September Solluna Power Hour: Essential Rhythms and Rituals to feel Grounded, Clear and Energized [Episode 1009]

Episode Summary:

In the September Solluna Power Hour, Kimberly Snyder discusses the essential rhythms and rituals needed to feel grounded, clear, and energized as we transition from summer to fall. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining balance through food, body care, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth. The conversation highlights the significance of daily practices, nourishing foods, and emotional processing to enhance overall well-being and resilience during this seasonal shift.

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Episode Chapters

SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS

• Glowing Greens Powder™
• Feel Good SBO Probiotics
• Feel Good Detoxy
• Feel Good Digestive Enzymes
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• Feel Good Skincare

KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts 

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• How to Believe in Your Self Worth with Jamie Kern Lima [Episode 907]
• How to Raise Your Standards In Your Love Life with Matthew Hussey [Episode 883]
• How to Eat to Beat Your Diet with New York Times best selling author Dr. William Li [Epsiode 913]
• The issues with consuming vegetable and seed oils with Dr. Catherine Shanahan [Episode #899]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard [Episode #877]
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]
• How to Optimize Your Metabolic Health with Dr. Casey Means [Episode 889]

TRANSCRIPT:

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:00.888)
Hi everyone, welcome back to our September Power Hour show. I’m so excited for this very relevant topic this month, which is essential rhythms and rituals to feel grounded, clear, and energized. And I know for myself, transitioning from summer into the fall, with the busyness of school ramping back up and work, and there’s just so much more on the schedule.

Can you relate that these three words grounded, clear, and energized are really important, especially right now. There’s always a shift between seasons and between months, as we know, but there’s a really big shift in particular from summer into fall. And I’ll share that personally, I just, we just got back a few days ago from Hawaii and there’s a very different.

rhythm that we have on the island. There’s a lot of physical labor and farm work and expansiveness and just running through the woods and freedom. And now there is a reality into coming back to LA and there’s still a lot of road work in our area from the fires and our kids’ school burned. I mentioned here to our beloved community a few months ago and now there’s a new campus, there’s a longer drive, there’s just many things.

And so I’m really feeling the call, maybe along with you, to ground in to have these really sacred rhythms and routines and rituals which really do help us stay healthy and they help to regulate our bodily systems such as digestion and immunity. And they regulate our mind and they regulate our emotions and they allow us to stay connected to our hearts even as things in the external world around us become more

full, can we say, and there’s just a bit more going on or a lot more going on. And what I’ve been doing is I’ve gotten back the last few days is really we will talk about this when we get to some of the later quarterstones. We’ll talk about this in emotional and spiritual. Is this idea of surrendering the resistance to our preferences more and more? Maybe I don’t want to be driving so much or why does it have to be so busy right now?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:20.418)
you know, why can’t it still be summer? And starting to sink into this deeper place of connection and resilience inside of us, in our hearts, in the center of our being, so that even as we glide around the world and maybe things aren’t our preference, we can find a deep sense of well-being and root into our own energy and our own true self connection. So we’re going to be covering all of this today through the lens, of course, of our

Four Cornerstones, our power hour show, has a theme. And then we’re still gonna cover food, body, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth during this show, which is at the top of each month, to give you the best tips and tools to really utilize throughout the month. So I’ll say right here, right now, if there’s anyone that you think would benefit from this show, please forward it to them. We really wanna share this information and to get it out in the world.

We also really appreciate reviews. If you could just take a moment to write us a review on Spotify or Apple, wherever you listen to our podcast. It’s such a wonderful way to support the mission of the podcast, of our feel good community, which is to support others. And that has been the mission, by the way, since I started my free Kimberly Snyder.net blog many years ago now and wrote my first book, The Beauty Detox Solution.

And I really want to stay rooted in that mission. And I think our community attracts like-minded souls that really do want to spread love and support for others. So sharing the show, whether it’s a screenshot or a link to a direct episode, is such a wonderful way to support. Okay, let’s get right into our… and another quick thing I want to mention is you can also join our newsletter at mysaloona.com to stay more connected to the community as well.

So what does it mean to feel more grounded and clear and energized? I really love this word grounded. And what it means to me is that we are complex beings. have so many different layers of our being. We have the emotional body, the soul or the Atman or the spiritual body. We have the mental part of us. We have the physicality. And when we’re grounded, it means that every part of us

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:43.118)
centered and synergized and we feel very much present where we are. We’re having an embodied experience and so what that means is that in this particular lifetime in this dimension, depending on what you believe in, we’re here in a there’s a you know a physicality to the realm that we’re in and so when we’re grounded it means that we are connected to all layers of our being, included very much our bodies.

