The Wellness Mama Podcast

Episode Highlights With Katie
Why, after 1,100 episodes, health was never really the destination
How my view of the body shifted from something broken to fix to an intelligent, adaptive system
The difference between supporting your body and obsessively monitoring it
Why optimizing health is a means to living more fully, not the end goal
How attachment to identity and others’ perceptions can quietly create suffering
The freedom of not needing everyone to understand you
What the Stoic idea of amor fati means and how loving what is differs from resignation
How these lessons have reshaped my approach to parenting and honoring children as individuals
Why being willing to say “I might be wrong” is a sign of growth
A personal reflection on consciousness, impermanence, and the gift of being human
What I’d tell my younger self about peace, control, and enjoying life now
BONCHARGE
I like so many of their products - from their red light products to their sauna blankets. Red light has been so helpful for me during my recovery from Hashimoto's. To find out more, go to boncharge.com/wellnessmama

Episode Highlights With Peter
Humans are photosynthetic and why this is important to understand
Photosynthetic means synthesizing usable energy from photons
Water is photoelectric and what this means
Humans are photosynthetic because water is photoelectric
We are 99% water by molecule count and 70% by weight so we are essentially a water solar panel
Why many humans are a solar battery operating at 1% of their optimal solar energy intake
What happens with mitochondria and ATP when we interact with light
Mitochondria absorb infrared light and use this stored energy to boost cell energy
Mitochondria are photoelectric 
The fourth phase of water and why this is important to our biology
Our body heals itself, and light gives us extra energy
What it might mean if sunlight makes you feel tired and get burned easily
Water is a solar panel, and melanated water is 100x better at being a solar panel
Melanin is the darkest naturally occurring molecule in nature and does much more than just protect us from sunlight and UV. it isn’t that it shields but it absorbs and converts it to electricity
The highest concentration of melanin in the body is in the middle of the brain
Hormonal implications of light exposure
His 25 practical tips for maximizing benefit of hydration, minerals and radiant energy/sunlight
No amount of drugs or supplements can fix chronic light dehydration or chronic mineral and water dehydration
How this relates to iron and anemia in women
Some practical tips you would never guess that are deeply impactful (and often free and easy)
Resources Mentioned
The Light Body book by Peter Forhan - free to download
Peter's website
The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
Mayu Swirl water structure pitcher – code wellnessmama gives 10% off
Bioptimizers
I love and use so many products from them, but I especially love the magnesium and digestive enzymes. Visit bioptimizers.com/wellnessmama and use wellnessmama15 at checkout to get the best deal
LMNT
I talk often about the health benefits of salt and electrolytes and I am a big fan of LMNT canned drinks and packets. Go to drinklmnt.com/wellnessmana for a special offer.

Episode Highlights With Laurie
What children are subtly learning about being human by our own presence and reactions
Our children can bump into places in us that are not resolved
What they learn about if sadness or anger is welcome even within themselves
How to shift so your child isn’t inadvertently responsible for managing our nervous system for us
The most powerful things we can model for our children and it isn’t being perfect
How can my child know what I feel without making them responsible for what I feel
Children don’t need a parent who never gets activated; they need to know that they won’t be abandoned because of the activation
How do we listen and communicate in a way where each person is taking responsibility for their perspectives
Empathy and boundaries can exist together, and the downside of doing everything for our kids is that it makes us feel good, but they learn that we don’t think they are capable
Not every childhood pattern looks dysfunctional from the outside. Maybe I became patient because anger wasn’t safe. Or I do everything because being needed feels like love
Questioning: “Am I choosing this or am I compelled to do this?”
Our job is not to make our children happy, it is to alow them to struggle and teach them they can handle it, to teach them all parts of them are welcome and they are still responsible for their actions 
Moving away from reactive parenting to intentional parenting and how to repair when needed
“Who are we committed to being as a family?”
Learning and teaching the distinction between doing and being
How to repair when we don’t handle things like we wish we had
Resources Mentioned
The Return Experience - Use code wellnessmama
The One Thing Underneath Everything
Follow her on Facebook, and Instagram
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! book
Hiya
Hiya created a super powered chewable vitamin for kids that packs twelve organic fruits and vegetables plus fifteen essential vitamins and minerals into every dose. Try it at hiyahealth.com/wellnessmama.
Bioptimizers
I love and use so many products from them, but I especially love the magnesium (Magnesium Breakthrough) and digestive enzymes (Masszymes). Visit bioptimizers.com/wellnessmama to get the best deal!

Episode Highlights From Laurie
Why just knowing why we do something isn’t enough to shift it
Her start in psychology and what she learned through her own experience as well
How to be freer inside moments that used to run you 
What does the body have to do with changing emotional patterns
It isn’t that behavioral change is unimportant; it is just a doorway, not the destination
Often, the pattern starts in the body before the mind, but we think it starts in the mind, and that we can change it only with the mind
The body becomes a doorway into slowing down and how this is so important
Can you notice what is happening inside of you without trying to change it or explain it
Experience is made up of three things: thoughts, feelings, and physical experience
What does SEE - BREATHE - STAY look like in an ordinary moment?
Differentiating what happened vs. what we make it mean
Healing in a relationship: Can I bring those old activations into the relationship 
The difference between mindfulness and actually staying with ourselves in emotional moments
Being aware of not bypassing or abandoning when staying with a feeling
Not “can I get rid of this feeling” but “can I remain with myself while the feeling is still here”
We spend so much of our life trying to control our external world so we don’t have to feel certain things, and how to shift this
Resources Mentioned
Follow her on Facebook, and Instagram
The Return Experience - Use code wellnessmama
The One Thing Underneath Everything
BONCHARGE
I like so many of their products - from their red light products to their sauna blankets. Red light has been so helpful for me during my recovery from Hashimoto's. To find out more, go to boncharge.com/wellnessmama
LMNT
I talk often about the health benefits of salt and electrolytes and I am a big fan of LMNT canned drinks and packets. Go to drinklmnt.com/wellnessmana for a special offer.

Episode Highlights With Angel
What iridology is and how it actually works
Her work with thousands of people and how the eye can be an insight into health
How she got into this work and how this has been practiced for centuries
There are 28,000 nerve endings that come into the eye
Iridology can’t see blood pressure or blood, but can see most other things
This is not a diagnostic tool but a complementary one
What stress lines are in the eyes, and what they can indicate
Personality lines in the eyes and what they can tell you about someone 
What shows up most in women and moms, and the patterns she sees most
Her Iris-Hormone map and what she can see based on these
Cortisol is the base of the hormone hierarchy, and she sees this in many people
Her one-week plan to help start moving cortisol in a positive direction
Eyes do not lie (but people can)
There are four spots in the eye that show the pancreas and can indicate a person is consuming too much sugar for them, even if they think they are low-carb
Importance of real food protein
Thyroid deep dive related to the eye
Some easy and free tools to improve insulin sensitivity 
Too much exercise and under-eating can be big problems, especially for women
She looks at the gut whenever the thyroid is off
Resources Mentioned
Dr. Angel's website and free gift
Follow Angel on Instagram and Facebook
Just Thrive:
Just Thrive Health has been one of my longtime favorite brands for gut health and they have an amazing Daily Gut Detox. Your immune system, gut barrier, and digestion get the support they need to stay strong and healthy. You can find this and their probiotics at justthrivehealth.com/wellnessmama or use code wellnessmama for 20% off your order.