Thrive with Cate Stillman Podcast

I chat with my homegirls, Grace Edison, Bridgit Danner, and Rachel Peters, about our life journeys on our pro healer wellness paths.  In discussing our unique stories and how each of our paths has led us to our current wellness careers, we realize one thing we have in common is the passion we each feel towards holistic wellness and healing.

Grace, Bridgit, Rachel and I discuss the sense of risk that comes with change, our wellness setbacks, and what we’re most excited for in the future of our pro healer journeys. We have each experienced fear, failures, life changes and transitions on our paths. As wellness professionals who have felt strong callings to raise the consciousness of the planet and to better the overall health of humanity, we realize that each of these bumps in the road are part of the journey and are totally worthwhile.

I rap with Grace, Bridgit and Rachel about:

• The passion or calling wellness pros feel towards the healing path and how worth it is, even when there is a chance of failure
• What it means to give ourselves permission to step into our own potential and do what we truly want in life
• Integrity, the sense of risk that comes with change, and what it takes to give up a job you don’t like in order to pursue what you love
• Knowing that when the pain of staying the same and staying small surpases the fear of what’s to come, then it’s time to move on

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• How you can transform your current career and lifestyle into a healthier, happier, more balanced life
• Why the transition into a holistic based lifestyle can be scary, but totally worth it
• What it means to go deep in one area of your life verses stay on the surface

Links:

• Bridgit Danner’s website
• Rachel Peters’ website
• Grace Edison’s website
• How I Built This podcast with Guy Raz 
• Yoga Health Coaching

Show Highlights:

• 3:20 - Cate chats about her experience transitioning from her “real job” working in energy conservation into a full time pro healer role in order to raise the consciousness of the planet.
• 7:30 - Rachel talks about her role as a yoga teacher and her work in nature based education and how the two correlated and propelled her on her path towards Yogahealer and Living Ayurveda
• 15:35 - Grace chats about teaching yoga and her “big girl job” as a financial advisor. She talks about the transition from her well paying career into her current lifestyle as a holistic financial coach  

• 20:15 - Bridgit tells us about her life working as an acupuncturist, owning a yoga studio and clinic, health coaching, and helping with women’s wellness.
• 28:30 - We talk about our attachment to jobs with “benefits” and how they may not actually benefit you
• 33:45 - Grace, Bridgit, Rachel and I discuss what we’re most excited about now in our own work as prohealers and what we have to look forward to

Favorite Quotes:

• “Access to wild places is access to ourselves.” - Rachel Peters
• “The easiest way to learn faster is to try to teach something.” - Cate Stillman

• “There is a reward to the grit and the follow through that we may have a sense of, but it feels really different when we arrive there.” - Cate Stillman
• “There is a sequence to the way energy flows, there is a sequence to unlocking consciousness, there is a sequence to growth.” - Cate Stillman
• “What are you willing to give up through this transition?” - Bridgit Danner

BIO:

Grace Edison:

Grace Edison teaches and guides people to get out of their own way with courses that are primarily focused on re-claiming your innate power to heal and be in control of your life, your time, how you feel and how you show up in the world. Formerly a full time financial advisor and part time yoga instructor, she has expertise in the areas of health and wealth and the relationship between the two. Grace is a mom of 8 year old twins, owns a yoga studio in Northern BC Canada, runs retreats, is an up and coming Yoga Health Coach, works for Cate in admissions and is leaning into new levels of leadership.

Bridgit Danner:

Bridgit has always had a love of nature and a desire to serve others so her desire to study acupuncture at Chinese Medicine School felt very natural.  She became a licensed acupuncturist in 2004 and a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner in 2015. She established a multi-disciplinary wellness center in Portland, OR in 2007 as well as the organization, Women's Wellness Collaborative, in 2015. Women's Wellness Collaborative sponsors online health education events for women, and hosts a weekly podcast called Women's Wellness Radio.

Rachel Peters:

Since 2001 Rachel has been supporting others through body, mind and heart-based yoga classes, trainings, mentoring and workshops. Her goal is to share how these practices have helped her shift into a more conscious, vibrant and easeful relationship to life and to support anyone who is ready to do the same. She’s been a serious practitioner and student of yoga from a young age and has thousands of hours of teacher training, immersions, workshops and retreats with phenomenal and inspiring teachers. In 2011 Rachel answered a deep calling and began her studies of Ayurveda with Cate Stillman at Yoga Healer. That same year, she began intensive studies with Paul Muller-Ortega of Blue Throat Yoga on the practice and theory of meditation and embraced a daily meditation practice that changed her life. These simultaneously launched her into a clear vision and daily approach of what she needed to do in order to thrive in the modern world. She now offers Ayurvedic Living immersions to help you to get light in your body, clear in your mind, and thrive in your life.

