Episode 226: Taking A Functional Approach to Health with Human Design
Over the past year, I’ve received questions and comments regarding "making a big pivot" from health coaching to Human Design so in this episode I discuss why it's not a pivot, but rather an expansion, by sharing my perspectives on:
Taking a “functional” approach
Stress as the root cause of all root causes
Peeling back the layers to uncover the root causes of stress, using work-related stress as an example
How talking about “health” without including body, mind, and emotional health is an incomplete conversation
Human Design vs other personality frameworks
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 121: Understanding Your Priorities & Establishing Boundaries in the Workplace
Episode 215: Finding My Voice: Vulnerability in Communications
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Connect with Naomi:
Share the Episode:
“I haven’t pivoted, rather, I’ve expanded because Functional Nutrition isn’t a diet or a lifestyle, it’s an approach, a methodology on how to solve problems. Marrying Human Design with Functional Nutrition is my approach that I’m choosing to work in because it helps me and my clients get to that next level of transformation.”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there and welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I’m your host, Naomi Nakamura.
Today's episode is coming to you prompted by an Instagram conversation I recently had that I'm grateful for because it sets up the next few episodes. You guys know that I like to sequence episodes together and sometimes do a mini-series, sometimes have standalone episodes.
The past few episodes have been Projector-focused, but today’s episode is the result of an exchange had with someone who slid into my DMs. The reason I’m having an episode on it is because it perfectly sets up the next few episodes that I’m hoping to have, fingers crossed that scheduling works out with a guest or two that I have planned. Over the past year, I’ve had several conversations with listeners and others in my community about how I’ve “pivoted.” So today, I want to have a conversation about this and why I don’t see it this way.
In the, gosh, six, almost seven years now that I’ve worked with health coaching clients, I’ve made a lot of observations in each of their situations. With the nature of the work, we do together, it tends to be very personal – it's deep work. And with each, I've done a lot of analytical thinking, seeing patterns, and observing how things evolved.
So, coming back to the exchange I had that inspired this episode, the listener expressed that they missed the topics that I talked about in the first 150 episodes of this show on holistic health.
First, thank you for listening to the first 150 episodes, that’s a lot of episodes and I'm really glad that they found those episodes interesting, valuable, and helpful.
So, let's talk about what holistic health is. I haven’t opened dictionary.com or anything to look this up, but off the top of my head, holistic health is an expanded approach to health beyond the conventional medical approach of symptoms, diagnosis, and medication.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that conventional approach because we all need relief from immediate symptoms. But I think at this point, if you've been listening to the show for 150 episodes or beyond, you know, as well as I do that more often than not, there’s more to the story.
Of course, if someone has a bug bite, it's a bug bite that they need medication for, but what I'm talking about is chronic illness, and we know that when it comes to chronic illnesses, there's likely more to the story.
Now, my health coaching approach has always been Functional Nutrition, but I've come to realize is that I don't think I’ve done a good job of explaining what Functional Nutrition is.
Functional Nutrition is not a diet. It's not like Whole 30, it's not like Keto, it’s not like Paleo. It’s a way of thinking. It’s analytical thinking. It’s a methodology in how you look at, and how you approach your health to address the root causes of your chronic illness. At this point, I'm using causes in plural tense because when it comes to chronic illness, there's likely to be more than one thing going on. It's about addressing the root causes, which I can't necessarily say that holistic health always does in its approach. I’ve also come to the realization, and I'll share more about this next week, but even in Functional Medicine and integrative medicine, that whole-body approach still doesn't always happen. I’ve come to learn that it really depends on who you work with.
I’ve had health care providers that have taken a whole-body approach and others who, while they do practice integrative and functional medicine, still didn’t necessarily take an analytical approach for whatever reason.
Functional Nutrition isn’t a prescribed way of living or eating. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a methodology.
Dr. Mark Hyman is a functional medicine doctor. He is or was at one time, head of functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. He’s written several books and has a large social media presence in part due to his podcast. He’s an influencer in the functional medicine world.
I've followed Dr. Hyman for a long time, and I really admire his work. I recently did a quick scroll through of his Instagram feed as I prepared for this episode.
He has posted on what to eat, how to eat, and how you move your body. And yes, we want to take a bio-individual approach, but there are some fundamentals that apply to all of us. And I think he really shares some complex ideas in an easily consumable way for people who aren't totally immersed in this world as you and I are because if you're here listening to me, especially for 150+ episodes, you’re immersed as I am.
So, along with the ideas that Dr. Hyman shares, the way of functional medicine way is to “test don't guess,” meaning, take lab tests to see what's going on rather than just guess and make assumptions. Collect data.
And then, of course, supplements are recommended to help repair and support various functions in your body.
And yes, I've done all of that. I’m doing all of that right now as I treat thyroid and atopic dermatitis.