And we can be really connected to the present moment, which means we’re looking into the person’s eyes that we’re talking to, whether it’s our child or the teacher at our child’s school or a coworker or someone that you’re chatting to on a Zoom for work or whatever it is. Instead of not really being in conversations or not really being where your body happens to be, you know, those experiences where you’re sort of, you know…

how did I just go shopping at the grocery store and I’m walking out with my bags? I don’t even remember being there, right? That’s when we’re disassociated from the body and we feel so hurried or life is so fast paced that we start to miss the magic of the moments and things start to get faster and faster, which creates a sense of incoherence, which means our nervous systems start to go into overdrive. We start to feel more tension perhaps in our bodies.

And this disables our ability to be in flow and efficiency and energy efficiency. So what happens as this cascade of all different sorts of biochemical processes starts to get a little bit off kilter is that we end up aging more quickly and we end up feeling more depleted in our energy. So this sense of groundedness is a very important theme as we go into fall.

because one of the things that ancient wisdom teaches us through Aryaveda in particular is this is the season of Vata. So Pitta is what we’re coming from through August and the summer, which is a lot of fire element. The sun is very strong. And now we’re moving into more of the wind, air, energy. And when it’s not balanced, what happens, the potential is there for anxiety, for confusion.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:00.216)
for feeling excess stress, for our digestion getting thrown off, for our immunity getting thrown off. So we want to eat in a way and live in a way that really grounds our energy through this very important transition. So the important of rhythms and rituals is that, again, there’s so much fullness in our schedule and we don’t control the traffic and we don’t control so many after school events coming on. And right now I’m trying to just figure out with my boys.

you know, the swim class overlapping with the chess classes. So, you know, one has to sit at one event and then I drive to the next and the other one has to read or sit during the other event. And there’s just a lot of scheduling. If you can relate to that, whether you’re a mom or you just have a lot going on in your plate, getting together with friends, different work projects, you know, lots of, things that are calling us and calling for our attention. So let’s, let’s start to.

talk about our first cornerstone now because when we have these rhythms and rituals it helps to ground us so that we don’t get swept up in the vata in the air and also I want to mention from another ancient wisdom system traditional Chinese medicine that fall is associated with the metal element and the lungs so again back to that air

coming in through the lungs, there’s a focus in this area, and we need to create inner strength in order to feel that balance and carry us through the fall. It’s interesting because lungs also govern the heart chakra and all energies related to the heart, this whole area right here. And so as we move into more fullness, I don’t really like to say the word busyness because busy can imply just getting things.

done off a to-do list versus just there’s fullness that requires our presence and our energy and our love, right? So we can lean, it’s an opportunity to lean more into our inner connection and to strengthen our heart coherence and the power of our heart and allowing that to keep us rooted in our bodies, right? Rooted into making decisions that are really the best decisions for us and having these sacred

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:18.516)
rituals through the day, these touch points to bring us back if we start to go up into our head too much or we start to believe some of the incoherent thoughts or we just start to get overwhelmed by how much there is going on. We want the rhythms and the rituals to keep pulling us back, pulling us back. And this is part of Dinacharya, the Ayurvedic daily rhythm, which I’ve also spoken about quite a bit on the podcast.

which is this idea that as we regulate these simple daily practices and we consistently follow them, in turn we become more regulated in our nervous system, in our coherence, our heart-brain nervous system connection, in our overall bodily efficiency, in our overall bodily well-being, and we start to feel more flow as we glide through a very full day.

And there’s just a deeper sense of peace and we can be really engaged, but also a bit from the inside, less caught up in the ups and downs and feeling so reactive about things that don’t go according to our expectations. I was in a really beautiful, I was at a baby shower over the weekend and one of the women was talking about her perspective of how important it was to dance in the gap.

between how you expect things to go and how life is really showing up. And I love that, you know, that symbology, this idea of dancing between that and finding a way to meld and flow with life. And when we feel more grounded in our bodies through the Four Cornerstones, I think it’s easier to have more of that lightness and to be able to dance with whatever life is doling out to us versus feeling really frustrated and easily triggered and worn down, which is

What can happen when we don’t have our rituals to carry us through? So from a food perspective, let’s jump into our first cornerstone now. Remember that how you eat has a profound effect on these different layers of your being. And this is what ancient wisdom has always talked about. It’s not this reductionist approach to food, but really seeing that how we eat affects us emotionally, mentally, physically, and even spiritually.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:42.284)
So our bodies during the fall are in September are craving a sense of steadiness. And there’s a very different feeling in your body when you start to feel full, satiated from having, let’s say a hot bowl of soup, something very grounding, feeling very comforting versus just reaching for a bag of, you know, a processed snack, even if it’s

