, like we are so quick to bring in remedies. We're so quick to say, give me something to do. But the first, the first treatment in Ayurveda is prevention of cause.

• 18:33Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  So we're like, what are you doing? What are you doing that's leading to this? So first, let's, let's, let's dial down on all of those.

• 18:41Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  So dial down on how, how you, how much you work, how hard you work, how you organize your day, how you are. Because there are certain times where, you know, neurochemically, we're designed to have better focus. So how, I have people design their day, for example. How much are you working out? I mean, people are burning themselves out, even with excessive working out, drying themselves, my muscle injury, just, you know. All all kinds of other hormonal issues. Also caffeine, right? I'm like, I tell everybody, don't don't give it up completely. But let's the idea of bullet coffee or adding milk or adding cardamom or changing the time that you're consuming. Alcohol, what are you doing with that? But also bringing in many, many tools, right? Like I tell you the two biggest tools, Mindy. And like I can give you a whole range of tools and all the herbs and all of that.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  But the two biggest tools that I see, which are accessible and easy for everyone is one is exhalations. And which means that we as human beings today are inhaling short inhales throughout our day. So if anybody is using a variable, right? And if you were wearing variables, we would realize that on an average, right now, you and I are having a conversation. Twelve to twenty breaths. Now, if I was stuck in traffic and I was racing, those twelve to twenty breaths would be thirty to forty. Could be thirty to forty, could be could be twenty five, way higher, shorter breaths. When we're super busy, we start and every inhale that our body takes, right? Every time you go into an inhale, it's a sympathetic reaction. It's a fight or flight.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Hmm. Every exhale is a parasympathetic. It's a repair. It's a rest and digest. If every inhale is action, every exhale is repair. If every inhale is doing, every exhale is being. And that's why at the end of the at the at the end of a really busy day, most of us would sit down and be like, huh. We would exhale forcefully exhale, right? The body goes into a sigh because the body has had enough. But when we actively learn something called resonance breathing. Hmm. Where you're actively learning. And you know, I can I do this sometimes in the middle of the converse, like of a conversation, indeed, like you wouldn't even be able to tell. But if I'm while I'm speaking and using my mouth, I for I'm just becoming conscious of having a longer exhale through my nose. Hmm.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And it's just by bringing awareness to it, you automatically go into a longer exhale. But that is very refueling to the body. When your body goes in parasympathetic, it releases the neurotransmitters and hormones that are required for the body to refuel itself. Right. And like like we, that's why after a very stressed period, we're all dry, right? Dry eyes, dry. Throat, dry ears. But if you're just relaxing, you're in a towel, you're in a spa, you're having a great day. Almost there's moisture on your skin. You know, your eyes are not as dry. There's a replenishment that has happened. So those exhales go a long, long way.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And it's something that's available to us in perimenopause, in postmenopause. So that is one thing that I say, you know, must be part of everybody's toolkit.

• 21:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so I love this because it's free and it's easy. And I have a big, I'm a big fan of healthcare not costing everybody a ton of money. So I want to go back to this idea. Let's say I'm forty years old, forty one. And I'm come roaring into this, these perimenopausal experience and my career is taking off, my kids are teenagers. And like this idea that I would need to slow down, otherwise I'm drying my, drying everything out. And I'm really creating more menopausal symptoms. How, what would the breathing technique look like? Is it something you do in the morning? You've talked about how you do it during the day. Is it like a tool that you just need to be aware of and do it as much as possible?

• 22:22Mindy Pelz?

  And does it counterbalance this, this burnout life that so many of us live?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Such a great way of putting that question in. So I would say that it does require practice, right? So there's an app called the Breathing App. My great friend Eddie Stern has created this app. And you can just, it's a free app. You can go and set up a timer for resonance breath, right? So it'll give you a gong that goes five seconds, inhale, seven seconds, exhale. And you can pick your times, you know, three seconds, four seconds, whatever you want. But then you start practicing that. And I say, I tell everybody, you practice it in the morning, you practice it in the night. You can even set it for two minutes. You don't have, you can do it, you could be driving. And say, while I'm driving, I'm going to be doing this. While I'm working, if you can do this five times a day. I mean, it's one or two minutes, five times a day. Like I'm like, do it like prayer. But you're reminding your body, if you can actually take a break.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Even while you're waking, when I say take a break and then take your, take a break from being in your sympathetic nervous system, from being in chronic stress, if you can break your chronic stress even while you're driving and you're training yourself to do this. Now, without the, without the app that is accessible to you, within a few weeks, you'll realize, right? Many, in my busiest periods, like normally I have a lot of rituals that I practice, but in my busiest periods, I have to say that this is what holds me together. And it, you could be in the shower, you could be just wiping your body with a towel, you could be opening a refrigerator, you could be doing whatever you want. But you just, you could be in the middle of a conversation and you go into that longer exhale. But yes, the caveat is it does require practice.

