The "Wellness" Industry Sells Us On Rigid Optimization. It Doesn't Work–But This Might. | Nidhi Bhanshali Pandya

A deep dive on Ayurveda, a sophisticated system for health that's been refined over millennia. Nidhi Bhanshali Pandya https://www.nidhi.me/ is a renowned NAMA-certified Ayurvedic Doctor, the bestselling author of Your Body Already Knows https://www.nidhi.me/nidhi-book-pre-order-new (2025), and international speaker/educator known for her modern approach to women's health and longevity. In this episode we talk about: What Ayurveda actually is beyond TikTok trends How ancient Ayurvedic principles align with (and differ from) modern medicine  How to brace yourself in the face of an imbalanced ecosystem The human tragedy of overoptimization The value of awe, fascination, and pattern-seeing as more effective than discipline or force  The three codes of life The framework to come back into our own intelligence in the kindest way How modern life (especially electricity) disrupted our biological rhythm and created chronic imbalance The concept of balance and the Buddhist middle path as echoed in Ayurvedic texts The "inner climate" framework Practical tools for sleep, including concrete daily practices to offset "imbalances" The concept of agni (digestive fire) and how to support it A three tiered toolkit for self-regulation The perils of jumping into change Why cold drinks and excessive water can disrupt digestion Radical acceptance and gratitude Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsors: HomeServe: Plans start at just $4.99 a month. Go to homeserve.com https://homeserve.com to find the plan that's right for you. Leesa:  Go to leesa.com http://leesa.com/ for 25% off mattresses, pllus get an extra $50 off with the promo code Happier, exclusive for our listeners.

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

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we're going to talk about the problem of self-optimization. We're also going to talk about some ancient alternatives to optimization. But let's stay with the problem for a second. This issue of optimization is a symptom of a deep problem, I think, in the overall wellness world, where we're sold sometimes this idea that we need to spend an enormous amount of time and energy and money fixing ourselves, endlessly tweaking our workouts, tracking our sleep, counting our steps. It really preys on our insecurities, our fears, our pervasive sense of insufficiency. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to be healthier or better in any number of ways. But, and this is paradoxical,

• 1:03Dan Harris?

  the first thing you need to do if you want to grow and change is to accept yourself as you are. Because you can only get so far if you're approaching personal development, spiritual growth, whatever you want to call it, from a place of self-hatred. If you're succumbing to what has sometimes been called the subtle aggression of self-improvement. So like I said, today, we're going to talk about an ancient alternative to self-optimization. Specifically, we're talking about something called Ayurveda. Ayurveda often gets reduced to overpriced supplements and spa treatments, but at its core, it is a deep and sophisticated system for health that has been refined over millennia. Some of the ideas in Ayurveda have been studied by modern science.

• 1:48Dan Harris?

  Others have not. So you can think of this episode as an exploration rather than, strictly speaking, medical advice. If something here sparks your interest, check in with a qualified healthcare provider before you make any changes. My guest today is Nidhi Pandya. She's an Ayurvedic doctor and the author of a bestselling book called Your Body Already Knows. In this conversation, we talk about what Ayurveda actually is beyond all of the TikTok trends, how ancient Ayurvedic principles align with and differ from modern medicine, the human tragedy of self-optimization, how awe and fascination are more effective than discipline or force, how modern life often disrupts our biological rhythms and creates imbalance,

• 2:31Dan Harris?

  the framework to coming back to your own native intelligence, the intelligence in your body, some practical tools for sleep, the concept of digestive fire, a three-tiered toolkit for self-regulation, the perils of jumping into change, and more. Meanwhile, over on my new app, 10% with Dan Harris, there's a new meditation that drops today from our Teacher of the Month, Bart Van Melik, who has tailored said meditation to today's episode. The meditation is called What Listen to Your Body Actually Means. So in other words, Bart is going to take us beyond the cliche. Okay, we'll get started with Nidhi Pandya right after this.

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• 4:09Dan Harris?

  Nidhi Pandya, welcome to the show.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me, Dan.

• 4:13Dan Harris?

  All right, let me start with a really basic question. I think a lot of people have heard of Ayurveda. You know, it's kind of as a, it's like a marketing thing now. I've heard of it. I know about as much about Ayurveda as I know about essential oils, which is to say nothing. So what is Ayurveda?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I'm so excited to have this conversation. I'm glad you opened your mind to hearing about Ayurveda, or at least Ayurveda done differently.

• 4:41Dan Harris?

  All the credit goes to Marissa Schneiderman, whose job is to pry open my mind.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  All right, so Ayurveda, you know, as you said, a lot of people know Ayurveda today through TikTok wellness trends, whether it's turmeric, whether it's ashwagandha, oil pulling, dry brushing, bullet coffee, intermittent fasting. You can say to a great extent, all of these have their roots in Ayurveda. But what Ayurveda literally is, what it literally translates into is Ayu means life and Veda means science. It is the original science of life that comes from India 5,000 years ago. And given the fact that it's the science of life, Dan, it covers everything from prevention and treatment of diseases

• 5:27Speaker 03

  to lifestyle, nutrition, fertility, childcare, social conduct. If it has to do with human life, Ayurveda covers it. And what's happened is that as we've opened our mind to looking at the system beyond modern medicine in the last few years, a lot of trends have come from traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. So the world has opened up its mind and eyes to Ayurveda again. And this is the perfect time to rediscover it and bring it back because it is technically ancient, but it's timeless and it's extremely relevant to us.

• 6:05Dan Harris?

  So you say the world has opened its mind. One of the quotes that I love from one of my favorite punk bands in the eighties, The Meat Puppets, they had a line in one of their songs, "Open up your mind, in pours the trash." Meaning, and that's not to trash Ayurveda, just to say that you've got a lot of less than scrupulous people who can feast upon this ancient tradition for their own benefit and create a lot of confusion. Does that jibe with you, what I'm saying?

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Dan, 100%. Because when you bring something ancient and you're still bringing regulation into it, but it sounds mystical, it sounds appealing, and it sounds different, it can very quickly become a trend. It can very quickly be lost in translation. And honestly, part of my life's work, Dan, is to bring Ayurveda back to what it's supposed to be. It's the science of life. It is the most precise and logical science that I have come across. And to bring it back into its principle-based model, rather than a prescription-based model. So Ayurveda has become prescriptive, dogmatic, rigid, and even trendy, which is just loading people with information, rather than giving them the wisdom of why this is done.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  So bringing the whys back to the whats, that's part of my work, but you're absolutely right. It can very quickly become a trend. It can very quickly become a marketing tool for marketers.

• 7:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah, you said it's the most precise science that you've come across. Am I recapitulating your words correctly?

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:38Dan Harris?

  I guess the reason why my ears perked up when I heard you talk about the precision of the science is, like, if you get cancer, who are you, me, he, going to trust more, like an oncologist or an Ayurvedic doctor?

• 7:52Speaker 03

  So I will say that, and I've thought about this, because I'll be honest, cancer actually runs in my family. Like, we are just, we're just all like that. My grandmother, my aunts, my dad. And this is precisely what we've done, especially this is what my dad, who's currently in remission, is doing. So for the surgical aspect of it, definitely modern medicine. For critical care, definitely modern medicine. But for the maintenance, as well as if anybody is going through chemo, and what that chemo does to your body, and what radiation does to your body. But I think everything else, as my dad is, he had high-grade prostate cancer, fast progressing, he's seven years in remission, and all his treatment post his surgery has all been Ayurvedic.

• 8:33Dan Harris?

  Right. So but what about chemo? Would you not do chemo?

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Look, when I work with my clients, Dan, I will tell them that you do you, right? I'm not allowed to give medical advice. And I understand that, you know, chemo can be beneficial for a lot of people. But I will say that chemo pretty evenly chars the body for the lack of a better word. You know, it creates this inflammation inside. It depletes the mucosal lining. And all the work that needs to be done so that you can start rebuilding, I will bring in Ayurveda, all the foods that you can eat and all that you can avoid so that your body is braced for that chemo. Ayurveda can be very helpful to integrate into that entire treatment protocol.

• 9:16Dan Harris?

