161. Shayna Taylor: Healing Chronic Anxiety and Gut Inflammation by Returning to Nature

In Italy is like insane. They love food.
They love community. They love long meals.
Even me, before I moved there, I could go and eat all the pasta and cheese I wanted and it wouldn't affect my gut and my skin. Most people have their own garden, produce their own olive oil.
You know, it's normal for them. That's their life.
And they appreciate the ingredients. Because it is back to the basics.
There's your grass-fed meats, your raw dairies, you know, all of the things that in Italy are just the norm. And here they're the exception.
Food became transactional, which is our biggest problem. You go to the market, you have no idea where anything's from.
You buy it in plastic, you check it out, you pay for your credit card, and then you go home and you eat it. If you walk into your grocery store and they have a health food section, what does it say about the rest of the store? As Americans, we're so spoiled in the way that things are quite easy for us to do.
We're so disconnected from Mother Nature, and we're actually disconnected from each other.

I find it so cool to learn about how nature used to work

before we manipulated it so much.

This kind of started my journey,

not only in entrepreneurship,

but also this journey of like, I'm ready for something new.

Talk a little bit about what led you here

and what inspired you to put this together

and like, what does it entail?

It's a great story,

but I'm gonna share the honest part of it because I think everybody needs to know. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brecca, where we go down the road of everything,

anti-aging, biohacking, longevity,

and everything in between.

And we have a super treat for you guys today,

a really, really unique guest.

I mean, my wife is in love with this guest

and so is my daughter.

And I think so many of you know who she is.

And I think she exemplifies everything about society today when you reach the point where you just say, the heck with it. And you hear me talk all the time about how my favorite thought leaders in our space, anti-aging, biohacking specialists, scientists, researchers, functional medicine doctors, they're all getting back to the basics.
So today is gonna be an amazing podcast about getting back to the basics. So welcome to the podcast, Sheena Taylor.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited. Your journey is so, it's so unique, but I want to say it's like, it's inspiring because I think you probably have a lot of people go, gosh, I wish I could just do that.
You know, I'm stuck in this job or this relationship or, you know, my kids are in school or whatever it is. And they just don't have the gumption to do it.
I wonder if you just share your story with my audience. Yeah, of course.
I actually get those messages every single day. Yeah.
We were just talking about it. Yeah.
Yeah. Every single day I have people write me about how they wish they could move, or it's a plan that they have in in two or three years to move to the countryside somewhere or to Italy specifically.
But, yeah, so my journey is a wild one. So I'm born and raised California.
I got into the health and wellness space in my early 20s when I went to culinary school for college and became really passionate about food. I also was a model for many years, which was very counterintuitive to each other.
But that's what kind of like pushed me towards wanting to be more on the health side of things versus a traditional chef. And then I had a lot of my own health problems, especially related to like gut health and, you know, specific things around skin and.
Which, of course, if you're a model and you're having skin breakouts it's a big

it's a big problem yeah exactly uh and then i so i was in an eight-year relationship most of my 20s and in 2020 uh i decided to end the relationship and this was like a huge uh pivot in my life i'd have to say i was going through saturn return because i was 28 and i was just it was like all just made sense. I had a very intense Saturn return

from people who know about it.

And so... life.
I'd have to say I was going through Saturn return because I was 28 and I was just, it was like all just made sense. I had a very intense Saturn return for people who know about it.

And, uh, so when we broke up, I was basically had to start my life completely over because my life

was totally a shadow of that person. Was your partner in LA? Yes.
My partner was in LA. We

also lived in New York for like three years. And then I decided to move back to LA when we broke

up. Um, and so this kind of started my journey, not only in entrepreneurship, but also this journey

of like,

Thank you. I was in LA.
We also lived in New York for like three years. And then I decided to move back to LA when we broke up.
And so this kind of started my journey, not only in entrepreneurship, but also this journey of like, I'm ready for something new, like really to start over. And so I was building my businesses in LA.
I always had this drive to want to move to Italy and buy farmland and like be a farmer and grow my own produce and have my animals. And like, that was my dream, the chickens, like all this stuff.
And I was just like, I thought that it was going to be something in my life that I did when I was like 45, you know, I didn't think that it was going to be, uh, in the next couple of years from when I was dreaming about it. Right.
Right. And then I started deep diving into spiritual practices because I was trying to not only heal myself from the relationship of eight years, but also all of the things that brought me to be in an unhealthy relationship and childhood stuff that I felt I just didn't unravel because I was just in survival mode.
And through that process, my drive to want to leave L.A. and go live a different life just became stronger.

