What if the symptoms we label as “mental illness” were also messages from the body clues pointing us toward healing?
In part two of my conversation with integrative nutrition coach and Sparking Wholeness podcaster Erin Kerry, we went deeper into the powerful connections between gut health, body image, spirituality, and what it truly means to live beyond labels. Erin’s insights are not only science-backed but also deeply personal, shaped by her own journey through trauma, bipolar disorder, and recovery
Gut Health and Mental Well-Being
For much of her life, Erin had no idea that her stomach pain, depression, and anxiety were connected. Only years later, when she discovered the gut-brain axis, did she learn that over 90% of serotonin—the neurotransmitter that regulates mood is actually made in the gut.
As Erin explains, the vagus nerve is the body’s superhighway, carrying signals from the gut to the brain. If the gut microbiome the ecosystem of bacteria living in our digestive tract is out of balance, it can impact everything from mood regulation to immunity.
This is why Erin is passionate about nutrition that feeds the microbiome: leafy greens, colorful vegetables, healthy fats, and quality proteins. As she puts it, “Food is therapeutic. It’s somatic therapy. It connects the brain and body every single time we eat.”
Beyond Diet Culture: Food as Therapy
Too often, food is framed only in terms of weight loss. Erin and I both reflected on how diet culture has conditioned us to see “healthy food” as boring or punishing. But Erin reframes eating as an act of healing, not deprivation.
Crash diets and extreme restrictions don’t just fail long-term—they also create stress that disrupts digestion and destabilizes mood. As Erin reminds us, “A body in stress won’t digest.”
Instead, when we nourish our bodies with variety and balance—including carbohydrates that the brain thrives on—we experience more stability, energy, and mental clarity. Food, in this way, becomes both fuel and therapy.
Healing Body Image
One of the most poignant parts of our conversation was Erin’s take on body image. Like so many women, she remembers comparing herself to friends, magazines, and cultural ideals from an early age. Many of her clients—ranging from teens to women in their seventies—carry those same battles with their bodies.
Her approach? Partnership over punishment. Rather than chasing a “perfect” size or shape, Erin helps women reframe the body as an instrument of purpose, not an ornament to please others.
As I shared during our talk, your body is a vessel. It’s the network of muscles, fibers, and cells that allows you to love, serve, and live out your unique calling. Shifting from external validation to inner respect is where healing begins.
Integrating Mind, Body, and Soul
What sets Erin apart is her emphasis on spirituality. For her, healing isn’t complete without a sense of purpose—recognizing that our bodies are not obstacles but tools for love, service, and connection.
She challenges us to ask: At the end of my life, what do I want to be remembered for? Chances are, it won’t be the number on the scale. Instead, it will be the ways we showed up with love, resilience, and authenticity.
No Quick Fix—Just Lasting Change
In an age of weight-loss drugs and quick fixes, Erin acknowledges how tempting it is to look for a magic solution. But true transformation, she insists, is a journey of regulation and small sparks:
- A nourishing meal
- A walk in nature
- A body-scan meditation
- A journaling practice
Each spark creates momentum toward wholeness, and over time, those sparks grow into lasting change.
Living Beyond Labels
Erin’s upcoming book, Live Beyond Your Label (coming September), captures this philosophy. Built around the acronym LIVE Learn to Address Stress, Identify Root Issues, Variety in Diet, and Exercise for Body and Brain—the book offers both science and practical tools. Each chapter closes with a mind-body practice, from journaling prompts to restorative postures, designed to help readers heal in everyday life.
As Erin says, “Labels can help make sense of symptoms, but they can also limit us. Living beyond labels means reclaiming your body, your health, and your purpose.”
Key Takeaways from My Conversation with Erin Kerry
- Gut health and mental health are inseparable—most serotonin is made in the gut.
- Food isn’t just fuel—it’s therapy that connects mind and body.
- Diet culture keeps us trapped in cycles of deprivation and shame; healing reframes food as nourishment.
- Body image work begins with partnership, not punishment.