  Got it. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you're not saying, let's forget about Western medicine. You're saying, no, let's supplement and enhance Western medicine with this ancient science of life.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Absolutely. One way of saying this, right? Yoga is a sister science of Ayurveda, right? And it's beneficial for most people if they're doing strength training three days, they're running two days. It's beneficial for them to add in yoga one day somewhere in there because it'll help to stretch, it'll help to regulate the breathing. It will improve the heart rate variability. So it very well works, in fact, in our modern day with everything that we're consuming currently. You know, with our air being polluted, with our food being toxic, with everything in our environment. And this is also why I say this is the time for Ayurveda. Because this science teaches you so well and so deeply how to brace yourself in the face of imbalance or in the face of an imbalanced ecosystem.

• 10:14Dan Harris?

  You do spend some time in the book talking about the human tragedy of over-optimization. Can you say a little bit about that?

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Yes, Dan, and I'm living in the capital of over-optimization, New York City. After the invention of electricity, I mean, this is also the same time we have chronic diseases. We've gone completely, we've just lost how to live. And well, now that being said, it's underlying root cause of all our problems. And I'm not saying you shut off all the lights in your house tonight as soon as sun sets. But just to give attention to how much it's disrupted the way we live. So we've expanded our days. We've expanded our capacity to work. We're constantly being overproductive and we're living in this high stress that we have to get everything right. You know, Dan, can I tell you, most often I'm telling my clients to do less, not to do more for their health. Most of the times I'm like, you don't, you don't need to do all of this.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  You don't need to exercise six days a week. Take three days off, relax for so many days because we've got into this whole doing burnout mindset. But what it really does, right? It jeopardizes your wellness rather than giving you wellness. And because most people to follow these rigid routines, to follow that level of discipline, which is not intuitive and inherent, which comes from an external prescription. So your body, it's not coming from your limbic system. It's just a, it's just like a memorized behavior from external sources. When you do that, your body is under high stress. And when it's under high stress, you have increased cortisol, you have increased adrenaline.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  As a result, you're actually disrupting your hormones. You're affecting melatonin production. You are compromising your body's idea of wellness. You're down regulating digestion, the biggest thing. You're down regulating digestion when you're like, I have to get this right. I cannot eat this. I have to eat this. I have to sleep at this time. All the have tos, all the shoulds in the name of health are actually hurting health. I see the people who are sickest, you know, Dan, people will come to me. I usually work with women a lot more and women will come to me and say, I'm doing everything so right. And I wake up in the morning and I wake up at five thirty and I do A, B, C, D, E. And I'm taking these supplements and my husband, he's smoking and sitting on the couch and he's fine.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Because the truth is like your stress to be well will hurt you more. And when I say your body already knows, that is a promise that you don't need to go this crazy. There are few things, few fundamental things we all need to return to. There's nothing more that you need. We've four and a half billion years as a species. You know, we started as single cell organisms on this planet, four and a half billion years. The planet just continued to thrive. And we've come to a place in the last hundred years where we are questioning whether we can evolve from here, whether we can grow from here. But otherwise, eighty three trillion species over four and a half billion years. We didn't have to do anything. The environment was right. The climate was right.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Inherent intelligence is carried by every species and we just rely upon that. So we've gone into this overdrive and in the overdrive, we're actually creating further disease.

• 13:26Dan Harris?

  You say as a one countermeasure that we should learn through awe. And you talk about the value of fascination over force. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Dan, you know, when I talked, for example, about the circadian rhythms of the day, right? And I talk about looking outside. I always talk about the behavior of the sun and I always talk about the behavior of the species outside of us. And I said, hey, morning, it's sluggish outside, it's sluggish inside. Or the sun is rising high and our digestive fire is rising high. Or there's wind outside and there's like yawning and wind inside, right? So when you're constantly connecting with those rhythms and patterns of nature, when you're looking at the behavior of other species, when you're just like fascinated with this, look at this precise science, plants can dare not do photosynthesis till the sun is out.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  And when you're constantly looking at those patterns, you're actually learning from the limbic system. You're actually learning from a different part of your brain. Oh, and wonder, they become an emotional experience. And when something becomes an emotional experience, rather than I am supposed to wake up at seven AM, I have to set my alarm, which is like a prescriptive informational prefrontal cortex rigid prescription. That is not internalized by the body. And when it's internalized with awe and wonder, you activate the default mode network of your body, which is where conditioned behavior happens, where organic, natural behavior happens, where your neuroplasticity expands. So I insist, right? Like, when people come to me, Dan, and even in my book, I'll insist, don't make the changes today. I don't want you to make the changes.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Like, for three weeks, you're not making any changes. You're just sitting in awe. Like, I want people to notice these rhythms of the universe outside of them. Like, look outside to know what's happening within. Philosophers, philosophers, time and again, have said, as above, so below. As is the macro, such is the micro. And just that awe, right? And then when you do one thing, and when you're so tuned in and you've become such a keen observer of these rhythms and patterns of the universe. And then let's say you decide, somebody decides to say, I'm gonna eat an early dinner tonight. And yes, at the night, you know, they're used to comfort food and their body is, you know, it's gonna feel unhappy. And they observe keenly what happens next day. Let me see what happens to my bowel movement. Let me see, how do I feel at lunch? Because you're just now becoming this keen observer,

• 15:46Speaker 03

  going back to the rhythms and patterns that were meant to be part of this human cycle and human body.

• 15:53Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, that really lands for me. The first person I heard this argument from, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work, but Evelyn Tribbley, who's one of the progenitors of something called intuitive eating. So instead of listening to somebody else's rules about what you should eat and when and trying to achieve ketosis or whatever, it's more like, actually, can you listen to your body? And get curious about that. I have really switched my eating habits based on that, and it's been really helpful.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  That's beautiful. That's beautiful to hear. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I tell people, when you're keenly observing, observe rhythms, observe patterns. Because literally, Dan, what sets you apart from your wax statue and what will set me apart from my wax statue is that I have a breath. I have a heartbeat. Every cell has a vibration. There is everything in the universe. It's the rotation of the sun. It's the revolution around. You know, everything is a rhythm. It's a pattern. It's a whole orchestra. What a beautiful musical system. And when you go out of rhythm, even if for one minute, the earth stopped rotating, we're gonna be like, oh, what's going on? Or if you see it's snowing in spring, we're gonna think there's something off like drastically, even though in short term, you know, like nothing's happening.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  It's snow one day, it's sunny one day, but we know that this is just inherently wrong. We know we scared, right? So similarly, everything is a pattern in the body. And so I just say keenly become a pattern seer. Outside, inside, see how they connect. And it's easier, once you get into this mindset, it's actually easier than people think.

• 17:27Dan Harris?

  Okay, so you also have this framework, the three codes of life, the inner climate, circadian rhythms, the cycle of everything, growth, transformation, decline. Do you think what might be worth walking through this for people?

• 17:42Speaker 03

  So I'll go into the second one, the inner climate, longer, but I'll just talk about what this framework is, right? So if my ask is that let's bring us all back to our instinctive knowledge, to our wisdom that's within each cell of our body. That's a big ask unless I give you a framework. So I said, it's only three governing principles. To be honest, these are governing principles, only three principles that govern everything from outside in the universe to inside in our body, to every single phase of our life. The first governing principle is the circadian rhythm. As diurnal mammals, even nocturnal mammals, they have very different circadian rhythms.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  But basically, all species on the planet have this relationship with the rising sun and the setting sun. And the juices in our body flow accordingly. So the first one is to really tune into that wonder and awe and start replicating that in your life slowly, steadily, one day at a time. And then that makes it intuitive, right? Which means that already if somebody is telling me, hey, you know, wake up in the morning and like do something super bizarre, I already know that it's against this first principle. It's not intuitive, it doesn't make sense. The second principle, which is really my life's work, and this is something that we would get a little bit deeper into, if at all.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Dan, the whole premise is, right, that life exists on our planet and no other planet. Because the climate was right on our planet, right? With the sun and the moon and the atmospheric pressure and water. And climate was right. Suddenly, single cell organisms became like these, like eighty three trillion species. Today, climate is wrong and we're questioning our life on this planet and how long it will survive. So we know that for anything to survive, you need the right climate. I cannot grow tomatoes on the North Pole. The climate is not right. Similarly, the idea is that there is a climate inside our bodies.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  And our body is a universe to trillions of microorganisms, microbiome. And today, more and more researchers and scientists are discovering that their life determines our life. How healthy they are, how healthy the microbiome is, determines our digestion, our immunity, our nervous system, our hormones. And you're like, oh, my God, like, there's a whole world happening inside. So they need a certain climate for them to thrive. And I've studied other ancient systems of medicine as well. They actually understood this in different ways, but all of them came to the same conclusion in some way or the other. That there is this climate, the yin and yang that you have to maintain. So what is that climate?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  And my work is I've just made it more understandable than the yin and the yang and then the pH balance. So what is that climate? Dan, can we do this together really quickly? If you don't mind. Can I ask you to take your palm and just cup it a little bit and exhale into it a few times?

