Back for another season is one of your favorite episode themes: Seasonal Living and Health according to Chinese Medicine.
Today's topic? Living in alignment with Autumn with Anne Woods.
Anne Woods is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist in San Francisco. Her approach to modern medicine is gentle and empowering. Rooted in ancient healing modalities such as acupuncture and Eastern medicine, therapeutic movement, nutrition counseling, and herbal medicine, she believes we can teach the physical, emotional, and spiritual body to achieve balance. Anne has a passion for helping people with acute and chronic pain, digestive disorders, hormone imbalances, natural skincare, and stress. Her intention is to help people feel vibrant and alive in their bodies so they can live fully, with peace in their heart and mind. She has been teaching yoga for over 14 years in a variety of styles. When she is not in the clinic, Anne enjoys spending time in the ocean, tending her garden, ceramics, and cooking up nourishing dinners with friends and family.
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💫 Mentioned on today’s podcast:
💫 To connect with Anne:
To connect with Kasia
Back for another season is one of your favorite episode themes: Seasonal Living and Health according to Chinese Medicine.
Today's topic? Living in alignment with Autumn with Anne Woods.
Anne Woods is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist in San Francisco. Her approach to modern medicine is gentle and empowering. Rooted in ancient healing modalities such as acupuncture and Eastern medicine, therapeutic movement, nutrition counseling, and herbal medicine, she believes we can teach the physical, emotional, and spiritual body to achieve balance. Anne has a passion for helping people with acute and chronic pain, digestive disorders, hormone imbalances, natural skincare, and stress. Her intention is to help people feel vibrant and alive in their bodies so they can live fully, with peace in their heart and mind. She has been teaching yoga for over 14 years in a variety of styles. When she is not in the clinic, Anne enjoys spending time in the ocean, tending her garden, ceramics, and cooking up nourishing dinners with friends and family.
💫 We cover :
💫 Mentioned on today’s podcast:
💫 To connect with Anne:
To connect with Kasia
Hello and welcome to Nourish. My name is Kasia and I'm an entrepreneur, a longtime meditator and a student of Chinese medicine. My mission with this podcast is to share the tools and practices to help you integrate your whole self into every aspect of your world. As someone who is both a Taipei high achiever and a deeply spiritual, vulnerable and empathetic being, I know firsthand how it feels to be living a double life showing up one way at work a different way alone and struggling to reconcile the two. This disintegration of authenticity is one of the biggest causes of burnout, health flares and anxiety. For me, understanding how the mind-body connection is crucial to health and success, cultivating a strong sense of inner self and applying the healing philosophies of Chinese medicine and Zen Buddhism to my life has allowed me to lead from a completely heart-powered place, letting go of other people's judgments and finding peace and allowing my multi-dimensional being to shine. My hope is that this podcast may inspire you to do the same. I want to call out. It is a practice, it is a journey, but I believe it is the most important thing that we can do for our bodies, minds and our ultimate potential. Enjoy, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, kashla. Nice to see you.
Speaker 1:Nice to see you too, my favorite seasonal friend, I swear. As I told you last time, every single time we get together it feels like it's the start of a new season. So this is just such a beautiful, beautiful intro and I actually want to kick it off with a seasonal question for you. Here, in the Bay Area at least, I have felt a bit of this transition from summer into late summer, which we're going to get into into now. We're segueing into autumn, and I would love to hear for you how have you been adjusting to this time? Like if you could just give us like one thing that you noticed, perhaps from nature and what you've done to kind of move and flow with that. I think that would be a beautiful way to start.
Speaker 2:I love that question. That's great. You know the answer to this question. You know what I'm going to say, right?
Speaker 1:I don't actually.
Speaker 2:So we've done this enough times now. I think you know I'm going to say food, it's food. So I was thinking about our talk today and I think I was eating some lunch and I started thinking to myself oh wow, that's so funny. You know, I feel like I exhibit these, these little nuances of the seasonal shift and I don't even realize it. And then I always like to look at my own zine just to go back to it each season because it's it's so fun and it's cute and I'm proud of it and it was a fun project I did with my artist friend and I was reading it before our talk again and I was like, oh yeah, I was just doing that and I didn't even realize I was doing that. You know, we'll get into some of what I'm talking about when we talk about the spirit of the seasons. But that was interesting, Just kind of my thoughts and where they're headed. And you know what I, where I want to focus my energy, that's, that's what I'm referring to, the type of exercise I want to be doing now, how much sleep I want to be getting, reflections on my life, reflections on my practice, my clinic reflections on my art practice, you know, just things like that, and the food, of course.
Speaker 2:This this time at least, here in San Francisco. This is our late summer, although I have to say I woke up today and I said it's fall. Oh yeah, it really felt like fall this morning, Did you feel that? Oh yeah, the air is chriss and it was a little sunny. It was very quiet this morning and there was something about it, the way the light was hanging, shining through the window. I just felt it like it's fall today. So I can't wait to dive in and talk to you about all of it. But yeah, especially in San Francisco, the food is awesome. Right now is my favorite time of year to eat and to cook and to play with food, because we have the bounty of the summer and the late summer and we also have all the fun cozy fall vegetables coming in. So I love them all. So this just feels like the cornucopia Very on brand.
