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Light a candle and find your inner goddess with us.
Co-hosts Danielle Schleese and Briana Donaldson want to break the taboo of women’s health and wellbeing. From intimacy to parenting, women are constantly shamed for their inability to measure up to standards they never had a say in setting. On Honey Toast, these subjects find their home among incense, deep-dive conversations, and two best friends. From journal challenges to goddess calls, Briana and Danielle are always finding new ways to help you embrace your natural beauty — inside and out.
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Welcome back to honeytoes podcast today, we are joined by Devon Hall. She is a clinical Ayurvedic specialist and the founder of ease Ayurveda. She helps women move from a state of survival into full embodiment and ease so that hormones, digestion and vitality can all thrive. Her work blends Ayurveda nervous system repair and somatic therapy, but at its core, it really is just about tuning in and listening back to the body rather than just jumping into fixing it. So if you are somebody who's ever questioned, what is my gut saying, or what does intuition have to do with digestion, then this episode is for you.
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Thank you so much for joining us today, Devin. We're so grateful and honored to have your voice on the podcast.
0:53
Thank you so much for having me. I am just Yeah, so excited to be here. Yay. We're so glad to have you so obviously, Ayurveda is something that's really I feel worldwide. Now I think that a lot of different people are starting to incorporate it into their everyday life. But for someone that has zero knowledge on Ayurveda practices or what the components are to an Ayurvedic lifestyle, how would you explain that to them, or how would you introduce them to it, so that we can kind of lay a foundation for some of our listeners that might just be curious. Yeah, totally. So Ayurveda, without getting too too heady, Ayurveda is really the holistic medical system from India. It's the ancient, most ancient medical practice that we know of that's written, it's dated. It dates back 5000 years, maybe even 9000 years, and it's really this time tested, holistic way of treating the body through diet, through lifestyle and through herbs. And similar to other traditional medical systems out there, like traditional Chinese medicine, it's really rooted in element theory. So we have the elements ether, air, fire, water and earth. And from these elements, these elements are really like the building blocks of nature, and they describe everything that has ever been manifest, everything that exists. So from these elements, we have qualities that describe these elements. And these 20 qualities, they're 10 pairs of opposites. This is kind of like how Ayurveda describes everything that's happening in the body, in the world, in the mind, everything. And so these 10 pairs of opposite qualities are things like hot and cold, or dry and moist, or light and heavy. And so each element is a specific combination of these qualities. So when we're describing something like water, we describe it as moist because it is literally moist, but it's also represents like cohesion and and smoothness. And something like air is motion. It's the opposite of stability, but it also represents just like, let's say it also represents things like variability. And so even though these elements are something that's like real like fire and water and air, they're real things. They also represent ideas or emotions. And so really, anything that's happening in the body can be described by these elements and their qualities. So then above that, and this is where we get into the doshas. So above elements, we have our qualities. We have our elements, we have the doshas. And so if you have ever heard of Ayurveda, you've probably heard of the doshas. And this is how we describe our own bodies. And the doshas are these energies that really govern every function in the body. So they are vata, there's pitta, and there's Kapha. And each one of these doshas contains two elements. So Vata is air and ether, Pitta is fire and water, and this water is almost a little bit oily in nature. And then we have kapha, that is water and earth. And so every body has all three of them. We all are made of all five elements, but we all have varying degrees of each. So when someone said, like, if you've heard of Ayurveda, maybe you know that you already that you're a vata person. That doesn't mean that you are all vata. It just means that you have extra vata in you. You have extra air and ether elements in you. And so you have tendencies that are different from someone that maybe is, say, kapha, that has more earth and water elements in them. And so this is kind of how we talk about the when you hear the doshas, we're just talking about what you consist of and what your tendencies kind of are. This actually spiked a question in me, because you were saying, yeah, not everyone is one element. Everyone is like, a little bit of everything, which is interesting, because, I mean, we want labels sometimes to just like, understand.
