Tharshini Nirmalarajah | Ep #47| Can TCM assist with early-stage pregnancy loss recovery?

consultations or professional medical advice hey guys i’m tasha hey listeners this is gooney and we’re here to discuss lifestyle medicine hi everyone welcome to doctor of the podcast so today we’d like to speak about something that is quite heavy the subject which is miscarriages because we don’t hear much of it being spoken about openly so we wanted to bring on a specialist who would give people some insight on how to navigate it better if they do experience it and for this we have tarshini nirmala a melbourne based chinese medicine doctor who focuses on the area of hormones and fertility she’s also the founder of fertile seeds of life a melbourne-based clinic which focuses on helping men and women navigate fertility challenges and hormonal challenges so welcome darshini to doctor of the podcast thank you for being here thank you so much for having me and i’m really grateful that i’m here on this podcast and being able to really talk about this sensitive topic it’s definitely something that is not spoken about like you said and women and men need that support to really navigate around this topic and you know how how we can support miscarriages how we can prevent it but also how can we move through it as well and really let go of the emotional impact that it can have on a woman’s body so thank you for allowing me to be here to talk about this and i just wanted to start off by just saying for any of you who are watching and listening that you know if any of you have gone through any miscarriages it can be very very difficult and i’m just so sorry that you’ve had to go through this journey of losing your child but know that you know you are in the process of becoming a mother you know you’re a mother in the making and there’s a lot that we can do to help support you physically emotionally spiritually as well and that’s what i’m here to really help you and support you with today well welcome tashini and thank you for this message and it’s somewhat of a message of encouragement for whoever is going through a difficult time like this and i think that really the topic is apache recovery after an early pregnancy loss with this traditional chinese medicine there are different labels to it there’s miscarriages and they’re different type of people who can experience pregnancy loss someone who was not looking to get pregnant and unfortunately then loses their child for some reason and then that people are actively actually trying to get pregnant and so when we did our research be it you know more qualitative to quantitative qualitative on my side is more like people i know around me who’ve been trying to to get pregnant and the issues that they’ve been going through and the ones who actually didn’t want to and then what they were brought to do and as you said in every situation there is a physical and an emotional impact and according to the nhs in in the uk among women who know they are pregnant it is estimated about one in eight pregnancy will end in miscarriages so that’s that’s not a negligible uh number and so i think that that’s why today’s is important for us to kind of talk about it maybe a first step would be to talk about the definition shall we start by what is a miscarriage yeah sure so a miscarriage refers to a spontaneous pregnancy loss prior to the embryo or fetus being sufficiently developed to survive before 24 weeks of gestation and pregnancy complications it’s you know estimated that about 10 to 20 percent of all clinical recognized pregnancies usually unfortunately end in miscarriage so it’s quite big you know out of those miscarriages you know 50 percent of those miscarriages are unexplained so there’s no real understanding of why that could be happening whereas more of the other 50 is more to do with sort of the genetic issue as well um but yeah and this is where i think chinese medicine can really help women around that 50 percent that’s unexplained question what do you mean by unexplained so obviously um when we when we talk about uh sort of the 50 that are explained it’s more they can actually trace it back to some sort of genetic embryo issue so with usually you know the maternal age of the parents being a lot older uh that’s usually the genetic material is actually affecting the quality of that embryo okay and so if there is a sort of chromosome or missing chromosome then that can really impact a very high volume of pun is usually you know when a woman experiences really low hcg levels you know dropping we can’t we can understand at the level that yes progesterones are decreasing and it’s not increasing and it’s not doubling up the hcg levels but no one can really understand why if they’re on you know progesterone pessaries and they’re taking progesterone and all of these things why is the body not being able to metabolize this to increase those levels so that’s where i talk about more unexplained reasons and you know also women experience ectopic pregnancies where they uh you know the the pregnancy is occurring outside of the uterus and this can occur as well like 90 percent of ectopic pregnancies usually occur in the fallopian tubes so that could be one of the reasons as well of a pregnancy loss of miscarriage too so those are a couple of the things that can happen would you be able to shed some light on what hcg means yeah so the hcg levels is how they can actually measure the progesterone levels rising so we know that you know after um when the when you have sort of like luteal phase deficiency which is the second half of your period that’s usually to do with more of your progesterone levels so your hormones aren’t escalating when