Speaker 1 (00:00:05):
Hello, Ariel.
Speaker 2 (00:00:07):
Hi. How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:00:09):
I'm doing well. How about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:00:11):
Doing all right. Doing all right.
Speaker 1 (00:00:15):
It's great to see you. I'm so excited and grateful to have you here. I've been kind of a quiet fan cheering you on for a while now, and it's so exciting that you're going to come in today and share some of your
Speaker 2 (00:00:29):
Wisdom with our community. I'm glad to be here, and I know Allie speaks so highly of you and your community, so happy to come on.
Speaker 1 (00:00:38):
That's so awesome. Yeah, I had no idea. She let me know later. She was like, I work with Ariel, and I was like, oh my gosh. That's amazing. So
Speaker 2 (00:00:46):
Cool. Yeah, she's amazing. She's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:00:48):
Love it. So I will introduce you. We can have a chat and then everyone who is here joining us live today, as we're moving through the conversation, if you have any questions, I do have the chat pulled up. So please drop any questions that come up and we will leave some time towards the end to answer those. And if you're unfamiliar with Ariel, Ariel Myers is here joining us today. She is a licensed acupuncturist. Hello. She is a certified herbalist, a womb worker and founder of the Wisdom of the Womb and the Fertile Mama Method, exploring and attuning to the cyclical nature of all things, including the body, relationships, business, and even money. Ariel's passion is in infusing the ethos of the archetypal yin feminine back into life for the sake of not only humanity but the planet lofty dreams. But luckily, this includes play, dancing, pleasure, meaningful connection, and deep rest.
(00:01:58):
Ariel's passion arises from the recognition that many of her patients who were struggling to conceive were ultimately disconnected from their cyclical natures. She recognized that a huge component of the epidemic of female infertility is a fundamental disconnection from the realm of the feminine, including the body, the womb, and the earth. Ariel's mission is to share the wisdom of the womb, to empower women to understand their fertility and the power of their wombs so that they can live life as of their lives and create the families that they desire. So beautiful. Such a beautiful mission, Ariel.
(00:02:39):
It's so wonderful in this perspective to have you here to share your perspective on this. We talk a little bit about the spirituality connection between kind of pm MS and PM MDD symptoms and our work with clients, but you really take it to another level with the fertility, which I personally am in as my husband and I have been trying to conceive for three, going on four years now. Yes. So I've been using your teas. I'm excited. I brought my collection here so I can share it with those in the community. They can get their eyes on the lovely teas that you make, but I would love to hear from you about what led you, your journey into doing this wo work and working with women in this way.
Speaker 2 (00:03:26):
Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting because now when I look back on it, I can see, oh, it feels so divinely guided. Where else would I be? But when it was all happening, none of it was really conscious. I would never have known when I became an acupuncturist even that I'd be interested in fertility and the womb and the body, and I mean obviously the body, but not necessarily the female body. So I grew up with a mom who had a Crohn's disease, pretty severe Crohn's disease, which is a digestive disorder and some depression and anxiety, and then took a pharmaceutical that ultimately destroyed her aortic valve. She had to have open heart surgery from the pharmaceutical. So it's interesting though, because when I became an acupuncturist, it was like none of that felt, it wasn't like I was like, oh, I want to understand the body because of my mom's disconnection from hers.
(00:04:27):
None of that was conscious. It was more like it just felt really alive to me. I was always interested in nutrition more because I didn't like my body and wanted to lose weight. So I became obsessed with nutrition. It wasn't ever about health until it became about health. So it kind of went like that, just really following what felt the most alive. I was most interested in nutrition, so I wanted to go to school for nutrition. And then at that school I learned about Chinese medicine and that felt really alive, and I just really appreciated, it was the first time when I learned about Chinese medicine and acupuncture that it was explaining what was happening in the body as all the part of one thing. Our emotions connected to spirit, connected to our body, not just like your mind is totally separate from your leg.
(00:05:21):
And so I just really appreciated that. And then, yeah, I was, when I graduated, I was actually most interested in orthopedic acupuncture. I was really into climbing on people and manipulating their joints and their muscles. And then when I got pregnant myself, I kind of stopped being able to do such intense manual therapy, like lifting men's body parts. And I think I found that more and more women were coming to me to get pregnant. I didn't necessarily think that was about me specifically. I think it was more that I was practicing right outside of New York City, and there were a lot of highly driven, highly successful women who were trying later in life or so. And then really, I was practicing differently. I was just doing fertility, more focusing on labs and still using more my mental awareness of the medicine. And it wasn't until I moved to Colorado 10 years later that I really kind of dove into what I see as the realm of the feminine and learning about nature. I'm kind of glossing over a little bit to get to here, but if hopefully that kind of answers your question or at least begins to,
Speaker 1 (00:06:48):
Yeah. So it was kind of a winding path, but it unfolded, and here you are in the fertility and womb work space, and I'm not sure, I wasn't familiar with womb work until more recently. So I would love, if I'm not sure how familiar everyone here is with it, I would love for you to share a little bit about what that means, what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (00:07:08):
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because when I was first doing acupuncture, I had a fertility acupuncture clinic. I was really related, closely tied to the IVF clinics in the area. And so I was working with the womb, but it was totally, I just wasn't even connected to mine at the time. It was more just like I was doing the needles. I mean, I was a good acupuncturist, so it's not like I was missing something, but I just felt disconnected from the energy of the womb. And then I was still in Hoboken when I really started to just put my hands on and begin to try to get out of my head and really feel into what I was feeling in my own body and to begin to just check in, almost forget everything I knew and just feel. So that's kind of what I say. I think sometimes when we think about wound work, we're like, oh, it has to be.