5:00
Defined. So each dosha, from what I understand, has its strengths and weaknesses. So how might somebody recognize these strengths within themselves? Or, like, what are qualities within like, a personality? Because we're saying like air is a is a bit more motion and fluid. Like, what? What qualities Would you look at someone or, or, let's say somebody doesn't know anything about it, without having to have a background in Ayurveda. How can they recognize those qualities in themselves? That's my question.
5:26
So I think it's easy to honestly, like, get too in the weeds with just thinking about what your dosha is. And let me back up really fast. So like, every person has a constitution, and so your pro T in Vedic or in Sanskrit, your Prakriti is what you are given at conception. So this is like your very specific ratio of vata Tapi to Kapha that you're given at conception. And this is you at your most balanced state. When I see a client, I'm looking at what is called their vikrati, which is their imbalance, or the all the ways in which their doshas are currently out of balance, or maybe, like heightened, right? And so it's as a practitioner, it's easy for me to kind of stay within the dosha realm. As someone that is new to Ayurveda, I would say, kind of ignore the doshas for a second. Just look at the qualities of your symptoms. Like, if you are experiencing anxiety, for example, you are feeling ungrounded. You're feeling light and mobile. Like there's a lot of like, ungroundedness and a lot of speed happening in your mind, and just like, a lot of variability happening there's a lack of stability and a lack of stillness, and so those are the ones that we want to bring in right? That the rule in Ayurveda is like increases, like and opposites bring balance. So if you're experiencing mobility and if you're experiencing
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like variability, then you want to bring in stability, and you want to bring in stillness. So that's how we start to really think about it. So it's all kind of all about balancing the skills and, like, finding balance exactly body within the mind. Okay, so I have to ask, because I went on your website and did my quiz. Did your quiz. Oh, nice. And I got kapha, yeah, so what if you can? How would you like describe that? And I don't know if you know, based off of, obviously, just a quiz, it's not going to give you maybe a full spectrum of information, yeah, but just like, can you give me a rundown of, like, what that means? Kapha, yeah, okay, yeah. Like, why would I have gotten that as the results? Yeah. So this is your and this is for your gut type. You did the gut type? Yes, yeah, yeah. So if you have a vata gut type, so you have more water and earth in you, oh, no, and those coffee.
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Oh, did I say vata? Yeah, and kapha, so you have a, if you have a Kapha gut type, you have more water and earth elements within you, and so those come up in your digestion. They also come up in your mind. They also, they come up everywhere and when. So when you are in balance,
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this shows up as really steady, like Kapha energy is like when you have a lot of water and earth, and you you're very stable, and you things just move at ease. Like, one of the ways that is a really easy way to think about the doshas is thinking of them as different types of boats. And so if you have a vata boat, this is your like, errand ether boat. They are a little sailboat, like they are sailing, and the wind just takes them, like, literally, wherever, right? And it's a lot of variability, and they're constantly being, you know, shot off course. Your Pitta boat is your speed boat, and they are just like, bee lining it. They are like, racing to the finish line. They're gonna get there super fast. They're super driven. And then your Kapha vote is like your cruise ship. And it's also getting, like one way, it's just goes exactly where it needs to go, but it's taking its steady, smooth time, and it's gonna get there when it gets there. So with your digestion, it's kind of like that, where you have you eat your food, it's gonna get broken down. It's a little bit slower at times, but that's okay. Your bowel movements are slow and easy. There's no like tendency toward a lot of diarrhea or constipation. Like, it's kind of just this like steadiness all the time, yeah, which is awesome, and you have that in your mind too. So you have this like steady nature about you, but if you were to go out of balance Kapha energy. So usually, wherever you go out of balance is really like what you're already made up of. You can go out of balance in other doshas, for sure. But usually you kind of tend toward your dosha that's already dominant with it, right, right? So for a Kapha up type, if you're gonna go out of balance, then you're probably.