Speaker 1:Oh, San Francisco. That visual is perfect Chef's kids right there, no pun intended. So I actually want to kind of zoom in on something that you said, because as I was preparing for this interview, kind of going off of the traditional dates with Chinese medicine, I was kind of thinking, okay, we are definitely transitioning into fall, but you mentioned that this is kind of a late summer period for San Francisco. Can you talk a little bit about, first of all, like, what is late summer? Because this is a unique season that is only present in Chinese medicine philosophy, or, I guess, not only present. I can't say that because I don't know around the world of perhaps there was another season that was referenced similarly, but it's definitely not one that we typically celebrate or follow. We see four seasons, but Chinese medicine sees this fifth one. So can you talk a little bit about what is the late summer season and are we in it right now? Sure thing.
Speaker 2:So today, as we're talking, is September 11th, so we've actually already passed the late summer season. According to the lunar calendar, late summer is an earth element season, and late summer is an earth element season and it starts August 5th and goes all the way to August 25th. So this short little 20 day season is the last stretch of summer and it is slightly different and I think, in a different. We have our own version of it here in San Francisco, which is true, we call late summer, you know, september and October, because it's just when the weather gets warm in our area. But I've told you this before, I'm from Texas and it does get very hot in the summer, of course.
Speaker 2:And so late summer is brutal because everyone is just so parked from the whole summertime. We are exhausted, you're dehydrated, you're everyone's a little red. You know all their like blood is up on the surface just sweating, like trying to cool off. And late summer is when you get that final blast of heat and all the plants come to a crisp. So think of really dry grasses, you know, for talking food, think of a tomatillo. You know how the, that little green vegetable has the skin around it, or like a ground cherry, that also kind of has the skin.
Speaker 2:There's another plant that's really beautiful, that's like even then the name is called a lantern flower or something like that and it has that sheath fiber that goes around the fruit, and so that's kind of the essence of late summer is it's really hot, it's really dry, we start to see it's the final harvest, you know. So that's what late summer is all about, and it's very short and I love that course. The clinic I run is called the garden most clinic, and I love to garden, and so in my home garden I have this really cute wildflower garden, and so what I noticed in San Francisco late summer is the black eyed seasons just popped up, and then the cosmos got really excited and they popped up a little bit more fervently to res earlier in the summer. You know my sunflowers were coming up slowly and you know just different plants were doing their thing, and so this, this was a time, this has been a time that I've definitely noticed because I'm paying attention to my plan.
Speaker 1:So it's funny you mentioned that because I am a first time gardener and I don't know if I'm premature with this as, like a seasoned gardener, but I actually last weekend started to pull up some of the summer crops that I had that honestly started to look pretty overripe at this point, like a little bit burnt, like the arugula was looking a little crispy. Kale, I mean, kale is kind of like an autumn food, but I did plant it pretty early and I felt like some of my kale plants were looking a little bit dry. And so I'm curious from, like a health point of view, is this more of a transitional season or does it have very distinct kind of health things that we should have been looking out for, and what are some of the things that, especially as we transition out of that season now, what might we be experiencing during this time?
Speaker 2:Great question. So during the late summer it is the earth element. So the two paired organs of the earth element are the spleen and the stomach, and so I'm always looking out for both the physical and the emotional as root causes of my patients and balances. So each time the season changes, we just our bodies seem to become a little bit more vulnerable to a slight imbalance. Or if we already have an imbalance in the body that's safe from inflammation or hormones or pain or whatever it is, it can possibly, you know, lean one direction or the other during these shifts. So when we shift into late summer, I'm definitely looking out for digestive disorders and I'm also looking out for people having trouble sleeping at night because they're up just thinking, thinking, thinking a lot of penceiveness. Yeah, and I actually brought one of my zines with me to our talk, so I'd love to read it off to you if you'd like to hear a little bit from the zine.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh yeah, directly from the zine. Okay, great.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the spirit of late summer. The organ of late summer, like I just said, is spleen and stomach. So we want to chew our food well, to enhance digestion and enzymes. You want to eat in a calm space without stimulating sounds or screens. This is an action step that we can take in order to promote healthy digestion and also nervous system regulation. Rest and digest, or fight or flight Right. So when we're eating we want to be resting in a peaceful environment as much as possible. No eating on the go as much as possible. You know multitasking. Don't have your computer typing away and sort of emails while you're shoveling some rice and chicken into your mouth.
Speaker 1:Never done that in my life ever. I don't even know what you're talking about, frankly.
Speaker 2:You get the idea. And then the energy of late summer is yin within yang. So summer is the most abundant form of yang energy that we have all year long. So late summer is just like a little trickle of yin starting to come in. The climate is damp, so not quite summer, not quite, not yet autumn. This warm burst of late summer is for thunderstorms and nourishing the body with balanced sleep, nutrition and movement. So the planet is Saturn. Saturn is a planet of boundaries, responsibility and self control. So I like to think of that.
