Unlock the Secrets to Thriving Through Perimenopause with Ali Zuur-Arnerich

“People who are successful, whether on a health journey or in life, are not more motivated than the rest of us. They just have better habits.” —Ali Zuur-Arnerich  

Perimenopause and menopause are not just hormonal shifts— they are a profound transition that can redefine a woman's sense of self, power, and purpose. Therefore, when we embrace this transformative time as an opportunity to reclaim our vitality, the physical, emotional, and mental changes of midlife don't have to be a struggle anymore.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich is a holistic health coach and expert in women's midlife wellness, guiding clients through the complexities of hormonal fluctuations with a personalized, integrative approach.

Tune in as Heather and Ali dive deep into strategies for managing perimenopause symptoms, optimizing metabolic and nervous system health, and cultivating the mindset and habits to thrive through this pivotal life stage.

Connect with Heather: 

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Episode Highlights:

01:35 Healing Arts 

08:25 The Importance of Bio-Individuality

11:21 Strategies for Perimenopause

27:48 Tips for Improving Health

31:31 The Power of Retreats and Community Support

Connect with Ali: 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich is a dedicated health enthusiast with a passion for well-being and holistic health. With a robust educational background and extensive practical experience, she has cultivated a diverse skill set in wellness disciplines.

Ali's certifications include Functional and Therapeutic Breathwork Facilitation from Breath Body Therapy, Women's Functional Nutrition, Hormones, Perimenopause & Menopause Coaching from the Integrative Women's Health Institute, and Insulin Resistance Coaching and Nutritional Endocrinology from the Institute for Nutritional Endocrinology. She is also a Certified Birth Doula and Massage Therapist, with specialized training in Prenatal Massage.

Ali continues to expand her knowledge as she works towards completing her certification from the Quantum Coaching Academy. Her dedication to education and her diverse expertise make her a well-rounded wellness professional committed to helping others achieve optimal health.

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Transcript

Heather Nelson: Hello everyone, welcome to this week's Life Conversations With a Twist. I have Ali here on the podcast today. I actually just met her, and I'm really excited to dive into your story. Ali and I were connected through a good friend. You'll actually hear some other podcast guests that will be on the show because she is connected, and that's what I love so much about this woman and community is, how do we support each other? How do we connect everybody? So thank you for being here, and welcome.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Oh, thank you. So fun to be here.

Heather Nelson: Tell us a little about who you are? Where do you live? A little bit about your personal life, kids life, all the things. 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: My name is Ali Zuur-Arnerich, and I have been in the healing arts world for over 20 years. So my journey started as a massage therapist. And from there, I've really just been following the breadcrumbs where my clients need to show up. I'm like, oh, maybe I should learn more about that. So from massage therapy, I started working on pregnant women, pregnant friends. I was in that demographic, and so learned all about prenatal massage, got certified in that. And then I had clients asking me to be there during their birth so I could support them through that journey. So then I became a birth doula, and that was prior to even having my own children. I experienced that before I had my own kids, which was beautiful.

Heather Nelson: I was like, is that a good or a bad thing?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: It was actually a good thing. I'm involved now deeply with women's health. And I just have to say, as a woman, we have so much intuition. And really, we've got memories stored in our DNA. So the first time I witnessed a birth, it actually felt familiar to me. I was like, okay, I've seen this before in some other lifetime. That memory is stored somewhere so it felt like a very normal and natural thing, which was a blessing. 

Heather Nelson: I have three children of my own, plus I was a surrogate. I love being pregnant, and I actually really love the birthing process too.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I love that. I hope you share that far and in wide. My story in my head about birth, my mom always said, giving birth was a blessing. She enjoyed the process. It was hard, but paying with a purpose. So that was my narrative, which is really helpful. Unfortunately, so many women have the opposite narrative, that it's awful, it's painful and it's the worst thing ever. And so I think we need to amplify that story, that it can be a really beautiful thing.

Heather Nelson: Absolutely. I just always remember being wheeled in a wheelchair into the hospital to have birth, or to give birth. My friends are like, oh, I'm about to go. I'm about to have a baby. I just remember that feeling. And it comes over me, and I'm like, oh, such an exciting time.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I know. I had my daughter at home. It was pretty amazing. My son, I intended to have him at home. My first birth, we ended up switching to the hospital, but everything was totally fine. We signed ourselves out as soon as we could go back home. I had both experiences, and equally amazing and empowering.