And then my family knew I was thinking about moving so we decided to spend Christmas there uh for holiday and I had this attachment and in spirituality you start to learn about non-attachment so I was in the process of learning non-attachment at the time and I had an attachment to my house because it was my first house I ever owned. I like made it exactly how I wanted it.
It was a content creator's house and I was building my social media following then and building all my recipes. So I was like, wow, to leave this house feels like very daunting, but like, it doesn't make sense for me.
Then I was like, do I rent it? But then I was like, no, because then I can't invest in a property in Italy because you know, it's like I needed to sell it to then have this dream. So I literally like, I'll never forget.
I woke up one morning and I was journaling and meditating. And this was very new to me at the time.
I was like, started with a five minute journal and it took me like months to integrate it into my life because I was so used to waking up and just like going straight into my work, running away from my underlying anxiety, which I learned later in life. I didn't realize that I was just like running on the crazy cycle because I was trying to run away from the underlying anxiety I had.
Um, but I just like woke up one day and I was like, you know what? I think I'm ready to sell this house. Wow.
This was October. I was supposed to leave for Christmas, December.
So I was like, if my house sells before Christmas, you put this prayer. Yeah.
I will go. I'll just like, I'll just basically like go on a whim.
So and not take anything with me except for three suitcases. So I put my house on the market and it sold two weeks later.
And I was like, okay. You know what's funny is like you either get buyer's remorse or like, you're like, shoot, I didn't enough you know I should have asked for more money sold too fast but that's amazing so I was like okay either I'm leaving LA for sure and my second option was Nashville I was thinking I love Nashville I wanted to leave LA so I was like okay I'm gonna move all of my stuff to Nashville in storage and I'm gonna go to Italy with three suitcases and I'm going to really explore the my stuff to Nashville in storage.
And I'm going to go to Italy with three suitcases. And I'm going to really explore the like idea of living in Europe.
So I don't recommend this is the way people should do it because I didn't like I went there, decided to stay and then had to figure out my visa process. So I was flying back and forth and wasted a lot of money and time because I didn't like prepare myself.
And, you know, I was really on a whim, which is very much me. Like I love spontaneity.
So I was just like living a spontaneous life. But yeah, I, while we were there for Christmas, I, we stumbled into a real estate office and I wanted to look at how like properties for fun.
And I wasn't really sure what I wanted and what I was looking for, like a bunch of land or maybe later, or just like a small house or a retreat center. Like I didn't really know.
And so I started looking and they sent me some properties in Umbria region specifically because I really love Umbria because it's still the raw, authentic Italy. Like Tuscany is amazing.
It's beautiful. And I do spend most of my time now outside of Florence, but it's so touristy and it's everybody knows about it that it it's just not as authentic in Umbria.
Like good luck finding an English speaker. And I like that.
You know, it's like the authenticness of Italy. And it's so beautiful.
They call it the green heart of Italy because it's literally the center and it also gets a lot more rain. So everything is so green and lush all the time, whereas Tuscany gets very dry in the summertime, like Umbria stays very green.
So it's stunning. Really beautiful place.
Does it have four seasons or is it? Yeah. But it's temperate, right? I mean.
It's not like winters are not drastically winter. Like maybe it snows for like two days and then it melts.
Okay. And that doesn't happen every year.
Does it have that like seasonal affective disorder period where it's all really gray and not really? No, because- That's awesome. Honestly, like the climate of Italy, especially, you know, Southern is even better.
But like where I'm, we are like central-ish, it's the seasons are really nice. They're becoming shorter now because the whole world is getting warmer.
And summers are really hot sometimes. But I have to say like winter was very chill very chill nothing crazy there was like two weeks where it was like kind of cold only because you buy a place here you yes so back to the story full commitment back to the story it's actually uh kind of a it's a it's a great story but i'm gonna share the honest part of it because i think everybody needs to know the the goods and thes of when you do something like this.
Because as Americans, we're so spoiled in the way that things are quite easy for us to do. Everything is hard.
Don't get me wrong. But like starting a business, anybody can start a business.
Buying a home like it's to get a loan and all these things like it's actually very easy compared to other countries. And when you have this mindset of like anything is possible, which is the mindset I had.
And then I decided to be a single woman, like turning 30 and move to Italy on her own and try to buy a property and land and like be a farmer. I got so humbled.
Wow. So humbled because the way that we do things is the opposite of the way Italy does things.
Wow. So to build a business, to start a business, to do things right, to have tax write-offs, like even as like I lost so much money because the original accountant that I got introduced to didn't tell me any of these things.
So I had to unravel myself out of like using like on for us, for instance, like a small example, if you use your personal Amazon, but you use your business card, right, for something, you can justify it for tax, like for tax reasons or for stuff in America. It's always, of course, you should open a business Amazon account.
I'm not saying not to do that, but like, that's a small thing that I've never had to think about because it's easy for us to justify it. In Italy, even though I'm the owner of the business, it was the business credit card.
And though, you know, it was under my personal Amazon account. They take it as I stole money for my own personal buyings from Amazon, from the company.
So I personally had to wire the money back to the company to justify the money when I never spent it. Wow.
So you owned a business. Yes.
You use a business card for personal things. No.
And business card for business things. So like I use my business card in Italy, but it was my exactly.
So it was like for farm stuff. It was like, you can, you can clearly see it was like stuff for the chickens and like random farm supplies.
Like I would never use that. It's for it, but they literally, it doesn't matter because I use it on my own personal Amazon.
They consider that i stole money from the company so i had to wire all the amazon accounts like whatever i spent on my amazon back to my agriculture company to pay it back for the books of finance wow and i was like this is a small example but like you just don't think about those things you know um but anyway so i'm gonna tell you in short like a little bit about story. So I started looking at properties with my family and we were in Christmas and I stumbled upon this property, uh, which blew my mind.
I, the energy, I'm very sensitive to energies of places and this energy of this place was magical. So I was like, I know this is it, but my logical mind was like, you can't buy the first place you look at, Shayna.
You need to look around a little bit. So my friends were coming for New Year's and I remember the house, they're foreigners as well.
So they said, we also rent it for vacation rentals, one of the houses, because it was two with two different owners. And so I decided like, oh, can we rent it for New Year's so I can's to like, so I can live in it and see what it's like.
So they, we rented it for a week. And then during that week in meditation, I was like called to rent it for a month.
So I rented it for the whole month of February and that allowed me for it to be the base, which I could go and look at other properties around the area to be sure this was the one I wanted to put an offer on. And in that time in February, I also started asking questions because the olive grove, so it was only three hectares with the houses.
And then the olive groves used to be attached outside of the fence. So I was like, who owns the olive grove outside of the fence? And they were like, I don't know, let's find out.
So they find out, they go, I go to find out that all the land around it is also for sale. Wow.
And so this is when I was like, this has to be the place because this is like the farm dream and also the retreat dream. Like this was like the both tied together.
Yeah. So then I inquired about buying the land outside.
So it was a different transaction. And long story short, I moved into these houses.
They let me move in before I bought it because the houses didn't pass the inspection. I was supposed to sign the houses in August, 2022 when the euro was equal to the dollar.
And we're just coming out of the pandemic here too. Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, exactly. And it was very new, very fresh.
Yeah. And they were supposed to be done with the works that needed to be fixed by December 2022, which then turned into June of 2020, you know, or sorry.
Uh, yeah. December of 2022 then turned into June, 2023, which then found out more works that needed to be done, which turned into July, 2024.
So I, I was supposed to start the project to refurbish this house because it was really old and start hosting small gatherings so it could pay for it. So this was an investment property.
It wasn't for me to like live in Gaelic around. And I made a mistake of starting to invest money into the farm and my garden and the chickens and all these things.
And before, you know, I bought this house, cause I was like certain that this house was going to be purchased. But then three years of my life goes by and I realized like, Oh my God, like the road was going to be erected.
And then they were like, like there was so many discrepancies of this property that were on not that they didn't tell me. And I don't think that the owners are like bad bad people I just think that they didn't have their paperwork in order and to in order to sell a house in Italy unless it's like really written that you you know everything is whatever like um transparent you cannot sell something so the commune is crazy they check every single detail of every little thing of the house to protect me as a buyer.
But long story short, I was just like draining money without being able to make money. And so after this road got erected and all these things and I realized the value that I paid was just not the value that I should have.
So I also got taken advantage by the real estate agent and the owners because I didn't know I was an American thinking like, wow, this is so cheap compared to what I'm used to in Los Angeles. And I didn't do enough research and really got fucked over.
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Wow.

So then I decided to back- And as an, not to break your story, but as an American citizen, can you just go over and

buy land there?

You don't have to be native or get any kind of special visa or you can just own land there?

Yes.

Okay.

You don't need a special visa.

You actually can get a special visa if you own land there.

Okay.

So once you got it, then you could-

Yes. And I assume you got the visa now.
Yes, exactly. I have a self-employment visa because I also have a company there, the agriculture company.
Yeah. So in the end, in the meantime, I bought the land all around it, which is where my olive oil comes from.
So I don't know what your resources were, but it sounds like you drained a lot of resources at this point. Yeah, drained a lot of resources.
It was very humbling. I made scary.
Yeah. Very scary

because all this money that I would have never had from this house, I was like putting it into,

you know, investing into this project that was supposed to make money. And I ended up losing

like so much of it. And now when I backed out, because it had been three years, the owners said

