The "Wellness" Industry Sells Us On Rigid Optimization. It Doesn't Work–But This Might. | Nidhi Bhanshali Pandya

25:42This is the nature of the human body. This is the nature of our organs, of how we function. And this is the nature of the world outside of you, of the foods you eat, of sunrise and sunset, of what's happening. And how do they interact with each other? and through this deep understanding of how nature works, how life works, through that basic foundational principles, now it can kind of go further into because of this understanding, this is how you can build your life out. This is how you can eat. This is how you can cook your foods. This is how you can wake up. This is how you sleep. This is how you conceive.

26:20This is how you make relationships, just pretty much all of that. So at its core, Ayurveda understands that instinct, but it's kind of written down in the form of a framework. And on top of that framework are these prescriptions that consume this or do this in the morning and do this in the nighttime. One more layer of Ayurveda, Dan, that I think that's often missed is Ayurveda is not rigid. It's not a rigid science at all. For example, let's say you and me. We all know today, I'm just going to give you an example that, okay, sleeping early at night is going to help deliver inflammation. It's going to get the body, the glymphatic system going, going to give you deep rest and repair.

26:59And yet there are times that, let's say I cannot sleep on time and I'm sleeping late every night when I'm sleeping. Ayurveda has a lens of understanding what happens in the body when I'm doing this. So say, hey, we know today scientifically that there'll be more cytokines and you'll have more inflammation, more oxidative stress, lower lymphatic cleansing. What can you do, right? Because you understand the impact of what this thing up will do, what can I bring in during the daytime to create balance to that imbalance that I created at night? So because I understand the nature of the imbalance, you can now bring in remedies.

27:38You can remediate the imbalances that you create. Now, of course, long-term, that's going to hurt somebody. but I cannot even tell you like I live in New York City I'm raising two teenage daughters and I would say it's all my tools in my toolkit come from this science and understanding and it doesn't mean that you have to live in an ashram or a monastery it does not mean that it just means you want to understand the basic rhythmic function of your own body and what's happening outside and constantly look to offset imbalances that are created and move towards health in the most sustainable and easy manner.

28:15I've sometimes heard Buddhism referred to as advanced common sense, and that seems like it might apply here. It's a return to our intuitive knowing that's been papered over, crusted over by social pressure to look a certain way, conflicting advice about what diet is best for you, lots of unhealthy foods that flood the food chain. And it's about bringing us back to our intuitive knowing and then adding some real insights and expertise on top of that. Oh, I couldn't have said it better. But yet, I tell people that we're so far away from our intuition. We're so far away from our instinct, right? We've overused our intellect.

28:55I mean, our intellect is great. It's really what made us human. It's allowed us to advance this much, but it's also in the way of coming back to our wisdom, right? It allows us to stay in that information. We're obsessed with information. It's outside of us. Wisdom is within us. And in Ayurveda, the first cause of disease is that loss of wisdom, of that inner knowing. So we need a framework to come back. And yes, Ayurveda provides that framework so you can start understanding instinctually the rhythms and the patterns that exist in the body. But it is very true. It is very much like Buddhism. In fact, one of the later texts actually have a sutra, a verse from Buddhism, the middle path, how everything comes to that middle path, whether it's food, whether it's lifestyle, it comes to that moderation.

29:43Yes, middle path. Just for people listening who don't know much about Buddhism, the Buddha in his early pre-enlightenment days was swinging back and forth between total indulgence in sense pleasures available in the world. He was a prince, so they were all available to him, all the various forms of pleasure, and then aestheticism or self-mortification, complete self-denial on the other hand. Ultimately, what he landed on, and this was where he ended up getting enlightened, was the middle path. And I hear that in what you're saying. In fact, the word balance comes up a lot in your speech. And I wonder if that is a core concept here that is operationalizable for the rest of us.

30:30That is a core concept. And the word balance, I mean, it can mean so many things to so many people. I mean, somebody could look at balance as like, even as a rigid concept, that you're always looking at something and looking to balance yourself with it, or you're always looking to do something right. But that's not the kind of balance, right? The kind of balance that you're looking for is the moderation. It's the moderation in everything. Of course, the deep understanding of how to live and how to do things and to constantly seek to bring moderation in that. And when you deviate from that, you know, center path is, again, to understand how can you bring yourself back in the most easy, loving, kind manner.

31:07It is a very loving science. You know, at the end of it, Ayurveda, it brings a lot of self-compassion for yourself, but also for others as to how do you constantly come back into that equilibrium in all parts of your being, your physiological being, emotional being, mental being, as well as breath. Coming up, Nidhi talks about some countermeasures for sleeplessness, support for building strong digestion, and some other key concepts of Ayurveda.

31:38speaking of that, you mentioned as an example of the flexibility that in Ayurveda, there's an understanding, and this rhymes with modern science, that going to bed early and having a set schedule is really important for sleep, which sleep is so, I sometimes call it the apex predator of healthy habits. And yet sometimes, and I'm thinking about myself, like tonight I have a dinner at seven, I'm unlikely to get home before 10 and then I'll unwind for a while, so I'll be going to bed later than I normally do. But it sounds like in your system, that's okay. You just need to bring in some countermeasures the next day.

