Joy Is Your Justice - Why You Need To Reclaim Yours Now To Improve Your Health

The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Is joy the missing piece of the puzzle in your life? Do you want to feel more energized and connected to yourself? In this special episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, our guest, Dr. Tanmeet Sethi, will help midlife women to reclaim their joy and use it as a powerful weapon to improve their health. Tune in to learn more about the importance of joy in your life, why you need to embrace it now, and how you can start reclaiming yours now!

Tanmeet Sethi, MD, is a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician who has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines locally and globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities. As a mother, she has received the impossible news that her youngest son has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessibly through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She is trained in Psychedelic Medicine, Integrative and Functional Medicine, and is a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. TEDx talk on gratitude.

You will learn:

- Why joy is essential to your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

- How to recognize when you are missing out on joy in your life.

- What tools and techniques you can use to rediscover and reclaim your lost joy.

- Strategies for incorporating more joy into your daily routine for improved health.

Don't miss this inspiring episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Tanmeet Sethi! Join us as we discuss why joy is your justice - why it's so important to reclaim it now and how doing so can improve your health. You will leave feeling inspired, energized, and motivated to create the life of joy that you deserve! Tune in today!

(00:00): What your mind can't resolve, your body will hold onto Dr. Cei. Find out how to let go and reclaim your health now with joy.

(00:18): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:12): Hi everyone. Welcome back and thank you so much for joining me today for the podcast. So glad that you're here, my guest, you are gonna love and be inspired by her. She has a powerful story and you know it's a shame that sometimes our purpose comes from our pain and sometimes that's where the greatest gifts come from. If we say yes to the call, to the invitation of the pain, to lean into it and find the answers, when we get those answers, we can then bring them back to our tribe, all of you and me, to help them overcome similar struggles and improve our health. I think that almost every doctor and healer that I've had on the podcast has a journey of pain that led to some breakthrough that caused them to seek new answers. And then that's what they're doing here is bringing them back to the tribe, which is kind of brave and revolutionary.

(02:11): So I think you're gonna really love my guest today. I know I did after meeting her and speaking with her. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. But first, the title of the episode is Joy is Your Justice. And I know some of you are like, do I wanna listen to this? What am I gonna get out of this? What does this have to do with my health and my hormones? Well, she's gonna tell you because she too brings the science and that's why I love the incredible guests that I have on the podcast. Cause they bring the science that brings the truth and then you can just cut through the nonsense and know what's true about your health that you're not hearing elsewhere. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Tanmeet Sethi. She's a medical doctor and board certified in integrated family medicine.

(02:59): And she spent the last 25 years on the front lines locally at globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities as a mother. She's received the impossible news that her youngest son named Zin, has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessible through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She's also trained in psychedelic medicine. We're gonna have her back another time to talk about that cuz that's a whole episode in itself. Also, she's trained in integrative and functional medicine, and she's a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. And she has a wonderful TEDx talk on gratitude. So please help me welcome Dr. Tanmeet Sethi to tell you why joy is your justice and why you need to reclaim yours now to improve your health and many other things. Welcome Dr. Tanmeet.

(04:07): Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

(04:09): I'm really excited to have you. We had Dr. Ellen Vora on and she was amazing and lovely, and she recommended having you on and told me all about you, and I said, yes, absolutely, please. And I know you have a book that you're getting ready to publish, and so it was kind of challenging to get it set up, but I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us.

(04:37): Oh, thanks. I'm so excited to really spend some time with you and your listeners.

(04:42):

And the first question I have to ask you is, as a physician, how did Joy become the topic for your book?

(04:53): Yeah, well, there are a couple of different reasons. One is that as a primary care physician for the last 25 years, I've really found that a lot of what I do is really managing spiritual needs in the exam room. People really feeling lost and disconnected and feeling like they've lost meaning in their life, and also managing all the physical symptoms related to stress and really trying to help them navigate how they refined meaning and joy in their lives so that they can actually have a better quality of life. And so that was an ongoing theme in my visits as an integrative physician, I do a lot more counseling around lifestyle and spirituality than most docs do. And so I was really doing a lot of that. And then on top of that, you know, something happened in my own life that was really tragic, which is that my second child was diagnosed with a fatal disease.