You know, the numbers add up, let’s just say like a processed protein bar, this cold processed item just going into your body. There’s a very different energetic quality to it. And I’m not saying we have to be perfect all the time and there’s times where you’re traveling or you’re in a bind and that protein bar may be the best option, but more and more we want to develop rhythms of creating stability in the body. I also want to mention that my friend this month, Dan Buettner,

who is the founder of the Blue Zones. We’re actually doing a, depending when you listen to this, you check my socials at underscore Kimberly Snyder. We’ll be doing a live together to talk about his new Blue Zones book, which is all about one pot meals. So I’m really excited about that because we have to find and utilize really easy ways to eat in a way that feels really grounding, which stabilization means healthy fats.

It means lots of fiber, lots of nutrients, and as natural and whole as possible. We also have some fantastic recipes, which are on our website, mysaluna.com. And one of my intentions for the fall is to get more organized with meal planning for the family because it is getting so full so that I will focus on what we’re eating for dinner.

And of course, packing all the school lunches and have a general plan for at least Monday through Friday and get organized. So I myself have been looking back at our vast storehouse of recipes. And there’s ones that I, you know, created years ago. I kind of forgot about that and bringing it back in. On my Instagram, I recently posted about our gorilla wraps, which are these amazing walnut tacos, basically. And it was a recipe that I got away from.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:04.702)
and I brought it back in and it just felt so grounding and great to have the healthy fats from the walnuts and all those beautiful oils and the collard greens. So we definitely want to have that stabilizing food. And I mentioned hot soups because one of the things that happens in the vata season is that there’s a coolness. When you think about wind blowing through, it’s very welcome in the summer when it’s 100 degrees outside and we want a nice cool breeze.

But as the wind starts to pick up, it can start to bring a chill into the bones, into the body, into the throat. And so sipping on warm elixirs and having more warm foods, particularly for lunch and dinner, becomes a very important ritual and routine. So I’ll be planning lots of one pot meals. I’ll be going back to dahl, which is, you know, a wonderful recipe that we also offer on the website. And so,

It’s, and also if you go to our podcast tab, just for being a member of a beloved member of our community, you can also get a free download, which we’ve created recently, which has all different, recipes for you. the doll version is one of them. So it’s, I believe, or you could email love at mysaloon.com and ask about the, download. So we still want to have.

raw nutrients. So I do start the day with a nice warm hot water with ginger and lemon, particularly a hot water with lemon. And then I like to drink my smoothies room temperature, including the Glowing Green smoothie. I’ve never been a icy smoothie person. And I know some people love iced coffee and my kids love coconut ice cream and cold smoothies, but I just

I’ve gotten used to over the years really having things closer to room temperature. So if that works for you to have your beautiful glowing green smoothie, hopefully with a glowing greens powder added in, that’s wonderful, or at least a little bit less cool and moving towards that as we start to go into fall and also winter. Another great rhythm and routine.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:23.68)
is to bring in more grounding root vegetables right now, which naturally start to become more seasonal. And I’m talking about certain squashes and also things grown into the earth, beets and carrots and so on and so forth, which are really great for your digestion. And they bring in that kaffa quality, which means earthness, earthiness, and they’re literally grown in the earth.

And besides grounding root vegetables, another great rhythm and routine to get back into or into is almonds and almond milk and nuts. So I’ve been posting about almond milk lately because I’ve gotten back into it and I feel so much vitality from making my own almond milk to get that essential o-just, that incredible vitality enhancing the essence of the almonds.

And so it feels really grounding to my body. make almond milk maybe every other day or every two days or so. And it’s, know, when you think about nuts and the property of nuts, there is a stabilizing quality to them. So I just want to point out a bit of research from this one is from the journal BMC microbiology from 2020 and it found significant seasonal variability in gut microbiota.

So what this means is that as we essentially what it means, and you can read the study if you would like to, we will link to it in the show notes at mysaluna.com. And I’ve read other similar studies with similar results is that as we adjust to seasonal foods and we shift our diet, just like we shift our clothes between season to season, we will see a greater strengthening and resilience in our microbiota, which is really important.

for feeling grounded, our gut health is so important as we talk about quite a bit here. And so it’s important to again, reaching for seasonal veggies and shifting our diet. And this is the moment again, besides the seasonal root veggies and a bit more heaviness to also have warmer foods to start bringing that in. And I know for some of us here in LA, September can still be quite hot.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:38.51)
but starting to bring it in because it will start to increase as the season continues. There was another great review in 2025 in the International Ayurvedic Medical Journal showing how Agni, which I love this word, or digestive fire, naturally fluctuates as the environment changes around us. And Ritucharya is the Ayurvedic principle of living in tune with seasonal shifts. And we want to emphasize

supporting our digestion right now with warm, grounding foods. So there’s something really beautiful about attuning to the environment around us instead of just plowing forward and not really considering that, which I know you can maybe think of some people that eat the same way completely all year round or start to follow a diet or something they see and they don’t really take into account seasonal foods or how their body’s really feeling in a particular environment or what needs to shift.

