The Four Cornerstones [Episode #404]

Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. Our goal is to help you be your most healthy, confident, beautiful and joyful! Our topics focus on health and wellness (physical, emotional/mental and spiritual), holistic nutrition, medicinal plants, natural rhythms and cycles, beauty, meditation, self care and rituals, spirituality and personal empowerment.

Feeling Good means we are healthy, balanced, peaceful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of our perfectly imperfect lives. Feeling Good requires us to tune in and nourish our whole selves, which is made up of the four Solluna Cornerstones: our food, our bodies, our emotional well-being and our spiritual growth. Feeling good naturally leads to also looking good, in a much more powerful way from glowing skin created from within, a beautifully healthy body, radiant energy, and a greater level of overall well-being and personal growth.

Thursday is our community show, where I cover a themed topic and answer four questions that come right from members of our community, just like you! We are here to support you in living your most beautiful, inspired and joyful life.

I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder, founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and nutritionist. I’m so grateful and honored we found each other!

This week’s topic is: The Four Cornerstones

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Stacy – Lewiston, Idaho

Does what we eat really affect our mood? How do I know the difference between being provoked which may cause a mood change or that it’s the foods I eat?

Amber – Santa Cruz, California

If we are a work in progress at what point do I know if I’ve hit a plateau or I’m at the weight I need to be at? I am still not happy with my body but my doctor tells me I am in a healthy weight range.

Joyce – Newport, Rhode Island

I find it difficult to make time to meditate. How much does this really help with things. It just doesn’t seem worth it right now?

Bethany – Sarasota, Florida

I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to the spiritual side of my life. I’m not active in my church and wonder if it’s possible to grow spiritually without being part of a church or organization?

Inspirational Thought Of The Week

No matter what you do, or don’t do, you are already fully worthy, fully enough, fully beautiful.

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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

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[RESOURCES]

• How Certain Foods Can Change Your Mood
• 5 Mood-Boosting Secrets to Lift You Up During “Dark Days”
• Questions and Answers About Gaining Healthy Weight and Muscle!
• Why Can’t We Lose Weight?
• Start Meditating With These Easy Tips
• FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
• Why Can’t I Lose Weight? — Weight Loss Solutions for Women That Work!
• My “Roadmap” Plan for Rapid but Healthy Weight Loss Success
• Highly Recommended…AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda Movie
• Probiotics
• Detoxy
• Digestive Enzymes  
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• Elevate Your Mood With Charlynn Avery & The Truth About Yoga
• Benefits of Acupuncture With Dr. Pina LoGiudice & How to Give Your Mood a Makeover!
• The Importance Of Self-Care With Ruth Berhe & The Inflammation Weight-Gain Connection!
• How Meditation Can Improve Performance at Work!

Transcript: Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly Snyder: Hi, ladies. Welcome back to our Thursday Q and A podcast where we have a very special topic for you guys in supporting your life and feeling your very best. This is a topic that’s very close to my heart because it has given me the framework to talk about beauty and health and wellness in a very pragmatic way with all the tools and strategies grouped into what we call the four cornerstones. I have found, and this is based on my work with clients for years and years and years, this is something that we just started talking about in this framework with the four cornerstones, but this is actually the basis. This has been the basis of my work for over a decade. Again, the work that I’ve done with clients has never been just about food. It’s really been about the whole lifestyle.

Kimberly Snyder: So I’m really excited to get into it today with very practical questions that have come from the community about how we can live our best lives, and feel our best, and look our best through the four cornerstones, which I’ll say right now are food, body, which includes exercise, sleep, taking care of our skin, digestion, supplements, everything that we do with our body besides eat, and then emotional well-being, and spiritual growth. And when we work on all four cornerstones, we really do achieve our highest levels of wellness and beauty and energy. And this has really truly been my experience for myself, with my clients, with so many people I’ve worked with. So I’m really excited to get into it today.