that they spent the deposit and they won't give it back to me, so now I have to go to court. Oh, my God.
Yes. On the land that you currently own but are trying to give back.
No, so the land is separate. Okay.
So the land I own outright, and the land is owned by Shana Agricola, which is my agriculture company. Okay.
It was just the houses that I was trying to buy, which is in the middle of the land that I own. Oh, my gosh.
So it's like I own 88 hectares or 88 acres of land and the houses are in the dead center of it. And you've got to get out of that.
That's what you're trying to get out of. That is what I'm trying to get out of is the house situation.
So I was trying to... Because you overpaid and...
Yeah, I was trying to just renegotiate with them, but they weren't willing to budge. So then I was like, OK, well, then just give me my money back so that I can, you know, go on with my life.
You guys wasted three years of my life because you didn't have your paperwork organized and you expect me to just like take the brunt of it. And they said no.
So it's there. Unfortunately, there's nothing else left for me to do then to.
And it's not like in the States where they hold the money in escrow, they released it to them. So they spent it.
So they're saying, they're telling me they don't have the money to pay me back. And then, so now I have to, I'm literally filing with them in court because my lawyer is like, you, you have the right to have the money back because it's, they didn't do the, like they were supposed to finish the work as of December and you were so kind to wait two and a half more years for them to finish the work.
And they didn't. So like you, by law, you're, you do, you are supposed to get reimbursement for the, for the deposit.
But you know, for in Italy to go to court is like, it's a minimum of four years for this to be resolved. Oh my yeah wow yeah so you know i listen i love what i do and i love my land and i love producing this olive oil and like we're gonna do so much more with the land to make more products to sell because it's so magical the the land there and the olive trees are you know 200 300 years old so it's why they have such high polyphenol count because the older the tree the deeper the roots and that's where the polyphenols come from is the nutrient dense soil so it's like i'm so grateful and i wouldn't change anything also because i think i needed to be humbled coming from los angeles and like thinking anything's possible like i i'm happy that I went through that spiritual humbling.
It was obviously very hard because then I like all this dream of everything I thought I had figured out, uh, just got totally taken away from me. Uh, and I had to figure out like, okay, well, what is my life now? And I met my fiance in, in the, in the mean, in the meantime, like through moving to Italy, he's Italian.
We just got engaged. Um, congratulations.
Thank you on a New Year's So you didn't know him when you were going and buying this land? No, I met him like a year and a half after I moved. That's cool.
Yeah. How's your Italian? Uh, not very good.
How's his English? Great. Good.
Okay. Yeah.
He lived in New York for like five years. So yeah, no, my Italian is like, I can, I can understand a lot, but for me to talk, it's like very basic.
I need to like go to an eight week course, but I like don't have the time. And then I also speak in English all day because my companies are based in America.
So I'm still doing zoom calls all day in English. And then I have a translating assistant with me in Italy who like helps me translate everything.
So I'm pretty much crippled myself to learn Italian at this point, but I will learn, especially before I have children, because he's going to, they're going to know more Italian than me. And that's not, you know, I'm going to have a code link.
Yeah. Cause he's obviously fluent.
So he's going to, yeah. And growing up from, you know, when they start out being multilingual is easy.
It's almost like they don't know the difference. But learning it as an adult is tough.
So you're living in the property that you're trying to get out of now until you figure it out, right? No, I moved out. Okay, so it's just vacant.
Yeah. Yeah.
So when you say moved out, are you on the property now? So no, I moved to Florence area because my fiance works closer to Florence. So I actually moved before it kind of went sour because I was like, okay, I'll move out of the Umbria property because it's going to have to be totally redone anyway.
So we moved in together, um, like a couple, a year and some change ago, uh, outside of Florence. And so I already kind of like moved.
So I was like, perfect. I can commute to Umbria like while the project's going.
And then we live together here. So it's easier for him him to go to work because I don't have to go to work every single day.
He has to drive to an office every day. Right.
So that was kind of our compromise. And I moved him out of Florence City Center because I refused to move back to a city.
I was like, this is our compromise. So now we live like 20 minutes outside of Florence, still in the countryside in a town called Impraneta.
That's awesome. And how far away is that from your place? It's like an hour and 20 minutes drive.
Yeah. So you know what's fascinating to me is, so I have a dream of eventually selling my concrete jungle and starting a regenerative farm.
Like I want to ride out my years on a regenerative farm. I even have a piece of property that I really like that I've sort of picked out in Colorado, a place for grass-fed cattle and pasture-raised eggs and free-range chickens and hydroponic microgreens, really nutrient-dense microgreens.
And I grew up on a farm, so what was really weird is when I left high school, I wanted to get as far away from the farm as possible. Of course.
And then the further I get into adulthood, I want to get back to the farm as fast as possible. And we kind of had that talk before the podcast.
You know, sometimes we just miss that connection with Mother Nature. We just miss the basics, just grounding, sunlight, breathwork, eating whole foods.
I mean, the food in Italy is very clean. It's amazing.
I mean, I'm sure you can find bad food. I mean, it's westernized there too.
But for the most part, I mean, it's real whole foods. And olive oil is arguably one of the best things you can put in a human body.
I do a shot of it every day. Thank you for the bottle, by the way.
You're welcome. But what fascinates me is not only how bold and intimidating and scary it must have been just to relocate your life there, especially as a single woman.

I can't imagine you had a skill set in regenerative farming or anything. You didn't learn how to raise all the trees in L.A.
Honestly, I. Chickens you didn't learn in New York.
I mean. No, no, I didn't.
I knew nothing. I only knew from.
That's what's so fascinating to me. Obsession.
I only knew from research on my own. I mean, we're really lucky live in our the time that we live now because so many things are available to us on the internet and books and you know all this stuff so it was more of an obsession of like wanting to learn all this stuff and then the best way to learn and i say this for people in business like business school is amazing and it does teach you a lot of things that maybe i wish I had when I started on entrepreneurship.
But what really teaches you how to run a business is running a business because there's nothing that school can teach you other than real life scenarios. And it's the same with anything.
Like I was like, I will figure out how to do this. And the best way for me to do it is just to immerse myself in it.
So that's exactly what I did. I went there and I figured it out as I went.
And I've learned so much. I got really into biodynamic farming.
That was what I wanted to do was biodynamics and using the ecosystem of the area and the farms. And I find it fascinating.
I find it so cool to learn about how nature used to work before we like manipulated it so much. So yeah, it just came from pure passion and throwing myself into it.
Wow. That's amazing.
And so you were, I mean, how to raise a chicken, how to like, and, and you literally went out there and I don't even know where you get a chicken. Um, I mean, research because I also was like, I need to make sure I have chickens that are organic, that were never fed corn that also, you know, it's like, there's a lot of things that I'm obsessed with.
Like I will never eat a corn fed chicken because I have a huge allergy to corn. So it's like, then I had to find specific farms that were also believing in that in Italy, which are, luckily you can actually find them, you know, often.
I don't know if anyone knows this, but yeah. More common than not.
Italy is the most sustainable agriculture in the world. Yeah.
They invest so much money into organic agriculture. I was in Medellin, Colombia a year and a half ago, and I just remember I was at a restaurant, and I was reading the menu of the steak, and the waiter came over, and I was like, do you mind if I ask if this is grass-fed steak? And he looked at me like I had three heads.
He's like, what else do cows eat? I'm like, oh, my bad. We actually have to ask that back in the States.
And he was so confused. C oh what cows don't eat chickens i mean like what's your what's your question i'm like the porn the antibiotics no hormones no idea what i was talking about so it's cow in a field but it's you know it's it's just so funny because you know they don't know any other way but here you have to try to get around the system with all the processing and everything and and this you know brings me back to the conversation we were having before the podcast because truly I believe that nature heals and I truly believe because I've seen it in both clinical practice my own life my family is that we're so disconnected from Mother Nature.
And we're actually disconnected from each other. You know, meaningful relationships, just conversation.
In my previous podcast, that guest that I had on, she was talking about how we're human beings and not human doings. And can you just be like, I'm sure you had a lot of alone times on this farm when you first got there.
Overwhelmed, not within an exact roadmap, probably going to sleep in Italy. There had to be some nights where you're like, what did I get myself into? Oh, yeah.
And so talk a little bit about, I mean, I'm talking about before you had a relationship and someone to share ideas with and things. But like, you know, when you were that single woman by yourself, foreign country, just bit off this project that you're probably think it was more than I could chew.
What were you doing actively to just reassure yourself, not get into that panic state, you know, not sort of just collapse from, you know. from overwhelm.
Yeah. From overwhelm.
So I have to say that all the spiritual work that I did before, and this was like the beginning, actually, I learned way more in the process of me moving, but I had some basic tools of learning how to be okay in my own body. Like home is your vessel.
It's your body. Home is not a place that you live.
And if you feel home in your body, then you can essentially be okay in any environment. And this was ultimately like the biggest realization I had of like, I can create home anywhere.
It doesn't need to be in Los Angeles. And so I'm going to sell this materialistic thing and I'm going to go try and recreate it in a different version in Italy.
I'll never forget though. I was staying in Paris in London before I finally like got moved into the place in Italy.
And let me remind you, these country houses are old. They're like 30 years, you know, wear and tear and there's no kitchen cabinets on the thing.
And there's like, you know, I had no furniture at all. So I had the house manager guy who worked for the owners before just buy me a mattress.
And like, I had a mattress when I arrived. And then he gave me like, you know, a table and some chairs.
So I came with my three suitcases. And that was it.
You're like, what's the Wi Fi password? He's like, he's like, no,. Yeah.
By the way, the like wifi that the house owners did have set up didn't work at all. So of course I like had to go get Starlink and then try to figure out what, you know, how to use Starlink.
And so I remember I arrived and at this time I already kind of stopped drinking alcohol through my spiritual journey, but I would still occasionally have like organic wine here and there. And my girlfriend, bless her.
So my one of my best friends, Olga, I met her actually in Italy before I moved. And she helped me actually feel comfortable to move there because she was like, she lives in Paris now, but she was living in Rome at the time.
And she just became like a sister really fast. And so on my solo trips, her and I used to hang out.
And so when I finally made that decision, I was like, at least I know I have one friend that is close by, you know, in case something goes wrong. I also have like one of my best friends in Denmark, but she's a mom of three.
And it's not like she can just like leave and help me, you know? Right. So I got to the houses and I like I like was just sitting in the kitchen

