The Gut-Heart Connection - With Mona Sharma

31:13Shawn Stevenson:Because again, somebody might be dealing with a cardiovascular issue and not even, even considered that their gut might have something to do with it. Let's talk a little bit more about that connection. You got it. Yeah. So, um, there's an incredible communication system within the body called the vagus nerve, bi-directional communication that moves from the neurons in our gut microbiome. So what is it like over 500 million neurons called our enteric nervous system that resides in our gut that communicates through our vagus nerve up through our heart center to our brain. We often talk about gut brain access, but there's a gut heart brain access and the heart takes in the signaling, whether that is safety within the gut microbiome, things are functioning really well.

31:58Digestion is great. We're able to absorb all of our nutrients. Or a sign of danger, I can't digest this food. There's too much stress. So my zonulin protein is increasing and now the tight junctions in my gut are becoming leaky. That gets communicated through the heart. And if our heart is sensing always 24-7, are we safe? Are we not? Am I safe in this environment? Am I safe within this environment? It's constantly getting messages of it's not safe. There's something going on. All right, let's take that up to the brain. Then we go to the brain and the brain is like, okay, well now I'm anxious because the heart and the gut are telling me that there's like a red alert going on.

32:37We're not digesting our food properly. The heart is freaking out because it's not feeling safe, nor has it felt safe for so long. And that's what creates that shift in our nervous system state that we have to start to regulate. This is why I say, you know, you could be on the best protocol in the world, best fitness regime on the planet, but you still might not wake up feeling good this is a case for so many of my clients why don't i feel good when i wake up i'm doing all the things and often it's an issue of our nervous system so when we kind of start with nervous system regulation and moving into heart coherence all of a sudden the system within the body starts to regulate we come into a place that is safe that's that rest and digest mode when that is the state that our body has to be in in order for every single cell and mitochondria within us to function optimally, right?

33:27I wish we could see our mitochondria on a big screen to just see what was happening, right? Do you remember in nutrition school when you look at a cell with free radical damage? So you look at your blood and you see this one cell with free radical damage and it literally looks like it has all these spikes wrapped around it, right? And it's like, whew, if I saw that, that's telling me my body is stressed. I think that day is coming, but just the awareness of, okay, how is my heart today? Am I in a regulated state Or have I done something to come into coherence, right? The HeartMath Institute is incredible for now.

33:59Having the data, this is not woo-woo anymore. It's more than just vibration and tuning in. It's coming into coherence through your breath, through gratitude, through family, through love, through yoga, through meditation. Things that had we still be living in communities, like at the ashram, we would probably still be doing together.

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35:48Shawn Stevenson:Plus you'll also receive their 60 day money back guarantee. So you have nothing to lose and better health to gain. Head over to Organifi.com forward slash model. Check out their variety of superfood blends, their green juice blend, their red juice blend, their phenomenal collagen that we use all the time. again 20 off at organifi.com forward slash model and now back to the show you know it's so crazy i mean we've we're changing this quickly and i'm grateful for that but we still overall are looking at our body parts in isolation absolutely you know and so just even considering the heart absolutely what's going on with your gut is impacting your heart what's going on with your toes is impacting your heart as well.

36:41Shawn Stevenson:It's all connected. We've got a lot of data on teeth and heart, right? Yes, oral health and the microbiome of the mouth and the microbiome of the gut, right? We're starting to understand that. But again, let's work up the ladder a little bit. When you go to your doctor, your primary care or go to any hospital, unfortunately, more likely than not, the GI doctor isn't talking to the cardiologist. The cardiologist doesn't even know who the primary care is and these notes are getting put into a system but where is the integration right for so long in our industry we've been talking about integrative health care i don't even think that's happening yet so i think it's time for integrative health care to to happen and uh dr andrew wild talks about this often the day that i can show up at a doctor's office and i met perhaps with uh you know in the waiting room where i'm cute to just take a few breaths and then i meet with my my medical doctor and we maybe are looking at my biology and i'm running my labs but before i go i'm also looking at eastern medicine i'm understanding is this a good time to incorporate some acupuncture could meditation actually be prescribed to me to prevent going on that that blood pressure medication because there's also studies to show that meditation can actually lower blood pressure if there's that integration and people are leaving with things like yoga and meditation or Pilates or Qigong or Tai Chi, if that was prescribed to you, I wonder, would you do it knowing it could change your life?