(00:08:15):
So I don't know something. But I think it's really just listening, paying close attention. And I think so much of it is being willing to feel the things that we might feel ashamed about or we might not about ourselves or we might feel like are wrong about ourselves. And just so much of it is a little bit, I don't want to say it's not logical, but it's almost like feeling into and believing what we feel, believing and paying attention and just honoring. And we can do it with hands-on, but we can also just do it more in the imaginal realm and certainly we don't need someone else to do it for you.
Speaker 1 (00:08:57):
Yeah, so interesting how you were saying earlier, this disconnection between the body and the mind, the spirit, our emotions. That plays out so much with the menstrual cycle because the menstrual cycle for so many of us has just been a source of pain, embarrassment. The women I work with, lots of psychological symptoms. So that disconnection just gets driven more and more where the body is now the enemy and then you move into the fertility space or even healing those symptoms. That's never addressed, especially in western medicine. But even like you're saying in a lot of functional medicine, it's just kind of not part of it. It's still formulaic, lab testing, supplements, acupuncture, herbs. There's a gap in connecting with the emotion there. And it's so
Speaker 2 (00:09:47):
Cool. And that stuff can all be so helpful and so important not to dismiss any of it. And for some women, that's enough. For some women it's like, oh, it was totally fixed and that was it. But whenever it's something that's recurrent or just not going away, I sometimes think it's our body being dig deeper more, more even more. Keep going. So yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:10:13):
There's such a huge connection between so many conditions and trauma and then so much trauma that comes around the womb, whether it just be being a woman, having a period or any sort of a adverse experiences. We had younger when we were younger. So it's so important, and I do really see a gap, a missing link in the women that I'm working with where they're doing all of this stuff to feel better. But then there's still this gap of I haven't quite felt into what that is, and we're never taught anything about that. The womb connecting with the womb. It's just this place in our body that is medicalized and kind of demonized in so many ways. It's the source of all life at the same time. So
Speaker 2 (00:10:58):
Wild. I love that epigenetics is now coming into what we used to think was just like woo woo. It's like, no, actually there's this whole study that it's not just our own trauma. It could be our mother's trauma, our grandmother's trauma, and just I think lineage work, especially when it's this deep menstrual related stuff, it's like it just feels like it can be just ours and it can be just from our own life. But I think it's also just a good option to kind of see if we can track back. And I don't think we ever need to find out to know in our mind like, oh yes, this is what happened, because sometimes we just don't get those answers. But I think even just to go in there with that possibility that where we're healing maybe generations worth of wounding,
Speaker 1 (00:11:45):
Yeah, there's an openness to it. And I think that it's a bummer that that's not just more of part of the healing journey that people talk about because people go in, whether it be fertility or a symptom, it's just this very kind of linear path that they're going on and they want this result and they want it to look like this. And when we take that approach, we miss so much else along the way. And it is so cool that epigenetics coming out of like, yeah, we were actually inside of our grandmother's body, so how are we not impacted by their mental state, their emotional, their environmental state? And it's wild. When you were talking earlier, going on a little bit of a tangent here about the nutrition for shrinking yourself to be as small as possible, that was your interest, or at least that's what I heard. It is wild to look back at our mother's generations and working with so many clients, the model of nourishment that they saw in the previous generation was so disordered. And so just malnutrition in general, if we're just trying to put a word to it and how is that impacting our menstrual health, our womb, our connection with our body when everything that we remodeled was just like your value and your worth is linked to what it says on the scale and how your body looks is so damaging.
Speaker 2 (00:13:10):
I know, and it's so challenging. It's such work to unravel that because it's so closely tied to health that it's so easy to be like, I'm doing it for health, but does health to you look like being smaller? And that's one of those things, and especially with I was thinking about PMS and PMDD, one of the things I really like about Chinese medicine is that we hardly ever just look at the, and I'm kind of going off on a little tangent, but I'll get back to what I was thinking about. We hardly ever just look at the diagnosis like, oh, you have this, so I'm going to do this. It's like we see each person coming in, and so someone could come in with 10 different people could come in with PMDD and they might have 10 different Chinese medical diagnosis, which is what's the energy that's alive in their body? What's the energy that's out of balance? And I think sometimes that's what we can look at when it comes to are we doing this to be healthy or are we doing this to stay small? Is the energy expansive or is it contracting? And I think when it comes to food, that's one of those ones that it's like, are we tightening or are we releasing?
Speaker 1 (00:14:20):
Yeah, I'm so curious about the kind of viewpoint of Chinese medicine towards those diagnoses, those symptom profiles, because it is so different When we get into any medicine outside of western medicine, the approach is very different and it's so beautiful and important to see the whole person and to look at, hey, what are all of these factors? Because there are so many different drivers, like you were saying, we can all experience PMDD symptoms or severe premenstrual symptoms, but the drivers behind those are going to look different for each individual. So what is that kind of perspective? I know that's probably opening in Pandora's box, but
Speaker 2 (00:15:03):
I mean, it's just so interesting because I actually haven't spoken about this out loud yet. And when you were reading my bio, I was like, huh, I might change that because I've spent the past 20 years really exploring yin, yin feminine, yin feminine. We need to be more yin. And I think that's part of the evolution a little bit of as we're just evolving as a collective. But for me energetically these past few months, maybe years, I've been just more feeling aware of this y energy in me. So I'm an Aries, and I always thought, well, yang yang is masculine. And lately I've just been like, there's a difference between young masculine and young feminine and young feminine is like this dark goddess bursting forth from I think our womb energy. And so when I was thinking about PMDD, and I don't want to go totally off of the rails here, but I feel excited talking about it because it's like when somebody comes in with PMDD, the things that I might most find were this kind of what I would say is depressed liver fire, this kind of real stagnation of liver energy.
