Episode 297: What human design reveals about your drinking with Hope Pedraza
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As middle-aged women, we all know what it’s like to be exhausted. Not the kind of exhausted where you need a nap. The kind where you’ve been running on fumes so long that you forgot what actual energy feels like. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re likely already doing everything you can to eat well, exercise, cut back on your drinking. You’ve probably got rows of supplements lined up on your counter like little soldiers. You do the research and you see the holistic practitioners.
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because your health is important to you, but you still have chronic anxiety, humming underneath everything. It’s not so much that something specific is wrong. You’re tired of feeling like things aren’t right, that you’re not there, that you’re playing a bad game of whack-a-mole. Here’s what you’re missing. You can’t expect your symptoms to improve if you haven’t corrected the root cause, which is energetic.
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It’s the patriarchal programming that makes you feel like your self-worth is defined by your productivity. It’s the part of you that doesn’t know how to relax because relaxing literally doesn’t feel safe. My guest today is Hope Pedraza. She’s a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who uses human design as a diagnostic tool. And before you roll your eyes, stay with me.
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She combines the labs and the data and the science with your energetic blueprint to show you exactly where the disconnect is, how you’re designed to operate versus how you’re actually living. Because the gap between the two is wreaking havoc on your thyroid and adrenals and causing inflammation in your brain and body. If you’ve tried everything and feel like you are fighting a losing battle,
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This episode will change how you think about why that is and give you some basic tools for reprogramming your nervous system so that it can start working with you instead of against you.
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My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine, and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again.
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Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
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Hope, I’m so excited to have you on the show. Would you do the honors and introduce yourself to the audience? Just let us know who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Yeah, so I am a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, which is a mouthful, but essentially I help women get to the root cause of chronic symptoms, and I use multimodalities. So I use functional labs, use energetics, I use subconscious reprogramming, human design, things like mineral balancing, clinical hypnotherapy.
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frequency, resonance scanning. So I put all of these pieces together and it’s really just to get down to the quote unquote root cause. And for me, anything physical happening on the body has this energetic emotional root cause. And so yes, I want the women that I work with to understand what’s going on in their physical body, but I want them, I want to go like 10 layers deeper to understand why these physical things are happening. And that’s by getting down to that energetic emotional cause. Well, let’s just talk about big picture before we get into it.
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What is a root cause? Why does it matter? And how is this approach different from our typical approach to addressing unpleasant symptoms? So the root cause, like real root cause, it’s the why behind the why, right? It’s the reason things are going out of balance. And for a while, I was just using the functional labs. And because we talk about uh a more conventional approach, right? Like conventional medicine.
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It’s really more about like band-aid approaches, right? If you’re being honest. And for me, I wanted to get down to the root cause. Like, oh, my gut is doing this. Why is it happening? Oh, you have an imbalance in gut bacteria or you have intestinal permeability. Like those are the physical root causes. For me, as the more I started doing that with my clients and just looking at the physical pieces, I still had more whys in my head. Well, why is the intestinal permeability there? Why do you have this imbalance of gut bacteria?
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And so that was when I started bringing in the energetic pieces and the emotional pieces and the programming pieces. Because yes, I think to answer your question, part of your question there is why do we want to get, like what’s why, why do we want to do that, get to the root cause.
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I have worked with so many women who have, they’ve gone the functional route. They’ve had the experience with the conventional route. It didn’t really work for them. They got the band-aid approach or they got brushed off like, oh, you’re just getting older or your hormones or whatever. And so they’ve tried the functional route, the holistic route, but they still didn’t really get what they were looking for. For me, this is when we talk about real root cause, this is it because you can do the functional labs. You can take all the supplements. You can spend the thousands of dollars on the detox, the supplements and all the things.
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But if you’re still running the same energetic programming, the same emotional programming, you’re still the high performing perfectionist, you’re still the type A, you’re still people pleasing, you’re still... All of these are the programs running your bodies, your cells are gonna respond accordingly. So your symptoms are either gonna come back or they may not go away or maybe they’re better, but you still don’t feel great. And those are the women who come to me where it’s like, I don’t feel terrible. Like I can function as a human, right? I can get done what I need to get done.
