Anya Kaats - A Millennial’s Guide to Living with Authenticity - (Ancestral Health Today Episode 035)

welcome to ancestral Health today evolutionary insights into Modern Health welcome everyone to today's episode of ancestor Health today and today we're honored to have Ana cats Ana welcome to the podcast thank you so happy to finally be doing this wonderful yeah so so so grateful to finally have you I know it's been a few um back and forth with schedules so um I like to have our guests um you know introduce themselves at length and tell the audience who you are where you come from and what's your history in the ancestral Health movement oh long story um so I guess honestly I could probably track it all back to being a kid my mom I grew up in uh just outside of New York City and my mom was tuned into and ke into um you know organic foods and homeopathic medicine and um you know yeah cooking whole healthy foods and that was a big part of our reality growing up I remember being sort of like the the weird kid with the H packed lunch and a right milk because I didn't have what all the other kids were having um and so of course as a child that was like frustrating because I wanted to eat at McDonald's or whatever um and in retrospect I think that was like a very sort of important uh education in alternative ways of eating that were outside of the mainst stream and I guess the other thing that was happening to me is it is that I had qu severe digestive issues um which at the time you know I had like severe colic as a baby uh and back then there wasn't any kind of awareness around the connection between that and gut health um I was born I my mom had a C-section was a vegetarian for the entire time that she was pregnant with me uh and didn't start eating meat until after her I was born um and so I grew up with all these health issues um pretty severe digestive issues to the point where they just sort of became normal in my life uh up until I was about 20 um like just getting into the nitty-gritty right away but just like severe constipation which I just accepted it's like a part of my reality like a lot of people do nowadays it's it seems like but issues are just you big good is and everybody seems to think it's just a norm yeah I and I that was truly like my reality since I was a child so there wasn't even any experience of of anything else I guess in my late teens I watched I had sort of like evolved into an a standard American diet what once I was free of my mother's influence and I was in college and I didn't really know how to cook very well and um so I sort of just ate whatever I mean I wasn't like pounding fast food or anything but there was definitely like a lot of processed carbohydrates and juice and lots of toast and like you know the kind of low fat idea or something like unintentionally that was what I was consuming um and I had a close friend growing up who was really into nutrition and health and had sort of tried a bunch of different diets herself um and we sort of both bonded around our sort of health issues over the years and um yeah I came across a movie called fat head the documentary this guy created are you familiar with it yes yes so I mean this was a while ago right like this was like back in the day like when you know Mark sis was like just beginning and was like the only like him and Rob wolf or something were the only AO people in the space and that was really my first introduction to this concept of like that uh maybe this thing that we've been fed around uh calories without a distinction distinction between um fat and carbohydrates like the whole thing was just really fascinating to me and I sent it to this friend of mine who I kind of trusted around these things and she's like yeah that's pretty legit and that uh propelled me down a rabbit hole not because I was trying to solve my health problems um but just because it was compelling to me like um and so I sort of stumbled around uh across the whole paleo Primal world and again it was just it resonated it was like oh of course we're supposed to be like moving naturally of course we're supposed to be eating whole food and support like it just was all it all seemed such like such common sense um so I like bought my vibrant five fingers and you know just like d fall into baile uh and at the same time that I was experimenting with paleo I was also going through a really big life transition sort of ending a relationship graduating high school going into college I tend to make these big Health changes like at important transitional times in my life which makes it sometimes difficult to distinguish like what changed was it that I started eating differently right or or just because my life is better uh but at the time I I wasn't I wasn't thinking that in depth um so I changed my life and ultimately over time like the health stuff came back to some degree and I started getting oh and I had also gone off um birth control hormonal birth control around the exact same time so changed my life changed my entire diet and went off for ownable control birth control which I'd been on since I was 16 without any nobody guided me in that process nobody said like oh by the way if you do this you should support your hormones I mean so I just cold cold turkey went off again like all the stress and everything that was going on in my life and the first weird thing that happened was that I started to get sty recurring sty in my eye uh back and forth and back and forth and over over again and then sort of developed into acne and so over the course of like two or so years in my early 20s this diet which I thought was sort of helping me be healthy uh I wasn't seeing those effects anymore um and I equated my lack of Health to not doing the diet well enough not doing the thing you know well enough um and so I ultimately started to get even more strict about what I was eating uh from like very strict paleo to like I but I was eating Darion like okay maybe not Daran maybe once in a while I'd have like a cheat day with a pizza pizza but it was like no more gluten at all um and again simultaneous to this I started working fulltime the natural products industry um basically straight out of college it wasn't necessarily the plan but I and where did you go to college Sarah Lawrence okay so in the US I thought you had gone overseas at some point yeah I went abroad spenting here in Amsterdam as well okay um yeah uh so what was I saying um so you start working in the oh right natural products Health industry right out of college yeah so I was working at Whole Foods parttime which then like within a matter of months a couple months turned into a a demo specialist position where I would cook food for the customers uh to sample and some of those were like sort of paid for by the brands that were oh being that were sold in Whole Foods but a good portion of it was just me deciding what I wanted to do um which was quite fun and I had no professional cooking experience but I knew how to like make date date balls or whatever that was my like audition for audition for the position um and so I was yeah I just my whole life sort of started getting consumed by this through Whole Foods through the demo specialist position I ended up being hired by a kale chip company to run what at the time was just a team of demo people um so hiring people Nationwide to sample which I don't even think happens anymore in Whole Foods all that sampling uh but it still