(05:50): So he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is for your community, is like an a l s for children. So it's degenerative and fatal. And he was diagnosed when he was three and while I was pregnant with my third child. And so I really had a really big milestone in my life where I realized that as doc who had been practicing and advocating for patients and doing a lot of social justice activism in the community, that this was finally something I couldn't really fight against. There was no cure, there was no hope. It felt like, and I really had a point where I realized how am I going to truly have joy in this life? You know, sure, I can fake it or I could function, or I could, as people were saying, think positive, which really drives me crazy, which you'll read about in my book. But I finally had to figure out how do you hold joy when you have something that is completely unchangeable? And that really was an ongoing theme for a lot of my patients who are managing trauma, oppression and suffering. And so it really culminated in my personal and professional lives.

(07:02): Yes, I'm sorry to hear about your child having that. And I can imagine that reaching for joy and figuring out a way to do that is al almost, it's a spiritual practice. And that I know having worked with patients clinically for many years, that it's not so much the physical ailments, but I actually was hearing Dr. Gabo matte, I love him, talk about instinct, the myth, myth of normal the other day, and the statistics on really that all physical illness is emotional, spiritual, mental, it, all of it, almost a hundred percent right? Except for the, the less than 5% of genetic disorders. And the fact that mainstream medicine completely, almost completely, let's say, ignores this fact in this day and age is, is really a travesty and does a disservice. So I want everyone listening to know that all of you should be treated not just your physical body. And there are clinicians out there who can work with you on that life, Dr. Tanmeet. So you had a tragedy and were trying to figure out how to find joy. And so what were the steps that you took to figure that out?

(08:25): Yeah, . Well, I feel like that's the whole book, right? Is all the tools I used. But what I would say is that what I really, just to give everyone a sense of how it all started is that I think it really started with one really big milestone question, which was right after Zin was diagnosed, and I talk about this in the book, is that my husband and I were sitting there kind of going through the expected and normal, why me, why us? Why him? Why, why, why? Feeling unfair, feeling like we didn't deserve it, feeling like there was no way out, which is what we all say, why me to everything, right? Whether it's traffic in the morning or it's a devastating diagnosis, right? And it's natural. It feels like how could this happen? But there was a pivotal moment there where we looked at each other, and we still can't remember who said it first, but we said, why not us?

(09:22): Why, why not him? Why not us to lead this life and still find joy and meaning. And also you can see how, why me is a very victim, powerless role. Mm-Hmm. , you can feel your body even contract and hunch when I even remember saying that. And when I say, why not me? My body opens up, I feel expansive, I feel powerful. And it defeats all those really kind of ridiculous, if you think about it, ideas of why me? Because it kind of insinuates that tragedy comes to those who deserve it. You know that why me as I deserve this, when you realize that bad things just happen, bad, bad, bad things happen. And it's not because we deserved it. It's not cuz we did wrong or did bad, it's because we're human and we're leading this human life. And why not me opens us up to also the humanity of all of us who are suffering and managing that which we cannot understand.

(10:25): And so that was really the beginning of this journey, I was really saying, why not us? Why not us to teach all of our children that life does not need to be dictated by the length of our lives or the dreams that were now shattered that we had conceived of, that he would play sports or go to college, or, you know, have a family, kind of the general things we think of and why not open ourselves up to the dreams that can be created once we let that go. And once we did that, it's not that it was easy, let me tell you, it wasn't an easy journey. Joy isn't an easy practice, but it is actually quite simple. And every day, if you commit to it as a healing practice, it becomes a way of life instead of a destination to get to. I

(11:13): Love that you, you turned it around to why not us. And I've heard people say that, and it's by no means on the same level, but even just this morning, the airline ripped apart my luggage and I just, I went to pick it up, the carousel and the whole handle that, that you're supposed to drag it with on wheels just came flying out and it was a big gaping hole. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I've seen people spin out about a wheel getting broken on their luggage, and I just, it's not worth it. It's just luggage. It's different when you're talking about human life. And so I think it's, it's such a testament to you and your husband's fortitude, insight, openness to be able to make that pivot with such rapid pace. And I know that you talk about the crucial distinction between joy and happiness, and yes, people sometimes will say, well, I just wanna be happy. I just wanna be happy. What is the difference?

(12:12): Oh, it's so big. It's really so big. And I'll tell you, I was much happier before my son Zubin was diagnosed. But I am way, way more joyful now. So I'll tell you the difference is that happiness is a cognitive evaluation. It's a sense of how things are going, and it's attached to outcome. I will tell you, there's nothing, let me preface this by, there's nothing wrong with happiness. The more the better, right? It's a pleasurable feeling. Mm-Hmm. . So I'm not discounting that happiness is wrong or bad, but there is a difference because happiness being attached to an outcome and how things are going, keeps it in the brain. Also, it's a very mind, head, heady kind of feel, experience. I shouldn't say feeling. And joy on the other hand, is a deep embodied feeling. My, one of my favorite quote quotes is actually from Rumi, who says, when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in.