and you're like it's really isolated like I'm not like this is also to my I'll tell you a side side story after two which is so funny about my fiance but um I just sat in my kitchen and was like oh boy like what did I just do here I am i had no car i had no i had no car and i was in the countryside so i was like how am i gonna get groceries like i need to like like what is what is my game plan here so luckily i had mateo who was like the guy who was the property he like watched the property you know for the owners before and so he like really helped everything. But like, you can't buy a car as a foreigner in Italy.

So I had to go buy a car in another country.

So I had to go fly to try to find a car

to then drive back to Italy so I could have a car

because I was like wasting money on leasing a car.

You can buy property, but you can't buy a car?

No.

Wow.

See, like that's the stuff that-

Of course nobody tells you.

No one tells you that.

No one told me that.

Yeah.

So I, yeah, I just had this moment where I like almost had a meltdown where I was like, okay, I know you're really like a bold woman. Like you're an Aries and like, you know, you've done a lot of things in your life.
You just go for it. But like this one, this one is like next level.
So I literally have never drank alone in my life, but I poured myself a glass of wine because I was like, I need a glass of wine. I think my whole audience has already forgiven you for it judgment-free zone now yeah and i remember my girlfriend olga bless her she literally calls me and she's like how is it going like how are you doing and i was like well i'm just like having a glass of wine and she was like you having a glass of wine by yourself i was like and she's like okay you want to talk about it? Like coming over.
And she's so sweet. She literally surprised me and flew the next day because she knew I was unwell because it's like, I don't drink in the first place.
And then I'm drinking by myself. It's like, really? Something's wrong.
Something is not right. So she literally came and surprised me next day.
And called me at like 9am and was like, guess where I am? And I was like, where? She's like, I just landed in Florence. I'm coming to you, bitch.
And like literally came. Yes.
And literally came and helped me just like get the basics. She was like, let's go get the basics so you can feel comfortable.
Because I was like, what do I need to make myself not feel like I'm in a complete panic? So basic needs. So I went and got like kitchen stuff and knives and cutting boards and like things that made me feel, you know, I love to cook and I'm in the countryside.
So like I don't have, you know, I can't go to a restaurant on the street every day. They're not even open every day.
So I like had to get myself in like this country living, you know, vibe. And then of course, all of my spiritual tools is what actually like helped me and grounded me like having my feet in the grass and actually grounding myself every day and hearing the nature and having the view and like going outside and being like what was the reason why you did this and reminding myself why I was there and just like continuing in my spiritual practices of like figuring out, as I mentioned to you before this podcast, like it, it wasn't until I landed in Italy and I had to sit in silence that I realized my underlying anxiety was chronic, like really intense.
And it started bringing up all these feelings and all this stuff. And then I started realizing how much grounding my energy, like physically grounding my energy and also visualizations and meditation helped me actually start to combat and, and realize when my anxiety was okay.
And when my anxiety was heightened. And so I just like, that's when I started promoting a lot in my journey of like putting your feet in the grass and how important it is and how it's this free tool that we have.
And it doesn't, if you don't have grass, it could be sand. And if you know I'm sand, it could be dirt.
And if you don't have dirt, it can be leaf. Like, you know, it doesn't really matter what it is.
It's just grounding in nature in general. And so this whole process, and of course, spending time with animals and like buying my chickens.
And like when I started to really develop out this dream that I had, like, it just made me feel so grateful. Like I was just like, how blessed am I that I'm able to, to do this? And also, you know, the cost of living in Italy is so little compared to here.
It's like traumatizing when I come back to the States now and have to go to the grocery store. I swear.
I'm like, I'm playing, I'm paying six pints for a freaking blueberry, $6 for like a thing of blueberries. And like I like what I can get for six euros at the grocery store in Italy is like a whole bag worth of fresh ingredients.
Wow. Like I just did this grocery haul because I want to tell people that want to show people the comparison.
And I bought, I'm not even joking you, like huge, three huge bags of vegetables, so many different types, like six cucumbers for my juices juices and four celery things bunches of celery and like two kombucha things and onions and garlic and all this everything 51 euros no way 51 euros if i went to air one definitely not at air one when i go to air one hundred euros yeah exactly when i go to air one it's a minimum of 250 yeah wow for like half of that right yeah and you know why because air one is not the readily available grocery item i mean right it's the specialty item right because it is back to the basics i mean there's your grass-fed meats your raw dairies you know all of the things that in italy are just the the norm and here they're the exception yeah i know you know. You know, I remember Max Lugavere saying one time on a podcast, he's like, you know, if you walk into your grocery store and they have a health food section, what does it say about the rest of the store? Yeah.
It says everything it needs to tell you. Right.
Right. So true.
And then the health food section is the most expensive. It's a tiny little area.
It's like, you know, the shelves are kind of off on the side. And you're the exception to the rule.
I think, you know, which is why I'm so excited about this Mahan movement, because I feel like it's not going to happen overnight. But, you know, going back to supporting our farmers and local agriculture, there are apps now that will tell you where your local farmers markets are.
Where can you get raw cheese and raw dairy? Where can you actually get locally grown chickens? And where can you get, you know, eggs from a hen house, you know, twice a week that are not so commercial? I think, you know, us getting back to the basics, I mean, number one, you're neutrifying the body, right? I mean, you're getting the minerals, the raw materials, the vitamins, amino acids. And number two, you know, just you're sort of reconnecting with nature.
We didn't even think about shopping outside in a farmer's market. We think about under big fluorescent lights in a warehouse.
Yeah, exactly. Well, food became transactional versus actually being like a relationship you have with food, which is our biggest problem.
You go to the market, you have no idea where anything's from. You buy it in plastic, you check it out, you pay for your credit card, and then you go home and you eat it.
And that's the disconnect between the relationship with food and human beings. And obviously city people feel that the most.
And it's another huge topic that I'm really passionate about is connectivity with food and how if our children were raised to understand where food came from and the joy that it is to watch a seed turn into a sprout and then a sprout turn into a plant and then a plant that gives you something you can eat is even for an adult, you know, even 90 year old grandmas in Italy find it incredible. I mean, the relationship that they have with food in Italy is like insane.
They love food. They love community.
They love long, long, long, long, long meals. And they love growing everything.
I mean, most people have their own garden, produce their own olive oil, even if it's a small amount. And they like it's, you know, it's normal for them.
That's their that's their life. And they and they appreciate the ingredients and they tend to the soil.
It's like why the food is so good in Italy and why people, you know, even me before I moved there, I could go and eat all the pasta and cheese I wanted. And it wouldn't affect my my gut and my skin versus like I was gluten freefree gluten-free dairy-free refined sugar-free yeah corn-free like I wouldn't eat anything being in LA and I was more inflamed than when I was eating the food there is because they've been passing down generations by family-owned farmers the old way of farming and yes of course some of them did you know they do have pesticides still there in Italy, but like generally speaking, it's family owned businesses and they've been doing the old regenerative practices forever.
So they never felt the need to change that. Right.
And so the food has more nutrients because the soil is not over tilled or over poisoned. And so when you eat the food, you're actually absorbing the nutrients that your body needs versus feeling like it's just inflamed and you're not getting the nutrients.
It's like an apple in America, you eat one and you, you actually only get the nutrients that is like a quarter of an apple. And then, so you have to eat six apples in order to get the nutrients of one apple.
Whereas when you go to Italy and you eat a tomato or an apple, you're like, Whoa, this tastes so good. And it's like, well, yeah.
And it's nutrient because it's nutrient actually releases GLP-1, which is ozempic, naturally in your gut, right? I mean, it's a hormone we make in response to nutrient density. I mean, and so many people are on a highly processed diet.
And so they're not releasing a lot of this satiety hormone that says, hey, stop eating, which is why in tons of different studies, you see people giving equal caloric density diets, one highly processed and one a whole food diet. People that are eating the whole foods will eat less calories because they're more satiated because there's more nutrients in people that are at the process.
Do you notice, I mean, when you come back to the States, do you actually notice the difference? I'm sure you're militant about trying to control what goes in your body, but at some point you got to eat. And so do you actually feel that difference? Everybody I know says, yeah, gosh, I go to Italy and have a bowl of pasta and I have a basket of bread and I actually feel fine.
I lost weight eating pasta and bread and olive oil and drinking wine in Italy. Yeah, it's totally like that.
Yeah. It's so accurate and so so many people do that.