• 20:51Speaker 03

  What did that feel like then? Was it warm, was it cold?

• 20:55Dan Harris?

  Warm.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Warm. Was it moist, was it dry?

• 20:59Dan Harris?

  Moist.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Okay, so you said warm and moist.

• 21:02Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Okay, perfect. Dan, do you know what human blood is? Is it warm, is it cold?

• 21:08Dan Harris?

  It's warm.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  It's warm. It's warm and moist. Dan, mother's milk?

• 21:13Dan Harris?

  Same.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Warm and moist. Reproductive fluids? Warm and moist.

• 21:18Dan Harris?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Amniotic fluid, warm and moist. The sun and the moon, they come together outside on their planet to create this warm and moist environment. And that allows for life to thrive, right? Especially places that are like Florida in March, so warm and moist. Beautiful life. Our microbiome was previously called flora and fauna, right? We know that flora and fauna thrive in warm and moist places. Our body temperature is ninety-eight point seven degrees. Uh, Dan, do you like hot-tempered people, cold people, warm people?

• 21:52Dan Harris?

  Warm.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Warm, yeah, and and nobody ever teaches us what that warm is. Hugs are warm and moist. A cozy blanket is warm and moist. Most comfort foods are warm and moist. Anger is hot. Anxiety is dry. Stress is hot and dry. Depression is cold and sluggish. But love, gratitude, compassion are warm and moist. If you're sitting in a room, you don't want the room to be overly dry. I mean, no, nobody likes dry skin, but even if your hands were sticky or slimy, you wouldn't be comfortable with it. But if it's just the right moist, you don't want it too cold, you don't want it hot, warm and moist. Human beings all around the world, right, inside of us, outside,

• 22:36Speaker 03

  we gravitate in our minds, in our bodies, in our emotions. We gravitate towards warm and moist. Warm and moist is where life thrives. It's too hot and humid, parasites, marsh. It's hot and dry, you're a desert, you're Sedona, not happening. You're cold and moist, it's all snow. You're cold and dry, you're a cold desert. Warm and moist is where life thrives. A trigger is hot and dry. And and I do this with my clients, when we use our battlefield. Tools, they actually notice that they're becoming hot and dry inside. It's picking up pace. So this place of balance, which is warm and moist, which is really what we all want. We can bring warm and moist into our foods. We can bring warm and moist, like the good fat and the cooking and the spicing is the warm and moist.

• 23:18Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  In traditional Chinese and Asian cultures, they ferment it. Again, that is warm and moist, right? We talk about fermentation, culturing. The process of culturing actually is a warm and moist process. That multiplication of bacteria, which is aerobic, produces these water droplets. And the whole, the whole pot actually becomes slightly warm because of the multiplication of the bacteria. That's a warm and moist process. So if you look back, I looked at all cultures and somehow they were doing this. They were returning back to the warm and moist. It is that state of flow. It is that midpoint. When I talk about the center point, but the sun, you know, you're not overly, things are not overly heating. Things are not overly cooling. The sun and the moon, that's what they do on our planet, right? The sun heats and dehydrates everything. By the end of the day, you have dry eyes, dry throat.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  And then the moon comes in with its gravitational force, which in Ayurveda believes that the gravitational force also acts on our neurotransmitters. In that gravitational force, it replenishes the moisture on the planet. The center point is warm and moist. So anyways, I can talk about the inner climate method for as long as I live, but I'm going to just end here. But the inner climate method kind of offers you to start noticing where in your life are you creating excessive burn? Excessive stagnation? What foods that you're eating is doing this for you? What is your own inner climate? What has your imbalance led you to? People can identify their own inner climates as well and say, oh, my God, my body has become hot and dry. It's inflamed and it's like global warming happening inside. I'm burning in the sun and I have this rash and my stools are burning.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Or people can say, I've just become stagnant and I just sit and I want to watch TV and I just don't feel like doing anything. I feel so depressed. So people identify their own inner climate and then we make the journey back to warm and moist in every aspect, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, everywhere.

• 25:02Dan Harris?

  Let's go into what Ayurveda is actually all about. What are the key concepts that we need to understand beyond the branding that may show up on our face lotion?

• 25:13Speaker 03

  So when we look at the world around us, right, Dan? And we look at animals. And I always use the example of deer. Deer knows that it needs to wake up in the morning to graze. No alarm clock needed, not complaining, oh, my God, I'm on the same patch of grass again. And we see animals everywhere, species on our planet, displaying behavior where they understand how to live. Like, I've personally seen bears eat big cabbage heads in Alaska before they hibernate because they want to have that big bowel movement. Or there are animals who will reject certain foods, but eat galactogogue plants when they're nursing. Or pets, you know, if you have an animal, and if you go out in the, you know, in the wild with a dog, and if he is bruised, they notice sulfuric soil, they'll kind of roll on that sulfuric soil.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  So all species, even worms with like two senses, can understand where to make their hole, what to go into, what to consume. At birth, we as babies know to eat from our mother's breast. We've never used our mouth before, but it's this inherent knowing. So we can agree, we can safely agree that all species understand how to live and how to be well and how to make choices. Somehow, we have forgotten, we've overused our intellect so much that we've lost that instinct. Now, Ayurveda is a science that is preserved. If somebody had to take all of human instinct and really put it down in literature and say, these are the rhythms and the patterns that exist in your body. This is the nature of the human body.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  This is the nature of our origins, of how we function. And this is the nature of the world outside of you, of the foods you eat, of sunrise and sunset, of what's happening. And how do they interact with each other? And through this deep understanding of how nature works, how life works, through that basic foundational principles, now it can kind of go further into, because of this understanding, this is how you can build your life out. This is how you can eat, this is how you can cook your foods. This is how you can wake up, this is how you sleep, this is how you conceive, this is how you make relationships, just pretty much all of that. So at its core, Ayurveda understands that instinct,

• 27:25Speaker 03

  but it's kind of written down in the form of a framework. And on top of that framework are these prescriptions that consume this or do this in the morning and do this in the nighttime. One more layer of Ayurveda then that I think that's often missed is Ayurveda is not rigid. It's not a rigid science at all. For example, let's say you and me. We all know today, I'm just going to give you an example that, okay, you know, sleeping early at night is going to help deliver inflammation. It's going to get that body, the lymphatic system going, going to give you deep rest and repair. And yet there are times that, let's say, I cannot sleep on time and I'm sleeping late every night when I'm sleeping. Ayurveda has a lens of understanding what happens in the body when I'm doing this. So say, hey, we know today scientifically that

• 28:10Speaker 03

  there'll be more cytokines and you'll have more inflammation, more oxidative stress, lower lymphatic cleansing. What can you do, right? Because you understand the impact of what this thing up will do. What can I bring in during the daytime to create balance to that imbalance that I created at night? So because I understand the nature of the imbalance, you can now bring in remedies. You can remediate the imbalances that you create. Now, of course, long term, that's going to hurt somebody. But I cannot even tell you, like, I live in New York City, I'm raising two teenage daughters. And I would say it's all my tools in my toolkit come from this science and understanding. And it doesn't mean that you have to live in an ashram or a monastery.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  It does not mean that. It just means you want to understand the basic rhythmic function of your own body and what's happening outside and constantly look to offset imbalances that are created and move towards health in the most sustainable and easy manner.

• 29:12Dan Harris?