(00:16:20):
That's almost like when you have energy that's not moving, it becomes stuck. It creates friction, which creates heat, and then you might have this heat rising. But then it's so interesting because in terms of western medicine, we might see it as progesterone deficiency, or we might see it as a serotonin imbalance or we might just see it. I've seen it also referred to as a difficulty with the hormones shifting going from one to the next, which kind of doesn't line up exactly with depressed liver fire, but that's not, of course, that's not the only thing we'd see, but typically there's a liver stagnation. There might be this heat rising. So yeah, I don't have a ta here's it wrapped up in a bow, but I'm feeling this yang feminine as really this just essential force in the collective now that's really required. And I dunno, it feels important, and I feel like this kind of, I don't want to say stifling of that young energy, but maybe not accepting of that young energy or not allowing for it or not having a place where it can be expressed in our life.
(00:17:30):
Sometimes I think that the stuff that arises during our luteal phase or right before we have our period, not that we need to pay attention to. Certainly some of the negative aspects of it. I know with pmdd, sometimes we could have suicidality or really harsh depression. So not to necessarily listen to it all, but to at least pay attention to what is it asking of us? Do I want to express myself more in a different way or is there something I want to just allow space for more in my life? This young phase is also so much about play. Young energy is about play and joy, and so there's this heart kidney connection of where can we find areas in our life to have more childlike wonder and play? So yeah, again, I'm like, did I answer your question? I don't know. But
Speaker 1 (00:18:27):
Yes, I love that. No, that's such a beautiful take. And I think that mean it makes so much sense with anything going on with the liver and the irritability and the anger and the rage and that fierceness that's coming out with the young energy that you're talking about. But so often, especially if you're living with these severe pmm S and pm DD symptoms, there's so much negativity and guilt and shame around the symptom. There's not a lot of curiosity. There's not a lot of patience or forgiveness. It's just so much guilt and shame of I shouldn't feel like this. I shouldn't be this angry, I shouldn't have this rage. But what we see so often is when this is a reoccurring, especially when the rage or the irritability is linked to situations that are reoccurring, that's something that your body is telling you about what's going on.
(00:19:18):
There's more to symptoms than just, I feel angry and it's a problem. I mean, obviously we could get into blood sugar dysregulation is going to drive that, and there are reasons that are going to drive that. But to be able to look at the experience and to have just any softness or any positive spin on what you're going through, I think is such a gift to the community when we're so often dismissed, we're so often just, yeah, it's terrible the way that it feels to be an angry woman that irritability and angry and rage such a big symptom with PMDD, and that's not an acceptable way to be, but at the same time, there's a lot to be angry about and maybe somebody needs to be bringing that to the forefront in some way, channeling it. I do. I like looking at it through that lens a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:20:19):
Yeah, I mean, certainly it doesn't feel like now's the time to just be like, let me be receptive into my feminine and trust that things will be taken care of. There's something there that's as California is burning on fire, I don't know. And not to say there, there's not to just look at what's happening and make it fit our spiritual guideline of our storyline of like, oh, but to just acknowledge that energy is energy and whether it's moving through our body or moving on the planet to just, I think one of the worst things we could do is to, the thing we want to do is to make it go away and fix it, but that's sometimes the thing that just stifles it even more when really if we can be like, how can I really accept this? And maybe working through it in a way that we hope will make it better, but to just stifle and make it go away, it's the energy doesn't work that way. And especially that rising fire energy, you can't just throw some water on it.
Speaker 1 (00:21:32):
Yeah, there's so much denial, so much repression. And it's wild how when you are in an episode and you're escalating, how much release can just come from saying, I feel this, saying it out loud and feeling it and just letting it flow through. And then something else too that you were saying about the joy and pleasure. There's just such a lack of that I see with my clients. There's just this push through, push through, meet everyone else's needs. I have to come second. It's so sad to see that we have just tried to take on the world and put ourselves at the back burner and feel that that's the way it should be and that we should just be able to continue that way without some sort of fallout in our hormones and our menstrual cycle and our kind of energy system. It's that's not ever going to happen.
Speaker 2 (00:22:31):
It's like there's so little pleasure in the female experience, or maybe I feel like we're adjusting and we're shifting. But certainly when I would think about my mom's generation and her friends, certainly seeing women being joyful or in their pleasure was not a part of my experience as a child growing up. I definitely didn't see that. And when I did growing up, see women having fun, what I would see is drinking too much or it didn't feel like just that childlike pleasure. And maybe childlike isn't the word for it. That's kind of how I see it, but maybe it should be feminine pleasure, not childlike pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:23:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to look back to at the models that I had and rarely were there, even women and my family and my friends, seeing my friends' moms and stuff growing up that were just taking care of themselves. I mean, not even pleasure, obviously I was seeing very little of that, but even just like, Hey, I need to nourish myself right now. I need to prioritize my wellbeing. It was not modeled. And I think, yeah, we're suffering so badly from that. And I think there's a funny kind of meme out there that says PMS doesn't actually stand for premenstrual syndrome. It stands for prioritize myself. And I think people hear that and they're just like, that's so selfish. That's narcissistic. There's just this guilt and shame even around prioritizing yourself. Yet, every time we get on an airplane, they tell us, Hey, you need to put on your mask first so that you can help other people. If you don't take care of yourself, you cannot show up in the world in the way that you want to be showing up in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:24:26):
It's so wild, isn't it? I know I've told this story before, but the worst insult my grandma used to say about a woman was she takes good care of herself. That was at her taking good care. It's so bizarre. And luckily I have a group of friends where it's like, we really do honor that and value that, but don't know. I don't think that that's standard for most women not feeling, or if they do take care of themselves, it's almost like they feel guilt about it or shame about it, or it's like they'll only do it when they're at collapse and it's just complete shutdown. I have to take a week off to be back to functional, which is, maybe that's up at PMD is too, is taking a week off just to, I don't know. I got to the point where I used to feel so guilty about the way I would act when I had PMS, I was just so ashamed that part of me came out and it started to feel like just saying life just feels so much, being in my body just feels so much harder, and everything just feels like it takes so much more energy.