Yeah. And, and listen, like I, because Italy is not into health and well, like I can't go down and get a green juice, like, you know, down the street or like go, you know, I miss, I miss some of the biohacking wellness-y stuff that we have here in America because I do love that stuff.
And so when I come here, I like totally go to like, you know, all the juice places and get all my smoothies and like, you know, versus having to make it for myself every day, which by the way, is the way of, you know, I preferred way. But of course, it's nice when you don't have it.
It's like these, these conveniences of America. I miss sometimes because we live in the world of convenience.
And Italy is the opposite of that. It's like how inconvenient can things be? I'm not kidding.
Really? Yes. It's just so backwards.
I'm not kidding. It's so the opposite of how we are.
It's actually wild. Which by the way, it's amazing because it's why Italy is Italy, right? It's a hundred years back in time.
And so people love to go there to experience that. But you know, there's, there's a pros and cons of everything, right? Hi guys, Gary here.
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Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Yeah.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the projects you've worked on, the Inner Alchemy and your gut healing course, your online gut healing course. I think we agree because we talked about it before.
The camera started rolling about everything comes back to the gut. I mean, if you heal the gut, you heal the biome.
And I think only recently has modern medicine even begun to shine a glimmer of light on how important gut health is. I mean, it really is only one single cell layer separating us, our outside world, from our inside world.
I mean, this system that we call the gut, the colon, the small intestine, the stomach, the esophagus, all of this areas is technically outside of the body. And so it's as much a barrier to keep things that shouldn't come in out as it is a gateway to let the things that should go in.
And if you think about the sophistication of, you know, before you even understand any of the physiology, like this stuff shouldn't come in and this stuff we need to let in. If we let enough of this in, we're healthy.
If we let some of the things in, we shouldn't, we're unhealthy. And in the connection, not only to our immune system, but to our emotions, to our mood, you know, to so many different aspects of being optimally healthy.
I believe so many people that are diagnosed with mental illness, just throw that category out there, or mood disorder, actually just have a lack of mental fitness because of the gut. So talk a little bit about like what led you here and what inspired you to put this course together and like what does it Yeah? Yeah.
So I agree with everything that you just said. Uh, I, of course, where I, where I started this journey was my own health problems.
I had so many weird health issues that I could not figure out what was causing them from skin problems to chronic bloating, to cystic acne all over my back to like just like weird things um constipate like I thought being constipated for like three days was normal you know like and it's just it's just not nothing about that is normal super not and you know I was in I was on a quest to figure out how to heal myself naturally and I would go through these phases where I would like get a little better and then I would go backwards five steps and then I would get a little better than I would go backwards five steps and I went to 11 different doctors all different types medical doctors holistic doctors like all these different types of weird you know Chinese medicine doctors to like organ like measuring your organ doctors to like I was literally like I'll do anything to figure out what is wrong with me and not live in this. Like I had also chronic like brain fog and memory loss and so many things that I was like, I don't understand.
I'm the healthiest person I know. Like, how is this possible? I ate all the right things.
I didn't eat any gluten. I didn't have any dairy.
I didn't do, I was literally like, I work out every day. I don't understand.
Right. And it wasn't until I met actually Dr.
Joffrey, who is my partner in Inner Alchemy. And when I met him, we became friends first.
I was actually going to him for like chiropractic in New York. I met him through Kelly Ripa.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Because he's in Naples. Yeah.
Now he's in Naples, but he was in New York originally. Oh, he was in New York originally.
I think the world of him too, by the way. I use his acid kicking.
Yeah, get off your acid. The green and minerals.
Yeah, exactly. I use all his stuff too.
I take his vitamin D3 every morning. Yeah, no, he's amazing.
Yeah, I've been taking his stuff, I think, for like seven years now when we met. So when we met in New York, he was helping me with my scoliosis.
And then that turned into, he was like all into this, all this other stuff, gut healing and whatever. And so I was like starting to pick his brain about all of it, asking all these questions.
And then he was like, we have to do testing. Let me help you.
And he was the first person that was like, we should do a GI map and test your gut health. It sounds like it's a gut problem.
And I was like, cool. I don't know what that means, but like, that sounds good.
It was like the first time I actually felt like I was, I got it as something that made sense to me. Right.
He like tested my blood, live blood cell analysis. He like did all this stuff that like no other doctor I went to did.
They didn't like ask even the, the top medical gut specialist in LA, like I did a colonoscopy and the other oscopy and like, everyone was like, you're fine. And I'm like, well, I'm not fine.
So I don't, you know, and yeah, so I, I did a GI map with him. He was like you're fine and I'm like well I'm not fine so I don't you know and yeah so I I did a GI map with him he was like oh girl yeah yeah yeah I had like everything under the sun for got candida overgrowth parasite like all the bad bacteria were like 10 times higher than the good bacteria I had h pylori like I basically had like the perfect perfect formula of a very fucked up guy.
Yeah. And so through that, doing a whole protocol with him.
And at the same time, I also, so this is why we came together. So I was doing these protocols and they were helping me, but I had so much underlying stress that it was making it go go backwards and it wasn't until I got my stress under control and I moved to Italy and like realized all this stuff spiritually that I actually was able to heal my gut so it took me six years to like get to where I actually was like healed and it wasn't because of what Dr.
Joffrey was giving me it was because I had so much chronic underlying anxiety that it was wreaking havoc on my gut. And that's why I couldn't actually fix it.
Yeah. And it was just like the genesis of serene soul retreats.
Is that how? Okay. Yeah.
So I host retreats, wellness retreats that happened when I moved to Italy. It's one of my favorite offerings I've uh, with women, uh, and it's, it's amazing.
And then now I have a Shana Serene circle, which is an online community that kind of brings the retreats to everyone because obviously it's not everyone can come for a week or can afford a retreat. Uh, so I also launched this, uh, platform online called Shana Serene circle, which is like everything I cover on the retreats.
Cause we do food relationship with food, spiritual work, fitness, and then of course, like enjoy Italy the same time. Wow.
So women come from the States and go to Italy. Yeah.
They come from all over the world, but a good, I would say like half of them are from the States. Yeah.
How big are these retreats? Uh, we're between 10 to 16. Wow.
And do they stay at your farmhouse? So that was the original plan was for them to stay at my farmhouse, but everything started to be delayed i ended up collaborating with other luxury properties around italy yeah so i've done um a couple other properties in italy and then now we're trying to do weekend retreats and then i want to do event day events on my land so we want to do like have you know the brand like outstanding in the field have you heard of them yeah so i want to do like that on my land so huge table long dinners where people come and do a wellness day so we do like a day retreat on my land so people can actually be in the olive grove they can like see the land because so many people are invested in this land so i want to give them the opportunity to come and even though the houses like tbd what happens like i could end up getting getting them in the future anyway but for now like it's just in the the loop of whatever at least allows them to come and like be in the olive groves and feel the energy of the land because the energy of the land is everyone should feel it. It transformed my life.
Transformed my life. Wow.
And so you host these retreats for women. When you say a day, it's like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Do you guys hike? Do you meditate? Yeah, so we do some sort of, yeah, it'll be different per event. We'll see.
We haven't done any yet. We're planning them now for this year.
Okay, cool. But we want to do come like a little bit in the later afternoon, we do some sort of physical activity.
So whether it be yoga, hike, Pilates, or whatever, then we move into some sort of spiritual work. So whether it be sound bath or or meditation practice or whatever, then we do a long table dinner and then we want to do an after party with a DJ.
So it's like a summer vibe. That's so cool.
Yeah. That's so amazing.
So you're on this journey with Dr. Geoffrey, who's technically working on your guide.
When I say technically, like he's a technician, right? He's like, this bacteria is low. We're with the the SIBO, you know, H.
pylori. So we're addressing all of these issues.
And he has an amazing gut protocol. I actually did a challenge with him, and it was one of the most successful challenges I've ever had.
We had 30, I don't know, 5,000, 37,000 people online, and it was amazing. And I also find him, which I think is important in a practitioner, just very intentional and very caring.
Very. Right? Like when he engages you, you feel like you're his only client.
And we used his greens and then we put together different recipes with like fermented veggies and everything. Yeah.
So you're on this protocol and then what did the spiritual journey journey look like for you? Oh, man. Yeah.
Started with like journaling. And if you don't want to talk about it.
No, no, no. I'm happy to share.
Because I feel like a lot of people are spiritually devoid. And when I say spiritually devoid, it's not that you don't believe in Allah or you don't