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Kimberly Snyder: Before we do, I just want to give a quick reminder to please leave us a review on iTunes. I know sometimes we put things off. I do. I’m sort of the person that may not text back within a day or so. Sometimes I’m that texter that takes a few days. I’m the person a little slow with email. So maybe you’ve heard me say this before, but sometimes we just need that little kick in the butt. It’s a request right from my heart because it’s free and it’s easy, so it’s not a huge ask. It will take you a moment or two, but it really helps other beauties find the show that could really benefit from this as well. It’s a wonderful way to share. It’s a wonderful way to support what we’re doing here. So please go on iTunes and just leave us a review.

Kimberly Snyder: I also want to give you a little reminder for yourself to remember to subscribe. That way you don’t miss any interviews, you don’t miss any information in the Q and A podcasts. There could be a nugget waiting for you that could really shift things positively in your life. And besides that, I’m a huge believer in regularity and lifestyle, and just really living the life. The podcast is a way to keep you tuned into the energy, to keep you tuned into this lifestyle, to keep you motivated.

Kimberly Snyder: We are all friends here so you can feel that K and I are your friends that are with you holding your hand on this journey together. A lot of the questions are ones that we all share. If you know something it could be extra motivation, extra reinforcement. If you don’t know something, you could learn a lot that could help you. So please subscribe and it’s just a great thing to do for yourself. So all that being said, we have our amazing Katelyn who has been with me on the show since the beginning. So excited to have you my love. She is part of our Solluna team. She’s actually our general manager. She runs the show and she’s amazing. So, K, hello love, all the way in New York. How are you?

Katelyn Hughes: I’m doing amazing. Super happy to spend some of my time doing the podcast today. Out of all the things I do, it’s still on my top faves because it’s community based and from when I got to meet some of the beauties in the in-person events, that always sticks with my heart of we live in such a digital world. So when we get to actually be face-to-face, or do the podcast, I feel like we’re touching people in a different way, and I really enjoy it. So pleasure to be here with you.

Kimberly Snyder: Yay. All right, beauties. Let’s get into the four cornerstones. K, I think that this framework, as I mentioned is not vague. It’s very practical, it’s very pragmatic, and it’s very useful. So let’s get right into it. I’d love to hear what the beauties are wondering.

Question 1: Does what we eat really affect our mood?

Katelyn Hughes: Yes. So Stacey from Lewiston, Idaho is asking. Does what we eat really affect our mood? How do I know the difference between being provoked, which may cause a mood change, or if it’s the food I’m eating?

Kimberly Snyder: So, Stacey, this is a really great question. Thank you for setting this up. Food is our first cornerstone, and food is fundamental. Food is something we all have to do. We all have to eat. For a lot of us because it’s tangible, and we pick it up, and we see it, and we have to eat every day it’s the beginning of the journey, the wellness journey for most all of us. Food is, first of all, let’s just take a step back, so I can go really quantum physics here, but everything is energy. Everything is a frequency. Everything. The things that we think are solid, like the chair you may be sitting in, or the car you may be driving in right now, or the table, everything still has a movement to it. Everything has spinning electrons. Our bodies have this aliveness. And I have been talking about for years not to reduce food down to just numbers.

Kimberly Snyder: When we look at numbers, it’s very finite. It’s just limiting ourselves to how much we weigh. We’re so much more than that, and food is so much more than numbers. When we start to understand that every food has an energy to it, we start to understand how deeply food does affect our mood. This by the way, is something that has been, because everything is energy, so the food that we’re putting in is going to affect us. This is something that Ayurvedic medicine has been talking about for over 5,000 years. Ayurvedic medicine talks about the Gunas, the qualities of what we’re eating, so let’s just talk about that for a moment.