does occasionally yeah yeah yeah since 2020 a lot less than it used to I still go in there sometimes and there's one person yeah yeah yeah and that was like my entire job was like managing all of those demos for Brands coming in doing Dem myself like it was such a huge part of the store at that time uh anyway I met a bunch of Brands through that position and I ended up being hired by this kchip company bradz raw foods uh to run and create a demo team which then evolved into like social media and digital marketing and the brand grew and grew and grew and got quite a bit larger than it was when I was first tired was like on The Today Show and like just got crazy um and so through the course of my 20s like as I'm you know going through my own personal stuff I started working at broads and then I moved across the country to work at another uh natural product startup called mamia and then from there was hired to work at a company called sura which is I guess still pretty popular and um and then after that for several years was just Consulting for Brands doing Creative Marketing a lot of product and food photography so that was my entire life uh professionally and oh and also I started a health and wellness blog during this time so but yet while this was all go while this was all going on as I was working in the natural prod the wellness industry as I was um making Helo muffins oh and I also sometime during this whole journey became a um uh holistic health coach as well went through the training on that which was mostly you really did it all oh yeah I did the whole the whole Wellness influence or shebang in that era was definitely what I was going for um and and meanwhile like while I had this public facing Health Food blog and health and wellness blog and while I was you know working in this entire working in this industry in promoting raw juice or kale chips or whatever it was to the general public I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker over the course of my 20s um and so this acne that had uh the sty that turned to acne that had developed in my early 20s had never G away and in fact gotten worse um and the gut issue were you know like not horrific but not good and I continue to feel as though if I got my diet more together or got my lifestyle and my workouts more together that that would equal health and was pretty obsessed with trying to find the solution to that um you know how do I fix this like what is what is it that I'm you know in sort of going through I mean I must have taken I like every supplement like I just went through the and I just bought every product in every store that like anybody wanted to sell me to try and to try and heal myself um and yeah nothing worked um and the acne piece got quite bad um to where it was sort of affecting my psychology I'd never had acne as a teenager um I'd never had you know like there was just nothing like that so I felt really resentful that that was happening to me in my adult life like uh didn't I you know move past this and and just that sort of really um just so much frustration and self uh like frustration at the self that I couldn't fix myself you know and um does that all make sense so far yeah it does and in that in that time as a coach what were you doing with clients and what type of success were you seeing with your own clients yeah you know I actually never really saw clients I I got that Health coaching certification mainly just for my own own personal growth that was kind of the intention behind it um and I had just moved to California at the time and my uh ep's husband I don't even think we were engaged by then had not moved out to California yet and I had a lot of time on my hands so I was just like working out of like doing all this all this stuff and just like that was my my project during that time I wanted to before you move on backtrack a little to your year overseas did you see any ch changes during that that year that you were in Amsterdam yeah so that was a a pretty interesting year um and I am I'm sort of like unsure on the timing of when the Paleo thing really started but I feel like I hadn't really gotten full into it in Amsterdam so um when I went there I was like going to the gym pretty regularly I remember I was eating oatmeal like a lot of my health problems got better and those were the things that I sort of remember doing it wasn't diet at the time it was still um you know what I thought were sort of like Whole Foods a lot of like brown rice and chicken and um oatmeal uh and yes my health problems did get a lot better that year um which I'm sure was due to a variety of factors I remember like noticing it got better going back home and then noticing that it got worse again um and I sort of acquainted that to my lifestyle over there I was just like really happy and doing what I wanted to be doing and um yeah going to the gym and being active and not being obsessive about food like just eating you know uh so yeah I didn't even think about at the time like the quality of food there versus the US which I'm sure also had a a big a big role um and also I had a you know the sort of of How The Story Goes what what what came to me was really how difficult my childhood was in many ways super stressful and um anxiety ridden um and uh a lot of that was due to a difficult relationship I had with my mother and Amsterdam when I went abroad was the first time I had sort of as a person you know aside from like sleep Camp I guess spent a chunk of time away from my parents um and so I think that was a really big factor as well uh but you know my my health stuff like because it was just the digestive thing which I was so used to at the time like I wasn't really thinking a lot about health until um those years where I like discovered paleo went off birth control ended a relationship graduated high school like all these things so you were talking about you moved to California your then husband wasn't even there yet right so I was taking you know this health coastering program which was I Institute for Integrative Nutrition and that was a I thought that was a great program I mean because it was really not dogmatic around how to coach people and was quite nuanced and saying like here's all the diets and every something different's going to work for everybody uh and I yeah I did the same one for my own personal understanding and this was I think the program was like a year old at the time yeah I I I really enjoyed it I thought it was great and I that's really what started uh what influenced me to start the blog which at the time when I first started it was quite um a lot about you know like being happy and being outside and that sort of thing that I calls primary food right spirituality and friends and community and that all of these pieces need to be checked off before we we can really think about what kind of diet is going to fix your life um or your heal um and so I feel like I really started on a good page there um But as time went on so many different things happened I think my uh like the health stuff was getting worse so I thought oh I'm not doing enough um and uh yeah so um does that all make sense so far AB talk a lot yeah yeah yeah okay uh so yeah it was just a really um it was a it was a rough decade for me in my bunnies with all of that and uh then and and again it's it sort of it would like kind of get better but then get bad again and kind of get better and I could never 100% correlate