5.13 | Food is Your Money Mirror

>> Isha Vela: Welcome to Waking Up Wealthy, the podcast for visionaries and rebels who are ready to revolutionize their relationship with money and create powerful collective ripples with the money they make. I’m your host, Isha Vela, trauma psychologist, somatic practitioner, financial professional and minimalist, bringing you practical money tools, unconventional wealth perspectives, and Aquarian era business strategy to guide you in building wealth that’s aligned, ethical and empowering. Let’s wake up to the true meaning of wealth together. Welcome to episode 13 of the podcast and today we’re going to talk about the relationship between food, your relationship with food, and your relationship with your body to money. And this may seem like a, kind of an odd combination of things to pull together or talk about, but it’s more of a central piece than you imagine. And I think you’re going to have some big time breakthroughs in the realm of money energetics, if that’s something that you’re working on right now. And I’m going to start by just sharing my orientation and frame through which I conceptualize of all of the money energetic stuff, which is animism. And animism is the belief that all things, not just humans, but animals, plants, rivers, obviously anything in nature and even ideas, have a spirit or a soul or consciousness. And it’s one of the oldest belief systems in the world. And it obviously found at the root of a lot of indigenous earth based, and ancestral spiritual traditions. And the key aspects, you know, one of the key aspects is that everything is alive, right? inanimate doesn’t exist the way that it exists in the western world. So a mountain has a presence, a tree has a spirit, or even has like, emotions or a river has a memory and the wind can carry messages, right? So it’s really seeing the interconnectedness of everything and everywhere and that nothing, no being, is superior to another. And I really love this because, humans are just one of many. It kind of flattens the hierarchy. And, this is partially why I ended up as a relationship anarchist, because in my process of like exploring animism, I just kind of started flattening hierarchies. and I really sort of love that and just seeing myself as, you know, like, no one is better than the other. And it really sees like a, bigger contribution of each. Each being has a contribution, right? And then the second part of it is that relationship is central. So animism is not just about worshiping spirits, it’s about being in relationship to them. And that means acknowledging the energy and like I said, the contribution Offering respect, practicing reciprocity, right? When I talk about gardening, I’m practicing reciprocity with the land. Like, I invest energy, I invest love, and the land gives back to me. So, you know, asking a plant for permission before harvesting is really honoring that the plant is giving of itself to nourish you, right? And saying thank you or offering gratitude to a river or a body of water that you get to swim in or that you get to drink from. listening to the land and what it needs instead of just taking from it, right? The extraction process of a lot of corporations or even people, when they pollute land, they are taking, right? They are. They are dumping and expecting the land to just take care of it, right? Just like a child would dump there dirty towels on the floor and expect mother to take care of it. so whatever relational templates you carry from your childhood will affect your relationship with everything, including money, right? So this is why we’re looking at, you know, food and money as a parallel here. And I’ll say a little bit more about that in a second. So obviously, you know, in this. In animism, spirits can communicate through symbols, dreams, signs, divination, even intuition in the body. Like, people are talking about telepathy, right? you know, I practice telepathy with my dog. so you can practice telepathy with a tree. So you can feel into a tree, whether it’s a somatic experience that you’re, like, sensing something or whether it’s a thought form. we can sort of speak and communicate. And listening, the listening of the tuning in is a sacred act, and it’s an ongoing process. And then the fourth piece is that, like, land and ancestors are alive. So land isn’t property. Land doesn’t belong to you’it’s. An elder, it’s a teacher. It can be a relative, right? So the ancestors are obviously not gone. They are here with us. They support us. They offer wisdom and protection. The land owns itself and we get to be in relationship to. That’s sort of the highest. I think that, like, an honor to be in relationship to land and to steward land is really like a beautiful relationship. And of course, this has decolonial implications because it directly challenges all of the Western frameworks of domination and ownership and extraction and hierarchy. And it reclaims a way of knowing that prioritizes care over control and upholds balance over profit and respect. Sovereignty of all life forms, right? So we don’t say like, you know, it really ties into, like, even whether or not you decide to eat Animals or not, or even eating D is like, still you give thanks for the food that is on your table, whether it comes from an animal or a plant. And you say thank you for the nourishment, right? And you take it into your system. So it’s a powerful. It’s been a really powerful way to decolonize. Sort of like how I relate to things, how I relate to nature, how I relate to money, food. It’s returning everything to the relational aspect that’s been sort of one of the biggest driving forces in my life and how I sort of how I live my life. And, so I want to get into the juicy stuff now. So if you’ve been with me for a while, if you’ve known me, and if you’re personally close to me, you know that I’ve struggled with food addiction. Some of you may not know this, but, how it showed up for me is that I, you know, I called myself a foodie. And in that was a really deep addiction to food. And when I would wake up