Welcome to Love Food, Love Yourself, an written and audio series for Practice Dirty,  designed to help women over  40+ develop better understand of nutrition and a create a more mindful relationship with food.This series will help you better understand the foods that you put in our bodies, and also learn how those foods connect to our mental, physical and spiritual health.

In our last piece, I talked about how our relationship with food became so fragmented and broken, especially for BIPOC women over 40, like myself. In this episode, we’re going to go through a series of questions and exercises that can help begin to heal that relationship. 

So how do you begin to fix your relationship with food? 

The first thing you have to do... is stop. 

Stop reading books, stop reading blogs, unfollow all the so called social media gurus. Just stop. And once you’ve taken a break from it all, and had a chance to breathe, you can then come back and begin to learn anew. 

Now that you’ve taken some time to clear your head, we can go back to the basics.

Find the full article and questions prompts at https://practicedirty.substack.com

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

Welcome to Love Food, Love Yourself. I’m your host, Macala Wright. This  podcast is designed to help women over  40+ develop better relationships with food. My goal is to help you fall in love with food and even more with yourself. 

In this episode, I share my journey to health and how I learned to love food and take charge of my health through a mindful, no bullshit-approach my diet and nutrition.

To read the full article, subscribe to my newsletter on Substack: https://practicedirty.substack.com

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

In the latest episode of Practice Dirty, I speak with the original nervous system healing coach and YouTube influencer, Sukie Baxter. In this episode, we discuss:

• How you know if you actually need to work on regulating your nervous system. 
• How you are holding tension in your body directly correlates to how you hold it in your mind. 
• What your nervous system reveals about your health and medical issues.
• Learning to listen to the physical signs your body is sending you. 
• Whether it’s personal development or self-healing, there is no quick fix, we have to do the work.
• Wellness culture markets “fix yourself fast” and that tactic is damaging to learning to regulate. 
• The body perceives trying to changing too fast as an attack or a threat, and it revolts. 
• It takes time and practice to learn a new way of being, and relating to yourself. 
• Our culture’s focus on hyper-productivity leads to collective burnout. 
• We live in a culture of toxic individualism and it’s killing us.
• We can only influence ourselves - our lives, bodies, and thinking. 
• Being in community with people doing the work creates support and fosters co-regulation.
• Trauma influences how you move through the world.
• As a human being, you’re a process that shapeshifting all the time. 
• It’s unethical to use trauma, broken, or pain as a marketing tactic. 
• When your healing is soft experience, the body and mind integrate it much more readily. 
• Healing doesn’t have to be a hard, bootcamp like experience. Our challenges with self actualization comes from view ourselves as things, not as living organism. 
• The one thing you should stop doing right now is trying to be perfect. 

Invite yourself to be curious about why you are doing, what you’re doing, when you’re doing it. It’s where you can reclaim little drops of agency in a culture that takes it from us. 

BONUS:

• What happens when you’re a horse woman and you want to move beyond competition. 
• How to explore just “being” with your horses, and “being” with yourself. 
• Throwing your playbook and timeline outline the window when to comes to how you coexist with your animals. 

Sukie Baxter - YouTube and Whole Body Revolution

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

Interview with Sara Silverstein, a breathwork facilitator and certified somatic sex coach. In this episode, we discuss: 

• Why women are so disconnected from our bodies.
• We disconnect from ourselves due at a young age due to cultural conditioning and sexual objectification. 
• Your body belongs to you, no one else. 
• Using somatic experiencing to explore your body through the four realms of sexuality. 
• When you give someone the opportunity to speak up in a safe space, they flourish. 
• Learning to connect to yourself can help you reclaim your sexuality. 
• Learning to love your body as it is. 
• The fact that your vulva has its own aura. Yeah, it’s a thing…
• How the majority of porn is dismissive of the majority of women and their bodies. 
• Breathgasm - the bliss of an orgasm that come from breathwork. You should try it…
• Women are pro-sexuality, men are afraid of it. 
• How to become a multi-organism individual by quieting your mind and feeling into your body. 
• Developing the ability to talk about really hard things.  
• Asking lots of questions and actively listening in order to have really hard conversations. 
• Make sure you understand your limitations and boundaries. 
• In order to reclaim your body and sexuality, you need to do the work. No one can do it for you. 
• It’s time to stop being afraid to embrace your power and evolution. 
• We’re over being told we’re too much. In fact, we can take up even more space. 
• There are many paths of success, and you can achieve it in a way that works for you. 

Embodying all the pieces of you is one of your greatest challenges. 

Book Recommendation: Come As You Are

Learn More About Sara: https://www.sarasil.com

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

In this episode of Practice Dirty, I speak with Kecia Lee, a transformation life coach and Brainspotting practitioner. She helps people who are at a crossroads in their lives, explore their inner world when life simply isn’t working, and help them use their inner knowing to figure out what to do next. In this episode, we discuss: 

• How all women face Imposter Syndrome, self-doubt and self sabotage.
• How decades of cultural conditioning have created our challenges in mindset and affect how we think. 
• How we learn to not listen to the voices in our head telling us we can’t achieve our goals. 
• How giving away your power takes a mental and spiritual toll. 
• When you make yourself small, it reinforces your negative beliefs about yourself.
• How women need to challenge thoughts and beliefs - “Is what I’m thinking really true?” 
• The power of brainspotting, one of the fastest ways to process trauma and move on to the next step of your journey. 
• In order to move forward, you have to have an awareness of your patterns and be willing to change them. 
• Self-care isn’t rainbows and kittens, it is radical transformation. 
• Learning to put yourself first in order to serve and give requires integrity with yourself. 
• When you develop your ritual and routines, try many practices. But be fluid in learning how to find your center wherever you are. 
• How we’ve led away from ourselves, and we spend our lives trying to come to ourselves. 
• That we are not separate, we’re all connected; we’re made from the same stardust and chemical composition. 
• It’s time to stop criticizing yourself and others. 
• The relationship with yourself is the most important thing you’ll ever have.
• Connection to yourself is the pathway to everything. 

