“I Express Gratitude For My Body”
This episode is all about the power of food, healing with ancient principles, and using mindfulness to find balance on your health journey.
Mona Sharma is a dynamic leader and entrepreneur in the health and wellness industry who works with high-profile clients around the world. She also has a reoccurring role on the Facebook series Red Table Talk where they profile her work with Will Smith and the entire Smith family’s healing journey.
Mona has seen firsthand the power of food and mindfulness to heal, having grown up living on an Ashram. Her approach is rooted in this philosophy, and also inspires her research into the gut microbiome and its impact on our health and happiness.
In this podcast, Find Your Perfect Balance For A Healthy Life, we cover:
- Conflicting health and wellness advice is causing confusion
- Your body has the ability to heal itself
- Ways to shift your mindset to make healthy habits easier
- Why you should stop eating foods that have nutritional labels
- Calming the mind before mealtime can be vital to improving your eating patterns
There Are Too Many Conflicting Health Messages Online
We’re living in an era of hyper wellness. There’s so much information out there; it’s never been more confusing. People don’t know what diet to do or what to eat anymore. Even with access to this information, we’re still getting sick, and obesity is rising. Plus, diabetes is on the rise amongst adults and children, while anxiety-related disorders are increasing. It’s time to go back to our roots and ancient traditions that positively impact health. We need to focus on food as medicine, community, nature, and mindfulness.
The Human Body Can Find Balance and Heal Itself
We all have to acknowledge that our healing comes into our own hands. Doctors are great, and they are doing their jobs. Many times people will go to their doctor and leave with a prescription. Instead, people need to leave their doctor’s office with a sense of hope. Plus, you need to do your research, find resources, and learn about other ways to heal your body. Any ancient healing concept has great studies to back it up; ancient rituals are backed by science. For instance, meditation and connecting with nature are both supported by science. So, we need to stop calling them “woo-woo.”
How Your Mindset Is The Key To Getting Healthy
Inflammation is a buzzword. However, where is your inflammation coming from? Most likely, it’s your diet or your environment. Before you can fix your inflammation, you need to find a sense of self-compassion and self-love. Poor eating habits can be a numbing effect. Don’t wait until you have a symptom before you take action. Everything that you are doing at this moment will manifest in your body in the future. Is there constant chatter within your mind? Yoga can help you calm your thoughts. Plus, breathwork can help through mealtime. Above all, your mindset and belief system need to come first.
Eat More Whole Foods and Ditch Those Nutritional Labels
When you go to the grocery store, you need to read the labels. If you don’t know one of the ingredients, you need to put it back on the shelf. The more we can control what we are purchasing, the more the food industry will respond. The majority of people don’t know how to grow their food. We should be growing food everywhere to feed people, but we aren’t doing it. All in all, the goal should be to eat foods that do not have an ingredient label.
Try Mindful Meditation Before Mealtime
Our bodies are magnificent and magical; they can heal themselves. If you’re looking around the house and seeing things that are causing you stress, then clear it out. When it’s time to eat, you need to set the stage within your home. Play calming music and set the table. There’s a difference between going out with friends for dinner vs. eating alone on the couch. Teach your family that you shouldn’t have your phone at the table. Instead, you should be eating meals and talking with your loved ones. Overall, communication, community, and rest are essential during mealtime.
Dr. Mindy
I always like to start my podcasts with whatever’s burning on my heart. And one of the things that’s really burning on my heart right now is that I believe we are exiting out of a time where we gave all our power away, or health power away to doctors, and we’re starting or to medication. And we’re starting a new paradigm is starting to emerge that I feel like is rooted in more ancient history philosophies, and is giving people their power back. I don’t believe that paradigm has fully emerged. But I’m seeing the rumblings of people being in discontent over the idea that big pharma, and the medical world has all the answers. So I want to start off with, talk to us about your story, your upbringing, and how it shaped your philosophy of health, because I don’t think a lot of people had that kind of induction into health when they were born.
Mona Sharma
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you’re right, you know, we’re living in an era of hyper wellness, there’s so much information out there, it’s never been more confusing. People don’t know what diet to do what to eat anymore. And even with access to all of this information, and doctors and you know, everything that’s being promoted, we’re still getting sick, obesity is on the rise. Diabetes is on the rise amongst adults and children, anxiety related disorders are all on the rise. So I’m with you, like there’s this call to go back to back to roots back to these ancient traditions that we know have been practiced for centuries that have positive impact. Right? Right. And that really ties into my story. So yeah, I grew up living on an ashram, my father would take us to live at a national, which is a spiritual center, where they focus on food as medicine, and mindfulness every day yoga outside sitting in community having connection with nature. And he did this because my mom, I’ve only known her to suffer from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. So her whole body is completely deformed. But I would just see the impact of these modalities on their mood on their health. And of course, we took so much of that home to us. But you know, as a little kid with your dad tapping you at 530 in the morning to go meditate. Like, no, this isn’t fun. But you know, the motto in our house was eat it, it’s good for you drink it, it’s good for us. My mom would try anything and everything to reduce the inflammation to her joints. Now, flash forward, I guess in my 20s I had to just go and live life and you know, not being a doctor or a lawyer in the Indian tradition. I went and I got a job in fashion.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. How’d that go?
