Zeeba Khan: Exploring Ayurvedic Healing for Trauma and Addiction Recovery

In this podcast episode, I had the pleasure of delving into the profound world of Ayurvedic Healing with Zeeba Khan. Zeeba is an internationally renowned meditation teacher and energy healer. Her holistic approach to wellness goes beyond physical health, embracing emotional, mental, and spiritual restoration.

A cornerstone of Zeeba's practice is the utilization of Ayurveda. This ancient Indian system of health and well-being is a holistic approach to healing that views us not just as physical bodies, but as beings with energetic, spiritual, mental, and emotional facets. Ayurveda offers the potential to neutralize the effects of trauma, prevent disease, and even reverse it.

Central to the Ayurvedic approach to healing is the chakra system. These are energy centers where physical nerves come together, each corresponding to specific emotions and body systems. Trauma can become trapped in these chakras, manifesting in physical ailments and emotional disturbances.

One of the main topics of our conversation with Zeeba was the importance of creating a sense of safety within ourselves. This is linked to balancing the root and sacral chakras. Zeeba highlighted the connection between trauma and attachment issues in adulthood, and how an imbalanced sacral chakra can increase the risk of developing cancer.

We also discussed how our modern culture's neglect of emotional intimacy and physical connection can result in feelings of victimization, leading to harmful patterns. Zeeba provided valuable insights on overcoming these patterns and reinstating balance.

Transforming ourselves through chakra balancing is a crucial aspect of dealing with trauma. Particularly important is the solar plexus chakra, associated with self-empowerment and transformation. Wounding in this chakra can lead to feelings of blame, persecution, and a need to rescue others to feel worthy of love.

An interesting discussion was about the connection between sugar addiction and trauma. Zeeba provided practical advice on how to cope with trauma, break free from sugar addiction, and invite joy into life through meditation and prayer. Meditation trains our brains to make more conscious decisions, and the incorporation of bitter foods can help curb sugar cravings.

This episode served as an arsenal of holistic healing tools for listeners grappling with trauma or addiction. Zeeba's expertise in Ayurvedic healing provided a deep well of wisdom for listeners to draw from. Through her guidance, we can all embark on a healing journey that embraces both the physical and the emotional, leading to a more balanced and healthier life.

In conclusion, Zeeba Khan's insights into Ayurvedic healing offer a refreshing perspective on trauma and addiction recovery. Her holistic approach to wellness underscores the importance of addressing both physical ailments and emotional disturbances in the journey towards healing and recovery.

Florence's courses & coaching programs can be found at:
www.FlorenceChristophers.com

Connect with Florence on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the Kicks Sugar Coat podcast. Join me each week as I interview experts who will share the science of sugar, sugar addiction and different approaches to recovery. We hope to empower you with the information and inspiration, insights and strategies you need to break up with sugar and fall in love with healthy, whole foods so you can prevent and reverse chronic disease, lose weight, boost your mood and energy. Feel free to go to my website for details on my coaching programs and to access free resources KicksSugarCoachcom. Welcome everybody to the Kicks Sugar Coat podcast. I have with me today Ziba Khan, who is going to deliver a really amazing interview on a very unique angle around the conversation of addiction and addiction recovery. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She's an internationally renowned ayurvedic clinician, meditation teacher and energy healer. She uses holistic medicine to restore her patients mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. She not only helps people prevent disease, but reverse disease. What she does actually really exceptionally well, which is what she's going to talk about today in our interview, is get under the why behind the what. What brings you in my door, but why is that problem in your life? And really, that takes us all the way back to the topic of trauma, because who doesn't have trauma and who doesn't have trauma integrated into the things that we're most frustrated by in our lives mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually? So she's also a leading practitioner with Mindvalley Solvana and where her meditations and podcasts have helped many people around the world, and in 2020, she had the great honor of being invited by his Holiness the Dalai Lama to participate in a live interactive session to talk about compassion and healthcare.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Welcome, zeba. Thanks so much for having me. Florence and I just will share a really exciting win for Canada. Zeba has just moved to Canada. She's now visiting Toronto, so our country is the better for it. I'm so excited. Welcome, welcome, thanks so much. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to get into the healing arts the arts, the art and the science of healing and what led you in that direction?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Well, my little boy was born we lived in LA at that time and he got a cough and his doctor was convinced that he had asthma, because the air quality is so bad in LA due to all the smog. So if you have a little tickle in the throat, by and large you're very quickly diagnosed as asthmatic, put on an inhaler, sometimes giving medication, so on and so forth, and he was about a year old at the time, which meant that he had to go on a nebulizer with steroids. And I did not want to go there. I could not. I mean, it just broke my heart. The thought of holding a mask over his face and having him inhale these steroids just drove me nuts and I figured there needed to be, there had to be another way to get him better, and without this terrible discomfort and all the unnaturalism behind this mode of medicating him. So I decided to turn back to my roots.