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but I don’t feel great. have this low key like anxiety running the day most of the day, this or the stress. I know that I should have more energy. I know I should be feeling more like fulfilled and all the things. And that’s for me, that’s the programming and that’s the energetic programming that’s causing these physical things to show up on the body. So where do you begin? I begin with the physical body. So I start with the labs. The labs for me is
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Let’s first not guess what’s happening. Let’s not guess if it’s your thyroid or your hormones or your gut or whatever. Let’s have the empirical data in front of me so I can say, your adrenals are doing X, Y, Z. Your estrogen is whatever. So that’s where I start. Let’s at least not guess. So from there...
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This is when I put, switched, this is like my work is really like science meets energetics, like science meets soul. So then I’m put on my other hat. Well, let’s look at your human design is one of the tools that I use. Let’s look at your human design. Let’s look at your energy body and figure out, okay, my adrenals are doing this. Why are my adrenals doing this? Here’s how your energy is designed to flow through your body. Here are some of the patterns. Then we dig into the patterns and the programming and the conditioning that’s causing these physical things to show up on the body. So we can start putting the puzzle pieces together there.
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Do you want to explain a little bit about human design? Because I feel like we are so like on the same page, but like I don’t use that as a tool. I can figure out what your design is based on what comes out of your mouth. It’s a good way to do it. Tell me what human design is and how that aids your investigation. So human design is essentially your energetic blueprint. So it puts together a lot of old ancient ways of thinking like,
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the shocker system, astrology, the eye chain, the cabal tree of life. And it puts it together with some more modern day science like quantum mechanics and quantum physics and neuroscience. And it puts it together into this chart. And there’s actually a lot of, I know for some people, this is kind of up there on the Wu scale, but there is actually a lot of science that backs up human design with neutrinos, these subatomic particles and how it affects matter. So that’s a whole other rabbit hole, but there is a lot of science to back it up. But essentially it is how you are designed to operate energetically. So we can look at
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how you’re designed to make decisions, how you’re designed to interact with the people around you, with the environment around you, with the universe, how you’re designed to eat and move and be. It’s just the lessons you’re here to learn, the challenges that are gonna be thrown throughout your life at you. All of that, plus like, I mean, there’s a good jillion rabbit holes you can go down in human design, but the gist of it is that, it’s your energetic blueprint. So when I’m putting that together with the more scientific data, if you will, with the labs, I’m able to look.
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to connect the two because here’s like, there’s just one piece. Here’s one piece. If you’re familiar with the chakra system or if that word is triggering to your energy centers, we have energy centers running through the body, right? So we have seven main chakras and human design, there’s no tangent we could go on, but it’s a little bit different. But all of these energy centers are connected to specific organs or glands that emit hormones.
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So even if you look at like traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine says that the balance in the body starts the yin and yang, the balance in the body starts with the endocrine system, it starts with our hormones. And so all of these energy centers are attached to specific organs and glands which emit hormones. So that’s the first place I can look. So for example, I see something on your lab like, your adrenals are tanked, like your cortisol is like bottomed out, you’re like in this exhaustive phase. Well, your root center,
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is attached to your adrenal gland. So now I’m gonna look at your human design and look at your root center and we’re gonna figure out how your energy is designed to flow through your root center, but how you’re actually operating. Like what is your operating system doing that’s going against what your design is meant to do. And then that’s where we can start making some adjustments. We can do a lot of the reprogramming. There’s a lot of rewiring and this where the subconscious where it comes in. And so that’s just one little piece, but it’s how your energetic body is impacting your physical body. That’s what the human design piece is for me.
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Can you talk about how the way your energy is designed to flow varies from person to person? Yeah. So that it’s like, what is it that you’re seeing that is out of alignment and how is that different from person to person? Yeah, that’s good question. So there’s a lot of nuance with human design, right? Like I said, there’s a gajillion rabbit holes you can go down, but I’ll give you a couple of examples. So there’s five main types in human design and all these types are designed to operate pretty
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very differently actually. So for example, I have this year, had a client who was a manifestor, which means that basically your energy, she was a business coach. Your energy kind of goes in spurts. So you have these creative waves followed by kind of these waves of rest. And a lot of times manifestors can struggle with that because with our hustle culture and go-go-go society, it’s hard to kind of pull back and really lean into those rest cycles. So for her,
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She was dealing with lot of hormonal things. She was dealing with hormonal imbalances. She had some ovarian cysts and that kind of thing. And so for her, as a manifestor, her sacral center, which is the center for creativity, for life force energy, pleasure, all those kinds of things, this center was out of whack because she didn’t know how to stop. She didn’t know how to turn it off. Your sacral center is associated with your reproductive organs. Of course she’s going to be having issues with her estrogen levels and her cysts on her ovaries because she’s totally out of whack.
