Episode 25
Women's Menstrual and Mental Health: A Candid Conversation
with Menstrual Coach Eva Garro
Hosted by Diana S. Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, QS
Episode Description: Welcome, fearfully and wonderfully made human! In this episode of The Holistic Counselor Podcast, I sit down with Eva Mariana Garro, a certified natural fertility and menstrual health expert, to explore holistic approaches to hormonal…
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Episode Description
Welcome, fearfully and wonderfully made human! In this episode of The Holistic Counselor Podcast, I sit down with Eva Mariana Garro, a certified natural fertility and menstrual health expert, to explore holistic approaches to hormonal balance and menstrual health. Eva shares her personal journey from enduring severe menstrual pain to becoming a passionate advocate for natural fertility methods, including the symptothermal method. Together, we discuss the importance of knowing your body, using natural menstrual products, and understanding the seasons of your cycle. This conversation is not just for women—it's valuable for men too!
What You'll Learn
- Eva's personal journey through menstrual pain and how it led her to natural fertility and menstrual health
- How cultural attitudes toward menstrual health impact the way we manage our bodies
- The dangers of conventional menstrual products and how switching to natural alternatives can improve health
- The symptothermal method and how tracking basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and the cervix can inform you about fertility and hormonal balance
- The connection between menstrual health and overall well-being, including mental health
- Why understanding your body's "seasons" is critical to self-care and hormone balance
- The influence of ancestral wisdom and holistic practices from different cultures, including Ayurveda
- How partners can benefit from understanding menstrual health and cycles
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Hava Femme's Free Resources: Download the menstrual health checklist and dosha test to learn more about your cycle and constitution. Available at: HavvaFEM
Follow Eva Mariana Garro
- Website: havvaFEM.com
- Instagram: @havvafem
Follow Diana S. Rice
- Website: Through the Valley Therapy
- Instagram: @throughthevalleytherapy
Quotes from the Episode
- "We as women need to understand our cycles, not just for fertility, but for our overall health." — Eva Mariana Garro
- "Your body has its own seasons, and understanding those is key to balancing your health and well-being." — Diana S. Rice
- "Menstrual health is the fifth vital sign. It's a window into your body's overall health." — Eva Mariana Garro
Connect with Us
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review! Let us know how you're using this information on your journey to holistic wellness.
Episode transcript
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Automatically generated from YouTube captions. Names and wording may contain errors; listen to the episode for the original conversation.
welcome fearfully and wonderfully made human today's episode is one I'm particularly delighted about I've always been fascinated by traditional Chinese medicine arvic practices and how cultures and tribes across the globe approach feeling as a Latina American I've seen how our culture often turns to Conventional medicine shaped by commercials and mainstream practices but what's always intrigued me are the holistic approaches those rooted in centuries of wisdom that offer a more personalized natural way of healing that's why
I am thrilled to introduce today's guest Eva Mariana Garo did I say that right yes thank a bicultural and bilingual certified natural fertility and menstrual health expert she's here to share her expertise on mastering menstrual cycles boosting fertility and balancing hormones knowledge that's empowering for women and yes even helpful for men to understand so let's dive into this conversation and I hope you take away a nugget or two to support your own journey toward health and
well-being so Eva benen welcome thank you thank you Dan for having me here I'm so happy to be here yeah so would you tell us a little bit about who you are and how we we met or how you know because I know we're both part of that holistic business Network which is a pretty cool Network huh and so so tell me how you got here to this journey of the founder of CEO of am I
saying it right Hava yes havm havm correct right so well long story short it was out of um personal experience this personal pain physical pain I had so much physical pain growing up during my teenage years I used to have very bad cramps and like not being able to go to school or if I went to school I would faint um it was it was horrible I you know I tried to look for answers but then
it was just the doctors doing their job I guess but without going deeper um to the root cause of what might have been causing that to this day I don't know if I had endometriosis or you know something I did I was diagnosed with endometriosis wow we're gonna talk about that then yes just you know it it takes almost like eight to 10 years on average to diagnose Ando uh for instance so yeah I suffered a
lot from this for years I never got any answers I started even taking well of course the doctors were like just take the pill it'll regul your make you happy was it as a teenager for you too but I didn't take it I never took it uh I said no some like something inside me was like you know what I don't want to go that route I don't know why I don't even know why but I
don't want to take it yeah um so thankfully I didn't but it didn't fix it me because I didn't have anything to to you know to try and then we didn't have much interet back then either um so basically I started taking some medication for arthritis which made it better but it was still bad because I would get sleepy so if I went to class or whatever it was I would I would be sleeping all the
time so how old were you I was around so I got my first pre when I was 13 so that started when I was around 14 15 yeah um sounds the same like it's something that I think in our culture we suffer a lot quietly go ahead I'm sorry you know oh yeah for sure and and sometimes you know I talked to some friends and some of them were like I don't feel anything like I don't
have any pain and then others would be the same as me so it was just like very confusing and also part of me saying maybe it's normal but then I have these other friends that are not going through this so it shouldn't be normal then so it was very very weird weird times so I just started doing my own research I got tired of asking other people um to fix my life for myself and also you
know my parents didn't know either like it was just even if they wanted to help they really couldn't do much can I can I ask where you're where you're from yes I was born and raised in Mexico City okay so I live there almost all my life until I was 20 something okay um so yeah was all back in Mexico we do have a good private care system if you can afford it which is not a
lot of people but we could uh thankfully so even with that with that privilege it was still so hard to find a solution yes so without making it so long um I ended up using different finding out that I had like a couple of cysts and then they disappeared after switching to more organic pads so I was just using the regular pads that they sell you know at the supermarket oh wow and they were causing problems
as well so I tried different pths that they're they were like ionized something they came from like Asia they were like super special and so you never Ed tampons I never used tampons no I I mean I used them a couple times just for pool or whatever it was but um see right like that was the thing you coming of age here in America and it's like boom all right you better learn how to put a
tampon on and you're like okay there's a hundred different sizes and then you're doing it and I I know with my experience I don't know if you had that it you're at school think about a teenager a young teenage girl going through what we went through right it's horrible it's you're already trying to be accepted in a new culture I mean did you come here were you in Mexico City when all this was happening te I