Speaker 2: 3:28

My mom is Persian and my dad is Indian and in both of those cultures and both of those traditions the kitchen is very much the pharmacy. Florence, if you're sick, your mom is going to get into the kitchen and start brewing up teas or soups or herbs. You know she'll come back, usually with something hot or warm, and you'll feel a lot better that now. That doesn't mean that you don't ever have to go to go to see your Western doctor or your GP, and you might, yes, require a course of antibiotics at the end of it, but you don't always have to go down that route of allopathic medicine. There are things that you can do at home. Naturally, that might really be the cure, without all the negative side effects of synthetic medication, and so that's what I did with my little boy, went into my kitchen and I started this home remedy and it worked, and so after that I thought I really I felt like that was my life's work, that was my dharma, and I really wanted to bring this to people.

Speaker 1: 4:29

I'm not here to say that it's better than Western medicine, but time and time again, I've seen it work brilliantly instead of Western medicine, but also in tandem with Western medicine, and that's ultimately the goal is to help my patients to feel better, to give them energy, back their life purpose, back their zeal for life back, which sounds to me because I'm also trauma informed and very, very fascinated by how trauma shows up in our lives in different ways that that says to me that you're moving them out of the trauma response, that heavy, depressed, frozen free state, and moving them back into the parasympathetic, moving them back into the flow of life. So tell us a little bit about how Ayurvedic I think you were mentioning you might walk through the chakras and talk about how trauma impacts them and what we can do to sort of free ourselves up from these frozen states that keep us locked into depression and anxieties and addictions.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 5:33

Ayurveda is a 5000 year old ancient Indian system of health and well-being.

Speaker 2: 5:40

It was actually written to teach us how to prevent from developing illnesses but, in the event that we do develop illness, how to reverse them and return to optimal health, and that's what makes it so amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Now it looks at our being very holistically. We're not just these physical bodies, but we have energetic bodies, spiritual bodies, mental bodies and emotional bodies also, and one of these areas in Ayurveda is the energetic body, and we know this in the West as the chakra system, and chakra in Sanskrit means wheel, and if you look at a photograph that you find online, you'll see that they're these seven circles that go along the spine. In actuality, the chakras are not along the spine, they're actually in front. They're in the very center of our body, and they are centers where we have a bundle of physical nerves that actually come together, and so there's a lot of activity around these seven areas in the body. So what I'd like to do is to walk your listeners through them and just see if any of these descriptions kind of resonate with them, so that they can be more informed about where they might be holding trauma in their body and how and why that might be causing them to have a sugar addiction in the first place. Go ahead.

Speaker 1: 7:14

And I just have a quick question about I'm very fascinated about that that description of the seven chakras being tied to centers where nerves come together and they're sort of bundled. I've never heard that before. So that's why you're saying that we know where the chakras are, because we can see in the, in the anatomical system, that where Ayurvedic 5000 years ago was talking about these energy systems, that when you go into the body you can see these clusters of nerve bundles and they correspond.

Speaker 2: 7:46

They correspond to a lot of things. They correspond to emotions, they correspond to systems of the body like our digestive system or circulatory system or reproductive system. The most fascinating to me is their correspondence to emotions, and you know all of the. The chakras also have a set of organs associated with them, and I have yet to see a patient who comes to me with a particular ailment of an organ who also did not have that corresponding emotion be predominant in their life. For example, diabetics will come to me.

Speaker 2: 8:27

Right, and diabetes, of course, is caused to by a shift in the pancreas. Ultimately, we have to go back to the orbit of the pancreas when we're dealing with diabetes. The pancreas is the seat of joy in the body. I have yet to have a diabetic patient come to me who is joyful in life. So it's not only their physical organ that's deteriorating, but ultimately it's caused by the energy of deep grief or sadness that's also predominant in their life that's leading them to develop diabetes. And so for us, irevindically, when we look at diabetes, we don't only look at how can we increase insulin sensitivity, but we look at how can we bring joy back into this individual's life as well, to help them to heal holistically.