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As opposed to someone like me, for example, I’m a manifesting generator. My energy comes from my sacral. So manifesting generators are like, we’re like the energizer bunny. Like you just keep going and then you go to sleep and you wake up and you can do it again tomorrow. Cause you just have this energy to keep going and doing. So I have more staying power than somebody who is a manifestor. Not seeing either one of us gets more or less done. We’re just designed to do it differently. So it’s being able to.
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understand that piece because I’m still a human. Like I still have a limit. There’s limitations. So for me, I have to understand where my limitations are knowing that I have more energy to keep doing, but also like I have to rest because I’m a human being. So being able to just understand the nuances like that and knowing how to use your creative energy, your physical energy, your mental energy and knowing how to lean into, you know, rest phases, rest cycles, that kind of thing.
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Can you talk about how the manifestor, how you helped her? becoming aware that she needs more, I guess, downtime and less consistent go, go, go, go. Yep, for sure. What, I mean, does she just get that information and is like, oh, I wish somebody would told me that sooner. I mean, yes, but it’s not, if only it was that easy, right? So there’s a lot, there’s a lot there to unpack because for her, there was, there was a lot of stories with that too, because she had grown up in a household that.
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taught her that if you aren’t doing anything, you’re lazy. So there’s a lot of programming there too. She has to keep doing, she has to keep going or she’s lazy or her worth was tied to her productivity and her output, which a lot of us as women I know can relate to. have a whole series in my podcast about that, but that was really one of, not all of it, but that was one of the root causes for her. So for her it was helping her understand A, as a manifestor.
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Your rest cycles are equally as valuable as your creativity cycles because your energy has to settle before it can ramp back up. So you can’t expect to have your next creative cycle until you really lean into your rest cycle. Let things integrate. Let the intuitive downloads come in. Maybe you get some divine download for your next idea, but your rest cycles are equally as important as your creative cycles. So it was for her cultivating safety with the rest.
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And that’s really what it is for a lot of women. It just doesn’t feel safe to rest, right? Our productivity is a trauma response because it doesn’t feel safe to slow down and stop or rest. So it’s cultivating that safety around being able to rest and take a break. What I want to double click on here is that the root cause of her ovarian cysts and adoac hormones was the fact that she is not giving herself appropriate rest time. And what
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What is so hard to believe is that it can really be that simple. Totally. The thousands of dollars, I have been to so many functional and integrative and holistic and naturopaths and swallowed millions of dollars of software. Let’s be honest about my investment. It’s like if you don’t fix what’s causing you to get out of whack, then you can... uh
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temporarily avoid symptoms, maybe stay off escalating, but the engine that’s driving the problem is still on. exactly, exactly. And that was her really. mean, she had also done the holistic thing and she was really good at taking care of herself and ate healthy and was working out and doing all the things. And it’s like, why can I lose the weight? Why are my periods so painful? Like why are my hormones all over the place? And that’s exactly it. It’s the operating system is probably.
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All right. So let’s dive a little deeper into reprogramming the operating system. So you’ve got this gal who realizes that she is going to need more downtime. um And I just, love that something nobody ever told us, unless you’re an athlete, we all know you can’t like run a marathon and then the next day run a marathon. Like you have to, you have to train, you have to have a period of rest and recovery and refueling.
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And we all get that, but then we run our lives like we’re running a marathon every single day. So it’s really sad, but talk to me a little bit deeper than about how one reprograms that operating system. So I think first it’s kind of getting down, mean, speaking of root cause, kind of getting down to where this belief came from, the belief that it’s not safe to rest. Where does that come from? Is it?
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because like from, you from that client example, she was taught her whole life, if you’re not doing anything, you’re lazy. So that was part of it. I think for some people, there’s a proving there, whether you have to prove to yourself or other people. And I can’t stop because I have to keep proving myself. There’s different reasons for why that belief exists. So I think one is kind of getting to the bottom of that. Why does that believe? Why does it not feel safe to rest? And the next thing is, like I was saying before, it’s cultivating that safety, which sounds like...
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pretty simple, but it’s actually really hard for people. It’s like I’ve had clients before where I tell them, okay, find a 10 minute, just 10 minutes, 10 minute chunk of your day to sit and do absolutely nothing. Half of them wanna scratch their eyeballs out for like the first two weeks of trying, cause it’s so hard. It’s so hard. Cause all you’re thinking about is all the things you should be doing or could be doing or need to be doing or whatever. So it’s starting that and building like, can I just teach my body? I can sit here and do nothing and I’m not gonna die.