Heather Nelson: Thank you for that work. 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: It's beautiful. It really helps out too. If anybody's listening who is starting on that journey, hiring a birth doula or having some other support person there, it makes the whole experience so much more useful, especially for the partners. A lot of the times when I was meeting prenatally with families, the husband would be like, wait a minute. Isn't that my job? Aren't I supposed to be helping out and supporting. And it's like, oh, gosh. Every time, the husbands were like, thank God you were there. Love the woman as she's going through that where I can handle a little bit more the pain management, be that intermediary between the nursing staff, the woman and their wishes. So anyways, yeah, it's good.

Heather Nelson: Fun fact, actually. So when I gave birth to my surrogate baby, it was a single mom. So she actually had a doula that came in. And at first I was like, I wasn't sure how she would be a part of it, but it was really cool to have her there. And then she went and supported the mom, because she was single. Obviously first child, and wasn't sure how that process was going to go. So she flew back with her. And then fast forward, my last retreat in October, the doula was at my retreat. Oh, no, it was the wildest thing. I forgot how reconnected we were. And she was like, don't you remember me? I was the doula. I was like, oh, my gosh.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: That's so beautiful.

Heather Nelson: I'm like, I guess she remembered me. I mean, how do you forget somebody? 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: So that journey, I did that after I had my own children. My husband and I, and our kiddos, we started moving around, following his work around the state. So we were a little bit nomadic for a few years, which was actually really fun. And then we ended up landing here in Nevada City. And being a birth doula, being on call posed a unique challenge. When I was a mama to my own kids, it was a little anxiety like, oh, my gosh, am I going to get a call at 2:00 in the morning? What if I have to take my kids to school? So I kind of hung that up for a while. I still have not picked it up, but maybe someday. But I got back into massage. And as I was working here locally, I began working with a woman who was at the end stage of her journey with cancer, and we became very close. I was massaging her weekly up until the end of her life, and her journey was so beautiful. I couldn't help but be struck by the similarities of being a birth doula. and then really supporting somebody through their end of life journey. There were so many similarities that, again, that felt almost like a natural thing for me to be doing, and her life was just full of no regrets. That's what she kept saying towards the end. I have no regrets. I have no regrets. So after she passed away, I don't think she even knew, and her husband probably doesn't even realize how impactful that was for me, because it started my own thought loop of like, I don't want to have regrets. No regrets. And I'd always wanted to dive more deeply into health. I have a pretty scientific mind. 

I have a Bachelor's of Science degree, so my mind is quite scientific, and body work. And being a birth doula was very intuitive. My brain was almost kind of shut off. I was just doing more intuitive work, and my brain was screaming like, I want some more knowledge, so let's do something that requires a little more brain power. So I started studying health and nutrition, and endocrinology, because so many of my clients were experiencing things like thyroid issues, weight issues, and just weren't getting answers. So I felt really called to learn more so I could be of service. So I started that journey probably close to 10 years ago. Even with that, I've been following the breadcrumbs. I started with metabolic health, working with pre diabetes, insulin resistance, PCOS, and then my demographic really shifted to this midlife transition of perimenopause and menopause. So I became certified is as a perimenopause coach, a breath work facilitator, just really trying to equip my toolbox with all the things to help primarily women as they navigate this transition of hormonal shifts, which is really connected to metabolic shifts, and then through the breath work training and other modalities I've studied. Now, I'm quite obsessed with the nervous system, understanding that that's really running the show. So that's kind of where I am right now. I have certifications and Emotional Freedom Techniques. So tapping hypnotherapy, Reiki, Neuro-linguistic programming. So I've got a pretty wide skill set and am really trying to meet women at that intersection of midlife with hormonal shifts, metabolic shifts and nervous system dysregulation. I'm sure, as you know, talking to so many women, as we hit our 40s, into our 50s, we're burning out at a pretty rapid rate. So I'm pretty called to help women to tap into their intuition, tap into their inner wise woman and inner mentor, and learn the skills and strategies to start taking care of themselves in a different way. 