So, heavy emphasis is placed on how and what you eat, how you move your body, lab work, supplements, and stress management.
In my opinion, based on my own experiences and observations, we tend to get caught up in the food and the lab testing, and the supplements. And like I said those things are so important.
Let me be very clear – Over the years, and in the present moment, those things have been important in my own healing journeys.
But what I’m also saying is that not nearly enough time is spent dissecting the other deeper contributors, namely stress, that are part of or the actual root cause that won’t be found through a lab test or fixed through food and supplements.
Dr. Hyman has a post in his Instagram feed that I’ll link to in the show notes that says, “We're up against a chronic epidemic: stress.”
So, what does that mean? In the caption, he talks about how stress comes in many forms. I've been saying this for years.
Stress comes from eating foods that aren't right for our bodies, right now. We tend to demonize certain foods. I certainly have before. But we need to understand that just because we may not be able to tolerate a certain food right now, that doesn't mean that you won't be later. That’s what gut-healing helps with.
So, stress comes from eating foods that aren't right for your body, right now.
Stress can also come from over-exercising, or under-exercising. Many of us, myself included, have turned to exercise to relieve stress, but too much or too little of it can also be a source of stress.
Stress can come from exposure to things in our environment whether it be smog, exhaust, or fumes in the air, in the personal care products that we use on our bodies, or the products that we use in our homes. So, that's another form of stress, because it puts stress on our system.
Then there's financial stress, right, we're in inflation right now, and we’re all feeling financial stress.
There’s socio-economic stress.
There’s stress from systemic injustice.
There’s stress from relationships - family members, friends, partners, colleagues.
Speaking of colleagues, there’s work-related stress.
So, when we talk about stress and how we need to manage it – understand that this is a complex topic.
Back to Dr. Hyman’s IG feed, some of the solutions he recommends for stress are meditation, relaxing your mind, and human touch through hugging or massage.
These are all great things and they do help us relax, but are they really addressing what is at the root of your stress? I argue no.
Let me explain what I mean.
Let’s break down workplace stress, because I know this is something that I’ve talked a lot about on this on this show, especially in the first 150 episodes of the show. It's something that I have first-hand experience with many times throughout my career. And it's something that I know you all have experienced or are experiencing too.
We all experienced work-related stress at some point or another, to varying degrees, so how do you get to the root cause of it?
First, what is it about work that’s stressing you out? Are you being micromanaged? Do you hate the nature of the daily work that you do? Do you not get along with your coworkers? Is it stressful for you because of your commute? Is it stressful because you're not getting paid the salary that affords you to meet your financial needs? This is all work-related stress.
So, how do you cope with work-related stress?
I've used food to cope with stressful jobs. I’ve used exercise, as I’ve shared many times, to cope with being micromanaged. That’s how I got into endurance training. It became an obsessive thing for me to where exercise became harmful rather than helpful. Ironically, what I was trying to do to help my health ended up hurting it.
How else do we cope with stress?
We take our frustrations and anger out on others which don’t help in having healthy relationships.
Stress also disrupts our sleep. I think we can all attest to that. And when that repeatedly look for stop gaps, right? Melatonin, Epsom salt baths, diffusing essential oils.
We look for all kinds of stop gaps to do what we need to do to find immediate relief from what’s bothering us, as we should.
But eventually, when we're under prolonged chronic stress that creates more inflammation in our body. Some inflammation is good, but it’s more than our body can tolerate, for prolonged periods of time, that’s how chronic illness happens. And when we’re all chronically stressed it becomes an epidemic. So then, when that happens, what do we do?
We look for answers on how to solve it. But it's hard, especially in the health care system in the US - there's all kinds of problems there, which I’ll get into in the next episode.
So, then we turn to holistic health and functional medicine, anything else that can help us find the answers that we seek.
And we find ourselves taking lab tests, ordering supplements, which aren’t cheap by any means, and sometimes, we start to bio-hack our health.
I’ve never been into biohacking. I didn’t have the energy or brainpower for that. I think at some point it can become obsessive and counterproductive.
I realized this when I first heard about MTHFR. Being a 1 / 3 Projector, I took various tests to see if I had the genes for MTHFR.
But then I thought, “You know what? I really don't think MTHFR is going to be the answer, the elusive root cause of my health issues.”
I mean, it could be for a small percentage of the population. But to really make that definitive determination, everything else in one’s health would have to be extremely perfect. And that’s just not realistic.
That’s the closest I’ve come to biohacking.
The same could be said about lab tests and supplements – is it addressing what’s REALLY at the root of what’s causing chronic health issues?
Maybe. But likely they’re baby steps toward it. It does help us feel in control in what’s usually a situation where we feel confused, frustrated, and out of control. I think it also gives us something to look at when we don’t have answers.