Speaker 2:That reminds me of, you know, all of the parties we talked about in the summertime and travel and excitement, and it's almost, it's just embedded in our culture that you know school starts in September, late August, and you know people are coming back from their trips and everyone's just getting more planning and organized and tidying up the house and just starting that school year on the right foot. So that reminds me a lot of this Saturn energy. The color of the season is yellow, so yellow represents optimism and vitality, like the sun. And it's left brain function, where the intellect resides, and the, which is the energy of the spleen, the intellect, the emotion is pensiveness and worry. So physical and emotional nourishment invites balance to the energies of the mind and pensiveness and worry can come up a lot when we're talking insomnia. So really getting that sleep hygiene regulated and on track.
Speaker 2:The season is important. The taste is sweet, so slightly sweet foods can balance the spleen and the stomach. But you want to be mindful not to overdo refined sugars and desserts, because that can tilt you into the damp zone and that can come with a slew of imbalances and issues. The body tissue is muscles, so take care of your body this season. Begin a new workout plan or structure your movement practice so that it flows. We don't want to hate what we do, we want to enjoy it. We want to love it, because everything's an energy and if you're resistant towards exercise, it probably won't go so well, or you might get injured or, you know, if your mind is fighting it, your body is going to fight it too. So find something that you love and and try back. The spirit is the intellect, like I said. So we're entering a spirit of thinking, memory and concentration perfect beginning of school energy. And the element is the earth element. The earth evokes transformation, centering, grounding, energy and slow move.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious since this is such a small season, do you kind of start to blend together late summer with fall rituals or reflections, or how do you kind of split those up? When it comes to specific lifestyle choices, I think you mentioned already that food is a huge part for you, or perhaps some of what you're doing with gardening, but for somebody who is in that stage where I really do acutely feel that transition period between, I guess, what feels like summer and fall, as we've already talked about like what does that look like? Is it very distinct for you from a lifestyle point of view, or is it starting to pull a bit from late summer into fall in terms of lifestyle decisions?
Speaker 2:It does feel a little bit different to me. I feel like there's a bit more of a serious energy that comes in, at least into my life or into my realm, and this is what I was mentioning at the beginning of our talk. That's so funny. I actually was just changing my workout plan and I didn't even realize why I was doing it. Yeah, it's true. And then a couple other things about.
Speaker 2:I would love to read you the daily living page of the zine next, because I think it will be related to your question. But just yeah, some of these choices and some of the things that we're thinking about like, oh, with this one future plan, I'd really like to get this organized and dialed in, and I'm now all of a sudden feeling very motivated to figure it out. And then I looked back at the zine and go perfect timing, this makes perfect sense. And just making less plans and saying no to social gatherings and just spending more weekends at home and allowing your body to rest and kind of make up for the busyness of the summer season, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's talk about some of the daily recommendations for late summer and then we can start to transition no pun intended into fall.
Speaker 2:Okay so body temperature and clothing bring a sweater. Late summer presents warm days and cooler nights. The bright, young energy of summer begins to welcome in the cooler yin of autumn. So, especially here in California, we do experience those cold, chilly nights. We did finally get a couple of warm nights during the summertime, if you remember a few weeks ago oh yeah, back in August, yeah, it was nice.
Speaker 2:And for movement, you want to care for your body and care for your spleen. So begin your mornings with these yoga poses that I recommend Forward bends, deep twists, deep lunges and longer holds of your poses. Open your hips, do something active each day and aim to get sweaty. Strength training adds energy to the muscles and balances spleen energy. So the spleen controls the muscles and the best way to tonify the spleen because a lot of my patients especially yeah, I know that they're probably listening to this and so you know who you are my spleen, my spleen chi deficient patients or spleen blood deficient patients I always say like, don't forget to know of work.
Speaker 2:Just go for a really long walk. You don't have to do a HIIT workout. You don't have to raise your cortisol levels with intense strength training or like a crazy workout class. Just go for a three mile walk and bring your dog or a friend or your partner, or be in the comfort of your own self and just go for this really long walk and fit it into your day. Or do two one and a half mile walks and fit it in somehow, because that's the best way to enliven the spleen and really activate them muscles and get your body back into that balanced place.
Speaker 2:And then breath and meditation. I like to think about it's. You know, reap what you sow, so it's the final harvest, and give yourself permission this season to receive abundance from all of your hard work this year. It's a the season is a window to ponder your life path, whether or not you want to stay on track or switch things up, take time to reflect and slow down mental energy with deep breaths in and out throughout the day, and meditate on settling into your transitions during this buffer season we could call it.
Speaker 1:So how does that look like tangibly for you If you could share perhaps a sample routine in the morning in terms of like or I guess maybe not morning, let's say a workout routine in the summer, if you could remind us and then now in the late summer, so we can kind of start to get a feel for how that is different. Or perhaps also your routine Do you switch it up with meditation or with breathwork styles or anything like that?
Speaker 2:You know, the answer to that is it depends, because no one's the same and everybody needs something a little different. We all have different healthcare goals, we all have different workout goals, and we all have different needs, right and and wants and and likes and things like that. So for me personally, if it's, if it's about me, then I'm happy to share that, which is I really like to exercise in the morning time. I find, though, it's easier for me, I'm more motivated, I'm more energized, so I like to get out and go, so either a yoga class or a Pilates class or a big walk or a jog, you know, during the summer months, if it is a little bit warmer, I do like to sprint, and so I like to go really, really fast and get really sweaty and then do a nice long walk and cool down. I'm not much of a marathon runner personally, but I think it's fun to go fast, and so I like to do that in the summer months, but lately haven't really been running as much.