- Spirituality and purpose are vital to lasting wellness.
- Quick fixes don’t create wholeness; small sparks of change do.
- Living beyond labels means refusing to be defined by diagnoses or cultural standards.
Erin Kerry’s story is a reminder that healing is both science and soul work. By nourishing our bodies, reframing our self-image, and embracing purpose, we don’t just survive—we spark wholeness.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation on the ANEW Insight Podcast
📺 Watch on YouTube: @my.anew.insight
📘 Pre-order Erin’s upcoming book Live Beyond Your Label (September release)
💻 Explore related ideas in my book: Deprogram Diet Culture and the full course at anew-insight.com
View here full podcast Transcript here:
Dr. Supatra Tovar: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the ANEW Insight podcast. We are back for the second half of our interview with integrative nutrition coach and Sparking Wholeness podcaster Erin Kerry. Erin gave us some invaluable insight into her path to lead teaching and pursue nutritional coaching. I cannot wait to pick her brain some more.
Erin, welcome back.
Erin Kerry: Thanks.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: So, I really wanna talk about the connection between gut health and mental wellbeing and why you make that such a focus in your coaching.
Erin Kerry: Yeah, I think for me, the biggest reason I make it a focus is ’cause I had no idea what it was. Nobody ever told me that my gut and brain had anything to do with each other. And as I mentioned in the, in part one, I, I, experienced pretty significant trauma when I was a young girl, and I [00:01:00] didn’t realize until a few years ago even I was looking through some old journals that I kept at that time.
The year after that, I watched my grandfather pass away in our front yard. I was having chronic stomach issues and this was something that even for me as adult, I’m like, I don’t remember my stomach hurting all the time, but I would write in my journal. My stomach is hurting again today. My stomach is hurting again today.
I went to the doctor, we don’t know, it was that kind of back and forth type of dynamic that I don’t remember, but it’s in my journal. So there was definitely a clear connection. I just, nobody told me about it. I didn’t find out about it until probably this would’ve been 2013, so 12 years ago, 2013, 2014, I learned that the gut and brain are connected via the vagus nerve.
And vagus is spelled V-A-G-U-S. And what I always say is what happens in the vagus nerve does not stay in the vagus nerve, ’cause your vagus nerve is connected from the base of your skull all the way down, it really attaches to every little organ along the [00:02:00] way. It looks like a little alien in your body, but it is an incredible communication.
Signal that helps to essentially tell your body when you are, when you need to, fight, flight, freeze, right? Or when you need to rest and digest. And that communication is going on all the time. And the other thing that I didn’t know is that most of that communication doesn’t run from your brain to your gut, but it runs from your gut to your brain.
So our neurotransmitters, like serotonin, over 90% of them are produced in the gut microbiome and microbiome is a word that we use a lot. Just as if, I think a lot of times we use it as if everybody knows what it is. In case you really are like, well wait, what is the microbiome? It’s the ecosystem of bacteria that live in the digestive tract.
We are essentially more bacterial cell than human cells in some ways because we are just made up of so much bacteria and that bacteria signals everywhere, right? And so that that bacteria in the gut is helping to synthesize neurotransmitters based on what food you’re receiving [00:03:00] or not receiving. And so if you’re receiving, like we talked about before, a lot of nutrient dense foods, like your leafy greens and your vegetables and your good healthy fats and your good quality, quality matters of animal protein. If you’re getting those things. Then your gut is gonna be able to synthesize the nutrients that you need to build neurotransmitters, and then that bacteria is gonna be able to communicate with the brain and help to produce things, like I said, serotonin, but dopamine.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Right.
acetylcholine
Erin Kerry: is a really important neuro neurotransmitter that regulates the vagus nerve,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Mm-hmm.
Erin Kerry: But I had no idea.
Nobody told me that these things were connected. Even when I was put on an SSRI, which is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Nobody told me that it was just reuptaking, the serotonin that I already had in my body. I wish somebody had been like, Hey. Are you even making serotonin? Is, is serotonin even being made from tryptophan?