(13:07): You are a joy. Because joy is that deep, deep primal experience that no one can take care of us, take away from us. Happiness is, you can think of it as being given to you because it's attached to those things and that outcome. And they're all good like jobs or families or whatever. But joy is something no one can take away if you really dig deep down into the core of your body. And that's what a lot of the practices in the book explain that if you can lightly step into your body exactly where the pain lives, you can access joy. Because joy actually draws on the same deep well as your pain and as meaning in your life. So if you can really meet your pain with love and acceptance, you can actually feel a joy like you've never felt before. And so really, I also wanna just tell people, I feel this very strongly.

(14:07): I'm someone who's worked with marginalized communities for my whole life. I myself experienced racism throughout my childhood, death, threats for my family, all kinds of things. I'm also still a brown woman who looks like a terrorist family to everyone in this country. You know, that kind of thing lives on. And at the same time, I have the right, not just to suffer as a human, but to live with joy. And so joy is my act of resistance. It lives in my body, and every time I access it, I'm actually boldly saying to things that have taken my power away, that you may have done that. But I still stand here and I still rise despite that.

(14:47): It is so powerful when you, you, some of the things you just said, I get got chills all the way through my legs, that joy draws from the same deep well as your pain. And that's so powerful. And joy is something no one can take away. And happiness Yeah. Is given to you by things. I'm happy because things are working out the way I want. But are you joyful? You know, even if you have a cancer diagnosis on your way to the doctor, are you enjoying the people that you meet and the sunrise and the trees? And I watched the movie Soul from Disney recently. I don't know how I missed that one. I

(15:22): Haven't seen that.

(15:23): And oh, it was amazing. A friend recommended it this weekend. And it basically is about exactly what we're talking about, finding the joy in a leaf, falling off a tree onto the ground, finding the joy in the simplest of things. And you're right, no one can take away your right, your ability, your desire to, I see it as a gratitude practice, really. Yeah. Because you're appreciating these small parts of your day in the now, and that can tap into the joy of just being alive.

(16:02): Right. And there's another big difference, and you can feel, it seems so simple, but it's hard to see it until I could see it, right? Is that happiness feels very binary. So people think, if I'm sad, I can't be happy, and if I'm happy, then I don't, you know, I'm not sad. So it's very binary. And so it is a way because of the confusion between happiness and joy. People feel joy is binary, but it's not because the thing is, joy actually acknowledges all the pain, the sadness, the grief, the, the hard and all joy is not a solution. It's not a binary, I am joyful or I'm not. It's a way to hold everything. So I can be deeply sad in one moment about, I'll take, give for example, my son. You know, things aren't so, it's not like it's easy. He's actually declining steadily.

(16:53): It's getting harder and harder. And I have grief every day, things that we lose every day. And I can be deeply sad about that. And in the same moment, I can feel joyful that I'm alive and can feel that sadness and that I'm so, my humanity has not been stripped away from me. Because one thing that trauma, oppression and suffering do is strip our humanity away and make us numb to life in general. And if I can feel the joy of that leaf falling, the walk, the fresh air in the same moment that I'm crying about my son, then I have won. You

(17:31): Sure have you really have. And I think we can get so tied into the, the purpose of our existence is this materialistic. I've got more stuff, I've accomplished more things. I win, I'm happy as, and anyone who's done the things and earned the money knows that doesn't bring joy. Usually . It's not what happens. And so I've heard people say we all have, well, you should look on the bright side. Yeah. Find the silver lining to the cloud. And you say that that's not going to bring joy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

(18:08): Yeah. And it's actually one of the big reasons, you know, I mean, my book is really about joy in this whitewashed wellness world of these contrived positivities, this toxic speak of look on the bright side. I mean, you can't think yourself on the bright side of oppression and poverty. Come on, give me a break. Right? You can't think yourself on the bright side, out of deep hate and racism. I mean, this just doesn't work. It doesn't work. So, you know, people get your mind on straight, you know, that's easy for someone with a lot of privilege, but not for someone who's either in a marginalized community in poverty or, I mean, I could name all the things, right? What I really talk about is how that kind of toxic positivity actually is so harmful. I think it's dangerous because what it does is it doesn't let you be seen, right?