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I can sit here and do nothing and I can be worthy. I can feel worthiness. I can be worthy just doing, just existing, breathing air and existing on planet earth. I can still be worthy and just starting and building in chunks like that. And for me, those are the first two steps. Once we can start showing your body, your nervous system, like, hey, you’re not gonna die if you’re not doing anything, then we can start building that throughout the day.
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and just making bigger changes from there. Okay. So you say there’s two steps and I believe I hear them. Can you articulate the first two steps again? Yeah. So the first one would be just the diving into the underlying reason of why it doesn’t feel safe to rest, which can take some contemplation. there’s something that... And this is why I use things like NLP and hypnotherapy and stuff, because sometimes there’s like deeper things there. So that, and then let’s start to cultivate the safety and the rest. Can I teach my body? I can do nothing and still be okay.
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Well, and I love your homework assignment. mean, at least that’s what I heard. Totally. I saw somebody on Instagram at one point and maybe they’re one of your followers. I don’t know, but it was like me raw dogging it for 10 minutes. She was just sitting there, legs up the wall. She changed positions like 87 times in 10 minutes. yeah, what I think people don’t understand is you can’t convince yourself to feel safe. It all makes sense.
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I’m worthy and I need to relax and recover. But safety is actually a visceral experience. You have to learn how to hold that safety in your body. When your brain comes like, knock, knock, knock, you’re lazy, knock, knock, knock, you’re not getting everything done. This is such a waste of time. You’re an idiot. That is where the real work is done. That’s the growth edge is learning how to sit there for 10 minutes without freaking the hell out.
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That’s exactly it. Yep. All right. So then is there more? Yeah. mean, it typically it’s kind of, it’s kind of a domino effect, right? Once one domino falls, then usually there’s more dominoes that fall. So then it’s, there’s usually some other underlying beliefs too, right? Like there’s a lot of workiness things. There’s a lot that goes on with like emotional processing. That’s another thing we focus on a lot. So one of the centers on human design is your emotional solar plexus. And it’s basically like your emotional processing center.
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That is a really big one for me, A, because like you mentioned when we were on my podcast, like we’re not taught how to do that. Like we’re just not. And so being able to process emotions and feel emotions versus suppress them or repress them or push them down or whatever. And a lot of it happens in this center. And the interesting thing about this particular center is associated with a lot of our detox organs. And I love talking about this because if you think about this concept of
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being able to express our emotions versus the opposite, suppressing them or pressing them, pushing them down. When you aren’t allowing yourself to feel emotions and express them in a healthy way, you are literally holding your body back from detoxifying optimally. Like we are holding in toxins in the body, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, like all these organs of the body that help our body detox, you’re impacting how those are operating. You are literally holding on toxins when you’re not allowing your emotions to flow freely through the body.
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So that’s another big area that we look at and we work with like, you know, what do emotional boundaries look like? What do energetic boundaries? So boundaries is another thing to focus on here because it’s one thing to feel safety in the body to rest or to slow down, but there’s another layer here too. Well, there’s also these aspects of people pleasing and that kind of thing that can come up too for women. And so a lot of that has to do with the energy of the emotional slo-replexus and how that’s operating. And I would say,
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90, I probably see 99 % of my clients have some sort of like liver, I don’t want to say dysfunction, that’s probably not the right word, but like sluggishness in their liver and how their liver is processing their hormones and that kind of thing, which I can see on the labs. And we always go back to like the emotional part and how are we processing emotions and setting boundaries and all that. It’s so interesting to talk about how our emotions show up on our labs.
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Like, can you say a little bit more about the connection between our energy and our physical bodies? I mean, you’re saying that if I’m not processing my emotions that shows up, you could see that on my liver labs. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. What? It’s crazy, right? I had a client last week and we were doing a session and she had done some blood work with her doctor and we were talking about her blood work and she’s super healthy gal. Like she runs marathons and she’s super, like super healthy girl. uh
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her A1C was off and there’s no rhyme or reason why her A1C should be off. And so we started talking about it and I do, I use the healing, I do energy resonance scans, it measures your energetic frequency. And so we were doing one of those and a lot, one thing that was coming up in her aura scan was about emotional energetic boundaries. And so in the middle of her session, I’m like, hold on, you’re telling me just a few minutes ago that your A1C is off. Your A1C is like, this is a measure of insulin and blood sugar and all that. Your pancreas is responsible for remaining your insulin that
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helps regulate your blood sugar. Your emotional solar plexus is connected to your pancreas. And all these things in her skin we’re talking about, we talked about emotional boundaries and she had felt like she had just totally let down. All of it was connected. Like even it was showing up as her A1C being elevated. Like here your blood sugar’s out of whack as your pancreas is like, I don’t know how to, and it all goes back to emotional boundaries. So there’s so many things, I mean,
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Minerals are another thing that I measure, that I test, that I test. And that’s another one where I can always see what’s going on in your emotional body because there’s a lot of those that really even like physically can impact your emotional. So your emotional body, your emotions. One specific one is your calcium levels. Tissue calcium is totally different from blood calcium. I want to say that upfront. So it’s not the same thing as getting your blood levels. In tissue calcium, we...