Are you getting tryptophan [00:04:00] from protein and plants? Because if you’re not, if the gut has enough going on, that’s I would say irritable, right? Like IBS is kinda that catchall phrase, but if the gut is not digesting well, if there are some issues there, whether in your bathroom habits, then it’s, there’s a really good chance that you might not be producing all those co-factors to make the serotonin. And that would’ve been a really great puzzle piece for me to learn. But that wasn’t talked about. And so I do focus on gut health because as Hippocrates said, many years ago, thousands of years ago, disease starts in the gut. So whether it is something like depression or even bipolar disorder to an extent or something like diabetes or autoimmune disease, for sure is a big one that starts in the gut.
We have a lot of factors that are influenced by what is happening in that ecosystem in our gut.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. I think that there’s such a disconnect. I think people don’t really truly realize just how much nutrition [00:05:00] affects not only your physical health. I think people kind of understand. I. That, but there seems to be a disconnect there that, you kind of can eat whatever you want as long as you’re like, you know, staying in a calorie deficit and exercising a ton, that’s just, it’s just not true.
It really depends on what you’re eating and the quality of food that you’re eating, and that will determine your gut biome.
Erin Kerry: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: If you’re, eating standard American diet, your gut biome looks very, very different than say, someone who may be on like a whole food plant-based or plant forward diet.
And so it’s vital to get this information out. And why do you think, I, I think that gut microbiome hadn’t been a part of our vernacular until the last 10 to 15 years, but why do you think that that’s so?
Erin Kerry: That’s, that’s a really good question. I think when it comes to the nutritional impact, I think we spent a lot [00:06:00] of time focusing on what people shouldn’t eat, so that they could be smaller so that they could lose weight and there wasn’t enough focus on what to eat to live right? To function to have high quality of life.
And you, you talked about, you kind of touched on that whole calories and calories out. I am such a product of diet culture. I mean, I thought the only time you eat what I would say, I put this in air quotes, always. If you are not watching to eat healthy food, to eat nutrient dense food, it had to be boring.
And it had to be because you’re on a diet because you’re in deprivation mode. Well, that’s a whole mindset issue, right? So then I’m essentially telling my body. Well, this natural, whole food, sources of food that this, it doesn’t even taste good. There’s nothing good about it, and so it just impacts even the digestion when, when I eat it right? It’s, I, I have a phrase I love to say that’s a body and stress won’t digest. And if we are stressed out about what we’re eating, whether it’s because we think it’s gonna be bad for us, right, [00:07:00] or, or if we think it’s just gonna be tasteless because it’s quote healthy and we don’t
like healthy food. I mean, that’s gonna impact how our food is digested. And so I think going back to even your question, I, I don’t even think we’ve thought about how food could be an instrument for healing ever. Like, I, I just don’t know if that was in the narrative, not until the two thousands. And I really paid a lot of attention to nutrition trends and dieting trends, especially in the nineties because I wanted to lose weight, right? I gained weight on Zoloft. I wanted to get it off, and so I was constantly on this quest to put myself back in that smaller body that I had before thinking of course, if I could get to this size or this weight, I’d be happy. And that was never the case. if I did, I did it based on a crash diet that usually created some drastic consequences to my mental health. But I, it’s just, it just wasn’t part of the conversation until now. We’re finally going, wait, the way you eat can be therapeutic.
And I think that that’s a word that we don’t [00:08:00] associate with eating. I love thinking about food as therapeutic food as even a somatic practice. When we think about somatic therapy being kind of a, a buzzword in, in therapy right now, right? Like somatic being of the body, lots of people are doing EMDR or any of these emotional processing, visualization, all these things that connect the brain and body. Well, food does that. When you are receiving food that is nutrient dense, that tastes good, that’s colorful, it is a sensory experience and it’s somatic therapy. And so food really I think should be therapeutic, but we just, for forever, it was like, well, what can I eat to be the size I wanna be to lose the pounds?