But I don't think it completely addresses the root causes of stress, or in this example that I’m using - workplace stress.
So, you’re stressed because you’re being micromanaged. Because you don’t like what you do daily. Because you don't get along with your coworkers.
So will lab tests, supplements, food, and biohacking help with that?
I see the root of these things as a lack of boundaries, and I’ve recently done two episodes on boundaries which I’ll link to in the show notes.
It's a lack of communication - being able to communicate how you feel with your peers and your manager. I was thinking about this the other day, about communication because when in our life are we ever taught how to effectively communicate.
Corporations spent thousands of dollars on corporate training programs to teach their employees how to communicate effectively. I know this because when I first moved to San Francisco, I worked for a training company that taught communication skills, and our flagship program was called Effective Communications which taught adults, professionals, how to effectively communicate in their jobs.
So, when and where in our life did, we learn how to become good communicators? Definitely not in school, right?
So, we have a lack of boundaries, a lack of communication skills, and then if you're not happy with what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, what do you want to do instead? What is it that you would love to be doing for work instead of what you’re doing now? And why aren't you doing it?
So, then we can peel the layers back even further.
If you're stressed out about work, you might use food to cope. You might use exercise as another way to cope, which is what I did.
Or because your sleep is so disrupted, you may feel tired all the time and simply don’t have the energy to exercise. Or to cook meals at home. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know – you’re smart and you know all of this.
So is the lack of boundaries, inability to effectively communicate, and not doing what it is you really want to do at the root of your problems?
Peeling even further back, if you think about it, at the root here is about not speaking up for yourself. Not prioritizing yourself. Not having self-respect. Not being able to trust yourself.
And at the root of all of that is not loving yourself – it’s a lack of self-love.
Yes, this is deep stuff. And it can be uncomfortable to think, uncomfortable to accept, to see that this is what you’ve been going through. My friend, I know because 98% of what I speak about on this show is based on personal experiences. What I’ve just talked to you about now is what I have gone through myself.
And so, we’re taught to deal with stress using tools like therapy, journaling, and meditation. These are all great – I use these tools myself. Heck, I still see my therapist over a decade later. I don't see him as often as I used to, but I still do. He's even been on the guest in one of the first 150 episodes of the show.
I’ve recently shared how journaling helped me gain some clarity around things I’d been burdened with. I talked about it recently in Episodes 214 and 215.
I've had episodes on meditation – again, these are all great tools.
But having a framework that I can work in, in an actionable way has been tremendously helpful. For me, this framework has been Human Design.
Because addressing these deeply layered root causes is about self-awareness, acknowledgment, and acceptance of how I’ve been conditioned.
Because when I talk about not having self-respect, not trusting myself, and not loving myself, it also came down to knowing who I am, accepting who I am, loving who I am, and accepting how I felt about myself.
I think deep down, some deeper than others, we know who we really are. But despite knowing this, deep down, I really didn’t feel free to be that person. I felt that I had to be what other people expected me. And perhaps at one time in my life, I was that person, but we all grow and evolve, right?
Therefore now, I don't speak of just what I spoke about in the first 150 episodes of this podcast. I've grown, evolved, and expanded, as we all have.
And for me to not speak about the things I’ve learned, how I’ve evolved and the tools and frameworks that I now use is not being true and authentic to who I am now.
Human Design has been the framework that’s given me context to better understand myself, and accept who I am – all my weird synchronicities and all. As a result, I feel like I now have the permission to be myself and to feel okay showing people who I really am, that I don’t need to try to fit myself into someone else's mold, to someone else's expectation of who I am - like being a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
And I know that you know what this feels like, but I don’t know anyone who can’t relate to what it feels like to be a square peg and forced to fit into a round hole.
Imagine the relief that you feel when you don't have to do that anymore when you can just be who you are. This is what I mean when I talk about helping my clients find freedom and empowerment. It's about being free and empowered to be who you are.
Now, having an undefined G-Center which is the center of self-identify and direction, I sometimes don’t know how to be who I am because the energy of this center isn’t always present for me. So, in those times when I don't exactly know how to be who I am, my Human Design gives me an actionable direction on how to proceed – what’s the way for me best communicate, what’s the best way for me to make decisions, how I best process information, how I can best express myself.
So, think about it - taking advice from someone who doesn't know who you are, who might not even know you personally, or from someone who couldn't be any more different from you and you're trying your best to follow their advice or whatever it is that they teach and it's not working for you…
Then you start stressing yourself out, judging yourself, tearing yourself down because you're wondering why their way isn’t working for you, and you think gosh, there must be something wrong with me. I must be doing something wrong, or I'm not good enough for this, or I'm just not cut out for this.