Speaker 2:I have been enjoying stretching, the phone roller, the yoga, tune up balls. I've started I picked up tennis actually and that's really fun because it's that more sprinty, start and stop, more social kind of game and it's excellent. In San Francisco there's all these courts around town and they're so beautiful. There's just palm trees in the back, and you know this. Last weekend I was at Dolores Park and there's all these lookouts, you know, into the cityscape and you can see the ocean from some of them. It's amazing. So that's been a really fun activity for me during the late summer time.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like kind of the summer season. Again, in that theme of higher energy you like to incorporate some higher energy movements and then that kind of starts to taper off in the late summer and you mentioned you were also changing your routine for the fall. Is there something that is very intentional about that for you, or is it almost like an intuitive pull that comes with just being in sync with what's happening in nature?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me it's just what I feel like doing. Honestly it's not intentional. I don't operate via, you know, like my. That would be cool to make a seasonal calendar. I would definitely buy that if someone were to make one with all the nodes. And here's all the little shifts and here's the recommendation for this month and here's you know, little journal prompt for this month. But now I kind of just roll with how I feel and you know, and the spirit over, you know it takes me and I'm a little bit more flowy, I think, in my life than super planned out like that. There's also a nice I have been feeling inspired to spend more time alone, kind of my thing that I like to do for fun is lay on the floor with a big pad of paper and do like mind maps. Do you know what mind maps are?
Speaker 2:I've done them online, not on paper, which is funny oh yeah, I'm a big on paper person, so I have this huge pad of paper and I'll just start, you know, like just writing out all my thoughts and just going down bullet points or long sentences or feelings or ideas, and just let it flush onto the paper and then I can kind of create from there a mind map of what I want for the fall season, the winter season, and then also for the next year, to and start to kind of think about next year or even bigger than that, like what do I want the next five years to look like? And I love a five year plan prompt.
Speaker 1:As do I. I know I'm definitely fully into that, but I will say that I've been doing my best actually to per a lot of your recommendations, like adjust some of that energy, the intentional, like scheduling energy. I kind of let that go a little bit more during the summer and I think that there's something really beautiful, even if it's intentional and it has nothing to do with how I'm feeling, but more so the idea of moving in sync with nature but not having that be necessarily the way that I always operate, which has been really really nice this summer. That's great. So a little bit of like seasonal intentionality.
Speaker 1:And I know you talk a lot about reflections in your zine, so I know we're sharing a lot of information here. But we are now moving into a time of a little bit more structure, right With the fall energy, and I'd love for you to as we kind of transition into that. We gave people an overview of late summer, a very brief one, as we kind of segue into now what's coming and if you could share with us. We're entering the fall season. How long does this go on for and what are a couple of the core themes before we move on to some of the lifestyle things to be aware of.
Speaker 2:Sure. So fall, we're in fall. Fall has already started because we're in September, so fall in the lunar calendar is August 26th to November 25th. And it's a metal element, yeah, and I can't wait to dive in on all things fall with you. So the spirit of fall is, you know, of course, oregon pairs our first, the long and the large intestine, and I recommend that we focus on the breath in the fall because that's the lungs. So we want to support lung health. We want to keep an eye on healthy elimination, on detox. It's a great time for a detox or a little gentle cleanse. We can talk more about that if you're interested. And what I recommend for that yeah, just nourishing gut health.
Speaker 2:This season the energy is yin within yang, so we want to welcome cooler weather, cooler yin weather, mixed with the remaining warmth of late summer. The climate is dryness, so we want to keep the body hydrated and warm. We want to protect the neck from the wind and I love licorice tea to soothe a dry throat and support digestion with soups and stews and probiotic foods. The planet of fall is Venus, so this is the planet of love and attraction and feminine energy. So we want to pay attention to how we invest our time and our money. Actually, venus planet, the color of fall is white, and so white foods like pears and apples can support lung health. The emotion is sadness, and so it's kind of it's normal to feel a little sad or lonely this season. The emotion of the lung is grief and one can expect a calling to let go of the past and you could even think of, oh, what needs to fall away.
Speaker 2:Right Fall season, the taste is pungent, eating aromatic foods to balance lung and large intestine. And the body tissue is the skin. So I'm sure you'll have some great questions about skin, because I'd love to talk to you about skin for fall season, and we want to moisturize the skin with quality plant-based products and organic skin care, cleanse and detoxify the skin with sweaty activities and love on the body and the spirit of fall is the corporeal soul. So this is the po, this is the physical part of the spirit, and Chinese medicine has a really cool way of describing the soul and the different types of energy that make up the soul and the human experience. But this is a spirit of feeling, your feelings and sensational experiences. So we want to find what's soothing to your nervous system and what nourishes you inside and out. And last but not least, the element is metal, and metal evokes order, organization, meticulous energy, right versus wrong and the ego.