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Calcium shouldn’t be in your tissues, it shouldn’t. Calcium is a structural mineral, so it should be your bones and in your teeth, like 98 % of it. When it shows up in your tissue, this is a problem. Because when it shows up in your tissues, your body is gonna pull calcium from the structure, from your bones and your teeth in periods of stress, whether it’s like really severe acute stress or chronic long-term stress. And it’s gonna push it out into your cells as a protective mechanism from these bursts of cortisol to protect your cells from too much cortisol.
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So over time, what can happen is what’s called a calcium shell that builds up around your cells and your tissues. can even go up into your brain and affect like neurotransmitters and it can impact you on an emotional level. Like I’ve had clients before that thought they like I had one client that thought she had ADD like adult ADD or ADHD. She was this close to going on medication, but it was like, let me just try this first.
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Rebalance her minerals, helped her gut, all of a sudden nothing. Like she could not think, she was so foggy, she couldn’t concentrate. All of it was, and it was all, her calcium was through the roof and it was affecting her on an emotional level. Like just kind of feeling emotionally like stagnant. If think about calcium, right, it’s stiff, it’s stagnant. That’s how it feels emotionally in your body when you have too much calcium in your tissue. So.
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There’s so many aspects of your labs, of your physical body where I can look at it. I can tell you exactly what’s going on emotionally. Now some of it requires deeper dive, but there’s so much of it that I can like, Oh, I see what’s going on here. So then in that situation, what was the response? mean, did you, how do you correct her mineral or do you deal with the emotional stuff? And then that corrects the minerals. It’s kind of do it at the same time. It’s kind of a joint thing for the minerals.
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You want to break through the calcium shell, which things like vitamin K and boron, like there’s minerals. Basically you want to shuttle the calcium in it where it’s supposed to be, which is right, it’s in your bones and in your teeth. So you’re using things like magnesium, boron, vitamin K, some specific minerals that are going to break up that calcium shell. You want to optimize like detox and drainage pathways in the body, like lymphatic system and liver and gallbladder so your body’s detoxing optimally at the same time.
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So there’s like physical things we’re doing, but then yes, we’re also doing like, okay, well, why did this cal again? Why did the calcium shell? Because we can break up the calcium shell, but if you’re still operating in the same way that got you there, then it’s, it’s probably going to come back. There’s a good chance. So for her, was being able to understand her stress. She had a really high stress job. So was, it was giving her things to help with her nervous system.
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help with her anxiety, more mindfulness practices. And for her, was just learning to slow down, kind of like we were talking about before, like feeling safe to slow down, step away from work, she worked from home, step away from work, take breaks, like mental breaks, and just taking care of herself and her mind, just being able to, that she could manage the stress. Can you put this into, I don’t know, timeline, frameworks, talk to me about kind of where women are, what they’re dealing with, and then how long does it take to, you know,
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address the root cause and have labs actually change as a result. I mean, everybody’s different, of course, right? So there’s no hard and fast. So it’s going to take this long. A lot of my clients start to feel results in the first uh few weeks. A lot of them do. Some of them don’t, but some of them do. Like that client, I’m thinking of that client in particular that thought she had the ADHD. She, not granted, she was also a very tall lady, but she, I mean, she lost like 14 pounds in a month, which is not the norm.
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But it was all of sudden, she had optimized some things in her diet and were starting to help her body detox and her body was just like, it was ready to drop some stuff. So it depends. would say, I always tell people, give yourself a good at least a good three months before you’re like, oh, this isn’t working, screw this. Because sometimes too, and sometimes it’s never a linear thing, just like with life in general, it’s never a linear thing. So sometimes you start to feel like you’re feeling good and then you feel worse before you feel better. That can happen a lot too.