like oh when I eat gluten I have this flare it wasn't like that it was so random that it sort of made it impossible to settle on anything and so I was just constantly obsessed with what if it's this what if it's that what if I can try this supplement what if I can try that supplement um and yeah the sort of moderate FX fluctuation in symptoms but generally just pretty terrible all the time especially as I got into my late 20s and then I uh again initiated a change in my life quite drastically and decided to get divorced and was sort of my ex-husband and I couldn't figure out the house situation and so I was forced to leave my house and just coincidentally because this is how my life Works um at the same time I had already sort of signed on to do a parasite detox protocol and like a um bacterial detox through a naturopathic doctor that I had gotten to know over the years and this was the like the latest and greatest uh strategy for eliminating what really actually at the time when I got divorced was like it was I was in a good phase like sort of minimal but I still it wasn't good enough and so I had signed on to do these these protocols truly at the same time and so I get divorced I leave my home and I start taking you know supplements and bio sidon I think it was called that like strips your gut lining and of course being like my personality is just like well if you're going to do something do it all the way like I can handle it and so I did you know the most um extreme level of this detox that I that I could as far as uh you know taking more supplements or like doing coffee enemas and anyway so what what ended up happening is not that my uh symptoms and got better but that they got horrifically worse in the course of a month went from like pretty fine like had I known where it was going I would have just stayed where I was to do worse than it had ever been in in those 10 or so years that I'd been struggling with this um which was pretty horrifying and yeah like catapulted me even further into just this despair of like why isn't it working why can't I figure this out um and yeah that continued for about uh I mean I finally had the wherewithal to stop the the parasite detox protocol and I also around that time finally like the same doctor ordered a hormonal test which nobody had ever done I mean I had been to many naturopathic doctors and many regular doctors and nobody had given me a hormonal test um which was quite shocking after it finally happened and I I learned about all of this um and that hormonal test so like I don't know let's say six months or so after I got divorced was so bad it showed that my was it progesterone uh was anyway one of these or estrogen was so low that it was like it didn't even show up on the chart there was like a you know like I don't like a speed limit dial or whatever and it was so low it was like at a postmenopausal level so like really really bad and I had had done so much research kind of by that point by the point where I was like I really need to test my hormones that I I I could recognize that that was probably the root of a lot of this at least on a physiolog on a physiological level because you know the hormonal stuff affects everything um the gut and you know just like it's a a domino effect so uh which didn't necessarily explain my digestive issues growing up ex you know aside from the stress level which of course also affects hormones but anyway at least in my adult life it became pretty clear to me after I took this test that that was a big problem I started taking bioidentical hormones um and that helped a good bit it took me out of like crisis mode into uh sort of not great but acceptable mode uh still taking a lot of supplements and also so over the course of the next two years after I got divorced I it was a really dark time for me I basically lived myself in a cabin in Tanga California for two years and for that first year really saw almost nobody um because I was just so ashamed of my skin and so uncomfortable and so freaked out and going to therapy be two to three times a week and um really uncovering a lot of a lot uh around my relationship with my mother growing up my childhood you know like just so much stuff that was staring me in the face in a way I'd been to tons of therapy before but it never really seemed to it didn't really work until this period in my life um and I I was really starting to slowly but but make some pretty clear connections between um my psychology and my health so I could tell that things were getting better and getting better and then I would get back in touch with like a toxic person but not change anything about my diet or my supplement taking or whatever and the problem would get really bad again um and so I but very begrudgingly I mean because I had spent almost a decade fighting against this but ultimately accepted that the health issues that I was having they were trying to tell me something like that I should be grateful for what was happening for you know like that my body was an ally and trying to alert me to something that was wrong um and having this kind of epiphany around like well when my health problem s go away that will mean that I no longer need them to alert me to something that's not right um and there was a lot not right about uh my life prior to that the marriage that I was in was not what I where I wanted to be it wasn't a good relationship we weren't compatible I was super stressed and working way too hard at work and punishing myself for not being able to figure out my health and you know working for these huge natural products Brands and so stressed out and crazy bosses and commuting to work and like having this really unhealthy relationship with my mother which then translated into my life I mean I was like not in a good place um so a combination of strength which has implications for um actually you know biological Cascades and then you have um more and more restrictive diet and you have hormonal disregulation and all of that is converging at the same time yeah yeah I was pretty much doing everything opposite of what I should have been doing um wi which started you know I would say especially that moment of of stopping birth control I mean I I should have been nourishing myself um and and even taking specific supplements to sort of help my body rebuild uh its hormonal capacities um and instead of doing that I restricted my diet like you said I started working out harder and um and even though it was Halo focused it was excessive uh and I was in this really yeah stressful time in my life so it it was across the board as the problems got worse I I did what the wellness industry told me I needed to do in order to be healthier uh and none of it worked um and the one missing piece was are you happy uh so anyway that that is basically the backstory um and I'll let you inquire further but um yeah once I once I started accepting what was happening to me as an you know an ally ship and something I should respect and and listen to and once I started changing my life in positive ways that were more authentic and reflective of who I really was and what I really wanted in life um ultimately I made another kind of brash decision which are my favorite kind of decisions to just you know I was still taking these supplements and the hormones and things were a lot better but still not great and I as I started picking up the supplement container again and again and again I felt this