Kimberly Snyder: Foods that are very active are considered Rajasic. They create more activity. So if we overeat those foods our mood is affected. We can start to feel more stressed, more anxious. For instance, onions and garlic are considered very active food, very Rajasic. This is one of the reasons that I personally don’t cook with onions and garlic anymore. I may eat them in restaurants. I’m not militant about it, but I found that since cutting them out, because I live in an urban environment, because I’m dealing with traffic and everyday issues, and time crunches, things like that. I don’t need that extra Rajasicness in my life. So that’s just one example.

Kimberly Snyder: Tamasic means decaying matter, things that can bring us down towards slothfulness. So if you look at, for instance, eating meat, the second an animal is killed, it starts to decay and it starts to decompose. So even though there’s very popular diets out there like paleo and keto, and different iterations of Atkins, which are high animal protein, which talk about leanness and being thin, it doesn’t take into account the quality and energy, and the way this affects our moods. So if we’re eating matter that’s decaying, decomposing, again, Ayurvedic medicine these older medicinal systems will say that’s gonna make us feel more slothful. That’s actually from an energetic standpoint, is taking down our vitality. And that’s the reason that all yogic teachers pretty much have talked about vegetarianism, just boosting our energy overall.

Kimberly Snyder: And then finally there’s Sattvic foods, which are considered very balancing, and create a level of equanimity and power and peace and joy. And those are the foods that we focus on here at Solluna/beautydetox. Whole foods like dark leafy greens, and fresh fruits, and seeds and nuts, and legumes, and whole grains like sprouted brown rice, and quinoa. Pretty much all the foods that we talk about here are Sattvic foods. And we know since in our four cornerstone framework, everything affects everything else, we can say for sure that foods affect our emotions. Just like emotions, being stressed and anxious when we eat, affect our food. They can create food cravings. They can, even if we’re eating perfectly healthy food when we’re upset when we’re eating adversely affects our digestion, so on and so forth.

Kimberly Snyder: So I will say that sometimes things happen in life, there’s upsetting events, or we get triggered or react to something, of course, that’s going to change our mood, but I will say it with confidence that food in general is definitely going to affect our mood. And this is why we talk about emphasizing the morning practice so much because when we start on an up, and we’re putting really good food into our body, hot water with lemon, GGS, that’s going to put us on an up, and the chances of us having a better day and being in a better mood are much higher when we’re supporting it with food. So it’s not the end-all, be-all. It’s not the only thing that affects our mood, but since everything is energy and choosing more whole, unprocessed, natural foods supports our wholeness, our naturalness, our natural state of peace and joy, overall.

Katelyn Hughes: Food definitely affects my mood for sure. There’s those days when I’ll eat a whole chocolate bar because I’m stressed and I’m like, “Oh, I haven’t ate lunch. I didn’t even make my smoothie yet.” We were talking about having a routine that’s 100% if you can stick to the routine helps your day. What do you think about journaling K? With people feeling like, “Oh, I’m not sure if I’m being provoked.” Like maybe somebody bothered you, or if it’s the food you’re eating?

Kimberly Snyder: Sure, exactly, K, thank you. Sometimes a record is really helpful. So I’m a big journaler. I know you are K. Just noticing what you ate, what happened that day, what patterns. I think, also noticing how you feel after eating certain foods. Onions and garlic are super healthy on the purely physical nutrient level. There’s cortisol, and vitamin E, and all these great compounds and great things about onions and garlic, but I started to notice when I ate them I would feel more fiery. So taking a record of that I think can also be really helpful because then we can start to look at patterns and notice just ways to better take care of our own body.

Kimberly Snyder: Certain foods, and if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Well, I’m using garlic, don’t really do that to me.” That may be the case. You may not have as much natural Pitta in your constitution the way I do. So you may benefit from the onions and the garlic, but we all have different bodies. So I think that’s a great point to make, K, is to just really dial in for you, and to pay attention, and to keep a journal is a great way to have a record.

Question 2: At what point do we know if we’ve hit a plateau, or at the weight we need to be at?