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but it’s sometimes you can start to feel subtle effects within the first couple of weeks. But I’d say like the big real changes, I’ll give yourself a good 90 days before you’re like, oh, okay, now I’m starting to see these big changes show up in my body. And because too with the, when we’re putting it together with the subconscious reprogramming and the deconditioning and all of that stuff, I find that it can also help speed up the process because if we’re able to drop those patterns, right? And drop the conditioning that got us there,
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then your body feels safe to heal. Cause that’s really what it’s about. I really believe that our bodies are designed or built with everything they need to heal themselves. Yeah, sometimes we need a little support here and there, but we have everything we need. A lot of times it’s just creating an environment of safety within ourselves for it to feel safe to heal. Like it is physiologically impossible for your body to heal when you’re in a fight or flight state. Like physiologically it’s impossible.
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That’s the stages of your nervous system we talked about before. It can’t. You have to be able to get into that place where your nervous system is in a state of repair and restoration for it to be able to heal. So it’s just building that safety in the body and the nervous system. it’s like, okay, now I can know what to do to heal my immune system or my reproductive system or my gut or whatever. So can you tell me how you came to know all of this? As you got into functional and integrative medicine, what was
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the turning point where you realized that just playing whack-a-mole with symptoms was not effective? Yeah, that’s a good question. So I started out, I have a brick and mortar Pilates studio as well. And so I started out just being a nutrition coach, like just based in nutrition coaching, because I just wanted to give women just basic accountability. And I was working with pretty much all women at the time. I it was all women at the time. And I was recognizing, like we’re talking about calories and macros and I’m like, this
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what’s going on in your body requires deeper conversations than that. Like there’s stuff going on with your gut and your thyroid, your hormones and all things. So that led me down the path of becoming a functional practitioner. Like I want to do the labs, be able to see like actually what’s going on. And just like with any other entrepreneurs that are listening as you evolve as a human, your business evolves with you, right? And so I was kind of going through my own journey at the time. I had done a lot of work to heal my own body. had a lot of gut things for...
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years I had disordered eating behavior. So I had gone through kind of my own journey. And when I was going through my practitioner training, I had to do labs myself. And one of the labs we did measures how your adrenals are functioning and all that. And so I did the lab and I’m like, and I feel like I was a really healthy person. Work out all the time, work out for a living. You paid to work out, right? And working all the time, eat healthy, things. And my adrenals were tanked, like in the toilet, barely any quarters. It was bad.
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That was a big wake up call for me because I’m like, okay, I’m doing all these things to be quote unquote healthy, but my body is. And then of course, then I start to connect that’s, oh, that’s why I was beginning sick all the time. I was getting injured all the time and all these things. So I started to connect dots and recognize like I, I can’t keep functioning like this or like literally my body’s going to die. Like my adrenals don’t have much left to give. So that was a big wake up call for me when I recognize like, oh, I can be doing all these physical things and taking all my supplements and you know,
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doing all the exercise and it’s clearly not like the labs are not showing, you know, all my effort. And that for me was when I found human design in and around that time, when I started diving into my human design and understanding my energy body, my conditioning, like how it was designed to operate and do things and how much of me I had rejected and tried to shut.
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down and shut away to try to appease society or societal conditioners or whatever. And that was really affecting me on a physical level too. And I was just, I was full on adrenal burnout and I knew I couldn’t keep going like that. And so that was when I, so long story short, to answer your question, it really came from my own journey, recognizing like the physical parts are great, but it’s only going to get you so far. Like we have to tie in these energetic subconscious pieces to go down to the operating system. Like we were talking about why.
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why are your adrenals in the toilet? What got you there? And yeah, and I just knew that that was how I had to help women was to be able to take that really full comprehensive holistic approach to healing the body. So the bridge for you was that you found human design. Yeah, I think so. And then how did you then cross into also including, I mean, you mentioned NLP and subconscious
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or I’m assuming hypnosis stuff and all of these other modalities, how did you find all of that? And what made you decide to include versus not include different modalities? Because I’m assuming you’ve got an approach that’s got your own pillars and you’ve pulled from what you know to work. so how did you get to where you are now with your approach?
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So for me, the human design, when we talk about human design, you hear the word deconditioning a lot, which is just this process of undoing what goes against your design. And all of us, I mean, we’re born with conditioning from the time. I mean, from before we’re born, the conditioning is in our DNA, how we’re meant, how we do things and be just based on generations and all of that. So for me, the tying in of the hypnotherapy and the NLP and all that, that’s the deconditioning, that’s...
