Lisa: Well, hello, Katie. Thank you so much for being with me here today in one of my inaugural episodes of my podcast.

Katie: Yeah, I'm delighted to be here. And congratulations on your launch.

Lisa: Yes, thank you so much. And for all of the listeners, I consider Katie Silcox is my teacher. She is the founder of Shakti School, which is an Ayurveda school, which has two levels, New York Times bestselling author of Healthy, Happy, Sexy, and also author of Glow Worthy. Is there anything else that you would like to just share about, about yourself as well right now?

Katie: Well, it's funny, you know, and this might kick us off, Lisa, I feel so honored to receive the word teacher from you and really feel like I'm very much a student myself. And, and secondly, You know, these bios that everyone's sort [00:01:00] of forced to listen to at the beginning of podcasts, and we do them as well.

And it's so great because you're honoring the guests and, and their experience and their wisdom. But I was speaking with someone the other day, like, it would be so great if we had like the, the golden bio and then right beside it, the shadow side bio where it's like, yes. And struggled with addiction and anxiety and, you know, like all the things that we would never put in a bio.

And, and like those two things could coexist. Um, and so I definitely consider myself a seeker and a student and a practitioner and truly continuing to fumble through life trying to figure this out and also just accept that it's not really figureoutable. So that would be the side bio.

Lisa: Oh, I love that so much. And I love how you say the shadow bio

Katie: Shadow bio.

Lisa: yeah, the shadow bio, I think I, that's actually an exercise I think I want to do with some of the women in my community, because we [00:02:00] actually do a lot of work with the shadow work. And I'm always saying, it's amazing that 90 to 95 percent of our behaviors are driven by the unconscious, right?

And as Carl Jung says, until we make the unconscious conscious, we will be ruled by it and call it fate. Like, why do I keep dating the same men? I don't, I have enough money. Why can't I stick with anything? And it's so important to recognize that there's other aspects of ourselves. It's not just the persona of who we show to the world, but it's so much deeper and so much more expansive as well.

Katie: Yeah, and I mean, I know this may be off topic, but it's something you and I think are both super passionate about and, and the shadow for those out there listening. We, we can tend to go into a binary thinking around it. I have to watch for this all the time of like the, the, the shadows, the bad stuff, that's like making me do all this bad shit and, and date bad people and eat bad foods and, and indeed that's [00:03:00] true, but also that the shadow is forcing things forth.

So as to relive and re experience something that really needs to happen and have a different outcome. And so one of the things that I've been working with personally is, is, and I'm not saying, Oh, I'm so advanced, but for everyone out there listening, just knowing your shadow is important and not letting it rule you, but like a little bit more of a deeper or more advanced, I hate that word.

Let's not use it, but like just, just deepening your relationship to it is to actually try to understand the gift in what it's, Teaching you?

Lisa: Yes. Oh, I love that. That's so beautiful. And one thing, and this also was not one of the questions that I had planned on asking, but now that we are on this subject, I've had women say to me, like, but when is it done? Like, when is all this work, the personal [00:04:00] development work done? Like, when do I have to get to stop looking for my shadow?

And I think we share a similar. that it's not really about getting anywhere. It's a sense of exploration, but I would love to hear, like, how would you respond to that question of when, when can I be finished with this?

Katie: Well, I get so smiley and giggly and full of joy in Shakti School when students ask questions like the one you just asked me because I've asked that very same question and maybe continue to ask it, and. And so it's something I want to know as well or have wanted to know. And I think that it's done when we're ready for it to be done. When we're ready. And I think this whole idea of self improvement culture is a farce. That you're done when you realize. That there's nowhere to [00:05:00] go, and you start to soften to that and you start to open to that. And that doesn't mean, and this is kind of 1 of the things I know we wanted to talk about around discipline versus, um, go with the flow.

But I think opening to that infinite. This is what's occurring. This allows a lot of change to actually be available. Whereas when we're kind of in that idea of like, when is it done? And like, I'm on a growth track and I'm on an evolutionary track and I'm on a self improvement track, which we all get involved in on some level.

As long as we're in that mindset, we're always operating from a place of contraction and constriction, which is a place through which no change is actually possible. So it's this huge irony that when we're kind of done with the whole thing and we lay back and we allow ourselves and our breath and our body and our energy just [00:06:00] to get super open to what is now, lo and behold, things can start to move in a new way.

Lisa: Yeah, I love that because I think, and I know you've talked a lot about it, that you're, you're not broken. You're not something that needs to be fixed and yet we're continuously evolving as well, too. And I know you often do this mudra might have a video of the podcast as well, too, where we have to. Well, both of those, right?

That we're, we're good as we are, and, and there's an evolution that's seeking place as well,

Katie: Exactly. Yeah, for sure. And evolution is occurring. Um, There was a, a great union psychotherapist named James Hillman that was really revolutionary because he went against a lot of the, well, not against, he was just continuing to do what a student does with his teacher's work, continuing to think about it and chew on it and ponder it.