Heather Nelson: I have to come to one of our retreats, and I think that's why Kara actually connected us to begin with because I feel like that is so much of what our demographics is. We're all navigating this, so I love that. What do you do as a coach, what do your clients look like? Do you do one-on-one coaching? Do you do group coaching? What kind of work do you do around that? 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I do one on one work. And historically, I was doing a pretty set program. I have a signature program called the reset. And years past, it's been six weeks long, and that's one on one coaching. I like to have people test their glucose levels. So whether they're wearing a continuous glucose meter or using a finger stick test, they can get real time data of what's best in their body. That if I were to take issue with the wellness and the coaching space, it's a little bit, it can be one size fits all. We all have our training and our backgrounds, and then that's the lens with which we view every client even though that might not be the appropriate protocol or program for that specific client. So I'm really into bio-individuality. Everybody's body is unique. Food acts differently in every body, so I'm pretty focused on finding what works best for each individual. That's what one on one work looks like. So we look at nutrition, and then all the other lifestyle, medicine pieces, sleep, movement strategies, stress mitigation through breath work, through meditation, or whatever works best for that person. And then in recent years, I've been incorporating more of the NLP, neuro-linguistic programming work to really bridge the gap between the head and the body. So much of it is integration work, and that's what I've been doing in my groups and in one-on-one coaching, because we surely are not at a point where we have a lack of information. We are drowning in information. And yet, we are struggling with our health more than ever in history. So it's clearly not an information problem. It's like an integration problem. So that's really my work has shifted, and I'm starting there now with clients removing any blocks, removing limiting beliefs, inner critic work so that we can get that head knowledge, and bring it into the body and live it, and make the changes we want to make.

Heather Nelson: So good. It's funny, before we jumped on, I was just saying I'm 42. We were having this conversation at dinner last night. Am I 42 or 43? I feel like once you get into the 40s, you're like, I don't even know how old I am anymore. I know I'm getting older. There's so many women in my group, my age group, and we're all like, this is the conversation we're having right now. It is, oh, my god, are you getting night sweats? Oh, my gosh, I'm a raging, crazy person. We have unwanted body weight, we have no energy. Talk to us about what a process would look like for somebody who is in this space. I have a friend who specifically was like, I went to my doctor and they don't know what to do. And I'm sure you can speak to that. Because I feel like our doctors, you know, when you go to Kaiser, you go to Sutter, they try to solve problems, but they're not being proactive about the problem and giving us tools of how to navigate it in a healthy way. Instead, nobody wants to take pills, nobody wants to take hormones, nobody wants to do all that. But how can we help to bring health into that?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Oh, my gosh. Just to pull out what you said, it hits it on the head. Being proactive where our healthcare system is reactive, right? Typically, we're seeking out help from our medical professionals. I don't want to say when it's too late, but it's when all the symptoms are there. And so then the reaction is to mitigate symptoms, not actually get to the root cause. So to that community of women in your life, I'm 47, I'm in it too. To all these women experiencing these symptoms, first of all, you're not broken. I just want to get the message out this transition of perimenopause and the menopause, every woman is going to go through it. I call it the great unifier. It doesn't matter if you have kids. If you're a CEO, a stay at home mom, it doesn't matter you're going to go through this transition, so let's accept that. 

And you have to remember too, women weren't even included in scientific research until the 90s. We weren't. It was illegal to include women because we have these hormonal shifts. And when I work with women, I'm finding that so many of us at this phase of our lives don't even understand our menstrual cycle like we've been blinking for 30 years. We don't even understand the phases of that. And now here we are navigating out of it, and we're like, what is going on? So there's such an information gap there. I'm pretty passionate about closing that. And all the symptoms you mentioned, our hormones are fluctuating, and we'll speak to just estrogen and progesterone. Progesterone tanks first. Typically in this transition, and that hormone can really help with anxiety with sleep. So when we have an ample amount of it, we're sleeping better. We have less anxiety. We have a little bit more resilience in the face of stress. So in those tanks, suddenly we're a little more anxious. Our sleep is disrupted. We're not feeling as good. And then estrogen starts to fluctuate wildly, because it requires this buffering of the progesterone that's now changed. So then we can either have very high estrogen, which is night sweats, mood swings, all of that, and then very low estrogen. And when we have low estrogen, we're going to put on weight. It affects our metabolism. So on top of that, we're losing muscle. We're a little bit more sedentary. 