Speaker 1:So much there, so much so I actually would love to bring it back to something you mentioned at the beginning, which is this concept of detox. I feel like that's very, very loaded. A lot of people might have different points of view of what that looks like, and you mentioned that a very gentle cleanse could be useful during this time. Could you speak a little bit more about what that would look like and also why during autumn versus, let's say, another part of the year?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think, of course, like I said before, everything always depends on the type of person you are, and I highly recommend, if you're thinking of detoxing or doing a cleanse of any sort, to contact your acupuncturist or your healthcare practitioner, whether it's a naturopath or chiropractor, or I love acupuncturists and I'm an acupuncturist, and so I think you'll get the most quality experience if you are guided by an acupuncturist and also someone who really knows your health history and has the skill set to understand the physiology of the human body and how detox can support the human body expressing whether it's heavy metals or just dampness or something that's kind of stuck that needs to be let go. So, yeah, fall is a really nice time because it's not winter. I don't want people to detox in the wintertime, especially those who are already deficient. Winter is the time to rest and rebuild and add chi and blood to the body with warm foods and all the things we talked about in our winter podcast. So winter cleansing not a huge fan, but summer and fall great times to do a cleanse, even a warm, once you hit the more warmer months in spring, I just think we have, like I said, in summer we have a little bit more abundance. There's naturally more energy in the body, that young energy is all around, and so I think doing it then is probably the best time.
Speaker 2:And I'd love to share with you the second part of your question, which is how and do we go about doing this and what would I recommend? And what does a gentle cleanse mean? So I'm not a fan of a juice cleanse or a soup cleanse or a liquid cleanse or a fasting cleanse or something where you just take everything away. I am a fan of a food based cleanse, and so that's what I'm going to recommend to my patients, and I'm sure there's a lot of opinions out there and people will say all sorts of things and that's totally fine, and if something worked for you, that's great, but it's definitely.
Speaker 2:I don't think a liquid cleanse is for every person, and usually when people are coming in to see me, they're pretty unwell and they have a serious condition that we want to work on. So we don't want to overstress the body and we also want to nourish the body and want to heal the body. We don't want to put it under so much. I think stress is the perfect word actually with starvation. So it just depends on the person and the type of cleanse. So a gentle cleanse for me would be adding as many colorful foods as you possibly can, adding more water to your day to day, adding more breathing to your day to day, and then maybe some herbs and some supplements that can help support the liver organ, the gallbladder, the spleen, the kidneys, and both phases of detox. So there's phase one and phase two of detox.
Speaker 2:I don't want to spend too much time going into the nitty gritty of that, but what I will say is food-based cleansing is you're removing all the inflammatory foods, pretty much, and inflammatory substances that are just more well known to cause either slight or serious inflammation in the body. So these are going to be things like alcohol, smoking, recreational drugs, caffeine, and then refined sugars, corn, soy, dairy gluten. You know things that tend to cause inflammation in a lot of people's digestive tracts and bodies. I'm also probably going to take away processed foods, because we want everything if it's a cleanse and we want to focus on whole food eating. We want to cook our own food. We want to eat warm foods.
Speaker 2:There are soups and juices and smoothies inside of this gentle cleanse, but it's not the only thing that you're eating, because you really can get great results with a food-based cleanse and, yeah, it just depends on what your body needs. You may want to try it for three days and see how you feel. You may want to try it for five days and see how you feel. I like 10 days, and so I think you really can dive into yourself and your psyche and learn a lot about what your cravings are all about and why you reach for things and really the relationship between your emotional body and your eating habits. They come up to the surface very vibrantly when you're doing a gentle cleanse.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's such a powerful perspective on really reframing. I think a lot of the time we think cleanse it's like all this removal and it creates this negative connotation around food and that cleansing is actually the complete removal of food in many cases. And focusing on juices, I think this is such a powerful reframe and definitely one that is a lot more accessible for me. I will share, as somebody who has tried a juice cleanse in my 20s and literally almost ate my coworker in like a bit of rage and, should he ever be listening to this, he knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:I went and had to have bread and soup right after that. It was bad. So don't recommend that for people who have my tendencies. Constitution yeah, my constitution, 100% so kind of in the same vein around like body care and things like that, and I know that and you're always so careful about this You're not prescriptive at all.
Speaker 1:But I am curious about workouts and I was really excited about this episode today because I don't know if you're going to recommend or not recommend this. But I went about early last night and I woke up bright and early today and I did a 6am workout. Okay, super energized, but it was an intense workout. It was like strength training followed by conditioning, which is kind of like high intensity circuits. Only about 20 minutes of that, 18 to be exact, because that was the cap. But I am curious, is that something that you would recommend for this season? Because at the same time, it was still dark out when I went off to do that and I was starting to think, like you know, from a seasonal point of view, should I actually be slowing down my workouts or changing them in this different way? At the same time, my competitive side loves this, so help.
Speaker 2:You know, you hit the nail on the head. It really just depends on your constitution. It also depends, you know, because you're a woman and you have female reproductive organs and amensis. It also depends on where you're at in your cycle. So that's a whole other podcast I would love to have is cycle syncing and talking about how to regulate hormones and regulate menstrual cycles. But for the specific question, I would say, yeah, that's fine, that sounds great.
Speaker 2:I also woke up really early this morning too. Just, I don't know why it just happened and happened sometimes and we don't know why, but we were on the same wavelength. I was up with you. Yeah, I was up and yeah, and I just had all this energy and just kind of went for it. So, yeah, it's the season of letting things fall away. So it's a great again. It's a great time for a cleanse. It's a great time to get sweaty, to push yourself. Strength training is awesome. Hit workouts are awesome. Whatever you like to do, that's fun for you, it's all good. Just don't overexert yourself, you know, and don't injure yourself, and know your limits and stretch before and after you do your exercise.
