Colleen Kennedy on nourishing yourself and your Self

It was such a joy to interview my own herbal medicine magician for this episode. I cannot overstate how much Colleen has helped me over the years and hope this episode helps you…

Full transcript

Food is there to be enjoyed. We're very blessed to have an abundance of food around us and you know what? Like yeah, a bit more gratitude that we're lucky that we can have whatever we want whenever we want really and that we're being nourished and nurtured and not to be having the negative dialogue around food. There's a lot of negative dialogue around...

Hi I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I am so excited to be sharing new trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly ideas for you to help you take better care of yourself, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself, as well as the basic self-care which we all know can be so challenging at times. I really appreciate you tuning in.

If you want a deeper dive you'll be getting bonus content each week if you sign up to The Sole to Soul Circle. You can do that for free or from as little as eight euros a month and you can also find more ideas in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.

Hi Colleen, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome you to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

Thank you, I'm delighted to be here, really happy to be chatting to you today.

You're one of the first people I thought of when I had the idea to do it but um I'm so glad I followed up because you hadn't got my email!

I'm so glad you did too because you don't always get emails and sometimes things can go missing so it's a good lesson for me actually as well to touch back with somebody if they haven't you know responded to something that you're keen on so yeah so good on you.

And also you've been such an enormous support, you are part of my self-care basically, you and Yvonne with the acupuncture. I don't know what I'd do without you both and so I'm delighted on a personal level that more people will get to hear what you do.

So I started working with you three or four years ago where?

It was, it was about four years ago now I think and yeah it was great. You were coming in very eager to learn and I think I remember your excitement of learning some concepts around your blood sugar balance and how you could control and manage your energy levels, your lifestyle and overall your outlook and brain fog you were coming in with as well.

A lot of what a naturopath does is teaching and educating and trying not to be too preachy because nobody's perfect as we'll discuss today but I think it's a, it really allows for a compliancy when you understand why you're taking something or why I'm advising you to do something.

I think in my experience over the years in practice and even as a lecturer as well you have to, you have to give a bit of the ‘why’ and then people because ultimately what this medicine is all about is empowering you to take the reins in your own health care.

It's very much an empowerment medicine and you know so that comes with a little bit of that education as well.

And I remember how you were telling me to imagine the plant magic, the plant medicine working its magic moving through me and how because I've been sober since 2001 I could like feel it in my elbow and my knee. And I was talking to a herbal medicine friend in the UK and I was like it's amazing she said to imagine this… and she was like, ‘Evei, that's the alcohol’ so kind of feeling that but just I really appreciated your yeah and your I didn't feel judged.

My work is all about self-care and I was confessing to you about like my crisps for dinner every night and all the rest of it and you're like that's contributing as well as perimenopause and I didn't know but ADHD with brain fog.

And yeah well this is it for such complex creatures. I think you know what it’s like. It's very interesting today and I see this a lot with the students as well and people being ashamed of their of their food choices and shame should never be around food. My God, like I mean that's what's got this problem today where the weight loss industry is how many billions of dollars worth you know to the economy? And you know we're set up for failure and we're not listening to our own body cues and it has to come from acceptance as well if it's going to be lasting.

And the other side of that coin is as well sometimes I feel like we need to pull ourselves out and have a look at the greater picture in the world and, my God, like food is there to be enjoyed. We're very blessed to have an abundance of food around us and you know what like yeah a bit more gratitude that we're lucky that we can have whatever we want whenever we want really and um that we're yeah we're being nourished and nurtured and not to be having the negative dialogue around food. There's a lot of negative dialogue around food.

Oh my God, January is a big time for that as well and um after Christmas so yeah it's about nurturing a healthier relationship with food as well.

And I think you know you did um really benefit from that as well you know not being not beating yourself up for having crisps but knowing how to talk about food um in a in a kinder way.

And yeah, what we what we tell ourselves is really important yeah and I think because I did have a lot of shame because self-care is such a huge part of my work and because what you were telling me is very basic nutritional advice.

I was in my 40s already but I remember studying a bit of nutrition with the yoga therapy training like in my 30s and learning how important it was as children and teenagers. I used to even write about nutrition for the UK national press and I'd kind of dismiss it for myself like, ‘Oh yeah, but it's too late for me.’ And working with you it's like, no it's really not too late.

This morning I added chia seeds and flax seeds to my mixed fruit and vegan yogurt (the plain one I no longer have the sugar one for breakfast) but these things like, I keep, I'm kind of overemphasising this a bit because I have been working in this area for so long and I want people who might be listening or watching to realise that probably food stuff for me is the least natural in terms of what I've integrated into my own self-care.

And some of what you were telling me back then, I understood it at some level but it felt like the kind of thing that aliens might do: like to chop fruit and have granola and seeds and vegan yogurt for breakfast. It's like yeah, but that's not really me.

Whereas I do now have that like three or four times a week!

Yeah, great, yeah it's a habit isn't it? It becomes a new you. Know it's a skill and it's a habit and it is exactly that it is self-care. It's nurturing yourself and putting in lovely vital plant food into your body. Yeah that's key for your inner vitality.

Yeah. I really want to hear about your ideal and actual daily self-care so I imagine some of it will be around food and plants but whatever feels…

I always have I'm here in my clinic at the moment and you know it's great for me when I'm in clinic here, I probably drink more herbal tea when I'm in the clinic so I make up a big pot and I have that big go and I always share a cup of tea with whoever's coming in to see me and I end up drinking quite a bit of herbal tea over the day.

Then when I'm in here myself and I always like I think that brings me into the zone and it's hydrating as well. So yeah, there's a lovely there's a lovely I don't know what the word I'm looking for is but there's a there's an ally feeling almost. When you have these herbs and they're here they're here to support us on so many different levels.

I think herbal medicine is so special. We know it works on the physical and that's what you know where people will tangibly come to herbal medicine initially it's because it'll do this for that you take this for that.

But we know and when you're taking herbs for a while you can see that works much deeper and herbs work very much on the emotional and spiritual levels as well so I find that it brings me, in certain terms, will bring me into a more calm and a parasympathetic state.

And so that's really important for me when I'm working as well. That's an ideal thing that you do manage pretty much every day but more so when you're in clinic and you have it in your environment prompting you. Exactly, yeah exactly, yeah. And what else would I do when you know when I'm when I'm on track and my schedule is a little bit you know better? Better run… it hasn't been well, it's been very busy for a few different reasons for the last couple of months and I haven't been getting to the gym as much as I'd like but I do like to get a gym session in in the morning if I can.

Because if it runs away after that, I tend to be quite busy in the evenings either doing online classes or with my two teenage boys and things can just go awry after that. So I find if I don't get it in in the morning then it can it can slip away from me. And I know how I feel when I've got that regular routine in so I'm missing that at the moment. And I know this week was a bit of a write-off because I I've other things to do but next week for me, I'm going to be back on track.

And when you say going to the gym again it's that kind of thing that people imagine it has to be something really high intensity or something really like heavy or whatever it might be what...