And typically at this phase of our lives, we're wearing like a million hats, right? We're professionals. We've got children, whether we've got young children, or our children are leaving the nest, and maybe we have aging parents and we're navigating that process. So there really isn't time or space to think about our own health until we're super symptomatic. It's a compounding problem. And then the strategies that work 10 years ago, but lose that 10 extra pounds, it's just not working. We can't cut calories and hit the treadmill. Nothing's working that used to work so we really have to meet women where they are, and utilize strategies that work for this season of life. And again, there's so much information out there. It's hard to know what it's like. We all see the pills on Instagram ads like, lose your menopause belly and whatever it is. I want to put that out there, the kind of PSA. It's never just one thing, and there is no supplement that's going to fix it. It has to be a well rounded, foundational approach.

Heather Nelson: I love that. Take us on the journey as a client, what would that look like? If somebody was interested in going down this journey, what are the steps, or what are the strategies that you put in place? 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Again, like I said, starting with the embodiment work. Oftentimes, people need to see results in a short time. And I totally understand that our brains need to see that this is worth it. And so I typically start with nutrition, because it's something that we're doing every day. It's just the biggest lever that we can pull on because we're feeding ourselves. And so where I start with that, I find so many women in our demographic are not eating enough, which is very counterintuitive to the 80s and 90s that we all grew up with eating less. Eat less. Women's bodies thrive on safety. Our nervous system needs to feel safe, because it will always prioritize reproduction and survival. And if we are undernourished, our sex hormones are going to be diminished, and we're going to have worse symptoms. 

Heather Nelson: Wait, so you're saying if I eat more, more sex?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Right. But it's so true. I just find that we're undernourished, and primarily with the nutrient like the macronutrient profile where we're not getting enough protein. I have a lot of women who come to me and they're maybe eating, they're like, well, I'm eating an egg for breakfast, and that's six grams of protein. I mean, you need 30 in the morning, really, to signal safety to the nervous system and balance your blood sugar throughout the day. So estrogen is tightly linked to our blood sugar control. And again, that's a lens that I look through with clients. What's your blood sugar doing? Blood sugar creates mood swings when our blood sugar tanks, our cortisol and adrenaline kick in. So we're actually having a stress response which feels like anxiety, right? And so are you really having anxiety? Or is your blood sugar totally out of whack? So we start there to stabilize blood sugar signal safety to the body. So we're starting with protein in the morning. We're making sure you're getting lunch. So many women are not eating lunch because the work day gets busy, meetings, everything happens. And then oftentimes, dinner can be too close to bedtime, which is going to disrupt our sleep. So again, that's really where it's a great place to start because we're nourishing ourselves every day.

Heather Nelson: How much protein are we ideally per day in grams?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Recommendations are tricky. There are some general truths, though some people say that there's a lot of different opinions on this. For sure, some professionals say one gram of protein per ideal body weight in pounds. So if you want to weigh 130 pounds, if that's your ideal weight, you should be eating 130 grams of protein. So as a coach doing this for a long time, I would never go in and say that to somebody who's maybe currently eating 50 grams of protein a day, because their nervous system is going to be like, that's a huge change, and that feels terrifying. I'm shutting down. And we're not doing this totally. I would, let's start to increase your protein, and just start with breakfast. Let's start with that meal all day, right? So how can we aim for 30 grams of protein in the morning? And if somebody, again, is eating oatmeal and no protein in the morning, I'll say, how do we get 15 to 20? Let's start there. Start where you are. I think that's so important when we're working with clients on a health journey. Again, because the nervous system is running the show, and the nervous system needs to feel safe. We have to make incremental changes, because anything that's new and different does feel like a threat to the nervous system. And then we're back to our comfort zone. Does that make sense? 