32:16What would those countermeasures be? Like if I've given myself permission to stay up late, how do I take care of myself the next day? Right. I just want to say something, right? So firstly, of course, it's ideal to sleep early. And I'll tell everybody, if you can't get to bed by 10, if you can be in your bed and be asleep by 10, nothing like it. But I understand that life happens. So one of the things that you would do, and this happened to me last night, Dan, so it's like really I'm freshly right there because I had a late night. So in the morning, right, when I pick my exercise, I would pick a lighter form of exercise.

32:46So if I have a choice between, let's say, running and going for yoga, I would go for yoga because it will slow my breath down. The idea is to slow your body and slow your breath down, to stay as much in parasympathetic as you can, and you're not living in stress mode. So these are a few of the things that I did. I woke up in the morning. I went for a yoga class. I came back. I massaged my body with oil. It's one of the Ayurvedic practices of body oiling, slowing down, creating lymphatic drainage, but also very, very grounding to the nervous system. And then I took a nice warm shower and then I did my breath work and my meditation.

33:21But also what I will remain conscious of for the rest of the day is to choose activities that are slower, to slow down my body movements, to maybe go into a silent fast. And then, of course, eventually to go to bed early tonight. If I will have a chance, I'll go for another massage. Maybe I'll go for a foot massage today. So the idea is that, listen, if I did not get enough repair at night, how do I create enough repair in the day? And how do I have enough tools in my toolkit so I know how to create repair? Now, let's say today was a really, really busy day. Just by slowing down my exhalations, just by slowing.

33:56and this is a practice that I have adopted for many, many years, that you slow down your breath. When you slow down your breath, you slow down your nervous system. You slow down your nervous system and you get into the parasympathetic mode. Your body is repairing faster. It literally goes into the rest and digest mode. So even though you're awake and you're functioning, your body is still trying to maintain its repair. In fact, every inhale, I always tell my clients, every inhale is sympathetic, puts your body into like, let's act. And every exhale is parasympathetic. And when you get really busy in a day, very often we come back and we sit and we're like, we sigh loudly, right?

34:34Because your body is forcing out that exhale. But if you were to just mindfully tune into those and create those longer exhalations, even in conversation, even while your mouth is open, when you focus on longer nasal exhalations simultaneously, your body starts to go into parasympathetic. And you really come to that present moment, and your body starts to relax. And that offers healing of its own kind. I just want to get technical about a couple of the things you said there, because my obsession as an interviewer is to provide my listeners with things they can do as soon as they're done listening.

35:11So when you're talking about deep, slow breathing, and you mentioned that you this morning did some of that. Can you be pretty technical and granular about what that looks like? Yeah. All right. So it's called a resonance breath and the resonance breath is that you count, you can count for inhalation. So let's say you were to do five count and whatever that count looks like for you, right? It could be five seconds. It could be a faster, you can do it in your mind. So you would inhale if you were inhaling five seconds and take a slow inhale. But when you exhale, you'd want that to go a little bit longer.

35:46So let's say you would do seven. And you can use an app. My friend Eddie Stern has an app called the Breathing App. Super easy. You can set a gong. It's a free app. And it gives you a timer. And you can let it play in the background. But when you would exhale, so if your inhalation is five, your exhalation would be seven counts. Slowly through the nose. As though you're blowing a balloon. Let's just say if your nose could have the power, the potential to actually blow a balloon. and then you slowly exhale.

36:18And then the slow, long exhales, like the shorter inhale and the longer exhale, really sets your body into rest and digest. Now, when I say shorter inhale, your inhale is still enough of an inhale. It's still a nice, long inhale. It's just shorter, slightly shorter than the exhalation. And how long will you do this for? sometimes i'll do it for five minutes if i'm doing it systematically but also you could be working and if you have an app right you could be working and if you have an app like the breathing app and you play that in the background for 10 minutes 15 minutes you're kind of training your brain to start breathing like that even when you're busy now dan for somebody like me i think i've done it for so long that i can naturally just remind myself hey nadi just go back into that resonance breath so whether i'm talking whether i'm teaching whether i'm cooking i can kind of fall back into those longer exhalation patterns that instantly relax the body.

37:12That's cool. The other thing you mentioned was massaging your body with oils. Just can you say a little bit more about what that actually entails and do we need to buy special oils? Yeah. Yeah. So Dan, the practice is called Abhyanga, right? And it's right now, again, it's become trendy again. It's got body oiling. But it's a practice like my grandfather, who was an Ayurveda healer, did his, for his entire life. And I've been doing it for the last 20 years. And what that does, so first, how do you do the practice? And I'll tell you what it does as well. So how do you do the practice is you take traditionally, you took sesame oil or another herbal Ayurvedic oil.

37:48Now those are very complicated, dhanvantari taylam, mahanarayan taylam, and you don't have to ever use any of those. But using a plain sesame oil, untoasted, is good enough. It's a great start. And for people in the United States, I tell them, if you don't even like the scent of the sesame oil, go and get just a simple lemongrass coconut oil from Trader Joe's. There's no collaboration with them, but it's a very easy start. It has a pump bottle. It's a very easy place to start. Now, traditionally, you would be warming up this oil, but you don't have to warm up the oil if you want to start another practice.