Dr. Supatra Tovar: It still is. It still is. And if you look just at the current diet trends. Of the last 10 years, it’s high protein, low to no carb. And if we look at that from a mental health perspective, you are depriving your body of its main fuel source.
Erin Kerry: [00:09:00] Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: The brain functions, thrives on carbohydrates, on glucose. And when we don’t get enough of them, and, and this is where I think the disconnect is, is
vast, in my opinion, is that when you go on these high protein, low carb diets, you get foggy brained,
Erin Kerry: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: you get anxious, you get depressed, you start to crave carbohydrates to the point where sometimes you need a cheat day. And I really hate
Erin Kerry: I know.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: that word so much that the phrase so much or you, can’t handle the diet and you go off and then you usually will binge on what you were craving.
People if we just could understand nutrition. And I think that it’s very confusing out there because what you see in the media and what you see, just promoted, especially in social media, uh, are a lot of, of fallacies. They may help you lose weight for like, the time that you’re on the diet, but you’re really going to be [00:10:00] losing water and you’re gonna be losing muscle, and you’re not going to be losing fat because the body is stressed out.
It doesn’t like what you’re doing, it doesn’t like to starve. And it, it will hold on the one thing that you’re trying to lose, which is fat. So I am on board with you all the way that we really need to promote education from, actual science rather than pseudoscience so that people can really experience the benefits.
And when you allow yourself the amount of carbohydrates, which it really should be about 60 to 70% of your diet, if not more, you can really experience a lot of the mental health and physical health benefits that come from that. So yes, I love this. And you touched on body image. I really want to talk about body image and the work that you do with your clients and what you know
you’ve struggled. You were [00:11:00] dieting yourself, I dieted myself as well. How do you help people reformulate
Erin Kerry: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: their own concept of their body image?
Erin Kerry: Oh, I love talking about this because war, as women, we war with our bodies from as far back as we can remember. Most of us, like I I, I often will ask my clients, do you remember a time when a, a female, an older adult, female grandparent, figure, whatever, said anything positive about the female body?
No. No. From, I mean, from as far back as I can remember, it was like, well, there’s periods, there’s menstrual migraines. You’re gonna bleed all over yourself and have cramps and it’s terrible, and then you’re gonna get boobs. And then you’re, I mean, like, it’s just, and it, it just made it sound and there there’s part of me, it’s like, yeah, I wanna grow up fast.
This will be great. Being a woman, it sounds really cool to fit into clothes in a different way, but then when things don’t, you find out you don’t look, you didn’t develop the way your friend developed, right? Or you don’t look like this person. And [00:12:00] then the comparison game and the magazines. Oh, I was obsessed with People Style Watch and all of the, all the fitness magazines and all the regular magazines, but I image was really important to me and so I, I found that most of my clients
in the similar, I mean, really you, you can’t avoid the comparison game when it comes to the female body, right? Like it’s, and so, so many from age, I’d say teenage years, I have clients who are in their teens all the way up to seventies and even eighties. There is a war with their own body, whether it’s because of the size that they’re in.
And that could be, they think they’re too small and they don’t have muscle, or they think they’re too big and they don’t have, oh, muscle’s kind of a hot topic right now too, as you’re saying, like the protein thing every time about building muscle, but then that becomes just one more thing for women that we have to achieve. Right? And so
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And there’s a lot of falsehoods when it comes to protein consumption, so it’s like,
Erin Kerry: I know.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: ugh.
Erin Kerry: There, there’s a lot and, and there are women that are struggling with their bodies [00:13:00] just because they’re struggling with these mystery symptoms or autoimmunity. And so as women, unfortunately, and I say this as it is, just even just heavy saying it like we just have was, I don’t wanna say wasted again, that that’s a negative connotation word.
I wanna be careful with words, words matter, but I think we’ve spent a lot of time on chasing a number on the scale or chasing a size or chasing a look, whatever that look is. And when, even when we get to that place, there’s always something else, right? There’s always, so at the end of the day, I, I really love working with people on how can you partner with the unique body that you’ve been given to live out your purpose?