believe in Jesus or you don't, it's like you don't have a calling other than your job. You really don't identify with the purpose.
You know, interestingly, when you look at the blue zones, I talk about this a lot, there wasn't continuity that ran between diets. The only thing that were not exceptions, were mobility until later in life, basically exercise.

And it wasn't like intense, you know,

these centenarians were not doing hits cardio.

No, they were walking.

Yeah, walking.

Gardening.

Yeah, gardening, exactly.

Swimming.

But when they gardened, got down on their knees,

squatted, you know, stood up, carried a bucket.

Carried a bucket.

Yeah, exactly.

Like a sack of potatoes.

Exactly.

But the other was a sense of community and purpose. And is that sort of what you're getting at? Yeah.
Oh, okay. Like what's my purpose? Yes.
So in my own journey of diving into spirituality, I realized that all the things that we want in life like empowerment or setting boundaries with others and attracting abundance and having our dream job and attracting the right partner all of these things in order to get the real version of what you dream of you have to do the inner work and understand your inner world because if you don't understand your inner world you have no idea why you're attracting different things into your life or why you're not attracting different things into your life. And the only way you can figure that out is if you start to have a better relationship with the soul within yourself.
And through my own journey, I realized how completely disconnect, I thought I was like, I was an intuitive person. I was like always into into health and wellness I was always you know I loved crystals and like this was like the surface level of actually getting into the inner work of of myself and understanding where all of my triggers came from and how I actually was a very reactive person in life and would react to small shit that didn't matter right or get angry or annoyed or annoyed.
Or like, even if I didn't snap at someone else, it was like, I, my internal world was reactive. No.
And it wasn't until I was like, Oh my God, like, I don't have to live in reactivity. I can actually live in peace.
And the only way that I can do that is by figuring out where it comes from and why I would become reactive over something that like essentially doesn't matter. And even if it is something that would upset you as a human being, it doesn't mean that you get to choose how it affects your wellbeing.
And on my anxiety journey, that was the missing link is that I was letting everything affect me at such a deep level because I was so used to being in survival mode and like a warrior, you know, chick and just like, ready, ready to like fight a war, you know, that everything hit me like it was the worst case scenario, even if it wasn't. So obviously I was attracting different things into my life.
Like I've been through so many crazy things and it was because my energy was waiting for the worst case scenario because that's what, what I was used to since I was a kid. And even though I've had so much good in my life, it all came with some debilitating challenge to get over.
And it was I literally was like, what is this and why? Like, it can't just be like, because, right, you know, because I you know, it's 100% something inside myself. So what I love about spiritual work is that just asking journaling is like people laugh at journaling, but like, it's one of the main

starting points of being able to ask yourself questions because we don't ask ourselves enough.

How do you feel today? People don't actually ask themselves that. And like, how is your internal

world? Like, is something off? Like, what emotion do you feel? Did that, like, people are so reactive

