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Hello, my friend and welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I'm your host Naomi Nakamura. About a month or so ago, as I was working on what topics of the next quarter’s podcast episodes would be, I put a call out to my Instagram community to see if there were any requests on specific topics.

I had a bunch of requests come in that will be covered over the next few weeks and months, but today’s episode is in response to a topic request that to be quite honest, I’ve been ruminating on for well over a year - how to make wellness more inclusive.

In retrospect, because hindsight is everything, I thought back to 2015-16 when I just finished nutrition school and was starting out as a health coach. I remember feeling very out of place, that I didn’t fit into what a typical health coach looked like – a tall blonde in a bathing suit doing yoga on the beach in Bali.

We can laugh about it now, but back then, that was very much the image out there of a health coach. I remember thinking that I could not be farther away from that persona, and I wondered if there was a place for me as a health coach because let’s be honest, at least at that time, there weren’t a lot of health coaches that looked like me.

But when it comes to how to make wellness more inclusive, I certainly don’t have all the answers, AND wellness is a broad term, and it covers a variety of things.

I did a little prodding and while the person who requested this topic was referring to how to make clean beauty more inclusive and science-based, that’s not what this conversation is going to address, at least not in this episode – I’ll save that for a future one.

But if we think about wellness, there's so many different things that fall into this category:

Yoga and movement Breathwork and meditation Nutrition and healthy eating Gut and hormone health Lowering your toxic load, which those two things for me, are why clean beauty matters

There’s also:

Acupuncture and chiropractic care – two topics that we discussed in recent episodes There is clean beauty, supplements, really, anything that supports your well-being can fall into the “wellness” space

As I said, I don't have a whole lot of answers on how to make wellness inclusive in these different areas, because I do think there are many ways it’s not inclusive right now and there's a lot of opportunity to make it so.

When it comes to inclusivity, some simple things that we can all do are:

Be mindful of the language that we use. To be honest, that wasn’t something I gave a lot of thought to, but now that I’ve been aware of it, I try to be more mindful in the words that I choose to speak

Another thing that I think matters is cultural appropriation. There are so many things in the wellness world that come from ancient cultures, and I think acknowledgement of that is important.

Share our stories. I did that a little with last month’s episodes for Asian Pacific Heritage Month, but I think sharing our stories, and they not always have to be about race and culture, though that’s important too, but stories on our personal experiences, can help us understand each other and how we came be where we are and who we are. In my personal experience, this fosters a deeper sense of understanding, appreciation, compassion, and empathy for each other.

Along with sharing our stories, how about having meaningful, intentional conversations, and truly showing interest in what the other person actually has to say? When you ask someone, “How’s it going?” genuinely mean it and hear what they have to say.

When I was 17 years old, I left Hawai’i to go to college on the mainland. It was certainly a cultural adjustment and one running joke that my Hawai’i friends and I made was that people would say, “Hi, how are you?” and as we’d answer them, they’d keep walking on by, not interested at all in hearing us answer their question.

It’s funny and we can laugh at it, but I think truly listening to each other, being interested in what other people have to say, and not only that, but feeling the energy behind their words, their emotions, their body language, really SEEING them is another a way that can foster inclusivity.

And lastly, and this is what I really want to spend some time talking about is fostering inclusivity with empowerment through education.

Like wellness is a vast topic, health coaching can also encompass so many areas. My interest has always been in uncovering the root of what’s behind our health concerns. What’s beyond the obvious that’s hidden beneath. Because often, what appears to be the issue is actually a byproduct of a deeper issue.

Then, when it's uncovered, take an integrative approach to address it through the body, mind, and spirit.

There’s always been this divide between holistic or alternative practices vs western, made even greater over the past year with the Covid pandemic.

Both approaches have value, and when practiced together, can be very powerful and even more effective than when used individually.

For example, medications. I’m not opposed to them. Sometimes, they are to calm a situation that needs immediate attention. I’ve been open about taking thyroid medication on and off over years, but when I needed to take it, my goal was always to try making diet and lifestyle changes to heal and support my thyroid function so that I didn’t need to take medications forever.

There are people who believe that once they’re put on medications, no matter the condition, they’re on it for life and that’s simply not true.

There are also people who have health conditions that can be remedied with some diet and lifestyle changes but they're not willing to do so. They'd rather take medications, which doesn't address what's really at the root of their problem, than make the effort to make some changes.

So, if we want to make health and wellness more inclusive? Empower through education. Medications are expensive, health insurances are limited, and don’t even address true healing. Because, as you recall in Episode 174 – our life experiences are stored in our physical bodies so deep healing happens when we address the body, mind and spirit.

So how do we do that?

What’s helped me, and what I teach and guide my clients to do is to do a whole lot of self-observations, get curious and investigate.

For a long time, going as far back as my childhood, I've struggled with getting good quality sleep. As an adult, when insomnia and the inability to get a restful night's sleep became problematic, I went to see my general practitioner. This is before I began exploring alternative healing modalities. My doctor’s answer was to prescribe Ambien and Lunesta, which worked temporarily until they didn't.

That’s when I turned to herbal remedies and over the counter supplements. They had the same results as the medications - they worked for a little while but then eventually they stopped working.

By then I had developed other health conditions that, in retrospect, I believe are related to poor sleep. With my health in a hot mess, that’s when I learned about Functional Medicine and decided to give it a try, because at that point, what did I have to lose?

There’s no doubt that Functional Medicine helped me in so many ways, but the reality is that Functional Medicine is also expensive. It's really costly, even with good insurance. I still struggled with the costs of doctor visits, lab work, and the endless stream of supplements.

I had to pick and choose what was a priority because I couldn’t afford everything that my doctor wanted me to do because Functional Medicine typically isn’t covered by most insurance plans.