Speaker 1: 9:18

And you can't do that without addressing trauma. So take it away, walk us through the chakra. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 9:24

You are very welcome. So the first chakra that we have I'll go through them real quick and then later on in depth. We've got seven chakras, starting at the very base, that's our root chakra, and then about three finger widths up from our perineum. So if you imagine sitting on the ground crossed, like it, your perineum would be the part of you that hits the earth that you're sitting on. That's your root chakra. Three finger widths up from that we've got our sacral chakra. Another three finger widths up from that we have our solar plexus chakra and then we have our heart chakra. Our fifth chakra is the throat chakra. Then we have our third eye chakra, which is the space between the brows, and last we have our crown chakra, which is the very top of our head. So when it comes to trauma, the energy of the trauma can get trapped very easily in these seven chakras. Let's talk about the root chakra in depth.

Speaker 2: 10:29

Trauma can occur anywhere from trauma. Wounding, rather, can occur anywhere from birth to the age of six months. This can happen, for example, if you are in unwanted pregnancy, if you're born into a home where there was domestic violence, there was a lot of fighting or yelling, there was a lot of fear. Maybe there was no financial security and so there was a lot of fear about will we be able to make rent this month? Where will money for our next meal come from? Situations like this, even though we were too little to remember it, the energy of these environments, florence, can get trapped in our body, and when they do, when that wounding happens, it gets trapped in that root chakra. So this can lead to problems when it comes to attachment with our caregivers. We can be anxious, we can be avoidant, we can have inconsistent attachment styles with the people who are raising us and taking care of us, and what that means in adulthood is that we will always be seeking survival and safety.

Speaker 2: 11:40

And as adults, we actually can't heal from this unless we treat our adrenals and heal our adrenal glands.

Speaker 2: 11:49

And, as you know from your trauma work, adrenals are very much involved in the fight, flight, freeze, response, and so we've got to make sure that our adrenals are healthy so that we can help to make ourselves feel better in our own skin in our own external environment, and then address our trauma wound to break addiction of any kind.

Speaker 2: 12:15

So one way that we can do this is to really establish a strong sense of safety within ourselves, and we do this simply by being present, whatever that means for you, if it means focusing on your breath, if it means selecting a focal point across the room ideally you want it to be slightly lower than your own eye level and about three feet out, and studies have shown that when you pick a focal point, that's about that distance out from you, so at least three feet out and about eye height for you it begins to relax you, it begins to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, you begin to go into a meditative state. So you don't need anything fancy, you just need to focus on something. It can be an object, it can be your breath, it can be a happy memory, it can be a spot in nature that you used to go to when you were little or that you've recently visited, but that will help to relax you and to reground you and to root you in the present moment. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 13:24

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:28

So ultimately, with the root chakra, we want to move out of this state of hyperarousal and into a state of relaxation, and I would say that at least 60 or 70% of my clients have a root chakra that's out of balance. A lot of people suffer from this because we just we didn't feel safe as babies, as children. So the second chakra, if we move up three fingers, I add that forward.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Oh, and it doesn't help. It doesn't help that in our modern culture, babies are taken from their mothers at birth. Right, that's called separation distress, and sometimes it's a few hours, sometimes it's a few days. Right Back when I was born, my mom didn't see me for three days. Oh, you just rest, we've got her, she's okay. Yeah, there, all the babies are in little cribs. You know, you rest up, you'll be fine and right. But in the meantime the baby feels abandoned. The mother's body wonders where's my baby? Where's my baby? And so so many children, right from the get go, have gone right into dorsal freeze because they've been, they feel abandoned, right.

Speaker 2: 14:37

Absolutely, and if it's not that, then it's. You know, at least in the US, it's two week maternity leave, oh gosh, and that's another form of trauma. So they don't feel abandoned at birth. The babies feel abandoned two weeks after they were born.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I can't imagine. Crazy.