Heather Nelson: Absolutely, Yep, yeah. 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: So starting where they are, that's really the first lever I pull on. And then until that becomes a habit, right? I really work with behavior change at the habit level. People who are successful, whether on a health journey or in life, are not more motivated than the rest of us. They just have better habits, so that's really where I start with people. How do we make this a daily habit that becomes routine? And then we layer in the next step. For me, typically, it is sleep. Sleep is really intricately linked, again, to metabolism and blood sugar control. One bad night's sleep can lead to insulin resistance the next day. And when people are tracking their glucose, especially with the continuous glucose meter, they can see that they can eat the exact same meals that they ate the day before, and their blood sugar was awesome. They have a bad night's sleep, they eat that same food, and their blood sugar's all over the map. 

Heather Nelson: You have to think. And I know this is another general, ideally, how much sleep should we get?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: So everybody's really different. I will say that we all have a different sleep type. Some people are truly night owls, some people are truly early risers. So again, I work with shift workers who are working the night shift. I work with people who have to get up at 4:00 in the morning. I always like to reverse engineer it. I think keeping a consistent bedtime and a consistent wake time is huge. I think 8 hours of sleep, 7 to 8 minimum for most women, is going to be ideal. Some women can thrive off seven hours. Some women need nine hours. So using your life as the lab, and experimenting with what works best for you. If you're chronically under-slept, it's going to be really tough to make moves on a healthy journey. It's a very big domino that we have to get in check. 

Heather Nelson: Because this is my problem. I'm very consistent. I go to bed at 10:00, I wake up at 5:00 because I go to the gym. It's very regiment. Even on the weekends, my brain will automatically wake up. But I always find that I wake up in around one or two because my brain's like, do you have any advice? Because I know I'm not the only one where this thing that triggers, and then you start to go down this path of all the things I have to do. And then I'm stressed out about it. So I'm like, do I need to? I can't go back to sleep because I feel like I need to get up and wake up. How do you navigate that?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Yeah, that's so understandable. And again, you're not alone. Like you said, oftentimes, that can be a blood sugar dip in the middle of the night. And again, like I mentioned, our bodies want homeostasis. Our bodies want this balance, and it kind of takes care of it. So if the blood sugar dips too low in the middle of the night, adrenaline kicks in, cortisol kicks in to bring the blood sugar back up. And again, that feels like a racing mind. So sometimes when you wake up like that, your mind is going to make meaning of it like, why am I awake? Oh, it must be because I've got that meeting tomorrow, and then I've got to get my kid out of their practice at this time. How am I going to navigate so then you just get on the thought loop. So I think strategy one for that is to be sure that you're facing your meal three hours before bedtime. We don't want to go to bed within an hour of eating dinner, because sleep is for repair and rest. It's not for digesting. We won't want the body to be free to do it, not digesting at night. So make sure that at meal time, make sure that you aren't having a ton of processed carbs in that evening meal that you're going to have fluctuating blood sugar. Aim for protein, whole food sources of carbs like whole grains or starchy vegetables, and try to have good sleep hygiene. Put yourself to bed like you would do with your child. Dim the lights, maybe take a warm bath, read a book, make some tea. And for those of us that have the habit of drinking wine before bed or the cocktail, that's a recipe for waking up in the middle of the night.

Heather Nelson: True. Because last week, I didn't, I wasn't drinking wine. I was just like, I'm gonna take a little break. And then last night, I had wine with dinner because we were celebrating a birthday. And then sure enough, I wake up and my heart is like, yeah. It makes sense.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: So again, it's just the body being a body. It's our body working the way it should. How do we shift those inputs so we're not disrupting our sleep? Alcohol is a huge one. And again, I will never say cut it out completely, because everybody has their own relationship with alcohol. I don't know that I'm buying into all this stuff, there's no healthy amount of alcohol because a lot of people who live in their hundreds drink alcohol every day. I'm not saying it's a health benefit, but is it as detrimental as we think? But for this season of a woman's life, when our hormones are absolutely on like Spring Break party time out of control, it's not the time to be using alcohol to calm us down, because it's going to have the opposite effect.