  I've sometimes heard Buddhism referred to as advanced common sense and that seems like it might apply here. It's a return to our intuitive knowing that's been papered over, crusted over by social pressure to look a certain way, conflicting advice about what diet is best for you. Lots of unhealthy foods that flood the food chain. And it's about bringing us back to our intuitive knowing and then adding some real insights and expertise on top of that.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Oh, I couldn't have said it better. But yet, I tell people that we're so far away from our intuition. We're so far away from our instinct, right? We've overused our intellect. I mean, our intellect is great. It's really what made us human. It's allowed us to advance this much, but it's also in the way of coming back to our wisdom. Right? It allows us to stay in that information. We're obsessed with information. It's outside of us. Wisdom is within us. And in Ayurveda, the first cause of disease is that loss of wisdom, of that inner knowing. So we need a framework to come back. And yes, Ayurveda provides that framework so you can start understanding instinctually the rhythms and the patterns that exist in the body. But it is very true. It is very much like Buddhism.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  In fact, one of the later texts actually have a sutra of words from Buddhism, the middle path, the how, how everything comes to that middle path in whether it's food, whether it's lifestyle, it comes to that moderation.

• 30:40Dan Harris?

  Yes, middle path. Just for people listening who don't know much about Buddhism, but the Buddha in his early pre-enlightenment days, you know, was swinging back and forth between total indulgence in sense pleasures available in the world. He was a prince, so they were all available to him, all the various forms of pleasure. And then aestheticism or self-mortification, complete self-denial, on the other hand. And ultimately, what he landed on, and this was where he ended up getting enlightened, was the middle path. And I hear that in what you're saying. In fact, the word balance comes up a lot in your speech.

• 31:20Dan Harris?

  And I wonder if that is a core concept here that is operationalizable for the rest of us?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  That is a core concept. And the word balance, I mean, it can mean so many things to so many people. I mean, somebody could look at balance as like even. As a rigid concept, that you're always looking at something and looking to balance yourself with it, or you're always looking to do something right. But that's not the kind of balance, right? The kind of balance that you're looking for is the moderation, is the moderation in everything. Of course, the deep understanding of how to live and how to do things, and to constantly seek to bring moderation in that. And when you deviate from that, you know, center path, is again, to understand how can you bring yourself back in the most easy, loving, kind manner? It is a very loving science, you know, at the end of it. I read that it brings a lot of self-compassion for yourself, but also for others,

• 32:10Speaker 03

  as to how do you constantly come back into that equilibrium in all parts of your being, your physiological being, emotional being, mental being, as well as breath.

• 32:21Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Nidhi talks about some countermeasures for sleeplessness, support for building strong digestion, and some other key concepts of Iyabata.

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• 34:03Dan Harris?

  Speaking of that, you mentioned as an example of the flexibility that in Ayurveda, you there's an understanding, and this rhymes with modern science, that going to bed early and having a set schedule is, you know, is really important for sleep, which sleep is so, yeah, I sometimes call it the apex predator of healthy habits. And yet, sometimes, and I'm thinking about myself, like tonight, I have a dinner at seven, I'm unlikely to get home before 10, and then I'll unwind for a while, so I'll be going to bed later than I normally do. But it sounds like in your system, that's okay, you just need to bring in some countermeasures the next day. What would those countermeasures be? Like, if I've given myself permission to stay up late, like, how do I take care of myself the next day?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Right. I just want to say something, right? So firstly, of course, it's ideal to sleep early. And I'll tell everybody, if you can't get to bed by 10, if you can be in your bed and be asleep by 10, nothing like it. But I understand that life happens. So one of the things that you would do, and this happened to me last night, Dan, so it's like, really, I'm freshly right there because I had, I had a late night. So in the morning, right, when I pick my exercise, I would pick a lighter form of exercise. So if I have a choice between, let's say, running and going for yoga, I would go for yoga because it will slow my breath down. The idea is to slow your body and slow your breath down, to stay as much in parasympathetic as you can, and you're not living in stress mode. So these are a few of the things that I did. I woke up in the morning, I went for a yoga class.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I came back, I massaged my body with oil. It's one of the Ayurvedic practices of body oiling, slowing down, creating lymphatic drainage, but also very, very grounding to the nervous system. And then I took a nice warm shower, and then I did my breath work and my meditation. But also, what I will remain conscious of for the rest of the day is to choose activities that are slower, to slow down my body movements, to maybe go into a silent fast. And then, of course, eventually to go to bed early tonight. If I will have a chance, I'll go for another massage. Maybe I'll go for a foot massage today. So the idea is that, listen, if I did not get enough repair at night, how do I create enough repair in the day? And how do I have enough tools in my toolkit so I know how to create repair?

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Now, let's say today was a really, really busy day, just by slowing down my exhalations, just by slowing, and this is a practice that I have adopted for many, many years, that you slow down your breath. When you slow down your breath, you slow down your nervous system. You slow down your nervous system and you get into the parasympathetic mode. Your body is repairing faster. It literally goes into the rest and digest mode. So even though you're awake and you're functioning, your body is still trying to maintain its repair. In fact, every inhale, I always tell my clients, every inhale is sympathetic, puts your body into like, let's act. And every exhale is parasympathetic. And when you get really busy in a day, very often, we come back and we sit and we're like, we sigh loudly, right?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Because your body is forcing out that exhale. But if we were to just mindfully tune into those and create those longer exhalations, even in conversation, even while your mouth is open, when you focus on longer nasal exhalations simultaneously, your body starts to go into parasympathetic. And you really come to that present moment and your body starts to relax. And that offers healing of its own kind.

• 37:22Dan Harris?

  I just want to get technical about a couple of the things you said there because my obsession as an interviewer is to provide my listeners with things they can do as soon as they're done listening. So when you're talking about deep, slow breathing, and you mentioned that you this morning did some of that, can you be pretty technical or granular about what that looks like?

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. All right. So it's called a resonance breath. And the resonance breath is that you count, you can count for inhalation. So let's say you were to do five count, and whatever that count looks like for you, right? It could be five seconds, it could be a faster, you can do it in your mind. So you would inhale, if you were inhaling five seconds.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Take a slow inhale, but when you exhale, you'd want that to go a little bit longer. So let's say you would do seven and you can use an app. You know, my friend Eddie Stern has an app called the breathing app. Super easy, you can set a gong, it's a free app. And it gives you a timer and you can let it play in the background. But when you would exhale, so if your inhalation is five, your exhalation would be seven counts slowly through the nose, as though you're blowing a balloon. Let's just say if your nose could have the power, the potential to actually blow a balloon.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  And then you slowly exhale.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  And then the slow, long exhales, like the shorter inhale and the longer exhale really sets your body into rest and digest. Now, when I say shorter inhale, your inhale is still enough of an inhale. It's still a nice, long inhale. It's just shorter, slightly shorter than the exhalation.

• 38:59Dan Harris?

  And how long will you do this for?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Sometimes I'll do it for five minutes if I'm doing it systematically. But also you could be working and if you have an app, right? You could be working. And if you have an app like the breathing app and you play that in the background for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, you're kind of training your brain to start breathing like that, even when you're busy. Now, Dan, for somebody like me, I think I've done it for so long that I can naturally just remind myself, hey, now they just go back into that resonance breath. So whether I'm talking, whether I'm teaching, whether I'm cooking, I can kind of fall back into those longer exhalation patterns that instantly relax the body.

• 39:36Dan Harris?

  That's cool. The other thing you mentioned was massaging your body with oils. Just can you say a little bit more about what that actually entails? And do we need to buy special oils?