came right after that so I came when I was 16 so I was still suffering from that but it was right after I started trying the pets okay so I know I cut you off but I want people to understand like we're having this conversation because whoever is listening if you're a young teenage girl and you're just like I suffer too but it's quiet because we're not we don't talk about it Society doesn't talk about it
everything's Hush Hush in the church it's more like we I don't listen I learned about period stuff and everything from watching television watching other women right in my culture and and then it then you feel dirty about it that's actually one point uh very interesting point because in Mexico of course you know we're Catholic most people are Catholic and very religious and it was about that that tampons were invasive so it was not good religiously to
like put something inside you wow which has a good point in essence but it's just not communicated you know effectively right so I think that's what that was one of the main reasons why I never used tons just because I was scared it was just not right and I was scared of it naturally because of all that you know growing up Sy sometimes I then I I am grateful for that because I save myself some some
issues with now that we know that tampons are toxic and it's being openly communicated in some circles because like we you and I and a lot of us that study holistic pra practices and understand our bodies a little more because because what we usually believe is what what we're we're being shown constantly on you know Tampax wants to sell their product yeah so we're not going to talk and then they have it really really tiny and
small like this might cause side effect this could cause toxic shock syndrome and I remember reading that I'm like I don't care I just need to stop bleeding out yeah because it was days upon days of pain I'll never for I mean listen I get it like for you you said that you pass out I was I you know I would it was just I would just go up into a little hole in my bed and
people don't understand because you know then you have family going and and you you're feeling crappy yeah and that's and you don't know what's happening so yeah I was on the pill yeah I was using tampons I had no idea what because no one taught me and I'm not blaming my mom you know because she didn't know so exactly you know people just do what they can with the resources they have and the knowledge they know
at the moment so it's not about blaming it's about understanding and what are you going to do with the information that was given to you now right so okay sorry you go back back and you're 16 this is how it flies on this podcast because we're having a conversation so you're 16 um and you're suffering because I'm I'm picturing me too suffering this is why I wanted you on here so bad because it's like okay we
have this kind of same story but I'm a lot older than you right I think I don't know you look very young I'm gonna be 30 next week I love that you are this knowledgeable and that you started your company okay back to H because listen your story has created this company for a reason because this is the purpose because people especially in in the Latina culture I mean I know you probably work with all sorts
of cultures like me but because we are who we are we're women of color that have suffered and gone through some stuff we're able to now on the other end of the healing right to go back and go all right here are the tools I use I don't know if it's going to work for you but you could try them it's something different it's not just pill after pill after pill or you know you know Tylenol
and Advil I would take one of each oh well together and it still didn't help my periods exactly yeah you know what helped I'm gonna be honest with you and and I hate to say it this way but back but I knew that was doing side effects too I smoked a lot of freaking marijuana oh yeah I've been there too you're trying the only thing that was at least giv some relief relief right yeah but it
was still not enough no I'm glad you mentioned it yeah because we have to understand like we're trying we're trying to it's pain that we that usually brings us to our mercy of trying to understand okay enough with the pain or we just continue on the on the hamster wheel of trying and then now you're here with a bunch of side effects because you know I was on the pill I was smoking marijuana I was allergic
to cats I was on benad dril I had was eating crappy I as well that's so weird yeah yes but and I just I I just got over it like two months ago we really yeah but that's our system right our system changes we don't know the science behind them and but our bodies continually tell us something and if we don't listen we just self-medicate exactly okay so back to you starting this company because now that
you're yeah yeah okay keep going like yeah Soh I'm just thinking about all that you're saying and I'm processing while I'm think what I'm going to say next um yeah so I started using those stats that my aunt was Distributing because one of her friends daughters had the same issue and she fixed the the cists like they went away after using this pet so she was like you need to try this like I I know a
person that they you know they work for her I was like okay so I started using them and yeah like after two months uh my period got lighter I got a day less of bleeding I used to have six days of like heavy bleeding yeah and then I it started being five and less uh quantity I started feeling better my cramps went down not like 100% but I would say a 20% which was great for me
at that point and it didn't smell bad I I didn't like I wasn't itching yeah you know cuz like normal pads cause all these things that we think that our vagina smells bad when it's really not that it's what you're putting and then they start selling you stuff to mess up with make it smell good right or mess up your microbiome because people do not understand that every place that has moisture in the body is a
microbiome it's its own little entity of beautifulness how God made us honestly it's so absorbent like the is one of the most absorbent parts of our body it's like amazing how we're putting things in there and we don't even know and it has its own you know pH regulation which it cleanses itself like you don't need to put anything you don't have to dou exactly yeah I have to ask this did you have anemia I had
at one point in my life um I've always been super skinny so yeah I've had issues a flakita which that's another whole story of mental thing because nobody feels nobody feels sorry for the flas oh yeah in this culture we need another episode for that for sure um but yeah so I was yeah I had an email at some point I was also now that you mentioned it I think it also has a lot to do
with that that I was also struggling with food and just mental health in general which I didn't know at the point I just didn't have the references or even the words or you know to know that I had something U but yeah I've always had a lot of anxiety and I have Trico to Mania which I just recently opened opened up about it and started just talking about which is pulling your hair out of stress or
anxiety um so I started doing that at that age I would say around 16 so it was just you know all these things happening but the Pats helped and then after that it just naturally let me to discover the cup so the menro cup um never tried it I started using it and it changed my life it was it became like my best friend I was like thank God I found this is is it hard to
use and where did you get it no at that point it wasn't that popular as it is now it was just starting um a friend of mine just gave me you know the the website where she bought it in Mexico and I bought one it was like the diva cup it was like the first one to be super I heard of it yeah it's it's a good club um now there are many many many different ones
but back then it was just like a couple of brands that you would uh be able to get in Mexico so I got that one and it was it was great it was like a good change I started just managing my period differently U feel like feeling more free without something you know there all the time and really how does it work okay honestly I just I know like I don't care like people that you can
you can turn it off if you don't if you think this is gross or not but you know what this is reality for us women and we need to talk about these things we do we need young girls to understand like this is how our body is made it's nothing to be ashamed of it's nothing to try to hide it's natural and and also that men should learn about this if you are in a relationship with