I know that years ago when I lived in New York and I was following a raw food diet for a couple years, and I really wanted to follow this diet and it worked really well for me for a while, but I remember being so cold at times in New York City and just really wanting a hot vegetable soup. Be no, no, no, I can’t because it has to be raw. And these rigid rules don’t always serve us.

Maybe sometimes we want to shift over or clear something in the body or heal our gut or candida or whatever it is. And so we have to be a little bit more regimented. But I really do believe part of listening to our bodies is listening to our hearts intuition about what our body needs. So over time it very well may shift how we eat, particularly around your menstrual cycle, around seasons, like we’re talking about here. And I do think it’s important to have those natural fluctuations.

And finally, a 2019 publication in Frontiers and Immunology from 2019 found that greater daily dietary diversity is linked to a more stable, resilient gut microbiome composition. So for again, we listen to the autumn root vegetables, which actually actively support our digestive health. A podcast that I did some months ago, maybe a year or so ago with

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:01.484)
Dr. B, who was a plant-based gastroenterologist, we discussed how in an ideal world, he said we should have 30 to 35 different vegetables in a week, which is creating that real diversity. And maybe that sounds like a lot, but if you think about the vegetables that are in the Glowing Green Smoothie, for example, if you put romaine and spinach and parsley and cilantro, it starts to add up.

And maybe 30 is just seems completely out of the ballpark right now. But, you know, if you’re just, if you notice you’re only having, you know, three, five, six, seven, you can start to work to stretch towards, let’s say 11, 12, and then maybe 15 and start to see ways in which you can create more of that diversity, which will make your gut very happy and your body very resilient. So just start to notice.

If you’re feeling anxious, you’re feeling spacey, if you’re feeling, you’re just craving so much sugar, you’re feeling bloated in your body, you’re feeling like there’s just an irregularity to any of your bodily systems, but especially digestion. And now that your body’s calling for these sacred rhythms and rituals to feel more grounded.

So just to review for some of the top tips is to start and end the day with warm elixirs. It’s very easy to make some of these elixirs. Again, you can go to our website, mysaluna.com to get some recipes, but even simple hot water with lemon in the morning and hot water with ginger sliced in it in the evening is a really great place to start. And then leaning into seasonal grounding foods such as the root vegetables, such as the nuts.

warmer dishes, particularly for lunch and dinner. You could have something like a salad and a lentil veggie soup with quinoa or rice. This is something that we eat a lot as a family. Dinner last night was a kale salad. I’m really happy to say that both my kids are really into kale right now. Again, who knows how things shift and change, but both my kids really love the Dharma’s kale salad. And then I made a soup with lentils and all the veggies that we had in the house.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:17.132)
broccoli and carrots and spinach. I made a soup and then rice and that was our dinner and it was really easy, relatively easy to make and felt really grounding. It’s also important to avoid stimulating foods. So this is not a great time. I mean, it’s never really a great time, but particularly now to have excess caffeine to overload your body with processed foods or sugary foods.

We want to keep that groundedness with the wholeness that can come from foods. And we want to bring a rhythm to meal times. So as much as possible, if you can eat around the same time every day, if you can say grace or a gratitude practice to create a ritual to sitting down, hopefully without devices or screens in a hopefully non-rushed way, and to enjoy the time that you’re eating and time with your family, that would be really beautiful.