Speaker 1:Very, very good reminder. Very good reminder. So I do want to make sure we touch on skin, because maybe that is the first indicator that I had that we are like moving into the fall season and I swear this is so. It's not funny but it's weird. It's this weird. I don't know if you've ever seen mean girls. And there's the one girl that's like she. She could kind of like predict the weather patterns based on like feelings in her body. I mean, it was basically like based on. It was more like what was actually happening. She was like oh, there's a 90% chance that it's already raining, anyway, that's like the one line that I got from her. I forgot her name, but she's the. She's one of the blonde ones.
Speaker 1:They're kind of all mostly blonde, but anyway, mean girls great movie, but I'm referencing this because I feel like my skin is that for me, like when there's smoke in the air. I feel like I can always tell during fire season, before we even get the alert, that the air is bad, and I feel the same thing for fall, like I'm just noticing this change and I'm curious how should we be caring for our skin during this time and like, what is happening and how can we balance that out?
Speaker 2:Great. So yes, then you know the fall season brings a little bit of dryness. Winter is going to be the ultimate dry time because we're all blasting the heat on our skin. We're trying to stay cozy and warm, or, you know, around fires, or we're near fireplaces or, like you know, just trying to stay cozy, and in the car too, if you have the heater on blasting onto your skin, that's going to change your, your skin a little bit.
Speaker 2:So it is important in the fall season to assess your skin care routine and to make sure that you're feeling hydrated enough. Summer time is when we switch our moisturizers to a little bit lighter of a moisturizer. We're sweating more, we're hot more hot usually so we don't need as heavy of a cream or, you know, certain serums. We may not need them in the summertime. They may actually start clogging our skin, so that's a good indicator that things are too heavy. So in the fall season, I really like a, an oil for fall. So I think getting a really sweet, organic and all natural skincare oil that is made with herbs and plants and works for your skin and you feel hydrated by it and and not too dry, I think that's going to be, that's going to be key. I also love a hydrosol for the fall season. Do you know what a hydrosol is? What is that?
Speaker 1:I've never heard of that. Mm, hmm, but you've heard of toner right, yes, the stuff that burns your skin. I don't really like that.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't love toner and then for your skin, yeah, no, no. Okay, you got the wrong toner, kasha, we need to get you the right toner, okay. So hydrosol is really nice because, just like you said, if a toner is too astringent or it has the wrong ingredients for your skin in it, it can burn your skin or feel just too much astringent sensation. And so a hydrosol is just really gentle water of the plant, and so there's a distillation process in order to catch a hydrosol. So one way I've heard it described that makes a lot of sense to me is when you're, when you're trying to capture the essential oil of a plant, the steam that comes off of that distillation process that's captured is the hydrosol, so hydro water of the plant. And some people, some herbalists, actually think that the hydrosol has more potent herbal properties to it than an essential oil. And we're all told that never put an essential oil directly on your skin. They're so powerful, they're so strong. You always need to use a carrier oil or something to thin it out, and that's true. But hydrosol you can put directly on your skin and it's extremely healing for the skin tissue and really protective of the skin barrier.
Speaker 2:And when we see these seasonal changes I have noticed that skin barrier function in balances are things I noticed the most. So people getting like dry patches or little acne breakouts or you know they're just not feeling supple and hydrated and glowy in their skin and that just means it's time to come in and get an acupuncture facial. So we do those at the garden, of course, and happy to help anyone out who wants to refresh. But yeah, just seeing your local all natural esthetician or holistic esthetician or going in to see a holistic acupuncturist who does skincare treatments is a great idea Because you can get some exfoliation done with some masking. And then we of course apply acupuncture points to the face and just invite balance back to the skin and back to the facial muscles and the length and drain the length and detox the length and also help plump and add elastin and collagen to your beautiful face. So I love a seasonal acupuncture facial.
Speaker 1:I do love a. I love an acupuncture facial period. I know you do. Yes, yes, anytime, but especially seasonal. I think that's such a good call out, so we must touch on what's on the menu, because I follow your Instagram. I'm always seeing that, so please like what are you? Finding at the farmer's market this time of year. What are you looking for as well? Like, if you want to highlight a couple of things for people that are just really good foods to have during this season, sure, so let's let's go back to the zine.
Speaker 2:I have my fall grocery list that I'm happy to share with you, and then I can also talk about some of the recipes that I like to make during this season.
Speaker 2:So, in the pantry for fall, I want to see that you're cooking slower meals and slower meals with a richer flavor profile, adding vibrant, colorful, local produce, and when you're doing this, you want to throw on your cozy clothes, your soft pants, your house shoes, warm your home with an oven roasted meal.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of fresh produce, I like avocados, apples, citrus figs, pears, leeks, mushrooms, pumpkins and squash, root vegetables and Brussels sprouts Christopher's veggies are great and the jar nuts and seeds, whole grains, spice blends and superfoods. You keep those in your pantry, and then in the jar for the fridge, canned tomatoes from late summer, bone broth whether it's chicken beef or a vegan broth made of vegetables, of course, and a seaweed base instead of a bone base or a fish base, and all of tapenats are really nice in the fall season and then culinary herbs rosemary, oregano, chives and thyme and Chinese herbs in the pantry that you could go hunting for or ask your acupuncturist about these Fuling hua huangpi, cordyceps, star anise and cloves, cardamom pod and ginger and, if you didn't know, all of those are Chinese herbs, so it's a little silly, but I do have a fun recipe for an all natural pumpkin spice latte mix. Oh my.