(18:59): So anytime that I'm really sad, of which there are many, many, many moments, , and someone says to me, at least you have, oh, I mean, the amount of time at least you blah, blah, blah. Oh, I can't imagine. You know, they go on and on about they're trying to be good. Really they are. I have empathy for them, they just don't know what to say. But every time they do that, no one's acknowledging that I'm angry or sad or frustrated, and that's all I need to feel in that moment. And actually, a true joy practice is feeling what you feel and then allowing that to move through you. There's good science I talk about in the book that shows that if you suppress those feelings, you actually activate your threat centers more. And so we think, look on the bright side, just push that away.

(19:50): But actually we're stimulating all those threat centers in our amygdala, in our limbic system, which then stresses our sympathetic nervous system out, which causes more cortisol release, which reeks havoc with our whole body. Right? Our hormones, as you talk about a lot, right? I mean, so brightness, looking on the bright side, toxic positivity, I feel is actually quite dangerous. I honestly will tell you, I never ever tried to cheer someone up. What I do is try to sit with them in their pain and hold them so they know that they're not alone. Because actually the isolation of sadness and grief is damaging. Right? And so when someone says, look on the positive side and you can't do it, what do you feel more excluded, more stressed out, more unseen

(20:39): And ashamed.

(20:40): Exactly. Exactly

(20:42): Right. And we really do have this almost toxic avoidance of negative emotion, sadness, particularly for women. Anger, grief. We don't know how to grieve. We don't know how to be sad. And so I think that's what, when people wanna placate and say, oh, well look on the bright side is they're uncomfortable with their own grief and pain and sadness. So they can't sit with you in their, and I love what you're saying about how it affects your limbic system. And you know, everybody listening, I talk about hormones all the time, but one thing I can't talk about enough is that it's not a mind body connection, it's a body mind. You have a body mind, right? . Right. And it's psycho neuro endocrine immunology. Right? It's all one system. So you are affecting your hormones when you don't allow free flow of emotion.

(21:37): Yes, exactly. Exactly. You're actually, you know you're actually getting more stuck in physically, energetically, and biochemically, and most of your listeners probably know this, but the more cortisol we make, the less we're able to make our reproductive hormones and manage our testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. I mean, all of those come from the same precursor as cortisol. So the more we're stressed out, right? And people will say, well, I can't change the stress. No, we can't change what's in our lives, but we can change how our nervous system receives it, and we can change how our body feels it. Right? And so it's why I'm sure you've experienced this many times clinically, but people will often tell, you know, I I manage a lot of symptoms that frankly don't get a diagnosis, right? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, there frankly not an answer. And so people will say you know, I just don't understand, I don't understand.

(22:34): And I always say, what your mind and heart cannot resolve, your body will hold onto. And that's something to understand that it's not making it up. Your body is actually holding onto what you have been unable to navigate. And that doesn't mean that you were wrong or bad, it means you just needed more time. You, your, your nervous system does what it needs to do to protect you. It's a beautiful intricate system, but sometimes it serves us for too long, you know? And then we need to help our nerve, our nervous system, come to a different place. So it's really about joy as an ongoing practice. It's really, if you ask me, been underestimated and under really realized in this wellness world of that you just find joy. Have you found joy? Right? I found joy. It's,

(23:29): I found it at the Walmart . Yeah. It's

(23:32): Seeking joy every day, every time you can, because the more you swim in joy, the easier it is to hold the hard. And the more you swim and remember the joy and hold onto that, it reminds you that there are ways that you can come back to it. It's like a soothing mantra, right? It's not meant to be, I realize a destination, a place you get to like some nirvana land. So that's why I can say I cry a lot. I scream, I'm angry. I'm angry a lot. Let me tell you, this world is not easy. This world me off every day. The amount of violence in inequality, oppression, ongoing hate and division, it's really quite frustrating and stressful. Right? And at this, no matter what side, quote unquote, you're on, this is not about who's right and wrong, right? It's just, it, it is easy to suffer in this world.