Katelyn Hughes: Awesome. Okay, guys, let’s see what Amber from Santa Cruz, California is thinking. She asks, if we are a work in progress at what point do we know if we’ve hit a plateau, or I’m at the weight I need to be at? I’m still not happy with my body, but my doctor tells me I’m in a healthy weight range.

Kimberly Snyder: So this is such an amazing question, Amber. I think that this really, really plays into our four cornerstone conversation. So imagine, if you will, four cornerstones. We’re talking about a square shape. And what happens is if we don’t nourish one aspect, or two aspects imagine these cornerstones start to feel dark. It means the light shines really intensely on one. It means we can get over obsessed with one aspect. In this case, being obsessed, or putting an overemphasis on your body. And it always means that when we’re really into our bodies, which is where I was for many years, when I had eating disorders, and was bulimarexic in high school, I wasn’t balanced emotionally. I wasn’t tuning into myself spiritually. I was very disconnected from the inner quality of my life, and my feelings, so in turn, I overemphasized my body.

Kimberly Snyder: So at this point, if you are in a healthy weight range and it’s like never enough, never enough, never enough, it’s because we need to take some of that attention away from your body and land it in the other cornerstones. If we’re just obsessed with our body, I’m telling you, honey, it’s never going to be enough. There’s always going to be another thing you’re going to pick on. You’re going to want to lose more weight. You want to be more toned, you want more muscle, you want more this or that. There’s always going be something. So it’s this never ending battle where you’re never going to really win. Here, my love, I would say to look at where else in your life you actually need to put some of that beautiful, amazing energy. It could be journaling, working out the emotional aspect, which is something we talk about in our Solluna circle a lot.

Kimberly Snyder: It could be spending more time with mindfulness and stillness, or being in a more supportive community, having more time with friends, and more time in nature, but I promise you that if you look at that, honestly, you may probably find, I can’t promise it, but I would say I’m pretty sure that it’s really not your body that’s the issue. It’s not that you need to be a better weight. In fact, I would encourage you to get out of the numbers. When I threw out my scale, I actually got thinner because I wasn’t so rigidly obsessed with looking at that number every day. My body just started to open up and let go and my digestion got better, and my bloating went down. I think scales and every time you go in your bathroom you see it super, super stressful. Don’t you agree, K? Like you’re always thinking about it?

Katelyn Hughes: Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder: Then I threw it out and I was like, “Well, how do I look in my clothes? How do I feel in my clothes?” How do we feel? How do I feel today? What are my energy levels? Do I feel strong? Do I feel good? Things like doing my walk in the morning make me feel really good. I feel good in my body. I feel like I’ve worked myself out a bit. I don’t feel stagnant. So it’s really looking at your lifestyle. Maybe taking some extra time, like I said, to journal, to process. The emotional well-being is something we talk about in the Perfectly Imperfect book, and the circle, the community. We have a lot of tools and strategies that we are providing now for this because I have seen so much struggle, and strife, and discomfort, and suffering because we’re just thinking about food, and exercise, and body where the emotional, and spiritual part, do a little work there, our bodies will open up, and we will feel so much more empowered and strong and good, which is the point of this.

Kimberly Snyder: Wellness isn’t just the surface. I’ve worked with a lot of people that are empirically beautiful, and have beautiful features, and a beautiful body, and a great weight, but they’re not happy. If we’re not connected, if we’re not joyful, if we don’t feel a brightness, if we don’t feel peaceful in our bodies, then we’re not really well. We can get there. I think that’s our birthright. It’s not dependent on how successful we are, how much money we make, how we look outside. It comes from our inner connection, and that’s the exciting part is you don’t have to wait until you have a hot boyfriend, or a good job, or you get to a certain weight. You can have it now. We can work on it now.

Kimberly Snyder: It’s this whole Love, Serve, Remember that Ran Dass is talking about. The Yogananda, the great masters. Remember who you are. Remember your spirit. Remember this power that you have. And then sure we may want to fine tune our body and get more toned, and this and this, but it’s not our end-all, be-all. Our self-esteem isn’t hinging on how we look, which is super stressful. It’s really about nurturing all the four cornerstones to feel our best.