I would also encourage you in particular to go back to the fiber-filled glowing green smoothie if you got away from it and to check the recipe on my site if you’ve never tried it and to add the glowing greens powder into it. There is a lot of powerful greens in this whole combination and ones that you wouldn’t have fresh in the glowing greens powder such as Amalaki, Ashitaba, Moringa. I’m actually starting this week going into double doses.

of the glowing greens powder, so two scoops instead of one, which I do sometimes when I feel the call to ground, but also cleanse at the same time. There’s a relationship between cleansing out heavy metals and wastes and then re-revifying, just nourishing yourself with very deep, nutrient-tense plants, which is what is in the glowing greens powder. So I just…

I’m feeling like I need that right now as I move from summer to fall. So I’ll be having two scoops a day of the Glowing Greens powder, which will help again cleanse the heavy metals and the toxins, but also really nourish. And you’ll start to see even more of a glow to your skin. You’ll see an even more bounce to your hair, your hair’s growth, just across every cell of your being.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:39.128)
And if you’re also feeling like the need to support greater digestion, mean, you know, you’re getting, there’s more bloating and we want to absorb more nutrients, I highly recommend adding in the digestive enzymes as an important way to absorb more nutrition from your food. You take them right before you eat. And then also, which has been really important, I’ve been taking it more often in the fall because my vata can definitely get imbalanced.

is detoxi. And that one you take in the evening, it’s magnesium and oxygen and stable vitamin C. And it helps you have larger bowel movements without being a laxative and without being habit forming.

So let’s move on to our next cornerstone, is body. Your sacred, unique, amazing body needs to be cared for, especially in the season. Why? Because Vata and winds and, you know, more full schedules and lots going on tends to drive the energy up, up into the mind, up into our, you know,

We’re in our heads where anxiety can start to manifest and excess worry and excess fears and thoughts. And so we want to really come down into the body to prevent that. And so one ritual I want to talk about is working with the light, working with the sunlight. And there’s research, particularly one I’ll reference in the show notes from 2021. This is published in the Pediatric Research Journal.

found the connection between daytime light exposure and well-being. So spending time outside was associated with fewer insomnia symptoms, less fatigue, and it helped to really boost our mood, our sleep quality, and our circadian rhythms. So if you can create a ritual, whether it’s

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:35.704)
going for a walk in the morning or taking a mid-morning break or lunch break and going outside or doing a workout outside somehow and getting some sunlight. It’s our journaling in the morning outside. It really is a sacred rhythm for your body to take in that light and to help itself reset day by day because we’re part of nature and the most powerful energetic force coming down.

And of course, I’m not talking about the higher power, the divine God source, whatever you want to think of it. I mean, in terms of these bodies that are influencing our earth, the sun, we want to connect with it. It is fostering life and all plants across the planet. And it’s really amazing to say I want to connect with this source of light and energy on a daily basis. So for me, I do that through my daily walks.

And in the morning, depending, if we get up early enough, we go out in the garden. I did it this morning actually, and it was really beautiful. Sometimes we water our plants, or we plant new seeds, or we’ll eat. Right now our pomegranates are coming into ripeness. We ate a pomegranate this morning in the garden. And it’s really nice to have that outdoor sun time. And sometimes it’s a little cloudy, but sometimes, depending where you live, when the sun breaks through.

or you just get fresh air and a little bit of sunlight, it’s really powerful. So another sacred rhythm, and I mentioned this just a moment ago, but it’s a wonderful way, no matter what, how you exercise, I’m a big believer in walking. There’s so much in walking, there’s a gentleness, but at the same time, a massaging quality to your abdominal region, to getting more circulation and oxygen up to your brain.

to taking deep breaths. It’s a time where you can really focus on your heart. It’s a time where you can feel yourself moving forward in your life, no matter what’s going on. And it’s not pushing, it’s not overly chaotic, it’s not incoherent. So I’m a big believer as a wonderful wellness practice to do some type of daily walk. And maybe it’s just a few moments. For me, it’s in the middle of the day and it’s my main form of exercise and it feels really good. There is even a…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:01.022)
review published in the 2025 systematic review published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity. And they actually did walking interventions in older adults. And in this study, it was 40 minutes per session multiple times a week. And they found that it improved executive function and memory, showing how just walking and physical activity can help so much with creating that clarity, one of our keywords in our podcast today.

our description of the podcast and emotional resilience. There’s something about moving and breathing and being in this sacred rhythm that I think really helps to ground us and fall. And you don’t have to walk super fast, right? As things start to feel more hurried and we’re trying to get things in and we’re driving from place to place, there’s something very nice about keeping a nice even keel while you’re walking and not feeling that tendency to have to rush to the next thing, but really enjoying moment.

moment. So another sacred rhythm I think is really important with the body is skincare and touching your skin and taking time to really nourish. So we can do this in multiple ways. I’ve talked about Abhyanga oil massage in the past and I don’t do it every day to be honest. It’s a treat. It feels good. In the ideal world, I probably do it a few times a week like my Ayurvedic teachers have always said.