Speaker 2: 14:53

So you're right, our society is not one that's set up to honor and to nourish our very, very fundamental need as human beings for deep emotional intimacy and physical touch and connection, and so this kind of trauma can occur at any age. Frankly, you know, when we're living in a society that doesn't respect our need for connection and contact, we're in trouble. Right, and going back to the chakras. If we move up now to the sacral chakra, wounding here can occur between the ages of six to 18 months, and this is the seat of creativity in the house of emotions, of relationships. But when there's wounding between the ages of six months and a year and a half, shame and guilt become very deeply embedded in the body, and the sexual reproductive organs can suffer later in life as a result of the shame and the guilt that we feel about ourselves as people and that can translate into shame and guilt about having sex or how we have sex or who we're attracted to, or shame and guilt around our own sexual identity and how we identify, and so ultimately, this becomes a sense of being victimized. We constantly feel victimized by the world, and so we end up leading a life of resistance to the world and end up choosing destructive patterns that stifle our creativity and that drain us of energy and motivation, because we don't believe that we're worthy of anything bigger and better than this. And eventually, in very extreme cases, florence, this can actually manifest as cancer in the body, and, as you know, cancer feeds off of sugar, and so if we have an imbalanced sacral chakra, we're constantly reaching for sugar because of our addiction. We have a very high chance of developing some kind of cancer later on in life. And so how do we balance our second chakra?

Speaker 2: 17:15

Notice the emotions that you're feeling. Ideally, when you're feeling them, label them, name them. The moment you name them, they lose their intensity and you've started to win. Just name them, don't be afraid of them and know that they will pass through you. I speak Hindi, and the verb in Hindi that is used for emotions is the infinitive to happen. So in Hindi, you don't say I am afraid. You say fear has happened to me.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Oh my gosh, is that different.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Isn't that different, though? So it doesn't come from a sense of being victimized, like fear has happened to me. There's no way I can move out of this, but it's rather this has occurred and it too shall pass. It's moving through me. It's very, very different from our English. I am dumb, I am scared, I am no good, right? I mean, when we say I am and we follow it by something unpleasant or negative Florence there's a sense of permanence to it in English, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 18:24

Yes.

Speaker 2: 18:25

END Right. The Buddha. When he was meditating under the Bodhi tree and temptation kept coming to him, he said I am with Mara rather than I am fearful. I am with fear. Right, Because if you're with something, you can be without it too. Right, you picked it up somewhere and you can drop it off someplace else.

Speaker 2: 18:49

It's not forever, and so if we can view our emotions as these temporary surges of energy which is really what they are they're temporary surges of energy, but when we are uncomfortable with them and we try to suppress them or we try to not feel them, that's when we start accumulating trouble. So it's fantastic if we can name our feelings and move through them, knowing that they will not last forever, no matter how unpleasant they might be, we begin to heal our sacral chakra.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Can I ask a question about the sacral chakra? Go ahead, I'm saying chakra, right, but sorry, is it when you say sex and sexual expression and all that like, does it have to be about sex or can it actually just be about intimate human relationships? Like, because I'm just thinking I'm pretty sure I had some wounding between those years but I didn't have any of the symptoms of that chakra that you mentioned, but certainly I would say there was struggles in relationships to feel safe and to you know that kind of thing. So is it just about how it shows up in our sexual expression, our comfort with being sexual beings, or is it also about intimate relationships more in general?

Speaker 2: 20:13

That's a great question, florence, and thanks so much for asking that, because ultimately, the sacral chakra, in one word, is about creativity. So it can be about, you know, the creation of ideas, but it can also be about the creation of babies and, equally, it can be about the creation of relationships, any kind of relationship, okay.

Speaker 1: 20:36

So it's really about self-expression and passion, and so about when you start to emerge into the world here I am, and that becomes a creative expression of your ideas and your thoughts and your love and your affection. Okay, okay, Interesting.

Speaker 2: 20:51

So it's almost like where that seed of creativity is planted and then the other chakras kind of take over to transform that idea that's within you to the world outside of you and to help you express it and to help you manifest it. But our sacral chakra is really where that seed of creativity is planted. Okay, okay, got it. So if we move up to our belly button region, we've got the solar plexus chakra. Now wounding here can occur between the ages of a year and a half to three years, and our sacral pardon me, our solar plexus chakra is the seed of transformation and self-empowerment in the body. But when we have wounding we have a lot of tendency to experience feelings of blame and persecution and feel like we need rescuing from the world. And the liver and the pancreas and the gallbladder are all parts of the body that respond to our perception of being blamed or that respond to our need to rescue other people so that we feel like we're worthy of love. And over time we can also develop this feeling that others are to blame for our dissatisfaction with life. Everything is their fault, and we can end up developing a physical imbalance that can lead to blood glucose imbalances and eventually to liver issues like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and it's all because of our perception of the world, right? I'm victimized, I'm unhappy. I'm trying to do everything I can for you so that you love me, but you don't love me, and so now I'm angry with you, I'm resentful towards you, I lack joy in life because of you, and now I'm an angry person, and that ends up affecting the gallbladder, the pancreas and the liver.