Break

Katelyn Hughes: Well, thank you for that reminder around it. I think we all need the reminder that we’re not a number, and not to define ourselves by external things. I think that’s really important, especially, around body being women we have all this pressure about how to look, or how we think, quote, unquote, should look. So I think that that was beautifully said, and a great representation of the second cornerstone, and kind of will transition us when we get back from our little break into our third and fourth cornerstones.

Kimberly Snyder: All right, beauties, we are back from our break. We are here to talk about a four cornerstone lifestyle, which is really powerful because it helps us look deeply at our own lives. This is so individual. This is really unique to you. I’ve done it for myself and I could say, oh, okay, if I’m getting really stressed, or trying to hyper control my food where am I not really nurturing myself? It’s sort of like projecting out. If we get really angry, we’re blaming a lot. We find ourselves having a lot of drama in our relationships. There’s something else going on within us, so this is empowering work. To me this is a very empowering way of looking at wellness. If you are frustrated, if you are like, “I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m still not getting the results.” This framework will support you in getting what you want in helping you feel your best and, yes, look your best. So I’m excited, K. Let’s hear the last two questions from our beauties, and for our beauties.

Question 3: I find it difficult to make time to meditate. How much does this really help with things?

Katelyn Hughes: Yes, so Joyce from Newport, Rhode Island. I find it difficult to make time to meditate. How much does this really help with things? It just doesn’t really seem worth it right now.

Kimberly Snyder: Joyce, thank you so much for your question. I love this question because it brings up a very important point. When you say, “How much does it really help with things? It doesn’t seem worth it.” I know that it’s easy to fall into that boat because you don’t see the effects as easily perhaps as something you pick up, or the way that your body shape looks, or the way that the food looks, and the colors from the food. It’s internal and we have been trained as a society we live in a very visual world with images. Just so much is external that this is such a different message that we’ve been taught all along. So when you say, “Does it really help? Is it worth it?”

Kimberly Snyder: Yes and yes. I will say it helps with everything. It makes everything function better because meditation is the time where we actually go inward, and we connect with our own essence. We connect with spirit. We connect with ourselves. We connect with creator, whatever word you want to use, God, the universe, the wholeness inside of us. It’s essential. If we don’t take the time to meditate, we will grow in anxiety and stress in comparison, in competition, and being swayed by things that we see in the media or social media. We may not sleep as well. We may have more drama because we’re like tiny little toy boats being tossed in the ocean. To me, meditation is anybody that’s out there that’s been a scuba diver it’s like when you press the button on the valve, you let the air out of your vest, and you go down into the deeper water where you’re not tossed about as much on the surface.

Kimberly Snyder: I started meditating about 12 years ago. I still do the same type of meditation. It’s called Kriya Yoga. It’s taught by the Self-Realization Fellowship and Paramahansa Yogananda’s work. When I started, I asked the same questions, Joyce. I was like, I could spend this extra time in the morning getting ahead, making my meals, or doing emails, or I could sit here. And it doesn’t really feel like it’s doing anything, and I’m just thinking the whole time anyway, like this is BS. This is a total waste of time. And now I can say that, wow, it’s a practice. My meditations used to be super thought filled, but I stuck with it. I take that time every morning. I really do meditate every morning. I really do meditate every night. Sometimes it’s shorter, sometimes it’s longer, but what it’s given me, it’s given me my life back.

Kimberly Snyder: It’s given me my connection with myself. It’s made me more connected to knowing what I need to eat. It’s made me more connected to feeling when I’m off, when I am being triggered, it pulls me back. I can notice my breath more. I noticed when I’m more in the story, when I’m working from a place of trauma, and things that have happened in my childhood versus being really present. It’s helped me sleep better. It’s helped my digestion. It’s helped my body work better. It’s the only time, it’s the only real practice where we turn the search lights out. Imagine the headlights of your car going out, out, out, looking around, always gathering information from outside stimuli to going in. And there’s a peace, and there’s a joy, and there’s a connection. There’s a power, and there’s a connection with your true beauty when you go in.