38:22And just as you would put moisturizer on your body, you would apply the oil and you would massage your limbs. You would massage your shoulders. You would massage your abdomen. Any place that you can get to, focusing more on the joints, long movements in the long areas, and circular movements in the joints. And you could do this for five minutes. You could do this for seven minutes. You could do this for ten minutes. Ideally, you want to do this before you shower. In fact, in Ayurveda, you do this before you even go for your exercise. If you look at, you know, pictures of wrestlers from India, you'll see they're wearing their little, you know, little wrestling underwear and their entire body is oiled up.

39:01And as a child, I thought that was just for aesthetics. Till I learned that it actually not only protects their joints, when their body warms up, it allows for faster recovery. You know, when they're wrestling and they're using their body, they're exercising. In fact, in fact, sesame is known to regulate estrogen. They still haven't done the research on how the oil would have an impact. but sesame by itself regulates estrogen which becomes anti-inflammatory and allows for faster recovery but men can do this women can do this it's not reserved for just one gender and you would apply that oil and ideally you would you know i tell people of course don't go into your gyms with all that oil just wipe it down a little bit so you're not slipping anywhere and then you would exercise you would sweat more as a result you would recover faster as a result and then you would jump into your shower but what it does when you even also jump into your shower oil has a detoxification effect so it's many many things and i want to go into them just briefly sure so oil as the body has warmed up when you exercise the oil will kind of enter your pores right the pores open up the oil goes and oil is a if you even if you let's just say you spilled some oil on your table and then you didn't have the chance to wipe it out and then you had to leave you know for an errand when you come back you'll see that oil almost looks grimy you almost feel like all the dust from the table has come into the oil because it has this power to kind of pull out dust, dirt, and grime.

40:23So it's a detoxifying practice for the body. Of course, it allows a faster recovery. It depends on how you massage. You can do a lymphatic drainage. In Ayurveda, they'll also say it'll allow for the better synthesis of vitamin D. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. And traditionally, you would put some oil and you would step out in the sunlight. But then when you go into the shower after this, right, like you have oil on your body, you go into the shower, you're protecting your skin barrier from the harshness of the water. Water can be very harsh for the skin. So you're also protecting your skin barrier.

40:56So at so many different levels, that oil from detoxification to your nervous system, to protecting your joints, to faster recovery, but it's going to help you at those various levels. I will say, Dan, it is a practice that all my clients, once they start this, this is one of the practices that they don't want to give up at all. And they notice a big difference in their recovery, but also their skin, their anxiety, and also how sick they get or they don't. Because microbiome on our skin is lipophilic. All the good microbiome is lipophilic, which means that they thrive on fats. They need those fats to survive.

41:33So you're constantly replenishing these depleting fats, especially we're living in these air conditioning regulated environments. It's really interesting. Okay, so let's talk about some more key concepts of Ayurveda. One of them is digestive fire. What does that mean? Right. I mean, we've started giving a lot of importance to digestion now in the West on the last few decades. The concept of digestive fire is this, right? For anything to break down, for anything to transform, for any metabolic activity to happen in the world, heat is needed. You cannot even charge your phone without electricity.

42:10The saying that I use is, how can it transform unless it's warm? To cook your foods, you need warmth. For plants to do photosynthesis, you need warmth. Every metabolic process is warm. So this environment of the gut, where you have these great digestive enzymes that come to work, you have gastrin that comes to work, you have bile that comes to work. And even for somebody who's never really interacted with any of these enzymes, as a biologist, they can still understand that These are probably warm. These enzymes are probably warm. You know, these acids of the stomach. And this environment, balanced with the mucosal lining that protects us from our own acids and hot foods and the process of metabolism, that perfect environment, which is conducive to life, which is conducive to microbiome down there, that is called the digestive fire.

42:58Now, Ayurveda talks tremendously about it. It says that when your digestive fire gets compromised, therein starts the beginning of all diseases, at least at a physical level. Okay, so if we take this seriously, and I do, what are some basic moves we can make to tend to our own digestive fire? Yeah, so the fire fluctuates through the day. And I think understanding how the fire fluctuates naturally is the first important thing. And then the second is, how do you prepare your foods that they support the fire? So let's go into the first one first, which is how does the fire fluctuate throughout the day for diurnal mammals like us that are supposed to rise with the sun and set and sleep as the sun sets?

43:43Because before we had electricity and we don't have nighttime vision, we didn't have a choice but to be in bed once the sun set. So much like plants can only do photosynthesis once the sun is out, we're kind of like that. So how does the fire fluctuate through the day? It corresponds to the sun outside, it mimics the fire inside. So then let's go into that cycle a little bit through the day, the daytime cycle, right? And Ayurvedic scientists, people can call them Ayurvedic sages, I like to call them scientists. They also look at the patterns outside to understand the patterns inside. So the morning hours between 6 a.m.

44:21and 10 a.m., for example, A fire is still picking up as the sun is rising outside. And if you were to walk on grass, it's all wet and dewy and sluggish. That's kind of the environment in the body and the gut, right? So people can have nasal congestion in the morning. People can have eye boogers in the morning. Usually your synovial fluids and the joints are padded. I mean, I can never show off in a yoga class in the morning. That's not happening, right? Because everything is like sluggish. And your gut is sluggish as well. Because all this kind of mucus, the refueling that happened at night, the repair, makes your body a little bit more wet and sluggish inside the system.