(24:31): That's what I would say. But my anger, or my stress, or my frustration around that is actually held by my joy. Because my joy allows me to feel all that and know that I'm also flowing in between that and gratitude, love, self-compassion, and my breath, you know, all and on and on. Mm-Hmm. . And so I just think that people need to understand that joy is really a revolution. It's not a place to get to. It's an ongoing act of resistance. And it's your way of actually boldly calling out to this world that you are actually good and you deserve to be here,

(25:10): And you deserve to have grace and flow, and I'm gonna say happiness, but in the moment, the joy. Yes. Yes. Right? So what does that look like for you on a, on a day-to-day basis? I have a friend, and she shared with me something that she and her husband do every night at the end of the day before they go to bed with their pillow talk, is they ask each other, what was your favorite part of the day? What part of the day or what happening or thing in your day brought you the most joy? And they share that with each other. I

(25:47): Love that.

(25:48): So yeah, they don't do the gripe session, they ask mm-hmm. , you know, what brought you the most joy today? And I love that. How, what does it look like for you?

(25:56): I'll tell you what it typically looks like, and I'm also gonna tell you, some days it doesn't look like this at all. I'm gonna be real with you. And then some days I forget to do things. Or some days right? It's just too hard. And those heart. And so I'll, I'll tell you what I do is that in the morning, I really try to commit, and it, it happens most mornings to sometime alone in the darkness of the morning. And in that time, I use breath and some movement to really help me come to my center. It's a time for me to check in with myself actually. And I tell people this, it's my form of resilience. I really don't like the way resilience is handed to us. And my form of resilience is to check in with myself and say, what do I need today to be who I need to be, be today?

(26:43): And maybe that's more breath, maybe that's more exercise, and maybe that's none. Right? Maybe it's such a busy day that I just need to remind myself to breathe a little. I really check in with myself every day. I also do a gratitude practice at dinner with my family. So we do an up and a down and a grateful is what we call it. So what was our up of the day? What was our down? And that's the best way for me to find out what's really happening with my kids . And I think it also just models that sadness is there, things let us down, you know? It's okay. We don't need to brush them away. But I'll have some nights where, you know, one of my kids, mostly my son actually will say, I don't have a down. And I'll say, okay, you're, you don't have to have a down, but you have to have a grateful mm-hmm.

(27:29): . There's just no way. You cannot leave this table without a grateful mm-hmm. . And, you know, and they never do. But those are the ways that we institute it in our family day-to-day. But it is much more insidious than that. So it's, you know, when I take a walk, I try to take at least a short walk every day outside so I can re sort of convene with some greenery and the fresh air. I live in Seattle, so that's challenging. But I try my best. And it is often just a simple feeling my feet on the earth and reminding myself how grateful I am that I got. One more day, I got a day where I got to walk outside my house. If it's been a very hard day, and I've done no gratitude practice, no breath, no movement. That's a rare day. But it happens where I've done none of that.

(28:17): I go to bed at night, I close my eyes, I take a few breaths, and I do a little, I guess you could call it a prayer, but I do a little meditation to the river gods, I call them mm-hmm. . And I say, you know, I did not flow down this river the way I wanted to today. May I flow tomorrow in a different way? And I really just give myself that grace and that self-compassion. And so it really comes in just at all points of the day, something bad will happen, my luggage or you know, whatever, something bad will happen. I'll get upset, I'll get annoyed, I'll get stressed, and then I will come back to my breath or a walk or my gratitude practice pretty quickly, you know, and just use those as ways to hold them. It doesn't mean the sadness passes or the anger passes right away. It just reminds me that it's all okay. Mm-Hmm. , whatever I'm feeling. Does that make sense?

(29:16): Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I love those times of intentional practice at different times of the day that you're mentioning. For me, nature, it's all about nature. , the way the sun filters through the blinds or drapes, the way the trees sway in the wind. I mean, it's just the simple, oh, and birds. Birds so much

(29:39): Fun. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So, I mean, there's so many ways, right? And I mean, you know, some days I could almost cry that hot water comes outta my faucet when I want . You know? And you know, you can really have awe at so many things in this world. And at the same time, you know, we can get swamped in our suffering, right? Because suffering, what it does is create such a narrow sliver we can't see past it, right? And it's all about these practices that I talk about are really about expanding ever so slowly, gently, that sliver so that you can see more. And really, joy practice is all about that. It's about seeing more. So yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm grieving, but can I just see a little more, can I see a little more today? And really, you'd be amazed at how that can change your life.