and move forward in life so fast that they actually forget the connectivity with themselves and our phones don't help because then we're looking for instant gratification through social media versus like having, you know, these, it's like dopamine hits, right? It's like, we're looking for every dopamine hit we can find in society, whether it be friends, buying something, Instagram, whatever. And instead of like finding the happiness and the light, the like joy that we have, the happiness that we're supposed to have, the abundance that we're supposed to have in our energy every day, because then those dopamine things aren't necessary because you're just embodying the energy of all those things with you all the time.
But in order to achieve that, you have to dig deep within yourself and your inner world and figure out what parts of yourself you don't understand. And we're so, as we discussed before on this podcast, like people are so disconnected from themselves.
They're disconnected from the others. They're disconnected from so many things because we're, we're going into this virtual world of like, everything is, you know, a different reality than the present moment, than from nature, than from it's crazy when you think about it.
And we can't escape AI, right? We can't escape this technology. And like, it's great.
We have a lot of it and it's amazing. Like I love using some certain things for business.
I think it's amazing, but we have to find the balance between the inner work, the connectivity to nature, the caring about, you know, planet earth and the food we eat and the wholesome, you know, ingredients that we have and caring about sourcing and building a relationship with food again and ourselves, as well as, you know, if you want to dabble in that stuff, or if you live in a city, like you can have both, but you have to care about yourself and what you put in your body and your inner world and like going deep. And yes, meditation is a really good way to do that.
And yes, journaling is a good way to do that. I worked with many healers in my past to help me understand things better.
Now I'm in a place where I feel I don't need that. And healers are amazing because they do help you like transform different energy.
But at the end of the day, it's you that transform it. It's never the the healer so people should never look to healers as if they have some sort of like it's you that you choose it's you that show you transform yourself they are just a guide to help you through that process and i love and don't get me wrong like i've worked with some amazing healers i bring them on my retreats to work with the retreat members when they need like an extra ump and feel comfort and like transform energy within themselves.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's really coming back to where we used to be and how we used to live before all of this modern day world. And the Europeans have more connectivity to it because it is still, they're a hundred years behind.
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Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Yeah.
You know, it's funny when you go to Europe sometimes, you walk down these streets and there's tables spilled out onto the sidewalk and there's families at midnight that are still eating. They're done eating but they're just yeah sitting around and they're enjoying that time and there's kids running around and the kid gets on the uncle's lap and runs around then gets on the mom's lap and it's like i there's that interconnectivity around food and you know and i also remember years ago it's going back into the early 2000s, you know, being super frustrated because in August when like the Europeans take August off, like they take August off.
Everyone is off. There could be like a closing on a real estate project.
You know, like, oh, we're signing it tomorrow. Oh, my vacation starts tomorrow.
Well, that's fine. Just sign it on vacation.
Nope. And they unplug for a month and they take it very seriously.
No, like don't go to a city in the summer in Europe because no one's working. No one will wait on you.
It's like no one's working. I think there's like kind of a really interesting beauty.
The more my life has grown and expanded and even socioeconomically becoming more successful, because that's how society judges it, I can't wait to reconnect back to the basics. You know, we have this little like ultra not fancy log house in Colorado.
I talk about it all the time. It's like my favorite place on earth.
We went there in the middle of the winter. And it was the first time we went in the dead of winter, which kind of reminds me of your trip to Italy because I was like, what the hell did we do? Yeah, exactly.
This seems so cool on Instagram. Until you're in it.
And then we had to take a snowcat up there, and when the contractor left, I realized we were legitimately stuck there. Yeah.
And there's no electricity, there's no running water, and there's no heat, and And it was 15 degrees and the temperature was dropping. Firewood.
We need fire. I had to dig down for firewood and put it in there.
And then, you know, you walk over to wash your hands, the sink doesn't work. You're like, Oh, I'll just take a shower.
Oh, you can't take a shower. I mean, maybe I'll just boil some water.
We got snow and boil the snow, but it was just something super magical about it. You know, it was funny.
one of my wife and I woke up. It had gotten so...
I had started a fire. So the whole cabin warmed up.
And then we went to bed and piled under the covers. Well, of course, the fire goes out every night.
Right. So you woke up freezing.
So it's like 5.30 in the morning. It's like 15 degrees in the cabin.
And she's like, why don't you get up and start a fire? I'll go, why don't you get up and start a fire? I was like, somebody's dead out here. It's every man for himself.
But it was, no, it's just, it's just amazing. And there's, and sometimes those connections, and I love the fact that you're doing this for women because, you know, another common theme, and a sad fact about autoimmune disease is that the majority of it is in women.
About 82% of all autoimmune disease affects women. And I think it has a lot to do with the journey that you were on.
I mean, here you are a model and you're living in L.A. and you're gluten-free and you're dairy-free and you're probably running in the right circles and you're eating really clean and things are just all wrong.
It's really the getting back to the basics. That healed me.
Yeah healed me yeah that healed you and i mean going back to inner alchemy and and kind of why dr joffrey and i decided to partner is because it's important for people in their god health journey to have a scientific person like dr joffrey a real doctor who's going to explain you know why things are the way that they had all the technical things and he's like insanely passionate about the amount of like what supplements you should be taking and you know all this stuff and so that is so important as part of the journey but he also understands from his own world and also from my journey is that the of course he really he touches a lot on the food he's a very healthy guy and you know he's extremely healthy uh I do the whole chef portion of it. So we have like a whole cooking segment where I teach you like the basics in the kitchen and how to make a bone broth.
And like, we talk about the gut balancing plate. So like everything that you should, how your plates should basically be, you know, organized when you're thinking about food.
I also have, we have a huge section about stress management and how to unpack trauma and stress and different tools that you have in your life and going back to the basics of grounding your feet in the grass and getting sun in your face in the morning and actually having peace and learning what joy is again like i was living life so much without knowing what thing what actually brought me joy in life now i do ceramics like on my you know downtime and like when you're an entrepreneur too, I was over, I was like, I'm not working enough, you know, like what more can I do? And then I realized like Shana, when you do that, it actually depletes your energy field and you get drained and then nothing attracts to you versus having boundaries with your team and your job and everything and like being efficient in what you do and then spending time doing things that bring you joy. And Italy really taught me that because they don't overwork at all and have so much balance in what they do.
And so I started, you start to be like, oh, this is actually okay to live like this. And it's when you're not in this rat race of feeling bad because everyone else is in the rat race and you remove yourself from it, you're like, holy crap.
Like, okay, now I understand the balance of what life is supposed to be like. So now I've been able to find that balance.
You know, I'm not saying you have to move to Italy to find that balance. You can do it anywhere.
Right. Yeah.
But so yeah, inner alchemy is basically a, it's a very extensive 13 13 module uh online program wow that covers all of these topics um that and now we just actually we're about to break it up into three different phases because it's so much information we realize that it would be better if we broke it up into phases and also makes it a little bit more affordable for people who don't want to buy it all at once so we're're doing three different phases now. And yeah, within those phases, we cover lifestyle choices, supplementation, diets, chef school, the science behind gut health, all the different gut-related, most chronic symptoms that people have.
So whether it be Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, brain fog, depression, SIBO. Wow.
Basically, we cover all those things, yeah. So what's a basic daily ritual for you look like? I mean, I know that you're a big believer that you need to have rituals.
Yes. What does that look like for you if you're in Italy or when you're here because you're traveling? So how are you maintaining this on the road? What are some of your non-negotiables? I have a few.
So my morning ritual is the key to everything for me. How I start my day is the most important thing and helps me embody the energy of which I carry out for the entire day.
And when I started stressed or rushed or not grounded or not listening to some sort of spiritual wisdom or whatever like I really feel a difference in how I deal with things how my anxiety comes back and just how like neurotic I feel so my non-negotiables are I I don't care how early I have to wake up I like to have two hours before I have to do any sort of work so I used to start with five minutes and then it turned into 10 minutes and then it turned into 30 minutes and then now it's two hours I mean you say starting work before you get on your phone before I touch my phone before I look at email so I'll touch my phone because I typically listen to some sort of spiritual wisdom in the morning for 30 minutes it's how I like to start my day so I wake up up, I have my bone broth, I drink my, I have my olive oil lemon shot. I literally travel with my olive oil because I like need to have it every day.
You're welcome. Um, I have my matcha instead of coffee.
It's, it's actually how I started my first brand chain is kitchen was I created a matcha brand because it helped me so much with my anxiety to switch from coffee to matcha. Wow.
Um, and got really passionate about finding the best quality. We also sent you some matcha to it to try.
Oh, awesome. And so I got obsessed with finding the best tasting quality matcha you could find on the market.
And so then when I found it for myself, I ended up creating a brand. That's actually how I started being an entrepreneur was through selling matcha.
And I called it, I call it morning ritual matcha because it was a huge part of creating my morning ritual because I used to make my matcha and then sit with my matcha. And that's when I would journal and meditate.
And it was part of my like ritual. So in the morning I always ground.
So even this morning, I mean, Miami is a great place because you can walk to the beach. So my grounding was out to the beach and I woke up at 5am because I wanted to work out at 830.
So I wanted to have my time. So I always meditate.
I always journal. I always do gratitude.
Instead of thinking about the negatives, it's really easy to wake up and think about all the things you need to do and get stressed about it. But instead, I always try to think of all the things that I'm really, really excited for and grateful in my life, which obviously helps set up my day in a sense of gratitude versus lack or stress.
And then I always listen to 30 minutes of some sort of spiritual wisdom. So right now I've been really into Kabbalah.
And so I've been listening to a lot of spiritual practice related to that, just to like something new to educate myself on. And is this like a guided meditation or is it just verbiage? Verbiage.
Okay. Yeah.
Meditations, I used to do a lot of guided in the beginning. Now I do meditation on my own, like in my own guided head.
You know, I think a lot of people like me find it really hard. I mean, I think there's so many thoughts that start to creep in.
When you start to quiet the mind, it sort of wakes up. Yeah.
And all the things that didn't get attention are now vying for attention. Oh, yeah.
Meditation is a learned practice, too. I mean, it's like anything.
It's like building muscles. I mean, you have to consistently work at it for them to grow.
And I am committed to learning how to meditate mainly because some of the people I look up to and respect the most meditate regularly. And I've never met somebody ever that has committed to truly learning how to meditate that's done so that's regretted it.
Yeah, not one person. Not one person.
And I know hundreds of people and every one of them will say it was life-changing. And these are a lot of the folks that socioeconomically, you would really say, okay, they're at the pinnacle of success and they'll tell you that meditation is one of those things.
So I'm definitely still committed to doing that. Yeah, you should.
I mean, the biggest misconception about meditation, I think, is that you think you're supposed to think about nothing. Yeah.
But the reality is, it's actually the opposite. Yes, of course, you're not supposed to think about your anxieties and your stressors.
But like the amount of downloads and information that I get about my business or about something that I should do or about a friend is always in meditation. So like you have to learn how to, of course, like go into your inner world, which can be a scary place for most people.
But once you're able to tap in and release yourself from like all these like needs of things you need to do that are over here and tap into this like soul calling of information of peace and tranquility and like all the things that you want to think about from this side that's where the meditation is actually like the sweet spot because yes whenever breathing practices are amazing way to meditate guided meditations of course are amazing because visualizations allow you to be um distracted enough to go into a different world which is also your inner world and people And people think that like, like, um, visualizations, like I thought I was, I couldn't visualize anything when I first got started. I was like, it's impossible for me to visualize anything.
Like, what do you mean now I can, like, it's insane what I can visualize. And it's not about being able to see a clear picture.
It's not, that's not what meditation is. It's being able to understand the essence of what you're trying to visualize and like be able to be in that essence of it.