that happens then the baby will miscarry um right so that’s an indicator yes progesterone’s really really important when you’re pregnant um that’s what kind of holds the baby yeah it helps the baby grow that’s yeah so it’s really really important in that second trimester that’s that’s what we want to measure so usually even you know when we’re doing basal body temp charting with women in the clinic if we can see that their temperature is rising and it just keeps rising then it gives us an indication that their progesterone is rising as well there’s a lot of clues around this yeah i guess this begs the question so when when a woman experiences a pregnancy loss what is the experience the body is going through and how does it look like you know it’ll be different for everyone it doesn’t mean that you have to have all of their symptoms but generally there will be a vaginal bleeding which doesn’t always necessarily mean that it will go to a full miscarriage but you know vaginal bleeding with cramping in the first trimester can be a really strong indication you know cramping the front gripping in the lower back um you know if you’re bleeding and you’re clotting and things like that that’s a huge sign that you could be miscarrying but at the same token i have seen women who have had a vaginal bleeding and still been okay you know because it can be common as well in that first trimester as well so it is really dependent but i definitely feel from a chinese medicine perspective when a few of those things are happening all at once it’s it’s a very big clue that it could be a threatened miscarriage how long is the bleeding going for yeah look it can be different for everyone it could be every day and it could be potentially also getting worse and a lot heavier but some people may start yeah usually that’s a big indication that it’s happening and sometimes it can be into a like a full flow or so lucky period so that’s when women get really scared um usually when it’s a little bit of spotting um that can also be an indication that it could be it could be potentially uh it could potentially happen but it is also common to get a little bit of spotting so you’ll definitely feel the difference between spotting and a bit more of a heavier flow with cranking um yeah you can really feel that that whole energy is sort of pulling downwards which is never what we want in fertility when we’re pregnant we want everything lifting upwards because we want the uterus to be lifted we want the whole pelvic floor to be strong so that we don’t um yeah let go of the baby really and if if we were to put pregnancy and then i guess miscarriage into a tcm lens how would you explain the interpretation of traditional chinese medicine of a miscarriage um this is yeah this is complex but there’s quite a lot that happens from a tcm perspective you know we look at you know building blood building chi building the you know kidney system as well from a chinese medicine perspective our kidney energy is very important because this is where our essence resides it’s really what is given to us at the time of conception from our parents so depending on how healthy the mother is how healthy the father is how well they’ve been looking after their bodies through lifestyle factors through stress management through diet this will all ultimately impact the quality of the kidney jing essence that you pass on to your child so it’s really kind of like the everything your genetics your life expectancy everything in that moment and so in tcm we really recognize that preconception care really begins three months before you even try to conceive so this is something that i tell all of my patients yes granted for a lot of women they feel like time is running out because when they go to their doctors most of the women that i treat are between 40 and 45 so doctors really ram it into women’s heads that you’re getting old time is running out ivf is the only way and so when women come to me they’re quite distressed and they have this urgency this feeling of time is running out and it’s really hard sometimes as a practitioner to really educate women and men that this three months preconception care is the most vital thing because if you go into fertility thinking that time is running out and you haven’t prepared your body ultimately your chances of a healthy baby is minimized and we want to pass on really good quality genetics and good quality health to that baby so they can live a long healthy life so we’ve got to go beyond what sometimes uh that need for urgency and so from a tcm perspective when we talk about pregnancy we’re also strengthening what we call the chong vessel and the ren maya vessel which is the two channel pathways out of the eight extraordinary vessels so we’ve got all of our normal acupuncture pathways with every single organ related to it so we’ve got every organ uh creating a certain pathway or channel pathway through the body that we need all um different points to activate different you know things in the body but we have these eight extras that are much deeper than the normal channel pathways that are built in utero when we’re a baby in our mother’s womb and so the chong my vessel is the first channel pathway that gets built and here is where we can help build blood and it’s also where we are imprinted with our destiny our blueprint of our path here in this world and so this area is really important to nourish blood through to the uterus and through to the baby so we need a strong chong vessel and then the second channel that gets built in utero is the renmai vessel which is the conception vessel of the motherline and this really runs from you know down through the the mouth through the