Kimberly Snyder: So I just want to say to Joyce and all you beauties, it’s not easy. It’s simple, but not easy. We need to really work on our meditation. We need to carve out time for it. And even though we may feel like, oh, it’s taking time away from cooking, or time with my kids, or time for this or that, I promise you it’s worth it. I promise you it is the best use of your time. We have free meditations for you over on my Solluna website. There’s all sorts of forms of meditation. I highly recommend following some kind of led meditation, some kind of technique.

Kimberly Snyder: If you don’t really know how to meditate, and you just sit there, and you’re breathing, and the thoughts come in you’re not maybe taking the most advantage of this time. You may not feel as directed. You may feel like you’re wasting your time, so please find some sort of technique that works for you, that you resonate with that feels good and do it. Just take the time. It’s like brushing your teeth. It could be five minutes in the morning, five minutes at night, but it will affect everything. It will help you feel so much more empowered and connected. And I cannot say enough about meditation. Even if you feel like your meditation suck right now and you’re thinking and it’s just like, uh, stick with it. It will get better and better, and that I wholeheartedly promise you from my personal experience.

Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, and an insider tip Kimberly’s given me, maybe you can elaborate on a little bit is just when you’re getting started, it’s okay that it’s not sitting there for 20 minutes or 15 minutes. I know you always tell me just even sit for a couple of moments and that’s more beneficial than not doing it at all, right?

Kimberly Snyder: For sure. Even if it’s one minute, and you get up and you sit up in your bed, and you sit on your pillow, and you breathe in and out through your nose and you relax your shoulders. Then you put your hands together in prayer and you say three things you’re grateful for before you start the day. That is the beginning of your practice. Put your alarm on one minute. Try it. Just make it part of your life. And I promise you’ll start to see major benefits from starting your day energetically channeling into your body. We talk a lot about authenticity. We talk a lot about feeling good, like feeling yourself. And it’s really hard to do that if the beginning of your day is stress and Instagram and work emails, and all this stuff, and you’re pulled outward. Even when Bubby is up, sometimes he gets up before me, I’ll literally hide in the bathroom and just set him up with some toys and say, “Hey, I’m going to go to the bathroom.” I’ll do it for a moment or two to recenter myself.

Kimberly Snyder: And at the end of the day you are the shelter for yourself. You are the one that can really foster that joy and peace. You cannot rely on outside things. You cannot rely on your best friend, or your husband even. You can’t put that on other people to make you happy. It comes from you. So the meditation for me is stripping away anything and everything other than the breath, and the connection with life and myself. When you have that reliance your confidence will grow. Your deep, deep strength will grow because it’s that connection that will give you the oof, that depth, and that power.

Question 4: I’m not active in my church and I wonder if it’s possible to grow spiritually without being part of a church or organization?

Katelyn Hughes: Thank you for elaborating on that because I know sometimes people think it feels daunting. So that was just a nice positive to add there before we move on to Bethany‘s question. And Bethany’s living in Sarasota, Florida.

Kimberly Snyder: Awe, beautiful.

Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, it’s lovely down there. She’s saying, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to the spiritual side of my life. I’m not active in my church and I wonder if it’s possible to grow spiritually without being part of a church or organization?

Kimberly Snyder: Bethany, thank you so much for your question. Our fourth Solluna cornerstone is spiritual growth. And I do think this requires a little bit of explanation here because for a lot of us, spirituality may be connected, or we feel that it has to be tied to a formal religious organization, or a church as Bethany is talking about. What we’re talking about with spiritual growth is connection to our spirit. The inner part of us, the perfect part of the perfectly imperfect, our uniqueness, our life force, our prana, our soul, our spirit. That doesn’t require formal formality. It doesn’t require having to go out of your house. Organizations and churches can be very helpful. The community aspect, something that some of us gravitate towards, and some of us don’t. So for me, fostering the spiritual growth, and the wisdom really just means spending time in that stillness with yourself.