(30:34): Yeah. I find that the more, more I appreciate, the more I get to appreciate more things come into my awareness. And you shared this quote from Alice Walker that I, I would love for you to talk about the grace with which we embrace life in spite of the pain. The sorrow is always a measure of what has gone before. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

(30:57): Yeah. I mean, the reason that quote means so much to me is that for me, it really embodies a very deep reverence I have for ancestral lineages. Hmm. So you know, I actually really feel strongly, there's actually studies to show and, and epigenetics and studies to show that trauma lives in our bodies, right? Mm-Hmm. the trauma that our ancestors have experienced lives in our bodies as well, and we can do things to change that. But just, I also think their re their persistence, their resilience lives in me. I also think that everything that my ancestors have gone through has helped shape who I am and has given me the privilege to be here on this earth. And I actually not only mean my blood lineage, which I, I have deep reverence for, but I mean my global ancestry. And so I think of everyone who has ever fought for justice and what they have taught me, that that is the reason I have the privilege to stand on this earth and fight for justice myself.

(31:58): I think of everyone, all the mothers. Sometimes I just sit and do a meditation when I'm feeling very hopeless or sad, I do a meditation to all the mothers who have suffered before me and yet moved forward day in and day out. And I gain strength and love from them. And I say, I too have the privilege to stand here and do that. You know? So for me, the grace of, I mean, the ancestry of the land I live on was not my, is not mine, right? It, it was taken from people who toiled and tended, in my case, as the Duwamish people where I live, have still toil and tend to this land and yet get no equity. Right? And so everything I have the land I live on, the soul I inhabit, the ability and capacity I have to fight for myself and others is all a measure of the grace of those who have walked before me. Always. And if you think about it, that's a gratitude practice, right, too.

(32:58): It is. And I, I think it's something that we don't think about that often most of us or talk about, but the, the idea that everything that we've received in this lifetime is standing on the shoulders of everyone who came before, I think. And, and I think having to be intentional about gratitude is necessary. I don't know that it's the default in, at least the way I was raised, it, it wasn't the default. And as I've gotten older, it's something that becomes more and more the default . It's like, oh my gosh, you know how much I have been given in this life, this human body, this ancestors who did all this hard work, and yes. Did they pass the trauma down? Yes. But they also passed a lot of other things down.

(33:51): Right? And I will just give the caveat, because I think gratitude, you know, really becomes a contrived platitude. And, and actually people really get turned off whenever you say gratitude sometimes. Mm-Hmm. , because they say, well, I, I don't wanna be thankful right now. Like, that's contrived positivity, right? So I get a lot of questions around, how is it that you want me to be grateful right now? How can that be possible? And I, and I always say a couple of things. One is it's just an invitation. So really no one should feel forced to feel grateful again, that's not okay. Two, I actually, I did a whole TEDx talk on this. So it, you know, I feel very strongly about it, but I was taught by a mentor to thank my son for his disease and for this pain in my life. Now, I'll tell you, when she told me to go say thank you, Tim, every night after he went to sleep, I said, there's no freaking way I'm doing that. You know, like, how could a mother be thankful that her son is suffering and will not be here? That felt like blasphemy to

(34:54): Me, right? Yes, I get that. And

(34:56): At the same time, , you know, I was like, well, what the hell I got nothing else. And also, you know, this sucks. So I'm gonna try it. And I tried it. And that's what the Ted talk is about, is it opened me, I had never once in my life thanked any pain in my life, ever. And what happened for me after that was monumental, because thank gratitude is not about contrived positivity. It's about saying, here is what is, and here I am with it. It allows you to say thank you, means you actually face what's happening. You don't resist it. You don't say, I wish, wish it weren't happening. You say It is happening. It's horrible, it's tragic. It's actually the most devastating thing for me. And yet it's happening. I cannot change that. Now, when you look and face that you can have more clarity, you actually, there's neuroscience around this that you actually feel less threat. You dampen that threat center, you get more clarity in the parts of your brain that need that, and then you get compassion for yourself. It's, it's actually quite a intricate beautiful process. And then after that, you really understand that it's not the pain that I'm, I'm not thankful my son's suffering. That was contrite, that I thought that was trite, that I thought that was what she was saying.

(36:23): Right?

(36:23): It's that I'm thankful for the gifts that I now see despite the suffering, right? And so it's not that I don't believe in this. Everything happens for a reason. I actually don't believe that. I don't believe it's all good. You can find a silver lining. I don't believe that. What I believe is we have suffering and then we make meaning out of it. And that's what leads us to joy. And so my meaning is big, you know, my son. It is a constant grieving process for us. And at the same time, I mean, I would not be who I am today. I would not be the teacher that I am. I would not be the physician I am, I would not be the mother that I am. I would not, my children have a deep sense of compassion and understanding in this world. I am not saying it's great, it happened, but it did happen. And now what can I make out of that? Mm-Hmm. . Because none of us deserve pain or suffering, but we all deserve the right to make meaning and joy out of it.