neck through the the heart through the stomach through that umbilical cord where we are fed by our mother and down straight into the uterus so it’s the midline of the body and sometimes there can be a failure of gathering this type of blood and lack of nourishment to the fetus when we fall pregnant if these pathways are not open and healthy or if we’ve gone through trauma or there’s gynecological issues and you know there’s hormonal issues or there’s a lot of the different dysfunctions where there might be you know kidney yang deficiency for example which is to do more with progesterone levels it’s the warming mechanism of the kidneys that help lift that energy there could be a blood deficiency where someone could be quite iron deficiency that can really impact that channel and you know prevent that blood to be nourishing through to the womb to that environment of the uterus because you know we’ve got to remember that the uterus is a place of nourishment before a baby even knew the word nourishment so if a mother is not nourishing herself how can we nourish the baby so we look at all of those factors and also tonification of the heart you know in tcm we say that there is a vessel that goes from the heart to the uterus which we call the bowel my vessel if we’re holding fear anxiety stress grief loss here it impacts the uterus as the uterus holds all of these emotions as it is the container and is the anchor for the heart and so the bamae vessel can constrict releasing less blood flow and oxygen to be moving through from the heart to the uterus creating an unsafe place to bring the baby in so it’s really important to understand that you can still conceive with all of these emotions but it’s important to help going through the process of healing and expression and not repressing these emotions because if you do that you’re creating that energy to be stored in these areas so through tcm blends we’re able to work on a balancing way of connecting mind body and spirit because all of it works together they’re not in separation yeah your explanation is really reflective of how every single aspect be mental or physical is impacting your chances of getting pregnant or of keeping the baby but with that said the genetical factors on the tcm perspective is this something that we can reverse or work with to increase our chances of having a healthy pregnancy from a tcm perspective we can’t reverse the genetic material you know once that’s been passed on from your from your parents that that’s you know definitely what you have however we can influence the the ability to create a different environment and we know this even through epigenetics you know when we change the environment we can change the physical symptoms of the body and shift so that’s what we work with with tcm even though we may have or sperm quality or air quality we can enhance sort of the blood flow to the womb creating more of a fertile environment creating more oxygen more nutrients where that egg or sperm can thrive in we can support that through lifestyle factors through looking at the individual person through the pulse and tongue diagnosis so when we feel a pulse of a woman or a man and each organ system will have a different feeling to it you know this is a weird thing to say but some of them might feel slippery or worry or or full or empty and that can tell us if there’s a lot of heat if there’s stagnation if there’s blood deficiency if there’s qi deficiency there’s lots of things that we can get from the poles and then we can look at the tongue as well because the tongue is a map of the body so it can tell us which organ systems are also out of imbalance and what we need to work on on a very individual case because each person is different we don’t look at each person the same yeah i can see what you mean by the epigenetics part of things and so i guess these are the factors that are genetic based that you are trying to influence and from that for the unexplained things right what can we do to reduce that statistic so that it becomes more of an explainable reason why pregnancy loss occurs so it’s really important first of all to understand that you know 50 percent of genetics is also coming from the mother but also the father and one of the things i notice a lot in clinic is that it’s usually the woman that’s coming to see me for fertility for conception and not the man and men have to understand that over the last 18 years sperm quality has decreased by 50 percent around the world we’re seeing more and more issues with motility um the way they’re swimming we’re seeing issues with morphology which is the shape of the sperm you know if the sperm has two heads or two tails it’s not going to find its way all the way up to the fallopian tubes because it’s like a puzzle so if it has two heads it’s not going to flow through and so my issue is if it does have two heads then what’s the genetic material like and so there can be a lot of dna fragmentation in sperm which can cause a lot of miscarriages in women so sometimes it’s actually not the women so there are two questions here the first one is why do you think as a general decrease in the quality of of the sperms then the second would be is it possible that it improves uh because for women if you do your account like it’s kind of fixed right you can’t produce more as for men is it possible for them to improve production of their desperate there’s actually new research coming out around uh women and producing eggs so a lot of these things are actually starting to be challenged around this but you know the research is still very new so i won’t go into that right now yeah when it comes to men yes um you know there’s a lot that they can