Kimberly Snyder: I think a practice is important. It doesn’t have to be religious, but what we were just talking about with Joyce’s question, having a regularity to your meditation is critical. Just like we have regularity with drinking hot water with lemon, or trying to go to bed at a certain time, or taking digestive enzymes before you eat. These are practices that start to add up. So making time to be with yourself, to be in nature, to breathe, whatever your practices are for going inward. The through line with spiritual growth is introspection. There’s many different aspects. There’s reading spiritual books, journaling, meditating, breathing, being in nature, just spending time with yourself. Anything where we’re not going outward, media, images, anything that just takes us out, out, out. This is about in, in, in, because if we’re out, out, out, we don’t really know ourselves. We don’t really connect with our spirit. And then we’re very susceptible to picking on ourselves and body shame, which as someone that has had a lot of body shame and perfectionism, it’s miserable. It sucks. Every day it feels like a drag because we’re just picking on ourselves all day.

Kimberly Snyder: In contrast, spiritual growth is what practices am I doing to nurture my relationship with myself? And it should start to feel really good because our ability we were just speaking about our ability to feel joyful and peaceful comes from inside of us. And it feels very powerful to generate that. So breathing, again, we have all these free meditations and breathing practices and things that you can start to cultivate in yourself. It may be as simple as going out on your lawn. Bethany, you’re great. You’re very lucky you live in Sarasota, you live in Florida. You could go out on your grass, and just listen to the birds and breathe for a moment or two. To me, anytime we’re connecting to stillness, we’re growing spiritually, we’re growing in our connection. It doesn’t have to be formal. There’s no dogma religion that isn’t part of this. It really is just connecting inward, and that could take on many different forms.

Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, thank you for clarifying that because sometimes there is the misconception that it does have to be organized, or religious, and people don’t exactly know what it means. So I think it’s important that we took a few minutes to break that down, and what we mean here at Solluna when we talk about spiritual growth.

Kimberly Snyder: Exactly. So it all goes back to the perfectly imperfect. When we’re trying to grasp for perfection in the outer world, our grades, which is where it started for me, our weight, which is also where it started for me. All this outside stuff nowadays that could be, oh, well, does my life look good on Instagram? Do I tick all the boxes? Do I belong to this country club? Do my kids go to this school? Does my life look perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect? That is the epitome of stress. That is the losing battle. There’s the inside. And I think once we recognize that we love, we fall in love with our imperfections, and our messy imperfect life. For me, we were speaking about last week, K, our perfectly imperfect love lives for both of us, and just the ups and downs in the journey.

Kimberly Snyder: I used to feel ashamed like, oh, I’m divorced. There’s been imperfection, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and people judge me. Even my mother from the Philippines, I’m half Filipino divorce is illegal in the Philippines. So my family, there’s been levels of judgment and things like that, relatives, I’m speaking about. When I connect with myself and I know I’m a good person. I know my essence. I know I make mistakes, I know, but I’m on a journey and I’m trying and I’m learning and I’m growing all the time.

Kimberly Snyder: When we connect to that essence and that truth inside of us, the imperfect part of our lives, the messiness on the outside isn’t so serious. It doesn’t define us. So spiritual growth is important. It fits into our cornerstones because when we connect to that it affects our bodies, it affects our hormones. It isn’t as stressful. Our adrenal system can start to regulate ourself, our sympathetic nervous system. There’s a better quality to our balanced levels of cortisol and stress hormones. And guess what? Our hair will grow better, and we’ll have more energy because our energy isn’t depleted in all these patterns of beating ourselves up in shame.