10:00
Probably gonna go toward you can almost get, like, mucusy digestion, like you can get a little bit more nauseous, and some people or it can just feel sluggish, like things just aren't moving as nauseous,
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to know what your doshas were, yeah, yeah. Should have taken this guy quiz a long time. I keep telling her. I'm like, maybe it's the food, maybe it's the gut, yeah? Because I'm like, Ooh, I feel queasy like, all the time, yeah, yeah, that's totally your tendency, yeah, yeah. And so things are just moving not as fast as they maybe should. And and so things that you know really help to bring, like, what's bringing you out of balance is too much heavy qualities, too much, like, heavy, heaviness or moisture, and sometimes you just need a fire under your butt a little bit. Or maybe you need a little bit more lightness in your life. Or maybe you need something that's like, a little easier to digest, like pizza is and lasagna is probably not your best friend. Like, like, heavy cheesy stuff
10:57
versus, like, for a vata person, that can kind of be nice sometimes, you know. So it's very it's different, so interesting. Well, thank you for the rundown. Yeah. Well, of course, like, for instance, for you, Devin, can you tell us what yours is and then how that's affected, the way that you would approach, like, the way you eat, the way you sleep, the way you rest, the way you play. Like, how does you specifically, let's get into you. How does that affect and how like maybe finding this out, or your path to getting into this work for you as an individual. So I am a vata PISA Pitta person. Vata Pitta
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and I, it's, I have kind of a funny story with mine, because I really resonated with vata. I felt like I was a very vata person. And then as I have been healing, and this happens a lot, as I've been healing, I have almost unearthed my what my actual constitution is, because I was so out of balance in another way, that now that I'm, like, gaining more clarity, I realize what I actually am. So I had a lot of vata imbalance, which is very common in our world. We are racing around all the time, and we are constantly just in an anxious state because of our massive to do lists. And so I thought I was very vata. And then when I finally was able to settle that a little bit, I realized I was a lot more Pitta than I gave myself credit for. And I think I was also even somewhat in denial about how Pitta I was, because I didn't want to
12:29
identify with the negative Pitta qualities, which is very angry and irritable and judgmental. And so I like had this wall up to being so Pitta. But in reality, like once, I was able to heal my vata and heal some of my pitta, like, Pitta energy is amazing, and it's so driven and fire, you know, fire is powerful, and so it's been an interesting journey for my own self, for sure, I originally discovered Ayurveda, actually through doing a yoga teacher training. And I did, like, one full day on Ayurveda, and it just completely changed everything for me. I've always been into cooking and being in the kitchen all the time, and when I learned that I could heal my body with food, that just like blew my mind. So I immediately after my yoga teacher training, I bailed on a master's program that I was gonna do and went into Ayurvedic school instead. And so that's how I like landed in this whole area. Yeah. Okay, awesome. How do you how do you find that now, knowing that you are sorry You said Pitta vada pita, or Pitta now, I'm more Pitta vata, yeah. Pitta vata, yeah. How do you find that that's affected the way now, knowing that information about yourself that you kind of ease into your days and your lifestyle, like how that affects the way you live? Yeah, it affects everything. For me, it's like I through Ayurvedic school, it's really given me an entirely new lens through which to see the world. And like, every single thing I do, I'm thinking about how it impacts my dosha and how it's really interacting with my inner landscape. And so I'm constantly thinking about it with everything. But I think the real like medicine with vata or pitta, honestly, is just kind of calming the outside chaos of the world, because the world is so crazy, especially Western world like so I have to limit I have to limit my exposure. Honestly. I have to be careful on social media. I have to be careful with the news. I have to be careful just like exposing myself to the chaos and finding that inner calm. And I think that's my biggest medicine, for sure. And what are there any other practices that you bring into your daily life? I'm sure some your diet has has a big part in that, that you take into your daily life to kind of keep you on path to that balanced state. Yeah, there's many things I do to, like, really center myself every day, but I would say like the one, if I was to choose, like, one thing that I do almost every single day that no matter.
15:00
How stressed I am or how overwhelmed I am. This like I could be bawling. And this practice, like always brings me back to center and makes me feel so good. And this is the practice of Abhyanga. Do you guys know what Abhyanga is? No, but no, please.