a female or you have daughters or even friends or nieces whatever you know a person that's a woman right we have to understand that these are natural processes like right now I'm going through my second pu puberty Eva you know what I mean by that right menopause and nobody yeah nobody talks about that but anyway back to the cup I I really am curious and you don't have to be graphic about it because I don't want
it you know I don't want to get a course yeah but I want to understand like it's not like a tampon it's it's just is it like a pad I've seen it before never have used it now you know I'm older I don't need to use it but but I've always was curious and I have granddaughters and I have you know my daughters so I would you know it could be something I could share with them
but can you explain it just a little bit and which one you recommend yeah so it's basically it's like a um how would you it's a cup I mean it's like a little silicone um container okay and it might seem invasive and it might seem hard to to insert um I was super scared at first it took me probably four months okay uh to like from where I decided I wanted to try until I really tried
it and then it took me about three Cycles to really like get the dist of it and be able to insert it and and remove it like confidently and like correctly it's like tampons when you first get your period honestly that was the weirdest yeah I think we need to really like talk about this um that is it's a process everything's a process like we just want things so fast like oh this is going to fix
everything and I'm going to take take a pill or put put the cup and that's it no like it it takes time it takes time for you to know the the thing your own body like most people have haven't even seen down there ever or touched themselves like to find their cervix for example that's something that I teach on how your cervix can tell you so much about your fertility just by touching it wow like finding
it knowing where it is if it's looking backwards if it's you know whatever like everybody's different and we're just so discon connected and we want everything fast so this was a big lesson for me about that um which was it's a process it's going to take time but if you like if you pass that process you're on the other side and the cup is not for everybody that's also important to mention um it's not it's not
for everybody some some women have told me you know what this is not comfortable for me I don't like having something inside it it it feels weird that's fine some other women are like this is the best thing that has ever happened I'm so happy I can do everything I want with the cup on and I don't have to worry so it's like it depends so that's why it all comes back to you have to know
yourself and what's good for you that's right and just try it and if it and if you don't like it you can just not use it you know but at least you tried and also something that really helped me with the cup was my friend I think just having that accountability and and someone that has been through that yeah um it's very helpful because she was the one to really like push me like oh I've had
the same issue but after 3 months like you you're going to get it like it's going to be amazing and and that just kept me going and not giving up so that's Community whatever right that's support that's Community that's communication that's understanding that you know like have being patient with yourself right understanding that it is your job to know who you are right your purpose and and you know it because some people come to probably both
of us with trauma oh yeah right trauma because of being a woman and that's another whole processing of under you know like getting them to regulate and in your period I would think too um if the more maybe traumatic or higher a score average childhood experiences you had when you were younger the more painful your period might be it might be genetic the genes are the bullets but the environment is the trigger right um but it's
also what you're eating how you're sleeping what you're seeing what you're hearing and and there's ways to process it all so you're talking about lifestyle because what you're saying about the three months like we you're right we want a quick fix that is how this Society has trained us the westernized Industrial Revolution culture has trained us to hurry up hurry up hurry up hurry up hurry up and then we disconnect and lose ourselves and then now
here we're people pleasing everywhere and then our our reg our system is disregulated we're on our brain's inflamed on fire um our guts and everything that came it's all it's all connected so then okay so you're you're going through this situation you got the cup how did you get rid of the pain okay so that part so with the pets it was a little better than the pain I was just taking the arthritis medication in that
moment it was my transition to move to the us so that was the time when I moved I couldn't get the pets anymore because it was really hard for me to get them from Mexico I didn't know people in the US yet it was just very hard so I stopped using them and I used the cup after that like just I kept using the cup and then for the pain I would buy my arthritis medication in
Mexico whenever I went to visit and take it with me but it was super expensive so that was not sustainable either and I was just I was just tired of feeling sleep all the time when I took it it was just very very annoying so after I would say a couple years of that I was like this is it I'm just going to go through the pain like that's it like I'm just not gonna take this
pill this medication and I'm just gonna go through the pain and see what happens and maybe I back then I was very depressed when I moved to the US I was 16 uh I had a boyfriend I had my band I used to play the bass guitar and I had my first band I love it was like you know this point in life where you're so happy and you have your friends and you love going to
school and then you move to another country and you're alone and it was winter and it was dark at 3M it was really hard for me to adapt where did you move to to Chicago a subur CO shamberg Illinois in oh goodness yes from Mexico to Illinois at 16 years old yes that is why it makes so much sense the stress the anxiety the the pain and everything because that's hard and then back then it is
what it is you have ex you have no choices you're you know you have to what are you going to do go homeless like you're a teenager and this is because I worked with adolescence for decades so I get it like that I'm like no you know I will validate your trauma your parents might not validate it because they're like it's t toughen up like this is part of living like we're going to a medicia you
know like but at the same time this for your own good it is but then don't get it at that point no no and and that's a hard place for us that are immigrant well I'm an American but being raised by an immigrant it's it's kind of the I get the culture big time I get it you know and and being a therapist in in South Florida and brow County yeah you've seen everything yes so for
you yeah like you went from did it it had no snow where you were from no no I've never seen like I had never seen snow before that okay Ma you went from sunshine vitamin D like we had no clue about that either because I'm from New York right and and to to a whole different culture trying to find your way at 16 and in pain but you probably couldn't talk about it much because who are
we G to talk about it too yeah oh yeah oh my good no wonder you pulled your hair out I'm serious that that started getting worse yeah okay so just the trigger of everything yeah yeah it makes so much sense okay so now you're you're surviving because we're going to talk about the thriving in a little bit but right now you're in survival mode your brain and your body now are in survival mode how'd you get
through it uh my family my family was the biggest pillar um thank God I had cousins that lived in Chicago so I wasn't I mean I didn't see them every weekend and some of them lived in Indiana so it wasn't that far so we used to do stuff with them so at least I had some family like close and some aunts and uncles um but it was bad I got bullied by my P teacher at school