38:09That's integrative healthcare and that's the future that I really dream for.

38:12Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. I think it's just number one, just even having the option. Yeah. Right? Just giving, because of course there is a perspective of, well, people aren't going to do it anyways. Yeah. Studies show contrary, you know, and some really sophisticated studies have been done on type 2 diabetes and the adherence to lifestyle interventions with patients getting coaching and support exceedingly outperform as far as their results, prevention of the onset of diabetes. So like we'll put a study up for everybody. We're looking at pre-diabetics and having significant benefits that far outweigh. And of course, they're utilizing like metformin.

38:52Shawn Stevenson:They're using some medications that can be valuable. But the lifestyle interventions, people adhere to it far more than the researchers gave them credit for. And they got far better results. People are willing to do the thing if they're aware that it works and it's an option. Right. And this is about empowerment as well. And I want to ask you about this because you mentioned like we've got the microbiome of our gut. We've got a skin microbiome. We've got a lung microbiome. We also have a microbiome of the heart. And now the brain microbiome, this conversation is taking place as well. You know, everywhere that we look, we're finding these microbes.

39:31Shawn Stevenson:And there is a intimate connection between this invisible world of these microbes and our health. Can we talk a little bit about that overall connection? Yeah. So when we think about, you know, let's talk about mitochondria. I think we can just like pull this straight back to mitochondria. mitochondria are in every single cell within our body and this is a different type of communication network mitochondria these cells within our body we're now learning are constantly communicating with each other and i'm not a doctor but it just makes sense everything within us is connected a lot of somatic healers um they'll share stories of you know oh gosh you know i was working with my client doing yoga today with major back pain and now i've got back pain or i was working with the client who had a knee problem now i feel the knee problem right everything's connected on such a greater level so first there's the physiological level which i think that the sooner we can understand that everything that we consume whether it's what we eat or what we drink or the supplements that we take a supplement doesn't know to just go and work on the heart or just go and work on the liver or just go work on the brain or the eyes it's going to work on everything so you've got to understand that in the same way with food when we think about the food that you're eating the food is interacting with those mitochondrial cells that communication network and dictating is this going to fuel us and help drive us towards wellness and this version of myself that i'm daydreaming of at 90 or 100 or is this going to keep us anchored in our truth meanwhile okay we're staying here keep the inflammation up let's keep this free radical damage rising let's stay in the state of inflammation that hscrp is going to continue to rise so this is how we need to understand that everything is connected.

41:14And there's another thought process that I had that you'd brought up before that I want to get to. When we talk about making these changes and the studies that you had mentioned, I don't know that I would have come into yoga on my own, but my parents imprinted on me food as medicine. My parents imprinted on me meditation and yoga. I remember my dad would tap me on the shoulder at five o 'clock in the morning to go and meditate. And as a kid, it's like, come on, dad, seriously, like you're making me go do this. I would often just fall asleep. But sure enough, in my greatest time of need, I knew that that's what I had to go back to.

41:47And I bring this up because I know that you have a lot of parents that are listening and you are an incredible parent. And we talk about the rituals that we have in our households, the things that we imprint for our children will become them. I think that these habits that people always search for, what's a new habit that I can introduce? What's a new ritual? What's a new product, a new supplement? Habits come and go, but rituals become you. They become part of your DNA. They become so important that they actually will change your own DNA. We can now prove this through epigenetics. We can literally rewire our genes to age well or age poorly.