And he talked about this idea. [00:07:00] In our psyche of going forward of advancement of moving towards the divine. And he was like, you know what? No one talks about the value of taking steps backwards. What about going backwards? And that feels so unbelievably, um, unintuitive for us. Like we want to go forward and evolve, but there's a, there's a way that by allowing ourselves to go towards The thing that feels like the thing that's holding us back, we actually discover something about it.

Um, for example, just to take it out of the realm of the, uh, uh, abstract, like let's say you have this tendency to feel really lazy and lethargic and bored. We want to get out of that. Let's advance. Right? So get up, go do, we want to cultivate the opposite qualities. And what we find is maybe we do it for a little bit, but lo and behold, we're brought back into that [00:08:00] laziness, that boredom, that lethargy.

And so. This becomes an endless cycle, and that's what the word samsara means. To be caught in an endless repetitive loop that one feels a lot of suffering in because it's so repetitive. And I know all of us, all your listeners have had that feeling where it's like, I can't believe I'm here again and I'm doing this thing or I have to learn this lesson again.

But by actually opening to the feeling of boredom and lethargy and laziness by letting it be. And embracing it, even without becoming it, we start to learn that there's a lot of lessons there. Old stored memories, their energy, their insight there. And most importantly, when you accept and open to it.

You're cultivating actual love for who you are as a boring, bored, lazy, [00:09:00] lethargic, in this example, person. And I think that has helped me so much, especially as like, well, I'm not super like, well known, but somewhat of a public facing persona. It's helped me so much not be so nervous. I'm scared that everyone's going to find out that I'm not perfect, even though probably no one thinks that it's an internal thing by owning, as we say, and opening to all these different things that some of them are really gnarly Lisa. It's weird. I've got more and more and more dignity. It's okay if you see this about me, because I've already seen it. Now, am I going to lead with it? Am I going to lead with bored, lazy, lethargic as the leader and lead teacher of Shoxie School? Hell no! I wouldn't have a job, you know? So [00:10:00] there's a certain way that we can choose these aspects of ourselves.

as we go about our day. Same with, and this might bring us to another topic, I'm rambling Lisa, but the feminine. When I'm with Shakti School and the role of the head teacher in this moment where people are expecting a certain amount of lecture and experience and meditations and, you know, leadership, Am I going to lead with the most open, feminine, sensual, receptive creature that I can become?

No. Right? And so you can, it's not like a conscious thing. We can, we just start to be able to know what is the proper energy in what moment more and more.

Lisa: Yeah, that's so beautiful. There's so much that you said there that, and it's interesting when you started talking about taking a step back, while that makes sense to me [00:11:00] intellectually, I almost felt like I was having this physical response, like we don't have time to be lazy. We have to move forward. Like I could actually fail in my body having this visceral response, which some things that I need to work on, right.

If I can't think that we can, you know, take a moment to. To embrace these things that we're, that in some ways it seems that we are almost running from, like, gotta keep moving, can't be bored, can't get myself into these same cycles. So that's such an interesting concept of taking a couple of steps back, which I definitely want to think about a little more.

And I love how you are talking about kind of that balance between the feminine and masculine, because that's also something I wanted to talk to you about. Is that, you know, I think we both teach women. a little bit more how to embrace their feminine. And ironically, we have to be very much in our masculine to do that because it takes a lot to like organize programs and get things set up.

[00:12:00] And one of the things that I'm finding is, especially when it comes to self care, that, you know, women can be like, well, I was listening to my body and I, you know, so I didn't go for the walk or I didn't want to meditate, or I didn't want to do this cause I just wanted to relax and I always feel like, yes, there's some wisdom in that.

And there is an element of discipline as well, too, which I like to think of, like, the masculine, the animus, like, we gotta, we have a creative idea, we need to be able to get it out there. We want change in our body, we need to be able to do the practices. What's, um, what's your thoughts about kind of balancing, like, ooh, I want to listen to my body, the intuition, and the failing, and I still, still need to do the practices for them to work.

It's

Katie: Yeah. It's so funny when we don't, when we have too much animus. Running the show. Don't worry. The anima will grab you and take you down and make you lay down or you'll [00:13:00] binge eat or you'll drink a whole bottle of wine or you'll sleep with someone. Like, don't worry. The animus must and will be balanced.

Now, is it being balanced in a way that's conscious or is it unconscious? So like, the funny part is, is that you really can't get away with it forever. And men and women, you know, and, and you see so many men with addictions to alcohol or pot or their phones or pornography. And like, we all have the way that the shadow feminine grabs us and says, stop.

And. I think for us to become like the way the word, one of my union teachers described it, and this helped me a lot. He said, I said, I don't know who's doing what feminine or masculine, the Anima, the intimacy, he said, don't worry [00:14:00] in us, in you, in all of us, the feminine and the masculine need maturation, the way they're behaving now.

And I'm almost everyone, you know, at least some of the time is like children, right? Like. overdrive animus and addictive, manipulative, covert, hidden, heavy feminine. So an example of this. Type A lady, kick an ass at her job, got two kids, makes a little more money than her husband, still does the dishes and the meal planning, and you know, you've, you've known this woman, you've seen this woman, and go, go, go, go, go.