(37:27): And I guess that is the ultimate justice, right? Yes. What, yes, exactly. What could destroy you, you're going to turn and churn and use to support your joy in this life. I think that is the ultimate justice. And I know that you talk about how the vagus nerve creates a literal link between joy and justice. How does that work? Well,

(37:52): The vagus nerve, as many people might know, is the main nerve of our parasympathetic nervous system. And a vagus comes from the Latin for wandering. So it wanders from the base of our brainstem all the way through our chest to the deepest organs of our gut. And there's more traffic from the vagus nerve to the brain than the reverse. And what that really means is that our nervous system is giving us information constantly. Our body is giving us information. And so it's not about changing your thoughts or making life, right, because you think it's right. It's about noticing that if you can settle more comfortably in your body, more peacefully in your body by activating your vagus nerve. And there's a vast amount of ways that I describe that, and I'm sure people have heard about meditation doing that and so forth. The more you can calm your body through your vagus nerve, the more information you can send to your brain about how to interpret and translate this life as one of justice. The more you can stand boldly in this world and say, I am peaceful and calm in my skin and I'm here to stand up and be here in this world other, rather than contract it powerless, oppressed all the time, right? The bo the world will continually oppress us, will continually try to strip our power away. And the way to take our power back is in our body, period. I just really believe that.

(39:22): Yes, I agree. And the parasympathetic nervous system and hormones are intricately linked together, like you mentioned cortisols. Do you wanna tie that in for everyone so they get a really clear picture of what, when they're not in joy and they're not in gratitude and appreciation and they're in that victim mentality, how that affects the nervous system and the hormones?

(39:46): Yeah. So there's different hormones. There's the neurological hormones of serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and so forth. And then there's the reproductive hormones, right? A progesterone, estrogen. And there's different ways that it does that. One is, as we described, that the stress hormones go down. And so then we can put more energy into making our reproductive hormones. It's why people, you know, people will say like, oh, you don't have a libido cuz you're stressed out and people will think that's all in your head. It's actually not. You cannot, you know, I had a patient once where, you know, we looked and I showed her, you know, with testing to show her her hormones, what we were saying, I said, look like there's no juice here. Like there's just no juice, right? Like, how would, it's not your fault that you don't wanna have sex. It's your body saying, we don't have time for sex.

(40:35): We're trying to take care of danger. Right? And so there's this intricate relationship between our nervous system and our hormones. There's also an intricate relationship between our serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. The more you practice these tools that calm your vagus nerve, the more you stimulate dopamine, which brings reward into the brain and asks us, it puts us, you actually said this in the beginning, I thought about it when you said this, that the joy builds on itself. The neuroscientists actually called a spiral of joy. The more you notice, acknowledge and swim in the joy, the more dopamine is secreted to remind you to want it again, to look for it again. The more you do these practices of gratitude, self-compassion, et cetera, the more you produce oxytocin that makes you want to connect and tend to not only others but yourself, right? Mm-Hmm. . And so there are ways that our vagus nerve and our nervous system are the main regulators of every way that actually leads us to wellbeing. All the things people talk about, all the medications, all the practices, they start right there. I would imagine many of your listeners are very much wanting to feel more energy, feel more alive.

(41:57): Yes.

(41:59): , right?

(41:59): Yes. I mean people, women, there's such an epidemic of, I hear this so many times, I've lost my joy and I don't know how to get it back. I don't have the joy. I mean, sure, there're what I call midlife mayhem. The 60 or so symptoms that women start experiencing once they hit 40 and above, sometimes in the thirties. And they're those physical complaints. But the result, and I guess it's compounded because the hormonal poverty is what I call it that they go into and that includes neurotransmitter poverty. Cuz neurotransmitters are, were intimately, they're brothers and sisters to hormones. Yes. Is that there's no joy.

(42:40): Yes. Yes. I love that description. Hormonal poverty. I'm gonna remember that one. I love that. And I also love it because what we don't realize is that it's such a form of justice when we can replenish those hormones as well. Now we don't, I'm not saying everyone can solve all their problems with tools, mind, body medicine tools, but you sure as hell can help them and sometimes solve them. So you really just reminding people when they say, I can't find the joy. I would say, you know, it's time to step into your body. It's time to get back into your body out of your head and into your body so your body can mind your mind. Right. I mean, , I think it's more like you said, body mind than mind body. It's just, you know, Bessel VanDerKolk has well established this concept that trauma lives in our body. Mm-Hmm. and I actually, you know, I explain to people all the time, patients and people I work with in trauma groups, that trauma lives in the body. But that's also where it can heal. Understand that, that you actually need to get into your body to heal it. And so we need to do certain practices to step back into our body. It's not just thinking ourselves out of everything. In fact, only that will not do it.