42:23So for the parents who are listening who think that, you know, putting the carrots on the counter doesn't work or telling or cuing your child to take a deep breath off, they don't want to do it. They don't want to go meditate or they don't want to go to yoga or lift weights or whatever it is. Keep practicing. It will become, it will be a ritual in your household that will become so important to them in the future. Don't give up.

42:43Shawn Stevenson:I love this. So we've got coherence if we're talking about our mitochondria, all, everything being in sync and working together, coherence with these microbial communities. You mentioned earlier heart coherence. And so I want to ask more about what that means. What does that entail? and is this something that we should be striving to do if we're wanting to heal our hearts and our bodies overall? You got it. So studies really show us now that even something like leaky gut or gut permeability can actually cause a low heart rate variability. Better vagal tone increases heart rate variability. So HRV, it's the variations of rhythm and the time between each heartbeat.

43:28and although it might not sound like high hrv sounds good but it's actually something that you want when our hrv tends to drop we tend to be in a state of illness or stress or lacking resilience in our body to to heal so we really want to if we're going to use biomarkers and trackers and all those wearables recognizing that hrv is a powerful indication of what our heart rate variability is so now studies have proven that when we focus on increasing our heart rate variability whether that's through meditation or gratitude or humming or chanting or singing our hrv actually increases well what does that mean by going to that space of gratitude i'm increasing my hrv which means that i'm building healing resilience within my body if i'm building healing resilience within my body i'm actually warding off inflammation i'm optimizing my digestion i'm improving improving oxygenation to every cell in my body.

44:24I'm increasing blood flow to my brain. I'm probably healing my leaky gut and my heart feels as though it's safe. So I think that understanding your heart rate variability in terms of using heart coherence as a tool to get there is something that's so key for the future. And to get into a coherent state is actually something quite simple. Every single morning when I wake up, obviously because of my history with my heart, I'm so grateful for this thing man like this thing has been beating for me since i even before i even got here right and how many of us even think about our heartbeat right unless it speeds up way too fast or we get scared or we get a heart sharp pain and studies even show that the problem with cardiovascular disease is that we ignore the symptoms and we treat the pain when it's too late don't ignore the symptoms show some gratitude for your heart and just notice one is there any tension two am i breathing three what is my state right now am i in a sense of gratitude or am i living in stress and fear and the challenge with the world right now is that a lot of people are stuck in stress and fear right that is not a state of coherence so first thing in the morning hands over heart just think about one two or three things that you're grateful for but don't just think about them feel them and i ended up getting into nlp which is neurolinguistic programming And I did that because most of my clients, they generally knew what to eat, but I recognized what we had mentioned before, the power of our thoughts to impact our actions every single day.

45:55One of the practices in NLP is just getting into the emotion that you want to feel through visualization. So I'll guide my clients into kind of a best self snapshot. And listeners can even do this right now. So when's the last time in your life that you felt a sense of true happiness or joy or peace? like just think about it for a second when's the last time the event felt a true sense of happiness joy peace maybe your hands were even up in the air just like oh my god i feel so good right now even if it was for a split second and this could have been yesterday it could have been on vacation you might have to go back to a time when you were a child go back to that memory when you felt that happiness joy and peace to the point that you make it feel real you'll be able to start you know visualizing what it felt like maybe you'll see colors you'll remember a smell you might remember some sounds in the background we now know through great doctors like dr joe dispensa the body doesn't know the difference if your mind can make it feel real enough your body doesn't know the difference of it happening in the past or in the present moment so whatever the emotion is that you're craving right now in your life make it feel real if it's happiness focus daydream on happiness if it's health focus on health and what you're doing when you're a healthy person if it's peace if it's love whatever it is just focus on that make it feel so real to yourself every morning before you get out of bed this is your morning ritual you'll be in a coherent state and like starting your day off in that state is everything you're more likely going to make better choices

47:22Shawn Stevenson:for yourself please do this before you pick your phone up just please yeah no phones first thing that instantly cues stress, right? It immediately moves us into, for some of us into a dysregulated state. But if it's just like worry or busyness, we're far too busy. No one should start the day that way. Mornings are magical. Use them for that. Yes. So we're talking about this. I mean, one of the big takeaways today is the gut-heart connection. And being a nutritionist, it has a lot to do obviously with what you're eating and what's going into the gut. And so let's talk about healing our gut. And obviously we've talked about the implications for our heart health, for our brain health, for our health overall.