Speaker 1:God, stop, stop. I wasn't even going to ask about that because I felt like the processed sugar would have made it a no go. So I just wasn't, it's a no go, don't get it at Starbucks. Yeah, it was, yeah, yeah it was. I was, ignorance was bliss. But I mean, if you're going to tell me that, please, please, please, please, yeah, I'm going to. Could we link this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll, you know, what I'll do is I'll make it, I'll make it a blog post for the fall season and we can link that to the podcast when we launch it, and we'll we'll put it on Instagram for everyone to see. But it's really delicious. It's maple syrup based, and then pumpkin puree with pumpkin spice blend and some fresh ground herbs and and spices, and it's so good and it's such an awesome alternative to that insane sugary stuff that you get all around town. Yeah, and then you can have decaf coffee with it, so you're not affecting your hormones or your energy levels throughout the day. Or, if you like coffee, you can have half-calf. Or if you drink regular coffee in the morning, it's really fun. Blended with homemade almond milk or cashew milk, it's really, really delicious.
Speaker 2:So that's one fun recipe. But besides that, let's see, I mean I love, love, love, love. Well, on the zine, I'll tell you what I have here, which is baked oatmeal with crisp apples and chai-spiced pears. So that's really good. So adding the chai spices to your breakfasts, like a warm breakfast with clove or star anise, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, is awesome for the fall season as well, and then, of course, pears and apples and Asian pears really good this time of year Been baked. I don't know if you've ever had a baked oatmeal, but it's really really good.
Speaker 2:No, that sounds delicious, that sounds delicious and you just can make a big tray of it and keep it in the fridge all week and eat it in the mornings and you have meal prep to your breakfast, which is great, so yummy, yeah, it's yummy. And then when you heat it up, you heat it up with your homemade almond milk or ghee. It's so good and I love baked oatmeal. So another idea is getting into a really solid roast chicken recipe. So wherever you find your whoever is your favorite chef online or on television or cookbook, just go find their roast chicken recipe and make it and again, meal prep lunch and dinners. It's just ready to go.
Speaker 2:You have a whole chicken and there's something very nostalgic to me. I don't. I don't know about you, but buying an entire chicken at the grocery store just feels very fall winter to me and I love that. I love tying up the little legs with twine and stuffing it with rosemary and thyme and a lemon and a bunch of garlic, and these are all things that are great to help prevent common cold, which we haven't even touched on yet. But fall season is cold and flu season. So eating alliums, which are garlic onion, green onion, things like shallot, you know things like that those are really protective and naturally antimicrobial. So we want to eat more of those things in the fall season. So the roast chicken is great.
Speaker 2:And then the last recipe I have in the zine is a golden turmeric kabocha squash soup. And if you don't know the kabocha squash, it is this really beautiful green kind of short and wide green squash. That is the most delicious squash in my opinion. I love the kabocha squash. It's bright orange, so it's full of vitamins and minerals and it's so good for you and super supportive of the spleen of the stomach, of just your large intestine and small intestine, of everything. And the turmeric is really nice to support if you are doing a gentle cleanse or an anti inflammatory diet. This is a really great soup and it has me so in it, which is also nice and on the body and supportive of digestion.
Speaker 1:Well, as usual, I'm hungry by the end of this, which is because we're recording. It's a little bit late for me, but I am going to eat lunch right after this. So I'm going to eat lunch right after that. But that sounds amazing. I have a rant, a slightly personal question that I feel like the audience is probably all wondering at this point. You are a very busy founder, entrepreneur, practitioner, you are a clinician and you don't just run the Garden SF presence in real life, You're fairly active online and you're producing the zine and whatnot. How do you kind of bring being able to create these wholesome, delicious meals into your day to day Like, how does that practically look like for you?
Speaker 2:So what's the routine?
Speaker 1:of my cooking practice. Yeah, are you meal prepping? What does?
Speaker 1:it look like, because I feel like everyone is. I mean, at least I'll speak for myself, I can't say everyone. I'm sitting here, I'm listening to this. I feel the same sort of kind of peaceful, earthy feeling, like the parallel of like the Hallmark Channel during the holiday season is like happening as I'm listening to you describe these amazing foods and then I go and I like look at my life, which is basically oatmeal in the rice pot as quickly as I can before moving on with my life, which is, I know, totally counter what we discussed. But what does your routine look like as you're balancing all these other priorities and because Chinese medicine really does talk about slowing down eating your food and having it be as fresh as possible. So what does that look like in the modern world? As we're talking about lifestyle hacks I hate that word, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and especially in San Francisco. We live in a crazy city. It's wild here and it's fast paced and you know we live in smaller spaces than most people do and I always describe living here like there's a lot of steps. You know there's a lot of steps to find a parking space if you're driving a car or you know making sure you're locking all of your gates and doors and windows and things and just have to be really careful. And big city living, you know lots of stuff.