Because that’s, that’s what we’re here for. We all have purpose. We have a body to be the instrument of that purpose and reframing what that looks like then that trickles down all the way to nutrition, to sleep practices, to relaxation, to [00:14:00] movement, to, if I can think about creating an environment for nurture, creating an environment for healing, creating an environment where this is, I’ve got one body, this is my friend. Maybe my body didn’t come in the shape or size that I wanted, but this is my vessel to live out my purpose. And that’s, that’s different. Nobody really talked about that when we were little, and I, and I, I think there’s a lot of women there are there are of them, those little girl parts that are just aching for somebody to tell them, you are fine.
There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not broken. Right? So, uh, that’s kind of the starting point. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into it, but,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes, I love your body is a vessel.
Erin Kerry: yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: As opposed to an ornament,
Erin Kerry: Yes.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: as opposed to something to catch the male gaze or whoever’s gaze you wanna catch. Uh, your body is a complex network of cells and fibers [00:15:00] and muscles, and all of this is designed to propel you forward to do what you want to do and what you were, born to do, put here on earth to do.
And I think that that’s a really powerful way to help someone reshape their idea of body image. It takes it, away from the complete external and looking for external validation to actually turning inward and listening to your body and honoring what your body wants and needs, rather than trying to pound, a square peg into a round hole.
I love that you do that. So, let’s actually talk about integrating the concept of mind, body, and soul. Uh, you don’t hear a lot of coaches talking about soul.
Erin Kerry: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: So I want I want you to give us a picture of, I talk about mind, body, spirit. That’s my, that’s my thing. That’s why we’re, we’re, we’re total kindred spirits [00:16:00] on that.
Where does spirituality come into play in terms of the work that you do with people?
Erin Kerry: Yeah. I, for me, it comes from the concept of purpose and believing that we all have one. That we all were designed for a purpose. And I think when we are fighting and it’s, and we know it, we know deep down inside when we’re fighting against that purpose, there is an imbalance. We sense that imbalance when we’re going against what it is that we’re supposed to be doing.
And there’s a lot of noise out there, right, that, that we can get lost in. And until we can figure out, like back to your point of that partnership over punishment or trying to beat our bodies into submission and it, it’s a way to step back and go, wait a minute, what do, at the end of the day when I am I. 75, 80 or at my funeral even. Like, what do I want people to say? Like, oh, she did such a great job maintaining that figure. I mean, that’s kind of a, a, a [00:17:00] cliche topic that I’ve heard people throw on, but it, but it’s true. It’s like, and nobody’s gonna say that, like it’s really about how you live, what you’ve been given, your gifts, your abilities, and how you’ve loved, how you’ve served, how you’ve shown up in that body for other people, like I think about how our bodies are meant to show people love, right?
Like we are arms that can hug and wrap. I mean, there’s, there’s that interpersonal energy when you’re with other people and, and we feel that people who are grounded and who know their purpose. There’s a different vibe than people who are still struggling to like, like you said, force fit something that’s not there.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Hm.
Erin Kerry: And for me, that comes with my own set of faith and set of values of just realizing that there is something greater than me out there that and having honor and respect for that and realizing that my job is, is to show love to everybody regardless. But that also is. Showing love to myself.
[00:18:00] Right. I
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes.
Erin Kerry: a big part that we miss, but sometimes we can’t really give to others what we haven’t been able to give to ourselves.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. Oh, I resonate so much with that. I really do think that the entire purpose of everything and everyone is love.
Erin Kerry: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: how are we going to show, give, and receive love,
Erin Kerry: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: how do we connect with people, not just on an, external basis, but really on that kind of spiritual basis. And I think that that’s what’s drawn you to teaching.
Erin Kerry: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: That’s what’s drawn you to working with people that I feel the same call here. It’s like as soon as I became uh, a Pilates instructor. That’s when that’s when I was like, oh, I think I know what my purpose is. I think I understand now. I am meant to help people, and that drove this whole journey and I have never been happier.