But at least every day I’m touching my face and I’m putting clean skincare on my face. And one of the things Ayurveda also teaches is that there’s so many Marma points, energy centers across your face and your scalp. So even if you can just give yourself a few minutes, a few seconds, whatever you got of a scalp massage and to do it lovingly with care and to have that ritual of touching your own scalp. And for the moments…

that you are putting on your skincare to do it with love and to do it with care and to do it in an unrushed way. And not while you’re scrolling on your phone or you’re doing something else, but to really appreciate this organ, which is our skin, and to consciously give love through touch. you know, depending where you live, if your skin starts to feel dry, you might be putting lotion on your feet at night. And that’s also that also can be done in a loving way.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:25.942)
Also want to share, you may or may not know this, depending on how deep you’ve gotten into our community, but we have amazing non-toxic skincare at Saluna that’s made in small batches by hand. And the ingredients are really beautiful. It’s all plant-based. For example, in our moisturizer, there is a plant-based alternative to retinol, which helps to increase cell communication. It helps to promote cell overturn. It’s called Vigna Acetophoenica.

It’s a type of bean essentially and our vitamin C serum is one that I never ever skipped to create that beautiful brightness through your complexion. So in any case, just having those rhythms, I apply the skincare in the morning and also in the evening and it’s just a really nice touch point to connect with your body and your face and you can look at yourself and the eyes and just really be there for yourself and the ways in which you touch your body.

So if you’re feeling sluggish, heavy, disconnected from your body, you know, back to our word grounded, you can really start to bring in these bodily rhythms to help shift that. In particular, to get sunlight, fresh air, which will help to balance your sleep. To move gently, consistently, walking is really important to prioritize clean skincare. And another thing I wanted to mention is to have some type of evening routine, a beautiful ritual.

And I’ve talked about this on some other shows as well. We can link to some that really focus on an evening routine, which for me includes reading a hard copy book, journaling, a little bit of stretching. Sometimes it’s journaling or stretching, always taking a warm shower, always drinking a warm elixir. So there’s a rhythm that gets me ready for sleep, just as there’s a rhythm to getting my children ready for sleep.

So it’s not your overstimulation and suddenly expecting the body to drop into deep sleep right away, but this preparation and this moving towards sleep and rest.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:27.308)
So our next cornerstone is emotional well-being. And this is so important because energy and motion is really what our emotions are. And if we don’t take the time to ground ourselves, to be there and show up for ourselves, to feel our feelings, to have different practices to stay centered, such as our heart coherence practices and the heart aligned meditation, what happens is that our energy is running on the inside.

And emotions that are not in check or are not acknowledged or are projected out create dissonance, separation with ourselves and others, create incoherence, create fight or flight, create excess cortisol, excess aging, excess anxiety. So emotional well-being is a really essential part of, again, grounding, clarity, energized, the main three words that we’re talking about today. To feel that

resilience that comes from being with our emotions, being with our feelings, and at the same time, allowing them to pass through and not get swept up in the thoughts and the stories and the narratives that unprocessed emotions create is real strength and real resilience. So a 2022 study published in Frontiers in Education investigated expressive writing.

and found that writing about one’s deepest thoughts and emotions improved mood, lowered depressive and anxiety symptoms and even boosted physical well-being. So one of the things and one of the practices that has helped me so much over the years to this day, and I’m looking over there at one of my drawers, it’s full, actually there’s two, full of journals, full of journals. I’m writing all the time, daily writing is journaling because there’s that.

offloading from the mind onto paper to, and there’s a freedom that that creates and an expansiveness because to me it doesn’t feel trapped anymore and we can look at what we wrote, written, we can reflect, we can create self-awareness. So I write and then I go back to other things I’ve written and I’ll write notes on the side and I’ll add on and more realizations will come. So to me writing is a very powerful process and very important when it comes to emotional well-being.

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We need a safe, a space that feels safe where we can be totally honest. And it’s great to have a friend or a counselor or a therapist as well. But I also think the practice of being able at any time to show up for ourselves and write or to create a sacred rhythm for a special time to write, as I mentioned for me, it’s in the evenings where I really sit down with my journal, is so therapeutic and so wonderful.