just undeniable nausea reaction to it and I kind of made the decision of like you know if I'm just going to have like kind of crappy skin for the rest of my life I'd rather eat whatever I want and stop taking these supplements because it doesn't really seem to be making a difference whether I do it or not do it it's just like this is how my skin is going to be forever um and so I just impulsively decided to stop everything I threw all my supplements away I stopped taking the bioidentical hormons and radically changed my life and wasin a year all of my health problems disappeared because you were doing diet more restrictive and just not necessarily having specific targets for the supplements and you're doing this at the exclusion of everything else so Community which we know is incredibly important um and just that emotional stability and um um you know and and all of the other pillars that come with it that can be integrated but um it's a I see it as a repeating story even though you know food is such an important part because nutrients you know build the blocks that um go into what our body is um but it's not the only story and so many people you know just are absolutely hyperfocused on that area at the exclusion of everything else and creating even more stress because of the fuk factor right and I I think that's seen as you know I think we do that consistently because it's the easier option it's the option we feel we have control over right like I don't need to re reassess my entire life and relationships and job and Community right I can just take this supplement and the problem will go away um and you know it's really unfortunate because it it's it's a it's ironic to me that I really do think I had great intentions and I sort of returned back in a cycle to so many of these principles that I learned through I or through you know the early days of the Paleo world and going to like the first couple years of paleo effects and all of that um where there was you know talk about environmentalism and and I just feel like I kind of got caught in an Eddy uh floating down the river where like you know on so many levels on the one hand like well I can't make money on the blog from talking about climbing a tree so I might as well do a sponsor post for you know an aond Flower Company um and and then the sort of personal spiral of like oh you know that person's healthier than me and I'm not where I want to be and I better do this thing and do that thing and um so it's like I don't I don't even blame the ancestral Health movement or anything like that like I think there's just this this um comprehensive way in which we get distracted from what really matters uh and instead have our attention pointed at like what's the latest supplement or biohack or this controllable easy fix solution to what I think is a far more broad problem in our society and culture um and so yeah like the food is super important I you know live in the middle of nowhere in Colorado now and really you know spend a lot of time prioritizing local foods and um organic foods or at least you know foods that are from the local Garden or whatever um and so those things are important but if I was doing all of that and not living the life I wanted to lead then I don't think that makes a huge difference um and there was a a really great post by Chris crer many years ago our podcast episode where he talked about a client uh a patient of his a guy who had really severe digestive issues and it sounded very similar to my story like was just really really really sick and had tried everything to the point where he was essentially eating no Foods um just some extremely limited diet and sort of in a you know place of total surrender and giving up you know went into Chris's office and just said like if I'm going to be this sick like I might as well and I'm like dying I might as well enjoy myself and enjoy my life and he went out and he started eating pizza and beer and whatever he wanted it and his digestive issues improved and he went infected Chris gresser I told him this and I you know that's that's phenomenal like to me that's a in to some kind of like magic cure for something um then yes it requires like some deep insights around how we engage with our own with ourselves and how we're living our lives but I think it's a huge piece that um we really do a disservice to many people on not focusing on that for whatever reason because it's difficult because we can't sell products around it or you know yeah and there's I mean there's a lot of physiological explanation there's gut brain connection right and we have neurons in the gut and there's bacteria that produce neurotransmitters and so forth and so on but at the end of the day um we get also obsessed obsessed about those details and trying to control it from that perspective right rather than um looking at the entire picture again so fast forward to where you are today how is it different and how did you get there man everything is different um it's so funny to look back at myself in those days of the health food blogger self um because I just like I I feel like not not just in you know weight or quality of skin or anything but I just look so much different I think the way that Health affects us it's so comprehensive as far as just like our entire way of being in the world and um so I currently you know I I like I me I said I live in the middle of nowhere we have no restaurants really out here we have like one Cafe that makes breakfast the lunch that we eat at very occasionally um but other than that it's like we're pretty much on our own to cook so uh we cook at home essentially every meal I would say 95% of what we eat is coached at home um and a lot of it is local we buy a half a cow from a local um grass-fed beef Ranch that this uh group of cattle uh like has ancestrally been on this land since the late 1800s so it's like as local as local can be um and in the summer I work at I volunteer it to Community Gardens and a lot of our produce comes from there um and yeah just trying to eat as local and clean as possible um however not like I'm not paleo anymore um I eat you know there are some things I just don't like but I bake my own bread and I you know occasionally make cookies with real flour and non- almond flour and uh I don't drink um but yeah I'm generally pretty relaxed about food I went through this whole sort of like process in my late 20s where I oh I had learned how to cook quite well because of the blog and I was doing food photography and I'd really you know figured some stuff out but I'd never cooked like a normal person I'd never used flour I'd never you know used regular sugar like everything that I made was with coconut nectar coconut sugar almond flour cassava flour like I truly had never cooked normal food that I could you know pick up a cookbook and make something like that was in my life um and pict the pictures of the fasha you made are just make you drool I know I've been thinking about that fora I haven't made that in a while and I've been thinking about it a lot I really want to make it again um so yeah I kind of had this like you know Renaissance of of cooking of like wow I can just make a brownie recipe and you know I think over the course of the last it's been you know six years five six years since these epiphanies around lifestyle and and health and the connection between Psychology and Physiology um I've allowed my intuition to inform me about