Ruth Soukup: Have you ever found yourself halfway through a bag of chips or a box of cookies and thought, what am I even doing right now? It’s almost like you’re on autopilot, but underneath that mindless munching, there’s usually something much deeper going on. Old stories, buried emotions, childhood patterns we don’t even realize we still had.
And if you’ve ever felt like food is your comfort, your enemy, and your escape all at once. This episode is for you.
So buckle up friend, because it’s about to get. Real.
In this episode we’re talking all about emotional eating, how our earliest experiences with food shape our behaviors today and what it really takes to stop the cycle of self-sabotage. We also dig into the deeper work, how to tune into your triggers, reframe your cravings, and begin the process of healing your relationship with food from the inside out.
Are you ready to lose weight and heal your body for life (without dieting, drugs, or making yourself miserable)?
Our free on-demand video training will walk you through how to make this THE year you set health goals…and keep them.
And beyond that, we talk about letting go of resentment, finding meaning in the hard stuff, and how to start seeing every challenge as a gift in disguise. This is such a powerful conversation and I can’t wait for you to hear it. So let’s get right into it. Isabel, thank you so much for joining me today.
I’m so excited to talk to you. It was so nice to meet you. Thank you for having me, Ruth. You’re welcome. So let’s just start with the question I ask everyone tell me. A little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and how you got to be doing what you are now.
Isabel Chiara: Um, well I wanna say that, um, my whole life has kind of been centered around food because I was in the food industry growing up and I was a family business.
And I think that’s the foundation for everything. And so the focus was on food, but actually the focus was, uh, you know, how we ate. Um, the whole conversation around food at the dinner table. Um, and, but we were a very busy family because we were all in the restaurant business and we would just, our food became, um, uh, what our life was centered around.
But in actuality it was, we didn’t really focus on the food. We actually focused on, um, you know, our business.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah.
Isabel Chiara: And, um, business, a restaurant especially is hard, right? And it was a lot of, there was a lot of emotional kind of conversations around it. High energy conversations. I’ll just say, you know, it was like, I always like to say it’s like a fast order chef, you know, like, here, take this, do this.
And that’s kind of how, um, food went. You know, put a big, uh, plate in the middle of the table. Everybody grab what they want. Okay. We, we, it’s very fast paced. Um, so actually my life has been that way. Um, and it started at an earlier age and that’s how the tempo was. And I thought that was a normal, and if I went to another person’s home, actually, and, you know, their meals were more balanced.
I remember going to friends’ homes and they would have, you know, a piece of meat and a piece of vegetable and you know, a potato or something on the table, and it was very portioned out. Yeah. And you know, I come from an Italian family. There’s no portions involved. You, you just have whatever you want whenever.
So, you know, I never had those parameters. And I feel like that’s really what happens in your mind and in your mindset, you know, what are the parameters around food and eating? They were not like, basically I grew up with none and um. It was normal. That was normal and it was for many years. And don’t forget, when I went to other people’s homes, like cousins or relatives, they served food the same way.
Oh, because that was your whole, that was just your culture. It’s just the culture. So I never really put two and two together. But now that I was speaking to you, um, that’s kinda really what set the president anyway. Um, so, uh. I remember I went into the restaurant one time and this, um, I never ever thought about weight or weight gain or anything like that.
And um, this gentleman that had been working for us for a long time said, huh, I was only 12 or 13. Huh. Look at those hamburger and french fries. You keep eating, it looks like they’re going to your, your belly. And I was like, then I started thinking about it. Yeah, that was kind of the first moment. And I, you know, how.
When someone says something to you, it’s hard to let it go. That was, that was one of those moments in my life and I thought, well, I’m not gonna not eat hamburger and french fries. It’s like, it was an earlier age. It was like in the seventies. Um, so it was something that. You, there was no conversation, there was not the conversations about diet or anything really at that age.
It wasn’t like it is now. You know, when, when people are speaking about diets and, um, but because I didn’t have those parameters, I thought that, you know, sky’s the limit. And that was a space where I felt, you know, very comfortable. It was like a free for all. Um, I didn’t, there was no parameters put on as far as also, oh, you can’t really have this.
That was really one big part of my life when your parents are disciplining you, where I could say, um, oh, there’s no parameters here. And so if I felt anxious about stuff, I never looked at what I was anxious about. I learned to know that food became a solution that made me feel better and felt, felt okay.
Hmm. Um, so I kind of grew up like that and um, that came became my go-to way to be. Yeah.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah. So then how did that transform into your adult life?
Isabel Chiara: Well, well, what happened is, you know, I, I also didn’t know anything about nourishment. I knew nothing about what were good foods or bad foods, and like people weren’t really discussing that at that point.