Then she does a 300 hour yoga teacher training, and then she does Shakti school, and it's just like, oh my God, right? And also she's training for a marathon, and she goes to core Pilates and yoga, and, and It's unbelievable. I'm not one of these [00:15:00] women, but I have seen them in the wild.

Lisa: similar, in my 30s, yes. Because I'm like, okay.

Katie: So, so when you see that, just know we can hold so much compassion because there's a shadow to that there is and whether it's binge eating or alcohol or, or whatever, there's a way that the anima cannot be held halted. I've seen it in some people show up as maybe not the addictions or the things I mentioned, but things like repetitive nightmares, dreams.

So this is the, the, and then, and then we, we, we could really go there, but like the manipulation of men, you know, the using sensuality to get things and objects, right? Like, I mean, that's a part of our culture. So that's [00:16:00] what we're learning how to do is to mature both of those and understand what does it look like in me to be in my drive and discipline and transformational power and ambition and go gettership and activation and sympathetic nervous system and fight and all of those good things, right?

That we know we need and that we, we can do. Cause some women have, have a hard time with that. And men, it's not even a woman man thing. And then what does it look like to be in the maturity of the feminine? And, and, you know, listeners might be thinking, well, which is which? And the answer is, it doesn't matter.

You can switch these and call them different things. But the idea is that there are these dualities in our experience. If you find that you are overly permissive with yourself, and as per your example of, well, I'm not going to go on a walk or do my yoga or do my meditation or do my food sadhanas, because I'm just going to lay around and I was listening to my body.[00:17:00]

Maybe who are we to know what's going on inside that person? Maybe that was the right choice. But if you find in your own experience that your choices are overly permissive and leading to imbalances in your health, please Then you know that you're in that shadow of the, of the feminine where you're, you're a mother and you're mothering yourself in a way where the mommy gives the baby all the candy at once and lets the baby crayon all over the house.

Right. And so the, and then the same for the, the shadow masculine, it are my, and this is such a deep question, are my ambitions drives impulses towards self care and self transformation and excellence and evolution coming from a place of lack, low self worth. Need for validation. And so we can see so much of when women are go, go, go, go, go.

It's exactly because [00:18:00] when they do stop, they meet the wall of uncomfortable feelings that they are. Not just running from, but avoiding at all costs. Meanwhile, you've got the other ladies that are laying around eating bonbons who have 50, 000 good ideas. Don't launch anything. Don't change. And that's also problematic.

And so, and then if you're lucky, you're like me, where you can go in both directions. So, and I, and I didn't answer the question and I'll conclude very briefly by saying, Lisa, the answer to that is you do something that enables you to hear, feel the voice of your soul. And in that moment, your soul, you're going to ask, what should I do next?

The soul knowing is different than the permissive mother or the relentless father. And that's what the practice really is, is getting [00:19:00] in touch with that heart soul voice.

Lisa: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And that's something that I often tell, like, my students is that, you know, sometimes we can think of things as good or bad, like, you know, ice cream is bad and, you know, salads are good or whatever it is. And I'm always like, it's not about good or bad, but it's going to bring you closer.

To that soul self, to your higher self, do you feel more connected, do you feel more at ease to who you are, who you are meant to become? So I like to think of things not so much as good or bad, but are they bringing us closer to, to who we want to be?

Katie: 100%. Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. And I love how you were talking to the kind of the immature masculine and immature feminine because I think sometimes, and especially in the zeitgeist now it's like masculine energy feminine energy, but there's also immature masculine and you know more of the divine masculine and the same with or the immature feminine and the mature feminine we have to kind of understand to which of those are at [00:20:00] play.

Katie: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Then isn't it so easy to see it in other people?

Lisa: Yeah, it's so much harder right to see it in yourself. Um, yeah, in it. Interesting when you were talking about kind of that that archetype of the woman who's doing it all. And I said it sounded somewhat similar to me in my 30s. And like you said, every night when I would get home from work, I would have a couple of vodka and sodas.

It was like there needed to be something too. And I say, like, that was my ritual. Right? And, but that was a ritual. Like, when I like to think of rituals, rituals expand our consciousness. But when we have these maladaptive behaviors, they actually contract. They numb it. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit, and I know you've talked in the past about these maladaptive behaviors, because I think there can be a lot of shame about them, but yet, in some way, they work.

They distract us from our shitty relationships. They distract us from, like, maybe what's going on [00:21:00] financially, or in uninspiring jobs. But yet, they don't get us to where we need to be. And I was just wondering if you had a perspective on, on how we look at these types of behaviors.