Heather Nelson: Okay. Women, all my friends I know who listen to this podcast, we all keep talking about it. Especially like you were saying, when we're so busy that it's like a calming mechanism. Every friend who does it, there's something about it where when you're cooking dinner, you have a glass of wine to unwind for the day. And even last Friday, I was angst. I'm like, I just need a glass of wine. But it's like, no, because all the work that we've done for the whole week just gets ruined.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: And to be really intentional with it. Is that actually what you need? Or could you maybe sit and breathe for three minutes? That's why I like breath work so much, because you feel a shift in an instant, and you're already breathing. So why not control the breath, manipulate the breath, focus on the breath, and you can have that same effect. And that also to remember those urges or the craving like, I need this glass of wine. If you just ignore that or do something else for two minutes, the cravings are gone. If we can just move past that moment. And then again, if you're going out with girlfriends or a nice romantic dinner with your partner, or like you said, celebrating something, that's a really appropriate time. I feel like alcohol in that setting, I don't see a downside unless you're binging or getting wasted. But having a glass or two, or a cocktail with girlfriends and you're socializing is a celebration to me, that's a really important part of life. And joy, like oxytocin, this other love hormone is just as important as all the other ones we're so focused on. Cortisol and stress, we want to mitigate those. But finding joy and having fun is important too. But if that glass of wine is disrupting your sleep, it's not actually helping. And again, that's just for this season. Once we're post menopause in like 10 years, it likely won't have the same effect because our hormones are going to be stabilized. They're just going to be pretty much gone, and we won't have that same effect.

Heather Nelson: So perimenopause is a 10 year thing.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: It can be. So it's about a 5 to 10 year period, and everybody's different. I want to throw this caveat out there as well, with social media and how everybody's talking about it. I work with the naturopathic doctor a lot, and we share clients, and we're working on a collaboration program that's going to be amazing for women in this transition. But we say, 35 years old are coming, I need hormone replacement therapy. It's like, well, I don't know. We don't want to gaslight anyone. But that's in our paradigm and out there in the ethers. Oh, it must be my hormones. It must be perimenopause. There might be other things going on. Does that make sense? So yes, it's great that we're talking about it. We need better care. We need better information. We need our doctors not to tell us, I don't know what to do. That's a problem. And they're not trained in this, and that's okay. OB GYN, they're trained for pregnancy and childbirth, and so they're not really trained in this second puberty is really what it is. We're just going through a reverse second puberty here.

Heather Nelson: Along with our children, our teenage children.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I had a 13 year old daughter, 

Heather Nelson: Mine's 14.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: It can be 5 to 10 years. Some women are very symptomatic. Some women are not symptomatic at all. There's countries around the world where women don't have any of the symptoms that we experience here in our culture. So there's a lot to it of why some of us are more symptomatic than others. What's the word I'm looking for? Kind of this bucket that we're like, everything must be this. It must be my hormones. But again, there are strategies. So we talked about nutrition, sleep, putting muscle on is a huge strategy that's going to be more important than cardio. Cardio is still important. But if we have to pick our battles or pick our time, you'd be better off focusing on muscle, because that's supportive for our blood sugar balance. And blood sugar balance helps support hormone balance.

Heather Nelson: This is like another topic that all my friends that work out or are talking about now is we all need to do more weight training, or hiking, and not so much running in cardio, which I love for the mental part of it. There's something about when I run, I feel like I'm clearing things out, but I know that's not good for my body.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Not that it's not good for your body, it has to be a little bit of both. And you need to listen to your body too, right? So if you're feeling really depleted and you're dragging ass the rest of the day after a run, that's just, again, using being curious about your life. Being curious about your habits is so important. Our subconscious is running over 90% of our thoughts and actions every single day, so we're not consciously choosing much in our day to day life. We're just putting yesterday on repeat, and so it's important to put the brakes on sometimes and be curious. Be an investigator, detective. Is this still working for me, this strategy that I've been using for five years? Do I feel good after this? Or do I feel depleted?

Heather Nelson: Oh, so good. Okay, so we need to eat better, more protein, less sugar, less processed foods. We need better sleep, at least a routine. We need to build muscle. What else? What little changes could we make to maybe make this not such a painful experience?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I would say turning down the volume on all the noise out there. I think this kind of love, hate relationship with things like social media, I think it does help us feel less alone. We know that we're not the only ones going through this. But I think the amount of information, the amount of protocols, strategies, programs and coaching options can be quite paralyzing, because there's so much to do. There's so much to choose from that we're just like, okay, I can't even choose any of these, and I can't have a 10 step morning routine that starts at 5:00 am, so screw it. I just turn down the noise on that, and turn up the volume on our inner kind of intuition, and just get back to basics. That's really the message I would say. Of other little things we can do, just get back to basics. You probably don't need a 5 supplement herbal routine if you're not sleeping well and you're not moving your body every day, because that's not going to do much, right? So dial in the basics. Like I said, eat whole real food. Focus on protein, get your sleep, dialed in sleep like it's your job. Make it a priority. And then the other piece too is that nervous system regulation. So many of us are in fight or flight sympathetic mode all the time. We're going, going, going. We're kind of addicted to our cortisol drip that's always going. We need to be calm. Need to be able to access that other side of our nervous system, because that's where healing takes place. That's where our rational mind can come online. 