Mona Sharma
It was great until it wasn’t
Dr. Mindy
stressful, I would imagine. Yeah, look, it’s
Mona Sharma
somebody his dream job. And it sounds glamorous. I was able to travel the world and do make it for fashion shows and celebrities and all of these things. But my health really took a toll. I was stressed, I wasn’t living in my alignment and my, my purpose. And we were eating out a ton and drinking and doing all those things. There was a phase when we were taking laxatives at night to undo the damage like just really toxic. And my heart palpitations at that time, it just gotten really, really bad. And that led me to having two heart surgeries to ablations for these debilitating heart palpitations, and I was put on beta blockers as well. The beta blockers I would say really contributed to me gaining about 40 pounds, and it just wasn’t myself. And during my second heart surgery, the doctor said, Okay, what we found a node, if we go ahead with this, there’s a chance that you might have to wear a pacemaker for the rest of your life. And in that moment, I just thought what is happening? This is not my life. I’m not gonna wear a pacemaker. And I just thought of my mom and everything that she did undo or reverse the effects of her disease. And I just thought, that’s it. I throw in the towel and then I went back to the ashram that I grew up at the Shivananda ashram. What was the ashram? So the one that we grew up that was in Val Moran, and the mountains in Montreal, Canada, okay. And when I was older, I started going to have locations around the world. I started going to the one in the Bahamas on Paradise Island, which is paradise. Yeah. And then I became a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher that led me to becoming a holistic nutritionist. And I’ve never looked back. And ultimately, when I started working with these CEOs and athletes, you know, they were hiring me to get the six pack to learn how to do a headstand or a handstand, or whatever it was, but it would stay with me because I was able to allow them to experience a sense of freedom in their mind and stillness. And sure enough, that was exactly what I was lacking when I was sick, right? Doctors didn’t ask me about my stress, my anxiety, my sense of purpose. They could care less if I was eating, eating out or having a few cups of glasses of wine or coffee, right But there was a lot of inner work that had to be done in order for me to get rid of my heart palpitations, put down the inflammation in my body, learn how to live without anxiety, right? constant chatter in my mind a sense of lack of purpose and fulfillment and stuff like that. So it’s definitely been a journey. But the foundation really comes from these ancient rituals that I learned at the ashram.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. And I always think that we often have to do something that is completely opposite of our upbringing, like, get in, go into the medical system and get rubbed around there a little bit bump around there for a moment. And then to realize that what we were taught as children really mattered my mom, actually, when I grew up in, I had the pleasure of growing up in Malibu, and my mom was a total health nut before that was even popular. And so the first thing that she would do when we would go into the grocery store, we had to read the first four ingredients of every food we wanted. So if you came and said, Hey, Mom, can I buy this, she would say, read me the first four ingredients. And if sugar was in one of the first four, you weren’t allowed to, I wasn’t allowed to buy it. And there was, there was one food I wanted more than any, and that was a fruit roll up. And all the kids at this elementary school would wrap the fruit roll up around their finger, and they’d like, slick on it. I’m like, Oh, that looks so good. And it was like the fourth leg of the top four
Mona Sharma
ingredients. Oh, yes. Oh, second, yeah,
Dr. Mindy
I would just beg her. But you know, when I got sick, same kind of time as you in my early 20s, I came back to my roots. And I was so grateful for what she taught me. And even now to this day, like, you know, the foundation I was given to really believe in my own healing power to really see that food as medicine, like you’re like you’re saying, and to prioritizing it, and to give it the credit it deserves. It sticks with me, but most people don’t aren’t given that. So when they get sick, there’s no formula, there’s no way out, the only way out they know is to go to the doctor and do you know, get on a pill. So where do you think when people are on a healing journey? Where do you think that philosophy fits in? Is it something that they need to have in the beginning? Or is it something you just sort of gather as you go along your path?
Mona Sharma
I think we all have to acknowledge that our healing really comes into our own hands. Our doctors are great. The doctors that put me on the medication and put me through the surgeries. They were doing their job. Yeah, they wanted to take away my pain and my suffering. That’s what they were trained to do. And that’s what they did. Yeah, right. Yeah. But you know, I think there’s also a sense of fear. When we go to our medical community or a doctor’s wherever they say, We just say, Okay, that’s it. I gotta be on this medication now. You know, and we end up leaving our doctors offices without a sense of hope. Yeah, we, you know, for me, I really identified with being sick, I was sick, I have a heart condition. I can’t do those things anymore. Until I thought, Well, wait a second, it was really my brother, who’s 10 years older, you said like, how’s that working for you? Yeah, they are. Right. And a lot of us don’t have those people within our lives. But I think that it’s up to us to really one for people like us to preach, what we what we talk, what we speak, what we what we educate other people in, but really saying to people, okay, if you’re not leaving your doctor’s office with a sense of hope, then it’s up to you and go and find resources, do your research for other people who are going through the same symptoms, and the thing is the modalities that they’ve used to help them heal. Right. And, yeah, these ancient rituals are definitely they’re coming to surface now, but certainly not talked about.
Dr. Mindy
Right. Yeah, no, I,
Mona Sharma
I think that we need to stop calling the woowoo. Right. Yeah. Right. So woowoo, it’s like, no, it’s actually backed by science, right? We know, the power of meditations backed by science connection with nature, backed by science. So we need normalizing this, what we used to call
Dr. Mindy
woowoo, we now called neuroscience, yes. That’s literally the way I look at it, you could take any woowoo concept, and go to PubMed, and Google, you know, and search it, and you’ll find some great studies on it. So this this, if anybody’s thinking that meditation, fasting, herbs, like you know, yoga, all those things is woowoo and doesn’t have validity on their health. They’ve missed their neuroscience report. salutely Because it’s all been proven by science now.
Mona Sharma
It is, and I think that you know, people what is, you know, really popular, this word inflammation, right? It’s such a buzzword. Everyone’s like, oh, it’s inflammation. It’s inflammation. Well, where’s the inflammation stem from? Right so we can look at the things that are happening within your life? Is it from your diet, chances are Yes. Is it from your lifestyle? Is it from your environment? What I would say for me, you know, when I’m doing my consultations with my clients, on the very first call, everyone’s like, alright, well Come on, don’t give me the diet meal plan, tell me what to eat. Just tell me what you’re doing. And I’m going to do it. Yeah. But usually in the first call, we really don’t talk about food that much. Because a lot of it comes back to you having, you know, belief system, a sense of self compassion and a sense of self love. When I was abusing my body with food, and you know, partying and all those things. There wasn’t any self compassion and love. It was, you know, a form of disengaging from reality. Right. It was like a numbing. It was a numbing effect. Yeah, absolutely. Let me do this now. So I can just I’ll think about it later. I’ll think about healing later, right. Yeah. And so often, I think, especially today, we wait until we have a symptom and illness and imbalance or disease within the body before we take action. But we now know that everything that we do today in this moment manifests in our body and our minds in the future. So if we can first address I think the the thoughts, right, the roommate in our minds, I love that book, Untethered Soul Untethered Soul by Michael singer. Yeah, yeah. What are the thoughts saying is a constant chatter within your mind? At the ashram, you know, even with yoga, if you go to India, to practice yoga, you’re going to sit and you’re going to do breath work first, and not move through a hot yoga class. Right? Interesting. You sit down, you look at a plate with an Ayurvedic meal, you’re not counting calories, you’re looking at nourishment, you’re looking at foods that have high vibration that come from the earth, right, high fiber foods that are going to support you and fuel you with vitamins and minerals, and phytochemicals and nutrients and stuff like that. So I think that the mindset and the belief system, and you know, your self talk and dialogue has to come up first.