• 23:57Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And you want to start with the, with the resonance breath and an app, something on YouTube, whatever you find, simple, free, and then you bring it. Also, I tell people that sometimes when your body, you know, maybe I used to be super rushed as a child and I used to be very rushed and it's, and I wasn't efficient because I broke things along the way, you know, I forgot things along the way. But I realized that you don't have to slow your body down, you have to just slow your breath down and your body actually becomes more efficient.

• 24:24Mindy Pelz?

  Ooh.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Because you'll make better decisions, you'll have more clarity, you'll move faster, you'll be more agile, you'll be less like all over the place. It's just one wonder, it's like, I feel like there's a lot that can get done.

• 24:38Mindy Pelz?

  Interesting. So you can slow ti- time down is what I heard. It's like ta- putting you out of that sympathetic state, which also with that brings that high beta brainwave where you're like thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. What I just heard is this simple tool done five times a day and, and I assume we only have to do it a couple of rounds, could really prime the parasympathetic and get you out of that, out of the sympathetic response.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I would say you want to do it for a couple of minutes when you're starting out a heist. People do it for up to 10 minutes. I mean, I tell people, you know, like I worked with these really busy journalists in New York, like a ton of them. And I said to all of them, that you just play it while you're working. So then you're conditioning, I mean, like at the end of the day, you're all Pavlov's dogs. You know?

• 25:23Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  You, you, you, you play it when you're working and then you don't, before you know it, you are, you've trained yourself to breathe like that.

• 25:30Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, amazing, amazing.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  So it's so easy.

• 25:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, a friend of mine, this is something, a new tool that I've been really thinking about this year because of, you know, the evacuations from the fires and things like that. And I started getting a lot of anxiety and a friend of mine who's a performance coach really helped me understand some meditation techniques, some moving energy techniques. And she's like, you have to do them ahead of the anxiety attack. And it's like you're preparing yourself for how to handle the anxiety attack. And what I just heard and what you just said is that if you like, if at forty, every woman knew this, and then we just went into, okay, now I'm forty, I need to start practicing this breathing technique so I can be ahead of the irritability and the anxiety and the depression.

• 26:18Mindy Pelz?

  Is, is that a good way to look at it?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yes, Mindy, in fact, you know, I'm a, like, before people start working with me, I'm such a stickler for creating what I call the toolkit. So it's exactly what you define. I give them an à la carte list of, first is preventative tools, things you do every day before you get on the battlefield of life. So I tell people, you pick your preventative, you know, two, three, four, whatever you want, and then you practice them before life happens to you. And the reason is so your body learns how to feel safe. And then the battlefield tools, when you're in the moment and things begin to pick heat and the tools in the battlefield would actually look very different from the preventative tools sometimes, and they could, they could be drastically different at times and, but like you're in the middle of a conversation, things are beginning to get intense, what tools are you going to bring? But your body knows how to feel safe, even though it's gotten there through a different

• 27:06Speaker 01

  route, but the minute it knows how to feel safe, it's so easier to access that place.

• 27:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  But then you also have a third set of tools, which is repair tools, because we all need to heal from the day and we need to heal from crisis periods. So you definitely want to have in your toolkit, tools that can help, I mean, alcoholics are made at night, food addicts, sex addicts, TV addicts are all made at night, right? Because we all need to heal from the day.

• 27:26Mindy Pelz?

  So interesting. That is so well said, by the way. It's really true that, it's like that, I, that transition out of day into night is really, but that was so powerfully said.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that is so intense for the body, right? Because I mean, you're studying this, so all the excitatory, the excitatory media has become the inhibitory media, and it's so difficult for the body. So yeah, yeah. And so it's exactly what you said, but you know, you want to start thinking about your tools like that. And you want to have enough of all tools so that you know what to pull out of your toolkit at any given point.

• 27:58Mindy Pelz?

  Right. You know, it's interesting, I was just having this conversation with a couple of other authors that write books on women's health. And I was saying how I think a lot of times what happens to women is that we're in such a patriarchal pace. We're like so like go, go, go all the time, that at the end of the day, we don't actually balance ourselves out. We just go neutral. So we we're in this high state of performance. And then we sit on the couch with a glass of wine and watch our favorite Netflix series. But what we don't realize is that we haven't balanced out the doing with any any technique. We just go neutral and we're sitting on the couch and just numbing ourselves. So what I just heard in what you just said is this is a way of not just going neutral.

• 28:43Mindy Pelz?

  You're not just chilling out.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Oh, true.

• 28:45Mindy Pelz?

  You're actually repairing yourself from the frenzy of the day, and it's free and it's breath, and that's super cool.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Mindy, you're so perceptive. I just love it. And the way you summarize everything is just delightful. And you know, the one thing I I the like, one of the other ways that really sticks for people is this, right? Women are juicy, like, that's the truth.

