I Don’t Want My Life to Go to Waste: Why Health, Wealth and Wisdom Matter More Than Ever

I ran Shivan's Yoga Studio from 1991 to 2001. Since 2015 I've produced twelve online health summits and asked questions of more than three hundred experts. And I'll be honest, I was nervous recording this. I have over ten thousand hours of live television behind me and I still cleaned the toilet rather than sit down and start.

Why Health Comes First

For twenty years I worked in a television studio with mould on the vents. High stress, high heels, full makeup, graded on dollars per minute. The building wasn't looked after. I got sicker, and so did the women in the makeup room.

I was extremely distended and bloated. People asked me when the baby was due, and I was well out of childbearing years. Towards the end I was going for acupuncture or a massage just to feel like I'd had a night's sleep.

If any of that sounds like your week, you are not alone, and there is more to look at than you've been offered so far.

What SIBO May Have to Do With IBS

A series of events led me to find out I had SIBO, and to Dr. Allison Siebecker, a true SIBO specialist. SIBO may be an overlooked driver of IBS symptoms, and food poisoning may be the most common thing sitting underneath it. None of this replaces your own doctor. It's a reason to ask a better question at your next appointment.

Why Three Hundred Conversations Changed What I Do

Since 2015 I've produced twelve summits, including SIBO SOS, the Liver and Gallbladder Summit, Lymphatic SOS and Rescue, and the Women's Health Rescue Summit. The information I have access to isn't the typical doctor's office conversation.

My mother died of lymphoma. I still don't know how much was the chemotherapy, how much was that none of us understood the lymphatic system, and how much was that she shut down after my father died. Probably some of each.

Here's the part I'm less comfortable saying. I was hiding behind those summits. I promoted the experts and sometimes I was barely present in my own event. This show is me stepping out from behind them.

Why Money Belongs in a Health Conversation

My parents said, never talk about money. I think that was a mistake.

My mother, Annetta Marie Brown Sarna, called Bunny, made sure I had my own checking account by about twelve and knew how to balance a checkbook. She had friends who, when their husbands died, could not write a cheque or deal with a bank.

I've had a lot of money and I've had very little. What I want to teach is what I did at the tail end of television and for the ten years since: putting your knowledge online. A course, a PDF, an email list, a way to take payment. If you didn't grow up with the internet that isn't an obvious pivot, and it's more doable than it looks.

What to Ask When You're Caring for Your Parents

If you're taking care of your children and your parents at the same time, my sister Serene Sarna has worked in hospice for decades and is a death doula. I want her here on what to ask about nursing homes, assisted living and independent living. One of my business coaches, JJ Virgin, put it plainly: no one wants to do this, so they have to do it, and that's a harder lift.

Why Wisdom Has Nothing to Do With Age

I know young people who are wise and older people who are not. Age isn't the qualification. Meditation is the most transformative thing I've done for myself, and it isn't reserved for other people. It leaves you more centred, more balanced, more connected to whatever you call your source. I want you to have the actual techniques rather than the idea of them.

What Thirty-Eight Years Taught Me About Boundaries

I'm a thriver of a thirty-eight year narcissistic relationship. Not with a husband. With a mother figure, a woman my mother had asked to keep an eye on me before she died in 1997.

She was wise and she helped me a great deal. Credit where it's due. It also went badly wrong, and it took me thirty-eight years to say no to her. When I did, my whole life changed for the better, and the transition hurt.

Friends had seen it. They knew I had a blind spot and couldn't see a way out for me. I got therapy and counseling from some very wise women, and I found a psychologist on YouTube whose work on recovering from narcissistic relationships helped me enormously.

If you recognise yourself in that, remove the shame from it.

If something has been sitting on your list because it matters too much, that's a reason to start rather than a reason to wait. Health, wealth and wisdom are the three places I've had to learn the hard way, and I don't want any of it to go to waste if it can shorten the road for you. Be your own detective. There is hope, and there are answers. I'm glad we found each other.