Dr. Mindy
Do you think that people when they’re trying to get well, how deeply do they need to see how stain sick is serving them? Because I feel a little bit like, I just know, in working with my own patients that sometimes we get to this place where we, we have to look our symptoms in the eye and say, You know what, I’m actually getting attention. I’m getting out of things, I don’t want to do my identities wrapped up in my condition right now. And so I can look at meditation, I can look at a nourishing meal, I can fast I can do all those things. But in order to do that, and heal from those, I’m going to have to give up these things that are really familiar to me.
Mona Sharma
Oh, yeah, living with victim mindset, I was great at that it was so much easier. There’s so many things that I didn’t have to do if I didn’t feel like working out, Oh, it’s okay, I got this hard thing. I can’t do it today. I don’t want to cook, I don’t want to go to that event, whatever it is, and it’s more comfortable. And I think that, you know, we think that getting healthy and fasting, living a healthier life exercising, meditating that it seems like a lot of work, when instead, we simply haven’t acknowledged the benefit or the feeling that they give us, right. So for example, if I tell somebody to go to yoga, don’t just go to one yoga class this week, go to three, because I promise you at the end of the third session, you will fall in tune with the feeling that it gives you that feeling is what’s going to make you want to go back. Yeah, I think that whole you know, create a new habit and 21 days or whatever it is, it’s bullshit. Like it really is. Yeah, no, you have to notice the feeling of what doing these positive actions where your mind and body will give you? Does it take a certain level of undoing and then breaking up with a version of yourself that you don’t want to be right course. So I offer my clients a guiding light question. And I say before you do anything, ask yourself, is eating this having this conversation watching this TV show? Going to this place? Is it going to nourish me and the version of myself that I want to become? Or is it going to deplete me and keep me where I am. And if you kind of learn to live your life by constantly moving yourself to the number one position on your priority list, which most of us don’t live there, right? Then healthy living and all these rituals that you and I are speaking of becomes so much easier. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, but what if I say what if I asked myself that question, I’m like, this chocolate chip. Cheesecake there we go cuz I can make a really good keto cheesecake. If this keto cheesecake is going to nourish me it or regular cheesecake. It’s I want to feel amazing after it. So that’s what if that’s my answer, but then tomorrow, I’m like, Oh, wait, I shouldn’t have the cheesecake. But I felt great yesterday afternoon.
Mona Sharma
Well, I’m pretty sure you’re the same as me. We there are so many healthier options out there. If the cheesecake or the cookie or the ice cream is calling you then yeah, 100% Go for it if it’s going to make you feel good. But here’s the difference. If you get your body into a state where it is thriving, or at least healing, your body can metabolize those foods without the list of side effects that come with it including the anxiety or the Guilt after us. Right? Amen. Amen. But if we are consuming those foods from a state of inflammation and chronic anxiety and stress, and we’re using them as a crutch to feel better, then of course, that is not going to Nua shoe.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, yeah. How much do you think if you’re actually eating a food and you’re in a negative state? Like you’re either stressed or you’re like, I’m going to eat this, but I’m really feeling very guilty about eating this. How much of that do you think affects how that food plays out in our body and affects our digestion?
Mona Sharma
I think your digestion will completely shut down and you will feel bad from it. Yeah, it’s a whole thing, right? Like we’re living in an era where most of us go about day to day live living fighter flight. Yeah. Which is stress the equivalent, you know that you and I’m sure always give running from a lion, you would never throw a sandwich or an apple into your mouth as you’re running from a lion. Right? You’re right, he is trying to survive. And this is the the magic of ashram living, when you’re eating, there’s no distractions, you’re sitting in a peaceful environment, there’s no screens, you’re sitting with people you’re having conversation, the sounds are pleasing in the background, the view is also really nice. So you’re actually setting the stage for your body to be able to metabolize food. digestion takes up a tremendous amount of energy. And food is information, right? It’s either going to fuel health or fuel imbalance and disease. So I think that if you can set the stage first, and maybe it’s Hey, you know what, this is a cookie, it’s probably not the best thing for me, but I really going to love the crap out of eating this cookie. And then after tomorrow morning, I’m back to all my rituals that are gonna help me thrive.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, yeah, we call that in the fasting world, we call that fat adapted, I always I always use my hands where I’m like, we have two systems that we are going to burn energy from one is sugar and one is fat. And you’re meant to metabolically switch in and out of both of those. And once you get fat adapted, where you can go without food, and you can click back, and when you do eat food, you your blood sugar goes up, and then it comes down very efficiently. You are you can, you can have literally have your cake and eat it too. That’s the way I look at it. And it’s the to me, the lifestyles that we’re talking about is not deprivation, it’s actually a gift to the body. But you can’t, I don’t think you can go from chronically ill, to that place where, okay, I can have cake every once in a while. I feel like we’ve got some times when you’re in the darkest place, you’ve got to really put some structure into place to be able to get you to this what I call fat adapted or what you call it. I think you called it enjoying enjoying life. Do you think there is a progression of healing that happens for people depending how far down a dark hole you are?
Mona Sharma
Absolutely. You know, I would say that within the first two weeks, people often feel better by simply rotating out the bed. Just take out the bad inflammatory vegetable and the seed oils that they’re consuming. The sugars, the processed food, if you don’t know what an ingredient is on the label that you’re eating, neither does your body. Just focus on taking out the bed.
Dr. Mindy
And what do you think so what do you think’s the worst? Sorry, I just had to Yeah,
Mona Sharma
oh, gosh, the food industry is getting so tricky with these. It’s so tricky, honestly, like this oat milk thing is driving me nuts. And they put rapeseed in. When rapeseed just another word for canola oil. It’s like, gosh, they’re trying to trick you. Yeah. But I get it. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re making money.