On today’s podcast I promote a woman from inside our Yogahealer community.

Mary Sullivan, who has walked the self healing path in full with Yogahealer and is an amazing mentor in my Living Ayurveda course,  joins me to discuss Vata and Vata imbalances. Learn what it means to have Vata imbalances and how to deal with them by coming into deeper integration in your pranic, physical, mental, emotional, and intuitive bodies.

Mary and I rap about Vata, the force of movement and rhythm in our lives. There is an excitement, a spontaneity and a limitlessness to this Vata force, but when it is out of balance, it can take up too much space and block our productivity. An out-of-whack vata dosha can show up in the form of insomnia, gas, sciatica, or a scattered mind, to name a few. When we have these issues, we are losing so much energy and are so distracted that we cannot be productive. Our natural rhythm is creativity and productivity, not pain and disease. We are here to grow and thrive; this is the nature of our being.

Tune in to this episode to learn how to listen to your body, align your vata dosha, relax, receive, and thrive.

I rap with Mary Sullivan about the Vata dosha:

• Vata as the main force of movement and rhythm in all our lives

• Experiencing the subtleties of Vata imbalances that can manifest into larger issues

• Simple, at-home remedies for Vata imbalances

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• What it means to listen to your body and notice signs of out-of-balance vata
• How to embrace structure to embrace flow in life
• How to learn to relax and receive

Links:

• Mary's website
• Living Ayurveda course

Show Highlights:

• 8:00 - Vata moves and directs the other two doshas. Without aligned vata, we feel out of sync with our natural body rhythms.

• 9:45 - The two main forces of vata are primary downward force and secondary upward force. In order to keep yourself aligned, you need to pay attention to these subtleties of vata. If you ignore subtle feelings in your body, they can create large mental and physical issues over time.

• 15:10 - Vata can get so dry that it becomes isolated. When vata loses rhythm, it turns negative, and draws more roughness and more isolation until a person doesn’t feel connected to anyone or anything.

• 16:25 - Put structure in place to support the direction you want to go in life. When you don’t have structure and direction, you impair your ability to manifest what you want.

• 19:30 - There are lots of imbalances in our bodies- dry skin, scattered thoughts, distancing of relationships, bloating, insomnia. We need to ask ourselves how these energetic pattern arose, and how to dissolve and resolve these patterns.
• 25:00 - Learn to relax and receive...recieve your cat, your bed, the air.

Favorite Quotes:

• “Vatas love to drive the car, they just doesn’t know where to go or how fast and how much to drive.”  -Mary Sullivan
• “Embrace structure to support flow” -Mary Sullivan
• “You lose connection to our own spirit when you stop believing in your own inspiration.” -Mary Sullivan
• “Fear is like high test gasoline for Vata.”  - Mary Sullivan
• “Calm your head, and go to bed cause when you wake up, it’s a different story. You’re looking at the world from a different space.” - Mary Sullivan
• “Allow Vata to first, again, go down before the inspiration can rise up.” - Cate Stillman

BIO:

Mary Sullivan is an Ayurvedic yoga specialist, avid student of the Ayurvedic Living Course, amateur herbalist, canner, fermenter and cook. She teaches classes on meditation, self-care, health and food. She worked for over 20 years in the chemical industry as a chemist, engineer, manager and director. Her job disappeared when the company was sold; she lost her purpose and had a big hole in her identity. In early 2000 she began an odyssey of change and learning. She immersed myself in the study and practice of yoga, and became a yoga teacher in 2005. She began to study Ayurveda and yoga therapy, and became a certified yoga therapist and an Ayurvedic Yoga Specialist. She now has a new respect for the impact that Ayurveda, yoga, and consistent care is having on her life and health. Mary offers cleanses, classes and workshops in Ayurveda, food and wellness care & Lyme support to share her knowledge and practical experience in building a loving relationship with yourself, building routines that support your growth goals and maintaining self care as a cornerstone of a healthy vibrant life.