Speaker 2: 22:51

So, in order to remedy our third chakra, what you can really do is to expand your chest. Expand your chest, take up space, because you're important too, you matter too. Don't shrink yourself. When our solar plexus chakra is weak, we have a tendency of rounding our shoulders and shrinking ourselves and making ourselves small and invisible because we don't matter, right. But when we matter, we take up physical space. So we lift our shoulders, roll them back, push them down, expand our chest and just let your upper body relax and take long, slow, deep belly breaths. You feel your diaphragm expanding and you do this a few times a day, and it helps to remind ourselves, more than anyone else, that we matter in this world. Right, and as we take these long, slow, deep breaths in Florence, we also relax and, like you were saying earlier, activate our parasympathetic nervous system and help to release some of this trauma in that middle section of our body. Thank you, Amazing.

Speaker 2: 24:00

So if we move up from there, we've got the heart chakra. Now we've got our physical heart, but we also have an energetic heart in this same region. Trauma wounding here typically occurs between the ages of three to seven years, and our heart chakra represents compassion, service and love. Now, this is a love that's both given and received, and many of us, especially who were brought up as women, have difficulty receiving love.

Speaker 2: 24:35

We do not let compliments land deep within us because there is a sense of unworthiness. If someone compliments us, we tend to turn away the compliment. If someone says you look lovely in that dress today, we'll say oh, this whole thing is 15 years old, I got on clearance, instead of simply saying thank you, I love it too. Right? So we have to be good at both giving love as well as receiving love. And when we have trauma wounding in our heart chakra between the ages of three and seven, a pattern emerges Florence that involves a fear of loss and also a numbing out to prevent us from feeling overwhelming sadness and grief that comes with great loss. So if we experience the loss of a parent, a caregiver, a friend perhaps who moved away, the loss of a pet, we can learn to numb out because we can avoid dealing with the situation frankly.

Speaker 1: 25:36

Some disassociation, disassociation patterns can show up.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Absolutely. That's really when and where we learn to dissociate from our physical body and we begin living from our neck up. All our feelings are rationalized, we think everything through. We don't feel what's in our body any longer. We just become a moving brain and mind, if we will.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Now, the thymus and the heart are the parts of the body that respond to this perception of loss and loneliness and abandonment, and the thymus plays a big role in our immune system as well. So when we have a tendency of numbing out, our immunity also drops over time, and of course, we get heart issues as well, because we're looking at the circulatory system here and over time, if we continue to behave in this way, then we have this continual loss of fear and abandonment, and this can lead us to develop codependent relationships in adulthood, where we have a tendency of staying in abusive relationships, and then we end up resenting our partner. As a result, we feel victimized yet again. So one way to balance our fourth chakra is really to open your heart, to release the sadness and the grief that's there, and you can do this brilliantly and at no cost at all, simply by walking in nature or walking barefoot on the earth, going to the beach, sitting in a park or in your backyard and leaning your back against a tree trunk, and all of this helps to recalibrate the heart chakra. It blows your blood pressure. I mean, I can go on and on about what it does, but it is just so good for you Do it. Do it for at least 10 minutes a day, because it is nothing other than pure benefit, and it helps to detoxify as energetically from all the EMF that we're in all day long because of Wi-Fi, so it's really important to get out and spend a little bit of time in nature on a daily basis.

Speaker 2: 27:33

Now our fifth chakra is our throat chakra, and this is a big one, especially for women. Women here can occur between the ages of 7 to 12 years of age, and this is the seat of communication and self-expression and authenticity in the body of Florence. And when we've experienced trauma, wounding here, then we repress our self-expression. We're no longer authentic. We are afraid to speak up, what our real, genuine truth is. We're afraid of what will happen if people really see us or who we are, and so we buy into this paradigm of behaving like who we think they want us to be, so that we can continue being loved, and the thyroid and the esophagus are the parts of the body that are really affected when we feel like we can't communicate our thoughts or feelings, or dreams or hopes, because it's dangerous too, because we might lose relationships. If we do, and if we continue this pattern of behavior, florence, over time we will develop thyroid or esophageal disease. So, to balance our fifth chakra, say something positive about yourself to yourself, that's one thing you can do. Balance speaking with listening, that's another thing that you can do. Come to activate your vagus nerve and to relax you and again, to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Does all this make sense? So far, florence? Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:19