Book: The Anatomy of Peace

Kecia’s Website: Coaching with Kecia

Macala Rose - Mindfulness Tools Co. | Practice Dirty Newsletter

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

In this episode, I speak with Amrit Sadhana-Boyd, a nervous system regulation coach, and founder of The Untamed Herbalist, about the role our nervous systems play in our mental and physical health. We discuss the very hot topic of nervous system regulation, trauma, and what may be missing from the conversation when it comes to being a black or woman of color.  We discuss: 

• How to teach women to feel safe in their bodies.
• That the antidote to anxiety isn’t calm, it’s safety.
• When we learn the tools that teach us how we can self-regulate or co-regulate, we can create safety within our ecosystem. 
• As women, we are terrified of discomfort in our bodies, so our body’s natural response is to shut down. 
• How to learn to sit in discomfort and work through it. 
• Big “T” or little “T,” trauma is defined by an experience that is too much, too soon, too fast. 
• Your baseline for a regulated nervous system isn’t going to be the same as everyone else. 
• The nervous system is the highway between the mind and the body. It is the blueprint of your entire life. It holds all of your memories, it runs all of your body functions.
• How nervous system regulation is integrating, not getting rid of, not letting go of, all of the pieces so that they are a part of you, but they do not define you.
• That unless you are racially trauma informed, you are not fully trauma informed.
• Just because I'm trauma informed, that does not make me equipped to treat trauma.
• Being trauma aware also means that you have to be aware of spiritual bypassing, toxic wellness culture, and gaslighting. 
• Why it’s time to drop the word manifestation. 
• That women need to adopt the statement of “I am healing, not healed” because healing is a lifetime journey. 
• Healing isn’t about perfectionism .Perfectionism is rooted in white supremacy and doesn’t exist. 
• Did you know that your nervous system builds resiliency by putting you through the fear cycle, and letting you experience what it is like to come out the other side? 
• Nervous system regulation is all about when you're activated, finishing the stress cycle.
• Give yourself a lot of grace. Your anxiety is trying to protect you. 
• It’s important to acknowledge your anxiety, explore it, and let it move through you. 
• How we overcome living in a collective state of anxiety. 
• Our collective anxiety as women comes from the fear of bodily harm. 
• When you’re activated, meditation isn’t the right tool to use. 
• When you finally come out of a state of dysregulation, that you’re going to experience endless exhaustion. 
• You have to give yourself permission to rest and learn what feels like to be in a state of balance. 
• Trust what your body is telling you because your body won't ever lie to you and your mind absolutely lies to you.
• And how to stop being so hard on yourself. 

Learn More About Armit at The Untamed Herbalist. You can purchase the Hack Your Nervous System Deck. 

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

In this episode of Practice Dirty, Nikki Silvestri of Soil & Shadow and I discuss:

• What it’s like to be a black woman who’s fully committed to embodying a life defined on our own terms. 
• What it was like growing up in dangerous, violent communities in the 80s in Los Angeles. 
• The impact of childhood trauma and its role in shadow work.
• What shadow work is and how women must work through their shadows in order to resolve trauma and grief. 
• Being burnt out, letting the pieces crumble, and finding the agency to rebuild. 
• Doing less work, and keeping family circles small, in order to become observant and learning to heal. 
• How women are the ultimate leaders and how childbirth, in vitro, and carrying another life sets us up for our successes. 
• How the societal and racial constructions developed during the first American colonization were built to segregate and oppress us. How basic bitch business models, built on simplicity, may not always be beneficial. 
• The village/community models that would help heal broken family structures.
• How black and women of color can find agency to be seen and be heard. 
• How the collective fear of women of color is not being seen and being alone. 
• In order to experience ecstasy, we must first work through grief. 

It’s heavy, and it’s deep. But it’s empowering and proves just how powerful we can be. 

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

In the first episode of Practice Dirty, I sit down and talk with Hatty Lee, one of the co-creators of The Indwell Guide. In this episode, Hatty and I discuss:

• Women of color have a right to take care of themselves. 
• Self-care is necessary when it comes to your mental health. 
• How her book, Indwell,  was created in response to #BlackLivesMatter and #StopAsianHate.
• Starting a self-guided journey inward and exploring mindfulness. 
• The impact of violence on BIPOC communities.
• Destigmatizing mental health amongst BIPOC communities.
• How breathwork changed her life and how she uses it as a tool to help her clients regulate their nervous system.
• What trauma-informed practices look like for women of color when it comes to the workplace.
• How external factors are noise, and finding peace start with creating a home within yourself.

Find the full transcript here: https://macalarose.com/blogs/mindful-living/destigmatizing-mental-health-and-trauma-informed-care-for-bipoc-communities

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.

Here's a short overview of why I created this podcast, what it's about, and how you can use it. 

Find out more about my work at https://macalarose.com.