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the undoing, it’s the rewiring process. So when we look at someone’s human design, we can see, here’s how your energy is designed to flow and move and be, but this is how you’re actually operating in life. So now let’s undo that. And so adding all those other pieces is the undoing, it’s the rewiring for me, and it’s the rewiring and the deconditioning that is able to make that impact on the physical body, because now we’re rewiring the operating system, right? We’re redoing it, we’re reprogramming the operating system. And it starts from that.
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unlearning and undoing so much that conditioning that has just held your life force energy hostage, that isn’t allowing your physical and emotional body to operate optimally. So now, as somebody who is unfamiliar with human design, I’ve heard of it. I’m sure I’ve gotten my chart done. It’s not ever grabbed me in terms of like a tool that I need, but I’m really, I know so many people that swear by it.
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So one of the questions I have is, do you have to know your human design in order, like you mentioned manifestor or a manifesting generator. I mean, I know that there’s different kind of labels or different types of the design. What benefit do you have in knowing specifically versus, I mean, you and I have talked, you know what I do. How does knowing human design actually help or streamline the process?
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For me, it’s just, the first answer is no, you don’t have to know anything about human design. And I’ve worked with clients that have no idea, they’ve never heard of human design before, and then have clients who are like, they’ve been studying their own human design for years. So I people all into the spectrum. For me, it’s just having an open mind. That’s all I require. Like there’s, don’t have to have any specific belief system to go into it. It’s just have an open mind to try something different and see yourself in a different way. And for me, that’s what the human design piece is. It’s just another tool to help you understand yourself.
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And I tell my clients all the time, the women I work with, if you get nothing from me, if nothing changes in your body, I want you to understand how it works. So when I do the labs, my clients, I’m going deep into the explanation. I don’t just give them the labs that go, here’s what your labs like. I am going deep into the labs. I’m explaining every nook and cranny so they understand what’s happening in their body and why they feel the way they feel. The same thing with their human design. Human design, there’s caveats because as I said in the beginning, there’s a gajillion rabbit holes you can go down. It can get really overwhelming.
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So I pick out some high level pieces that are most important, but I use it as a tool for them. I just want you to understand you. I want you to, we weren’t given a manual to understand how our body works. I think that’s the biggest problem. I’ve worked with grown women who, and this is no shame, no shame, that have no idea how their period works. They were never taught how their period works. They have no idea. Yeah, I know I have a period once a month. That’s the extent of it.
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We were never taught how our bodies work. So I want the human design for me is just another tool for you to understand, oh, this is why I feel better when I make decisions this way. This is why I feel better when I take in information this way. This is why I feel this way around this environment or these types of people. Like they can understand themselves better so they can make more informed and powered decisions for themselves and their body and their energy and their boundaries and their physical health. That’s what it is for me.
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Don’t you find it interesting that in 2025, most people conventional medicine and the way we talk in our culture, the idea that you have energy running through your body seems to just be like,
35:15
What are you talking about? Woo woo, woo woo crazy. Like, isn’t that interesting? It’s wild to me because I had this conversation a couple weeks ago on a podcast. It’s wild to me because there are scientists who study this. There are mechanisms to literally measure your aura, your energetic feel. Like we can see it. There’s scans for that. I don’t know if you know Dr. Joe Dispenza, but he, he’s like, I love the science he puts together with all of this. It’s like, I can show you, I can prove it. And yet still, like you said, there are people who it’s like, energy. It’s like, it is
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wild. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, at this point, it’s kind of ignored at your own risk. Totally. And also, if swallowing pills and just running labs leads to health, good for you. But let’s just do a pulse check on how that’s going. Yes. Because I feel like the more, like I have this snarky little comment, the more healthcare you get, the more healthcare you need. Like I will pay out of pocket to go to a coach.
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And it’s not like I don’t believe in doctors or medicine, but I don’t believe it’s just physical. And this idea that you just address the physicals and I’ll fix that. It doesn’t, I don’t think it does. So, all right. Well, can you tell the audience where to find you if they, I mean, you have an awesome podcast and your socials, all that. Yeah. Yeah. So my podcast is called Hopeful and Wholesome.