Dr. Mindy
You’re a little more compassionate that I have, I actually don’t get it. And I’m frustrated, because even it says somebody who knows food as well as I do have to really be conscientious about reading an ingredient label looking at what all the different pieces are. It’s really front frustrating to a point that I actually don’t I try to get things without a
Mona Sharma
label. Oh, my gosh, yeah. And I would say this is probably one of the biggest hurdles that I work with my clients on when you go into the grocery store, learning how to read the labels and what the ingredients are, and getting yourself to a point where you, you know, have the confidence to say, I don’t know what that is, I’m going to put that down because I know that’s not going to serve me at all. And I think you know, Dr. Hyman talks about this a lot. But the more that we can control what we’re purchasing with our dollar what we’re spending, the more the food industry is going to have to respond. And yeah, you’re you’re just you know, you’re speaking my language, my future will definitely be around the food system, how we’re eating our youth these days, the food that we eat the fact that gosh, I live in California, and majority of people here don’t know how to grow their food, right? Growing food everywhere to feed so many people and we’re not doing it right. Yeah, but you have the general rule of thumb and the tramway is to eat more foods with no ingredient label. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy
How long did how I’m also curious how long you ate a meal. How long did a meal last in the ashram.
Mona Sharma
So we would typically have brunch would break our fast at around 10 o’clock in the morning and And this idea of eat the rainbow. So we’d see just tons of colors and you know, come from just different plant foods on our diet with a focus on good quality fats and animal protein as well, or sorry, animal, sorry, good quality proteins is what I’m trying to say. And we would probably sit and eat a meal for about 30 minutes or so like it wasn’t a five minute meal as we typically do. But we’re sitting and engaging. And we’re kind of taught to take in a sense of gratitude for our food, how it was grown, how it got to our table, the amount of hands and people and effort that had to go into picking it from the ground until it’s sitting there in front of you in this beautiful dish and the flavors that you’re consuming. And the beautiful thing with Ayurvedic meals is we honor all of the taste buds, as well as sweet, salty, bitter, astringent, and sour. So we try to incorporate all those flavors in our food and recipes. And when we honor that, we noticed that there’s fewer food cravings that happen throughout the day. So for example, to add some sweetness, like maybe a few raisins or a date into one of the veggie meals is going to appease the you know, I’m a I’ve got a sugar tooth. The cravings for those foods afterwards. Yeah, and then throughout the day, we’ve got rest, and then we’re eating dinner, probably around six o’clock, from six till seven, we’ll just sit and just relax and eat food and clean up as a community. But those are the two meals of the day.
Dr. Mindy
So it’s two meals, and then how long did you fast?
Mona Sharma
So like fasting, I guess from seven until 11 o’clock in the morning?
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, that’s that’s like the best me based off the research. That’s like the best scenario. Yeah, for digestion for metabolic markers. That’s like a seven to 11 would be a phenomenal amount to fast. And and clinically. That’s what what we see as well.
Mona Sharma
And I would say honestly, the first three days for people, it’s probably the biggest adjustment because we’re just we’re used to eating whatever we want instant gratification instead of really to a queuing, queuing into our intuition, and our hunger hormone and when we actually feel like we need to be eating. And then it’s easy.
Dr. Mindy
Have you heard that it takes 20 minutes from the time you eat for the hunger hormone to get turned off? Is that still accurate? That was like something my mom taught me years ago,
Mona Sharma
they still teach that at the ashram, I think there’s a little acidity and even if there isn’t honestly I think that we all just need to be eating slower. Right? Right. You know, the idea of chewing our food and chewing our food is the first stage of digestion, combining it with saliva and chewing, right? Most of us aren’t doing that. And yet if I were to speak at a conference or workshop, if I asked people how many are experiencing digestive issues, anywhere from bloating, constipation, or guests, diarrhea, whatever it is, every hand will go up. And so something that we don’t talk about, the doctor will never say we’ll take some more time chewing your food, right? Let’s see if that supports you with digestion, your bloating, right,
Dr. Mindy
right, which is the that is like where I go. But though happy happily give us a pill. Yeah, take us a while tell us just to slow down eating, which is so much easier than taking the pill
Mona Sharma
and putting your devices away, right? We’re so addicted to doing something while we’re eating, eating on the run on the go while we’re working or scrolling, right for entertainment. But we’re not present to the act of eating in nourishment. And this is a ritual that we really gotten away from, if we look back at our ancestors, they would eat and community like there would be villages preparing foods would sit together, right. And when we acknowledge like digestion is everything, eating food provides us our livelihood. It’s our energy throughout the day. But we’re so disconnected from the fact that food equals nourishment, food equals energy, just throw things down the hatch and expect our body to deal with it. So I think there’s more awareness around just stopping for a second, allowing your brain to cue into the fact that you’re going to take nutrition, allowing your body a minute to turn on the hormones that it needs to cue, right that just the digestive process. And all of a sudden, we’re cueing the rest and digest state for eating where we can metabolize our foods the best.
Dr. Mindy
I love that wellness community. You’ve said it a couple of times and I community’s another thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about. When we look at hormones. One of the things that I teach my my followers is that there’s a hierarchy to hormones. So how much do you think that that plays a part in when you look at the environment of an ashram? Like, it’s not just oh, I’m gonna go to an ashram and heal, but you can take pieces of that and do it in your own life. So talk a little bit about the power of community and healing.