And again, it doesn't have to be, I hear this all the time from clients, why I studied breath work that I can't meditate on. I've never been able to meditate. I can't quiet my mind. You don't have to quiet your mind, but I understand the mental block to meditation. So breath work. There's no barrier to entry. You just breathe. And there's so many simple strategies to feel what it feels like to be in the parasympathetic side of your nervous system and feel that sense of calm and ease, and we're worthy of that. And then we tend to be, go, go, go. We always have to be doing something. We're managing everybody's schedules, all the appointments. All of the things that we feel like if we stopped for a moment, everything would fall apart. 

Heather Nelson: That's  why Alicia and I and my other co-founder for our retreats, that's why we put these retreats together. I mean, we do two overnight experiences where it's two nights, and then we also do just full days. But it's allowing women to just escape all the noise of everything around them and to be present, to listen to their bodies, to breathe, to meditate. And I was not for that at all before I started doing these retreats, but it's been life changing to just be present, to again, let your mind just be, and it's such a special thing. I'm here for it. I think it's so important. It has absolutely changed my life. It's made me slow down a little bit and not run like 50 miles an hour, so I love that.

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: Yeah, that would probably be the final piece of it. And again, the interconnected loop of metabolism, hormones and nervous system, they are so intricately connected. And the nervous system is running the show. It decides if we burn fat or if we store fat. It decides everything that's going on our body. Not much is under conscious control so we want to make sure that our nervous system is in the right state so we can feel how we want to feel, look how we want to look, show up how we want to show up. We've got to keep that nervous system in check. So again, that's the embodiment work and the integration work so we can take all that knowledge of the protein grams and all of that, and bring it into our day to day life. Because the retreats, I think that is so amazing that you offer that. That's like my vision for this year. I want to do more retreats and be a part of retreats, because women need to know what that feels like, and then have a strategy to bring pieces back into their life. 

Heather Nelson: Well, we would love to have you. We're in the process of planning our next overnight, but we are definitely doing more day retreats throughout the year so we would love to have you. I think this is an important topic. I don't know if you know Jennifer Long? She also does some of this work too. She's in Marin, but it's this topic that is probably talked about daily in my friend's life. How can everyone find you? How can they get connected? I want to know all the things myself, personally. Let us know how we find you?

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: I'm wellnesswithali on Instagram. Again, I'm threading that needle of utilizing it, and not spending too much time on it, but that is probably where I'm most active in the social media space. I have a website, wellnesswithali.com, and then I have a free discovery call if anybody just wants to talk about what's going on. And I have no ego in this. I know my wheelhouse. I know what I can do to help people. So if I'm that person for you, we can come up with a customized program. You can do a group program with friends, which is really an incredible way to get results, and to be in community. And then if I'm not the right person for you, I'll help refer you out to somebody that can really support your needs, whether that's formal replacement or whatever it might be. And that link to book the call, we can put it in the show notes if you'd like to do that remotely.

Heather Nelson: Yeah. Oh, my god. I love it. I'm so glad we were connected. I love women who are doing work like this, like special work. Just focused on one thing. I think we all need it. We all need to band together and support each other, and know that we're not alone. It's like you said, we're all going through it at some point. 

Ali Zuur-Arnerich: It is a great unifier. It doesn't matter. We're going to go through this, and then we have another 40 years of our lives. We can reframe this as a really powerful transition to show up in our power, like in our purpose. I think that's the paradigm shift I'm really after.

Heather Nelson: I love it. Thank you so much for being here. I hope we stay connected. We would love again to have you at one of our retreats, and so thank you.