44:56It just means that it's a little bit slower and there's more phlegm in all of those things. So it's not the time for the biggest breakfast. That is the time you activate your fire by exercising. You activate your fire by oiling. And then when you do eat in the morning time, you eat a worm, right? Because I said it cannot transform unless it's warm. All traditional practices, most blue zones, eat something warm and not super heavy in the morning. So you've exercised, your body is ready, it's warming up, and you eat something warm. My breakfast, for example, every single day is a hot cup of spiced milk with a little bit of porridge on the side.

45:35And almonds, you know, soaked and peeled almonds. I soak them overnight, I eat them in the morning. My favorite breakfast, lifelong, love it. But it could be anything. It could be stewed apples. It could be roasted sweet potatoes. It could be an omelet for somebody, but ideally something warm and something spiced. We always use spices as well. And I want to say here that spices do a lot of things. They support the breakdown of the foods that you're eating. They support the digestive fire because they add that warmth. If you've ever eaten black pepper, ginger, any of the spices, you can almost feel that inherent warming feeling that they bring.

46:11It's a little bit subtle, but it can be experienced. So that's how your breakfast would look like. Now between the hours of 10 and 2, as the sun peaks, so does the digestive fire. And now we know this today, right? Science knows this, that gastrin as at its best behavior, which is great, one of the biggest MVPs when it comes to your digestion. But also your insulin sensitivity is high and you can break your foods down better. So the sun is high, your digestive fire is high. So is your mental fire, right? People don't get lunch, they get hangry because everything is so hot in their system. So it's a great time to eat your biggest meal.

46:49Anything that you crave, do it for lunchtime. You want to indulge, eat the biggest meal during lunch. And if you've eaten a warm, light breakfast, chances are that you will not feel sluggish after your big lunch because everything is nice and ready and warm in your body. So that's your time for big lunch and you support your fire that way. Between the hours of 2 and 6, as the sun sets outside, you almost notice the wind inside. The sun is setting outside. It's slightly windy. Leaves are now moving. You experience the wind experience inside as well. And I just, I use this language to make it more comprehensible for people.

47:27But when your neurotransmitters are changing from daytime to evening time. And what happens? You feel like stretching at your desk. You feel the afternoon lull. It's exactly what happens outside. Now that is a good time to, you know, just go get some fresh air, drink some peppermint tea. Of course not caffeine because really your body is doing everything it can to unwind and to slow down. And if you give it a stimulant, you're kind of taking it against the cycle. Ideally, right now, this is the most important. This is the biggest change. I tell everybody, if you want to make one change, make this one.

47:59And this is the change I'm talking about. Stop eating dinner. Stop eating by 6, 6.30 in the evening. As the sun starts to set down, and this can look different. If it's summertime, it can be slightly different. But as the sun starts to set, and let's say you're living in a place, the sun sets by 6, 6, 37, your digestive fire is not working as well anymore. In fact, at night, insulin resistance increases. You cannot break down your sugars as well. And that light meal at night, like dinner is not even a thing. Our ancestors were not really lighting lamps and having big dinner parties way after sunset, you know.

48:34And this is only like 100 years ago, 1930s is when electricity came into our homes and we weren't, we didn't have this level of chronic disease. So if there's one change you can make, let it be this. So that the fire kind of slows down in the evening time and you definitely want to honor it by only burning, eating as much as you can burn. For sure. This alone can be a big game changer. But if I had to add another thing on top of it that people can do to keep that fire burning, the first function of food, and this is going to sound crazy, but it will make sense once you hear it. The first function of food is not to give you nourishment.

49:13The first function of food is not even to give you nutrients. The first function of the food is to protect the environment of your gut. Because if the environment of the gut is not protected, it is only a matter of time. You may be eating the biggest superfood out there, but your body will not be able to put it to good use. It will not be able to assimilate anything from it. So how do you protect the environment of the gut? By, of course, honoring these cycles of how do you eat. But also, there are a couple of other things that can be done. Cooking foods is a big thing in Ayurveda. You cook foods.

49:45And if you go back into the history of our species, when we started using fire to cook our foods about 300 ,000 years ago, and non-Ayurvedic scientists have done this research, that when we started using fire to cook our foods, that's when we actually became these intellectual species. Because our gut became smaller. Our brains became bigger. Our microbiome, our gut bacteria changed drastically. And it's really what has made us human from primitive. And anybody can actually do this research because there's a lot out there. So Ayurveda is big on cooking your foods, on using good fats, and using good spices to cook your foods as well.

50:27So cooking does create some metabolic waste in the body, right? They can become free radicals. But the minute you spice your foods and you pair them with spices, most spices are what we call antioxidants that will basically neutralize those free radicals that are created not only from cooking, but also from your own body's metabolic function. So Ayurveda is big on using spices and that's not spicy. Spices are spices that you can find in the spice aisle of the grocery store, but are technically not really putting your tongue on fire. So it's cinnamon, clove, black pepper, cumin, bay leaf, whatever people like.