• 29:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, we are.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  We have breast milk, we have amniotic fluid, we have a menstrual cycle. I mean, we like, when you think of a lunar goddess, you can totally imagine this like woman with this like completely feminine energy walking through, right? And in fact, you know, Mindy, can I just say, when I was growing up and I grew up in a really large joint family? And we there was arranged marriage at that point when I was a young girl, right? And when they would look for like potential matches for my elder cousins, like, like boys, like the boys in the family, I would hear the elders say that, oh, does she have moisture in her eyes? Like, oh, yeah, she's she's great. She has such moisture in her eyes and that she has she has a fluid face. And I'm like, what? Does that even mean, right? And they're all like, this is a sign of fertility, right? Because

• 29:53Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Because we looked at

• 29:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a sign of fertility, right? So it used to be a sign of fertility and that's how from generation to generation, you learn how to evaluate maids, you know, because at the end of the day, we're primal beings.

• 30:05Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  And so of course it makes sense then that when we're going to a perimenopause and menopause years and our eggs have gone down, right? Like in our early thirties, the amount of eggs we have go down to ten percent, which most people don't know, in our forties, it's gone down to about three percent. And then we're dealing, you know, we're living with a three percent of eggs and such low estrogen for like good seven, eight, ten years, which is estrogen progesterone doing its own madness. And it's natural because the body is moving towards that dryness, right? But you don't want to dry more than it is meant to dry.

• 30:36Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  So, you know, for example, breath was my own practice, but Mindy, I I should say the second practice.

• 30:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, give me another one. Yeah, yeah, please.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, this this this stance, but like, yeah, but the second one that I really like is that, you know, we like the microbiome changes in the gut, right? Because again, the same thing happens. It's not so juicy. The mucosal lining, again, all the juice is dry. So the mucosal lining starts to dry up a little bit and the environment changes, the colonies of bacteria change. So you cannot consume, I like, I can't tell you go and eat a lot of fat. Like, I can't say that because you you cannot break it down. So skin is another channel of consumption.

• 31:09Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And Ayurveda really values the channel of consumption. So we use body oiling. Have you heard of the practice of body oiling, Mindy?

• 31:16Mindy Pelz?

  I I have years ago. Yeah, tell me more.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, in Ayurveda, so firstly, the word for oil is in Sanskrit is sneha. Sneha is also the word for love. It is the most, it's the same word, oil and love, same word, sneha. And it is such a self-loving practice. And I cannot even tell you the benefits go so from just replenishing the microbiome of your skin. This is where it starts, right? This is not where it ends. It might be because because healthy microbiome are lipophilic, which means they try on fat. They eat your own fat to live. So it replenishes the microbiome, but it also has the ability to detox your pores, this oil. Inside nourishes moisturizes and brings the grind back to the surface. But it also has the ability to lubricate your joints, right? Joints are such a big problem.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Plus, the oil that is used is sesame oil and sesame is known by there no studies done in terms of the practice of oiling. But sesame is known to be a balancer for both estrogen as well as progesterone. So the oil that we use, it always sesame based. I mean, this is not a coincidence, right? But this, again, it, you know, it's great for lymphatic drainage, the health of your joints. For the synthesis of vitamin D, because vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. It protects you from all kinds of radiation and it's just, it is such a calming practice for the nervous system. And it goes such a long way to replenish the juices in your body.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  So this simple practice of oiling your body before you go, ideally before you exercise. I know it sounds crazy, but we can talk more about that. But if not before you exercise and before you go to shower, not after, before you go into the shower. You, you oil your body, you rub, you know, it takes five to seven minutes, not too, too long. And then you go in your shower and you realize that the shower doesn't, you know, water is very drying, right? Mindy, if you went into the water, it's so drying for the skin.

• 33:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  And this like, it, it protects the skin barrier, your skin is glowing more and you feel better. It's such a game changer.

• 33:22Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  And we also, we also use oil in every orifice. I should give you this disclaimer, right? Eyes, nose, is, is nose, nausea drops, mouth oil pulling, ears, navel. Vagina, anus, I mean, there's like, there are oil curbes for every part of your body.

• 33:40Mindy Pelz?

  Are you, so then would, would you like have a bottle of sesame oil next to your shower? You rub it all over your body. Would you wanna put it in the different orifices and then take a shower like? And how long does it need to stay on you? Cause it, that seems like it could be a really easy. Like, I, like I shower at night, so I'm thinking how easy this could be just to do all of that and then shower. And, and it's, it's another way to support the system.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the orifices, they all need to be learned. So you want to learn how to do your oil pulling. You want to learn how to use the nasal nassia drops, and that's a separate oil for that. But sesame oil can be used for oil pulling. So the two things that are very easy is using is oil pulling and applying it on your body. Now, the practice can take any time from five minutes to you can you can do it for fifteen minutes. You can do it for as long as you want. But I would say, you know, at least start at five. And that's some most days, that's what I do, right? And you would do it like you would do moisturizer. It also eliminates the need for moisturizing excessively. And you just, the only thing that I tell people is treat it like a ritual, not like a routine. Like you, you kind of you caress it. How much do we get touched at in our forties and fifties and sixties? You want to think about like, this is your time

• 34:56Speaker 01

  to caress yourself, to touch yourself. You play play your favorite music and light a candle and just, just make it sexy, you know, and this is your practice. This is this is giving back to yourself and and the benefits go a long way. So five to seven minutes does so much for and people notice it right away. Mindy, in my entire practice, I've never seen somebody who's tried Abhyanga and then given up Abhyanga. It's called Abhyanga, but body oiling is another word as well.