48:07Shawn Stevenson:But what's going on with gut health today? And what are some of the major culprits and things that we need to be mindful of and to possibly avoid if we can? And let's also talk about what some things that we can do to improve our gut health. Love it. Yeah, you talk about so many of these things. but I think people really need to understand, especially now that they're all backed by science, right? So believe it or not, the first thing as a nutritionist that I work with with my clients on is not their food plan. I want to talk to them about whether they're sleeping, whether they're resting. So we start with sleep.

48:42Make sure that you're getting the rest and the recovery that your body needs living in today's stressful world. So this means optimizing your bedroom. Bedrooms are used for sleep, for sex, for reading, and for rest. That is it. I do not want to see a screen in anyone's bedroom, focus on blackout curtains. That is part of healing your gut. Next, we want to think about just stress resilience throughout the day. So making sure if you're looking at your calendar, at the ashram, one of the greatest things is the schedule that we're on every single day. We call this kind of a, it's Dhinacharya. It's this beautiful, sacred structure.

49:18Dhinacharya is literally going hour by hour at the ashram. You know exactly what you're doing at that time. And there's great people like Steve Kotler. He's put the science behind this and he talks about time blocking. During those times, you know what you're doing. You're able to give all of your focus and your attention to that one thing without the distraction of your phone. I promise this is going to come back to gut health. It means that you're not constantly getting reminders and dings and distractions through one process. You're probably more efficient and more productive throughout the day.

49:51You're going to feel a lot more peace from that state. And when you feel a lot more peace through that state, your gut's going to be able to relax and digest your food. Now we can get to our food. How are most of us eating? We're eating when we are on the go. We're eating when we're scrolling. We're eating when we're watching the news and global events, which again, remember the power of the mind, whether it's happening across in another country or happening on our phones, we're experiencing that emotion. we now know that stress completely shuts off your body's ability to digest food you have to be in a restorative state for your body to assimilate and metabolize the nutrients from the foods that you're eating so the state that you eat it should be peaceful it should be relaxing um you should turn your phone over i typically like if i were to meet you for lunch our phones typically go away we know this um put your phones away look at your environment and maybe go out for a walk after you eat to really allow your body to metabolize the nutrients that you've just taken in.

50:48And this is so important because digestion takes up a tremendous amount of energy from the body. And most of us, we don't even think twice about it. We throw whatever we want down the hatch. We expect our bodies to deal with it and we get back to eating and driving at the same time or going back into intense work. So the state that you eat is so important to optimize digestion more than any pill more than any supplement and then of course the foods right so foods are essential and i think the greatest thing that i love that's starting to trend right now is fiber fiber is essential to an optimally functioning gut why because the good healthy happy microbes within our gut microbiome they thrive on this fiber it's their food to thrive so without even taking a probiotic if you can increase your good quality fiber from polyphenol rich foods that have lots of color i'm talking about fruits and tons of veggies eat the rainbow focus on eating um just as much produce as you can those types of veggies and that fiber is going to fuel the good microbes within the gut microbiome and uh what i teach my clients is ultimately how to build a plate so how do we do this focus less on the diet if you're looking down at your plate 70 of your plate should be full of that eat the rainbow colorful veggies red purples blues and greens that food all has information the fiber the nutrients the phytochemicals but also the nutrients that come from the soil that they were grown in is information for a gut microbiome we don't think about that this is the power of eating seasonally if we eat seasonally microbes within the soil support our immune system at that time, right?