in the morning, I would eat breakfast and already be planning my lunch and dinner. and not from a place of, like, balance or health, but kind of like, oh, my God, I’m so excited to eat this. You know? And it came. And it came across as like, a genuine appreciation of food and deliciousness and all that kind of stuff. But. But I would kind of obsess over food. And unfortunately, I was also like. Because I also grew up in a family where, you know, being fat was seen as a moral failure. I also didn’t want to get fat. And so I would restrict food and be super, like, strict healthy and restrictively healthy. And then I would binge on the weekends, for example, or, one day a week, I would sort of, like, let go. And for me, that was like a form of freedom from the deep restriction. That’s why I don’t recommend people do this really restrictive budgeting, because then you’re going to spend, you’re going to overspend. So that’s another wonderful little parallel I’m going to talk about in a little, In a moment. So eventually this caught up to me, right? This caught up to my body. My body eventually started to show the signs of that pattern, the wear and tear of that pattern. I experienced burnout around the time that my children were born. I was completely out of balance. in fact, when. When my oldest was born, like, I. I really stopped, eating more healthy because it was like, there was less time. I barely had Time to cook. And so I would just like eat like crackers and some prosciutto or whatever. and then I would have like a pizza or something like, and, and relatively healthy according to American standards, but not really healthy, not whole foods. And, And so I started to show signs of intestinal leakages, digestion issues, malabsorption. I had skin issues. I had like, really, like I could not absorb nutrients. And so it was showing up in my face. It was showing up, even in like a dry eye. my lips would get like cracked and dry. I lost. I was no longer menstruating. I mean, it was like the symptoms were like so many. And this was a way, like the way I understand it now, this issue with intestinal leakage had to do with poro ass boundaries. And then the malabsorption was my inability to receive. I couldn’t take in, I couldn’t assimilate, I couldn’t receive. And so I had to change my diets, I had to change my habits and patterns and I could’t, I couldn’t eat the foods that I was used to eating. And I had to go gluten free and sugar free. And partially the way that I did this was like listening to my body and listening to what needed to happen. And those were the ways that I, that’s the direction I decided to go in, right, that I knew that it had to do something with bread because of the symptoms that I was experiencing. So it, it came from a place of listening, to my body and observing sort of like the signs and symptoms of what I would eat and what would happen. and a lot of the foods that I was attached to, I couldn’t have anymore. Like, I couldn’t just have boxes of chocolate and I couldn’t have muffins and cakes and all the things that I love to have or especially bread. so you can imagine the intense emotions that came up when the object of my addiction was removed. So it was like taking away alcohol to someone who was like, who was a drunk. And I remember one particular day when I was standing in my kitchen. It was about like 8 or 9 o’clock at night and the kids were asleep. And this was the time of day where I would binge. I would use binging as a way to relax. it was a treat at the end of a day. Just like somebody would have a glass of wine to unwind at the end of a day that was maybe stressful. It was like a way to regulate my body And I wanted to have chocolate almonds and I wanted sugar. and I knew that it was going to set me back because I’d made some progress by then. I had made those changes in my diet and I knew that I was going to get a huge headache if I ate those almonds. And I knew it would destroy the progress that I had made with my gut bme and I promised myself I wouldn’t do it. So instead I was breathing. I was standing at the kitchen counter holding ono the counter because I needed to hold on to it because I was like, I felt like my hands were just going to start reaching for things in my cabinet. So I held onto the countertops and I began to like as I tuned in. And by this time I was already in my four year Somatics certification process and I started to, started to feel more. By that time I was feeling more. I was more attuned to what was happening in my body. And ah, as I was holding onto the counter, I could feel this intense loneliness. It felt like a big hole, like a gap, almost like, like, yeah, like a chasm, you know, like a. I don’t know how else to describe, but it just felt like a big hole inside of me. I could feel the vacuousness of it. And at that moment I realized that this was the feeling that I’d been avoiding for decades by eating. I’d been wanting to avoid the loneliness. And then in that moment I began to feel it and I began to release it because I started to cry and I just started to be like, oh my God, this is it. This is what I’ve been feeling this whole time. And it was, you know, like as I was seeing, as I was in this four year certification in Somatics, I was seeing the patterns that existed in my relationships. The loneliness in particular. Using food as a companion instead of reaching out to people where the real connection was. I saw that also like how that was showing up with my money. You know, I binged, I hoarded money, I was a good saver, which was great. But I was also neglectful of setting myself up, of investing, of taking care of money or tracking money. So my relationship with my body matched the way that I related with food, or match the way that I related with my body matched the way that I related with food and money. And then earlier I mentioned that part of the reason my illness manifested in the way that it did was because I couldn’t receive, because I had experience neglect, and I was neglecting myself, I was neglecting money. So this feels like the