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So Abhyanga is the Ayurvedic self care ritual of massaging yourself with warm oil. And it's the best. It's the juiciest, most amazing self care practice ever. And it can be five minutes, it can be 20 minutes. I do it right before my shower every day, and I just coat my whole body in long, slow strokes and warm oil, head to toe. And it's just amazing. It's so centering and grounding. Yeah, yeah. That's like, one of my favorite things. I'm like, if there's anything I can do, it's literally rub oil on my lower half of my leg. Because I'm like, I am rushing to this day. I need to enjoy I need to, like, spend some time with me. I'm like, okay, really rub this into my knee. Real good. You are big. She does I do grabs oil on her body every day. It's so funny. It's the oil for me. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're speaking the language. That's
16:08
my ritual too, yeah? And it's the self touch, right? So it's like, yeah, bringing you back to the self and the body, which we'll get into, which I'm excited to get into further, um, with your work as well, because it's all interconnected, yeah, yeah. So
16:23
aside from Ayurveda practices, or I shouldn't say, maybe aside from, but collectively with Ayurveda practices, it's very connected to the gut, and it we know that you know a lot about the gut too, so we kind of want to go down that road a little bit and ask a few questions in that area. So based on your experience and the way that you explain that everything is so interconnected, what would you say is the biggest reason for gut issues? Or do you feel that the gut and the I don't want to say problems that it has, but the edits that it might need in working with you and the programs that you offer? Do you feel like it's very linked to trauma or emotion. Or what do you find is the is the biggest foundation of those issues in the gut, I would say, like, I would go as far as to say that the gut literally is a mirror for what's happening in the mind, and the mind is a mirror of what's happening in the gut. Like it's all so connected. And some people say that Ayurveda says that everything starts in the gut, and this is kind of what we're taught in school. I would say that it starts in the mind and the gut, and it's kind of all at the same time. And so, you know, what helps the mind also helps the gut, and what helps the gut also helps the mind. And so you can kind of tackle anything from both angles, which is really cool, right? Um, but yeah, I would say, like the gut, it truly is the root of so much. And you can heal the mind through healing the gut, which is impressed, like, incredible, right? And you know, science is showing that these days, and Ayurveda has been teaching it for 1000s of years. And, yeah, it's really cool, so fascinating. Yeah, I do feel, you know, we're kind of at this stage in society where the gut and the microbiome and saying, like the gut is the first brain or the second brain, or however people say, I feel like it's such a common theme in today's especially the health and wellness industry. So it's really interesting to get your perspective. And I love the way that you explain that, how you really kind of have to tackle the gut in the brain at the same time. Yet working on healing one of them will start to help to work to heal the other one, exactly. I love that. You know, working on them in tandem is probably the best solution. And
18:36
I would say almost like to add on to your thought, if I think of somebody, for instance, like me, before I started getting into more of understanding about my body and this work in terms of, like, fulfilling in my feminine essence, a little bit more understanding this realm.
18:55
To me, when I would think of gut, I would think of immediately digestion and not so much the connection it has to our spirituality and emotions, right? And, yeah, the physical kind of consequence, consequences or effects, I would say that are side effects that happen with the gut. And for me, I would think of, like, as a female growing up in the west and in my earlier years too, my connection to the gut would be like, Oh, I'm bloated. I'm not bloated. And that's like my knowledge, and it's extended as it would have gone in my earlier years. So
19:26
speaking of bloating as a practitioner and in your experience now, yeah, would you say Bloating is good or bad? Because if we had no background or knowledge or connection to the body, typically, bloating in society would be seen as like a clear sign of something your understanding is happening in your body, right? But is is that always bad in Ayurveda? Or, like, what is bloating to you? Yeah, I love this question. I always love the question of, is it good, or is it bad? Because it just is, in my opinion, you know, like everything just is
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blow.