Speaker 2:So, number one, I love cooking and I love making recipes and I love following recipes and I love cookbooks and I would take a cookbook any day over a novel. First of all. So I don't really read a lot of you know, yeah, I don't really really read a lot of novels. I read cookbooks and science books and you know astrology books and you know just fun. I just I'm a fiction nerd, I love learning and I, you know I don't think that'll ever stop.
Speaker 2:So for me, going to the grocery store is like my break or the highlight of my day, because I love being real food going to the farmers market. I don't do it every weekend. I'd love to go, but I don't make it because I have other priorities or I want to go out of town or on a hike or something. So I feel really blessed. In California, we have access to probably the best food ever in the whole entire country, so that's huge. And if you don't live in California, then I think just figuring out the best quality place to do your grocery shopping is key, and figuring out when you do have time to take care of yourself. And if you don't have time to take care of yourself, I'd really look at your life and ask yourself like why Is it actually worth it and do you feel like to not have enough time to eat a meal? That really tells me something. If I do have patients that come in and tell me this, that they have no free time and they're so busy with usually the answer is work. They're so busy with work that they don't eat, and so to me, that is a symptom of a root issue and something that that needs some some nourishment, literally and figuratively. But but yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:It's extremely important to to feed your body and to eat and to slow down either making food or prepping your food ahead of time on a free day, which is what I like to do. So I do a lot of meal prep on the weekends or on Mondays and Tuesdays when I'm not with my clients clinic, and then I just keep it simple. I'm not trying to make like fabulous meals for every single meal. You know I'm eating a lot of Power bowls, if that's the question that you have right, which is I figured out a system for me that works really well for cooking, where I have a lot of different pots going at once and it's really basic.
Speaker 2:So on my busiest week as an entrepreneur and you know someone who likes to do a lot of different things I'm eating brown shark, rain, brown rice. Everything's organic. I'm eating, you know, organic free range meat or chicken, grass fed beef, pastured butter. You know all the things that are in the zine and and then there's at least you know, a couple of vegetables on a tray, bake in the oven, and that's all getting cooked at the same time. So I'm not wasting five hours of my day trying to cook for my, my lunch and my dinner so that we could take about one to two hours max.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an amazing tip meal prepping and kind of figuring out a way, and I think the zine provides all the recipes with those perinutrients and then I think, probably just being able to like batch that a bit, it sounds like, is really powerful. I love that and I also absolutely love because we are at time per usual. It always happens like this, but I love that kind of ending reflection of if you don't have the time to nourish yourself, no pun intended to really look at that, and this is probably a good time, as we transition to the next season, to reflect on that, because there is something really cozy about knowing that you are able to kind of adjust things to be able to care for yourself in the best way possible. So I appreciate that powerful reflection and all of this incredible information. We're going to be hyperlinking some pumpkin spice coming your way.
Speaker 1:We'll share it on Instagram too. I'm putting a note for that. And before we wrap, where can people find you? Obviously, everything is going to be deep linked, but if you have anything that you want to share that you have coming up, that's really exciting. Please, please, please do.
Speaker 2:Sure, so we actually do have some fun things happening right now. Right now at the garden, we're doing a big September sale in the wellness shop, and so, if you didn't already know, we have a wellness shop alongside our clinic with really beautiful high quality herbs, supplements, herbal formulas all of our prescription formulas are on a discount right now, as well as our home goods and dry goods and skincare, and so it's a really nice time to come in and try. You know something that you've had your eye on for a while but haven't been able to click that button, put it in the cart, and we do have local pickups. So we're not currently shipping just yet, but we are available for local pickups. So if you live in the Bay Area and you want to get a discount on some of our awesome goods, then definitely check that out.
Speaker 2:We have an online shop. You just fill up your cart, hit, click purchase, and then we'll find a time with you person, one on one, and you can come by and pick it up. And then, other than that, we are getting ready for for cold and flu season. So we have, and also it's our skin is changing, so the other promo we have right now is $20 off of all skincare appointments, and so, if you wanted to try an acupuncture facial for the first time, or you're coming in for your seasonal appointment, we also offer holistic micro needling, which is relatively new for us, and we're so excited to share that with everyone. So that's also $20 off for the whole month of September. So come in for one of those, and other than that, just keep on the lookout.
Speaker 2:So many recipes to come. We keep adding to our blog that we have on our website, and if you want the all of the ingredients and the measurements for the recipes we talked about today in the podcast, then buy the late summer and fall zines. That's where those recipes are located, and we have them both physical copies, like I was showing you before in these cute little books, and they actually fold out to be poster with all the recipes on the back, so that you can put it up on your fridge at the magnet and have all the seasonal recipes and switch it out each season. It's very cute, and we'll also send you a PDF because we're in the digital age and we can do that too.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I love it. I love it and, as always, it was such a joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, thank you, prash, that's so nice to see you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. Happy fall, happy fall.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Nourish. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave a review. Five Star Reviews helped the podcast grow and I'm so grateful for that. I publish new episodes twice a month, so hit the subscribe button to be notified and if you want to stay connected in between episodes, join my community on Instagram and TikTok at nourish underscore podcast. All right, that's all I got for you today. See you next time.