because I was Mexican um like it was just hard like overall right um they wanted me to like make another year in high school because of my transcripts and it was just crazy but whatever so I went through that just you know just yeah like bearing with it because all my family was going through their processes too like my mom at work uh my dad just being because he had to stay at home for that period
of time and then my sister at school at six years old um so it was just like everybody was so busy going through their own processes that I couldn't really even tell them so much because they were overwhelmed too right you didn't want to burden them yeah but as a family it was beautiful because we just came together and in Mexico my mom used to work like long hours like until you know 9:00 p.m. and here
would be 5:00 p.m. which is what was like a big change for the family because she would come come home early and be with us so it was like it was beautiful in that sense um we had good good time so I think my family was all was all and everything I had at that point I didn't have any friends then I made one friend and she got stabbed by her boyfriend um over a Facebook argument
it's on the news and like you can find it online so it was just a hard a hard period of time for me I was like you know what I lived through the pain um for that for that uh it was two years only I did two years of high school I was like you know what I'm depressed I it's horrible here I don't want to live here I'm going back to Mexico okay so I went
back to Mexico um there I didn't do much about the the pain of the cramps I just kept taking titanol or Advil or whatever I could find um without really making it better um then I moved back I kept using the cup and then there I was I was older and I reconnected with this you know part of Mexico which is the The ancestral wisdom and you know my live I live with my grandmother so that
was a big part of it too because um I lived with her when I went to so I went to college in Mexico because I was depressed and I went back and I lived with her for all the the major and um what did you study what did you I studied two years of biomedical engineering wow thinking that that was my passion in life which it is but it just wasn't the right path to study like
that and University so I did two years like the the hardest part then I switched majors and I switched to uh Communications and entertainment business management because both of my parents are communicators all my family is in that industry so it was just in my blood and I tried to get away from that but I couldn't um but we're going to go back to that in a minute because that change was one of the most challenging
things in my life too just like accepting that I made a mistake and I already studied you know two years and I was halfway and we paid all this money and it's it was like really hard for me as a 20 year old to be like okay this is not what I want to do and I'd rather go through the problems with my parents telling them the money whatever it is now than doing something I don't
want to do the rest of my life exactly so so yeah I went through that change I switched it was okay and then there um I went to Finland for exchange wow yeah so that also helped a lot because I saw how people in Finland which is one of it's one of the best countries to live in I mean they have of course they're winter and darkness but also they're the happiest country in the world and
I see why well why don't leave us hanging and it's amazing because their education is just different um they the kids do whatever they want to do not what they have to do if they're good at some things it's like a mon story kind of thing okay where everybody does what they they're good at and where they're really called to do and not like a standardized system they don't have standardized tests they don't have homework um
kids go to school alone at like four years old in the bus with their phone hanging on their necks and they go alone and it's just crazy like it's just a different culture and they're still connected to to Nature so they have all this Lakes where they can go and swim wherever without being scared of any weird bacteria going through their noses or something no wait wait no brain eating um amias nothing exactly um when I
came to Florida I was like can I swim in the lake they're like no not this one but maybe that one that might be radioactive and that one I'm like so yeah they recycle everything um they're just so connected they go to you know to this like big like cabins in the lake and they survive in in nature and they're so so connected to these Pagan ways of living that they had and and the SAA and
it's just so much um cold plunging is isn't whm Hoff where wait where is Wim Hoff from do you know who Wim Hoff is I think he's not from Finland but I don't remember he's from up there where it's cold and and a lot of people are blankita yeah yeah okay yeah so that changed my perspective I was like this is like how we live in like how people live in the US it's it's a lie
because this is first country like first world country the US is like third and then Mexico is like fourth or fifth so that's the reality of the world yeah um so yeah that changed my perspective I came back depressed from Finland because now I wanted to live in Finland for the rest of my life Wow and then but I was like okay and then from there I moved to Florida so where I'm now in Miami so
then again all like this comparisons of okay like what is this what's this difference between these three countries and that just made me um started learning more about myself uh through all these changes as life was going just going and then uh just being tired of my pain I just got tired of it I was like I can't live with this anymore um of course my Pur pulling got bad even worse and then all those things
and I was just engaging myself in this like toxic relationship like my life was just not the best I was uh drinking a lot of alcohol you know during the week partying and University and like doing which was fun like I'm not going to say it wasn't fun um but because that's what we're taught that's a that's the thing that's what we're taught at a very young age I remember you know you watch TV and every
even now even every teenage thing right it's going to college going to the Frat party going to and and having alcohol and little by little people have no idea like if you have that Gene to make you addicted that the the downward spiral you'll end up going on because or what it does to your brain for depression it isn't it's a you know it is a toxin that you're putting in your system um yeah and and
this is an argument in in my culture and in my faith right it's like well Jesus made water into wine and I'm like yeah but he made it in a special occasion I get it we're Latins like you know a special occasion there's a wedding there's a party we do it once in a while I get it but if it becomes your self-medication every day you have to ask your question the question why why am I
putting this as something you know why am I putting poison in my body every day and it's just so normalized because everybody else is doing it so you don't really stop and think okay what am I doing it's just oh I'm doing what I'm supposed to do right right and it feels good and it's every every restaurant every bar it's the craziest thing that with alcohol I'm just gonna just do a little more of it because
to me it's like when someone says oh do you want to drink I'm like no oh you don't drink oh are you are you and I'm like no I don't go to AA I just choose to educate myself to understand what it was doing to me and that's why I'm choosing not to because my body is a temple yeah and that doesn't mean that you're gonna have a wine sometime in life if you want right and
I'm not judging like if you are if you're gonna husband my husband doesn't drink at all and has never like drank anything so he get all the time all the time where we go somewhere oh but why AR you drink it he's like I've never like why would I do it now right or why why am why are you drinking like I think it's because people feel uncomfortable or they're feeling they're being judged and I'm like
no you're judging me the way you think I'm judging you and I'm not I'm too busy trying to be you know the best representation of Jesus Christ because you know my faith I'm straight up with it and and to me it's like no do not judge because I'm not going to judge you because you guys have your own issues I'm here to try to help you but I need to every day look at myself first because