Katie: Thank you so much, Lisa, for that teaching on ritual. That's going to stay with me. I hope of ritual being something that expands the consciousness and I hadn't thought of it like that and maladaptive being things that contract and, and I think, you know, as someone that used to be very strict on myself, I've, I've mostly never felt so much peace and.

ease and being at home in my body and um, equanimity than I do right now in this stage of my life. And um, if I were to tell you all the things going on, it's like a challenging moment, not a bad moment, [00:22:00] but it's not a easy moment. And I think one of the reasons why is that I have begun to understand that everything that I was doing in the past, I was doing exactly because of what you said. In the moment, I really needed my maladaptive behaviors. They were the things that were a mother and a father to me. They were the way that my little self learned to, um, relax and, and feel soothed and, um, get love. And, and then I moved into that stage where I started to, like, parse away and, and peel away some of those layers, and I didn't need them as much, and so they just sort of fell away.

So I think we're going at it often in the wrong direction. We're like, okay, I know I should be eating kitschery, scraping my tongue, drinking lemon water, putting oil on my [00:23:00] body, you know, doing yoga, doing exercise, doing meditation on and on and on. We could fill it literally the whole day with practices.

Um, and I know I shouldn't be doing this, this, this, this, this, and this. Well, the more interesting question is what's there when you take a pause and feel more, when you just like. Say, okay, I can have the wine or the vodka soda, but like, just like when it, when I don't like what's sitting there and for all of us, what's sitting there is.

Terror, fear, sadness, loneliness, rage. It's all there. All of it. Guilt, shame, avoidance, you know, anxiety. It's all sitting there. Right there. For everybody though. And like, that's what opens your heart and my heart to each other. It's that commonality that we're all freaked out. And we have absolutely no idea what we're doing here.[00:24:00]

And in that moment, if you can just take that second to feel that loneliness, or that ache, or that longing, or that loss, or whatever's there, and you just touch into it for a half second, It opens it up during a long grueling, and sometimes still it happens now, but less and less period where I was really working through a lot of rough stuff, me watching love island and eating a bowl of country with a huge scoop of key.

was absolutely wonderful and necessary because you actually cannot be in the expanded consciousness all the time. The idea of being constantly opening to God and experiencing bliss and luminosity and having no, you know, traumas or feelings or thought. It's just, That's not what the pulsation is. And that's not really what Tantra teaches.

It says, okay, so [00:25:00] now you're in your, now you're aware in the contraction. Now, you know, he's not a fan of many people, but I freaking love the books of, um, Trungpa Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I try to say that 10 times fast, and he was an extreme alcoholic. And he would do his lectures half drunk. And, you know, I, I haven't dove too deep into it.

I don't want to know too much because I really enjoy his books. But one of the things that he taught was that the third stage in Buddhism from the Mahayana to the Hinayana to the last one, the Vajrayana, the Vajrayana is essentially what you and I are trying to do and are doing, where it's not about Are we doing everything perfectly?

It is, am I allowing myself to be open to what it is I'm experiencing right now without fixating around a centralized sense of me, [00:26:00] sense of self? Now, that's a developmental thing. If you've never had a centralized sense of self, You have to build that that's called get a good therapist, you know, and get a backbone and get boundaries and learn how to say no.

And all those good things that I've, I'm still learning how to do. But beyond that, it becomes, and this is the last thing I say, because you're being so generously. So with allowing me to just pour onward you watch love island and eat the potato chips. You are also awakening. That is radical freedom.

Radical freedom is the ability to be in any situation at any time in any state of consciousness opening to what is occurring. That's true freedom. Many of our friends, you know, in our zeitgeist, I love that word you used, we're, we're, we're spiritual materialists. We're addicts looking for the next spiritual [00:27:00] state. That's violence. It's saying, I don't want to be in this state. I want to be in that one. That one's the one. Do you know what I'm saying? That's

Lisa: the opposite of Tantra, right? Where Tantra is, I am here, right? No matter what I'm experiencing.

Katie: He, in, in Trungpa Rinpoche even goes as far as to say it's a fundamental aggression towards life And that's the goddess. If you are fully worshipping the goddess It's an aggression for me to want to be in the state of productivity or the state of happiness or the state of joy or the state of bliss.

It's, it's an aggression against what's happening right now. What's happening right now is there's a lot going on, right? There's a mixed bag pretty much all at all times. And when lucidity or [00:28:00] freedom or joy or expansion or bliss or relational. You know, success and happiness. They're temporary. They go even the highest spiritual States.

They're temporary.

Lisa: So important to remember, and I love how you brought up spiritual materialism, which I know is, um, I think also a book by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and I think that can be almost like another, another element or metric that we're trying to, like, can I be more spiritual? Can I be this? And in the effort of doing that, we're also losing the point of it as well.

Katie: Yeah. And it's just such a, it's such a, um, confusing thing sometimes because we're trained to think if I do these spiritual practices, or if I do all this work on myself or I do all this therapy, I'm going to get something. I'll do this to get that that's materialism. And so to [00:29:00] be able to actually do the practice. Really for the open heartedness of all humankind to just say, you know, the only thing I'm going to do is to sit here and try to open up my own heart for the good of all. Now that's a different thing that I, and then we all know this from the practices that the real teachings say that there is a release of the fruit of the outcome. I'm telling you girl, this is tough, right? I'm not saying I'm good at this either. It's like, Really? Yeah, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna teach my little heart out and whoever has benefited, I've done my best. Whoever may not, you know, I didn't, I'm not looking to be. Hmm. Getting something for myself out of this experience.