It’s really important to have some skills to process your emotions. There was even a 2021 review and JMIR mental health journal which explored how when we are able to process emotions through different tools, self-reflection, awareness, again the writing came out, we can actually enhance our mood, reduce rumination, and improve emotional processing patterns. So for me, what that means

is not plowing through and actually having that self-awareness to feel and to be aware when I am in emotional dysregulation, when I start to feel numb and disconnected, when my voice changes, when something starts to feel like it’s clouding my heart. So I’ve gotten really good at feeling the physical symptoms and what it often signal. What it does signal to me is it’s time to pause and

If you’ve read The Hidden Power, The Five Hearts, you’ll remember the steady and life practice. And if you haven’t read it, I hope that you check it out. You can listen to the audio book, which I’ve read myself, or the hardcover book is available right now. And what it really means, and the soft cover is coming soon, but to really anchor in so we don’t buy into the thoughts, we don’t get totally swept up into the emotions. And once I feel really anchored in my heart, my body,

and I’m breathing more slowly, then I can start to really revisit and allow the emotions to run their course. Because again, emotions are energy in motion. So if we stop that process, if we try to push it down or disconnect or distract ourselves or lash out at someone else, the process doesn’t fully go through. So then we’re stuck with these feelings inside of us that feel sticky and icky and incomplete.

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And that doesn’t serve us on any level in the long term. It doesn’t serve our health, it doesn’t serve our energy, it doesn’t serve our digestion. Over time, this builds up into more of a tendency towards anxiety and reactivity. So we really want to pause and start to create that sacred rhythm of honoring ourselves as humans that have a whole range of emotions and feelings and to honor ourselves to have tools

to regularly journal or to regularly as well have counseling sessions or therapy or ways and to develop tools to build them into our life so that we are feeling emotionally supported within ourselves. And it’s really, really important. And I encourage you to get a journal that you really like or that you feel, you know,

connected to for me. It’s these moleskin journals. I buy them in packs of 12 and they just feel very soothing and grounding to find a pen or a pencil that you really love. For me, this is part of the ritual. I love to write with these like kind of liquidy pens and to just make the whole experience feel really sacred for yourself and also to consistently do the heart aligned meditation which creates, I can’t tell you how much more calm I feel because it increases your

level of coherence, which means your nervous system and your heart and your brain working together to feel more calm so that as a trigger does come up, I don’t feel pulled in right away. I don’t feel like I have to react or, you know, get so upset, but there is a deeper calmness. And hold on a second here. You know, maybe my mind is telling myself a story about this. Let me sit back for a moment. Calm. Do the heart align, you know, steady in life practice first for just a few moments.

before moving forward. So the heart aligned meditation only takes eight minutes. It’s amazing to you guys. My husband’s been doing it every morning. I know there’s such a big difference in his energy. And in the research study that we did with the Heart Math Institute, we found that coherence increased 29 % in four weeks. So we know how much this is building the resiliency of your nervous system and all bodily systems. And it’s really, really powerful.

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And I just want to mention again the crossing over and the interchange between all the cornerstones. Taking detoxi, which is cleansing from your gut and your blood and your system, is really great for removing energy. And if you’re new to thinking about things in holistic way, it may sound a little funny at first, but I do believe the more we’re expelling from our body, the more old energies can leave, including old emotions, attachments, feelings.

and there’s so much that can be encrypted in our body. And so this constant flow, I remember when I became plant-based and I was having so much fiber and cleaning my body, I started to feel so much lightness. I also felt old things coming up that were cleaning out of our system, of my system, and our system in a collective way. So it’s really powerful to see as we cleanse the body and how much it resets the emotions in the mind.

which parlays us into our fourth cornerstone, which is spiritual growth. And we wanna anchor into rituals and rhythms that foster stillness and gratitude. So the stillness starts to, and of course we carve it out in the times where we can meditate and maybe just have some stillness after we take a shower or before we go to bed.

But what happens is as we create more consistency with these rhythms and routines is that we can start to bring that stillness with us even as we’re moving into a busy school schedule or we’re starting to be on a lot of calls all day long and it starts to feel, you know, there’s just a of challenges, lots of things coming up. We can start to, we created such a deep connection with that place of stillness inside of us that we can go back and drink from that well.

more more consistently through the day. And a 2024 study published in Nature revealed that meditation induces changes in deep brain areas related to emotional regulation and memory. And this creates calmness and clarity. So again, I’m sure we’ve all heard about how many benefits there are to meditation. And I love, of course, the heart aligned meditation, which I practice. And I also love

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Kriya Yoga Meditation, which is taught by the Self-Realization Fellowship, which teaches about Kriya Yoga and Paramahansa Yogananda’s teachings, the great yogi who came here to the West. So I personally do both meditation practices, and I can’t tell you how much it’s benefited my life and to help to create that stability and always across my life. And also,

from that stillness springs deep creativity. So when I started doing Kriya Yoga years ago is when I started to write books. And when I started to look at things in a very different way, I found Paramahansa Yogananda for the first time when I was backpacking in India. And there’s this incredible oneness that he teaches about, you know, whether we come from a Christian background as I did or any other faith.