do 100 and the reason why it’s decreasing at such a rapid rate is our environmental toxins you know more and more people are eating really badly by eating a lot of processed foods we’re using microwaves a lot more we’re eating from plastic that’s very toxic to sperm quality but also hormonal issues with women so we really need to look at clearing out anything that is toxic from our environment so you know moving towards natural products like you know cleaning products car products what we’re using as shampoo conditioner skin care routine we have chemicals everywhere we can’t run away from it you know but we can try to reduce it as much as possible by moving towards glass steel you know people always try to tell me oh this new bpa and i’m like no just get off plastic and even in our culture being sri lankan we used to use a lot of steel as a kid you know we used to put water in steel jars and copper jugs because when it’s in a copper jug for example the water can employ so that means the water actually changes in its own frequency and becomes more smooth so you actually become more hydrated the other thing is as well it’s also the toxic built up from alcohol through smoking so i would really recommend quitting smoking as soon as possible as you begin your conception journey really limiting things like coffee you know this is a tough one for patients because there is supporting evidence to say coffee isn’t the greatest but also supporting evidence to say that coffee is good i’m just going to speak about it from more my experience working with patients and from a chinese medicine perspective and coffee is very heating it’s very drying when we have coffee what happens is that the energy starts to rise up to our head that’s why we can have this mental focus and we can work really long hours and work hard but when we think about conception we want the energy moving downwards towards the uterus or to the reproductive organs of men so it’s actually taking away the energy and we’re rushing and creating more heat as well we’re increasing the cortisol levels if we’re already feeling stressed and this is not nourishing the blood in the yin the yin is nourished by the conception vessel which is what i spoke about before the renmai and the yin returns that energy back down into the uterus and the reproductive system so we’re taking away from that as well if people really love love coffee you can have one a day but to really have optimal health i would be pushing my patients to come off it if they have other issues or already have experience anxiety we also want to look at things like a healthy weight so there are a lot of people trying to conceive who are overweight and even just losing an extra five kilos can play a huge difference on your ability to fall pregnant also you know eating healthy wholesome food a diet high in fruits in veggies in proteins low in sugar and processed foods really increasing your good quality fats as well you know we want to make sure that you know to remember that hormones are supported by fat we want to have good quality olive oil avocados your nuts and seeds and tried to also speak to patients around cutting out dairy products as well because you know there’s a lot of supporting evidence now to show that when you’re having you know two to three pieces of dairy a day that it can reduce your chances of falling pregnant up to 60 percent and this is through western medicine and that’s because a dairy can be quite inflammatory and so you’ve got to think about also the cow you know what if the cow is pregnant you’re also then consuming her the hormones at an even higher level um you know reducing gluten as well out of the diet so there’s a lot that we can do from a health aspect and lifestyle as well working on your stress how are you coming home you know are you are you relaxing are you able to switch off or are you on your phone on your computer are you how are you really looking after your health how is your sleep pattern you know we look at all of this comprehensively through a tcm lens and we look at your period cycles because that’s a fifth vital sign in chinese medicine we look at you know what is your blood flow like are you getting clots is it on time is it irregular are you getting spotting in between periods so your period cycle is a huge clue into working out what’s really going on in your body um interestingly enough i’ve noticed a big difference when i actually was very careful with the type of food i was eating and and i didn’t have any dairy versus where i i was trying to compensate by the fact that i was not eating dairy so i had at least a piece of dairy per meal so this is really bad this is really bad and if you’re if you if you’re snacking then that’s like another yeah and my actual period were horrible i had cramps clotting and all these things so i was just like what just happened and i realized i slacked on my discipline in eating properly and if you pay attention to the way you’ve been navigating your life prior to the your period it has a direct effect on your period it actually is quite reflective yeah there’s no there’s no slacking there’s no stacking allowed yeah it’s it’s a struggle i mean i i’m similar to you guni because i think at some point when i was living in melbourne i was trying really hard to not be on dairy and so i noticed a huge difference and my prams they reduced significantly and i stopped having really bad pms as well when i caught out dairy which is not to say that you know it’s evil right but to my body that was a gift thank you for sharing that because it’s it’s it’s really important for women and men to understand that dairy is quite it can be i don’t want to say toxic but it is