Back by very popular request, Jody Vassallo joins the podcast for a 4th instalment. Jody is a cookbook author, publisher, Ayurvedic Practitioner, Counsellor, Yoga Teacher, Cleaner and Tilba Chai maker. She lives in dreamy Tilba, home of River Cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW. Jody has spent a large chunk of her career as a cookbook author and food stylist and once owned her own publishing company which failed and left her in heap on the floor but led her to discovering Ayurveda.
Jody helps women of ages rekindle their passion for food and themselves through nourishing recipes, yoga, honest conversation, vulnerability, and laughter. Jody is passionate about sharing the healing power of ghee, routine, rest and living a life that changes with the seasons with the world.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and more. I highly encourage you to listen to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here first.
Broadcast: February 09, 2024
Duration: 54:50
Here is a snippet of our conversation…
Addressing the ever-present addiction to improvement, especially at the beginning of a new year...
With the new year, there is this addiction to improvement and for me, the one thing that keeps being a main thread through the work I do is rather than improving yourself, it's about getting to know yourself where you are and who you are, and understanding if there's something that needs to change - whether you're changing it from the perspective of health, fear, or old patterning. So this foot on the accelerator - we've come into the habitual being as females of literally extinguishing every bit of space we have in our life with some activity and we've been rewarded for it; we've been applauded for it and celebrated for it. So now we esteem ourselves through movement and achievement and success financially, but there's a whole part of our lives that are missing because there's no breathing space and there's no freedom. So what I'd like women and men to be thinking about as we enter this new year is, rather than a new you can you get to know you where you are in this moment, in this very day, in this body that you're living in, in this phase of your life, whatever that may be..
Joint pain is a sign that we have a Vata imbalance..
The Vata lives in the joints. So, if our Vata is up, the joints are telling us. So you will feel, especially if you're into this perimenopausal and menopausal stage, one of the biggest signs of a Vata imbalance is in the joints. And the more we can slow down and do sensible exercise, allow our body to put on a bit more weight, to be a bit more lubricated by consuming really good, healthy fats… because the moment someone sees belly fat, they go, let's take everything out, let's remove carbs which are the first poor ones that get thrown aside. And with Ayurveda, what we do is say, it's not so much about, yes it is about what you eat, but it's when you eat certain things that's even more important.
During our perimenopausal and menopausal years we are dry, and sensitive..
It's dry, so you notice your nails are dry, your hair's dry, your eyes feel a little drier, your skin's dry, the vagina's dry and no one wants to talk about it. There’s more of a resistance to anything rough near us, even people with rough words and rough personalities become very abrasive. So we're going into this phase where these qualities are heightened; these things that may not have bothered you before become really, really annoying now. Like try to ignore the annoying person eating too loudly or that annoying sound somewhere. You might have been able to ignore it in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, but I guarantee you, welcome to menopause, there's no tolerance for anything like this because Vata is in the house.