There’s universal truth and oneness. And if you’re more, if you’re interested in learning more about Yogananda’s teachings, a few books ago, I wrote a book called You Are More Than You Think You Are, which is about his wisdom for modern issues like getting past fear, fearfulness, or tapping into your purpose and your vitality. So you can check out that book if you’re interested as well. I really poured my heart into that book.

And those teachings have really had a profound impact on my life. So another aspect of spirituality that can really anchor us is gratitude. And you can have touch points for gratitude through the day. It doesn’t have to be this big long thing, but when you’re driving in your car, you can do this with your kids. know, let’s name three things we’re grateful for right now. And gratitude really does open us up to the magic that’s already here.

Instead of mind’s way of, I wish this was like this, or the lack, or seeing not enoughness, don’t have enough time, why is this so hard? Versus, I’m so grateful that there’s these trees along the drive today. I’m really grateful that my kids go to the school that I love. I’m grateful that I get to experience another day. I’m grateful that I can take a deep breath right now.

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All right, so it really shifts the energy when we can turn things on its head instead of complaining again or looking at things that don’t seem to work and to come back to that gratitude. And there is a lot of research on gratitude. One research paper that will publish in the show notes comes from Frontiers in Psychology from 2022. And it found that a six week gratitude intervention improved emotional wellbeing and mood.

So they’ve even studied how people are bringing gratitude in and it’s really making a difference in their life, which of course is really motivating, I think, you know, which is one of the reasons I did a study for the heart aligned meditation. We can know so much intuitively, but sometimes our discerning mind likes to see data and numbers and research attached to things to back up what we already know.

which is a beautiful way to keep reinforcing the wisdom within us as we continue to progress further and further along our journeys. So remember that we have amazing support for you. The Heart Aligned Meditations are free with the coherence building music on our website, mysaluna.com. I encourage you to check out The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, as well as the other book I mentioned, You Are More Than You Think You Are, if you’d like some inspirational reading.

tapping into the power of your heart, tapping into some really amazing, useful, practical wisdom for today. And I also want to mention that taking our SBO probiotics, which is in the body and kind of a food, if you will, it’s something that we’re taking that’s based in soil-based organisms, also impacts us spiritually.

because when we, our gut is really in tune, we don’t have the distractions of IBS and bloating. And when we’re very rooted in our gut, our Manipura Chakra, in our present power, it’s easier for us, and I’ve experienced this myself, to be present in meditation, present in our hearts, present in our true nature, which is kindness and care and compassion, instead of lost in our thoughts and not really…

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know, alive with the person in front of us, not really present with them, not really listening, not really fully empathetic, and to see the light in others because we’re more connected to the light inside of us. So the probiotics are life-changing for so many different reasons, including spiritually and in terms of our fulfillment and our joy. And again, the detoxi is really powerful because the less waste we have in our system, because essentially at our core, we’re energy and we’re light.

the more of that potential energy can be, can move forward in our lives. And then we can feel that creativity, that stillness, that groundedness, that clarity, that crystal clear clarity and that energy, even when life starts to bring fullness and a more full schedule to our plate. So in sum, I hope that you’ve really enjoyed today’s show as we’ve covered these cornerstones.

There’s a beautiful energy in September calling us to let go of summer, to let go of old patterns and let go of attachments and to step into a different type of flow. And if we open up to it and we practice some of these sacred rhythms and rituals around the Four Cornerstones, we can enjoy it. We can open up to it. We can see it as another one of life’s adventures and enjoy each day and to feel more gratitude and stillness.

and to come with an open heart. So please check out our show notes again at mysaloona.com to review some of the points. We’ll link to information to some of the products I talked about, articles, the studies, the research, other podcasts I think you would enjoy. The show notes are quite abundant with information and support. So I encourage you to check them out. Once again at mysaloona.com.

And to come into the community deeper and deeper, it’s really here for you. There’s many ways to do that. Be sure first and foremost to sign up for our newsletter so you stay on top of all our different community happenings, our recipes we send out, our articles. I’ll be doing free, I’ll be getting back into some free Zooms again and courses as we journey along here and back into the fall and I’ll be back in the studio more and

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to also check me out, us out on Instagram, so Luna by KS and at underscore Kimberly Snyder. And to be sure to subscribe to the podcast to stay into our flow. And we do these power hour shows at the top of every month, but every Monday I’m doing an interview show as well. So I look forward to connecting with you more. And from my heart to yours, sending you so much gratitude for being part of our community, so much love.

and all my best wishes for an amazing September ahead. So I’ll see you back here soon. I’ll see you on socials. I’ll see you in saloonah and sending you so much love.