Mona Sharma
Like I think our bodies are magnificent and magical, right? Something as simple is I didn’t grow up in a house like this, but you know, putting out your dinner were setting the table, right as you set the table, spelling the foods that are cooking, you’re cueing the body to take in nutrition and digest food like you You’re producing the hormones that you need to optimize digestion. And so yeah, going to the ashram, this is a really big piece, we really understand an iron beta, the power of digestion is number one. If you are not digesting your food, you are going to end up suffering with imbalances. You’re going to end up accumulating over time and accumulation is what fuels inflammation. Right, right. Yeah. So yeah, I think it’s a necessity. So ultimately, what I teach my clients is how to create the ashram, how to bring the ashram to the city, my belly, you know, everything that I was doing at the ashram, I’m totally capable of doing in my own home, with the exception of the, you know, the random people that were there. But I can put on pleasing music, I can certainly cook and use spices, healing spices, and my foods and be very aware of where my food comes from, make the right choices. And I can set the stage in my home, I’ll always say to people, like if you’re looking around your house, and you’re seeing things that cause you stress, right, or like a stack of piles, or like the messy corner of the door that cause you anxiety cleared up, set the stage for that, right? Yep. And then all of a sudden, we’re we’re setting the stage for you to be able to replicate the same healing process that you would achieve when visiting these ashrams. Right? It doesn’t feel the same at all. But you can play the same music, right? Yeah. So if you set the stage within your home, and kind of maybe get rid of the the things that you’re doing the habits that you’ve built up over the past few years that you know, aren’t serving you, it does take time to ditch them. But again, I think if you’re making it a priority, and overtime, when you understand the feeling the difference, right? How good does it feel to go out with a friend to dinner, where you just sit and you’re talking? The food takes its time coming? Just really slow down and tune in and enjoy all the flavors of your food? You feel great? Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
yeah, we were we were in Italy, my husband and I about five years ago. And the one thing we noticed is the families that were with little kids that were sitting there for hours having food and wine together. And it was we just we love family. We love food. We love wine. So we were like, this is like look at that in action. And how the heck do they have that seven year old, that five year old sitting at that table so long? And I think that we just haven’t been taught how to do that in our culture and the TV, you’ve brought up screens a couple of times. One thing I would say I’ve been so proud of in our family, our kids are grown up now. But you were never allowed to bring a phone to the table ever. Because no, it was sit down and chat and talk. And even to this day, my kids can do that pretty nicely at the table like we have somebody come over my kids will sit for hours and talk with them. But I do I think that’s a trained behavior that has been really lost and would help so many American families. We have a worldwide audience, but I think that American families need to bring that back.
Mona Sharma
Well look at my past, right, everything that my parents were doing consciously or not, they were imprinting. Yeah, all of these rituals are part of me since I was a kid. Right? And I went back to them because I remember them. Yeah. And today Yeah, it’s a non negotiable in our house. My kids are little I’ve got a three year old and a seven year old. I mean, no screens at the table. Okay, screens once in a while, right. But we set a timer and then they are off and they know that it goes away. And we make the biggest effort to just have a family dinner every single night. Music on I usually am the one that will do the cooking and I’ll make sure they’re little kids even though they’re things that they might not be eating right now. Yeah. And they see it on their plate. They see the veggies on the dinner, we talk about eating the rainbow, we talk about where the food comes from. We also have a really great ritual where we talk about our roles and our authority for the day so that we’re communicating together. You know, I think our children also need to be taught to get themselves into a restful state when they eat and to kind of disengage from the activity and the chatter from the screens. Right? Yeah. physiological state.
Dr. Mindy
What’s What music do you listen to? Do you have a dinner music? tell you why. It’s not gonna be what you think.
Mona Sharma
So we’ll have Siri to play Christmas carols.
Dr. Mindy
Oh, gosh, all year round. Oh my gosh, Jessica. Biglan. Jessica, who runs our podcast, freaking loves Christmas, you listen to her all year round.
Mona Sharma
Sometimes you do or will listen to like, you know, Harry Connick Jr. or classical music. My kids are really into the the budgets that I placed from the ashram so they’ll listen to that classical Indian music once in a while too. But if we just need like a Zico to it’s Christmas carols, because they make us feel good, right.
Dr. Mindy
So put on happy music. So So we play. One of my favorite things to play is Krishna Das? Yes. No, I just love the chat. I love and so we’ll play that, you know, as we’re making a meal we’ll we’ll sit down and have it with a meal. And I used to actually play it sometimes when my kids were little before they would go to bed and so on. When my kids would go to other people’s houses, they would say, can you put Krishna does for me? Yeah, we get like texts from the bombs, they would be like, What is your child listening to? And it was it was no fun to just experience, you know, a different version of music for dinner.
Mona Sharma
Yeah, Christian Das is a big one. My husband will often play the Hamilton soundtrack. Oh, there we go. There we go. But I actually play those that kitchen style of music for my kids before they go to bed.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, it’s really making it. Yeah. So what do you think? What do you think’s more important? I know this is this is a hard one to answer. But the environment in which you’re eating food, and you’re surrounding yourself, what is that more important? Or the quality of the food that you’re eating?
Mona Sharma
The quality of the food? Sure. Yeah, I think because we’re living in a society where we’re bombarded with pollution and low nutrient food and water that might not be optimal and too much stress. I think that we need to look at our nourishment as a primary thing. So you know, really consider that your health care is your kitchen. Health care starts in your kitchen, right? Yeah. Your herbs are your pharmacy, right? So if I could come over to your house, and go through your fifth fridge and go through your, your cabinets, what would I see what I see things that when you say to me, Mona, I want to feel great every day, I want my energy to be a 10 out of 10. I want to lose 10 pounds. Does the food and your habits cabinets reflect that? Right? We’re not it’s really taking the personal power back healthcare starts in your kitchen.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, the only thing I would say to that is that people will pull up a diet drink and say, Well, I was 1010 pounds. Here’s here’s my diet, my diet soda and my, you know, low low calorie bars. You know, I had somebody the other day show me a bar that he was eating? And I’m like, No, I thought it was like a health bar. I’m like, Oh, my God, read those ingredients. To me. That is a horrific bar. So again, we’re back at the the messaging we’re getting around food is often you have it says on the label. It’s low calorie, it says it’s natural. But it’s not.