• 35:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I'm wondering if if it would help menopausal women sleep too, because that's a really big challenge. And again, if we look at it through the lens of what we've been talking about today, which is you go into these high states of performance, and then all we do is crash on the couch and watch our series and drink wine. We're only going neutral. We're not in so, gosh, you can breathe throughout the day, you can oil before you go, and you're you're just balancing the extreme performative state that so many of us find ourselves in. And what I love is it's not like you're saying, don't be in those performative states. It's it's very much like why I fell in love with fasting, which is I found it was really difficult to get people to

• 36:07Mindy Pelz?

  change their behaviors around the quality of the food. But I could get them to change their behaviors around the timing of the food. So the two things you just gave, so easy to do. And and although I think you and I would both agree, slowing down would be good, but so many women can't do that.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely, Mindy. And you know, like, I tell, I think you talked about sleep right now, right? And I think we've got it wrong a little bit. There's so much importance to morning routine that people forget about evening. I tell everybody, like, instead of saying that, oh, I couldn't wake up early because I slept late. I said, we want to say that I couldn't sleep late because I woke up early. And you want to have a night routine. I tell women, you want to give, first start your nightly routine. If you have no routine, let's have, how do you unwind at night? What do you do? How do you slow down? And and this oil practice can be used, especially in the bottom of your feet, you know, there's like,

• 37:01Mindy Pelz?

  Oh.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  like a khasa wand, like there's, there's a wand called the khasa wand. It's like, you know, there's gua sha and there's a wand for the face. It's like a alloy, copper and tin. And that's used, but even without that, you can just use plain sesame oil, massage your feet. You want to wear socks or wipe it down so you don't slip in the bathroom in the night. And then you want to like, you know, so slowing down at night changes how you wake up in the morning. And how you wake up in the morning changes how your day goes. And how your day goes again changes how your evening goes. But I think we need to really give a lot of importance to how we slow down towards the end of the day. That's more important than how do we wake up? Because that's going to happen anyways.

• 37:35Mindy Pelz?

  So give me an example of a nighttime routine that you you either use or you've used with your patients.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, universally, everybody talks about like dimming the lights, keeping those blue screens. So I'm not going to do too much. I'm not going to go too much on that. But I think one of the most important things is not eating after six, six thirty.

• 37:54Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I came from a family tradition where nobody ever eats, but also like till even about a hundred years ago, when we didn't have electricity in our homes, we were not eating big dinners. So and then the first thing that I offer is you want to finish food by six, six thirty, nothing big and solid.

• 38:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And dinner is always for health. Lunch, you can indulge a little bit. So I think that really starts to set.

• 38:17Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  And again, I'm gonna keep it super easy, right, Mindy? I mean, of course, I can say all these complex things and make people curious, but the truth is, it's fairly easy. What I really like to engage in is something called evening ragas, R A G A S. And ragas are these musical compositions. And these beautiful ragas are created, you know, in the ancient times in India, beautiful music compositions, classical music. They were created for the evening because they understood, those scientists understood that our body is going through this transition, this again, neurochemical transition, and it's difficult, right? As they change heads, serotonin upgrades to melatonin, and all of that happens, the body goes through a difficult period. Most people start feeling anxious, right? At dusk time, they feel anxious.

• 39:02Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  So you just play that music, like every evening, you want to start playing that music.

• 39:06Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, my God, I love this.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then I highly recommend that if you have an argument, save it for the daytime. Like, you actually say, okay, I want to talk to you about something, but I'm going to talk to you about it in the morning.

• 39:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you know, my husband and I, when I went through perimenopause into menopause, I finally had to say, after six o'clock, don't talk to me about anything that is not going to put a smile on my face. Like, because I

• 39:32Speaker 01

  So smart, Mindy. You are the OG of this. Like, you know how to do this.

• 39:36Mindy Pelz?

  I just was like, I'm not, otherwise, it means I won't sleep for like, ever. So I love that. I also, you know, something intuitively I started doing this year from just the trauma that I went through it with the fires, is I started playing chanting music at night. And I found that there was

• 39:54Speaker 01

  That was going to be my next thing, but it's finished, because I want to hear your story.

• 39:58Mindy Pelz?