what works and what doesn't you know I allow my body to inform me about what works and what doesn't like guess it's become pretty clear to me that I don't enjoy alcohol really um that was like an intuitive you know felt decision not something I did because I you know felt like I needed to be healthier um and so just there are these different ways that like discoveries get made around like I think our bodies are extremely intelligent and through this kind of like biohacking supplement taking world that we've lost that intuitive connection to what our body is know um so it's been a long process and of course not just physically uh physiologically but also psychologically being more in tune with my intuition around like what do I want in life what feels good what doesn't like where am I overstepping when it comes to work work or what do I even want to be doing for work and um asking these sort of bigger questions um so yeah i' I've developed a unique lifestyle and diet for me that feels good for me and I don't um adhere to any kind of raed way of being um although I do I I recently started thinking I really am immersed to labels in general across the board I just find them to be suffocating and not life affirming um and so I was trying to think for myself though like well if I could develop a label myself like what is it that I'm emulating or like what is it that my life is an example of um what resonates for me across the board you know when it comes to diet lifestyle sexuality relationships like and I feel like the thing that applies to all of it is just like trying to live as close to a sort of Hunter gather tribal life as possible right so like what are those what are those components like healthy local food community clean air clean water like Mutual support right there are all these different um levels at which I feel feel like humans are meant to relate to one another and I think I think those are you know similar to the sort of quote unquote primary food elements from I these ideas of friendship and community and spirituality and there all these really fundamental pieces of Health and Wellness that I prioritize above and beyond you know what kind of flow is in my cookie now um and and same with we haven't talked about exercise as well but but save there you know like doing things that my body really enjoys like I really love to dance and I really love Ashtanga yoga and I really love moving rocks around the yard and you know there are these activities that I actually find fun and enjoyable and I pursue those and I don't worry about you know how many burpees I'm doing um so yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense and even though you know you're drawn away from the label I'm glad that uh you said that because when I look at your lifestyle that's what you know comes to mind obviously we don't have um a lot of us don't have the opportunity to just you know go in the woods and disconnect totally because that's not participating in in our society but you've done as much of that as you know can possibly be done for you um so how did you transition into where you are now in what way um just the timeline what what made you decide to move to the middle of nowhere Colorado was there a step process what did you do in between yeah um so yeah I was after I got divorced I was living in t as I mentioned for a couple of years and that was a really I feel super grateful to have found the place that I found there it was in the middle of nature meet La was not the greatest was not really a fan but I didn't leave my house very much and I got my groceries delivered uh I just stayed basically in the woods as much as possible and I went on a lot of solo road trips camping by myself uh sort of across the west and at some point you know I I was only I had to move to San Diego initially because of this job that I had at natural products industry with and then I got another job in San Diego but then I was working for myself but I was still living in San Diego and owned a house there so there was really if I was no longer married and no longer own that house there was nothing else keeping me in San Diego let alone California um but I moved to Danga it was it was close it made sense for various reasons at the time but I knew I wasn't going to stay there forever um and I was starting to pursue I was thinking maybe I would go to grad school which was something I always wanted to do but never did go back to grad school and or not go back but go for the first time go back to school uh and I was sort of figuring out what I wanted to study and I had this idea that maybe my grandparents uh had a cabin uh in Gunnison when I say cabin it was like you know a nice a very nice cabin um in the middle of nowhere in gison that they only spent Summers they spent Summers there but they were getting too old to eat and spend Summers there my grandmother needed oxygen um in Colorado yeah I got us in Colorado sorry okay um and so I had this kind of idea of like well and they didn't want to sell it I didn't have the money to buy it but I thought what if we could just postpone the selling of this property and I'll just live there and like be the caretaker essentially and go to grad school and you know continue to live alone in a little CA in the woods and um so I and we really like made this decision that this was going to happen and I was going to move forward with it and then uh and which was still not you know my forever plan but it was something that was going to get me to color which I had really decided was where I wanted to be um I'd also during this time living in toena did a took an astrology apprenticeship uh and came to Colorado s Louis Valley for a sort of like a midterm meet each other in person retreat thing um in this that area which is where I live now really struck me at the time as well and so I just sort of started setting my sights on on Colorado and um anyway and then a sort of I decided not to go to grad school and met my partner Chris and we sort of discovered within five minutes of meeting that we'd both been here to the St Louis Valley to this down creststone um and both had this idea of maybe purchasing land here and kind of like you know convincing all our friends to move out and uh create a kind of Lifeboat together um and so we traveled for a little while but ultimately bought some laner and uh a little over a year ago settled here uh full-time like finally bought not rented but bought something and um so yeah I mean that's sort of just how I I ended up here um and you know Chris and I started spending time in crestone mostly during co uh and so we got to know the land really well and it was a really great place to be during co uh because you could just go outside and it's a very small area there the population is about 2,000 at the end of the road um like 20 minutes off the main road so you don't even like drive through it's you know it's it's far um and and so we got to know the land really well but didn't really get to experience the community very much we didn't meet very many people at all um and then it wasn't until we moved here uh November of 22 that we started to get involved in the local community and um you know to my surprise because I really thought like maybe nothing goes on in this town you know it's it seems really sleepy and really empty and um and then you know moving through and actually staying here and and getting myself involved in things that