Can I apply that to my meditation? That's more challenging, [00:30:00] right? We want our meditations to make us feel better.

Lisa: Oh, we went like the, what's the ROI on my spiritual practice. Right. And I think that I have been working on as well too. And it's like, no, there isn't. It's a practice that you, the point is the practice as far as just being there. It's a devotion, which I know is something that you've talked to about. So not looking at it as an ROI, but looking at it as a devotional practice with where you don't need to get anything in return.

Katie: Exactly.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, thank you. That was, um, That was so beautiful. I can't wait to listen to it, to hear everything that you just said as well.

Katie: me too. I'll try to listen as well. I feel like God has given me the gift of being able to talk about this all the time because I get to remember every time I say it.

Lisa: Great. Thank you. So I also wanted to ask you a few other questions that come up in my community quite a bit. Like, so I have a 10 [00:31:00] week Ayurveda program, Radiant Goddess, and it really attracts, like, the most amazing, like, inspiring, like, thoughtful women. And nevertheless, these, all these questions come up, and they're ones that I've actually struggled with.

As well, too. But like, what does Ayurveda have to say about alcohol, meat, Botox? Can you still drink alcohol? Can you still have meat? Can you still do Botox if you are a student of Ayurveda? And I have some opinions, but I'd love to, love to hear yours.

Katie: So I'm laughing. So, so Lisa, you're basically handing me your hardest questions. Uh, so you, I can now answer. I'm teasing. Um, no, this is great. This is so great because I think Like the concept of what does Ayurveda say about, right? That in and of itself is a tough starting point. We're talking about a 5, 000 year old, mostly oral tradition from the subcontinent of India that was informed by [00:32:00] thousands of years of communication and conversation with, All these different thinkers and healers across the globe, really.

And so you have several ancient seminal texts of Ayurveda that are kind of used as the, the rule books, if you will. And we can look at the Charaka Samhita or some of these other old, super old books and kind of go and see what they say. It would be like, If you and I were Christians, right? Like what does the Bible say about gay people or, you know, all these contentious and very delicate, uh, issues of our time and many times.

And so, um, In a way, and I mean this with like the sweetness of my heart, cause it's something we have to kind of remember constantly as we're sharing this. We do that mudra of balance because on one hand you do want to honor those books and those traditions, but in another way, there's a way that rule books create fundamentalism and [00:33:00] ideologies.

And these rule books were meant to inspire one to tune to Atman, the soul. And so the, and then they say, if you eat this, you're all going to die of that. Or if you do this, you know, this terrible thing, you know, the Indian books, these old books are very, very hyperbolic and some of them really strict and very clear and very stern, you know, but I think What has been helpful for me is to understand that the ideas in Ayurveda that in the original mind of the Rishis were mystical and spiritual ideas, the conversations that these Rishis, Rishi means a clear seer, had with the Rishis.

Substances, plants, um, medicines, right? Herb, herbs, um, meditation was the way that these ancient wisdom seekers figured a lot of these things out, like the Marma system and acupuncture. All these things [00:34:00] came from a direct embodied experience. And so from that, what I call feminine form, and it has nothing to do with women, but we could talk about kind of the way women held us came from this place of being tuned to a deep sense of listening.

So in the true love lover of life, right, the, the, the knowledge seeker sat and listened. He could feel and hear and sense the way that alcohol affected his system, and he wrote it down. And then he could feel and see and sense the way meat, Affected the system and he wrote it down, you know, or salads or grains.

And so you have Ayurveda developing out of a relationship of deep listening with nature. There wasn't judgment. And if there was then, then okay. But in the most pure archetypal, energetic, [00:35:00] elemental, pristine form of Ayurvedic medicine, there was no judgment. It was just. Meat is heavy, it's dense, it creates a false sense of ojus, which is vitality and stability, and, um, but it does help build immunity and ojus initially, right?

For example, it has been rumored that the Dalai Lama's Ayurvedic doctor, you know, who would never think of giving a Buddhist monk meat, right? It's not part of their practice, but when Dalai Lama is sick, they sneak the meat into a soup. And you can even read these old Ayurvedic texts that say, if your patient is emaciated, do not tell them, but just put soup and meat in their soup.

You know, it's just like, there's a lot of, um, Ideology around Ayurveda as well around Arma and animals and not wanting to do harm, but in the purest form of Ayurvedic medicine, there [00:36:00] is no judgment around that. Ayurveda does not say don't eat meat and it's bad. It says, well, if you eat meat, here are the consequences.

And, you know, we can think about that you and I know that if we eat meat that's come from an unhappy place and unhappy cow or pig or sheep that's been treated really poorly or pumped full of chemical, we eat that that will be our karma as well. If that animal died in a, in a terrible way we were going to take on the energies and, and, and emotions so those of you that are meat eaters.