On today’s show I have my pilates buddy from down under, Raphael Bender. We’ve decided we have these evil twin powers, he’s the pilates dude and I’m the yogahealer. His company is Breathe Education, the largest pilates company in Australia. He has a master’s degree in clinical exercise physiology, and he knows so much about pain science. He’s writing a book on it (it’s not out yet).

In this episode I talk to Raphael about my wandering joint pain. It’s super fun. Listen in, and I promise you that you will have insights about where your pain comes from. Also, share this episode with those you know in pain so they can learn.

The goal isn’t to live a pain free life.

I rap with Raphael Bender about:

• Why you want to know the story behind pain
• Where practitioners go wrong in trying to help patients/clients with pain
• A case study of an opiode abuser unlocking her pain puzzle

What you’ll get out of tuning in:   

• The surprising easy wins in lessening chronic pain
• What role empathy plays in unlocking the pain puzzle
• How to listen and receive clients so that deep trust is built

Links:

• Breath Edu.

Related podcasts:

• This podcast mish-mash includes some tips on how to hydrate in the winter.
• Core Strength from a Centered Body with Donna Farhi

Show Highlights:

• 2:33 – Pain has physical, emotional, and cognitive components. A holistic view is becoming more and more supported by scientific findings.
• 6:39 – Tune in here for the other points that need to be considered in understanding the roots of pain.
• 14:45 – When we ask clients for their story and listen, we create space to deeply receive their truth and reflect back to them in a powerful way.
• 21:59 – We can’t solve someone’s learned helplessness, but we can use certain tools to help clients empower themselves

Favorite Quotes:

• “Until the 1960s there was this mechanical conception of pain as being an inevitable consequence to some kind of damage to some part of the body. From the 70s til now, we have a more complex and nuanced understanding of what pain is” – Raphael Bender
• “We know exercise is good and everyone should be doing it, but it only accounts for 20% of the symptoms of pain” – Raphael Bender
• “We solve the puzzle together. I don’t tell you what’s going on.” – Raphael Bender

BIO:

Principal Trainer Breathe Education

MA Clinical Exercise Physiology (Rehab)

PAA Principal Trainer

Raphael Bender is a PAA Principal Trainer and holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Exercise Physiology (Rehabilitation).

He has a particular interest in clinical Pilates, and especially evidence-based approaches to working with persistent pain, which he has studied with Peter O’Sullivan in Australia and Bill Miller in the USA.

Raphael is Principal Trainer for Breathe Education, a PAA Education Body based in Melbourne, and delivering evidence-based Pilates courses nationally.

I don’t know about you, but so many people around me are sick, and I find myself giving unsolicited advice all the time. I know you all who are fans of Yogahealer and are podcast listeners might want some more insight into the particular ways to care for your immune system in the winter.

If you listen and this is helpful, please send us an email to let us know how they impacted you.

Sleep
Nighty nite tea or ashwagandha with hot water at night.
Decrease your stress so you can sleep. Realize what you can get done in a day and let it be. Don’t burn the candle at both ends in winter of you’ll set yourself up for autoimmune issues. Seriously.
Wind down early
Sleep more in winter or you will get sick. We’re on an annual sleeping rhythm.


Eat early to wind down early
ELD


Take Hanah or Chavanprash


Live Well Lubed - do self massage
Find out your body type and get a good oil from Banyan - www.yogahealer.com/quiz
Lubing helps your lymph filter germs. Dry skin invites germs to take over.

Carry a thermos. Sip hot water every 20 minutes. Take hydration very very seriously.


Keep your house cool and dress warm

Take cold showers. It works. I take 2-3 short ones per day

Eat soup. It’s easier to digest. Eat soup at night, maybe for lunch too See tip #2.
Take ashwagandha. It’s a winter herb - an adaptogen. Have it with dinner, with breakfast. Add it to your beet smoothie.

Eat beets. I use beets in smoothies. My favorite winter smoothie is grapefruit, beets, celery, pear and ginger with a few beet greens at room temperature.  Thin your bile. Heavy food is everywhere in winter. Beets help you poop
Never be constipated. When you'll constipated your lymph shuts down. Then you become susceptible to germs.