51:07You want to use those, you want to use a good fat, you want to cook your foods. Just going back to the cycle of the day, and you were recommending that we eat a smaller dinner and stop eating as the sun goes down. I'm asking this as an insomniac. Are there things that you would recommend drinking later in the day that might help people fall asleep? Absolutely, right? And that is absolutely what you can do. So drinking a warm cup of milk, for example, drinking a hot cup of milk, and that can be done at like 7.30, that can be done at 8, that can be done at 10 if you're staying up later. And adding, let's say, nutmeg or cardamom, especially these two spices, a few pinches of nutmeg or like even half a teaspoon of cardamom powder can be a tranquilizer, really ground the nervous system.

51:56Our body also remembers as babies. This is the grounding food you consume to go to bed. And it's a great one to allow yourself to go to bed, to fall asleep. Very helpful. Just want to keep going through some of these key concepts. Another is symptoms or messengers. Symptoms or messengers. Absolutely. Before your body goes into a full-blown imbalance, we've relied so long on just blood reports and other vitals to understand what's going on in our body. And they never paint a full picture to begin with. But in Ayurveda, the minute you notice the symptoms, that's step one out of the six steps before it can manifest into a full disease.

52:41So the first symptom is local, and you might experience something. Then it might become chronic. It might lodge itself. It's local, it's temporary. If it's not addressed, it becomes more permanent. When it becomes more permanent, it starts affecting either the tissue or the blood or the plasma in that area. I mean, think of it as inflammation. Think of it as if you had a bruise, even on the top of your skin, that didn't heal for a long time. It's not healed or you keep bumping your hand into something. It becomes more and more and more and aggravated. And at some point, it's going to be this deep level of scarring that's going to happen.

53:16But the same thing can happen inside your body. And I just use the example of a bruise because it's more visual. But it can be just anything. It could just be a blockage in one of your tubes and one of the many channels that exist in your body. And then once it becomes chronic and it starts to affect the tissue, now it's kind of homogenized. The imbalance is homogenized with the tissue. That activates your immune system and that can start now creating imbalance depending on which organ it is or which tissue it's affected or whether it's the blood and plasma. If it's blood and plasma, it starts traveling around.

53:46Now you have this, it's like dirty water pipes, you know, like every floor of your apartment building has water pipes that have gone wrong. every single floor is going to have dirty water. And that's kind of what our blood and plasma are, right? They're these distribution systems for the body. And if they get affected, then everything, it starts kind of circulating in the body. And then you'll start noticing individual symptoms. And then it usually goes into a full-blown disease. So pain is a great sign. A symptom is a great sign. We don't have to say, shut up. Look, I understand sometimes we all need to take painkillers.

54:14If you're having a day, you've got to do something. Life's happening. Yeah. But it's usually a sign. It's a great sign that listen to your body now. Let's address this today rather than saying, shut up. I'll see if you'll come back another day and we'll talk then. I guess a related concept that comes out of your book is the body is always right. I would say it's more than that the body always knows. The body already knows more than the body is always right. So the body is always telling you something. and the body already knows. And that I don't say in terms that the body is giving you alarms each time or the body is giving you warning signals.

54:55So that's actually not that. When I say the body already knows, it's the body already knows, like when you're a baby and your body knows to look for its mother's breast and eat from it, or the worm knows exactly where to crawl and when to pause. Even like if you see a bug at home or you see like they'll know how to behave when it's electricity and how to pause when they see motion. Like every species on the planet has that intelligence within of how to live, how to survive, how to be well. So my book, which is called Your Body Already Knows, gives you that framework to come back into your own intelligence in the most kindest way to trust yourself that your body already knows.

55:33And it always tells you what to do when you learn its language. We're missing the language. We're missing the framework. So when somebody can say, hey, I just want to eat like five bags of chips. No, that's not the listening that I'm talking about. We need to understand its language.

55:52Coming up, Nidhi talks about her toolkit for self-regulation, the perils of jumping into change, why cold drinks and excessive water can disrupt digestion, according to Ayurvedic principles, and much more.

56:12so you have a toolkit these are like three levels of self-regulation they include preventative tools battlefield tools and repair tools can you walk us through this yeah so dan i want to start by saying that yeah if people want to jump into change people want to come or today i'm all i have this all this adrenaline i want to be the best version of myself and I fall flat on my face. And that's like, listen, we've all done that a hundred times, right? It's kind of harsh to want to do that with yourself because our body has had a lifetime of experiences and trauma and generational conditioning and forget all the things that are happening to us, right?

56:48We've stopped even how to feel safe. In fact, most of the habits that we're keeping are just coping mechanisms. And here you are like saying, I'm going to give up my coping mechanism without a shield. So people are like, okay, I don't want to eat late from tomorrow night. or like I want to give up my alcohol, I want to give up. I'm like, let's slow down, let's slow down. Let's bring coping mechanisms because really poor habits that if you've been trying to give up a habit for a while, it's not gone. You're coping with something else. So the toolkit, which is probably the most important part, I think, of any transformation or change is this loving experience for your nervous system first and what it is.

57:26We all need three types of tools. The first one, I say, have preventative tools in your toolkit, which means something that you will do every single day for your nervous system to feel safe before you get on the battlefield of life. And this especially holds true for people who are living in chronic stress. They don't even experience a minute of what this feels like. Their nervous system just does not even know what that is. So it could be music. It could be meditation. It could be breath. It could be a massage. It could be a sport for some people. But before you get into life, your nervous system has been in a place where it's lost sense of time and space, where it's so present, it's so safe, it's so comfortable.