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And I’d suggest you start there because I talk about all these things. And if you’re curious, now that you’ve heard about human design, you’re like, what the heck? There’s tons of stuff on there. So it’s all kinds of stuff. I talk about that and other things, but uh Wholefulandwholesome is the podcast. Wholefulandwholesome.com is my website and I’m at The Hope Padraza on Instagram. All right. All right. And so I’m to do to you what you did to me. Can you just talk to, just say one thing to
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the woman who is struggling and looking for answers, what would you advise her to do first? Like this is very cliche, but what’s coming up for me is just to listen to your body. And I think that as cliche and as simple as it sounds for so many people, it’s really not because there’s so many of us who don’t take the time to listen to our bodies.
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shut it down, we shut it out, we shut it up, we push it aside, or we’re like, I’ll deal with you later. But if you can really tap into your body, as I said before, I believe our body was built with everything that is designed with everything we need to heal. And I also believe that it has all the answers. And if we’re able to get
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quiet enough and to listen and to trust it, because that’s the other thing. A lot of women I know have lost trust in their bodies because they’ve been gaslit. They’ve been told that they’re wrong when they feel things, right? If we can listen and then trust our bodies, your body’s never going to steer you wrong. It’s never going to send you in the wrong direction. So that would be my big advice for women. Just listen to your body, tune in, listen, trust it. Yeah. And it’s such a shift when you do. I remember for years hating my body and...
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and not believing it and presenting it. It is such a different way to live when your body is your best friend and your top priority. Step back. It opens lots of things up. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much, Thanks, Colleen. All right. That’s it for this week, everybody. What I want you to take away from this conversation is just one thing. Your body, your brain, they’re not broken. It’s just your programming that’s off. And I know that lands differently depending on where you are.
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For some of you, that’s a relief. For others, it probably just feels like, great, now I’ve got one more damn thing to fix. But here’s the reframe. You don’t have to fix yourself. You have to stop playing by the rules that were never designed to serve you. Hope said something that stuck with me, and that is that it is physiologically impossible for your body to heal.
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when you’re in survival mode, when you are stuck in fight or flight, it’s physiologically impossible. So all the supplements and holistic modalities aren’t gonna matter if your nervous system isn’t primed to accept them, if you don’t feel safe using them. So your homework from this episode, I’m giving it to you. You got 10 minutes. I want you to try what we talked about. Go sit somewhere and do absolutely nothing. No phone, no podcast.
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no meditation app trying to tell you what to think or redirect your focus, just be with yourself and your nervous system so that you can learn that you’re not gonna die if you stop. You’re just gonna feel uncomfortable. But that’s the whole point. You have to recondition your nervous system. So give it a try. 10 minutes, raw dog it. Just see what happens. And if this episode...
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did something for you, would so appreciate it if you would share it with another woman who needs to hear it. Screenshot it, post it in your stories, send it to your group chat, post it on socials, whatever. Just help us get this message to the women who are exhausted from trying harder, doing all the wrong things. And if you’re ready to stop managing your symptoms and running around the hamster wheel,
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Constantly repeating the same mistakes over and over and wondering why nothing ever changes and you are ready to do something different Change requires action my friends then get into the show notes and book a discovery call Because if you could figure this out on your own you would already be doing it Coaching is the most valuable resource that I have ever invested in in my personal life and it has had the most influence
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on how far I’m able to get in a certain length of time. Having a coach that can give you a roadmap and show you where the pitfalls are and give you tools and strategies to overcome the obstacles, there is nothing more valuable that you can do for yourself to make sure that you’re not having this conversation in your head in a year or in five years. If you want something to change, you have to do something different. And if you don’t know what that is, then you need to get coaching.
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So get in the show notes, click the link and schedule a discovery call to discuss where you’re at, where you wanna be and what it’s gonna take to get there. I know from just talking with my clients that the biggest surprise when they get coaching is that you don’t change overnight. You can only focus on one thing at a time. But when you know what to focus on and you’re able to execute effective strategies and get feedback on what’s working and what’s not.
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then the changes you are making start to compound. But if you’re the type of person that struggles with consistency and following through, then there is, again, nothing more valuable that you can do than provide yourself with consistency and accountability. And that’s what we do in the next chapter. So if you are ready to explore what the next step might be, get in the show notes. Otherwise, I appreciate you so much for being here, being a part of my audience, participating in these conversations.
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We really are changing the world, but we are becoming the change we want to see. I do believe that the next revolution will be led by well-rested, relaxed, powerful women. But we’ve got to band together. We’ve got to normalize sanity. And just by listening to these episodes every week, you are participating and contributing to that mission. So thank you. I hope you have a kick-ass day, and I will see you on the next episode.