So maybe you don't necessarily see the details of a falling rainfall or like a falling waterfall. But you can like get the essence of if you were standing in front of one and like in that moment with the waterfall and the energy of which the water is giving you.
And that's where you kind of want to like, you know, drop into that place because that's what actually, you know, gets your body to, to drop into relaxation and, and, and you get the mental break. Um, and when those thoughts come in, you just say, thank you so much, but like, I'm not doing that right now.
And like, come back to the, you know, it's just like, thank you so much, but like, that's not what I'm doing. And it happens to me.
Yeah. It happens to me still to this day, you know, sometimes I'll like think of something that's stressful.
And I'm like, right now is not the time. So like, I'll think about that later.
And like, put it over there in the box. Yeah.
It's so good. You know, I struggle with it so much.
You know, years ago, I started doing CrossFit. And what was amazing for me is after every CrossFit workout, I felt so amazing.
Not like muscle body wise, but just mentally, like any kind of intense exercise. And it could be anything, it's cardio, just weight training or yoga.
But when you're done, you haven't, for at least a period of time, thought about anything other than that. Like, if you've ever done CrossFit workouts, you don't think about anything but just trying not to die.
If you don't wanna quit at some point during the workout, you're not doing it right. But then afterwards, there's this eerily meditative state

that you're in where you're just clear

and you're cognizant and you're awake.

I actually crave that post-exercise window,

like a rat to cheese.

It's kind of like cold punching for me.

It's like one of my drugs of choice.

That's one of the things that's not negotiable for me.

And I'm not a crazy workout person,

but I exercise every day because when I'm done,

it's like my transition into the day and I'm just super aware and awake. Yeah, I'm the a crazy workout person, but I exercise every day because when I'm done, it's like my transition into the day and I'm like just super aware and awake.
Yeah, I'm the same too. And I'm going to add, you're going to be the one that's going to get me to add meditation.
Yeah, 100 million percent. I mean, you'll be able to get something just as good.
It'll be different, but it'll be very similar to that when you're able to like really embody meditation in your life. It'll be it'll be the same thing.
It's like, for me, I need it every single day, even if it's for five minutes, like it's essential because I know how much it grounds me in my wellbeing and like gives me certainty in my day and like relieves me from the, the crazy, you know, spiral of the trauma, you know, the, the stress loop, the fear loop that we all can get ourselves into. Right.
And it's not about, you know, running away from it or trying to control it. It's about like understanding it and giving yourself the tools and learning the tools that you can use to get yourself out of it and back into the present moment.
Because the fear loop and anxiety loop comes from the future. It doesn't come from the present.
So if you can bring yourself back into the present, and that's what meditation is, is in the present moment. It's you're just present and nothing else.
That's when you can, you know, really release and let go of the stress and anxiety of the world that we have on a daily basis. Shana, amazing.
We're going to go into my VIP community now. These are like my VIP community is like the community that I'm really trying to build to really kind of change the world.
I'm really pouring myself into educating and trying to inspire them to build an army of people that are doing a lot of what you're doing. So before every podcast, we let the VIP community know who's coming on.
So they have some questions for you. So we'll go into that room in a second.
But before we do, where can my audience find you? Yes. So you can find me and everything I do on social media,

which is my full name, Shana Therese Taylor.

S-H-A-Y-N-A.

S-H-A-Y-N-A, yes.

And then of course you can find all my offerings that I have like olive oil matcha

and retreats on shanaskitchen.com.

And it's amazing.

By the way, I will link all of this stuff

in the show notes for you guys.

And we always wind the podcast down

by asking every guest the same question. What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? What does it mean to me to be an ultimate human? I feel like my whole body just relaxed when you asked me that question.
I saw that. Did you see that? I went boom.
Yeah. I literally saw that.
The answer is to be fully grounded and present in the current moment and really happy and uncertainty. Because I feel like when you asked me that question, it like it actually grounded my energy.
I literally did see that. Did you see that? I did.
I was glad you brought it up. I felt it.
That was wild. So, yeah, I mean, I would say being somebody that suffered a lot from underlying anxiety and being completely ungrounded.
I mean, I remember I went to this Irish psychic reader and he literally told me I was like cut in half through like he's like spiritually you're like cut in half. And to the world, you look like a swan.
But underneath, you're like this. Yeah.
And I when he said it to me, I was yeah that's basically how i feel and so learning how to not live like that and being in the place that i am right now in my life and knowing what it's like to be grounded and knowing what it's like to be happy and of joy and love what i do and remove the fear loop from my life is, I think, what it means to be an ultimate human. That was amazing.
Well, thank you for being on the podcast today. We're going to follow your journey.
Excited about your partnership with Dr. Geoffrey.
He's a good friend. He's a great practitioner.
He's healed a lot of my community, and they know him very, very well.

So, guys, if you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP,

just go over to theultimatehuman.com and sign up to be a VIP and join us in these private communities where you get to spend time.

The podcast guests where we get to have open dialogue, Q&As, special challenges.

There's all kinds of benefits.

I really pour myself into this VIP community.

So I hope that I'll see you there. And until next time, that's just science.