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So Dan, the practice is called Abhyanga, right? And it's right now, again, it's become trendy again. It's gone body oiling. But it's a practice, like my grandfather, who was an Ayurvedic healer, that is for his entire life. And I've been doing it for the last 20 years. And what that does, so first, how do you do the practice? And I'll tell you what it does as well. So how do you do the practice is you take traditionally, you took sesame oil or another herbal Ayurvedic oil. Now, those are very complicated, dhanmantri. Mahanarayana and you don't have to ever use any of those. But using a plain sesame oil, untoasted, is good enough. It's a great start. And for people in the United States, I tell them, if you don't even like the scent of the sesame oil,

• 40:30Speaker 03

  go and get just a simple lemongrass coconut oil from Trader Joe's. There's no, no collaboration with them, but it's a very easy start. It has a pump bottle. It's a very easy place to start. Now traditionally, you would be warming up this oil. But you don't have to warm up the oil if you want to start in other practice. And just as you would put moisturizer on your body, you would apply the oil and you would massage your limbs. You would massage your shoulders, you would massage your, your abdomen, any place that you can get to, focusing more on the joints, long movements in the long areas and circular movements in the joints. And you could do this for five minutes, you could do this for seven minutes, you could do this for 10 minutes. Ideally, you want to do this before you shower.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  In fact, in Ayurveda, you do this before you even go for your exercise. If you look at, you know, pictures of wrestlers from India, you'll see they're wearing their little, you know, little wrestling underwear and their entire body is oiled up. And as a child, I thought that was just for aesthetics, till I learned that it actually not only protects their joints, when their body warms up, it allows for faster recovery. You know, when they're wrestling and they're using their body, they're exercising. In fact, in fact, sesame is known to regulate estrogen. They still haven't done the research on how the oil would have an impact. But sesame by itself regulates estrogen, which becomes anti-inflammatory and allows for faster recovery. But men can do this, women can do this. It's not reserved for just one gender. And you would apply that oil and ideally you would,

• 41:59Speaker 03

  you know, I tell people, of course, don't go into your gyms with all that oil. Just wipe it down a little bit so you're not slipping anywhere. And then you would exercise. You would sweat more as a result, you would recover faster as a result. And then you would jump into your shower. But what it does when you even also jump into your shower, oil has a detoxification effect. So it's, it's many, many things and I want to go into them just briefly.

• 42:21Dan Harris?

  Sure.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  So oil, as the body has warmed up, when you exercise, the oil will kind of enter your pores, right? The pores open up, the oil goes. And oil as a, if you even, if you, if you, let's just say you spilled some oil on your table, and then you didn't have the chance to wipe it out, and then you had to leave, you know, for an errand. And you come back, you'll see that oil almost looks grimy. You almost feel like all the dust from the table has come into the oil, because it has this power to kind of pull out dust, dirt and grime. So it's a detoxifying practice for the body. Of course, it helps allow for faster recovery. It depends on how you massage. You can do a lymphatic drainage. In Ayurveda, they'll also say it'll allow for the better synthesis of vitamin D. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. And traditionally, you would put some oil and you would step out in the sunlight.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  But then when you go into the shower after this, right? Like you have oil on your body, you go into the shower. You're protecting your skin barrier from the harshness of the water. Water can be very harsh for the skin. So you're also protecting your skin barrier. So at so many different levels, that oil, from detoxification to your nervous system, to protecting your joints, to faster recovery, but it's going to help you at those various levels. I will say, Dan, it is a practice that all my clients, once they start this, this is one of the practices that they don't want to give up at all. And they notice a big difference in their recovery, but also their skin, their anxiety, and also how sick they get or they don't.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Because microbiome in our skin is lipophilic. All the good microbiome is lipophilic, which means that they thrive on fats. They need those fats to survive. So you're constantly replenishing these depleting fats, especially we're living in these air conditioning regulated environments.

• 44:05Dan Harris?

  It's really interesting. Okay, so let's talk about some more key concepts of Ayurveda. One of them is digestive fire. What does that mean?

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, we've started giving a lot of importance to digestion now in the West in the last few decades. The concept of digestive fire is this, right? For anything to break down, for anything to transform, for any metabolic activity to happen in the world, heat is needed. You cannot even charge your phone without electricity. The saying that I use is, how can it transform unless it's warm? To cook your foods, you need warmth. For plants to do photosynthesis, you need warmth. Every metabolic process is warm. So this environment of the gut, where you have these great digestive enzymes that come to work, you have gastrin that comes to work, you have bile that comes to work, and even

• 44:54Speaker 03

  for somebody who's never really interacted with any of these enzymes, as a biologist, they can still understand that these are probably warm, these enzymes are probably warm, you know, these acids of the stomach. And this environment, balanced with the mucosal lining that protects us from our own acids and hot foods and the process of metabolism, that perfect environment, which is conducive to life, which is conducive to microbiome down there, that is called the digestive fire. Now, Ayurveda talks tremendously about it. It says that when your digestive fire gets compromised, therein starts the beginning of all diseases, at least at a physical level.

• 45:32Dan Harris?

  Okay, so if we take this seriously, and I do, what are some basic moves we can make to tend to our own digestive fire?

• 45:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the fire fluctuates through the day, and I think understanding how the fire fluctuates naturally is the first important thing, and then the second is, how do you prepare your foods that they support the fire? So let's go into the first one first, which is, how does the fire fluctuate throughout the day for diurnal mammals like us that are supposed to rise with the sun and set and sleep as the sun sets? Because before we had electricity and we did not, we don't have nighttime vision, we didn't have a choice but to be in bed, you know, once the sun set. So, much like plants can only do photosynthesis once the sun is out, we're kind of like that. So, how does the fire fluctuate through the day?

• 46:24Speaker 03

  It corresponds to the sun outside, is very, mimics the fire inside. So then, let's go into that cycle a little bit, through the day, the daytime cycle, right? And Ayurvedic scientists, people can call them Ayurvedic sages, I like to call them scientists. They also look at the patterns outside to understand the patterns inside. So the morning hours between six AM and ten AM, for example. Our fire is still picking up. As the sun is rising outside, and if you were to walk on grass, it's all wet and dewy and sluggish. That's kind of the environment in the body and the gut, right? So people can have nasal congestion in the morning, people can have eye boogers in the morning. Usually your synovial fluids and the joints are padded. I mean, I can never show off in a yoga class in the morning, that's not happening.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Right? Because everything is like sluggish and your gut is sluggish as well. Because all this kind of mucus, the refueling that happened at night, the repair, makes your body a little bit more wet and sluggish. Inside the system, it just means that it's a little bit slower and there's more flame and all of those things. So it's not the time for the biggest breakfast. That is the time you activate your fire by exercising. You activate your fire by oiling. And then when you do eat in the morning time, you eat a worm, right? Because I said it cannot transform unless it's warm. All traditional practices, most blue zones eat something warm and not super heavy in the morning. So you've exercised, your body is ready, it's warming up and you eat something warm.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  My breakfast, for example, every single day is a hot cup of spiced milk with a little bit of porridge on the side and almonds, you know, soaked and peeled almonds. I soak them overnight, I eat them in the morning. My favorite breakfast lifelong, love it. But it could be anything, it could be stewed apples, it could be roasted sweet potatoes. It could be an omelet for somebody, but ideally something warm and something spiced. We always use spices as well. And I want to say here that spices do a lot of things. They support the breakdown of the foods that you're eating. They support the digestive fire because they add that warmth. If you've ever eaten black pepper, ginger, any of the spices, you can almost feel that inherent warming feeling that they bring. Right? It's a little bit subtle, but it can be experienced.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  So that's how your breakfast would look like. Now, between the hours of ten and two, as the sun peaks, so does the digestive fire. And now we know this today, right? Science knows this, that gastrin is at its best behavior, which is your great, one of the biggest MVPs when it comes to your digestion. But also your insulin sensitivity is high and you can break your foods down better. So the sun is high, your digestive fire is high, so is your mental fire, right? People don't get lunch, they get, they get hangry because everything is so hot in their system. So it's a great time to eat your biggest meal. Anything that you crave, do it for lunchtime. You want to indulge, eat the biggest meal during lunch. And if you've eaten a warm, light breakfast,

• 49:24Speaker 03

  chances are that you will not feel sluggish after your big lunch, because everything is nice and ready and warm in your body. So that's your time for big lunch and you support your fire that way. Between the hours of two and six, as the sun sets outside, you almost notice the wind inside. The sun is setting outside, it's slightly windy, leaves are now moving. You experience the wind experience inside as well. And I just, I use this language to make it more comprehensible for people. But when your neurotransmitters are changing from daytime to evening time. And what happens? You feel like stretching at your desk, you feel the afternoon lull. It's exactly what happens outside. Now, that is a good time to, you know, just go get some fresh air, drink some peppermint tea, of course not caffeine,