20:00
Thing is a symptom, and we have to remember that symptoms are literally just the language of the body, and so it's your body communicating something with you. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's up to you, you know, like it's obviously affecting you. And symptoms can be challenging and uncomfortable, and that's valid. But at the end of the day, it really is just your stomach communicating something to you, and it's an opportunity to say, Okay, I have, you know, gassiness happening in here. Why is that? And then you get to look at your, you know, if you're tracking, you get to look at, you know, your food, mood and elimination. That's what I'm doing with my clients. I have them track along the way, and we will notice a symptom, and then we'll go back and look at what maybe caused it. But to say it's bad or good, you know, it is this is a sign that something's not quite balanced, I would say. And maybe you took in something that's creating an effect, but good or bad, you know? And yeah,
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we love to as human beings have certainty in life, and we want to know what's going on when there's no reasoning for something, especially when it has to do with our health and the body. So
21:12
how do you think, or how would you work with women to kind of help them shift the perspective from seeing something always it's like a bad thing with the body as it being a bad thing, rather than, like, what you said, it's actually your body communicating to you. So, like, if you're having someone coming to you that's so focused on the fear of what's happening versus tuning in, how do you get that woman to kind of cross that bridge for the first time and and lean into those feelings? Yeah,
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one, it's valid. You know that fear is valid, and all the emotions that come up with these symptoms, they're all so valid,
21:46
I would I always encourage my clients to remember that the body is as close to perfect as it you know, as perfect can be like our bodies are always healing. They're always trying to maintain balance and maintain that homeostasis, and they're always doing their best with what they're given. And so your body's already perfect. Your body tries to hear. Body can do so much, you know, but it's what you're taking in that the body can almost get a little backlogged, and it can be almost too much for it, like it can't catch up. And so,
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you know the art of Ayurveda is understanding what you're taking in that's putting a burden on your body, and what you can bring in instead to maybe alleviate your body's workload and really support it in healing and doing its thing. Because then once you learn what your body needs, then you just step back and let the body do the rest, and that's the magic. So for someone who, let's say, you have a client that comes to you, and they're very interested in Ayurveda and gut healing, and they're very intuitive or spiritual, but they're having a hard time, you know, really connecting with themselves, or seeing the cues, or hearing the cues that their body is giving them. What would be some like first steps to get someone started, in just those very beginning stages of reconnecting to themselves, to even understand and note and make make note of those cues that the body is signaling to them, rather than just running being like, Oh, I gotta take a Tylenol because I have a headache, right, right? Like, as opposed to like, coming to you and just being like, give me a diet, or give me a pill or give me a solution to the problem, but don't have to feel this way, right? How would you guide them into reconnecting with their body so that they feel more, you know, empowered with understanding what's going on with them? Yeah, this is a great question, and so relevant these days, because we are all so caught up in the chaos, and for someone that's just like, so in the drama of life and like, they're just too like, I've had multiple clients where they like, I can tell they're thinking about a million things in a session with me, you know. And so bringing them into presence and centering them a little bit is an art, for sure, and sometimes it's not very easy, but honestly, tracking is a really profound tool. Like, it's something that's so simple, and I don't for someone that's very overwhelmed, I don't do it longer than a week, but even just a week of tracking literally allows them to, like, see what they're doing on paper and be like, Whoa. Like, I didn't even see that that connection is there. I didn't even realize I'm doing that. And I get to, like, walk them through everything and tell them what I see, and then they just start, like, realizing all of these patterns that they've been doing forever. And so that's helpful. But then the other piece, I would say, is really just thinning out their schedule, like it's for pretty much every single person in the United States of America like it. We need to slow down, and we have to like because there's no way to listen to our intuition if we're constantly multitasking and we're constantly in our head and we're constantly onto the next thing. And we wake up thinking about our to do list, and we go to bed thinking about our to do list like That's.