I rap about:

• Why it is so important to get enough sleep in the winter
• What staying well-oiled means for lymphatic health in the winter
• Simple daily steps that don’t seem intuitive until you clue in to the Ayurvedic reasoning behind them

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• Understand how sleeping, de-stressing, skin care, and more help you thrive in winter
• Practical, simple steps for adjusting your daily routine to maximize the integrity of your immune system

Show Highlights:

• 2:34 – During winter we build up our sleep bank. If you change nothing else in winter, change your sleep. Tune in here for why and tips for how.
• 13:47 – Most people don’t realize how much drinking warm water in the winter is deeply hydrating until they’ve tried it.
• 20:21 – Struggle with constipation or overindulgence in winter comfort foods? Tune in here for a simple step to aid your digestion

Favorite Quotes:

• “Often in winter people don’t realize they’re dehydrated because they are drinking cold or room temperature water” – Cate Stillman
• “Some of your more neurotic emotional cravings start to fall away when you start to live more in tune with the weather” – Cate Stillman

On today’s show, I talk with Tatiana Wolfe, who has been in my Awake Living course both times the course has run. She has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 30. In this episode, you will learn more about Parkinson’s from an Ayurvedic perspective and from the lived experience of someone who knows about Ayurveda and has a solid meditation and yoga practice.

I’ll also let you know in this episode about some free Ayurveda training that is geared towards helping you use the language of Ayurveda more readily in your internal dialogue as well as in speaking with others.

I rap with Tatiana Wolfe about:

• The subtle levels of vata imbalance that end up building and creating dis-ease in our nervous system
• The importance of strengthening agni, digestion, so that our tissues and organs can receive deep nourishment, which helps the system cope with the vata aggravation that is at the root of diseases like Parkinson’s

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• A powerful understanding of the yogic and Ayurvedic teaching of a life-positive attitude towards tuning in to the perfection of every moment
• Understand how to build habits around transforming fear into love in our daily life
• Understand the deep relationship between physical nourishment and vata aggravation – when we don’t take care of our digestion, we water the roots of our dis-eases

Links:

• Parkinson's Disease (Kampavata): Understanding the Ayurvedic Approach

Related podcasts:

• Ayurveda for Health and Disease
• Detox, Rejuvenation + the 3 Causes of Disease

Show Highlights:

• 12:00 – Nerves, vata, dharma, yet, yet, yet, we get where we need to be by deepening our understanding of the innate perfection deep inside; the stillness supports the movement
• 16:33 – Tune in here for an understanding of how the vayus and chakras lead to the rise of a vata imbalance like Parkinson’s
• 26:35 – Part of the trick with diseases like Parkinson’s is taking care of digestion so that the tissues are thoroughly nourished
• 31:20 – When focusing on proper nourishment, we need to be mindful of the signals of improper digestion

Favorite Quotes:

• “When the nerves are scattered and you get that racy mind and the feeling that there’s nothing to hold it together, that’s the bhavana of dis-ease. We are looking for the opposite vibration in everything, allowing it to be felt in every moment.” – Cate Stillman
• “The nutrition has to get all the way through without a vata aggravation.” – Cate Stillman

I’m here today with a mentor from my Awake Living course, Dana Skoglund (check her out at www.danaskoglund.com). Dana is reading High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard, and in it, Burchard talks about how to figure out the 5 steps that will take you to your Wildly Important Goal (or WIG, as he calls it). He emphasizes talking to someone who has reached that goal and asking them what steps they took to get that goal.

So Dana asked me what my 5 steps to achieving a million dollar coaching business were, and in this episode, Dana and I discuss my 5 steps to building Yogahealer.

I rap with Dana Skoglund about:

• The 5 drivers of success at Yogahealer and how we look to those drivers to reach for our goal for 2020
• The importance of being willing to let your ego feel the burn of identity evolution
• The approach to leadership and community that goes on around Yogahealer and its importance to the success of the coaching model
  
  

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• Understand how to leverage some of the strengths and concepts used at Yogahealer to grow your own coaching business
• Understand the importance of getting clear on who you are - your own strengths and the uniqueness of your offering
• An example of how to separate ego out in order to allow space for identity evolution; coaching business growth and identity evolution growth are deeply interlinked.