58:07Now it has a memory. I usually provide people with an a la carte menu and I say you try all of them, keep a couple and have that every day. Can you just say a little bit more about what's on the a la carte menu? You listed a few things, but I just want to make sure people know. Yes. So I will say meditation last. even though it's my biggest, I'll say it lasts because it's so hard for a lot of people to get into. So I'm going to list it in the order of ease. Music is a big one and I'll say classical music. It is not a coincidence that there are seven notes, there are seven endocrine glands that play with the juices neurotransmitters in your body.

58:43There are seven chakras, if you're into the chakra thing. And every musical note has a certain effect on the neurotransmitters of your body. In fact, Indian classical music and even Western, but Indian was designed their morning, what you call morning music, morning ragas, R-A-G-A-S and evening ragas. So I tell people, start with those morning ragas. You don't have to do the work. Let your music do the work. Let your cells do the work. Let your body do the work. So that'll regulate your nervous system. So music It can be a regulator, but it can go in the order of music, exercise, body massage, breath work, meditation.

59:26There are other tools as well, but these are most easily accessible to people. Got it. Okay, so preventative tools. Then there are battlefield tools. Yeah, that inevitably, because we have these trigger patterns, these scripts we all carry, and you get into the battlefield of life, and there the trigger begins. And in that, we do all kinds of things to regulate ourselves when we're having that experience. So what are you going to do in the face of that battlefield? And these are different tools than preventative tools. Now, these tools, I can give you an example of what that looks like, that you can instantly start noticing the trigger and come back to regulation.

1:00:04And it's easier to notice the trigger if you've done the preventative tools because you've experienced safety, your nervous system has experienced safety. so when you're on the battlefield of life i'm going to give you a little a la carte menu for the battlefield tools and my favorite battlefield tool is humming and humming is something you could be on the road you could be driving you could be cooking and you can you could be at your desk working and you could be humming and what humming does again because humming is essentially an exhalation through the nose and i've talked enough about the exhalation from the nose puts your body in parasympathetic mode, instantly starts, your body instantly starts feeling safe, allows you to start regulating right away.

1:00:46This is also the reason why an OM at the end of a yoga class feels so relaxing because it is essentially a hum. It activates the vagus nerve, does all of those things. But in the most simplest understanding, I say it is going to put your body into the parasympathetic mode. It will start relaxing everything there and bringing yourself back to safety. There could be other battlefield tools while you're feeling that trigger, right? Grounding, noticing the fabric of your own clothes on your skin, really coming to every contact points. How do your feet sit on the ground? How's your hair touching? How everything feels.

1:01:26And again, that brings your body to safety. That starts getting your brain to be integrated again, right? Because the brain kind of flips the lid. The brain starts disintegrating and disconnecting when you are, your rational brain disconnects from your emotional brain when you're feeling, when you're on the battlefield. So that kind of contact point, coming back to every sensation that you can experience, again, starts to regulate your nervous system. You could also, without humming, just go into longer exhalations while you're having a conversation with somebody. If you're in the middle of a conversation with somebody, you can also step out and just splash some cool water on your face.

1:02:03If it is possible for you to go and take a shower, or to go for a quick five, seven minute run, moving your body. All of these things, depending on who the person is, I tell people you try some of these battlefield tools, but make sure you have them in your pocket so that when you're experiencing that trigger, you can pull something out depending on where and how that trigger is. And finally, repair tools. Repair tools, yeah. I always joke that all addictions happen at night. Like alcoholics are made at night, sex addicts, food addicts, TV addicts, right? Because we need to heal from the day. All of us need to heal from the day.

1:02:38And repair tools allow us to actually do that. Now, there are two types of repair tools. I mean, mainly the one something that you can use every single day to repair. And these could be anything from journaling to lying down with your legs up against the wall. This is a yoga pose called Viparidh Karni that lowers your breath pressure, enhances blood circulation, relaxes the body, to massaging your feet before bed, to taking a warm shower, to drinking a hot cup of milk. But when you do it intentionally and you say, this is my repair for the day, you bring more intention into it, into bringing your nervous system back to safety.

1:03:23And then I say that you also need repair tools for those times when crisis hits. So for example, my repair tools, when my nervous system just cannot take it anymore, I will go for a massage. I tell people to draw up a bath, to take an Epsom salt bath, to go for a massage. I think therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy or therapy that works for people is again, great periodic repair tool. But I think essentially to go through life, to even start thinking about any change, everybody needs to build a toolkit out. So before I promise change, before I bring shifts to people's diets and their lifestyles, I say, let's get that toolkit ready so that when you actually create that vision of the future that you're walking towards, you have all the tools that you need to give up a past life.

1:04:10Super helpful. Is this why you recommend minimizing cold beverages? Yes. Yes. It's like a refrigeration in your gut. We know all these poor acids and enzymes. They're all warm. And they're trying to metabolize and digest everything that we eat. And we say, hey, let's just play a little havoc inside. And let's put a cold beverage in there. It's like a cold rain, like in the middle of harvest season. And it slows down metabolism. And you do it once in a while, it doesn't hurt. But if it's not warm, how is it going to transform? Why would you want to refrigerate your gut systematically and periodically?