Now, I’m lucky, I’m extremely lucky not only to have good insurance, but also to have found a Functional Medicine center within the medical group where I’d been getting my primary care. It’s now where I go for primary care and my insurance covers some of it, but even then, it’s still costly.

While there is no replacing licensed medical professionals for many things, educating ourselves on what we can do for ourselves to improve whatever conditions we’re each struggling with can go a long way so that we don’t have to be so dependent on a broken healthcare system that doesn’t work for most.

Here's a couple of examples that come to mind of how this can help, and I share these because they’re personal experiences either with myself or with someone in my family.

For someone suffering with diabetes who is dependent on insulin, can some education on blood sugar and how to manage and keep it balanced, AND how they can incorporate those lessons in such a way that fits into their daily life empower them to make better choices with what to feed, or what NOT to feed themselves? Getting real on how damaging soda truly is, how it's damaging and what are alternatives so that they don’t feel so deprived if they choose to stop drinking soda?

How about relearning just what is real food? What is healthy, nutrient-dense food that won’t wreck their blood sugar but balance it? And then, what are some healthier options that are close to what their typical diet is, especially if it's based on native cultures?

As a kid, I watched my grandmother have to give my grandfather insulin injections and watched him really struggle because whatever diet recommendations his doctor made were so different from his native Filipino diet. It’s no wonder he felt so deprived and helpless – unable to help himself yet struggled to financially afford the medications that he needed to live.

I was just a kid, but I’ll never forget watching them go through that.

What about someone who suffers with IBS and or raging gut issues. I share this because this was me, and is pretty common with so many people struggling with similar conditions where we suspect that food sensitivities or intolerances are a key factor.

How about, instead of having to pay for really expensive, not covered by insurance, lab tests to identify potential food allergies, sensitivities, intolerances, which is what I did, can someone become empowered by learning how to do an elimination diet to identify offending foods?

And, as a byproduct of this exercise in self-observation, can someone become empowered perhaps by observing, for the first time in a while, or maybe even ever, what their eating habits are, not what they perceived them to be, and what their emotions are around foods that can possibly lead learning about intuitive eating that can lead to even more learning and empowerment?

I share these scenarios because it’s what my own personal experiences have been, and the experiences of some of my past clients who I worked with through an elimination diet process to address IBS but came out of experience, not only empowered in what they can do to address their IBS, but also able to identify their patterns and behaviors around food, improving their relationship with it.

The unexpected byproduct was their mindset shifts - you can hear one of my past clients share her experience with this back in Episode 025 and I’ll link to it in the show notes if that's something that you're interested in hearing more about.

Now, coming back to my struggles with sleep, as I shared, I took Ambien and Lunesta that my general practitioner prescribed for me, and while they did help me in the short-term, the reality is they were just band aids, because they didn't address the larger problem.

The supplements I took, the essential oils I diffused, all these other things were much of the same – band aids on a deeper problem because the root of the problem still wasn't addressed.

At this point I considered that perhaps there was something deeper going on at the subconscious level that was really preventing me from getting deep, restful sleep.

So, I deduced that if I can unpack whatever’s in my subconscious and identify what it is and work on addressing and healing whatever’s there, then perhaps I can also heal other health ailments that I have come about because of my inability to sleep well.

How much better could my body function with better sleep?

This is when I pulled back on everything. I stopped all the costly supplements to the point where now, the only things I take are a daily probiotic, vitamin D, and L-Glutamine. I stopped everything else, and I was on a lot of stuff, but I stopped all of it, and instead, I opened myself up to genuinely develop a consistent meditation practice.

I learned how to do breathwork. I started journaling, which if you haven’t journaled before, requires a level of vulnerability that I really struggled with at the beginning.

But I gave myself permission to try and told myself that it was okay if a lot of gunk comes up from past pain and traumas that I, to be honest, I didn’t want to deal with, but I’m trying to investigate and uncover what’s truly at the root of my problem.

I personally feel that stress is at the root of every problem, however it is that we experienced stress, but the point I want to emphasize is that through education, I’ve been able to empower myself so that I’m able to take more of a leadership role in my health, and in my wellness, using skills that are entirely within me. I don’t really have to be dependent on anyone to do self-observation, to do an elimination diet, to meditate, to journal.

I didn’t have these skills to begin with, but I was able to learn, both from free and paid resources, but by being empowered, I’m more inclusive in my own health and wellness.

And when we’re more empowered and leaders in our own health, we feel better, and when we feel better, we’re happier, and happier people are less focused on themselves, and as humans, want to help other people, the community, we think beyond ourselves.

And that’s a long-winded way of sharing just my perspective on how we can make health and wellness more inclusive.

Like I said, I don't have all the answers, heck, I don’t even know if this is the right answer. , But this is where my thoughts are at this moment – who knows, maybe I’ll change in six months – I mean, I have an Open Head center and an Open Ajna center in my Human Design, which means I’m able to see things from many different perspectives….

But since I was asked to share my thoughts, and remember, I’m a Projector in Human Design and we Projectors have to wait for invitations…

So, I'm gonna leave this right here, and thank you so much for listening.

As always, I'd love to hear your ideas and perspectives, perhaps you might offer one that I hadn’t thought of, so I'm happy to hear from them.

You can always reach out to me on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/178 for Episode 178, or you can come over and find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.

Thank you so much for your time. I say this a lot, but I truly mean it - we can never have more time, we all only have 24 hours in a day and we all have so many things going on. I know I do, and I know you do too, so the fact that you have made it to the end of this episode, and you're still listening, well, I appreciate that. I appreciate your time, and I appreciate your attention and I just want you to know that. Thank you for listening and I'll see you right back here again next week. Bye.