very inflammatory and you know when we think about a woman when she has her period all the vessels are open so this is a time where your body goes into a yin phase so we’re more prone to feeling cold and this is why we’ll use a heat pack and during that time if we’re eating cold food straight out of the fridge dairy products cold water you know cold salads raw veggies this will ultimately impact the womb and create more cold to enter and i see this a lot in fertility and gynecological issues this cold creating blood stagnation blood deficiency pain cold creates restriction you know and that’s why when everything restricts we feel craps you know we feel tightness and we want everything open and warm so you don’t really being conscious of having warm drinks warm water hot water i’ll have i literally sip hot tea all the time or hot water all the time i don’t drink cold drinks at all and if you do this and you honor your body in this way you end up having a beautiful cycle for the rest of the month where your hormonal system is being supported yeah it can be very overwhelming there’s a lot of changes that sometimes needs to happen so i want everyone to take something away making one change to begin with yeah talking about period cycles i know a lot of women don’t actually track their cycle so can you touch on how this impacts pregnancy loss so our cycle tracking is really important and it’s something that most women don’t know about until they go through the fertility journey it’s really important because different things are happening on a week to week basis with your cycle you know as soon as the sort of the period finishes where or we’re working on building your yin the fluids the lining is being built the embryo is you know getting to be released as well towards ovulation so during this time you’ll notice that you know the the temperature might be a little bit lower and we’re building blood so it’s really important for women to really recognize if there’s any sort of iron deficiency so i will usually go and get women to do a full blood test to have a look at this because if there is iron deficiency and there is that we classify that as blood deficiency in chinese medicine it will impact your ability to fall pregnant because there’s not enough blood moving down towards your lining to the endometrium right and so we want to check that out we also when we move towards ovulation we want to be looking at you know if there’s cervical mucus you know if your temperature is rising during that time because that will tell us if your progesterone levels are getting high enough you know during that time as well sometimes the temperature can be really low sometimes women are not ovulating and they think they’ve been ovulating as well especially if they’ve got things like pcos so we can track all of that through bbt charting it can become so much more effective than doing it through an app it’s an app is not going to tell you exactly what’s going on with your body you need to understand this on a very physical level so you’ll notice the temperature will drop and then rise and we know you’re about to ovulate then you’ll notice the cervical mucus and then you’ll notice cervical positioning as well that will rise up and become very soft like your lips whereas before your period it will drop down and feel like the tip of your nose very hard sometimes as well if your temperature is not rising properly as progesterone peaks we may need to put you on herbal tonics that help improve the kidney warming mechanism you know so there’s a lot that can be told through your cycle as to what is going on and we can adjust it yeah so we talk about the lifestyle factors we need to manage and one of them is stress management and the emotional health of both parties trying to conceive right uh what is the tcm perspective about pregnancy loss and emotions gosh the emotional process of pregnancy loss is massive you know this is a topic that not many women will share with other people when they’ve gone through a miscarriage a lot of the time their families or their close friends won’t even know it’s something that’s very much repressed because no one wants to tell anyone even you know the first 12 weeks of being pregnant that they’re pregnant just because of that fear of pregnancy loss and that can be very detrimental especially like i said in the beginning where the heart and the uterus is connected by the by my vessel and it’s because there’s a lot of shame guilt feeling like this is something that a woman should naturally be able to do and i haven’t been able to do that and so there’s also a fear of being judged because sometimes people are going in are you pregnant yet or what’s going on with your presence from pressure from family you know lots of different things and when a woman goes through a very difficult fertility journey when already no one really knows about and then she finally falls pregnant and there’s just so much excitement and you know i watch these women come to me then feeling really scared up until those 12 weeks am i going to lose my baby am i going to lose my baby and also if they’ve already had pregnancy loss prior to there’s so much fear and there’s a lot of grief that is being held around this around the loss sadness there’s weeping there’s so many emotions that are happening and if we don’t allow this processing of those emotions properly it can be stored in the organ systems over a long period of time so we really need to be looking at emotional support here and this is one thing i really work with with my patients around the processing of that grave being gentle on yourself creating a warm nourishing environment where you can go into stillness where