(00:25:44):
So just please know that this week, it's just being in my body is taking so much more energy that asking anything of me is just, it's hard. And even just saying that lessened it a little bit of the, I have to show up perfectly as a mom and perfectly as a wife. And so getting divorced, I do that too, not feeling like I have to show up perfectly as a wife.
Speaker 1 (00:26:13):
I'm taking something off your plate. I mean, I'm sure you see this with your fertility clients, and I've seen this so much with my clients as well, where it's just this burnout cycle of give, give, give and then collapse and then give, give and then collapse. And there's no kind of equilibrium of, okay, I need to take the giving down when I have the energy a bit so that I'm not totally burnt out by the time I get to the luteal phase. And I mean, I think there's also just a misconception that we're going to feel the same in a female body every single day, and we're going to have the same energy levels, and that just automatically sets us up for disappointment and shame.
Speaker 2 (00:26:54):
And it's so hard because life is not really set up for our bodies. Life has been more work and the nine to five, and it's just not set up for this cyclical body. It's set up to be the same amount of productive every day and then to have weekend off to, and hardly ever anybody just kind of rests on the weekends. It's more like, okay, now I'll do my activity or I'll be fit, or I'll see friends. And so yeah, I think it really takes a privilege. It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to set up our life in a way that feels like it's in alignment, but it also takes real effort to be like, I, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to work the nine to five. And so yeah, not everybody has the luxury. It is a luxury to do that.
Speaker 1 (00:27:48):
Well, something too I wish that we could somehow disseminate more of is this idea, like you were saying before, where they kind of burn out. It's like, I need a whole week. There's a misconception that I see so often, and it's in order to rest or in order to take care of myself, it's going to be this massive time commitment. It's going to take all of my energy and all of my time where that's really not the case. I mean, just making small little tweaks, giving yourself small little breaks, adding a little bit more protein to your diet, adding a little bit more pleasure into your life, whether it's turning on some music while you're cleaning or setting 20 minutes aside to take a bath. It can make such a big difference. It doesn't have to be this whole restructuring of your life to really take care of yourself, reconnect with the feminine, give yourself some you time.
(00:28:48):
It's so sad when I see my clients, we're like, okay, we're going to celebrate all of your wins. That's a big part of the process that we do, and it's the hardest thing for them. They'll change their diet. They'll work on lifestyle changes, they'll set boundaries, but celebrating their wins is just nearly impossible to get them to do. And I don't think that's a surprise in this conversation that we're having here. It just is a representation of that lack of modeling, that lack of understanding and the fear around being called selfish or being judged for putting maybe not even your needs first, but moving them up in the hierarchy of things
Speaker 2 (00:29:31):
On the list at all. Right. Well, hopefully, I mean, let's see. We're all here. We can all just decide to, I don't know, change that, do something different,
Speaker 1 (00:29:44):
Celebrate your wins, do something today. Just anything bigger or small that can celebrate how far you've come. Even showing up on this call, hearing from Ariel, I was looking before we met on PubMed for acupuncture studies and PMS. There are two. I could only find two.
Speaker 2 (00:30:05):
That's wild to me. I mean, yeah, it's so helpful for PMS. It actually is what led me to really believe in Chinese medicine was, I know we started talking about it a little bit in the beginning, but I had terrible, what I would call terrible periods, terrible. PMS really? I thought it was psychotic type PMS. And they just put me on the pill. They just as they do, and I was 16 or just put on the pill and never had regular periods all that went along with it. But when it came, it was awful. And so I just went for acupuncture because I started learning about it. I was taking it in college, the class that was about Chinese medicine, and I started getting regular acupuncture and taking regular herbs and dared to go off of the pill after a year of regularly taking herbs and getting acupuncture. And my period was regular with minimal, I mean, it was, oh, I was on antidepressants too, because they put me on antidepressants four. So I went off both of those things and just got regular acupuncture and herbs and it was like that terror that, am I going to feel human? Am I going to be okay? What's going to happen? And it was shocking to be like, oh, I have a regular period now. Oh, I still get PMS, but I don't feel like I'm out of my mind so depressed before my period.