  And I actually have one song, it was put, and I don't know the name of the song, but it was by Jay Uthal, who I, you know, have listened to his music in yoga classes forever. And it's because of the repetition, I knew that primed the vagal, your vagal tone, but what it's done now is that, like, I went traveling, and when I got in the airport, and I could feel myself stressed, I just put his song on because I'd already used it as a way to condition my nervous system at the end of the day.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Basically, Mindy, so, so brilliant, right? And, and listen, we as, you know, growing up in India, we were given these chants. I was just telling my mom on the phone last night, I said, Mom, you know, I just go into what I call Nohkar mantra, a certain chant, and I'm like, something happens, I just go into it, like, in my mind. I just like always, as a child, all the time, and it is so powerful. And it's such a great practice at night, right? Because it's like, and you know, even, it's, it's a very simple science, right? When your nervous system is exposed to the same vibration for a period of time, whether it's white noise or it's a chant. Now, the chant is a little bit more significant because, you know, it has, Sanskrit is a very vibrational language, and a lot of these Sanskrit chants, they kind of, like, they play music with your, with your endocrine glands, right? With your chakras.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  And it's, it's not, it's not a jo, it's not a coincidence that there are seven chakras, seven primary endocrine glands that are being studied, and there are seven notes, there are seven musical notes.

• 41:19Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And there's a whole, there's a, there's a whole science of this music, you know, raga chikitsa, like, healing through this classical compositions. But like, simply go on Spotify, go to YouTube, play Evening Ragas, and then, you know, chanting, like, like in my family, what I'm doing more and more is I just do an evening smudge. And it takes, it takes a mo, it takes a moment, I take an incense stick, I like go around the house and I set an intention, we chant together, me and my girls. But you're all studying for the evening. And I think, so what is very important is, for any one evening, you want to have an evening freshening. You know, whether you're taking a shower in the evening or getting into your pajamas, you want to take that time, you know, to, like, wash your face, get a change of clothes, you know how, because that sets the mood.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Again, it creates, it creates a whole different mood. And then a couple of practices before sleeping. You can have a warm beverage, if you're, if you're into milk, like a warm cup of milk with a cardamom powder, can, you know, feel like a tranquilizer, very naturally, without medication. And keep putting your legs up against the wall in this yoga pose called Viparit Karna. So laying on your bed, you know, with your legs up against the wall, and that really helps to lower your blood pressure, again, brings your body into the parasympathetic state. It's for free, you can play music while you're doing it. And then, if you want to do the foot massage, foot massage, cooler room, heavier blanket. I mean, like, Ayurveda has this exact specific recommendations that today's sleep experts are going to.

• 42:41Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing. I have a weighted blanket. I really like it. So you're saying do it. Oh, a cooler room. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's like, that's the key to to great sleep. But let's go back. So just so I'm clear, raga, you can just go to Spotify and it's R A G A. Is that how you spell it?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And evening ragas. So they're evening ragas. These are specifically designed. When you're, you know, all the daytime juices are becoming nighttime juices. So they're designed for that specific transition.

• 43:11Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  So you want to do evening ragas and then morning ragas and there's seven dawn ragas and dusk ragas and all kinds of ragas. But evening ragas is what you want to stick to for the evening.

• 43:20Mindy Pelz?

  Let's run the scenario that you've been working all day and you're now, maybe you're gonna go lean into season three of White Lotus. And you're gonna, you're gonna enjoy maybe some time sitting and watching a show with your husband. Would you do this ritual? Where you're listening to the ragas, your, your legs up the wall, putting the oil on. Is that best done? Like in the transition out of the day into the evening? Or is it best done when you're really ready to transition your mind and your body and your nervous system to actually go to sleep?

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So to be honest with you, my honest answer is do it whenever feasible for you.

• 44:03Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, there you go. Yeah, well.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  But when you have the luxury, but when you have the luxury, you want to do it to transition out of any kind of mental activation. So after your white lotus, or maybe you can start with a foot massage while you're, you know, watching your TV show. Or, you know, maybe you could start with a certain practice and then you gradually want to, like, you want to be yawning when you're watching the TV. You want to be like, I'm so relaxed and I'm ready to turn this off, you know?

• 44:29Mindy Pelz?

  Perfect.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And, and you don't want to sit on like one of those slouchy couches, you know? I mean, it'll look five days, people, and anybody who's gonna try this is gonna hate me for five days. And then I promise you'll love me because then you're not, because even the minute you're like in those slouchy couches, you're not getting up from that place. Like, you're not, you know, it's gonna be second and third and. Fourth episode of whatever you're watching. So that happens, right? So you want to inspire yourself. And like, I also like to have something. What am I inspiring myself to do next? You want to be inspired with what you're doing next. And also the timing of the sleep is important. Mindy, so even though I don't say it, people know that sleeping at ten, ten P M is ideal. You can't do ten, you do ten thirty. You can't do ten thirty, you do eleven. You can, and whatever you're doing, you just move back ten minutes.

• 45:11Mindy Pelz?

