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This is my final episode before taking a break from the podcast. It’s not a goodbye. It’s a pause, and I want to tell you honestly how I got here.
What I share in this episode:
What I’m working on in the meantime:
An invitation:
When I return, I’d love to shape the podcast around what’s useful and alive for you. If there are topics you’d like me to explore, email me at [email protected]. Thank you to everyone who has reached out over the years to ask a question or share a piece of your story.
Links & resources:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today’s guest is Serena Arora — Ayurvedic health practitioner, yoga therapist, author of Unbound, and founder of Peace Retreat Costa Rica. Serena grew up straddling three worlds — Indian on her father’s side, Chinese on her mother’s side, and born and raised in the West — and has spent decades learning how to embody, not just teach, the practices she studied. Her book Unbound is the answer to the question she gets asked every day: how did you get here?
This conversation is deep, vulnerable, and full of things worth sitting with.
What we cover:
Connect with Serena:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today's guest is Beana, founder of Rootstock — a land-based healing center on 2,000 feet of north-facing hillside in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, 20 miles from the Canadian border. For eight years, Beana has been building what she describes as a canvas, a sandbox, and a laboratory for learning how to be a person on planet Earth — gathering people around fire, around food, around authenticity and truth-telling, and guiding nearly a thousand people through psilocybin mushroom work in a deeply seasonal, place-based, and earth-centered practice.
This conversation is one of my favorites. Beana is wise, funny, deeply honest, and completely alive. I am already planning to have her back.
What we cover:
Beana's programs:
Important note:
This episode discusses psilocybin and plant medicine in an educational context. Laws around psilocybin vary by location — please research the legal status in your area. This conversation is for educational purposes and is not medical advice.
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
I'm recording this on a rainy fall day in Maine, watching the leaves turn, and finally getting into something I've been sitting with for a while — the deep connection between rasa dhatu, the interstitium, and what is actually happening to our skin and joints in perimenopause. This is one of my favorite topics right now, and I hope you can feel that.
I'm also sharing some personal news: after much thought, I'm taking a sabbatical from the podcast. Two more interviews and one final episode are coming — and then a period of rest, restructuring, and creating. I'll get into all the whys in that final episode. In the meantime: join my email list to stay connected, and watch for Somatic Stretch & Shake classes on YouTube and an upcoming live online class.
What I cover:
Resources mentioned:
Research I mention:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today's guest is Andrei Efremov — psychosomatics researcher, author, and founder of the Efremov Method. Originally trained in medicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, he now focuses on the neuroscience of fear and the body. His peer-reviewed work proposes that fear-based pathological neural networks can turn stress and emotion into chronic physical symptoms — and that fear may be the foundation of all emotional states. He is the author of Unwiring Pain and Primal Fear: Somatic Echoes.
This is a genuinely unusual conversation — Andrei's framework is distinctive and doesn't map neatly onto other approaches you may have encountered. I found it fascinating and wanted to share it with you.
What we cover:
Andrei's books:
Connect with Andrei:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today's guest is Natalie Rivans — co-CEO of ReOrigin, certified menopause coach, somatic practitioner, and mindfulness teacher. Natalie shares her story with us: years as a Metropolitan Police officer in London, living with undiagnosed ADHD, overriding her body's signals in a high-pressure environment, and eventually experiencing a complete physical collapse with chronic pain, digestive issues, and debilitating symptoms that no specialist could explain. Her turning point came sitting in a car overlooking the sea, listening to a podcast about neuroplasticity. That moment led her to ReOrigin — and eventually to becoming its co-CEO and co-creating ReNew, a menopause program that has produced remarkable pilot results.
What I love most about Natalie is that she brings both the lived experience and the science. And she is deeply, genuinely compassionate about what women are moving through.
What we cover:
Connect with Natalie & ReOrigin:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today I'm joined by Shannon Presson — author of The Unexpected Story, which includes a healing fable called "Lumina's Journey" and a reader guide called the Dragonfly Path. Shannon spent 20 years as a corporate event planner before a disruptive menopause transition cracked her open and led her into coaching and writing. Her work sits at the intersection of story, nervous system, and what it means to find your way back to yourself.
This conversation went so many places I didn't expect — and I loved every one of them.
What we cover:
Shannon's book & work:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
This one came straight from the heart — no notes, no plan, just something I had been wanting to say for a couple of weeks.
I'm coming off a deeply nourishing retreat at Limina Renewal Center in Searsport, Maine — three days of Ayurvedic bodywork, classes, ocean air, and beautiful people — and I settled into this episode with something I've been sitting with all September: the idea that perimenopause corresponds not just with transition and difficulty, but with harvest, abundance, and fullness.
What we explore:
Guided meditation: The Fullness of All You've Been
I close the episode with a spontaneous guided practice — a gentle time-travel meditation that visits the child, the teenager, the young adult, and the current self, gathers all those versions together, and finally glimpses the version of you stepping through the perimenopause portal to the other side.
Previously mentioned:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today I'm joined by Aaron Johnson — public speaker, facilitator, filmmaker, and touch activist whose work centers on the emotional and relational lives of Black men. Aaron is the founder of The Chronically UnderTouched Project — the CUT Project — and the director of Dark and Tender, an 18-minute documentary that follows ten Black men during a retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington. It has been called one of the most quietly revolutionary pieces of film in the healing space right now.
Aaron's work begins with a simple and devastating observation: that Black men in America are among the most chronically touch-deprived people in our culture — and that this deprivation has profound consequences for mental health, emotional regulation, nervous system health, and the capacity for genuine connection and community. The CUT Project exists to change that.
What we cover:
Watch 9 minute preview of Dark and Tender:
cutproject.org/tender
Aaron's invitation:
If this conversation moved you, share the film. Let someone see it who needs to. That is how the ripple spreads.
Connect with Aaron:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
Send us Fan Mail
Today's guest is Dr. Natalya Borakowski — a physician with nearly 20 years of experience in women's health and cosmetic dermatology, founder of Desert Bloom Skincare, and creator of Unveil You, a platform dedicated to helping women understand the biological, emotional, and cultural forces shaping how they feel about themselves in midlife. Dr. Natalya combines science, psychology, and compassionate education to help women move from burnout, self-criticism, and overwhelm toward self-trust, vitality, and genuine confidence.
What I love about this conversation is that it goes to the root. So much of the conversation around women's health in midlife focuses on what to do — what to take, what to put on your skin, how to optimize. Dr. Natalya asks a different question: what is actually happening underneath?
What we cover:
Connect with Dr. Natalya:
Resources:
Abhyanga Self Massage Guide
Weekend Nervous System Reset
Nourished For Resilience Workbook
Find me at www.mynourishednervoussystem.com
and @nourishednervoussytem on Instagram
From the publisher's feed
An exploration of stress, the nervous system, and resilience through the lenses of Ayurveda, Somatic Practice, Herbs, Neural Plasticity and much more!

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41,347 Listeners