perfect moment to share about the connection between food digestion and receiving because it’s linked to capacity, which is the ability to hold more, receive more, and manage greater wealth. So this is maybe going to blow your mind. Maybe you know this already, but, as I go through the parallels, I want you to just take a breath and observe what you notice about your own eating patterns and how it connects to your relationship with money. So the mouth, right, is the beginning of digestion. You take in food, right? And as a baby, you have to think about from before you are able to speak or think or have, have cognition in the way that you have cognition when you have words and language. You are just receiving energetically, right? You’re just taking in the world from an energetic place and through experience. And so as you’re suckling, right, as you’re breastfeeding, you are in a process of taking in. Your process is like that’s the first part of digestion you’re receiving through the mouth. The esophagus is the digestion tube. So you’re taking in nutrients, you’re assimilating nutrients and making them your own, right? A, banana that you eat, you know, if you’re eating at six months or you know, the breast milk, that becomes part of who you are as you’re growing, it becomes part of your bones, part of your cellular material, your muscles, all of the things. And that digestion tube that begins at the mouth and goes through the esophagus, through the stomach, the digestion system, it ends at the anus, which is the first chakra, of course, right? It’s like, you know, the digestion covers the five chakras, right? There’s a throat, the heart, the, Oh, Lord, now I’m forgetting it. but your power chakra, right, the third chakra, then you have the relational chakra, which is the second chakra, and the first chakra, which is safety. Safety and security, right? So money is safety and security. That’s where your anus lives. That’s the end of that digestion tube. So because food is tied to the connection with the mother, assuming that she is breastfeeding, or bottle feeding you, most of the time it has to do with closeness and connection. So it’s very relational. Food isn’t just food. You aren’t just being, you know, have food plopped in your mouth. You are being cuddled as you are being fed. So it has to do with closeness and connection. Hopefully there is Eye contact that’s happening as you’re being fed and not, you know, someone looking at a phone and just kind of like plopping the bottle or the nipple into your mouth. Right? So this is why the relational piece is very important. And that’s the origin point. Like this digestion and connection is the origin point of a lot of other issues that are, that happened in people’s lives. Right? This is where the patterning is happening. These patterns and templates are being formed right in that moment. So this is the core. Right. But, that’s why when you look at relationship as the source point or as the origin point for all of those things, it makes sense that there would be parallels there. So here are five of the parallels. So food and money as survival resources. This is why we come back to the first chakra. So both food and money are primal survival resources. We need them to live. And when you grow up in environments where there is scarcity, control, or let’s say fluctuations, boom and bus cycles, your nervous system encodes these experiences as life or death. But more importantly, they encode these experiences as normative. Because what is normative then becomes safe. So if you’ve had boom and bust cycles in your childhood, maybe you had a parent who had bipolar disorder who would make a bunch of money and then gamble it away or spend it in some way during a manic episode, let’s say that’s going to feel normal to you. And when you have a lot of money, you might, then it might disappear on you and you might not make the moves or do the things in order to invest it long term. You might not. The, stability or having more of a steady control or steady amounts, in your bank account might not feel safe to you might not feel safe to your nervous system, even though your brain says, wow, it would really be great to have more stability. Your nervous system is like, I want those bo and boom and bust cycles. I want the highs and lows because that’s what I know and that’s what feels safe to me, right? So, there have been people in my life who have had bipolar relatives who then I see, have had like once they, even when they make a bunch of money the way they spend it, they’ll like pay all their bills and then it’ll be gone. So it can be spending even a way that looks really, really responsible. So when you have, let’s say, an environment where there is scarce money, you know, this can lead to. Everybody develops a different strategy with different things. So for example Somebody in an environment where there is control or where there’s scarcity or fluctuations. They might hoard food or money. they might be over consumers in terms of spending. They might have binge behaviors, but they might also under earn or under eat or underspend. They might be really, really stingy. they might feel guilt and shame around having too much because they know the experience of scarcity and of not having. And so they don’t feel comfortable having. And they look at all the people who don’t have and they feel guilty for having. And this can happen even with, in families where, you know, people grow up with money and then they have experiences where they have friends who don’t have, or they have a sense of, responsibility for people who don’t have. And so they feel guilty. Right? And this is, there’s other things that are tied into that that are like about just guilt altogether and not, not giving yourself permission to have. But that’s a side convo, that’s another, another wormhole for another day. But there can also be a feeling of unworthiness, nourishment, unworthiness around wealth. You might not feed yourself properly. You might not feed yourself well. You might neglect to eat healthy, neglect your body, basically