(00:31:38):
And yeah, I just was so just, what's the word I'm looking for? It was like, what's the word? I dunno. Incontrovertible. It was like, oh, okay, this works. This actually has in my body, I feel the difference. And that's what sold me on it. But yeah, it's with all of these studies and for herbs and acupuncture, it's like somebody has to pay for them. And often, unless it's a pharmaceutical company that's going to pay for a study, the study doesn't get done. I mean, that's what we're finding now so much with perimenopausal. And it's like for all the studies for women my age, it's like they're just not really happening because it's like hormones are hormones. Nobody wants to pay for them because it's not like a pharmaceutical. So
Speaker 1 (00:32:28):
Yeah, it's sad that it is that way, but one of the studies that I found it, it looks like it was a Chinese study, it was 2014, and it reported a 50% relief of symptoms associated with PMS and PMDD. So for one of the two studies that I found reporting a 50, I mean, clients come to me and they're like, if you can just give me some hope, that's enough. Not even a 50% relief.
Speaker 2 (00:32:58):
Yeah. It's one of the things that for women's health stuff, I highly, highly, and I'm not even practicing acupuncture anymore, so it's not for me, I'm just like, acupuncture is amazing. And if you could find someone that does herbs too. And also, I will say that there are so many PTs and chiropractors now who are doing needling, and it's not acupuncture. It's not the same thing. So just to really differentiate, acupuncture is usually somebody who's studied for four years who has a certificate of Chinese medicine, so not just acupuncture and not just a chiropractor or with a 30 hours. It is just a significant difference. They're not just sticking needles in, they're really looking at, again, that whole picture of what's coming in. Because PMDD is not really a diagnosis in terms of, it's one of those diagnoses that it's like, you have this, but it doesn't really tell you why. Yeah. It's like fibromyalgia.
Speaker 1 (00:34:03):
Yeah. There's so much controversy around PMDD even being added to the dsm. So it's not surprising that other forms of medicine wouldn't just see it as that, because there's so much going on in the body to lead to these symptoms. PMDD doesn't tell you anything about why you have it. I have been amazed. I hadn't done acupuncture until last year in October, not last year, but the previous year, 23, I started in October for fertility, and I just haven't stopped going because it's made such an impact with just my overall health. And I was so amazed at just even just immediately after some of the sessions, the way that I felt was wild.
Speaker 2 (00:34:53):
Yeah, it's like the first time I had acupuncture, it was like, oh, it was just, I felt all of this pressure that I didn't even know had been building just release. And I was like, oh, here I am. This is what I feel like It's wild. And I used to just practice on myself. I would just do myself every few months and didn't have an acupuncturist for a few years. And finally last year I started going back to an acupuncturist and it's like I just look forward, and it's not for any specific, I think sometimes people think they need to have a problem to go to acupuncture. It's how we go to the doctor. I'm sick, so I'll go to the doctor. And it's more just to continue to bring things into balance. So I go with just because it's time to go.
Speaker 1 (00:35:40):
Yeah, it's great for preventative care as well. It's hard to describe the changes that I've seen from it really in words, but it can be finding any practitioner. It can be hard to find the right acupuncture practitioner, but the herbs are such a big part of it too. So let's move into chatting about those because there's so many herbs, and I know Chinese medicine uses specific herbs, and then there are, I'm kind of curious how it all fits together. It's not really a question
Speaker 2 (00:36:14):
Like Chinese herbs and other herbs.
Speaker 1 (00:36:17):
So a lot of times when we think about PMS and PMD, we think about things like adaptogens. We think about Chas tree berry, but then when you're working with a Chinese medicine practitioner, you're getting different types of herbs, and I don't really know if they're completely different herbs or if it's just a blend and it's called something else.
Speaker 2 (00:36:36):
Yeah, yeah. Well, so Chinese herbs is definitely its own category, but there's definitely overlap too. There's herbs that are western herbs, but they're also used in Chinese herbs. And Chinese herbs could be like ginger is one and cinnamon is one. And so different foods things you might put in. I have a little fly that's been driving me crazy, but again, it's like you wouldn't just be like, okay, you have PMDD, I'll give you this blend. I mean, sometimes people will practice that way, but it's, again, you still look at the what is happening. So different herbs are in different categories. So you might have a category that's like tophi Y or tophi Y or clear heat or boost blood or in move blood. So it's really like what is presenting, what's the kind of imbalance that is presenting? And you might tweak it, which is why acupuncturists usually to see someone at least once a month, if not once a week, especially if it's cycle related.
(00:37:35):
So you can say, you might just see what's presenting, like, oh, you have some liver fire, so we'll clear heat and we'll encourage movement of the liver. But somebody might say, well, you're in your mid cycle, you're in your ovulation phase, so we'll move qi. But next we come in when you're in your luteal phase, which has more to do with young energy and we'll boost yang. So I really don't like to just be like, here you go. So even when people reach out to us, it's kind of like, well, maybe try this for a month and then see how you're responding. And we might change it up a little bit. I mean, of course it's different when we're serving a bigger population. We can't be so specific. But I really like to say if you're having acute or severe or strong, I dunno if the word is imbalance, but symptoms.
(00:38:37):
And you can find a practitioner who will be really specific to you, not just be like, here you go, this is what we give for PMDD or PMS, but really look at your body and maybe formulate something for you that's obviously best. But then there are certain things that have just been known to help regulate a cycle or boost mood or invigorate your liver. So again, it's not a right way or a wrong way to do it. There's just different schools of thought and different ways of looking at it. And certainly Chinese medicine, one of the things I like about Chinese herbs is that it's not just this herb is for this and this service is for this. It's like, well, why? So one of the examples I give a lot is mug wart because we got a lot of pushback about using mug wart in our warming lens. It's our wo warming lens because a lot of women would say mug wart can bring on a period, and it brings on a period if you are too hot and you start taking mug wart and it's heating, but if you have cold in your womb, that's kind of when mug wort is used for, it's to warm cold. So it's kind of not just to say mug wart brings on a period. It's like no mug wart warms your womb. And that's why if you have cold stagnating, it'll bring on a period.