And so we've got our sixth chakra, our third eye chakra. That's a space between your brows, and trauma wounding here can occur later in life, between the ages of 12 and 18 years. And the third eye represents our intuition, seeing what we can't see with the physical eyes. And if we have trauma wounding here, then we feel very invalidated in life and by the world, and this leads us to develop patterns of defensiveness and lots of criticism and judgment, and we end up becoming dysfunctional in our relationships, which obviously leads eventually to unhappiness, depression and anxiety in adulthood and when we have an imbalanced third eye chakra, we actually have really bad dreams, nightmares, migraines, headaches, a lack of focus, and that's because our pituitary gland is imbalanced and it's also responding to this perception of not being seen for who we genuinely are. So to balance the sixth chakra, you can visualize your emotions being in balance right before you go to bed at night. Feel calm Again. If you're experiencing any unwanted or unpleasant emotions, consider writing them down in a diary or simply on a sheet of paper that you keep by your bedside, and this helps to purge them from your mind, which can help you to sleep better at night.

Speaker 2: 30:53

And the seventh and last chakra is the crown chakra. And here we can experience wounding in adulthood with our crown chakra. And this represents our higher purpose, our calling, our connection to a higher power. Whether you want to call that higher power divine nature or gaya, or source energy, or God, or your true self with a capital S, it doesn't matter, but it's your connection to this power that's outside of you. And if we have wounding in adulthood, then this can result in patterns that look like narcissism, addiction, grandiosity, lots of self doubt and the lack of self awareness.

Speaker 2: 31:36

And our eyes are involved when we have an imbalanced crown chakra, the pineal gland also is involved and we feel the sense of being all alone in the world, not having any support. There's no one and there's no entity out there who's got our back. That's what we feel like inherently, and what happens is then we're unable to sleep because it goes all the way back to the root chakra. We don't feel safe and secure because we feel all alone and we're tribal creatures, right. And when we feel alone or isolated, we have difficulty sleeping. And that's because the pineal gland produces melatonin, which is a hormone that causes us to become sleepy.

Speaker 2: 32:18

And when we feel all alone and nervous, well, of course your body is not going to produce enough melatonin, because it's going to want to keep you awake, because it thinks you're under threat and you're in danger. And when we don't have enough melatonin, we don't have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and serotonin is what causes us to feel happy. So can you see how all this is tied in? If we feel disconnected, we're unable to sleep, and if we're unable to sleep, that's because we're not producing enough serotonin, which causes us to feel happy. So we feel lonely, isolated, drowsy, sleep deprived, we have insomnia and now we're unhappy.

Speaker 2: 32:58

It's a recipe for disaster, right. Just that one chakra alone. So very simply, to balance that seventh chakra meditate, pray, be still, just sit still for seven minutes at a minimum and you'll feel calmer and more present and more connected to your life, to your physical body, to the world around you. You'll be more intentional in your choices as you move throughout the day. And if you can't afford seven minutes, do one minute Tonight is better than nothing at all, okay.

Speaker 1: 33:37

Wonderful, thank you, and it's interesting because we all talk about the same fairly universal understanding truths, right, that it's just different language, it's different frameworks, it's different ways of having. It makes sense. And so this is just another way that people can again understand that when there's these milestone deficiencies, that we didn't get what we needed between zero and six and six months in a year and a half, and there could potentially just we didn't get enough of something that we need to sort of feel safe and grounded and whatever you need to feel at each one of those developmental milestones and how, when you talk about it through the sense of the chakra, it just it just pulls the emotions, the mind, the body, the Western sort of understanding of these nerves, the nervous system and with this 5000 year old history of using somatic experiencing tools like meditation and breath and nature and yoga and like all of the, it's all. It all works. It's just a question of whether or not you have a framework where you go.

Speaker 1: 34:50

I get that. That resonates with me, that lands, that gives me a place to a map, right? So I imagine that when you work with clients, do you do it a bit of an assessment to get a sense of what chakras or where there was wounding, and you sort of make recommendations based on hey, my sense is is that these are the, these are the body based tools that might be helpful for you to bring some balance there. And as the balance comes in, we need stuff outside us, like sugar and flour and junk, to make us feel better because we something's off inside.