steamroll your body or gaslight your body, which is like when you, when you overstuff your body. Like I was doing. I was basically telling my body, you’re not full, you’re not full right now. Right? And so this is a pattern that I experienced and that I was then doing to my body. So let’s talk about second pattern is like control, restriction and rebellion. So, you may have been forced to clean your plate. you might have been, ah, food insecure. This often mirrors money dynamics, like feeling like there isn’t enough. so you want to think about the food pattern and the money parallel. So let’s say maybe you’re an emotional eater. You might also be an emotional spender. if there is, like I was saying before, really strong restrictions around eating. You might also have a restrictive relationship with how you spend money. Right? You might be really pulled in. you might have like a starvation binge cycle with money. You might have, sorry, starvation binge with food. And you might have feast or famine with income and money. you might feel shame around wanting pleasure, Shame for desiring wealth. Right? And that may be, not giving yourself permission to indulge in the foods that you want. I know that can sound really silly, but when like women grow up in Environments that tell them like, eating less is good and eating more is, you’re out of control, you’re disgusting. so when, when women indulge, we feel guilty, we feel shame for wanting pleasure through food, which is, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it has to be balanced, of course. And then like the third piece around this money, money and food pattern is the ancestral, ancestral scarcity stuff. This is really, really big. So for first generation folks, especially immigrants, historically oppressed communities, trauma around food and money’obviously generational. And your lineage might carry, the experience of famine and it can be, you know, generations, generations back. Maybe there was war. right now we’reie experiencing it in Palestine where people are being starved to death. Like, and I, I know people, Palestinian people who are, experiencing issues around food and feeding themselves as their families are experiencecd in Palestine are experiencing this. So this is like a real thing. It, it’s happening right fucking now and it’s happened a while ago and we are still feeling the effects of it. And I have probably shared this with you before, but in my family, my mother’s, parents, my grandparents experienced scarcity and food insecurity during the war. And we had two refrigerators at home. My father also experienced food insecurity in a different way because of poverty. And we had two fridges in the home. Like, it’s kind of unnecessary, but they were stocked all the time because that made my family feel safe. So hoarding food was what I grew up with, right? So it’s all kind of making sense. Like one generation, it shows up this way and it shows up for me in a different way. maybe your ancestors experienced government dependence or rationing. Maybe like, you know, in my father’s family, people had to eat fast or their food got taken away from them. Right? That’s why you see dogs gobbling up food, because there’s another dog that’snna you know, eat it. We call it like dog eat dog world, right? Where you had to kind of protect what you have because it’s going to get taken away from you. Some people hid food. I know kids who hide food. And I can see in their families the pattern of, you know, like, either not being allowed or having things be too restrictive. And then there’s this, oh my God, the sugar binge or the hiding, the hoarding. And maybe your ancestors had to trade food as currency, right? To have to like, well, I’m goingna give up this loaf of bread to be able to buy this other Thing, right? And so you have to, like, I go hungry to have this other resour. So they had to make really hard decisions that way. So even if you are stable now, your body in some way might still have the memory, the cellular memory of urgency, guilt, unworthiness around nourishment and abundance. And then the fourth piece is that, you know, capitalism disconnects us from, healthy habits around food and money. When you look at our culture where there’s an excess of food, I just, as you know, I live in Indonesia. I just traveled to the US For a work conference. And you can see, like, the portions are twice or three times as much as they are here. And here I eat everything but with regular portion sizes and I feel full. But when I go home, I eat the bigger portions and I feel a little bit fuller, but I’m eating three times the amount. So obviously, like, our bodies adapt to those, those bigger portions. Because if I’m here for a while, my body adapts to the smaller portions and it’s absolutely fine and it’s absolutely enough for my body. But it wouldn’t be enough. The portions that I’m eating here wouldn’t be enough if I were living in the States, because I would be comparing them to three times as much to larger portion sizes. So it’s really interesting how the body adapts and the body adjusts to what is enough and into satisfaction. so we lose connection to what are, I’m saying all that and sharing that to say that we lose connection with what is enough, but is actually enough both from the place of, consumption when it comes to goods and then consumption when it comes to food. So we’re constantly in the US we’re constantly in the Western world. We’re constantly receiving the message that we want, we need more. You need more food, you need more things, you need more money. And sometimes the answer is no, motherfucker, I don’t, I don’t need more money. This is enough. I don’t need more food, this is enough. And I don’t need more things. I actually don’t. You don’t need more things? I’m telling you, you don’t need more things. But, yeah, so we lose connection to what is enough. It kind of skews and distorts our lens, right? Our body experience, the lens through which we like, consume food, goods, all of the things. So, and we lose connection to how money