I got some stuff anxiety girl I didn't pull my hair but there's other things that I went off the deep end with right so it's like us being responsible for ourselves and when someone is not drinking don't just assume like stop making assumptions and stop taking things personally okay yeah so for you like okay we're we're going back to now here you are learning more about you Finland you love Finland and it's beautiful and and it's
amazing and we can learn from that culture because that's why I like doing this podcast because we have to understand that our way is not the only way exactly that's the best way it right we can totally learn from different cultures does not mean you're cheating on your culture exactly to me every yes every good thing comes from God like if you are a believer in a higher power or you know to me it it's Jesus
Christ it's not the religion it's the relationship like what relationship do you have with you and the creator of the universe the way you see it right that's such a good point that you're bringing up this is like spiritual part of things because at that point I was also very disconnected of my spirituality I grew up in a Catholic uh school which was very very strict and ized yes it was like horrible like oh your hair
tie is not red you're going back home it's like so you had a lot of legalism yes because I'm not put I don't want I want to make sure we're not putting Catholics down because I know I I had anger I had anger towards cathol Catholic I was raised cathol I will never forget my first grade teacher Eva me listen I'm in Catholic school I'll never forget this nun she beat me every day and then tell
me I had no self-control every day because now that I realize I'm a hyper little girl like I'm not going to sit behind a desk that's not how I learn I'm K athetic I need to see it I need to feel it I need to you know understand why don't beat me because I asked you why I'm not being disrespectful I'm trying to find out I genuinely want to know why no why right but every day
it was Boom the ruler over the hand getting sent home no self- control and then I would get in trouble at home because I you see where I'm getting so that's that's that's trauma on a child yeah so Catholicism like I see yeah I see people that actually walk the walk with love and gentle you know in that denomination or religion so but I also understand that in every denomination there are relig religious people and Christ
called that out think about that if you if you know the story like he's like no he's he called it all out it's not about the religion and the all these rules and everything it's about you figuring out you exactly and then being responsible for you so you're able to function in this world in a healthy way and to me he's my the spirit guide like I anytime I'm angry and I want to pop off on
someone I'm like all right Lord I need to pray help me yeah help me to not go into the ego exactly no for sure okay so back to this year's the spiritual aspect of things yeah that's so important because as you said um there's a lot of people that claim themselves to be Catholic or Buddhist or whatever it is it doesn't matter what what religion if it sometimes it's just because you were born into it but
you don't really believe what's behind and that's the thing like I like to learn the the root because in the end everything's the same it's just like Knowledge from God and it's just you know it's the same for all religions just every religion chooses to manifest their things differently but the root the the the very very root of wisdom is the same and the like principles of Life are unchangeable that reminds matter what you believe in
it's to me it's like in Proverbs you know the it's wisdom that's why the Book of Proverbs is wisdom and to understand it's the knowledge of God and and well we also have to understand that we're never going to know it's a mystery and the second you think you know it all then you have become God and that's dangerous then you have become your own God and you and then it's like I know it all you
know and then you start judging and acting in fear and when someone doesn't agree with you you go attack them and it's that that causes so much um damage in the cells so all right so now you're about done with college like you about 23 I would say um because I did two years of biomedical I switched so it was a longer period of time um I was living with my parents at the time because I
just came to Miami to do my internship and it was supposed to be fast and I would go back to Mex Mexico um which I never did but yeah that was a plan and then I just started you know diing more my my dad is very spiritual in in the terms of like he reads a lot and he knows a lot about so he's always told me about this stuff since I was little like Leon and
the Seven laws of the universe and all this things that I didn't understand when I was little but now it just all started making sense so I went through this you know the Dark Night of the soul that that we call it I had that living here in Miami already so I was here I had every long-distance relationship with a guy from Lithuania that I met in Finland so it was all very complicated was just like
what am I doing with my life I before that I had like three more longdistance relationships which were just very it was very hard for me like it was why am I doing this again like this is a pattern I need to break something's not right um and I kept moving so it was very hard for me to find this like ground and like really F like to feel rooted and and contained because I kept moving
Finland Mexico Miami I don't know what I'm going to do so I started like feeling that I didn't have a home and I didn't belong anywhere yeah you weren't grounded yeah so that of course affected everything else um and then I went through this Dark Night of the soul I realized that you know just life I don't even remember exactly you know what went through my mind that day but my life changed after that and it
was just like this moment where I was like okay like I don't I don't even care anymore about you know there fears and the consequences I'm just gonna change my life and live it as I want to live it and so I broke up with this guy um I started you know like changing my attitude towards life because I was very like negative and I was like very I've always been very kind and you know like
easygoing but I was mad I was angry at the world I think I was just like angry with everybody it makes sense I listen this is as a therapist who like done this for a long time I really feel that we have a hurt child when we have too much stress anxiety and depression I know we can we can diagnose the symptom right and then we manage the symptoms we're managing symptoms but to get the root
cause like think about it if you had in childhood not a total functioning beautiful healthy because who does like honestly like we all have our story but some of us depending on our personality and what was happening you know then we have that hurt child and then you become a teenager and then that's the angry teenager inside of you right and that anger will hold on and you're wiring your brain at this the whole time you're
wiring your brain from the birth from inside the womb oh yeah right and so you're carrying that stuff on from ancestors intergenerational trauma and you know it's like right now how I see it is God is waking us up to deal with this stuff so we don't continue on this pattern because if we continue doing these things that we are doing and you're not becoming aware of yourself and how you're gonna that's all you have control
of 2020 like the whole pandemic is what taught us that right really it's like wait a minute like there's a lot like what's the truth and and how do we control this because it's fear false evidence appearing real attacking us and what are we going to do about it now you're not stuck whoever's listening to this you are not stuck us two women right here talking to each other we have been Pro I have a feeling
like you felt stuck that Dark Night of the Soul she's talking about it's also known in my circle it's like the crisis of Faith okay and it's to me I've studied both and both sound the same to me you're God's trying to shake you and wake you to make you understand you have a purpose now you either ignore it and keep going on the hamster wheel or you evolve because the thing is if you don't learn