It's not about good, bad, right, or wrong for everybody. It's about try to find that least amount of suffering that's, um, that's available, right? And for some of us, that means that we just don't need it at all. And that we choose that path. Uh, what many people find in the spiritual community is they do that, especially when they're not from.

Thousands of years and hundreds of years of lineages that are used to eating vegetarian, but they're [00:37:00] from lineages that are used to eating meat and cheese and milk. And then they go and they try to do it and become vegan. And then seven years later, they, they are really unhealthy. And, and then they have to go back and they are usually the people that become paleo only eat meat, you know, they swing from one end to that.

So I hope the answer to that is it, it's just depends. Is it good for you? Um, in this moment, according to your body type, according to your lineage, uh, alcohol, I want to say, you know, here's what Ayurveda says that it does, it's going to increase heat, fire inflammation in the body in small amounts, it's probably not so bad in large amounts, not so great.

Here's the other piece. It just depends. Are you from Italy and France and Spain where it was in your baby bottle and you've been drinking it for thousands of years. You, you can take out wine away from a European and nor should like it's [00:38:00] so embedded in culture, right in India, that's not a part of their culture.

And so for them, having alcohol was often a part of tantric rituals. As a way of saying we're taking what they called the five poisons, the five poisons were meat, certain grains, alcohol, um, maybe it was pot and then women, right? Like if we rely on these ancient books, well, technically women shouldn't be allowed either.

But they would take small amounts of these, quote, poisons to see if they could keep their awareness as alcohol began to dull the senses and loosen, you know, the inhibitions and, you know, and then yet if we go to a certain shamanic cultures and, uh, in, for example, you know, South America, alcohol is a huge part of Shamanic ritual.

And so I, I'm a big fan of not making anything bad or wrong. Ayurveda itself says everything is a medicine or a poison [00:39:00] given the time, the place and the person in which it's being introduced. The last thing I want to say about it, and I can relate this to the Botox, by the way, we can link, if you want, I have a whole episode on Botox.

So it's like 40 minutes about what I think about it and the science around it. So go listen to that. We'll, we'll provide a link, but the Cheraka Samhita, this ancient Ayurvedic text says that the Ayurveda is an elemental principle. That is Sanatana Dharma, meaning that's the original word for Hinduism.

The English are who called Hindus, Hindus. They weren't called that they, they had thousands of different tribes and they English said, there's all one big thing and we're going to call it Hindu, right? Okay. The Sanatana Dharma, which is what many people in India, um, their roots is the universal way, the universal law, the way of everyone, not Indians, that all of us, right?

And Sutraka Samhita itself says, There's no judgment. There's just these elemental [00:40:00] principles that are for all of nature, and we're a part of that. And the Ayurveda, the elemental principles, must be adapted for the time and the place and the peoples in which they are being presented anew. And what's so mind blowing about that is that It's as if these ancient wise women and men knew Ayurveda is going to travel into the future, and there's going to be Vitamixes, and there's going to be internet, and there's going to be online gambling, and there's going to be like man made meat in, you know, packets being delivered.

I mean, it's like they knew shit is going to get so cray in the future that to think that we can present this as we are now is foolhearted. If we really are wise women and men, then we've got to keep growing it and adapting it. But we so firmly believe in these principles because they're the building blocks of nature that we're going to use those to analyze and understand.

And [00:41:00] lo and behold, the elemental principles still hold today. So for something like Botox, the answer is this is a new thing, right? What would the ancients say? They would say, we look at the qualities. And we look at what it does to us. Right. But it's critical, Lisa, for those of us listening, that we do not approach it from a place of judgment.

If we come at it ideologically, we are just fundamentalists in a new, in a new outfit. I get emotional about this because who cares if your friend got Botox or you get Botox and she's waking up in the morning. I know it's women and they're freaking reading the Bhagavad Gita and doing hours of meditation.

And they're some of the most saintly humans on the planet. And then they get a little Botox and people say, huh, did you see her? Can you believe it? Isn't she supposed to be a Yogi, [00:42:00] please? Yet ye who, you who are without stin throw the first stone, Jesus said. None of us can throw anything, right? So let's say for you, you want your lips a little plumper.

Let's say for me, I want my hair a little blonder, right? Like, get off my back, dude, right? Like, so, and blonde hair dye goes straight to the bladder tissue. And Botox. is toxins you're putting in the body. It's in the name itself. And they're now finding that when you do it and your children see it over time, they are not getting the same emotional feedback from the micro muscles on your mouth.

That's big news. So be informed, but I think all of us can do well with not judging about it. And I get passionate. Last thing I'll say, because I love the way that we do Shakti School, Lisa, because the Ayurveda world has the tendency to so [00:43:00] quickly become the very thing that the ancient teachers said, don't do, which is a rule book for everybody.

Ayurveda says, that's not what it is. You have an operating manual for your body. It's different than Lisa's. It's different than Katie's. How in the world could I tell you what it should be? It's only you that knows in the quiet moments of her heart what to do next. It's only you that knows why you want to eat bo you want to eat Botox or put hamburgers no, I'm joking.