flows. Like, we lose connection to the reciprocity, the sole purpose of money and the soul of money. Itself. And we lose connection to where food comes from. Right. When we constantly buy from the supermarket, we lose connection to the land. And we also lose connection to, like, the wholeness of foods. Will buy foods that have been, doctored and manipulated in science labs and we’ll call it healthy. Right. When it’s so far away from what the land actually produced. And then, you know, the decolonial practices of just animism and embodiment and connecting to what is enough, it helps reweave your connection to food and money as sacred relationship and relational, and most importantly, intuitive. So the fifth piece around this sort of the thing that kind of brings it all together is when your nervous system is regulated around enoughness. And this is a process that happens over time. I think, this, I really want to close with this, like a strong point. When I began working on my food addiction, my relationship with money began to change. But my relationship with food has spanned, like the moment I began to realize those connections between the wounding around receiving and food and money. That happened, what, almost 15 years ago and has been a, it’s been progressive, it’s been over a longer period of time. And so I just want to invite you to do this, so be in this process slowly and that to not be in a rush to get it all done. It happens over a longer period of time. So to not get urgent about the healing process, it happens over time, and you’ll notice small shifts. and what I want to invite you into is recognizing or asking yourself or like, tuning in to digestive processes and seeing how it then affects your relationship with money or working on your money and then tuning into how it’s affecting food. Right. So kind of going back and forth between the food and the money. When you make a big jump in money, does it also show up in your relationship with food? So when your nervous system is regulated, you savor food more, you can taste it more. You’re not gobbling it down with pressure or with this urgency. You’re in the enjoyment. You may look at it and like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful. And you might take your time to eat it. You stop eating when you feel satisfied, when it’s. When it’s enough, when you’re tuned into what that is for you. you spend money without a sense of urgency. You receive money without, like, anxiety. You’re just kind of like, oh, my God, that feels so good. You don’t feel guilt or shame. Is this kind of like, yes and more and whatever, right? Or yes and that’s awesome without necessarily having there to be more. Unless that’s a goal for you. You get to have it and enjoy it. You feel, you spend it in ways that feel good, that give you joy and pleasure. You feel worthy of nourishment right in your bank account, but also in your belly. And this is what embodied wealth is all about. It’s critical for sustainable growth in business versus, this grow and grow and grow that corporations are taking on. Right? They’re always finding ways to increase their revenue. When there’s a place where it’s like everybody’s making it enough money, you don’t need to come up with another product to make more money, like it’s enough. yeah, it has implications on how we do business, how we feed ourselves, how we consume, and how we relate to money and the natural environment. So I want to offer you some reflections and journaling prompts. just I want you to think about like, what were you taught about food or how do your parents relate to food? Is there a history of, scarcity? Some of the things that we talked about today, famines, fe famine cycles. How do these parallel your experience with money? and how does your body respond to receiving when it receives a meal? Do you feel, do you want to eat more or do you notice that you’re wanting to eat dessert right after you eat a meal? Or can you wait? do you eat over a long period of time or do you eat in a short little burst? does m. How does your body receive a big payment? Like when you receive, I don’t know, like when you receive your paycheck or when you receive a payment from someone that’s, you know, a five figure payment. How does that feel in your body? What are the narratives that come up? What are the sensations that you experience? And what would deep nourishment feel and look like in your. With food and with money? What would that look like for you? And most importantly, I invite you to feel into, like, really feel into what enough is for you. What would it feel like to have enough food? What does that feel like in your body? You know, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being like, I’m so freaking full, I could, like, I feel uncomfortably full, I want to vomit to one. Being like, I’m starving, I’m feeling dizzy. What is enough for you, right? Would it be a 5? Would it be a 6? What is it having enough clothing feel like for you? What does that look like in your closet? What does having enough money feel like for you? What is your monthly minimum and what would it be like to have that much more to be able to invest or to be able to plan for your future? Right, and that’s something that we actually help people, figure out is like, how much do you need in order to reach your retirement income goal, for example, or what does retirement look like for you? And what is enough? Right, so this is part of the what I love about what I do. So this is a practice of deep listening with the body and practice exploring what is enough for you in all different areas of your life. So I’m really excited to hear from you and how this is all landing for you. So definitely. leave comments if you’re watching on the YouTube channel, leave a comment and share with your friends so that we can get this, important message out to people in the world. All right, love you all and see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on itunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. Until the next episode, I’m sending you fierce, fierce love.