  Why is ten ideal?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, of course, depending on the seasons and place, but ten is just an easy number to say out there, but around there, some around there, because between ten and two. The melatonin surges at its, at its highest. The body goes into this deep, beautiful metabolic repair. That glymphatic system comes alive, which is cleaning all the debris from all the nonsense we are thinking. As human beings, we're the only species that have this ability to think and create debris as a result in our nervous system. So that happens when you tend to, and you know, and many like so many people at two o'clock, they wake up for a bathroom break. They wake up in a sweat. They wake up suddenly hot. That's like signaling the end of this metabolic repair, like internal metabolic, like the daytime repair. From the day, everything that's pending. So the body is signaling, you know, that, okay, this is done.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And then that second phase begins from two to four thirty, which is when the body goes into like now. Creating regeneration of new tissue, right? Like your growth hormone surges and prolactin surges. And you want to give yourself the whole window as many days as you can from the ten to four thirty. And then, you know, some more if you can. But those are really important hours of sleep. And once in a while, and sometimes we can miss it, but it just having this consciousness allows us to. To be, to want to sleep a little bit more.

• 46:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Okay. So that was beautiful. So we have breath. And then we have oil and then we have an evening routine. What else would you recommend to be able to transition into this depletion of hormones?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will say, right? So I'm going to go into a little bit of supplements and herbs and a little bit more on like, you know. Food and a lot of, a lot of the food also does align with modern nutrition and what it has to say. I will say that one of the first things, I'm going to go with nutrition first because we started there. So one of the first things you want to do is start eating, we already talked about a six thirty dinner, but you want to start eating. Lighter dinner. You know, in fact, it is a time. I mean, you are the queen of fasting. If you wanna fast, this is the time to do it and do not not eat much of a dinner. And and in in the in the Ayurvedic books, you they talk about barley soup and mung lentil soup, if at all.

• 47:12Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  You know, and and or people can do broths, people can do. Yeah, like a rice broth or a bone broth or a or a barley barley broth. Or a mung mung lentil broth, you know. Those are great dinners to go. So you wanna go because of course, like your visceral fat percentage goes from seven percent to thirty percent for most women, right? And your body, your microbiome is changing. Your body cannot break down large amounts of foods. And it's not in its building phase, you know, it's in its preservation. You know, it's like we wanna just let the body be in preservation and uh in that steady place. So that dinner, you so you wanna go down on dinner. You you you wanna go easy on dinner. But in terms of food choices, again, yes, not maybe really becoming conscious about

• 47:57Speaker 01

  all the fats which are not of the greatest quality that you're consuming. And dialing down on those, like excessive cheese, excessive, you know, ice cream or ex.

• 48:07Mindy Pelz?

  Like making sure you don't do. Yeah, at oh, through, okay, just in general. Got it. Okay.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like like basically, you know, I see many, I've had clients who are like, oh, because ghee is so great, I'm having oodles and oodles of ghee. But it doesn't work after a certain age because your body cannot break down fats the same way. And then it kind of becomes. Your your body is anyways waiting to build cholesterol at that phase, you know, for a few years, your body is like. You give me something, I make it into cholesterol because I'm not building any more tissue during this transition, just during the transition. A lot of people come out of it. Right? So you wanna just evaluate all the fat that you're consuming and see if your body is able to break it down. If it is not able to break it down, olive oil is a really good fats, eating foods which have the good fats like avocados. Great, keep them all. But anything that's of especially poor quality, like a lot of cream cheese, a lot of cheese, a lot of ice cream, excessive dairy.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  You just wanna dial down a little bit on that. You don't wanna go too crazy. But but olive oil is great to bring in at this point again, you know, so I tell people go fifty fifty on olive oil and ghee, don't.

• 49:07Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so and so you're watching your fats throughout the day and what where my fasting brain is interpreting what you're saying is that you would eat your bigger meal in the middle of the day or one or two o'clock and then you can broth it up or soup it up at night, which makes so much sense, especially if you do bone broth, because you can really start to actually open up your fasting window, maybe at six o'clock. And then you actually it's a different way of fasting if that main meal is the middle of the day, which I can tell you as a postmenopausal woman is definitely my preferred meal situation. Have the largest meal at lunch

• 49:50Mindy Pelz?

  or a late lunch. And then I usually innately was having a cup of tea or something warming at night. And then like my fasting window was already starting at like four or five in the afternoon. And it is in alignment with what you're saying.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Beautiful. I love that. Yeah. And there's so much like, you know, many just like that's so much research into like what really happens in the afternoon. Your insulin sensitivity is the highest, your gastritis the highest, your ghrelin is risen to a good amount of point that where you eat, you eat, you enjoy the food and you break it down. But versus at night, you eat, your ghrelin asks for starchy foods, and then you can't break it down. Like they're all kind of insulin resistant, mildly diabetic at night. So yeah, this is this is brilliant. But the foods that that you can add is and people go a little crazy about how they do protein. It is important to be mindful of protein. What I'm not happy about is that especially here in the West, people forget people forgot about protein for like, the first 40 years of their life. And then suddenly they're waking up to protein, right? And the body's like, what is this new foreigner