1:04:48So it's not uncommon for me to like grab a sparkling water out of the fridge. It sounds like you're saying actually just drink some tap water instead. Yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying do it tomorrow, right, Dan? But I mean, I'm not telling you to do it tomorrow. I'm not telling anybody who's listening to this to tomorrow. But I'm just saying bring curiosity to this. And then maybe one day you feel curious enough and you feel like I might want to try this. This might have logic or just open your mind to think what did traditional cultures did? Or like how new is refrigeration for us? It's like not even that old, like refrigeration only came into our homes like 70 years ago.

1:05:21And what else happened that time? Oh, my God. Guess what? Chrotic disease happened that time. Metabolic disorders began that time. And I'm not saying just refrigeration caused it. There are many things altogether that came into that whole era where modernization of our lifestyle and consumption happened. But it's worth seeing, even for three weeks, what that does to your body. In fact, sooner than that, people will tell me how different they feel. Another thing you recommend is to regulate water consumption. What does that mean specifically? so we've become obsessed with water and we think that we think that we drink water and all our cells start blooming with hydration like they're little flowers right like people have this visual i'm going to drink water and all my cells are going to plump up and i'm going to have this garden of cells inside me that are all plumpy that's really not true water goes through our stomach goes into our small intestine through the process of osmosis makes it wherever it makes it I mean, it is such a long-drawn process.

1:06:17And you're drinking, when people are drinking, crazy amounts of water. And they're just, all they're doing is urinating, putting that load. Because the water does not even have time at that point. Even the osmosis doesn't happen. It's an emergency exit to the bathroom. So this is like the first time we've given this important. And I understand why water became so important, right? Because as Americans, we just stopped drinking water. It was like no longer a thing. We were drinking beverages the entire time. And we were in this crazy place when industrialization just happened. So now we said, hey, let's wake up and drink water.

1:06:46But like everything else, we like to go overboard. So let's just drink five liters of water. And that can be very harmful for the body because it firstly compromises digestion, right? Your digestive enzymes are all out and they're creating a certain environment. They don't want a monsoon in there. Trust me, I grew up in India. Monsoon means like everything, everything goes to waste. All flora and fauna, what was growing is not growing as well. So the microbiome starts to get affected when you drink excessive amounts of water. And I've seen this with my clients who've got candida and parasite and parasitic infections.

1:07:19But also there's a load on your kidney. All I'm saying is when you actually drink water, more, of course, in the first half of the day till 4 p.m. and you drink to thirst and sip by sip and you keep it warmer or you keep it infused with either mint. And when you bring water into your soups and other foods, you know, more like semi-solid foods, They get absorbed better because if you get hydrated through osmosis, then you want salt in your food. Then you want to do it through salt as well. And that osmosis happens when you're eating. Like Ayurveda will talk about eating semi-solid foods as much as you can.

1:07:51And one of the reasons is that you're going to take all the water from that food and you're going to use it in your body. So you drink water to thirst. You'll end up drinking more in the summers, less in the winters. More in the daytime, less in the evening time. No prescription is needed. You got to keep it natural for you. But don't deliberately go and guzzle down liters of water because you think it is a prescription. So when I wake up, I drink about a liter of water before I work out. And usually it's just right out of the tap. What do you think of that? And you mentioned something about putting mint in it or something.

1:08:30I said mint because mint is the easiest but the minute you put something in your water you kind of give it a task to do you slow down like your body says hey hey hey what's coming in let's start processing it differently you know you give it an address almost so depending on what's happening in the body like one thing that I would recommend and I would just tell people you try it like Dan I would ask you to just try it if you were ever curious to try it for 10 days or a week is to take warmer water in the morning, throw in a few pinches of dried ginger. If the first thing in the morning, that's what I would recommend to pretty much almost anybody.

1:09:04And I rarely give universal tips, but this is one of those things that almost everybody can do is put a few pinches of ginger powder, not fresh ginger, ginger powder, great antioxidant, really starts breaking down the slime in your body, starts firing up that digestion. And just about one cup is enough in the morning time. Because your Agni, your digestive fire is just waking up. You don't want to give it rainfall early in the morning. You want to give it something that's going to support the waking up of the digestive juices. And excessive water slows it down. And I tell people, try this for yourself.

1:09:45Don't believe me. You try it for yourself, works for you, great, doesn't work for you. Move on. But it's worth trying. I'm not asking you to do anything that clearly doesn't sound dangerous for the system. So it's worth giving it a shot. Almost everybody I know has felt a remarkable difference. A couple other super practical questions before I let you go. You mentioned fermented foods. Are you talking about things like kimchi or pickles? Yeah, but you don't overdo the fermented foods, right? Every culture had some level of fermented food before they sat to eat, right? Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, just a little bit, a little fire starter because it's like, it's as warm and moist as it can get.

1:10:25It's like the first, it's like putting the math stick on. You don't want to put your gut on fire, so you don't want to do all fermented foods. But just like our ancestors did, you want to go back to that little wetting of the fire, that little stimulation of your appetite and the metabolic environment using some of those fermented foods. And there is place occasionally for more fermented foods, like a sourdough bread, for example. But as religiously, if you want to do something before every meal, It's just a little bit of a side fermented food. You also talk about adjusting shower water temperature.