(44:01): Right. I love this conversation and I'm gonna encourage everyone to get the book. We'll put all of your links in the show notes and I'm gonna have you share with everyone, and I agree with you. I just wanna be clear that neither one of us is saying that if you do a joy practice, you're gonna solve all your hormonal, neuroendocrine, immunologic health problems. But I say you have to do all the things. They're so tired of me saying that all the things , it's like a puzzle. And if you're missing any one piece, it won't work. So a joy practice, I would say is necessary but not sufficient. Without it, you'll never achieve what's possible.

(44:40): Yes. Yeah. And I think that's the main thing to, you know, Brian Stevenson is one of my justice mentors. I don't know him, but he's my mentor from afar. He says hope is about seeing the unseen. And I really believe that he's really helped me feel that, you know, because he fights for against the prison slave system. Really? And I mean, what more, what could be more hopeless at times, right? Mm-Hmm. . And what he says is, the reason I can do this work is because I commit to seeing what cannot be seen.

(45:13): Yeah. Isn't he the one who did the a Ted talk with something more views than he's like in the top 10 of all TED Talks?

(45:20): I'm sure he is. His TED Talk's amazing .

(45:22): Yeah. Right. Yes. So I think it's super powerful. I think your story is super powerful. Hopefully you're hearing what Dr. Theit is saying and if she can do it, we can do it.

(45:38): Yes. Right. I'm not, I'm not special. Yeah, for

(45:41): Sure. Yes. And how is your son Zubin doing?

(45:44): You know, his spirit seems to get stronger the more his body breaks down is what I would say. But he is declining. Yeah. So we're in a hard place,

(45:54): But I'm sorry to hear that. And, and in the same breath, it sounds like you have a powerful, grounded spiritual practice that will hopefully help.

(46:05): Yeah, and I appreciate that and I would encourage everyone to really understand that. I get a lot of people who say, I can't imagine, you know, what you're doing or how you do this. And in on the days where I have the energy to not just say, okay, I'm walk away. I tell people, you know, I would urge you to imagine, I would say imagination is the bridge that you need to imagine my pain will allow you to become closer to yours. So saying I can't imagine is also not seeing what's possible. If I can do it, I'm only human, then you can do it too with whatever your pain is. So build bridges of imagination every chance you get.

(46:44): That's so powerful. And as you were saying it, I'm thinking that's what the capacity of empathy is that you can imagine. Yes. And then you can be with someone in their pain and in their devastation. That's so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yes. And please tell everyone where they can get the book and where they can find out more about you and connect with you.

(47:08): So the book is Joy is My Justice, and it's on every book Online seller or in your bookstores. Or you can go to my website, which is www.ceimd.com. I'll give you that link. Yeah. Okay.

(47:23): Either we'll have it either show notes. All right. And on social media.

(47:26): Yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram, so I, I love to connect with people there. So my handle's md, so yeah, that confined, please. I would love for people to tell me what their biggest takeaway is, and maybe let us both know and feel free to tag us, because I love hearing from people who are moved. And I mean, you know, I'm sure you felt this in your career, Karen, but story is medicine, right? And that's how we really connect to each other and how we also heal. So when I hear people how story moves them, it's really a healing practice for me too. And so I really would love for anyone to connect.

(48:06): Yes, please do. And as we were talking, it was reminding me of, is it Rachel Naomi Reman at my grandmother's table? Who, yes. Is that the book? Yes. So if anyone's listening, also another second book to get is her book. It's Beautiful Stories. Yes. That will really warm your heart. And not in a cliche way, but in a soulful way. So definitely look, get joy as my justice and read it, but I'm excited for its release. And thank you so much for joining us today.

(48:41): Oh, it was really an honor to be with you. Thank you so much.

(48:44): And thank you for listening today and joining us. We're so grateful that you chose to spend your time with us today, and hopefully you heard something that you can use to positively impact your life, and by doing that, you'll impact your hormones positively. And you know I'm all about the hormones. Thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you again next week for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

(49:15): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

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