• 50:49Speaker 01

  substance that you've given us? Versus in a lot of traditional cultures, we continue we started protein since kids, right? Like we I had a bowl of lentils every single day of my life, right? I had some dairy, some lentils, lots of almonds. You want to train yourself to eat, you know, small amount of healthy proteins, ideally cooked in a traditional way. Like that's I'm big on that because your body protein is too heavy. And there is there's a reason why protein was either always cooked, spiced, because spices had to break down, even the toxic metabolic waste from the from the cooking and the breaking down. It really leaves so much free radish, so many free radicals, because protein is so heavy. So you spiced, watered down, right? Lentils were

• 51:32Speaker 01

  always watered down, lentil soups, lentil, or they're fermented, you know, tofu. Even even we have a ton of even an Indian and Ayurveda cuisine, we have a ton of fermented lentil preparations. So and like even even even cheese as a protein is fermented and we have paneer that is fermented, you know. So you want to eat it traditionally, how it was eaten. How did your ancestors eat it? Yeah.

• 51:51Mindy Pelz?

  And what, yeah, how the ancestors ate it is really important question. What spices help you? I really love that idea. My son is a chef and so we geek out on food all the time. Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 52:03Mindy Pelz?

  And so I'm like, I'm thinking about, we've had so many spice discussions, but more from a flavor profile. But what you just said is that certain spices actually help you break down protein. Are there, are, do all spices do that or are there certain ones?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  So Mindy firstly, like when you have, when you see my book, I have like two pages, I have charts which give you all the like which break it down even further. But I will tell you, so basically what the proteins help you, like what spices help you to do, like spices are hot in there. In what we call inherent potency in Ayurveda, right? Spices like the word spice by itself like brings heat to our mind. And what spices help you to do that because of the heat, right? Just how cooking is a hot process because electricity is a hot thing. That's what can charge your form. As long as it's warm, it can transform and spices are very warming in nature. And it'll help to take propel that breakdown to the next level, but not only that. Most spices are antioxidants and they help to neutralize free radicals. When things are metabolized, there's toxic metabolic waste.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  The heavier the food, the more the toxic metabolic waste. And right here, when you're cooking it with an antioxidant, it's it's right, it's like you're going to create the waste, I'm going to clean the waste. And that's why all traditions, ancient cultures cooked in these spices. So yes, not only there's a spice like asafoetida, it's very pungent and strong, but it helps to break down proteins really well. So I wouldn't dare dream of eating a protein without asafoetida, a little bit of it, right? So I'll pitch it to you, it's very, very strong. It's a, it's a resin from a tree. But also, also other things like carom seeds, very flavorful, delicious. And they're like little celery seeds looking kind of little seeds.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Very easily available in a lot of spice stores. And I think the US, like the West is still waiting to discover its flavor. And once it does, it's gonna be, it's gonna be like a big superfood. But like caram seeds are, these two are really, really great for breaking down.

• 53:59Mindy Pelz?

  Caram, oh, good. I don't know this seed. I need to go find it.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  You're gonna love it, Mindy. I'm telling you, like, just, you try very little. And then, you know, Mindy, I actually, like, even in my book, I guide people into how do you start? How do you build this relationship with spices? Like, you don't, like, how do you go on a date with yourself in that spice store? Like, how do you go, how do you date these? How do you woo these spices? How do you, how do you like, like, explore spices and then bring some to your home? And like, which are the starter spices and which are, which are like next level spices? You know, you wanna do it. You wanna have a relationship with these spices. And they tell you a lot, like, you know, you learn a lot about the tradition where it came from just through having this relationship with your spices. So spices are one way. So you wanna have your proteins eaten like it was traditionally. You wanna have, you know, you wanna moderate your fats, but include good fats.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  You wanna start eating early, but you also want to include fiber. It is a very important time to include cooked fiber. And most people find it very uncomfortable to eat cruciferous vegetables. And once again, having, you know, cooking your cruciferous vegetables in good fats with spices drastically lowers the bloat that they cause. Even fennel seeds, just fennel seeds for cruciferous vegetables. They enhance their taste flavor, which is fennel. That's it. And you'll see, and fennel goes with everything. Fennel goes with cauliflower, it goes with cabbage, it goes with Brussels sprouts. You do it all the time. And you'll see you're suddenly not as bloated. Also, you wanna push that to lunchtime if you can. The fiber, again, you're pushing almost all foods to lunchtime. And I would say most people can do well. If you're doing this, you're oiling, you're listening to your ragas, you know?

• 55:33Speaker 01

  You're making sure you're exalting. You have your girlfriends, lots of them. Like, I look at these boisterous women where I go to swim, Mindy. I go here to swim at Asphalt Green. And like seventy, eighty, ninety year old women naked in the locker rooms. And they're like boisterous and they're like young teenagers talking to each other. They're like, look at my hair. I got this new product. Oh, my husband's snoring so much at night. Oh, my goodness. They are so cute.