from that then you keep getting this um this tests of life if you don't learn you're gonna keep getting them the same one and until the next one with different people but same one right but or that's or with yourself but with different right things so so how did you shift like how did you change I mean I just changed inside I think I was like okay I need I need something to look up to like
I I lost all sense of spirituality but I but deep inside I knew there was something bigger than me like I've always seen things when I was little I used to see like ghosts and feel energies and like I I I knew it because I have it and I can like sometimes I feel things before they happen like I have that you know skill or whatever you can call it well I call it gift of the
sermon gift it's a gift now I see it's a gift but back then I was like scary what should I do with this no is and that's why to me okay so I don't know if you know my grandma was a Santa Ria medium yeah yeah but I don't I don't touch that stuff just because I know like you said the scari but now I see the gift now that I have chosen to follow Jesus Christ
is the gift of discernment I still pick up stuff I still but now I know how to handle it in a very exactly healthy way um to use the gift to help not to hurt but it isn't it is a lot of praying because some of this stuff is in the spiritual realm you have to be careful because that yeah it's there's some dark stuff out there oh yeah for sure yeah the thing the thing that
held me in that sense was that my mom used to pray with me when I was little so I did have that that memory I love that even if I didn't understand what it really was I did have that in me so that really I think helped me and my grandma that the one that I lived with for like seven years she's super religious and she goes to church every Sunday and she's like every day she
prays and so she gave me that like spiritual like strength yeah um that I needed them to um but I just didn't know what to believe in because I was like okay the Catholic School didn't work for me then I went I liked um metal music metal and rock wait really you and I are sisters I'm telling you right now I was a headbanger asked my high school friends well that was yeah I loved going to
con Metallica and just like oh wow so you understand what I'm tell which one did you like I like all kinds of metal but I like death metal more um and symphonic metal the one that's like Opera with symphonic I never heard of that one but I in college I did date for a minute a a death metal singer and go to his concert and then but you have I understand it now that I'm older and
going okay and know understand sound and megahertz and everything and vibration in vibration you got to be careful because honestly those that kind of and I don't want to put that you know it was a part of my life but like that can cause more mental health problems honestly it it can and that's why music and sound and breath work and having to regulate your system yeah that's so yeah so so back to have a have
a fem how did that you know I want to understand yeah what you do like you got I'm gonna make the jump from that to the have of f okay just like very fast wrapping this up I went through that Dark Night of the soul I started researching finding myself looking for Spiritual ground uh and I started my spiritual practice and then I met uh who now is my husband he was the one to like really
pull me into the spiritual work and like really do the work and and he started just talking to me basically talking to me and and he started getting things out of me and because that that's what I needed I just needed to talk to someone and um it was him and then this it just happened then what whatever he came to live here and then a friend of mine introduced the Syma method which is I'm going
to talk a little bit uh right now which is what I teach at have of him so that's how it started she she took it herself in Mexico she loved it she was like kind of selling it to us like oh my God this is the best thing um I know I like I learned so much about my cycle now I know what's happening then you can have you know sex without being like worrying that you're
going to get pregnant and using all this pills and she just like told us so many things that I was like intrigued and I'm like okay this sounds like something I need to look into because of my pain because of all things that I need to know what's going on and if I can just take a like you know classes and learn for myself and going to the doctor that's amazing so I signed up we took
it together so my then boyfriend now husband and me we took it we loved it he like it changed his life too as a man it was like wow like how come we don't know this like it's so amazing now I can understand you better like I can empathize better with what you're feeling with what your hormones are going through throughout the cyc what is it called again sympto thermal method so it's sympto from the symptoms
and thermal from temperature okay so basically it's a method that teaches you how to identify your fertile window and observe the health of your cycle by only observing your own body's um natural bio signals that all women have we just don't know how to interpret them or we ignore yeah we just live with them but we don't really acknowledge them um and it's just uh basal temperature which is the temperature you have when you wake up
when you're like calm without doing activity and then your cervical mucus which is a mucus natural mucus that comes out of you that sometimes we even grossed out by it and we throw it away and we don't know that observing that mucus can tell so much about our health in general that's why the the mro cycle called fifth bital sign you can know so much about your health and then the cervix which I was talking about
before which is that the cervix opens and closes and goes up in height and down throughout the cycle wow and you can feel that um so that's another you know symptom that your body has naturally so I learned all that I started doing you know the method for myself I we because of course the first thing that comes to mind the first fear is because we didn't want to get pregnant at that point um we're like
oh my God is this going to work because then you hear all these things about natural methods and you're like no the Rhythm the calendar method they don't work they're like not effective which is true they have a like a a lower Effectiveness because they are based on uh regular Cycles which is that every woman has a 28 uh day cycle and they ovulate on day 14 which is not true even if you have a 28
day cycle you can ovate late on another day that's not a 14 okay and not all women you know have 20 day cycles right it's just not possible so because everybody's different and sometimes you get stressed and your cycle you know becomes longer and menstruation is not what gets delayed it's ovulation and then menstruation gets delayed because ovulation was delayed but not it's not really that menstruation gets delayed so that's another thing that we don't know
so basically long story short we took it we loved it and there is where I found my purpose like that was the moment this was so like through covid era and after that um I was like this is amazing I need to share this I can keep this to myself there's no way I'm giving this to myself I need to share this with the world people need to know about this and it just started everything started
to get better I started you know to track my cycle see my lual phase if it was too long too short if I was missing you know progesterone like all these things that I had no idea so I natur started making changes yeah yeah feel better and that just diminished my pain so much I I'm just asking so if you were missing progesterone like I bet you some people are listening going what is progesterone they don't
even know because they they put their whole soul into the doctor which you know doctors have it their place but a lot of these like doctors that might be men have not studied this stuff at all it is they studied the medication that's going to help the symptom and so it's it's learning that's why you have to become your own Advocate if you are a female listening to this you have to know you I this is
what I tell the women that come to me it's like do you know your Seasons what what do you mean I'm like every month you have a season your winter spring summer fall I try to make it easy because I worked with teenagers and they're like I have no clue I'm always in winter you know some of them I'm like no I mean like do you know when you're getting your period do you know when you're