• 50:07Speaker 03

  because really your body is doing everything it can to unwind and to slow down. And if you give it a stimulant, you're kind of taking it against the cycle. Ideally, right now, this is the most important. This is the biggest change. I tell everybody, if you want to make one change, make this one. And this is the change I'm talking about. Stop eating dinner, stop eating by six, six thirty in the evening. As the sun starts to set down, and this can look different. If it's summertime, it can be slightly different. But as the sun starts to set, and let's say you're living in a place, the sun sets by six, six thirty, seven, your digestive fire is not working as well anymore. In fact, at night, insulin resistance increases. You cannot Break down your sugars as well.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  And that light meal at night, like dinner is not even a thing. Our ancestors were not really lighting lamps and having big dinner parties way after sunset, you know? And this is only like a hundred years ago, nineteen thirties is when electricity came into our homes. And we weren't, we didn't have this level of chronic disease. So there's one change you can make, let it be this. So that the fire kind of slows down in the evening time. And you definitely want to honor it by only burning, eating as much as you can burn. For sure. This alone can be a big game changer. But if I had to add another thing on top of it that people can do to keep their fire burning. The first function of food, and this is going to sound crazy, but it is, it will make sense. Once you hear it.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  The first function of food is not to give you nourishment. The first function of food is not even to give you nutrients. The first function of the food is to protect the environment of your gut. Because if the environment of the gut is not protected, it is only a matter of time. You may be eating the biggest superfood out there, but your body will not be able to put it to good use. It will not be able to assimilate anything from it. So how do you protect the environment of the gut? By, of course, honoring these cycles of how do you eat? But also, there are a couple of other things that can be done. Cooking foods is a big thing in Ayurveda, you cook foods. And if you go back into the history of our species. When we started using fire to cook our foods about three hundred thousand years ago.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  And non Ayurvedic scientists have done this research. That when we started using fire to cook our foods, that's when we actually became these intellectual species. Because our gut became smaller, our brains became bigger, our microbiome and gut bacteria changed drastically. And it's really what has made us human from primitive. And anybody can actually do this research because there's a lot out there. So Ayurveda is big on cooking your foods, on using good fats and using good spices. To cook your foods as well. So cooking does create some metabolic waste in the body, right? They can become free radicals, but the minute you spice. Your foods and you pair them with spices. Most spices are what we call antioxidants.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  That will basically neutralize those free radicals. That are created not only from cooking, but also from your own body's metabolic function. So Ayurveda is big on using spices and that's not spicy. Spices are spices that you can find in the spice aisle of the grocery store, but are technically not really putting your tongue on fire. So it's cinnamon, clove, black pepper, cumin, bay leaf, whatever people like. You want to use those, you want to use a good fat, you want to cook your foods.

• 53:35Dan Harris?

  Just going back to the the cycle of the day. And you were recommending that we eat a smaller dinner and stop eating, you know, as the sun goes down. I'm asking this as a as an insomniac. Are there things that you would recommend drinking? Later in the day that might help people fall asleep?

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely, right? And that is absolutely what you can do. So drinking a warm cup of milk, for example, drinking a hot cup of milk. And that can be done at like seven thirty, that can be done at eight, that can be done at ten if you're staying up later. And adding, let's say, nutmeg or cardamom, especially these two spices. A few pinches of nutmeg or like even half a teaspoon of cardamom powder can be a tranquilizer. Really ground the nervous system. Our body also remembers as babies, this is the grounding food you consume to go to bed. And it's it's a great one to allow yourself to go to bed, to fall asleep.

• 54:33Dan Harris?

  Very helpful. Just want to keep going through some of these key concepts. Another is symptoms are messengers.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Symptoms are messengers in Ayurveda, absolutely. Before your body goes into a full blown imbalance, we've relied so long on just blood reports and other vitals to understand what's going in our body. And they never paint a full picture to begin with. But in Ayurveda, the minute you notice the symptoms, that's step one out of the six steps before it can manifest into a full disease. So there's the first, the symptom is local and you might experience something. Then it might become chronic, it might lodge itself, it's local, it's temporary. If it's not addressed, it becomes more permanent. When it becomes that more permanent, it starts affecting either the tissue or the blood or the plasma in that area.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  I mean, think of it as inflammation. Think of it as if you had a bruise even on the top of your skin that didn't heal for a long time. It's not healed, or you keep bumping your hand into something, it becomes more and more and more aggravated. And at some point, it's going to be this deep level of scarring that's going to happen. But the same thing could happen inside your body. And I just use the example of a bruise because it's more visual, but it can be just anything. It could just be a blockage in one of your tubes and one of the many channels that exist in your body. And then once it becomes chronic and it starts to affect the tissue, now it's kind of homogenized, the imbalance is homogenized with the tissue, that activates your immune system and that can start now creating imbalance, depending on which organ it is or which tissue it's affected, or whether it's the blood and plasma.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  If it's blood and plasma, it starts traveling around. Now, you have this, it's like dirty water pipes, you know, like every floor of your apartment building has water pipes that have gone wrong. Every single floor is going to have dirty water. And that's kind of what our blood and plasma are, right? They're these distribution systems for the body. And if they get affected, then everything, it starts kind of circulating in the body. And then you'll start noticing individual symptoms. And then it usually goes into a full blown disease. So pain is a great sign. A symptom is a great sign. We don't have to say shut up. Look, I understand sometimes we all need to take painkillers. If you're having a day, you've got to do something. Life's happening. Yeah. But it's usually a sign. It's a great sign that listen to your body now. Let's address this today, rather than saying shut up. I'll see if you'll come back another day and we'll talk then.

• 56:53Dan Harris?

  I guess a related concept that comes out of your book is the body is always right.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  I would say it's more than that the body always knows, the body already knows, more than the body is always right. So the body is always telling you something. And the body already knows. And that I don't see in terms that the body is giving you alarms each time, or the body is giving you warning signals. That's actually not that. When I say the body already knows, it's the body already knows, like Like when you're a baby and your body knows to look for its mother's breast and eat from it, or the worm knows exactly where to crawl and when to pause, even like if you see a bug at home, or you see, like, they'll know how to behave when it's electricity and how it how to pause when they see motion. Like, every species on the planet has that

• 57:43Speaker 03

  intelligence within of how to live, how to survive, how to be well. So my book, which is called Your Body Already Knows, gives you that framework to come back into your own intelligence in the most kindest way to trust yourself that your body already knows. And it always tells you what to do. When you learn its language, we're missing the language, we're missing the framework. So when somebody can say, hey, I just want to eat like five bags of chips, no, that's not the listing that I'm talking about. We need to understand its language.

• 58:16Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Nidhi talks about her toolkit for self-regulation, the perils of jumping into change, why cold drinks and excessive water can disrupt digestion according to Ayurvedic principles, and much more.

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• 59:39Dan Harris?

  So you have a toolkit. These are like three levels of self-regulation. They include preventative tools, battlefield tools and repair tools. Can you walk us through this?

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Dan, I want to start by saying that, yeah, if people want to jump into change, people want to come, oh, today I'm all, I have this, all this adrenaline. I want to be the best version of myself. And I fall flat on my face. And that's like, listen, we've all done that a hundred times, right? It's kind of harsh to want to do that with yourself because our body has had a lifetime of experiences and trauma and generational conditioning and forget all, all the things that are happening to us, right? We've stopped even how to feel safe. In fact, most of the habits that we're keeping are just coping mechanisms. And here you are like saying, I'm going to give up my coping mechanism without a shield. So people are like, okay, I don't want to eat late from tomorrow night or like, I want to give up my alcohol, I want to give up. I'm like, let's, let's slow down, let's slow down.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Let's bring coping mechanisms because really poor habits that if you've been, if you've been trying to give up a habit for a while, it's not gone. You're coping with something else. So the toolkit, which is probably the most important part, I think of any transformation or change is this loving experience for your nervous system for us. And what it is, we only three types of tools. The first one, I say have preventative tools in your toolkit, which means something that you will do every single day for your nervous system to feel safe before you get on the battlefield of life. And this especially holds true for people who are living in chronic stress. They don't even experience a minute of what this feels like. Their nervous system just does not even know what that is.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  So it could be music, it could be meditation, it could be breath, it could be a massage, it could be a sport for some people. But before you get into life, your nervous system has been in a place where it's lost sense of time and space, where it's so present, it's so safe, it's so comfortable. Now it has a memory. I usually provide people with an à la carte menu and I say you try all of them, keep a couple and have that every day.