• 55:58Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  And you have the chance to like not care. Care about anything else in the world and enjoy this time.

• 56:05Mindy Pelz?

  It's so good. I love the way you described the lot, the, the post-menopausal women in the locker room. So I, you know, I'm so in alignment with everything you're teaching because I really feel like we already have all the answers, the primal answers, ancient tools that were given to us years ago, that was to help us through this process. And we lost our way. So I so excited about what you're bringing forward. How, where's your, where can people find your book? And what can they expect in the book? Like, I'm excited to go take that spices chapter. And I'm gonna go unpack that with my son and see what we can come up with.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yes, Mindy, and I'd still say, right, like, it's very tempting for people to go into the later parts of the book. And I'll tell you what the book is called and why it was written. So the book is called Your Body Already Knows. Okay. And, and, yeah. And so, so what I wanted to do is to take a moment to think about that, that your body already knows. We are the only species on this planet. We're the only species, Mindy, the most intelligent species who doesn't know how to live, right? Deer know, deer know when to wake up. They're not complaining about grazing on the same land every day. And tigers don't get carried away by, tigers don't get carried away because there was a new study about high frequency brainwave patterns in the morning. And nocturnal, and, and they're nursing mammals that will say no to certain foods, because they're

• 57:25Speaker 01

  nursing, and they say yes to galactic oils. And I've seen bears in Alaska before their hibernation, like right before hibernation, devouring big cabbage heads so they can have that bowel movement. Animals. So as, just as all other species on the planet know, they rely less on information, more on instinct and wisdom. And we've gone so much into information that we've lost our wisdom. So this book, Your Body Already Knows, gives you a clear framework. How to get away from the overwhelm of information? And how do you keep coming back to your wisdom? Using a framework? Because otherwise, if I say, hey, listen to your intuition, you'll say, I mean, my body just wants to have three bags of chips tonight. No, that's not intuition, right?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  So I give you the framework. Yeah. Yeah. So I, so I give you the framework. And so as long as you use the framework, you know, you know, what the answer is where. So you make choices. It makes your wellness easy. It's a very loving and gentle approach. My idea is nothing. You cannot heal anything. If it's not love and it's not kind. It's not ease and it's not ease, it's going to be disease. So it's a very loving approach to bringing you back. It gives people a twenty one day. So I just really quickly, part one is the most important part because it gives you the framework.

• 58:42Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Part three takes you on a twenty one day journey that one by one by one, you bring it into your life. One, one change a day, one shift a day, mi- micro shifts. These are micro, micro shifts have massive impact and worked with hundreds and hundreds of women doing this. And the spice is one of the days, one of the days, how do you bring in spices? So I tell people, don't jump into part three, you're very tempted, people just want to go into action quickly. I said, don't drop it a part three, part one is the most important. Because you know, it's like this, right? If you were driving Mindy from, from LA to San Francisco, you wanted to make that trip. You would first put it into your GPS, you would like look at the way you'd see where you're going to take a break, how you're going to navigate. Once you've mapped it out, you can drive part one and to allow you to map it out. So it's called your body already knows and that's where people can find it.

• 59:26Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, my gosh. As, as an author, I will tell you that it's not easy to put a book like that together. So let me just say thank you for everything you've done. I really find, and my audience knows this, I find books to be the best way to really embody a message or a teaching. Because as an author, you spend a lot of time really looking at how you put the information together. If the sentences structure is exactly what you would say. Whereas when we're like in a conversation like this, we're sort of speaking from a lot of pieces of information. And when you're reading, you actually can put that information down in a way that is incredibly clear and focused and action oriented.

• 1:00:11Mindy Pelz?

  So thank you for doing that. I'm excited for everybody to get this.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Thank you and thank you for doing everything that you do, Mindy. And thank you for such a thoughtful interview.

• 1:00:21Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm, thank you. I lo- I loved it. I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go grab the book and I like, and, and take the pieces. And I'm gonna go to Spotify and find some Raga. I'll do it, I'm gonna do the evening thing tonight. So you didn't.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  You have to let me know how it goes.

• 1:00:35Mindy Pelz?

  I will, you've totally inspired me, so this is phenomenal. Where can people find your book? I know it just came out.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, I think all the top retail stores, I just find it easier to order off Amazon.

• 1:00:49Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  But you can find it anywhere, Kindle, on Audible. So all of that is available to you. People can find me on my website. It's myfirstname, lastname.com, nithipandya.com.

• 1:01:00Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing, amazing. Well, Nidhi, this was incredible. You fired me up and I can't wait to go to sleep tonight. So it's gonna, I'm gonna go and get some sesame oil and we're gonna start the routine tonight. So, and please, those of you listening, like, give us feedback and let us know how it works for you. So, thank you, Nidhi, so much. This was a great conversation. Appreciate you.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Thank you so, so much.

• 1:01:25Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.