you can really honor the process of loss because it is it is the loss of a soul even if it didn’t come to full terms the energy of that baby and the cells of that baby were within you and there’s actually evidence to show that the cells of the baby is there for a lifetime within the woman’s body so that’s why it can be really hard to let go of miscarriages or forget we don’t forget yet when we go to the doctors and we have pregnancy laws they’ll usually say to a woman okay try again try the next month and we don’t actually allow the time for grieving personally i feel women should wait anywhere between six to 12 months which is not realistic for a lot of women because they’re in this urgency of falling pregnant but it could take up to that long to really let go and process and so i tend to do beautiful rituals with women and men to help them let go and taking them through healing meditations as well to honor that and even you know simple things like lighting a candle and writing a letter to that soul and allowing that to be released or buried or burnt is a beautiful ritual that you can do as well but there needs to be an honouring of this process and it’s just not done enough yeah i think that acknowledging that loss is the beginning of the healing process the healing journey right and beat a baby that you didn’t plan or be a baby that you were actively trying to i think that that passage is um is important i i actually experienced one of my great friends who actually had to go through force miscarried and it’s tricky to understand how to support be as a friend or not the actual emotional experience of letting go of closing that chapter or of honoring that the loss of that connection with these initial cells um because then that it seems like abortions would be somewhat of the same consequences physically speaking but emotionally speaking women are in different you know state of mind etc comparatively to someone who’s actually actively trying to get pregnant and um it can be very hard i think it could be very hard to to actually process this because you’re already in somewhat of a denial or in a space where you were not even ready for this and this is happening and everything goes so fast um i feel that this is lacking a space where women can tell like even though you didn’t plan this you need to process this it’s it’s a there’s a there’s a loop that needs to be closed or there’s there’s an honoring that needs to happen 100 i mean i can speak even from personal experience having an abortion when i was a young guy in life and at the time feeling like i had processed it you know i come from a culture where you don’t have sex before marriage and so it was very much hidden for me and i was in the mindset that i was detached from that baby and this was the best decision for me and that was okay that was the decision that it was supportive for me at the time however later in life i recognized that there was still wounding around this because i didn’t process it that my body was still holding onto this in denial of the reasons why i didn’t want to be a mother maybe the deep fears that were still being held there from past trauma and the fact that i didn’t really grieve that process of the letting go and that was all being stored within me when i’ve gone into deep states and meditation i actually experienced it and felt this so it’s really important to understand that there’s a physical detoxification that needs to happen with any type of loss of baby or even if it was consciously made the detox may occur through emotions that can surface either now or like later in life um it can happen through pain or aches in the body that you might feel so becoming receptive to where you might be holding that trauma around this loss which usually is around the hips around the womb around the pelvic floor around the lower back around the solar muscle around these areas is really a key or even through the glutes when we hold onto grave there might be a feeling of tiredness for no particular reason and a need to rest or the urge to meditate more or do healing more or go for swims in the ocean there might be a feeling of wanting to do yoga classes or even change the way you’re eating and sleeping these may consciously be feelings that you might be experiencing the body through this process or there might be a natural intuitive impulse that confirms that you’re going through a cleansing process and to honor that it’s really about being kind to yourself i think women are just not kind enough to themselves when they go through this process regardless of what decision you make right and not judging yourself harshly for it because not everyone’s going to fully understand it’s very individual to each woman and during changes it’s just about honoring your inner guidance just trusting the flowing changes that are happening within you and remembering that you’re like the great ocean yeah you’re made up of 72 water and you’re going through different tides at any given moment so honoring where you are in that and if you honor this you will move through these transitions with more ease and more grace and creating a strong support network is really important through this process even if it’s just one person you know i know that having a partner is really important who can uh you know understand to a certain level but also sometimes for a woman it’s happening to her body so sometimes it’s really hard for our partners to fully understand and i do find myself really supporting women through this process so for people who have had challenges trying to get pregnant what can they do today to help themselves to prepare for that journey what you can do today is for women i would be