- Never been happier than. And I really think it’s so important that people do [00:19:00] look beyond that external. And I have to have a car and a, a husband or a wife and this career, all these external things that don’t necessarily truly matter maybe at the end of your life, if you could be thinking about that now, your life would be very different.
So this is, this is gonna be an interesting question, but how in the age of, weight loss medication and quick fixes and all these diets and all this pressure, how do you steer somebody toward that?
Erin Kerry: Yeah, I, I struggle with this a lot because I think, especially with what you just said, the weight loss medication, it’s really, we. But it’s such a human thing to want a quick fix, to want a, what we believe to be a quick fix, a, a, a solution that’s going to be that magical. I even in my upcoming book, I have a, a whole chapter that’s looking for a magic fix.
We just want a magic fix because we [00:20:00] think if we can achieve that, then we’re good, then we don’t have to struggle. And so I think. Getting people away from that man mentality. It’s really looking again, at at things as a journey. Like this healing process is a journey of little steps that we take over time that can help us to emotionally regulate ourselves, right? Spiritually regulate, nutritionally regulate. There’s a lot of regulation that needs to take place so that we can have leftover energy to do the things we need to do without burning ourselves out. And that takes a step by step process day by day. And it’s not gonna come in a quick fix.
I mean, you can take all of the, weight loss injections in the world, but if you don’t change I think first that that body partnership mindset, if you don’t change the pace of life that you’re running full speed at, there’s not a lot that’s gonna change at the end because of course we do know, I mean, unless you’re planning on staying on that for the rest of your life, you’re gonna, you’re gonna gain the weight [00:21:00] back. That’s. clear, but I, I just, there’s so much more to that and maybe some people need to go that, that direction first to find out well actually, huh, this didn’t help me. Right? I’ve, I’ve been in that place before many times. It’s like, well, that thing that I thought that I really wanted, it didn’t actually give me what I wanted.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Mm.
Erin Kerry: What I have found to be most beneficial for me and for the people I work with is just finding, and that’s even where the name of my company and podcast comes from Sparking Wholeness. That tiny spark that just sets off a chain reaction that starts a blaze. And maybe it’s starting with nutrition.
Maybe it’s starting with going to bed a little bit earlier. Maybe it’s starting with enjoying a nature walk. Oh, I went outside today. It was a beautiful day where I live, and I realized, oh my goodness. This is something I haven’t done in weeks. I’ve been, I’ve been on the hamster wheel a little bit and, and I did get sick.
We talked a little bit after I’d gotten sick and my, I was giving my body some rest time, but today it was just a beautiful day to go walk and go, oh, this is what I needed. So being able to help [00:22:00] people figure out. What do you need? What does your body need? What does your brain need? Again, for that regulation of the nervous system, regulation of the whole body.
And that takes a process and that
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes.
Erin Kerry: might take some trial and error in trying different things. So it’s, and it’s different for everybody, but people don’t want that. They want the just gimme the one size fits all solution. We’re not one size fits all people.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. But I think that once you do start on that path and you really do start to go inward, and I, I highly recommend meditation for people
Erin Kerry: Hmm.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: as well as everything that you mentioned, you then start to go into that inner journey, and that inner journey is actually really enriching if you’re willing to face some darker things, if you’re willing to look at the past and really understand how you got to where you are, and then you can map out that
direction to go in the future. And you were, you were mentioning your book, so this is a part of it. I really wanna hear about. You’ve got a two book deal we [00:23:00] think. That’s really wonderful. Congratulations. So just tell us about the book that’s gonna be coming out in September.
Erin Kerry: So the book is, the title is if we just got the cover design, it’s beautiful. And it will probably be released more publicly soon, but the title is Live Beyond Your Label. So it is just this idea that we are given, whether it’s self-imposed labels that can limit us, or diagnostic labels, that at first were intended to help make sense of our symptoms.