And that’s when all the, you know, fast food dinners came out, the Swanson Ginners, the cuisine, things like that. And they were so yummy. The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and our hamburger helper for me, and I started, um. I thought those were, you know, God’s gift to our family because, you know, we were working family, we weren’t, we weren’t home.
Everything had to be a quick meal. So, um, well what ended up happening is, of course it started to gain weight, but I really wasn’t gained. I really wasn’t, I gained weight, but I was still thin. But it became, now food became an obsession. Um, so. Through the years, you know, of course then I went to college and of course everybody was watching their weight when I ended up going to college.
And um, so we started trying all of the diets and diet plans, started with the Scarsdale diet, and of course you do really well on your first diet because you’re very focused. But then later on, um, the diets become less. You’re less in tuned with a diet, they don’t feel great. And then it becomes a stru.
You know, we, I, I developed this whole struggle with food and um, but still I wasn’t super heavy. I just thought that, you know, dieting. ’cause I was, it was really, which I didn’t notice at that point. It was really because I was out of control. And the food was controlling me instead of me controlling the food.
So the thing that I used to actually, it served a big purpose. Food does serve that purpose in life because it’s something that allows us to feel really safe. Yes, it feels like it’s almost like an empowering thing. It becomes something that’s, you know, nu it’s, it is nourishing to us because our whole body, like if we’re anxious or we’re.
We don’t feel good. We’re, you know, something, we’re in a fight with somebody. We argue with somebody, or, um, you know, something’s happening with our girlfriends or our boyfriend or something, we’re gonna go to food or some kind of sugary snack. Um, right. So, well, that was what it was for me. You know, other people have other things.
Right. It’s triggering that dopamine rush in your brain. Yeah. Um, so at the end, so I think that. That just became more of a comfort as the years went by. And then I realized at some point it was something that I needed to get a handle on because at some point I did start gaining weight. Um, and I started looking for other solutions for myself, which as diet was one of them, I felt the need to find something in my life that was.
More another nourishing thing for myself in my life. And I began to look at spirituality and I started looking at energy, um, you know, studying all every modality, which I have really studied, and I have gone all over the world and studied with many masters. I started doing past life regression thinking.
Let me blame it on that. And so that, how did that work out? Well, I have to tell you, these. All these modalities are so interesting, you know? Yeah. It gave me a, I studied, actually studied with Dick Sutfin, who’s one of the, the original persons that, um, did do, uh, past life regression. And I don’t even know how I found him, but I ended up having a good, great connection with him.
Uh, and, um. It was a good 10 years. People thought I was a nutcase. It was way before anybody was doing past life regression. And I was doing it not only that I was feeling, I was having a sensation of different past lives and things like that, so that became a whole thing. But, um, I guess the point is that I was looking to spirituality.
It was really looking to, um, leave my body in order to. Spiritualized myself, so to speak. Like really just go outside of myself to reach for the angels or, um, reach for something that, um, could make me feel okay. Mm-hmm. And so through many years of doing all of this, um, work I’ve done Shamanism, and I’ve, I mean, I can’t even, I, there’s a list that’s like pages long.
I made a list one day of what I did. Um, but I did get a lot of really good training and a lot of intuitive. Energy training also over the years. And, um, but I never integrated that as I, I di I learned it, but I never really integrated it into my life. And then it wasn’t just till recently that I have come with to the point where, um, in my, in my journey with the food thing and realized that it was about me really getting centered in my body.
Living within my body and feeling the feelings and sensations in my body, that is the most important thing, and realize that the whole path that I have been searching for is this path of nourishment to really feed myself not food. I was really, this whole time looking for a really grounded spirituality, a real connection with myself.
Mm-hmm. And that was the search that I was on, you know, my
Ruth Soukup: whole life. That’s so relatable. And yet, so it was like there was a hole inside of you that you were just filling with food over and over and over again, right. That it was something deeper. Yeah. That’s so really cool.
Isabel Chiara: And from that training, so I actually called myself a life actualizer because.
By talk, but when I speak to people because I have, you know, such a, you know, resources from all over the places here that I realize that, um, I can hear in people like what their beliefs are, what their feelings are, what their sensations are, and kind of bring ’em back around in order to help them help them get that nourishment fe the feeling, and then sensations in their body that they can.
Nurture for themselves and have them feel, I think the goal for everyone is to feel whole. To feel like they’re living there for full potential. Yeah. And that’s what I feel like that I bring to the table when I am I. Working with people when I talk to people and, um, when I just get down to the nitty gritty with people.
’cause I am that kind of person Yeah. Where I’m just, uh, I, I go, oh, blah blah, blah. This is what’s going on with you. And um, and so it’s usually a good. Good conversation. Good starting point with people, huh?