My friend, have you ever experienced this? Bear in mind that this doesn't only apply when it comes to your work and work-related stress. This doesn't just apply when it comes to your health. It also applies to your relationships - your familial and social relationships, parenting if you're a parent. What your Human Design reveals can be applied to every aspect of your life.
So, thinking about your health, if you had a roadmap on how to live your most authentic self, think about how free and empowered and joyful that can be. What would life be like? What would your health be like?
Doesn’t that sound like the best kind of stress management tool? The best kind of protocol or results that can help you live your best, healthiest life?
Now, of course, there are things like genetics and family history and things beyond our control that also contribute to our health and root causes, but knowing my Human Design, knowing our Human Design gives us actionable things that we can do to support our personal development and self-growth in conjunction with working with our health care teams, with eating in a way that is best you right now, along with moving in a way that is best for you right now, along with the supplements recommended to you, along with therapy, along with journaling, along with meditation – along with whatever you’re doing to support other parts of your health. Because to me, this is how we address root causes.
So, in response to that DM conversation about missing all the things I talked about in the first 150 episodes of this show, first, I'm so appreciative that this person took the time to listen. It’s a lot of episodes and I'm truly grateful to have that time and energy shared with me.
But this person isn’t the first person I've had this conversation with and when they comment that I’ve made a 180-degree pivot in what I do – have I really?
The way I see it, I've expanded on the approach I've always taken – expanded the analytical approach of uncovering what root causes are, particularly when it comes to stress management and its connectedness to chronic illness because after doing this work for a number of years, it’s about the food, it’s about the lifestyle, but yet it’s not.
In my opinion, if you’re not addressing it in a deeply profound, personal way, it’s an incomplete conversation, an incomplete approach. I understand that not everyone can go from zero to deeply profound - it certainly has taken me years to get to this point but all the things I’ve experienced along the way have been stepping stones to get me to where I am now.
And I would gather that if you've been with me for this long now. I don't think it's a far-fetched conversation to have with you currently.
So, one last thing I want to say because I've had this come up and I have a future episode plan on this, and I know I say this a lot, but you guys I have episodes planned through the rest of the year. So, a future episode might not be for a while, so I just want to make a point one last point because there's inevitably going to be someone that says, “Well, yeah, but there are other tools to help with self-awareness.”
And they’re right. There's the love languages, Myers Briggs, and the Enneagram to name a few, and I have to tell you, my results from all of those frameworks have been pretty spot on and they’ve been incredibly insightful.
However, those personality type frameworks are not without the possibility of conditioning because we answer the questions asked in their assessments are subject to being answered based on how we've been conditioned.
I mean, I know people who can't figure out what their Enneagram wing is, or they think that they're an Enneagram Three but their results said something else, but they ignore it because they’re convinced that they're a Type Three, but they're actually another type.
Or after years of thinking that they’re one type only to realize that they’re another. Or, wanting to believe they're an Enneagram 8 because Eight’s have leadership qualities and a commanding presence. But the reality is, they aren't an Eight even though they want to believe they're an Eight.
The thing about Human Design is that there's no possibility for conditioning determining your design – your Type, Strategy, Authority, and everything else about your design.
Rather, Human Design sheds light on how you have been conditioned and it gives us a roadmap on how to decondition ourselves and how we can live authentically true to who we really are. And to me, that is how we address root causes.
And so yes, the things I've talked about in the first 150 episodes of this show are important, but if I'm staying true to my approach of uncovering root causes, this is how we really peel back the layers and get into the grittiness of why we do the things that we do, why do we have the beliefs that we have, how we've been conditioned and what do we do about it?
And I've talked about what to do if your Human Design doesn't resonate with you. But if Human Design itself doesn’t resonate with you either, know this – I’ve yet to meet someone who has looked into their Human Design objectively, without pre-judgment, well I've yet to meet a person who says, “This isn’t me”.
It took a few years for Human Design to land with me but once I gave it a fair chance and took a good look at my design, I couldn't deny it. My design is an actionable roadmap that I can work with, that feels true to who I am without conditioning, that I can look at and say, “This is who I am,” without a doubt.
So, this episode is my long-winded way of saying I haven’t pivoted from what I talked about in the first 150 episodes of the show, I’ve expanded on it because Functional Nutrition is not a diet, it’s not a lifestyle, it's an approach, a methodology you take on how you solve a problem.
It's a framework, my framework, my approach to marrying Human Design with Functional Nutrition that I'm choosing to work in because it’s helped me and it continues to help me and I see it helping the clients that I work with.
As always, thank you for listening, thank you for listening for 150 episodes, and thank you for listening to one episode. I appreciate your time, your energy, and your attention.
And like I said at the start of this episode, hopefully, this sets up the conversations for the next few episodes. I’ll see you back here again next week. Bye for now!
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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