Speaker 2: 35:24

It's exactly what I do, so I actually read the chakras, will make recommendations according to the chakras that are out of balance to help them bring them back into balance. There are certain foods that you can eat for each of the chakras. You know that I did not go into into today in our talk, but there's a lot that you can do. There are gemstones that you can wear. They have corresponding colors, so it's really whatever vibes best with you. There is so much that you can do to bring your chakras into balance, and so any addiction that we develop is not a life sentence. We've all been through trauma and we'll all probably continue to go through trauma in our life and, like you were saying just now, you know, trauma is not only what happened to us, but it can also be the absence of the good things that didn't happen to us. It's not just the bad, and very often we think of the bad, but sometimes it's just this vacancy, this void of the good that we never got growing up, or the good that we never got in that 25 year marriage, or the good that we didn't get you know, the job that we worked at for 30 years. It's a sense of not being seen, not being valued, not being appreciated, because when we feel seen and heard and valued and appreciated, we feel safe, we feel connected, and then we don't need to reach for substances that causes to feel safe and protected and seen and valued and emotionally feel good, because we feel those things naturally.

Speaker 2: 37:01

And so sugar addiction is not our fault, it's just a way in which we cope with life. You know, addictions of any kind are not bad per se. They are detrimental to us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, but we don't have to be their lifelong victims. And just because we've developed an addiction doesn't mean that we can't break free of it. We weren't born with that addiction right, and so we return to the state that we were in pre addiction. It's not something we have to live with forever, but we also don't need to shame ourselves for having it, because the truth is that it's helped us at some point to cope with things. At the same time, we need to find other, more healthy, beneficial ways to cope with the trauma that we have experienced in life.

Speaker 1: 38:02

The too much or the too little moments experiences. And yeah, wouldn't it be lovely to just feel the way sugar makes us feel, just naturally. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:15

And there are ways to do it. It is possible. Sometimes, you know, we dive into the world of meditation and prayer and realize my goodness, I've never felt this good before, even while I was eating sugar.

Speaker 2: 38:30

I never felt this good and this feeling lasts way longer than my sugar high is dead Right, with no negative side effects. And that's where I really think that finding your joy comes into the picture and meditation helps in. Meditation is not just sit down quietly in a cross-legged position and don't move and have your thighs go numb and, you know, get this pinza needle sensation in your legs. It's not that. Meditation is single-minded focus. So you can paint, you can go running, you can sing your favorite song, you can dance.

Speaker 2: 39:05

So long as you're just focused on one thing, you're meditating. It relaxes your entire physical body, it recalibrates you, it helps to bring your chakras back into balance. And when those seven chakras that we talked about today are in balance, florence, you're better able to make more conscious, healthy, beneficial decisions for yourself. Your pran, your life force, energy flows up and down your spine with each breath, because now your seven chakras are open, there's no blockage, there's no obstruction of any sort and you're living life to the fullest. You're oxygenating all of your cells, you're regrowing your body beautifully, without cancer, without negative side effects, without any shrinkage here and there or dryness in your joints, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing when all of your chakras are in balance.

Speaker 1: 40:02

And it seems to me that our idea of recovery is often if I could just get abstinent, I'm good, the only problem is the sugar. If I could just get the sugar, flower sweeteners and alcohol out and I can get onto whole foods, the journey, the journey's done, I've arrived. But really what that does is it just supports you. It supports you in doing the recovery work that needs to be done, which is all about addressing places where there's blockages, there's fear of emotions, and when we've had a whole lifetime of knowing that sugar works extremely effectively, it does calm us, it masks pain by making us feel better temporarily.

Speaker 1: 40:43

In that moment we do feel calm, we have a sense of well-being, we might feel a bit happy, a bit energized, or we feel calm and sedated and numbed out. It's either stimulating us or bringing sedation to us, and when we realize that all our life we've just used the same tool, but there are so many other options, new and better ways of doing the exact same thing that actually are pro health, that heal us instead of just give us a temporary nice feeling, and that the nice feelings from these other tools that we've never had the motivation to pick up and use in earnest like really give them a try, work with them long enough and consistently enough to have our bodies go. Oh, I really like that. That's better Right, because we just keep running back. We just keep running back to what works we know. I mean it does work For most of us. It's very, very sedating, very comforting.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Yeah, and you know what meditation does. Again, meditation of any kind is it helps to train our brains. Florence between putting even a split second between our thought and our automatic conditioning. So if we can meditate, if we pray, if we can just cultivate some space between oh, I need something sweet, I need some sugar and our automatic response of walking over to the kitchen or the fridge to go get something, then we can make more conscious decisions, because that's where our freedom lies. It's not about eliminating the cravings per se. It's not about eliminating the thoughts per se, but it's about being more conscious on how we choose life. And there are ways to eliminate cravings, like in Ayurveda, for example.