Right? But then eventually. The labels became identifiers that felt more like burdens than things to help. And so, that’s where that comes from. And it’s broken up into four parts. And it just comes from kind of an acronym that I follow as a, as a coach, which is LIVE. And L stands for Learn to Address Stress because of course stress can be emotional stress, but there’s physiological internal stress like. When we talk about the gut microbiome, that that plays a role and it’s all tied together. I stands for Identify Root Issues. And so that’s looking at things like, do you [00:24:00] even know what you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis? Right? Like, I didn’t, I stuffed my feelings, I didn’t wanna feel things, I was worried they were gonna get pathologized, right?
And it was gonna turn into another diagnosis. So learning to identify feelings and dealing with trauma or what are you looking for that magic fix that would be a root issue and goes into some other things. V stands for Add Variety to Your Diet. So that’s where we talk about nutrient density and restoring a healthy relationship with your body and a healthy relationship with food. And then E stands for Exercise Your Body and Brain. And so that’s more just about emotional regulation, movement practices. I do talk quite a bit about breath work meditation because sometimes I do start, you mentioned meditation. That’s what I start with with people sometimes is like, Hey, can you take 10 minutes and do like a guided body scan?
What would that do for your body? Just to, just to be present in it. Some people can’t, can’t start there. That’s hard. That’s really, really hard if you’re not comfortable being in a body that you don’t like very much. Many of us are over-functioning because we’re not comfortable in the body [00:25:00] that we have, right?
And so we do everything we can to stay away from thinking about that. And so that, I do start with that for a lot of people. But that’s all I’ve got. Every single chapter in my book has a mind body exercise at the end, which I love because it’s all very practical, actionable tools that I’ve done that have been helpful for me.
So whether it’s a journaling prompt or it’s legs up the wall, think about this or write a letter to your body a partnership letter to your body. I’ve got a lot of fun little activities that, that I think will be helpful, but I’m really, it’ll be out in September. I’m really excited about it.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: I can’t wait to read it. You’ll please tell me when it comes out, so I can, and I’m happy to promote it in any way that you want to have it promoted. I’m so excited for you. Writing a book is a complete journey.
Whew. Yes.
It is, I, for me, it’s one of the best things I ever did with my time. I’m so happy I did it.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And it just really is like, your calling card out to the world and, and, and [00:26:00] really a sending the message out to as many people as possible. So however I can support you, I am here for you. Please tell people how they can find you and how they will be able to purchase your book. I.
Erin Kerry: Yeah, so my website, well, got my Sparking Wholeness website, which is my original blog. That’s kind of what, how I got started. And that has a lot of older blog articles that are, it’s interesting how things have evolved for me, but it’s kind of fun to look on there. I’ve got @sparkingwholeness is my Instagram handle.
Also the name of my podcast. Facebook, I think I’m Sparking Wholeness Integrative Nutrition. I do have an author website, erinbkerry.com. I don’t do much with that. It’s more just where I’m gonna put the book information when it’s out. But then it will be available, I think pre-orders will probably start sometime this spring on Amazon, but then it’s gonna be everywhere, so
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yay.
Erin Kerry: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Oh, I cannot wait. I think that the world needs to hear this message and it’s [00:27:00] just amazing how adversity early in life can be the thing that sparks your wholeness and that, we have to be grateful for every experience that we’ve had because it’s, I really firmly believe that, that this is Earth School.
We’re here to learn. We’re here to grow. We’re here to love more and more as time goes forward. So you are a living example of that and I am really blessed to know you. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and hopefully we can continue conversations ’cause you and I are really, are kindred spirit.
Erin Kerry: Absolutely, this is so fun to connect with you and I loved having this conversation. I hope it’s really helpful for anybody out there who feels limited by their labels.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Me too. Let’s, let’s dismantle this labeling thing, okay? And that’s gonna start with you. So thank you so much and thank you for tuning into the ANEW Insight podcast. I’m really looking forward to the next guest and the [00:28:00] next interview, and we will see you next time.
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