52:31And then of course, there's protein. Protein is essential. Protein is essential for longevity, for our muscles, for our brain. So focusing on high quality protein. But the challenge today is that right now we're living in a protein crazed environment where people are eating a lot more protein, but they're not eating higher quality sources of protein meaning the animals are from factories they're eating fake foods or eating genetically modified ingredients to help fatten them up they're also in a very stressful environment in cages inside without any daylight or any grass when those animals are slaughtered in a state of stress the cortisol in those animals is going to spike you're going to consume the cortisol from that animal protein that you're eating from those animals.

53:21So it's something to think about. Whether you're vegan or eat animal protein, I'm here for it. Whatever you prefer, whatever feels great for your physiology. But please, let's just start to support the farmers that put the consciousness back into farming to give us higher quality cuts of animal protein. And then of course, there's good quality fats. You talk a lot about good quality fats. They are essential to every cell within our body, essential for our brain function, but also essential for our heart. and it's this trifecta of high quality phytonutrient rich fiber good quality proteins and good quality fat that will fuel our gut fuel our heart and fuel our brain it's pretty simple it's pretty simple man like the problem is that we we don't we're associating food as being things that come from packages and boxes and from an ayurvedic lens anything that comes from a package or a box is dead food.

54:11It's nutrient void. There is no nutrient prana, life force energy to it. So the reason why the color is so important is we have to think that we digest with all of our senses. We digest with our mouth and what we eat. We digest what we smell, what we watch, what we listen to and what we feel. So what you see on your plate is part of the digestive process. Make it look beautiful. And I'm already hearing maybe some viewers think, well, Eating that way is too expensive, right? Why is that that just eating whole foods has become something that's so challenging and expensive for people? Buy what's on sale.

54:46Because the other part about healing your gut is diversity. So if you're going to the grocery market and every single week you're buying what's on sale, it's forcing you to eat foods that are different. Different foods have different nutrient profiles, different vitamin profiles that are going to help to heal your gut as well.

55:03Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, I love that too. Quality matters. That's what I used to do when I was worried about, you know, being at the checkout counter in my car not going through. And I would look for those yellow signs, you know, the things that were on sale. And also sometimes stocking up on those things, too. You know, if I could save an extra$20 off my grocery bill by stocking up on those things. So, of course, and it's just prioritizing. It's just prioritizing. And, you know, the flip side to that, too, is, OK, now you're buying what's on sale. I don't have the time, right? I don't have the time to cook it, to prepare it, to chop it.

55:40One of the gifts is that when you go to the grocery store now, a lot of those things are pre-cut or pre-washed. If that's available, go for it. In our family, one of our other rituals on Sundays is after we go grocery shopping or go to the farmer's market, we'll chop everything up and we store everything in glass containers in our fridge so that it's literally ready to go. So every night when I'm cooking dinner, I'll put out some veggies that are already chopped up. My kids will just come by and start snacking on those. That alone, for me, that's like their multivitamin. I'm so happy just with that.

56:11So food preparation and just planning for it. Your healthcare, your healthcare starts in the kitchen.

56:18Shawn Stevenson:Oh, that's a bar. Okay, so I was surprised and grateful that you started off by sharing that sleep is part of healing your gut. Again, most of us do not think about that. And, of course, you mentioned the stress input. it obviously got into a diet but you know tie this all together when we're thinking about this phenomenon of of human experience and emotion and feeling you know um we generally tie that to gut feelings yeah right or a heart-based association with feeling and throughout time you know documented for centuries the human heart has kind of been this source of of love and expression and even anger, you know, and passion and all these things, these feelings associated with the human heart.