Why you want to eat hamburgers or, you know, put Botox or drink wine. You're in you're in Rome celebrating something wonderful? Drink the wine. You're, you know, sad as hell and you're drinking wine to get through your unhappy marriage? Maybe we need to talk. It's really about the energetic behind why we're doing these things.

And I'm, I'm going off on a tangent, but one more thing, cause it's so cool. [00:44:00] The ancient teachings say that you should be able to eat or drink anything. They weren't just talking about food and alcohol. They were talking about anything. That's the next level that you can quote, digest rocks. Meaning I can handle more and more and more.

Am I going to go to McDonald's and put a bag of rocks in my mouth? No, because I'm going to try to keep my health up. But I think that that would be my very long convoluted emotional reply. Silence.

Lisa: go through, because it is very expansive and yet not dogmatic.

And what I love about Shakti School, and this is also the way that I teach my students, My students and I think in some ways Ayurveda can be a [00:45:00] little challenging because it's not you must do this. You can't do this. It's like what you said. How does it fail? What's your intention? How does it feel if you stay up too late?

Right? Or how does it feel if you drink meat? So it really requires you also to take radical accountability for for your own well being and health and that sense of self awareness that I can check in with myself and not just say like, Oh, I'm so tired. Dark. But like, okay, well, what do I want to do about it?

Like, okay, how do I want to resolve it? And really understanding your energetics at any given moment and what had influenced them. And I mean, I think that's just priceless, right? That's invaluable to be able to connect with yourself on that level. So you can make skillful decisions about how you feel.

Katie: I don't know what word I want to use the challenge. It's worse than that. It's not a challenge. It's almost poisonous of comparison.[00:46:00]

Lisa: Yeah,

Katie: You know, I have to really watch that. I don't it doesn't seem fair. Sometimes that some people can get away with way more than me. You know what I mean? And it's like, well, why can she?

Drink this and that or eat this and that if I did that, I would just be a mess, you know, and a that's not the way it really works, you know, if people are eating crap and drinking crap, it's going to catch up with them at some point, right? It just may not be obvious. And I think a lot of us that are attracted to the things that you offer or the people that come to our school tend to be.

In a moment in their life where they're ready to make a change and or they've just been sensitive their whole life and have not been able to get away with as much as society gets away with. And I think we're now seeing in our culture that society is not getting away with it. Children have the highest rates of anxiety and depression that we've ever seen.

Autism is the highest it's ever been. [00:47:00] Obesity, the highest in the history of humankind. I mean, Chronic disease blowing up and not to depress us, but it's, we also don't want to just fall into the trap of, well, Tantra says that just everything's God and therefore, you know, do whatever and be permissive. I really want to make the case that, you know, I've been teaching Ayurveda in Shakti school for almost a decade and. gone through the rule books for 10 years. They're ingrained into my brain. They are the things that I personally come back to over and over and over again. I start watching the mung beans. You know, I, I eat the vegetables. I chop them up, put them with ghee and spices. I do the morning routine and the oiling and the dry brushing and the sauna and all these things that Ayurveda says are going to be helpful.

These are the things that I come home to. Over and over and over again. So I don't mean to belittle in any way, the deep value of the discipline. [00:48:00] And it is of Ayurveda that being said, um, I think I might be a little biased because when you're in the self care self help world for 20 plus years, you begin to realize that it's not the most important thing.

The most important thing on the healing journey and the life journey is the way in which you. Are or are not open hearted before any given situation. And I think that's, that's really, um, the, the, the advice, if you were to ask me, and I would give and starting an Ayurvedic practices. What is the intention and people will often go, oh, it's to.

Love myself more to have more self esteem or to feel more energy. Start there and then bring that into the food. Into the morning routine that energetic is way more [00:49:00] valuable than the practice itself.

Lisa: I love that. You just, and I know we're probably nearing time, but I would love to, um, cause you just said something. So, uh, what? I also work with a lot of women who are trying to build and cultivate more self-love and self-worth. And they're like, well, how do I do that? And I always like to think that it's not like an affirmation or a switch that we can flip.

Like today, I'm going to love myself, but it's by showing up for ourselves consistently, right? Like if we were to meet a first, meet a friend for lunch and they didn't show up for us, we got all dressed up. We're all excited. we'd feel really bad and then we rescheduled and they still didn't show up for us.

We'd be like, this friend doesn't really care for me, but yet I think sometimes we can do that to ourselves. We say we're going to, you know, start a new wellness plan or we're going to stop drinking and we don't do it for ourselves. So I like to think that self love is treating ourselves like someone we actually care about, you know, by doing the things that we tell [00:50:00] ourselves we're going to do, that that's how we start to cultivate and grow it.

But I would love to hear your thoughts, like, how does one cultivate self love?

Katie: I mean, that was a wonderful example showing up. Um, I think many of us struggle with. In relationships, especially, but it can show up in any relationship, a boss, a loved one of really wanting the outside to do that job of showing up for us. And yeah, it feels awesome when your husband or your boyfriend or your mom or your boss, like shows up in the way that you want.