• 1:01:41Dan Harris?

  Can you just say a little bit more about what's on the à la carte menu? You listed a few things, but I just want to make sure people know.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Yes, so I will say meditation last, even though it's my biggest, I'll say it last because it's so hard for a lot of people to get into. So I'm going to list it in the order of ease. Music is a big one and I'll say classical music. It is not a coincidence that there are seven notes, there are seven endocrine glands that play with the juices neurotransmitters in your body. There are seven chakras, if you're into the chakra thing. And every musical note has a certain effect on the neurotransmitters of your body. In fact, Indian classical music and even Western, but Indian was designed, their morning, what you call morning music, morning ragas, R A G A S, and evening ragas.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  So I tell people, start with those morning ragas. You don't have to do the work, let your music do the work, let your cells do the work, let your body do the work. So that'll regulate your nervous system. So music can be a regulator, but it can go in the order of music, exercise, body massage, breath work, meditation. There are other tools as well, but these are most easily accessible to people.

• 1:02:57Dan Harris?

  Got it, okay, so preventative tools, then there are battlefield tools.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, that inevitably, because we have these trigger patterns, these scripts we all carry and you get into the battlefield of life and there the trigger begins. And in that, we do all kinds of things to regulate ourselves when we're having that experience. So what are you going to do in the face of that battlefield? And these are different tools than preventative tools. Now, these tools, I can give you example of what that looks like, that you can instantly start noticing the trigger and come back to regulation. And it's easier to notice the trigger if you've done the preventative tools because you've experienced safety, your nervous system has experienced safety. So when you're on the battlefield of life, I'm going to give you a little à la carte menu for the battlefield tools. And my favorite battlefield tool is humming.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  And humming is something, you could be on the road, you could be driving, you could be cooking, and you can, you could be at your desk working and you could be humming. And what humming does, again, because humming is essentially an exhalation through the nose. And I've talked enough about the exhalation from the nose, puts your body in parasympathetic mode, instantly starts, your body instantly starts feeling safe, allows you to start regulating right away. This is also the reason why an om at the end of a yoga class feels so relaxing, because it is essentially a hum. It activates the vagus nerve, does all of those things. But in the most simplest understanding, I say it is going to put your body into the parasympathetic

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  mode, it will start relaxing everything there and bringing yourself back to safety. There could be other battlefield tools while you're feeling that trigger, right? Grounding, noticing, noticing the fabric of your own clothes on your skin, really coming to every contact points. How do your feet sit on the ground? How's your hair touching? How everything feels? And again, that brings your body to safety, that starts getting your brain to be integrated again, right? Because the brain kind of flips the lid, the brain starts disintegrating and disconnecting when you are, your rational brain disconnects from your emotional brain when you're feeling, when you're on the battlefield. So that kind

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  of contact point, coming back to every sensation that you can experience, again, starts to regulate your nervous system. You could also, without humming, just go into longer exhalations. While you're having a conversation with somebody, if you're in the middle of a conversation with somebody, you can also step out and just splash some cool water on your face. If it is possible for you to go and take a shower, or to go for a quick five, seven minute run, moving your body. All of these things, depending on who the person is, I tell people, you try some of these battlefield tools, but make sure you have them in your pocket, so that when you're experiencing that trigger, you can pull something out, depending on where and how that trigger is.

• 1:05:50Dan Harris?

  And finally, repair tools.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Repair tools, yeah. I, you know, I, I, I always joke that all addictions happen at night. Like alcoholics are made at night, sex addicts, food addicts, TV addicts, right? Because we need to heal from the day. All of us need to heal from the day. And repair tools allow us to actually do that. Now, there are two types of repair tools. I mean, mainly the one, something that you can use every single day to repair. And these could be anything from journaling to lying down with your legs up against the wall. This is a yoga pose called viparit karni that lowers your blood pressure, enhances blood circulation, relaxes the body, to massaging your feet before bed,

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  to taking a warm shower, to drinking a hot cup of milk. But when you do it intentionally and you say, this is my repair for the day, you bring more intention into it, into bringing your nervous system back to safety. And then I say that you also need repair tools for those times when crisis hits. So for example, my repair tools, when my nervous system can just cannot take it anymore, I will go for a massage. I tell people to draw up a bath, you know, to take an Epsom salt bath, to go for a massage. I think therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy or a therapy that works for people is again great periodic repair tool. But I think essentially to go through life, to even start thinking about any change, everybody needs to build a toolkit out.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  So before I promise change, before I bring shifts to people's diets and their lifestyles, I say, let's get that toolkit ready. So that when you actually create that vision of the future that you're walking towards, you have all the tools that you need to give up a past life.

• 1:07:36Dan Harris?

  Super helpful. Is this why you recommend minimizing cold beverages?

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes, it's like a refrigeration in your gut. We know all these poor acids and enzymes, they're all warm. And they're trying to like metabolize and digest everything that we eat. And we say, hey, let's just like, let's just play a little havoc inside. And let's put a cold beverage in there. It's like a cold rain, like in the middle of harvest season. And it slows down metabolism. And you do it once in a while, it doesn't hurt. But if you do it, if it's not warm, how it's going to transform? Why do you want to, why would you want to refrigerate your gut systematically and periodically?

• 1:08:14Dan Harris?

  So it's not uncommon for me to like grab a sparkling water out of the fridge. It sounds like you're saying, actually, just drink some tap water instead.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying do it tomorrow, right, Dan? But I, I mean, I'm not telling you to do it tomorrow, not telling anybody who's listening to this to do it tomorrow. But I'm just saying, bring curiosity to this. And then maybe one day you feel curious enough and you feel like, I might want to try this. This might have logic. Or just open your mind to think, what did traditional culture said? Or like, how new is refrigeration for us? It's like, not even that old, like refrigeration only came into our homes like 70 years ago. And what else happened that time? Oh, my God, guess what? Croitic disease happened that time. Metabolic disorders began that time. And I'm not saying just refrigeration caused it. There are many things altogether that came into that whole era where modernization of our lifestyle and consumption happened. But it's worth seeing, even for three weeks, what that does to your body. In fact, sooner than that, people will tell me how different they feel.

• 1:09:07Dan Harris?

  Another thing you recommend is to regulate water consumption. What, what does that mean specifically?

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  So we've become obsessed with water and we think that, we think that we drink water and all our cells start blooming with hydration, like they're little flowers, right? Like people have this visual, oh, I'm going to drink water and all my cells are going to plump up. And I'm going to have this garden of cells inside me that are all plumpy. That's really not true. Water goes through our stomach, goes into our small intestine, through the process of osmosis, makes it wherever it makes it. I mean, it is such a long drawn process. And you're drinking, when people are drinking crazy amounts of water. And they're just, all they're doing is urinating, putting that load. Because the water does not even have time at that point, even though osmosis doesn't happen. It's an emergency exit to the bathroom. So this is like the first time we've given this important.

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  And I understand why water became so important, right? Because as Americans, we just stopped drinking water. It was like no longer a thing. We were drinking beverages the entire time. And we were in this crazy place when industrialization just happened. So now we said, hey, let's wake up and drink water. But like everything else, we like to go overboard. So let's just drink five liters of water. And that can be very harmful for the body because it firstly compromises digestion, right? Your digestive enzymes are all out and they're creating a certain environment. They don't want a monsoon in there. I, trust me, I grew up in India. Monsoon means like everything, everything goes to waste. All flora and fauna, what was growing is not growing as well. So the microbiome starts to get affected when you drink excessive amounts of water.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  And I've seen this with my clients who've got candida and parasite and parasitic infections. But also there's a load on your kidney. All I'm saying is when you actually drink water more, of course, in the first half of the day till 4 P M. And you drink to thirst and sip by sip and you keep it warmer or you keep it infused with either mint. And when you bring water into your soups and other foods, you know, more like semi-solid foods, they get absorbed better because if you get hydrated through osmosis, then you want salt in your food, then you want to do it through salt as well. And that osmosis happens when you're eating. Like I will talk about eating semi-solid foods as much as you can. And one of the reasons is that you're going to take all the water from that food and you're going to use it in your body. So you drink water to thirst.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  You'll end up drinking more in the summers, less in the winters, more in the daytime, less in the evening time. No prescription is needed. You've got to keep it natural for you. But don't deliberately go and guzzle down liters of water because you think it is a prescription.