Mona Sharma
No Labels are tricky, right? Something labeled as healthy. And it could check all the boxes, gluten free low sugar, and all these things. But again, just go back to understanding if you do not understand what the ingredient is exactly. Yep, you can’t read it. If you can’t read it, your body will not know what it is. Yeah. And, you know, really spend your time shopping at the parameters of the right, outer aisles of the inner aisles completely. Because it’s our VEDA we say anything that comes from a box is dead food. Yeah, yeah. Right. There’s my
Dr. Mindy
image. Yeah. So I was just interviewed on the doctors for about self care for for moms. And what they what they wanted me to come up with a list. And so I one of the things they loved that I said was shop the perimeters, stay out of the middle aisles. And I’m thinking to my head, isn’t that obvious? Like, don’t we doesn’t every but they were like, Oh, that’s such a good tip. I’m like, Really, I feel like that’s something that has been slowly becoming like, Oh, this is a good idea to do, too. It’s mandatory that you stay out of the middle aisles. Unless you’re like, at Whole Foods or something. And even whole foods, you got to stay on
Mona Sharma
foods. Now. I know. And this is such a tricky one, especially for moms because we need things that are fast and easy. Most of us are working. And the food industry is doing an incredible job and marketing to our kids. So when I walk into random grocery stores, and I walk down that aisle with the crackers, and the cookies, and the goldfish crackers, and I just cringe, my blood pressure goes up. And I just like I wish that you know, a families could take ownership and understanding that this is really just about money, right? big food companies making money. There’s no nourishment for our kids. And if we know that all of these symptoms and diseases arising within our children mental health disorders even Yeah, the culprit is what they’re consuming right after change around what they’re consuming. Is it hard? Do I do my kids detox after going to a party and like Mom, I want the goldfish. I want the cake they want you know, this person gets it. But I really helped them understand. Well, tell me what’s going to give you more nutrition, what’s going to fuel your energy a little bit more? Yeah, thing that comes from the ground from Mother Nature, or something from this box, Tommy, can you read these ingredients? And she’s really not labeling them as good or bad. Because gosh, I know that when I was old enough, I went out and I binge, but really understanding the impact on the food, on their energy on their mood, on their behavior on their sleep. Then there’s a bit of a shift, and it doesn’t happen overnight happens over time. But I’m convinced in the same way that my parents did with me. The things that will stick with them. They’re learning
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, a great I also discovered this with my kids is once you train their tastebuds to like good quality food. They don’t love it when that when they get bad food. With both my kids, when they went off to college, they both came running home and they’re like, oh my god, the food is so horrible. And I actually then I started teaching them intermittent fasting at that point, because I was like, Okay, you’re going to need to, if this is all you have access to, you’re going to need to skip a meal and get some metabolic reprieve in that intermittent fasting window. And then maybe only condense it down. But it was it was a really fun reflection back where they were like, they were like, I hate that food. I’m like, great. We did a good job training your taste buds. I was really amazed. Yeah, exactly. You were listening? Do you think that there is a one size fits all approach to food? And where to how to where do you think vegan? And carnivore, that’s that’s those are hotly debated in my community. And And I’m curious, like, is everybody have to find their own path? Or is there an absolute great path for people?
Mona Sharma
I think there are. There’s an idea of a great blueprint. But I think that your perfect diet should be as unique as your thumbprint. When my clients can take ownership and say, you know, Mona, I’ve been going vegan this month, and it’s feeling really good, my digestion feels improved. I feel like I have more energy, like great, but let’s not get attached to it. This, this might be great for the season that you’re in right now. Maybe you’re going to start craving some animal protein. And that’s okay. Don’t worry about the defining label. Because the fact of the matter and I’m sure you talk about this all the time, we can find the studies that reflect keto and paleo and veganism, vegetarianism. Like they all have great, you can find the great things about all of them, right? Yeah. But I think it really has to do a lot with you. I know for a lot of the people that I work with when we look at your ethnicity, and where you come from understanding what foods are going to make you feel good. Have to do with your ethnicity, ethnicity. But yeah, not committing to one or the other.
Dr. Mindy
A little bit about that that’s actually come up in a couple of my podcast interviews, a guy you need to know is Dr. Bill Schindler. He wrote a book called eat like a human. And he’s a lovely man. He’s so oh my gosh, she’s so heart based. And it came up in that discussion. And and it kind of is a hair some sprinklings of go back and look at what your your heritage heritage is, and eat like that. Okay, well, I’m German. So does that mean, I should go? Well, I do like sauerkraut. And I do like sausages. Actually. Come to think of it. Yeah, there you go. But so but that isn’t that simple. You go back and look at where your upbringing was, is can we use that as a threat of health?
Mona Sharma
I think it depends, but I think it’s definitely worth a try. So look at me. So I’ve got my father who’s East Indian who grew up completely vegetarian, I aerobatic foods and everything. My mom who’s Danish who grew up on meat and potatoes, right, right. And if I am to go to the meat and potatoes route, my biology just doesn’t feel as good. If I go to the Ayurvedic route, I thrive, I just feel better, it feels better for my constitution. My brother on the other hand, when he goes the Danish route, the meat and potatoes and more of a paleo style meal, that potatoes, he thrives, it’s just better for him. But then I look at my biology. So as much as I am about using these ancient rituals, I also really honoring the fact that we have this incredible science to help us understand what we need in the moment. Yeah, I just have these weird genetic things like thalassemia minor. So sometimes if I’m prone to also getting a little bit of music, and I understand you know what, maybe now’s a good time to incorporate some animal protein. And I’ll cycle it in flexible, I’m flexible flexitarian. That’s what it’s Alexa terian
Dr. Mindy
that we so we have a Facebook group that fast together. And there’s a we have about 50,000 people on there. And we do different fasts every month. And I swear the carnivores in the vegans like, they go at each other. And it’s just crazy. And they’re, you know, the carnivores will tell the vegans that are off and the vegans will tell the carnivores that they’re stupid. And I’m like, This is ridiculous. Everybody has a version. So one thing that I started to incorporate into my work with my patients was, you could have vegan days, and you could have carnivore days. So you can be both if yes, to be both.
Mona Sharma
Absolutely. And you know, I have a lot of people who say, Well, I can’t really cook animal protein. So when they go out to dinner, they’ll take advantage of being at a nice restaurant with a really great quality meat and they’ll get it in there. Right. But yeah, I think that the level of stress and anxiety that’s coming up as a result of all these diet bashing, yeah, it’s just, it’s even more toxic. Right? I’d have to talk to somebody just before this podcast about he’d watched the game changers, right,
Dr. Mindy
right. Oh, yeah, I have to work. I have to unwind the thinking of the game changer. Totally.
Mona Sharma
Yeah. And so now he’s on that route. And it’s like, Well, I think I feel better. It’s Okay, well, let’s just not, you know, label yourself right now. Try it on and see how it fits, see how it feels right this month, monitor your symptoms, let’s feel into it. And it might change, just avoid committing. And all of a sudden it’s like, oh, that gives me such a great sense of freedom.