I haded before uh was sort of pleasantly surprised by how many other people were here with very similar intentions um which was to live a simpler life you know clean air clean water no building codes like a police station's 45 minutes away a sort of like self- policing you know communally supportive we call out the crazy people kind of a place and uh you know you kind of have to step up and get along with people and behave and say you're sorry um or just you know live in total isolation um so the community feels amenable to the priorities that I feel like I've established for myself uh which yeah are focused Around The Simple Pleasures in life good food good people good you know climate and uh yeah support and um just really you know we can't escape culture entirely uh we always going to be enveloped within that but I think there are drastically different choices that can be made at all sort of different levels on how to kind of opt out of those systems those cultural systems and expectations as much as possible as a woman what would you say now to your younger self and what would you um not recommend I don't like that word but what would you say to a young woman or middle-aged woman who is seeking and it's lost in this lack of connection and Community um and take keep in mind that you know there's many people at different levels some may have the resources to do what you did but others you know may be an impossibility uh at least at the moment what what would you say to this women in order to um find that community and and look at the place that they're in from more holistic perspective yeah I think a big word for me around all of this is nourishment um and that nothing good will come of like self-punishment and the sort of like self-restriction that we should be prioritizing our nourishment in as many areas as we can um you know whether that's through food and and when I say nourishment I don't mean like kale smoothies because that's healthy I mean something that makes you feel I don't know for me a good example is like homemade chicken broth you know something that's like you can feel and sense the nourishment in that and you know maybe sometimes that's a piece of homemade sourdough bread you know like it can be it can be whatever diet it's about the the process that into that thing and what it represents and you know or taking a bath or just like putting a hand on your chest and feeling a sense of compassion for ourselves I think until we develop some degree of love for ourselves and um forgiveness for all the ways we don't understand how to fix the problem um and this sort of self-compassion and self yeah self-compassion and and forgiveness I think are huge um before anything else happens I think everything stems from there um and to recognize that really truly none of this is our fault it doesn't mean it's not our responsibility but like it's not our fault that we you know grew up in a in a culture that disconnected us from our intuition or um it's not our fault that we were fed a crappy diet growing up and developed autoimmune conditions later in life I mean like this is the reality it's not anything especially if the stuff started young but even not like it's hard to figure this stuff out it's hard to develop a new way of looking at it that sits outside of the cultural expectation or guidelines um so I think across the board would be yeah having more compassion for ourselves and um that through that that surrendering of like okay wow yeah this sucks like what can I do from a place of like love and compassion um to make some shifts here and I can't say what that would be for everyone I think it would be different maybe it's volunteer volunteering in a community maybe it's um planting some seeds outside you know like there's so many different things that can can that can nourish us um and so loving ourselves enough to do what we need for ourselves as best you know to the best of our ability again um that would be my advice yeah that's that's well said that's a very important aspect um how about Community how does one go about building Community or finding Community what wherever one is yeah that's a hard one too I think again because our culture doesn't make it easy for us to do that um we live so close to each other we're practically on top of each other but we don't know each other um so I guess my personal strategy was really identifying what it was that truly interested me um and so beyond my job or my ex-husband's expectations or my parents expectations what was it that really C me up and after I got divorced the first thing I really could connect to around that was like astrology um that resonated for me in a way that felt extremely nourishing and um validating and so I decided to enroll in this apprenticeship in part just to meet people who I felt like might have similar values um and that worked I did find a lot of people with similar values uh and then sort of continued to pursue that right like if I where would I go to meet people that cared about the Earth and putting in the heart word to really connect with the Earth like well I should go volunteer to gner um so I just started to prioritize the things that were important to me in life and through those I met people I could see myself being in community with I think that's what's really missing in finding Community is that we all live so close to each other but that doesn't mean where like how do we meet people with similar values in a culture that values don't match our own especially you know um and so I think we have to sort of put in this extra effort to go engage in activities art class or Potter pottery class or dance class or take a course or go on a trip or you know go somewhere where people like you might be um and through those activities I think is where we meet community and then you know that's what's most important like yes I I would love all my friends to move here to Colorado and for us all to live on the same land and support each other like that is the ideal but that's not the only way that we can feel communally connected you know I I I sort of despise social media and the internet in a variety of ways but I wouldn't have found a community if it weren't for social media and my podcast that we didn't talk about but that I had for many years four or five years um that was also a way that I was connecting people with Sim uh with similar interests and similar values and you know that's how I met you and we were able to Foster that kind of you know communal connection across WhatsApp chats and Discord and uh book club calls and so there's there's ways to do it um even if you can't quit your job and move to the middle of nowhere um so yeah I think that would be my my very practical advice for finding people like don't worry don't you don't need to move to the middle of nowhere and like buy a tiny house or like do you know what Instagram tells you um you know those things are great but also there's so much Community to be found uh in different you know innovative ways as well yeah and I'm glad you brought the the podcast um because that's a question I wanted to ask you and almost forgot because I've seen you move through different things um and let go when it doesn't feel right for you anymore so and one of the things that we can and in my opinion do not wrong that's not the the right word but fall for the additional traps is in seeking Community we fall into a bubble right um and we go for