Kimberly Snyder: So this really it feels good. We feel strong. We’re more confident when we show up in the world, but actually it affects our bodies as I just said, it affects our food. We will have less food cravings. We’re not putting all this unprocessed perfectionism and anger and shame into trying to feel good from sugar or ice cream, or whatever it is. So everything does affect everything else. And the spiritual connection with ourself is such a huge foundational part of true wellness, and truly nourishing yourself, truly connecting to your light, and your beauty, which nobody can take away from you. And guess what? You can’t take it away from yourself. It’s always there. It’s just about this process of unraveling to connect with it. That strength, that beauty is already inside of you. It’s always been there, by the way. It’s just that we lose sight of it because we’re always looking outward and trying to pile on more, and dress it up, and acquire more, but, actually, it’s the undoing that will bring us more in connection with ourselves and realizing that power that stems from us and us alone.

Katelyn Hughes: I was just sitting here smiling, listening to you talk about the four cornerstones, and the fact that we can bring this out to the community. It’s so valuable. We really hope that you guys on today’s show really connected with some of the elements we’re talking about, but it really does just bring that joy into your life when you start to tap into these four areas. I just want to thank you, again, K, for taking the time to talk about it. And, of course before we let you go, we did just want to pick your brain a little bit more today and see if you had a quote of the week for us.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly Snyder: I do, K. When I was thinking about our topic, I couldn’t help but think about the latest book, which is called Recipes for Your Perfectly Imperfect Life. My favorite page, and by the way, I wrote this book in the midst of the messiest part of my life when I was … My mom had passed away, and I was going through a break up. It was very messy and I hit rock bottom. So my favorite page of this book is on page 72 it’s called The Real Source of Your Worth. And I had to go through all this to find it in myself. You don’t have to go through this big life crisis. We’re all here to share with each other, but I wanted to share from this page today because I think it’s so relevant to what we’re talking about today. So this is on page 72, and it writes.

Kimberly Snyder: As I write, you keep moving forward by realizing there is something inside of you that can give you energy and direction when you don’t think you have any. Remember there is nothing wrong with doing. Nothing wrong with accomplishing grand goals, or even trying to have it all, but no matter what you do, or don’t do, you are already fully worthy, fully enough, fully beautiful. The doing part of life, the losing weight, the this and that, it’s never ending the doing, doing, doing. So, just remember that we can work on ourselves, we can work on our bodies, we can work to eat better, all that, but underneath it all, as I just said, you are already enough, and you are already beautiful, and it’s inside of you. And it doesn’t have to do with the surface stuff. It has to do with the fact that you exist, and you’re alive, and your spirit there’s no soul you are anything. No one else is like you. You are unto yourself a unique beauty.

Kimberly Snyder: So that’s just a little reminder and the way that these four cornerstones are set up is to support you in that realization, and to support you in feeling your best. So thank you so much for tuning in. We have so much to support you in all of this. It doesn’t mean that we’re always going to talk about food and recipes, and practical everyday life, and how we can tune in and tweak things, and have great skin care, and take care of our hair, and all this stuff. It’s all part of the whole. Everything is part of the whole. We’re just emphasizing that it’s not just one aspect. It is not the surface. It’s really nourishing ourselves and looking at our own wholeness and connecting with that. That’s where it’s at.

Kimberly Snyder: So we love you. We’re here to support you in every area, every cornerstone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you, K, for gathering the questions. Remember, if you have anything you’re wondering about in any aspect of your life, to go over to mysolluna.com in the podcast tab, and you can ask your questions there. We’re always listening. We’d love to hear from you. We have all the offerings on there as well, so check it out. We love you. Again, I can’t say it enough. We are so grateful for this community, and we are building it together. We will be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. ‘Til then, take great care of yourself. Take a little peek at your own life, and what cornerstone you may need to give yourself a little love in. We’ll be back here with you in just a few days. Lots of love and see you soon.