Hey there, and welcome back to my series, Time to Understand Your Hormones, Ladies! This time I got to chat with Amy Branum, an Ayurvedic Practitioner and Herbalist who is based in Grass Valley, CA. Oh man, was this interview SO MUCH FUN. Besides all the juicy good...

What's the question I get asked the most? Without a doubt, it's "What supplements should I be taking?" This is SUCH a loaded question. Not only do you need different nutrients for different ailments - and no, I generally don't believe in traditional multis as a...

Before we talk hormones, we gotta talk hypo. And not the kind of "hypo" you might be thinking. Nope, we're not talking hypothyroid...we're talking hypothalamus. Why in the world am I talking about this random piece of the brain when we're supposed to talk hormones?...

During undergrad, I ended up taking three rounds of antibiotics. During undergrad, I ended up taking three rounds of antibiotics. Each time, it was for strep throat. I don't remember the specifics of every time, but I do remember one being during the summer of 1997,...

This piece was originally posted on my Instagram account. You can find it here. I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve struggled with judging myself with food and drink. It’s hard to get through a Holistic Health Education program and a...

Photo by Alison Marras on Unsplash It's Friday, and time for our answer and question session. This week's question is:   Q: How do I improve digestion—aside from not eating fast food?   A: Well, first of all, I'm glad you understand eating fast...

Photo by Amy Treasure on Unsplash The embrace was similar to what the trip had been: slow with a quickened nervous energy, tangled with images from the past, a sense of the surreal mixed with peace. It's hard to know exactly what to do with a get-together...

1. Speak Your Truth Early And Often Ask your real questions or tell your truth real early because it will get you to where you want to go a WHOLE LOT FASTER. It’s friggin' HARD to be vulnerable. I’m a Capricorn Sun with Scorpio Moon and Venus, Virgo Rising and North...

Resiliency is keeping your heart open even when it wants to shut down completely. It's damn painful to look at the news everyday and see so much hate, and then it's compounded 20-fold when something as striking and jarring as Charlottesville happens (though lets...

Work, then flow. It's my new mantra. Let me back up a moment. I find myself - my proclivities - to fall somewhere in between the grounded and woo. It's been the course of my life; if you are at all interested and understanding of the woo, my south node of Pisces and...

Over the last several weeks, I've been sharing on Instagram some of the tools that I wish I had as a child/teenager/young adult to get me through my depressive (and unknown to me at the time, deep anxiety) episodes. I pondered anti-depressants many times, was told by...

  Oh, I used to believe there was. I used to repeat that mantra over and over again to friends, family, clients. "Balance is what brings you good health. It's what so many of us are missing in life, and what would make us so much happier." The truth of my life...

I woke up with a sweat-covered face and chest. The sweat I could handle; the worst part was that pit-feeling space in the middle of my stomach. I've been here before. Note: this does not make it any easier in the moment. But I was able to feel some comfort more...

It's hard for many of us to look at the holidays as anything other than a crazy busy time. We may jump into seeing some holiday theater, or music, or venture out to see the lights and the Christmas markets, but we're mostly running around trying to take care of...

I stopped following the news as closely as I had been. Don't worry, I still get the overall picture. I read the headlines to know which person is being appointed, what mind-numbing tweets have been made, and I delve into some articles to read about the tragedies that...

I used to. Definitely for all of my 20s. During all of the anti-Iraq war marches I participated in in San Francisco, during my work with a low-income black women's organization my first couple of years in the Bay Area, when Bush won the first and second times, when...

I hold the well-being of all others close to my heart every single day. * I get wrapped up in trying to sort out my own emotional world, which can lead to self-absorption.   I accept that I am a complicated, emotional being with a rich internal world that is hard...

Easier said than done, but if you want to see what this angel card answered when I asked, "What steps do we next take to heal as an American culture?", check out the video below. Guidance Reading for What's Happening week of 10/24/2016 from Christine Garvin on...

Over the last few years, introvertedness has come to the forefront, and that has been damn good for me. I grew up wondering what was wrong with me for not feeling like hanging out with groups of friends for as long as they wanted to. Or why I always preferred hanging...

I know a lot of people with a lot of deep, personal, and collective dreams. Hopefully most of us continue to dream for the entirety of our lives. You can insert the word "goals" or "manifestations" in for dreams, but at base they remain a desire for something...

Health - such a broad term, I know - is endlessly fascinating to me. I spend hours each day reading through articles, blogs, and books about a variety of topics related to our minds, bodies, and souls, and the intersection of the three. New discoveries and connections...

  Carl Jung hypothesized that we each contain a myriad of archetypes (aka characters) inside of ourselves that is shared with everyone else on the planet via the collective unconscious. What does that mean? That each of us contains both "good parts" and parts of...

I woke up the other morning with that sinking feeling. Most of us experience this kind of feeling at some point or another for a variety of different reasons - being alone, ambivalence over an upcoming move, worrying about money. For me, it happens when my usually...

They sat us at a prized table on the sidewalk, in perfect view of the hustle of tourists and locals of Florence. It was not easy to get into Harry's Bar, world-famous as an Italian go-to destination, and my friends were ecstatic. I was just tired. We were 19 and 20...

He sat in the front yard, surrounded by over-grown grass and a haze that was caught somewhere between summer and imagination. I longed to touch his face, for him to grab me onto his lap, to feel close, loved, secure. But he was gone, looking towards someone else....

We marched around the backyard single file, all six of us, with me at the front. When I stopped in the middle of the yard, all the other kids looked at me expectedly. I had no idea what to do. I was five years old. I knew I wanted to take my classmates on an adventure...

My birthday has mostly always been an afterthought for most people outside of my nuclear family (of course, with the advent of FB and texting, there's been a much louder reaction to the day on the actual day). I didn't blame people - it was Christmas, they were with...