25:00
Not going to work. So finding moments of stillness is definitely like step one, usually, yeah, absolutely. I think that we all need to work on that a little bit. That's why it's so interesting. You know, they say that the happiest people in the world are sometimes the people that have the slowest, you know, most, simplest lies, mundane or simplest lives, simple things and like, Yeah, but, but it makes perfect sense, because we just get so overwhelmed and so caught up so so on the topic of gut health and can kind of continuation that conversation and digestion. I know, because wellness is like a huge fat, a fad and trend and hot topic and buzzword these days, for good reason too. But I would say that intermittent fasting and water fasts, or some sort of cleanse and detox is always on the rise, or talked about, do you think that these fasts and pauses and starvations are actually not so great for women and clients, specifically that you work with when or if that woman is already very disconnected from hunger cues or like, do you think that those types of fads and kind of cleanses for the gut or digestion, like of water fast would be healthy or helpful, if that makes sense?
26:18
Yeah, this is a great topic, because it's such a big trend right now. And yes,
26:25
I will say this just straight up fasting every single day, like intermittent fasting every single day is never good for women. There is a lot of research coming out right now about just ovulation fasting, and you know when, or even just follicular fasting when you're like, at your peak, you know, like, right? You can fast a little bit easier, right? I think that's valid. However, from an Ayurvedic perspective, it's just kind of funny to me, like Ayurveda is really rooted in aligning ourselves with nature and aligning ourselves with our circadian rhythm and the like, our digestion follows the sun. And so as the sun rises, our digestion turns on. It peaks when the sun is at its highest around lunchtime, which is when we should be eating our biggest meal of the day. And then as the sun sets, it turns off. And so here we are in the United States, and we're skipping breakfast, we have a small little lunch, and then we have a massive dinner right before our digestion turns off, and it just doesn't work that way. So yes, I believe we do need a fasted state. I think the fasted state can be just when it's dark, and that works, and that's perfect. But we are not nocturnal animals. We are not meant to have a dinner once the sun goes down. We are meant to eat with the sun. So I would say, if you are going to, quote, unquote, intermittent fast and you want to do like 14 hours fasting or 16 hours fasting, have an earlier dinner, and then you're good. And so you could do,
27:59
why would you? Because we only, we only get sun for like, 10 hours of the day. Oh, yeah, we get left. Do it in the winter. You have your long fasting during those Yeah, yeah. Winter's a little bit more tricky, like sun's going down at like 435 Yeah? So like, still having that meal as, like, a lighter, easier to digest meal, like a soup or a stew, or something like that is still better and having your biggest meal at lunch. But like, this concept of skipping breakfast is just not good for the female body, and if you're ignoring your body's cues, like Ayurveda teaches us that, how do they say it? I
28:35
can't remember right now, but like, like, preventing your body's natural urges is a cause of disease. So that means, if you are not going pee when you need to go pee, that can cause disease. But that's also the saying, if you're hungry and you're not eating, that can cause disease in the body. So by just ignoring our hunger cues and skipping just because we think we should, and it can help us lose weight or help us do whatever it's it's not natural. And I think Ayurveda would say, No, yeah, it's so interesting, because I feel like, as we're exploring through the season, we're really talking about how
29:11
eerily comfortable it is to almost disassociate, to prevent ourselves from feeling certain depths that aren't revered in society or welcomed. And then, like, even from a wellness standpoint, back to the intermittent fasting. Like,
29:27
people want to do good for themselves. They want to be healthy. So if you know, there's an expert science, you and your partner, and they just happen to be the opposite sex. So like, let's do this together. Let's support each other. I'm going to speak from my experience, because my partner is, like, very into health, and he's like, let's do an intermittent fasting. I'm like, let's do an intermittent fasting. I'm like, Yes, but like, deep down I know, I'm like, I probably shouldn't be doing this, because I know I have hormones and as certain research and like other women and practitioners such as yourself, like are educating and offering this information, I'm like, Oh, that makes so much sense, yeah, but you want to do good, but it's generally, like, a very.
30:00
Very noisy space, and you're trying to do the best you can, especially women, all the time, with all the knowledge you can that it you're just sometimes fall into a disassociation of what actually is the simplest thing to do, which is just listen, yeah, what is required. But I think that that's why your suggestion of just even for one week doing that, like log regular logging, like checking in with your body, marking down what you're eating, how you're feeling, and all of that is probably so profound, yeah, and
Transcribed by https://otter.ai