Dr. Mindy
What about seasonal eating? Do you think that there’s that’s kind of a topic that isn’t discussed enough? Do you think that we should be eating different things in the winter than the summer?
Mona Sharma
I do? I just think that this is, this is something that’s coming harder for us to do. Because we live especially in California, oh, my gosh, we can get anything we want your round, right? Don’t tell
Dr. Mindy
everybody that. I might have to edit that part out?
Mona Sharma
Well, I’m from Toronto. So I know. It’s a very different scenario. But yeah, I really do feel the benefits. So if we look at the Ayurvedic model of healing, they will eat seasonally. And I think there is benefit, because when we look at things like watermelon, and cucumber that are bloated with more hydration to cooler bodies down in the summertime, that just makes sense. Yeah, right. And then we go to the root vegetables that come from the earth that helps ground in the wintertime that are a little bit more heavy and satiating in the wintertime. It just makes sense. Right? So yeah, I think it’s, it’s definitely valid. But I also think from a nutrient standpoint, right, we have to acknowledge where our food comes from, how many hours did it spend in transit growing from the other side of the world, right, until it got to the supermarket, where it’s probably been sitting for a couple of weeks, before you actually open it up and eat it. So I think that if you’re able to eat seasonal and local whenever possible, you’re definitely going to get a higher nutrient intake. Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I also think that we as humans are, we’re like a puzzle piece that fits with nature. And when we are working against that, like, this is why I’m such a fan of the local movement, because you should be fitting eating food from your local places, because it came from local soils. And it’s going to go more with the with the Constitution of, of who you are in that environment. And so when I look at, like, the fruits that are available in the summertime, okay, that makes sense that we would have our bodies more prone to have fruit, but then in the winter time, you know, fruit may not in California, we get citrus easily but you maybe bananas wouldn’t grow on a tree in California or anywhere in the winter time. So are we supposed to be eating that in the winter time and when you get in touch with what the rhythms of nature, that’s a whole nother level that you can take eating to and it’s kind of fun. And and in the fasting world, we actually believe more in longer fasts in the winter, because you’ve gone in like that’s what the cave people did. They had to go without food in the winter. So our bodies are actually programmed to go into these longer fasts in the winter, where, whereas the cave people in the summer had plants and everything accessible. So they were meant to eat more.
Mona Sharma
Yeah, they’re foraging, they’re removing their axes. 100%. But I love that you brought that up, because I speak about that a lot. This connection to nature, right? I’m sure everyone listening can resonate with a time in their life where they just they wanted to escape, right? They wanted to travel or get away, or maybe that you pray love moments, right? People often go to the ashram also to escape that. Yeah. And it’s really this disconnection from nature that I think causes a lot of illness. And we are disconnected from nature. We’re also disconnected from our own nature. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what to do. And I have a hard time making decision. I don’t know what my future holds, like, No, you do. You just got you know, you’re you’re you’ve disengaged from listening, right? Our body is constantly sending us cues to listen to tune in. And yet we ignore them, right, we get used to living with the physical symptoms, but we also get used to living with in living out of alignment with our intuition. Right. Yeah. So what do we all do? We go into nature, we stop, take a deep breath. I feel so good, right? My husband and I will often just do weekend trips up into the woods, I want to get my hands into the dirt. I want my kids to get their hands dirty, like I really want them to breathe in that biome. And all we just noticed, like, I still have the same stressors, still the same schedule. Nothing else has changed with the fact that except we’re in nature, and I feel a lot better, right. So whenever you can just make that connection to nature. Big priority. Yeah. You know, and getting out into the sun first thing in the morning, right?
Dr. Mindy
Like reconnecting ourselves to the planet. I we were just in Hawaii last week. And my husband and I and we were I told my husband I’m like, we have to get in the ocean every single day. I’m like, we don’t get in the ocean every day. So let’s get our bodies in there for the biome for the the minerals I did. And then one day I came out and I did some research on like, the mineral content of seawater. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like they have some pretty profound minerals. So it was really fun to look at getting in the low in the ocean is a health habit that we don’t necessarily access on a day to day basis. So, so yes
Mona Sharma
from we always laughed because the Swamis would come in there orange suits every single day in the morning, they’ll go straight into the ocean before they started their day. And this ritual was really around, you know, undoing what your body was processing overnight, your body was repairing and regenerating your mind was dreaming and processing there. And so going into the ocean was an act of releasing what no longer serves you and starting your day in that now. And they’ll also have a shower at the end of the day. This is also a great practice for grounding. At the end of the day, just visualize the water that’s running from your shower. Just imagine it was a waterfall imagine it was the ocean, imagine it was a lake, we can all just tune into that. Visualizing the stress moving from your mind down to your feet into the drain away from you and then using grounding oils after to just get out of your out of your mind and into your body. Mimicking or visualizing the power of nature.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, crazy. Okay, before we close, you got to tell me about hikma. Just, I? So the hikma the vegetable, is it considered a vegetable? Or is it considered a root vegetable? Yeah, root vegetable, which is great for progesterone. By the way, I’ll route vest eventually. You probably already know this. But it is one of those that I’ve struggled to figure out do I like it? Do I not like it? Then I put it in some dip. And I’m like, Yeah, I like it. And then I’m like no, I don’t know if I like it. And it’s very conflicting for me. But you’ve actually got a whole company around the juice who explained to me the power of pic images.
Mona Sharma
Yeah, so heckum is a root vegetable. It’s kind of like a cross between a potato and an apple. And I’ve been using it on my clients meal plans for over a decade because it’s an easy swap for things like crackers and cookies and processed foods. Incorporate it with a good quality fat like a you know, avocado or some hummus and great you know, is high in vitamin C high and prebiotic fiber. This gut microbiome talk is they’re trending these days, but we know the power prebiotics to fuel the good bacteria in your gut. So great. We run our baby moon a couple years ago in Hawaii, eating some baby.