And yet more often that doesn't always happen. Right. And I think for me just, you know, um, One of my favorite definitions of Tantra is being able to be in reality, to fall in love with reality, not as you want it to [00:51:00] be, but how it is. Reality is always showing up for you. The question is, are you showing up for reality? And what we find, and it's super humbling, is that so often we're in reality. Wanting reality to be different or we're not in reality at all. We're living in some trance of a former self or a future self that we're projecting or creating. And so for me, self love has been so much about the acceptance. And it's painful, but the acceptance that no one's coming for me, no one's coming.

Mommy's not coming. Daddy's not coming. Dream lover on the white horse isn't coming. No guru's coming. They're not coming. And yet I have wonderful friends and [00:52:00] partners and co workers and teachers. Amazing. But even they're, they're not coming. Who's coming? Oh my God, no one. The ground's being ripped out from under me.

All the feels, all the feels, right? And then you stay with that. And you stay with the way that it feels so lonely. And you stay with that feeling of the heartbreak and the feeling of being let down by this reality that never was. You just stay with it. You keep opening to the groundlessness. And what happens, weirdly, usually, is that We can't expect it, but what tends to happen is you realize there's something there in the nothing. And wow, this something, it's not like any other love I've ever experienced. It's infinite. It's infinitely wise. It's infinitely kind. It's got my back. I can [00:53:00] relax because it's holding me. Oh my God, all that love that I was looking for, for all those lifetimes. It's all right here. And then I feel free because I don't need Lisa to be something for me today in the podcast.

I don't need my husband to be something tomorrow when he F's up. I don't need the students to tell me how good I did or how usually that's not the emails we get. You know, it's what they don't like, right? All those things. It's not that they don't still hurt or feel great, it's just that they don't have the same sting and they don't have the same false sticky sweetness because you realize there's something fundamentally loving that's you and that's also so much bigger than you. Then you're walking in love. And for me, the portal to that [00:54:00] realization is usually by entering into relationship with the wound. The wound is, it's so cheesy. We've said it a hundred times with the wound is the way and to self love. And I hate that term because we are self love. We think about egoic self love, like, Oh, I'm going to treat myself, you know, or like, I'm going to get a new purse or I'm going to like touch my body in the sweet way or whatever.

And like nothing wrong with any of that, but. But the whole true love affair, Lisa, is that it's not personal. Is that it's something so universal that it's in the fabric of the everything. It's so big. you in that moment are gone and yet you're never more present. So I think that might be a way of describing that experience for me. [00:55:00] And, and honey, I am petty as they come and I have a huge ego. And, you know, this is something that like, yeah, you can obviously hear it in my voice. Like, like it's a struggle, you know, it's a practice. It's a everyday adventure and watching the way that I am so small and so petty and so silly and such a little girl who's not getting her candy bar and her man did it wrong and her students said this and it hurt her feeling, you know, I am her girl, you know, and so I get it.

This is a, is a huge undertaking. And as my teacher says, it is only for the most courageous.

Lisa: thank you so much for sharing that. That is so beautiful. And I really think it just provides such a another perspective on self love, self worth, and why, why we are doing this, why we've [00:56:00] embarked on this journey.

Katie: Once you start, you can't go back to

Lisa: so much. So I know that after this podcast, people are going to be like, Oh my goodness. Like I will, how do I learn more? How do I go deeper? And you have a whole curriculum that allows women to go deeper. So I know Shakti school level one will start in January and you're enrolling now. Um, I can say that it was truly life changing that I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for Shakti School.

So I would, but I would love to hear, would you, anything else you would like to say about Shakti School for, for our listeners? And I'll have um, a link in the show notes as well where they can learn more about it.

Katie: that's so generous of you, Lisa. Um, well, we give a hundred bucks off to podcasts. So we'll also hook your people up with a lower price. We're right now and we're in early bird. So this is the month to get in. And you know, it's an [00:57:00] Ayurvedic wellness health coach certification. But it's really like, so much bigger than that.

It is, I call it lady life school. It's, it's a woman's school. It's really about, it's intuition school. It's love school. Um, it's community support school. Like you will meet other students. Super cool, big hearted, really intelligent women like you. And we have people that join that are Ayurvedic doctors. We have doctors, nurses, army vets.

Um, and then we have people that are in their eighties who are like, yeah, I just want this for me or people in their twenties, thirties that don't want a career. They don't want to be a helicopter. They just want to do it. And so it's just an amazing year together. And if anybody's interested, Lisa has so generously offered to connect with you.

And she's sort of a helpmate of the school and an ally of the school. So, you know, talk to her, she she's done. I haven't been a student in [00:58:00] the school, so I can only speak for what I see and, and my experience, but, um, thank you for this opportunity to share and, and this opportunity to share about the school, Lisa.

I really appreciate it.

Lisa: Yeah. You are very welcome and thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing all of your beautiful wisdom with much love. Thank you.