because these are the times you have to be gentle with yourself you know the the week before when you are feeling the cramps you I don't want you going to the gym like you've been going to the gym in your summer season like you know where you're feeling good because right now your body's telling you something and I have to teach them to start listening and sometimes it's scary for them so I just want to go
into because I know I it's already been almost hour and I could sit here and talk to you for another hour but I I I also know that people did can't you know handle listening for that long either um so I want to know you know see if you are listening and you want to know more about this this is why you would go to her website and figure out like what else she knows do you
have resources out there that like if a listener like a beginning L you know how yeah I have I have a checklist which is very cool because you can just check every month like okay this is my blood characteristics and my mucus and I'm feeling this so just check the list and you you can know if your cycle or your period are healthy or not and then I have a Dosha test for AA um that you
can find your own Constitution and then from that like your own physical Constitution and from that you can then make changes in your lifestyle to make things better for you healthwise yeah and then I where do they find this how do you they can find this at my website at hm.com resources um there there they are they're free to to download does does the resource explain what you were talking because you and I know this stuff
because we've studied it and we've had to figure stuff out the hard way for our own selves our own walk but like when you said um right in the the first part like you could download the checklist and know about your con your what did you say not Constitution but like um yeah not the well I want to talk I want to hit ruv in a second but before that where it's like oh the checklist for
knowing if your period is healthy yes so do you teach them how to do it though like you might have a checklist but do you say like here you need to go and do this and a b and c okay I just want to make sure because very explanatory oh cool all right all right so now to aric Medicine all right I know a little bit about it I do I've studied I I forgot I don't
know if I'm a Vita I forgot because it was a while ago I took the test and I'm just like yeah I'm that wiry girl we probably are the same one yeah probably okay can you explain it a little yeah so Aura um I would say it's like a way of living more than anything um it's it's an ancient practice of medicine if you would call it something but I just don't think there are words to
really explain what it is fully it's a way of living and the principle is that everything in the universe is made out of elements right we know water Earth um fire and um what am I missing ether and so everything's made of this elements everything like if if it if it exists it has its elements and but every element is different and they have different qual ities and they have different limitations and if you mix them
they become something different so it's like learning how all that exist has different balances and imbalances and um distributions of this elements so basically you can know that everybody's different you know that we're unique but if you get to know your Constitution so Aura has this things that are the doas which is Vata that is ether and air so if you see ether and air they're like both air substances so V people are usually skinny I'm
super Vata so probably you are too um that are most it's air so imagine the air how it's the air it's moving it's like up there so I that's why I'm like so so anxious and I'm always skinny it's like small bod skinny people um your mind is always thinking you're always like doing stuff you can't space it you know like oh these things and then we have paa which is fire and water and paa people
are more the fire so they tend to get maybe angry easier or they can digest their food faster because they have a lot of fire or they they tend to react to things or you can see like where the fire can you know manifest and then gaatha is water and Earth which if you think about it if you mix like Earth or soil with water it makes like this kind of mud so people that are kafa
are usually bigger in Constitution physically like bigger bodies not necessarily that are their fat or anything it's big bone that's what we call them Constitution we call them big bone yeah and then also people that maybe they like to stay SE like seated more they're always home they don't like to go out much or they are like they find it hard to work out because they're always like more um like passive so that's how you can
just very basically like understand um what the does are so for auretta if you find your own Constitution even if you don't know anything about Aura because Aura is the science of life it's is all life is a in reality but even if you don't know this stuff only by looking at your Constitution you can learn so much about yourself and when I found out about I read and I started doing this it was like wow
like I feel so much better like I just know that this is me and this is how I am from birth and that I can't change my skinny bones even if I work out even if I whatever if I eat more and it's okay I feel good and I feel at peace because that's how I was born and how I was supposed to be and these are the things that I'm doing that make me unbalance so
if the thing is imbalance attracts imbalance so if you have an imbalance of let's say I'm always cold for example I'm always cold on my hands my feet I'm always always cold but then if I go out to the sun I get hot really fast so my my temperature regulation is not like as good but now I already know so what do I do before I used to get like I don't know I used to feel
ashamed of like oh my God how am I going to be wearing like a sweater with everybody is like naked Miami you know I'm like now I'm like I don't care yeah like you know what this gave me so much piece of mind and being like I don't care what anybody you stop comparing yourself this is me this is how I am and I'm just going to be comfortable and I don't want to be cold so
I'm gonna put my socks on and I don't care right yeah oh I'm always wearing socks it's always like just accepting yourself and being compassionate and and and also being honest with yourself and being like what am I doing in my life that is contributing to me feeling bad because that's that's true we also you know we go against and we're not really honest sometimes and we want to go to the doctor and fix all the
things for us when we don't know anything about ourselves we are making the worst choices and and without knowing it either like some people really have no idea like I really did not know that every Burger King I ate as a teenager was going to you know do what it did to me like you know so I back to the aric uh principles right the methods uh do you do you have something on your website or
resource for people to learn or or okay good because to me it's like I know there's certain foods right that help each one of them I know it's kind of like traditional Chinese medicine yeah as well and that's why I like to have practitioners come on because I need people to understand just because they know this kind of practice people think it's a religion and Christians get so scared of it and I'm just like no like
you have to understand God made all these cultures exactly and we can learn from them stop being so scared to do that these are like elements I mean science it's a sciency thing it's like right and it's been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years long amazing because it's the spoken word of how it gets transmitted still after all this time because it works yes exactly okay so so because we have they have a
a resource just mentioning on the resource the Dosha test it's in English Spanish so even if you want in Spanish or English you can download okay did they find that on your website or yes on website and my website on the resources okay so yeah we have to make sure we go on her on her resource all right so I would love to continue the conversation but I I part two I have a client yeah well