Related podcasts:

• Persistence + Timing with Cate Stillman
• What it Feels like to Break Your Income Barrier

Show Highlights:

• 2:38 – When figuring out your business, it is important to know the difference between ‘drivers’ and ‘steps’
• 3:22 – Curious what the 5 drivers of success at Yogahealer are?
• 10:16 – The rise and growth of yoga health coaching was part of Cate’s process of realizing her unique offerings and creating space for them to grow in response to the needs of the community
• 13:28 – Observing how the brand shows up and spreads helps you leverage your strengths and grow your acculturation tank

Favorite Quotes:

• “Who you are and what you bring to the table, that’s important.” – Cate Stillman
• “The more somebody is onboarded before they begin a course, the quicker I can get them results.” – Cate Stillman

I’m here with Alexandra Epple who is a pro-healer mentor in our Living Ayurveda course, and also teaches Ayurveda in the California College of Ayurveda. Today we wanted to talk about the process of learning Ayurveda.

We’ve known each other since 2003 and now we are so much wiser, we look great and feel great. So today we talk about our ahas both on our daily experience of Ayurvedic wisdom and your perspective of wisdom and insights that come over time.

• How long it takes to truly understand Ayurveda
• The process of learning Ayurveda
• Alignment and the gravitational pull to rhythm
• The broken down points of connection

• What questions to ask to go deeper into your understanding of the practice.
• How to create, design and experience your own rhythm of ease.
• Learn where you are creating dysfunction and disconnection and how to stop to make your life a little easier.
• Why  Inquiry is important in the journey of Ayurveda.
• How to stop doing things that harm me, how to become a saint for your body.

• “You learn something about Ayurveda and you have it at this level and then you look at it again and it goes a little bit deeper, then you look again and it goes a little bit deeper”. – Alexandra Epple
• (Ayurveda) “It’s such an experiential, energetic, subtle experiential system of what Ayurveda is, It’s the ground that we stand on,  It’s the air between us, It’s the space within us, it’s that experience and how we actually connect with it” – Cate Stillman
• “If we get pulled back into rhythm, there is a level of depth and ease and capacity that starts to expand”. – Cate Stillman

 Alexandra Epple CAS, CMT is an Ayurvedic Practitioner, yoga instructor, Yoga Health Coach, bodyworker and Midlife Coach. Her approach to health is super practical and down to earth. She supports mature women through menopause and midlife so they come out the other end feeling better than they ever have; vibrant, joyful and luxuriously healthy. She is the founder of Women Gone Vibrant, the podcast to revolutionize the way you think about your body and unapologetically create the next you. Download her FREE Better Menopause Video Series to get the scoop on a natural, easeful menopause.

I’m often surprised at how much lack of awareness there is on how much sleep the body needs. If you’ve been in sleep deprivation mode for awhile, and your body breaks down - your immune system breaks down, or your mental or emotional body breaks down - and you’re wondering how long it is going to take to reset your system, to get to a place that’s better than you’ve ever been before and is sustaining, this is the podcast for you.

I’m really excited about these little incubators for the habits of body thrive that we’ve been developing and playing with. Right now we have one going on the first habit, Earlier, Lighter Dinner. It’s 14-days, free, and you will be amazed at how much better you feel waking up in the morning. You can join at www.yogahealer.com/challenge. You will get more of the kind of information in this podcast if you join.

I rap about:

• How most people don’t even notice or recognize the effects of sleep deprivation in ourselves or loved ones
• The importance of not overfilling or ignoring our “energy bucket,” or how much experience, food, and stimulants we put into ourselves and our days.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• Understand how energy works from an Ayurvedic perspective and be better equipped to manage your sleep to manage your energy & health
• Gain a better sense of the impact of sleep on our ability to digest, our ability to repair and maintain our cells and immune systems, and our ability to maintain solid energy without stimulants

Related podcasts:

• Soup with Cate Stillman
• Idiot’s Guide to Yoga with Millenial Sahara Rose
• Ayurveda for Health and Disease
• Fit Not Thin Webinar

Show Highlights:

• 2:42 – There is a serious epidemic of sleep deprivation in this country & it has serious ramifications, including more car accidents
• 6:28 – In order to understand the importance of sleep, understanding the Ayurvedic perspective on energy and energy management makes a big difference
• 11:10 – Without resetting our sleep cycle, we cannot maintain the health of our bodies, it is possible for all of us to better tune into the subtle energy of restful sleep and when the system gets off kilter

Favorite Quotes:

• “The crazy thing about sleep deprivation is people don’t realize that they have it. They don’t realize all the effects they are living with.”  – Cate Stillman
• “Immune integrity in Ayurveda is when every cell knows the boss, when every cell works together, and we end up with an energy surplus” – Cate Stillman
• “Until we take the time to reset the rhythm on sleep, we don’t get to experience immune integrity” – Cate Stillman