looking at your cycle first and foremost helping you understand what your healthy cycle looks like how long you’re bleeding are you getting clots are you is it nice deep and rich red so really looking at your cycle is the number one thing first and you know adding something into your life that’s going to help support your constitution you know reducing your stress levels reducing your chemical intake so how are you connecting with your partner create an intention as well when you’re making love you know and also really don’t do it if you don’t feel like it you know don’t do it just mainly just because you’re trying to conceive to work from a place of where you’re both feeling balanced because that’s going to create the strongest jing essence and life force for that baby i love that gene essence i love it yeah so for men also just creating a little bit more balance because i know a lot of them work really hard work really long hours and so we want to make sure that when you are coming home you’re doing something to relax this could be you know doing a little bit of exercise this can be doing a little bit of meditation where you can slow down your breath this is also getting out into nature remembering that nature is in perfect frequency for our bodies whereas when we’re inside we’re around a lot of computers and technology and all of these things that are creating radiation so getting back into nature is a really great way of doing that making sure that you’re not putting laptops on your lap as well because that is not great for your sperm you’re frying your little little guys so we don’t want to do that we don’t want to be wearing tight lycra as well if any of you do bike riding so doing those little things can help too great yeah i think these are really good tips that people can take away and implement immediately and as always we have our rapid fire questions the first question is what is the first sign that you notice when you’re out of balance feeling heaviness i definitely feel heaviness in the body heaviness in the shoulders my neck my my mind as well so as soon as i feel this heaviness i know that i’m not in alignment that’s that’s a good one um and so to fix that heaviness what is your method of coping or fixing that usually i’ll always go into nature i will meditate i will use different essential oils i’ll rub them on my body i will connect with my womb and my heart as well i always anchor back here to ask my body what’s going on so i always consult my body first um and i eat really well you know if i find my diet kind of sliding a little bit i know that i need to come back into alignment okay that’s it and lots of water so i make sure that when i’m drinking my water because that’s you know really going to be cleansing and creating more lightness in my body that i’m conscious with my water i always putting an intention into it because we know that the molecules of the water can change as well when we speak positively to the water so that’s what i do speak positively to your order i should actually do that um and the last question uh for you tarshini is what is one book that impacted your approach to wellness or well-being you know this is a really interesting question because i actually would you believe don’t read books i mean obviously i read books when i was studying my degree but there’s a reason why i do that and that’s because i wanted to really tap into my own inner wisdom i think so often we tend to read books and mimic what that person has said and bring that into our life and we actually forget the wisdom of our own intelligence a lot of the stuff that i teach now is actually all learnt by me meditating and going inwards and seeing a lot of things that have opened up for me and really trusting my own inner knowledge of my own inner guru so i don’t really read books i mean i’m sure that i will later on as something really sparks my interest but right now it’s a time of deep inner reflection for me and that’s how i sort of move through the world so yeah i guess the recommendation is your own self-reflection and practice that yeah that’s a good one you’re the doctor of your life you’re the healer you’re the doctor this is what i tell my patients all the time even though i might have it free i’m here to empower you to remember your wisdom and your ancient power and a woman knows this instinctively you intuitively know when something’s not an alignment or if there’s something wrong with your kids or something’s wrong with your friends or partner you know yes but you second-guess it based on what a practitioner is going to tell you so i always encourage women to listen to their intuition yeah a hundred percent um so thank you so much darshani for sharing your experience and your knowledge with our listeners and with us i’m glad we had you on the show and i hope that many women benefit from this conversation thank you and i just want to leave and say that you know to everyone that’s listening today is that you’re more than a blood report and from a chinese medicine perspective we know that when we can realign you to all of who you are your power and the body’s ability to heal is freaking fantastic so don’t lose hope you know really trust and open your body up to a level that maybe you haven’t experienced before by working with allied health practitioners can show you what you’re capable of yeah because that that blood sample that blood report is just a snippet a snapshot in a given moment so definitely a good message to leave our audience with thank you darshani thank you everyone thank you for listening if you enjoyed this episode go ahead and select that follow or subscribe button for now stay safe and we’ll see you next week