57:05Shawn Stevenson:And these two organs are most synonymous with human emotion and feeling. Of course, they're connected. And so this conversation is so important for us to pay more attention to our thoughts, our emotions, our stress inputs, processing stress in order to have healthier, you know gut health and heart health I want to ask you about this as well because you know right now there's a lot of change taking place in the world to say the least and it's we we talked a little bit about this earlier but the most important thing I believe is really being intentional about being with other people and experiencing life in the real world and you're doing so many things to bring people together and to create education, but also experiences as well.

58:01Shawn Stevenson:And you've created a show and it's a hit show already. It just took off when it, when it first launched called Rooted in Wellness. And I want to ask you about what that means and also how that relates to us collectively as a community and coming together. Ah, thank you for that. Yeah, it's a passion project that I think mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, I had to just be ready for because I feel a hypersense of awareness of the suffering that's happening out in the world. And you and I shared about the power when we share a story with people. And sometimes the person off the street will say, Oh my God, your story really inspired me.

58:42I have these heart palpitations. And Oh my God, those people are out there. okay i gotta i gotta share this so the intention of rudin and wellness was really just based on my own healing journey i think it's time that um we start to merge these ancient rituals that come not just from my indian culture but from all of our cultures all of us have rituals that that exist that we have to keep alive to heal our body and help us feel better but we also have to take into account the amazing magnitude and the magnificence that's available to us through western medicine right um friend or foe there's a lot of things that are happening in that world that i think you and i disagree with it saves lives though and through the testing that we can do today and understanding our physiology today through aging and prevention is there but we have to merge the two worlds together so i'm actively just telling stories and seeking experts like you to come on and just share the stories and how we can make that happen um now when i break that down even further i really just took the foundations of the ashram so working with my clients i help them build their own ashram at home so that you don't have to go away you have to recognize that whatever your environment is you make that your healing sanctuary and on my website i go through these eight roots of healing a lot of the things that we've talked about today proper sleep proper exercise proper diet proper rest proper hydration community but also spirituality and connection and then there's emotional freedom and trauma release so these are kind of the three bigger areas but i'm finding more often than not with especially over the past 10 years when i start working with my clients everyone's so interested and mona just tell me what to eat how am i working out what's the protocol what are the supplements i'll just do it all the people who stay with me make the transition into making their healing a spiritual journey spiritual journey meaning you recognize that this body and this vessel good god this incredible thing is carrying me through life the things that i've put it through the things that i've eaten the things that i've had to experience and metabolize like this body is carrying me and then when you get a little bit older when you get to your 40s and you give birth and have children it becomes so much more sacred and you realize like it's just so precious and time all of a sudden starts to speed up and it's going by really really fast now and I want to preserve it as much as I can.

1:01:06So when I guide my clients into understanding putting the spirituality back into your body doesn't have to be a religious experience it's simply the act of tuning in. So through practices every day we're understanding that we're given this gift of our mind and these thoughts that tend to be way too busy and overactive every single day but it's causing a lot of the problems and a lot of my suffering internally. So what if I were to continue to practice telling the brain like, okay, brain, you know, I'm kind of tired of you running your thing constantly, nonstop, causing me a lot of stress and anxiety, and I can't take it anymore.

1:01:42I'm actually feeling pretty sad and depressed. And we put that sense of freedom back into the body so that we can feel liberation. The body can start to like, okay, the brain is not freaking out anymore. It might come up and then you can just gently guide it into feeling, no, I'm not done. come back into your body gentle practices throughout your day throughout your year with your community with yourself so that you just know what it feels like to feel at home like this is your first home how are you treating it and then recognizing that whatever your environment is around you is what's going to dictate the impact what's happening in your home so choosing wisely community is so big i think a lot of us have probably gone through cycles of friends that we outgrew because we're choosing things that are more aligned with how we want to feel.

1:02:30We're choosing soul family who were friends because of how we want to feel. We're now seeking to move to places that are more aligned with how we want to feel. We're now coming online to the fact that this system of go, go, go, do, do, do, do more, do more, and then more, right? LA is notorious for this because there's always another home run here, right? It's like, I don't need that anymore. Like I want to come back home to this feeling. And what it ultimately feels like is a sense of freedom. When's the last time that we talk about freedom? How often do we talk about freedom in our conversation and just feeling really great or really good?