Dr. Mindy
Take a moment to think about what a baby Baby Baby means. What would I have my kids I want to I want to redo
Mona Sharma
I took full advantage of them. Yeah, my husband just said you know the surgery tastes really great as a juice and so came back home through hikma through a juicer and the juice from a heck of mix. There’s so much hydration and it tasted really good. It was a little bit sweet, kind of like a watermelon water. instantly went online went to see is anyone doing anything with hikma juice or hikma Water? Water? Nobody was but we saw tons of stories specifically from Latino community saying my mother used to give us to me for an upset tummy. Or my mom used to use the juice on her skin because it’s high vitamin C and that wow, there’s something to this. I love that nostalgia around it. Yeah. And so we started working with mixologist who ended up making us three amazing flavors and one of them ended up being we turned it into a sparkling water so three flavors of a sparkling water using hikma juice as the base. And we ended up being the number one selling beverage at Coachella the last Coachella after beer and water after a beer and wine after beer and wine. Yeah, but you know, for somebody who had no you know, idea that they would end up creating a beverage. This is something that was really exciting. And today we just launched an all Erawan stores. Dr. Hyman has been a great supporter and posted some recipes that he really loves. So yeah, that’s an exciting time. Really, the vision behind it though, is, you know, giving people a better alternative for those people who are addicted to sodas and colas and all that stuff out there. Here’s the sparkling water and I often think that people think when you go healthy you have to sacrifice taste, when that’s not the case at all. So you know, go try heck am I you can check us out online. But the big picture also like when you juice A Hekima you get a ton of fiber pulp, right. So I’ve turned that into Hekima flour, and we’ve got lots of exciting things coming for the company sound.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, can you order online? can order online
Mona Sharma
that hikma? life.com? Okay, so we’ll put that we’ll
Dr. Mindy
put the link in the show notes. Because you actually have me really intrigued. So I’m going to go order a bunch of stuff and try it all out. So because again, I told you it’s a really conflicting vegetable for me. But the fact that it’s a root vegetable is even more exciting because that is something that women over 40 really need to be able to support progesterone. Absolutely. Yeah. I love it. I love it.
Mona Sharma
Yeah. And the other thing is I’m going back to the ashram so and arch.
Dr. Mindy
Okay, so you take like people on tours. So believe
Mona Sharma
it or not, this is just me coming full circle to where I came from. So the ashram reached out to me, they asked me to lead a retreat than they realize my story and I thought, oh my gosh, come and tell your story. So I’m teaching the philosophy of how to build your Ashram there but also how to take that home with you so people can join in person We’re online on Paradise Island, I highly recommend coming in person.
Dr. Mindy
Amazing. Okay, well, we’ll leave the link down there as well. And it’s so nice to hear people having retreat together. Yeah. It’s like, Oh, that felt normal to hear you say that. Thank you.
Mona Sharma
I just can’t wait to have people agreed
Dr. Mindy
agreed to let you know for somebody whose love languages touch. This whole pandemic thing has been a struggle, like, I just want to hug everybody. So I agree. So last couple of questions for you. Every year on my podcast, we have a different theme. On this year, the theme is gratitude. So two questions on gratitude for you. One, do you have a daily gratitude practice that’s very intentional, and to what’s something you’re incredibly grateful for in this moment, in this day and age,
Mona Sharma
I love sharing my morning gratitude. So before I open my eyes while I’m laying in bed, I take my hands over my heart. And I express gratitude for my body. The fact that my heart has healed the fact that when doctors told me I was perimenopausal in my 20s, I changed that around when doctors told me that I couldn’t have kids I did. And really just the superpower of our inherent ability to heal. And the belief that I have in myself, it’s like, I just need the daily reminder of the fact that my gosh, my heart is beating for me every second of the day. And we kind of really get disconnected from that. Right? Yeah, absolutely acknowledge your body before you get out of bed, the one vessel that you get in this life that’s taking you through the highs and the lows, right? Yeah. And I would say, you know, in this moment, a sense of gratitude for the feeling of awakening that’s happening right now I feel like a lot of the people that I’m speaking with are feeling a sense of expansion again. And this expansion now is disconnection from what’s been publicized in media and social media. And instead a sense of tuning in well know what’s gonna make me feel happy in this life. How can I feel good? What are the rituals that I want to adopt? What’s going to make me feel good in my career, and really just honoring those conversations and something that our listeners can perhaps engage in? When you ask somebody how they’re doing? And they respond with? Oh, you know, I’m fine. I’m so busy. It’s like, Yeah, I know, you’re fine. You’re busy. Just tell me how are you feeling? Connect with me, like, let’s really honor that personal connection with each other. Because we all just want to get it out of our mind into the ER. And often we’re all struggling with the same things. And I think it’s, you know, men and women alike. We need more dialogue of not necessarily this word venting or bitching, but simply communicating the sense of feeling, things that we’re working on feels.
Dr. Mindy
I love that. So I did some I just turned in my fourth book to Hay House a couple weeks ago, yeah, I have a fasting. It’s called fast like a girl. It’s a fasting manual for women that will come out at the end of this year. And one of the things I did in the afterward, was really do some research on what happened at the 1918 pandemic. And one of the things that happened from that is that there out of that dark moment came four major themes. And one of them was really, I mean, there was one whole theme around women, which is really interesting. But there’s also a theme around community and connection. And really like the speakeasies, if you go in and you look at what the speakeasies were, they were people gathering, you know, secretly with each other and celebrating and when you say that there’s a paradigm breaking apart. That’s how I feel. That’s what I see is like, the the pandemic was a paradigm breaker. You can call it whatever you want to call it, but it shattered every paradigm. And we now get to create what paradigm we’re going to step into. So who you just like went right into my heart on that one Mona like this. And this is why I want to have these conversations because we have an opportunity to not do life, the way that we used to do it, because that way was not serving us physically, mentally or spiritually. We can recreate it but we can’t fall asleep again. So yeah, goosebumps. Yeah, I just love that. I love that’s
Mona Sharma
so beautiful. Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, thank you for having me. And how do people find you if they if they want to dive into your Hekima juice or find you on a retreat?
Mona Sharma
Instagram, I’m really loving the sense of community that we can kind of build I feel like I’ve made all these strange friendships through Instagram. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, so find me on Instagram drop me a note. You’ll see all the links to hikma there as well. I’ve got my website as well which is just Mona Sharma comm. We have come say hello and yeah, I think that community now more than ever, it’s just so important. So excited to just build that this year.
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- What It Means to Eat Like A Human – with Dr. Bill Schindler
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