Speaker 1 (00:40:06):
There's so much nuance and complexity, and I see that often too, where people come into the dms or they email me and they're like, can you give me advice on this situation? It's like, I don't know anything about you, your health history. And I think that's where integrative medicine, which includes Chinese medicine, all sorts of complimentary medicines, they're personalized. And I think I'm curious of your take on this, but I feel like just the modern medicine, the conventional medicine kind of a pill for an ill mentality has really shaped especially western minds and how they move about symptoms and managing symptoms and even preventative care where it's just way too stripped down. There's no nuance, and it really leaves people in a sad position where they feel like, well, I tried everything and so it didn't work. Herbs didn't work. I tried an herb. And it's just kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Here. There's so much complexity to how do you try something. And if you were working with a practitioner who was working to personalize this to you, so what is that like to be a practitioner in the Chinese medicine field to work so in depth and in a personalized way with so many women? And then to have that, how do you navigate what they're wanting versus the reality of the situation?
Speaker 2 (00:41:39):
Yeah. Well, I will say I really, really, really this year especially, I've been missing working since Covid. I closed my private practice and have just been online, and I really just miss the one-on-one work when I think you can go really deep and just really give really specific care. So I will say that that is for sure alive for me. And then I'm also so grateful and fortunate I feel to be able to reach so many women who wouldn't otherwise have access to this information about our cycles and about the different things we could do during each phase of our cycle. But it also does take women being willing to be their own advocate and be like, I'm not just going to, because a lot of people get mad, I drank the tea for a month and it didn't work. And it's like, well, we didn't say it would.
(00:42:32):
We're like, here's the tea. And then while you're drinking the tea, read our blogs. Learn about the different phases of your cycle, change your diet. Look at the ways you can tweak your diet depending on which phase you're in. Here are the different supplements you can explore when you're on a different, so it's not just, like you said, a pill for an ill. And I think it's really, really hard to get out of that mentality of, I'll take this pill and it'll fix me even just for a headache, like, oh, I have a headache. I'll take a Tylenol. Not Why did I get this headache? What did I eat that might've contributed? What was my stress level? And so I think in some ways it's like our medical system has infantalized us, made us children who were like, doctor, tell me what to do and if it doesn't work, I'll be mad at you.
(00:43:25):
And so we get that too, where people are just tell me what to do, and if it doesn't work, it's your fault and I'm going to be mad at you. And so I think so much of this, I talk about becoming a grown ass woman, and I had to do it too, of not wanting to blame someone for my situation on any level, anywhere. Whether it comes to my health, my, my financial status, I'm not going to blame anyone, and I'm looking at the small thing, but it's like our whole system is set up that way. Capitalism is set up that way where it only works if we are looking to people to tell us what to do and not really being in charge of our own lives. So I don't know. I think as we dismantle the systems in place, I'm hoping that in some ways we have more I agency to really look at our bodies.
(00:44:21):
But again, that takes time and space and this information, which is really not so readily available unless we're really actively looking for it. If we were in a different time, we'd have been learning about this stuff from the time that we first got our period, and it would just be in our field. We'd know, oh, when I'm about to get my period, I drink this tea the week before, and this is the herb that I drink for that. And whether it's ladies mantle or red raspberry leaf, it's just what we've been doing. And now it's like we really have to look for it. And also in a sense, trust. It's not just like, oh yeah, I've seen my mom and my grandma do this and the women around me doing this. So I kind of know. There's a lot of fear too around people just being like, I'm just supposed to drink this pile of shit in this bag and be like, it's like nobody knows what it is. So it takes a lot of doing your own research too, but also a level of like, am I just going to trust someone else? Or how do I even learn about these things?
Speaker 1 (00:45:29):
Yeah, there's a lot of confusion, a lot of fear even around herbs. But what you were saying about taking the agency and alleviating the blame on someone else, we don't need to put the blame on ourselves either, but just stepping into your power, it can be so liberating. And that's something I wish, again, was never modeled. It was never modeled that, Hey, your practitioner works for you,
(00:45:57):
Treat them respectfully. But as an employee and advocate, learn how to advocate for yourself. Learn the parameters of what is possible for you. Because same, I was going to gynecologist for 17 years trying to figure out what to do with my severe premenstrual symptoms and took all the medications, got misdiagnosed, took bipolar medication, all sorts of things. And I felt so victimized by that experience because they didn't help me in the way that I wanted to be helped yet I kept going to them instead of recognizing, oh, the kind of help that I want isn't offered by them. They do what they do, which is what they've been doing. And I wanted something else. And it's kind of like I use the metaphor of I was going into a cake shop looking for donuts, and then I was the one that was flailing on the floor and miserable and so angry when I could have just gone to a donut shop.
Speaker 2 (00:46:53):
I followed Kelly Brogan's work a little bit, and she talks about buying eggs at the harbor store. They're not selling eggs, but you keep going. They're looking for eggs. And she has a program, I haven't done it, but I have a few friends who have done it. It's called Vital Mind Reset, and it's kind of like this exact thing, really taking back our power, really knowing that nobody is really going to advocate for us. It's just so easy to someone to give us a pill and people like you who are really on someone's side and in their corner, that's a different story. But it's like, I think it's really few and far between to find someone who's really, really going to at least give you the path to guide you in the right direction, rather our medical system, unfortunately, and it's not the doctor's fault, it is not like, oh, doctors suck. It's like they're really, really have a limited scope of what they're able to do and time in which to do it. And if there's not a pill to fix it, unfortunately, it's really challenging for them to do anything.