more restrictions within that community and more isolation um and it it becomes a dogmatic experience rather than a communal experience and we cling to those things so what has led you to you know let go of things that I've seen are amazing opportunities or you know in the middle of that thing thriving um what is it for you that makes you decide when it no longer feels aligned for you and how can we avoid falling into the you know the pitfalls of becoming dogmatic and becoming and trapped and falling into bubbles that um are just another copy of what we had before in just a different for right yeah well I think it all goes back to that sort of intuitive piece to we can't make those decisions for ourself or figure out how to start something or end something if we're not connected to our own intuitive desires and our intuitive psychological Health um and so I was not good at this for a long time I you know I worked myself into burnout um and made some really harmful choices around decisions and relationships and all of these things so um yeah I think I guess I've always approached things too as like not forever uh I sort of stumbled into my career and then products industry that was never the goal it's not what I went to college for it's not what I expected to be doing and I and I also never really expected to be doing it forever um you know I got this job at Whole Foods I wasn't going to be like oh my God I'm G to be the demo specialist for the rest of my life it was I just do this until the next thing comes along and change my mind and shift so I think this understanding that you know I think people can get pretty uh stuck in process of making choices by thinking that the next thing you do is the thing you'll always be doing and that you can't change or adapt or shift or go back or change your mind um and so I always sort of looked at those these phases of my life as like Steps somewhere I I don't know where the staircase is leading uh but I'm just going to like take the next step um and so I feel like that's given me some degree of Rel Bel as far as feeling like you know what I really don't want to be doing this anymore I think we all know we all know when we don't want to do something like that's that intuition doesn't really go away right we either feel desire and curiosity and we feel organically drawn or we feel repulsed and we procrastinate and we avoid it um and so how to develop a relationship around that feeling and that moment of saying I'm allowed to change my mind or I'm allowed to walk away or to decide I was wrong or not even that I was wrong but that it's just it was right then and now it's wrong um so yeah it feels you know and as far as thriving it's like yeah what what rule who says we have to stop something when it's lasted you know why like why can't we why can't something be successful and then we can say great I did it like that's what I wanted to do I completed it I don't need to continue to grow it right that's just like this capitalistic I think mindset that we have that the thing must be completed to its Pinnacle and we must scale and grow and um I feel like the podcast finished like I did what I set out to do it was a journey to figuring out what kind of life I wanted to live and then I figured out what kind of life I wanted to live and started Living that life and so why would I spend my time talking about it when I could just be doing it and and I think a lot of people get stuck in the talking about it phase like I think there's a lot of podcasts with a lot of experts that talk about these things that they haven't necessarily they're not doing they're just talking about them um so anyway a sidebar but I I feel like Phil you know philosophy doesn't interest me unless it's applied like I don't really want to talk about being communal I'd like to try it and those are two different things um so yeah and as far as Dogma is concerned I think just surrounding yourself with people that you respect to enough to challenge you um and uh people who disagree with you who you know this town that I live in is like these people are from different Generations different economic backgrounds have different political views but at the same time we're we're all saying hey I I want to come together as a team and support each other in communal ways you know whether that's producing an event or working at a garden or being in a band or whatever the thing is um so that a huge that's huge like to to recognize that it's actually not about who you voted for for president or you know how much money you have that we actually have a lot in common and can all work together toward common goals and that just sort of helps you see the Nuance in all things and all people and makes it a lot more difficult to judge people especially based on opinions you know um I'd much rather judge people based on their actions like is this a is this person generous and kind and capable of saying sorry and um stepping up to the plate or being vulnerable like those are the qualities of people I want to spend time with and yeah how do you develop trust within a community I find that it's much easier to um listen to disagreement and critique from somebody that you deeply trust um because you know for me I think I know the intention of that person right and they're disagreeing or critiquing not to hurt me but because they want to share how they feel and they want what's best for me um how do you go about building that trust and how do you process when those disagreements and critiques happen within a community environment um that's a really hard question uh I think I think my best answer to it so far is uh getting hurt like screwing that up actually like trusting people and then getting hurt and learning from those mistakes on how much to share or how much to trust um I've I think I I am a of an idealist when it comes to our capacity to live communally and in a way that supports one another and um is open and communicative and emotionally intelligent and like I I've projected that capacity onto far more people than I should have um so yeah I think it all just goes back to discernment like being uh realistic about people's capacities being conscious of projections and you know I sort of started to feel like I'm so Desiring of this like Mutual SLE supportive community that I'm kind of a little drunk with longing you know like similar to how we are when we're young young and falling in love like we don't make the best decisions When We're Young if we just follow that sort of like goooo Gaga uh eyed feeling and I that's sort of how I felt about Community like oh it's only easy you can just do it um and it's like way harder than that and requires a lot of humility and capacity to make mistakes and say you're sorry and walk away from people that can't do it and um so I don't know I would say it's half discernment half experience half pra half practice um and not everyone can be trusted and that that trust takes time and actions are extremely important um and you can't you can't learn those things unless you engage with people right in relationship it like Cooperative teams and like I work for the paper where I am and like I you know have this job of maintaining a new an objective unbiased voice in the face of in the face of rumors and feelings and Decades of history and right like it it's uh it's not something you can talk about it's something you really have to put yourself in like okay I I'm really