we could do a part two honestly we could do a part two um but I do have clients this afternoon I got to start getting I got to eat something real quick I got to eat something healthy which means I got to take time to put that in my S because I am like I would love to talk more about women's health and Men you know like menopause like nobody talks about menopause right so I have
to ask you feel good now so you're now thriving yes so I am thriving I mean I still I do still have cramps I'm not going to lie uh I I do have cramps some some Cycles are worse than the others but it's just also now I can see why like if that cycle I was super stressed and I didn't take care of myself and I didn't take my supplements then I see the results right so
that means that now I have to be really active on taking care of myself yes because if I don't this pain comes back immediately right so it's not that it's GNA go away just because I'm like this and it's okay but now I know how to treat it and like uh act accordingly throughout my cycle so now I know that if I do all these things according to my faith is and what you're supposed to do
then when the period comes it's going to be better right so I'm I'm on that I'm on that point where I'm just taking responsibility for my actions every day yeah and I'm now just teaching other women about this stuff which has been so rewarding and now thank God I can you know have my business on this and and help so many not just women but couples you mentioned also educating men I I love teaching couples together
because I feel like we as women we you know we carry so many things already like so much weight so more responsibilities things to do and fertility is not just for having kids it's it's health and even for having kids it's both you need a sperm and an ovom you can't conceive with just one right so men have to be responsible for fertility too and there are ways uh in which they can support you know their
partner in in this in this area because they're so disconnected too so it's important to teach them as well I love that it's about balancing and understanding yourself right I I absolutely love that so what what would you like what are the takeaways that you would like the listener to take away like what would be the most important thing right now if someone's sitting there going I never even thought about my period or my female friend
girlfriend mom what whatever because I honestly at 40 I wish I would have known you because at 41 I decided to get the novaire do you know what that is the endometrial oion because of the pain and they're like well you're done with kids you have endometriosis you have anemia like I had all these situations and I suffered for all the way until I was 40 and then finally I'm like okay I'm going to go get
this thing done it was the most one of the most I have Trauma from that because think about this you're on the the bed well not the bed it was like a it's a you go in and you come out but it was a 30 second or 90 second thing they stick inside of you I have strangers sitting there with my hoo-ha wide open right and they burn the crap out of me but I never have
a period since then but I still have everything else so I I it's not a hysterectomy and then we didn't even talk about fibroids but but know what I love about this like you knew after your your crisis of Faith your dark KN of your soul it was downloaded in you your purpose because of your story just like you listener you have a story too you have to figure out how you're going to process that's why
we need Community that's why we need to have you understand you're not alone I really thank you you for sharing your being raw letting us know about trick I can never say it and I have clients with it no I have clients that IIA right how do you say again Mania yes right and it's something that if you have anxiety if it's not that there's people that cut themselves there's people that hit themselves there's people that
feel nail biting nail biting to the bleed to the bleeding right or picking your skin so it's just understanding like who you are and why you're doing it why you know and and there's a way to get out of it it it's not a fast quick way though it never is I know my story is not fast and quick right yours isn't either yours is not done yeah like right now you're still learning but yours either
no I know I know I know right until God calls me home so it's like how do people find mental health support what do you think like on your page you have your resources you're feeling better so what are the three takeaways that you think really really helped you to get to are now wow if I had to summarize the three I would say just that like self- knowledge in General on what we were talking about
all along getting to know yourself getting deep even if you don't want to look into some places that are really dark um it's worth it it's worth looking the second takeaway would be how do you choose to transform the pain so once you look and you find that pain and you find that whatever trauma you have that you maybe didn't even remember you had it because there are so many things that we don't even remember um
whenever you find this Darkness because it's going to keep you're G to keep finding it throughout your life it's not going to end so whenever you feel pain either it's physical or mental or emotional how do you what do you do with that how do you choose to to act so act from the pain as I did that's one of the takeaways like I transformed that pain into my purpose and thanks to that my life made
like this big change I got laid off for my corporate job like it was just like everything started to fall into place for me to be able to to do this purpose to like bring this to life and help other people but it was just the day that I really let go and I surrendered myself to God and to that that energy and be like I'm here use me I'm getting Goosebumps as I'm saying this but
like just really Sur it it it's easy it's not easy it took me a while and might take you even longer than it took me and whatever it is but it's it's worth it it's so worth it yeah there's no day I wake up without knowing that I'm going to make a difference and that's just I wouldn't trade that for anything I love that so that's a second and the third I think not to not get
fanatiz with anything like don't become a fan of things like don't get obsessed just be balanced simplify your life instead of putting more things on top of you try to let go of things I think that's we thought the other way around of like you need to buy get get get get and sometimes what you need to do is really get rid of all these things and stay with yourself and the basics are you eaing are
you sleeping are you breathing like literally just easy you pooping I'm sorry yes for sure no it's like is the natural cycle happening right Basics all the five senses what's coming in is it all coming out exactly so those three things I would say I love that MAA you're coming back I know I feel it and we we'll figure out a different um subject to talk about but um again can you just so much can you
tell the audience where to find you if you have social media and and yeah good yeah so you can all find me uh I have all social media channels you can just look for me as havm so h a v v a f m I'm on Tik Tok YouTube Pinterest LinkedIn whatever you Instagram Facebook and then my website which is hm.com it's in Spanish and English everything I try to do bilingual because that's also another thing
that I find a lot of lack of information in Spanish so I want to help my people as well so everything's in both languages and I post a full things on Instagram about different topics where you can learn more and I have some free resources again in the my website ham.com flash resources you can find all the free stuff there and yeah that's it you can email me as well if you my contact is info atav
aam.com if you want to talk more privately about anything yeah do you have a free consultation yes I offer free consultation if you don't know where to start or you just have like a very specific question I'm always open to I love that and everything will be in the show notes people all right all right well we're going to end this episode and how I love to end it is to remind The Listener to trust in
the Lord guard your heart and always renew your mind bye and now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that you are responsible for you the content provided on the whole istic counselor podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or
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