Speaker 1 (00:48:06):
It is a lack of education. I think really when I was processing it in the end was just I was uneducated about the options that I had. And so I spent so long feeling hopeless because I had exhausted the options within that realm. And then I finally came to luckily at the crossroads of almost losing my life to the severity of these symptoms where I was able to say, I am going a different direction here. Thank goodness I made the choice to try that. And you open your eyes looking in the other direction, and there are so many options that it is a completely astounding, you can do acupuncture, you can use herbs, you can work with so many different counseling modalities. When I had just been doing talk therapy for 17 years, I mean, on and on and on,
Speaker 2 (00:48:57):
Just was, what did you first find that was like, oh, the beginning of your path?
Speaker 1 (00:49:04):
Yeah. I found, well, it was in 2017 when the menstrual cycle revolution was happening, and I found Elisa Viti and her work was the lifeline of, oh, I've been dealing with these symptoms for so long, I don't even know what a menstrual cycle is. There was that whole revolution where finally things were coming out about, oh, there are four phases of your menstrual cycle. And there I am 27 years old, I feel really stupid right now. I didn't even know that this luteal phase was the thing that was wrecking my life. I didn't know anything about it, how to support it. And so then I kind of moved into the integrative menstrual health world, and I had a symptom free period in three months for the first time in my entire life with lifestyle and diet changes. So it's why I do this. And people come to me and they're like, well, you're not a gynecologist. I chose not to be a gynecologist because a gynecologist didn't help me.
Speaker 2 (00:49:57):
That's one thing we get a lot is don't listen to anybody who's not a doctor. And it's just like, okay, well, how's listening to your doctor been going for you? And again, nothing wrong with doctors, but they have a very specific scope of what they're learning. And most of it, all medical books are pretty much written by the pharmaceutical companies. So I mean, that's just funding them. So unfortunately, so much
Speaker 1 (00:50:25):
Vested interest, unfortunately, and so grateful for many medications, they can be lifesaving, but when it comes to chronic health conditions, it's just not addressing the why at all. Where,
Speaker 2 (00:50:42):
Yeah, I talk about, I got my appendix out because my appendix needed to come out and I wasn't going to do acupuncture for my appendix that was about to burst. So there's certain things that, and usually it's the surgical lifesaving things that are best served by western medicine.
Speaker 1 (00:51:00):
Acute care is
(00:51:01):
Where you want to go in an acute care situation. But I do wish, and I hope the work that we're both doing is helping provide people with, Hey, you do have more options. And there has to be some mindset around mindset work around what does work for you mean, and what does it look like? But these methods and these protocols and remedies are shockingly, I don't know why it's so shocking to me, but I'm just constantly delighted about how effective using Arabs, how effective using acupuncture, how effective those lifestyle and diet changes are, how effective feeling your emotions and being in your body can be. And I mean, let's talk about your miraculous, the wisdom of the womb business and how many beautiful human souls you are bringing into the world with the work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (00:51:51):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's definitely up in a labor of love, not to use the puns. Yeah. Do you have a question specifically or just about the business itself?
Speaker 1 (00:52:04):
Yeah, I just don't think any of our community members here are probably going to realize, unless they already know about you, the impact that you've had in that world. And it's just so exciting to see you. So Ariel has a Instagram, obviously, the wisdom of the womb, and she's posting beautiful success stories with her blends and your method of all of these babies coming into the world. And that's just as someone who struggled with and continues to struggle with infertility, to see hope outside of you have to do IVF is just so far and few between.
Speaker 2 (00:52:43):
Yeah. So I had a fertility wellness center for 10 years when I lived on the east coast. And when we moved in 2016, I was like, I don't know. I think maybe I'm done with fertility. I don't want to build a practice again. But I was still getting a ton of referrals. After I moved, I was getting 10 calls a week, and at first I was just like, no, I'm not practicing anymore. And finally it was like, I don't want to just send these women away. So I reformulated my blends, which was basically just 10 different Ts depending on what was going on. So we have one for each phase of the cycle, but then they're also like, you might use this if you have PCOS, you might use this if you have endometriosis or this if you have high FSH block tubes. And then basically everything besides the needles I taught.
(00:53:37):
So I made a course that's a Fertile Mama method. It's now a 12 week course, and I've kind of added to it with the more spiritual emotional components of each phase or different parts of your cycle or different symptoms. And when I put it online, I was kind of like, I don't know if it works without the acupuncture. I really wasn't sure. I had always worked with people and I had a really high success rate, but I was kind of like, how much of it is me being there? And I don't think that just needles, we say anything can be a needle. Anything can move the qi, the right word. Herbs certainly exercise, lifestyle. You don't need a needle to move the QI in a certain way or move the energy in a certain way. But when I put the things online, I was really like, I don't know.
(00:54:28):
And I still remember the first woman who, she was in her forties and she wrote back, I still remember her. She was in Alaska, I remember. And I was like, wow, she's in Alaska. And she got pregnant within a few months of using the products. And I was kind of like, oh, okay. So yeah, I started to put things out there and was a little bit wary of just like, am I putting something out that is effective? I didn't want to sell something that wasn't working. So the first few months I was kind of like, we'll see. And then the responses and the testimonials just started pouring in. And so it's been five years. That was kind of right before Covid is when I really put things online. I think it was August or October of 2019. And yeah, we've just had so many women, I mean people, I still get amazed by some of the success stories, like a woman who's had 21 miscarriages and then used our products and was able to bring her baby to term, and people who had severe endometriosis had been told by doctors they'd never carry with their own eggs, premature ovarian failure.