Speaker 2: 42:35

We say that bitter is the enemy of sweet. So the more bitter food you eat, the less sugar cravings you're going to have. Like black licorice is phenomenal for beating addiction and cravings. Macadamia nuts if you're craving anything, have a few macadamia nuts first and your craving might go away, or you might be able to delay it for a while. Or you might feel that you know what. You don't want it after all, because you feel very satiated right now.

Speaker 2: 43:07

Or have something bitter I mean Ayurvedic bitter herbs that I get my clients, like moringa. Moringa is a fantastic one, both for diabetes and for people who have addiction of any kind, but black licorice is really, really good. Jasmine is also a good one. Jasmine essential oil if you have cravings, smells some really high quality jasmine essential oil and that'll help to beat the craving in the moment. So cravings are definitely a problem because they can lead us to temptation, but just knowing that we have freedom, we have power to put a bit of a gap between that craving or that thought for wanting something sweet and actually getting it and putting it on our mouth, is so self empowering. We are not victimized, we are not robots, no one is controlling us, but in actuality, we have the freedom of choice in that moment.

Speaker 1: 44:01

And along those lines of bitter foods, all the leafy greens. And everybody knows, everybody knows in the food addiction, sugar addiction recovery world that leafy greens are our super power. So there's. I do shots of parsley and cilantro. I didn't do it for a sugar addiction, I did it because I really enjoy them, I love the fresh taste. But it was well doing those, especially in the morning. I'd be like, wow, I had absolutely no cravings all day. And it's only when you meet someone Ayurvedic or like, yeah, we've known that for 5,000 years, but it's leafy greens, parsley, cilantro, I will put fresh thyme and rosemary in there. I'll put mint. All the lettuces are great Dark kale, dino kale, if you like that. Chards, I don't put those in my smoothies in particular, but I'll steam them. Beak greens, gosh.

Speaker 2: 44:52

Carrot tops yeah, carrot tops. Carrot tops yeah, arugula.

Speaker 1: 44:57

All the leafy greens are your super power. If you're just looking to get a little bit of space between you and your craving, you can definitely run with that tool. And, speaking of prayer, I wanted to share one that I have on my fridge, just in case it's helpful to people. Speaking of the power of prayer, here's one that I wrote that I thought I would share in case it gets people started, so it just has.

Speaker 1: 45:20

Dear God, universe, source, I pray for another day of easy, peaceful abstinence. May it continue to be a top priority today, the foundation upon which my life is built. May my scale hold me steady, hold me strong, keep me safe. May both open doors for healing and miracles, health and happiness. May it bless me in others in way I may never know and beyond my wildest imagination. Thank you God, thank you universe, thank you, thank you. And it's one of those things that when I'm in the kitchen, I can't not look at, this prayer that I say every day. May I be blessed with another day of being a whole food woman on the path of recovery.

Speaker 2: 46:02

Amen to that Florence.

Speaker 1: 46:05

People find you and work with you and tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 46:09

Well, the best way to connect with me is through my website, that's ZebaHealingcom Z-E-E-B-A or Z-E-E-B-A healingcom, and I'm also on Instagram and Facebook at ZebaHealing, and I've got a lot of online courses too. So if people want to explore, you know, healing as per their unique doshat, which is your mind, body, spirit composition in Ayurveda, I offer a lot of courses on that as well, or they can work together with me one-on-one.

Speaker 1: 46:41

And because you're literally the equivalent of a doctor, really you can probably prescribe certain herbs and get into some of the sort of medicinal supports. Right, the herbal yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:53

Yeah, and I also work with people's Western doctors. Very often they're psychiatrists. When I'm looking, you know they'll come to me and say I want to get off of Prozac, this is it, or I don't want to do Valium any longer. You know I need help, so I will very often work with their existing doctors and together we will be a supportive team to the patient and help them to accomplish their goals.

Speaker 1: 47:15

Wonderful, Amazing. Thank you so much for your time and wisdom with us today. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 47:21

Florence Take care.

Speaker 1: 47:26

Thanks for tuning in this week. If you would like more interviews, more information and more inspiration on how to break up with sugar, go to my YouTube channel, kicksugarcoach or my website KicksugarCoachcom. See you next week.