1:03:06And I think that that is the wisdom that's a necessity moving forward. If we're really going to change the trajectory for healing and health.

1:03:14Shawn Stevenson:I love this so much. I love hanging out with you. another part of this community tie-in that you are very intentional about with your show is you're live streaming the show when it's happening right and so we had this experience together and your husband is running all this stuff and my son and this is so interesting again like we have our family members there yeah and I didn't know your husband was going to be there and like running all this stuff as well and my son was just kind of blown away when we got home my wife was like how many cameras were they using because he was managing and i was like i guess three i don't even brayden was like four you know and so he's modulating all this stuff and broadcasting it live it was broadcast through and i got this from my son because i didn't know i was with you but i believe it was on instagram being broadcast and youtube yeah sean like the the drive for me right now is is impact and also the intention behind the podcast and the reason for going live my drive every day is how can i help as many people as humanly possible and some days that could be one person on another day that could be five or ten i don't know but that's really been the driver behind not only the podcast but also a private membership community that i've been launching it's actually why it took me so long to come on this podcast i'm like i want to make sure that this is up and running before i come on because i know that healing for me took living in community at the ashram i needed to be with other people i needed other people to kind of witness my suffering and to hold space for me and to acknowledge that i wasn't crazy and that my symptoms were like oh they were feeling it too that was part of the healing and so now if i can have a community through the hundreds and hundreds of clients that i've worked with over the past thousands over the past decade if we can commune together and have synergy in our story synergy in what's working synergy and what's making us feel good and turn down the noise and what's happening in the health and wellness world right now there's almost look at that you just took an exhale see it just makes you exhale because the world is loud if health and wellness feels complicated to you feels overwhelming we are messing things up we've got the story all wrong health and wellness should feel like stillness and peace and coming home and ease and gratitude and love and i get to do this and experiencing joy and victory and love every single day, right?

1:05:41If we're surrounded by more people who like just start to drink that Kool-Aid just a little bit, like, okay, feel it. I want to come out and believe this. I'm going to feel it a little bit. We might go back into the stress and worry of modern day living, but the more that we can just like see the light every single day, we become the light. And I think more than anything, I needed the reminder that that light is still there and it doesn't mean escaping life. and it doesn't mean that I have to go hide back at the ashram anymore. It's right in front of us every single day, and other people are seeking this too.

1:06:11Shawn Stevenson:Yes, yes. This has been so amazing. And can you share, you mentioned the membership site. Yes, everything's on monasharma.com. You can find all the links to Rooted in Wellness. You can find my Eight Limbs of Healing. You can find How to Build a Plate that we talked about today. And, of course, the link to sign up to my membership community where there are access to everything that I learned at the ashram. So it's guided meditations, guided breathwork, guided yoga, all my recipes that I love, the brands that you and I just find synergy with because they're doing such great things in this world.

1:06:41And, of course, monthly calls that we're all going to commune on together.

1:06:44Shawn Stevenson:Fire. This is awesome. Thanks. This is awesome. I'm so grateful we could finally make this happen. Me too. You're amazing. One of my favorite people. You too. Just so easy. You know, it's just easy to connect and to hang out with you. Me too. And this has been amazing. I can't wait to do this again. Me too. Thanks, Sean. Of course. the one and only Mona Sharma, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, please share it out with the people that you care about. Send it directly from the podcast app that you're listening on.

1:07:15Shawn Stevenson:Or of course, you could take a screenshot and share this episode out on social media. You can tag me, I'm at Sean Model on Instagram and tag Mona as well. Show her some love. I'm sure that you would love to see that you were listening today. We've got some epic masterclasses. and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode.

1:07:47Shawn Stevenson:And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful empowering great content to help you transform your life thanks for tuning in