(00:55:39):
I mean, it's kind of like, whoa. And again, it's like I don't think of it as mine. It is just this work that I'm kind of passing through in a way that I think is really relatable and also understandable. I think we have really clear alleys on the call. Hi, she's amazing. She really holds people's hand and helps them know what to do when and how to cycle through the products. So yeah, we have different products, different teas, and then we also have womb oils and bath soaps. We have things for men too, if it's male fertility related. And yeah, it's just been, I mean, a whole thing. I never had any idea about how impactful it would be for women. We just get messages all the time. I was just on my, I have this alchemical healing class, this group that I'm a part of, and a woman.
(00:56:36):
I had no idea that anybody in there knew what I did. And a woman reached out and was like, I'm nine weeks pregnant. And I, I'm an acupuncturist and I give it to all my patients, so it feels bigger than me. And I feel emotional even thinking about it because it's truly, it feels such an honor and a privilege to be able to share it in this way and to know that it's supporting so many women and also supporting me too. So yeah, I feel really grateful to be able to share it and just share the work in a way that feels accessible. I think that's the thing is that Chinese medicine can sometimes feel like, I don't know what to take, and I don't know if this is right for me. And I don't know. And I think just to have it in a tea form where we could create a ritual around it. And yeah, I think you mentioned this before and I didn't really speak to it, but I combine Western and Chinese herbs. And in a way it's because the western herbs can be a little bit more palatable sometimes. The Chinese herbs are kind of intense taste wise. And so yeah, combine 'em in a way that's palatable and we're drinking it as a tea, which can be a ritual. And so yeah, it's been a great pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:57:46):
I drink wine every day, and I have some of the products here. I wanted to just give the community a visual. I started using the Fertile Mama tea. That's what I started with. I got the bundle. Also, it came with ear seeds, which I had used once before with my acupuncturists, but I've been using them more regularly since I got them with the bundle. And whoa, the ear seeds are wild acupressure points, their little pieces of metal that adhere.
Speaker 2 (00:58:20):
So the ear is kind of a microsystem of the body. So where the lobe is, is the head and then the wrap around could be seen as the spine, almost like a fetus curled in. So the different points would be on the different organs that are related to where that is in the body. But ear C are cool. We used to do a practice in school where we'd sit in a circle all feeling each other's pulses, and we'd put on an ear ear point and feel the pulses change so they could just really chill out your nervous system. And they're pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (00:58:52):
I've been loving them. I got more because I liked them so much, but I started using this and one of my challenges is just TMI. Hello, we're here. Cervical fluid production was just low. And once I started using this, I, no joke was like, this is working. Okay, it's working. I also, of course, and the community is going to love the bitches brew tea, using this in luteal. Such a delicious. And then I've started with also the fertile moon tea and the detox tea. I went all out.
Speaker 2 (00:59:28):
Yeah, cool. Loving them. I can colors. Those are colors, so it's like, Ooh, they look good. They look so good. We're changing the bitch's brew color. That one came out and I was like, Ooh, that's an ugly color.
Speaker 1 (00:59:42):
It reminds me of bean paste color.
Speaker 2 (00:59:44):
Yeah, we're changing that. That's on its way out.
Speaker 1 (00:59:47):
I like it. I like
Speaker 2 (00:59:48):
It's Well, we'll send you a bag of the womb warming if you want. That's the only one you don't have. And I find that might be, it's really invigorating and moving. So also for during the luteal phase, and I'd be curious to see if you feel any of that dark goddess energy coming out. Really, is it? Yes,
Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I'm such a fan. I'm always recommending them, especially since I'm trying to get clients off caffeine as much as possible. It's just such a trigger for pmms and pmm DD, and it's not wonderful. So it's nice to have solid options where, okay, this tastes delicious. You can have your same ritual and it's medicinal without
Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Having to thank you so much. It means so much that you're, because I know you're doing good work and you're really supporting women so that you're also sharing the tease is really meaningful. So thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
I'm a huge hype girl. For you, Ariel, when you agreed to do this, I was jumping up and down in my office like, babe, she said Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
I feel like Allie was the same. She was like, yay, you guys are going to be doing it together. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yeah, so wonderful. So where can our community find more, learn more shop the teas?
Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Yeah, so wisdom of the womb online.com. Like I said, we have Instagram Wisdom of the womb. We also do have a Facebook group. It's for fertility, so it might not resonate if someone's not trying to get pregnant, but you could find it also at Wisdom of the womb. And I think that the thing that comes after is all women are fertile. So that's how you could find both the group and the Facebook page. But really, Instagram and our website is the main place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Awesome. Yes. And check out some of those testimonials. So inspiring. They keep me going when I'm like, I'm ready to give up now. It's such, we're
Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Going to start having a new kind of avenue in that's just not for fertility, that's more for people who have issues and are not trying to get pregnant. We've kind of just been really fertility heavy, but I think it's especially now in our given climate for women to really understand their bodies and all around, not just if they're trying to get pregnant, but even if they're not trying to get pregnant or actively trying not to. So yeah. So we're going to expand a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Yay. Well, I'm so excited to see what's to come. Thank you so much for joining us, sharing your wisdom, and I look forward to connecting more in the future.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Yeah, me too. Thank you so much, Jess. So nice meeting you. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
So nice to
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Meet you. Bye Ariel. And bye. Thank you.