1:10:59Luckily, modern day dermatologists, cosmetologists, skin doctors will tell you this. But shower water, you don't want to take very hot showers because it affects your skin barrier. But it also plays havoc with your blood pressure. And actually, even like in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, your body has to thermoregulate very differently. when you're using very, very hot water. And as a result, it can compromise the thermoregulation mechanism of your own body. But warm water is just fine. Warm to like slightly warmer in colder months is just fine. So the prescription is to avoid really, really hot water.

1:11:37And the shower temperature, heart and above, you know, just as you would go into a jacuzzi, you would keep like your heart out of the pool. You definitely don't want to use very hot water, heart and above. Again, for the blood pressure. So then where are you on saunas? So if it's a steam, Ayurveda is actually big on steaming, which is wet sauna, which is not a dry sauna. And a wet sauna, like a wet steam, we have steam tents, but the head is out. The head is not inside the steam tent. They look like little cute, they actually look like coffins with your head out of it. Sometimes they're wooden.

1:12:12These days they're like more synthetic materials. So steaming is great for the body because it kind of starts opening up the pores and allows toxins to start moving out of your body. Saunas are slightly questionable. I can see why when we look at performance, why saunas temporarily close up your pores, really start activity inside, metabolic activity inside your body, your cells become active because now everything is shut down and the heat is retained inside. I would say long-term, in my Ayurvedic viewpoint and lens and understanding, it is not something that I would recommend long-term to any of my clients, especially female clients.

1:12:56Let's close on this. I want to give you a chance to preach a little bit here because this is the stuff where I really have strong and similar feelings. You talk about radical acceptance and gratitude. It's kind of like where you close on this in your 21-day plan that you talk about in the book. And I think that's a really nice countermeasure against a lot of what you described earlier, which is this kind of over-optimization, this mirthless, militaristic approach that we take to our own bodies. Can you just hold forth on this notion of radical acceptance and gratitude as we wind down here? Yeah.

1:13:34Yeah. So in this modern day, right, today, a lot of our wellness or the lack of it is psychosomatic. We become obsessed with our 3D bodies and our physical well-being. We've forgotten what our thoughts, our nervous system, and the biochemicals that kind of arise as a result can do for us. Radical acceptance and gratitude. And I'm just going to say even just scientifically, right, When you're in the state of gratitude, your body is completely relaxed. When you look at the spiritual world or your electromagnetic field, it's expanded. And in that state, wellness is only a side effect. I always like to use the example of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

1:14:23Charlie Munger, one of the greatest investors of our time, Bakshaya Hathaway, died maybe a couple of years ago at 99. Dan, the worst lifestyle, right? Warren Buffett sits and drinks such big bottles. At his annual general meeting, he's drinking Coke and eating burgers and he eats from McDonald's all the time. He's 94 years old. He's sharper than anybody else. But because he's in this state of complete acceptance, he is in flow. He loves what he does. He lives the life that he loves. He makes the choices that he loves. You can tell from the way he talks that he's in the present moment, and he has radical acceptance for his life.

1:15:04And in that state, wellness just happens. When people come to me, I tell them, if you cannot do it through your mind, you do it through your body. But if you can do it through your mind, you don't even need me. Because you can eat three, four, five times a day, but every thought has a corresponding chemical reaction in the body. It's only a matter of time that that biochemistry is going to change your biology. And radical acceptance of what you're unable to shift. And gratitude for how far life has got each one of us the ability to live in this modern day and time, to live in a time where we're actually talking about healing and we're talking about traumas and we're talking about not passing on to our children what we received from our generations of wounds.

1:15:49I mean, I think that by itself is such a great thing, great time to be born in that we can have this dialogue. And if we can stay in that state, you're more connected to the intelligence of nature. And it's only a matter of time when wellness will begin to show up in your life. It's been super interesting for me, introduction to Ayurveda, and I really appreciate your time. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and anything else you've made or produced or created that we should know about? Thank you for asking, Diane. So the name of my book is Your Body Already Knows.

1:16:27And it just gives you a systematic 21-day step-by-step guide to start living like this and creating your own toolkit and being able to witness some of the changes that come when you start living in awe and wonder and bringing Ayurvedic principles. So that's my book. I have a practice where I work with people I teach a ton I have a lot of courses on my website which is nidhipandia.com myfirstnamelastname.com I post a ton on Instagram my underscore ayurvedic underscore life you just look up my name you don't need to remember the handle but yeah I'm always teaching I'm always writing I am speaking I have a practice and I work with clients one-on-one for a period of six months Nidhi Pandia thank you very much for your time Thank you so, so much for having me, Dan.

1:17:19Pleasure.

1:17:24Thanks again to Nidhi Pandiya. Great to talk to her and learn more about Ayurveda, a subject on which I was deeply ignorant until now. Don't forget to check out our new app, 10 % with Dan Harris. You can sign up at danharris.com. There's a guided meditation that dropped on the app today that was tailored to everything we just talked about on the podcast. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, Bart Van Melleck, and it's called What Listen to Your Body Actually Means. As I said at the top of the show, this meditation is designed to take you past the cliche of listening to your body to the deep wisdom embedded in that phrase.

1:18:03Finally, a big thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.