• 1:11:42Dan Harris?

  So I, when I wake up, I drink about a liter of water before I work out. And usually it's just right out of the tap. Well, what do you think of that? And you mentioned something about putting mint in it or something?

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  I said mint because mint is the easiest. But the minute you put something in your water, you kind of give it a task to do. You slow down, like your body says, hey, hey, hey, what's coming in? Let's start processing it differently. You know, you give it an address almost. So depending on what's happening in the body, like one thing that I would recommend, and I would just tell people you try it, like Dan, I would ask you to just try it. If you were ever curious to try it for 10 days or a week, is to take warmer water in the morning, throw in a few pinches of dried ginger. If the first thing in the morning, that's what I would recommend to pretty much almost anybody. And I rarely give universal tips. But this is one of those things that almost everybody can do. Is put a few pinches of ginger powder, not fresh ginger, ginger powder.

• 1:12:40Speaker 03

  Great antioxidant, really starts breaking down the slime in your body, starts firing up that digestion. And just about one cup is enough in the morning time. Because your agni, your digestive fire is just waking up. You don't want to give it rainfall early in the morning. You want to give it something that's going to support the waking up of the digestive juices. And excessive water slows it down. And I tell people, try this for yourself. Don't believe me. You try it for yourself, works for you, great. Doesn't work for you, move on. But it's worth trying. I'm not asking you to do anything that clearly doesn't sound dangerous for the system. So it's worth giving it a shot.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  Almost everybody I know has felt a remarkable difference.

• 1:13:28Dan Harris?

  Couple other super practical questions before I let you go. You mentioned fermented foods. Are you talking about things like kimchi or pickles?

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you don't overdo the fermented foods, right? Like every culture had some level of fermented food before they sat to eat, right? Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, just a little bit, a little fire starter, because it's like, it's as warm and moist as it can get. It's like the first, it's like putting the mat stick on. You don't want to put your gut on fire. So you don't want to do all fermented foods. But just like our ancestors did, you want to go back to that little wetting of the fire, that little stimulation of your appetite and the metabolic environment using some of those fermented foods. And there is place occasionally for more fermented foods, like a sourdough bread, for example. But as religiously, if you want to do something before every meal, it's just a little bit of a side fermented food.

• 1:14:22Dan Harris?

  You also talk about adjusting shower water temperature?

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  Luckily, modern day dermatologists, cosmetologists, skin doctors will tell you this, that shower water, you don't want to take very hot showers. Of course, it affects your skin barrier, but it also plays havoc with your blood pressure. And actually, even like into Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, your body has to thermoregulate very differently when you're using very, very hot water. And as a result, it can compromise the thermoregulation mechanism of your own body. But warm water is just fine. Warm to like slightly warmer and colder man's is just fine. So the prescription is to avoid really, really hot water. And the shower temperature, hot and above, you know, just as you would go into jacuzzi, you would keep like your heart out of the pool.

• 1:15:10Speaker 03

  You definitely don't want to use very hot water, hot and above. Again, for the blood pressure.

• 1:15:16Dan Harris?

  So then where are you on saunas?

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  So if it's a steam, Ayurveda is actually big on steaming, which is wet sauna, which is not a dry sauna. And a wet sauna, like a wet steam, we have steam tents where the head is out. The head is not inside the steam tent. Like they look, they look like little cute, they actually look like coffins with your head out of it. Sometimes they're wooden, not these days, they're like more synthetic materials. So steaming is great for the body because it kind of starts opening up the pores and allows toxins to start moving out of your body. Saunas are slightly questionable. I can see why when we look at performance, why saunas temporarily close up your pores, really start activity inside, metabolic activity inside your body.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Your cells become active because now everything is shut down and the heat is retained inside. I would say long term, in my Ayurvedic viewpoint and lens and understanding, it is not something that I would recommend long term to any of my clients, especially female clients.

• 1:16:22Dan Harris?

  Let's close on this. I want to give you a chance to preach a little bit here because this is, this is the stuff where I really, I have strong and similar feelings. You talk about radical acceptance and gratitude. It's kind of like where you close on this in your 21 day plan that you talk about in the book. And I think that's a really nice countermeasure against a lot of what you described earlier, which is this kind of over-optimization, this mirthless militaristic approach that we take to our own bodies. Can you just hold forth on this notion of radical acceptance and gratitude as we wind down here?

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. So in this modern day, right, today, a lot of our wellness or the lack of it is psychosomatic. We've become obsessed with our 3D bodies and our physical well-being. We've forgotten what our thoughts, our nervous system, and the biochemicals that kind of arise as a result can do for us. Radical acceptance and gratitude, and I'm just gonna say even just scientifically, right? When you're in the state of gratitude, your body is completely relaxed. When you look at the spiritual world or your electromagnetic field, it's completely, it's expanded. And in that state, wellness is only a side effect.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  I always like to use the example of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. Charlie Munger, one of the greatest investors of our time, Berkshire Hathaway, died last, you know, maybe a couple of years ago at 99. That, the worst lifestyle, right? Warren Buffett sits and drinks such big bottles. At his annual general meeting, he's drinking Coke and eating burgers and he eats from McDonald's all the time. He's 94 years old. He's sharper than anybody else. But because he's in this state of complete acceptance, he is in flow. He loves what he does. He lives the life that he loves. He makes the choices that he loves. You can tell from the way he talks that he's in the present moment and he has radical

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  acceptance for his life. And in that state, wellness just happens. When people come to me, I tell them, if you cannot do it through your mind, you do it through your body. But if you can do it through your mind, you don't even need me. Because you can eat three, four, five times a day, but every thought has a corresponding chemical reaction in the body. It's only a matter of time that that biochemistry is going to change your biology. And radical acceptance of what you're unable to shift. And gratitude for how far life has got each one of us. The ability to live in this modern day and time, to live in a time where we're actually talking about healing and we're talking about traumas. And we're talking about not passing on to our children what we received

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  from our generations of wounds. I mean, I think that by itself is such a great thing. Great time to be born in that we can have this dialogue. And if we can stay in that state, you're more connected to the intelligence of nature. And it's only a matter of time when wellness will begin to show up in your life.

• 1:19:35Dan Harris?

  This has been a super interesting for me introduction to Ayurveda and I really appreciate your time. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book? And anything else you've made or produced or created that we should know about?

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  Thank you for asking, Dan. So the name of my book is Your Body Already Knows. And it just gives you a systematic 21 day step by step guide to start living like this and creating your own toolkit. And being able to witness some of the changes that come when you start living in awe and wonder and bringing Ayurvedic principles. So that's my book. I have a practice where I work with people. I teach a ton. I have a lot of courses on my website, which is nithipandya.com. My first name, last name dot com. I post a ton on Instagram, my underscore Ayurvedic underscore life. You just look up my name. You don't need to remember the handle.

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  But yeah, I'm always teaching. I'm always writing and speaking. I have a practice and I work with clients one on one for a period of six months.

• 1:20:39Dan Harris?

  Nithi Pandya, thank you very much for your time.

• 1:20:42Speaker 03

  Thank you so, so much for having me, Dan.

• 1:20:45Dan Harris?

  Pleasure.

• 1:20:50Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Nidhi Pandya. Great to talk to her and learn more about Ayurveda, a subject on which I was deeply ignorant until now. Don't forget to check out our new app, 10% with Dan Harris. You can sign up at danharris.com. There's a guided meditation that dropped on the app today that was tailored to everything we just talked about on the podcast. That comes from our Teacher of the Month, Bart Van Melik, and it's called "What Listen to Your Body Actually Means." As I said at the top of the show, this meditation is designed to take you past the cliche of listening to your body to the deep wisdom embedded in that phrase. Finally, a big thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show.

• 1:21:33Dan Harris?

  Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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