I'm not doing this community thing because it's like an an easy thing it's not a it's not like I'm taking a break it's a work it's there's effort involved in living in a community and and living communally um so yeah and some people are dedicated to that some people have taken that on as like a spiritual practice uh and other and others have not and so hopefully we can find other people that you know have really chosen that uh as we have and you know really want to act from that place yeah that's great that's very well said I like to say believe what people do not what people say but also with the caveat that people come with their own experiences and conditioning so you know not um those the steps are not always from not having the intention to live in a certain way but from that conditioning that comes from different experiences yeah so wonderful um last question what do you spend your what do you do nowadays how do you spend your days but walk me through you know what your life looks live like in the middle of nowhere um well like I said I write for the paper and at the moment we're in our deadline week so um wrapping up writing what I need to write and getting recordings from town meetings and uh so I do a lot of writing I've been writing I'm working on a book project so spending a couple hours a day hopefully uh doing that which is like a new thing that I'm taking on and committing to um the spring has officially arrived so the two gardens I work at are we're starting to plant and Transplant and clean and dig up grass that does not want to be dug up um uh I teach dance so that happens sometimes I go to other people's dance uh offerings or yoga um uh and a lot of cooking I cook a lot of food uh for myself and my partner and at the moment we're in the middle of a lot of construction we're building a sort of like mudroom extra bathroom onto the front of our house and have another property that we're working on creating a movement studio and so there's a lot of machines and uh tile projects to manage and sort of a lot of yeah building and con construction is taking up a fair bit of time and yeah I would say that's that's what my life looks like uh and I'm uh I'm helping this year quite a bit uh an event here that's been happening for 35 years called the crust Stone energy Fair which uh you were here for last year yes it's like that's when you came right yeah so I I sort of volunteered a little bit last year and helped with the green room and have sort of Taken on a more substantial role this year uh I really wanted to redesign the website for the event because I felt like it needed an upgrade um and so I've signed on to do a lot more like uh branding and uh content creation and website redesign using my skills that I developed in the natural products industry to benefit my local community which feels really great um and yeah that's a that's been a time consuming project it's a big team it's a free event so all the money that people make either to come speak or to work the event has to be um we accept donations and sponsorships and fundraising so it's an effort to sustain sustain the event in order to keep it free for participants um and uh but it's a really fun event that focuses on like alternative and sustainable and regenerative building and construction and lifestyle and um so which if anyone is interested is happening September 14th and 15 uh in crestone Colorado uh this year and yeah so that's been a lot of budget meetings and sponsorship meetings and it's weird like people say to me like oh what do you do out there aren't you bored and I'm I'm more busy here than I I feel like I've ever been but it's a different quality of busy you know it's it feels nourishing and like I'm I can see tangible results of what I'm doing um in a way that yeah just makes that kind of like it wasn't actually the busyness that was the problem it was more like the quality of it and it's balance relative to my you know selfcare um so because all of the values seem to be aligned with what you're doing the values that you hold dear um yeah and I think like you know going back to this idea of Hunter gathers I don't feel like our nervous systems were built to consume you know news and updates from billions of people and every place on the planet you know like it's an artificially created reality in that sense um and so while of course I like I care deeply about world issues I think refocusing my efforts and my energy on what I can do in my backyard and for my community is you know not maybe selfish which is what the culture might tell us but I think actually far more productive in you know how do we world problems get created through you know they start with interpersonal problems and they start with interpersonal traumas um so uh yeah I think just that sort of local focus is um quite calling yeah if we were all involved in our local communities and you know that takes care of it globally right cuz everyone is in right their corner of the world and that doesn't mean we don't connect with other people outside of that Community but that primary focus is where we can make the most impact yeah it's a a ripple effect I think yeah and yeah thank you so much for um this generous amount of time um where can people find you if you want them to find you uh yeah well I have a website uh Ana cot yat ts.com and I'm on Instagram ya. kaats uh and uh we have a another account for our crust Stone project up there on Instagram as well um yeah or come visit crestone it's a cool funky place the crestone conglomerate that's the name of the account yeah the cestone conglomerate yeah there's a a rock here that only exists here a conglomerate rock thr Stone conglomerate sort of you know a rock made of many other different rocks um and so we thought it was a good name for our project the sort of metaphor of creating a home and a life and a you know supportive whole made up of you know lots of different weird black sheep from from our lives so uh yeah that's the that's the project and I feel like I'm in a bit of trans a bit of a transition now especially career-wise like after the podcast I almost feel like I've sort of abandoned the idea of career um and like what if I could just support myself and live a healthy Whole Life by sort of piecing different things together you know whether that's saving money at Gardens or making some money from the energy fair or the paper um and so kind of taking a much more holistic you know approach to uh career so I feel like my yeah my website and all these sort of online presence Things become more and more difficult like I'm just a person living a life so yeah and isn't that what we all want to be a person living a life the life that we want to live exactly right that's the idea it's really that simple yeah totally definitely well thank you so much again and um yeah it's wonderful to share with the broader audience who um you know are interested in that perspective and that um want to understand what else is goes into this mix it's not just food it's not just water it's not just one thing is how how we are meant to live in this world and what we can do for whatever place we are to to take strides yeah yes thank you amen thanks for joining us on this episode of ancestral Health today we hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform Modern Health practices be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch 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