Ruth Soukup: Huh. That’s so interesting. I mean, it’s, it, and just your whole journey of, and the, the journey to self-realization that you’ve spent all this time.
I mean, especially food is so emotional. Right. And you, and especially, I can just like hear it in your story coming from. Uh, Italian family where everything is centered around food and you’re, and it just becomes, it’s the way that you were shown love probably. And it’s so, it becomes the way that you receive love.
It becomes the way that you receive comfort. It becomes the thing, the way that you receive everything. And yet when we like find in our lives that, that, that thing that has always provided comfort, that has always provided the love, that has always provided our emotional security is no longer. Is no longer serving us, then how do you replace it?
I mean, it’s a big, that’s a big question. That’s a big question to walk, to walk people through. So tell me a little bit about your process. Like how do you, how do you do that for people when they kind of come to this realization that, oh my gosh, I’m trying to fill a hole inside me with. Food that actually needs to be filled somewhere else.
I mean, that feels like a question that you could spend your whole life trying to answer.
Isabel Chiara: Right. Well, believe it or not, I like to start with what their cravings are. Right. Interesting. What does that tell you? Um, it, well, with the cravings, it also, I start with where the triggers are too. Right. Okay. Like what, what is it that they’re, what is the emotion about that they’re having?
Right.
Ruth Soukup: Mm.
Isabel Chiara: But what has. What has guided them to, to go to whether, whatever they’re doing a binge or feel lonely or feel however they’re feeling, what’s, what’s brought them to that point. And um, after the, uh, we get to that point, then we have a whole discussion and, you know, no one’s the same. Everybody’s the same, but really they’re not really, they have different things that bother them and they have different underlying beliefs.
And I like to get down to the underlying, underlying belief. And I also like to get back to the point where, where do they think it started? ’cause they know, and a lot of people, it seems like, um, go to a certain particular point in their life that they can’t forget. Mm. Like something true somebody to them, something happened to them.
And at that point I like to go into that whole dynamic ’cause it is a dynamic and see what it is that is really what, what they form from, what beliefs they form from it. What be, what, what, what they took away from that situation. And I have found that people live that situation. Like every day, every time they make a decision, they’re, they’re passing through that event in their life and Yeah.
But not consciously or consciously? No, no, no. Unconsciously mm. They remember it, but it’s unconscious when they are processing. Yeah. They don’t
Ruth Soukup: connect the, when they make decision, that event with the decision that they’re making.
Isabel Chiara: Yeah. That’s so interesting. Yeah. Sometimes it’s really easy, you know, it’s just go to that one point and.
Just go to that point, take look at it, take it apart, you know, heal from that experience. And, um, that’s why I created my app, um, because people could do it on their own. They don’t need a therapist or they don’t need a guide and Oh,
Ruth Soukup: interesting.
Isabel Chiara: Yeah, so because I had all these, so these processes that I was doing with people and I had no way.
I wanted to put it all together so people could just go and do it themselves and, and, you know, kind of get out from underneath that whole, whatever the experience is that’s, uh, still affecting them. Uh, but anyway, so sometimes it’s really simple just going to that one thing and sometimes it manifests into something physical in their life.
Like I do believe that a physical manifestation of something, you know, like hives or, uh, some kind of a. Um, breakout or, um, headaches, you know, things like that. Mm-hmm. Um, can be, can go back to similar, different situations in life. Fears, anxieties for sure.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah.
Isabel Chiara: Yeah, for sure. Oh yeah, I can see that. Um, so what
Ruth Soukup: are some of the underlying beliefs typically that you, that you see are connected for people?
Definitely,
Isabel Chiara: I, I, I wanna, I think there’s some main foundational ones. Mm-hmm. So one of the ones that I think is so important, um, is the, I’m not good enough routine.
Ruth Soukup: Hmm.
Isabel Chiara: I call, wait, let’s call it a rack. Rack. I’m not good enough racket because it’s what, it’s what keeps bringing you back to. Allowing yourself to not feel good about things you’re, we don’t feel good about sometimes, you know, we don’t feel good.
Don’t say everybody, we don’t feel good about how we responded to somebody good about how we, um, we’re at, was at work today, our relationship with somebody. So it’s about every what if we have a, a underground, under underlying belief like that and, and it will show up in every area of our life. Yes. So food is just hundred percent the re, the resolution that we’ve come up with.
But we never looked at how, how do we not go back to feeling anxious or judging ourself or criticizing ourself every moment of our life. And at the end of the day, I say we set ourselves up. I like to say we set ourselves up to, um, eat or binge or drink. So it could be anything or do whatever we, there’s an underlying criticism with ourselves and we don’t let ourselves off the hook a lot of times.
Ruth Soukup: And well, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? ’cause if you’re not good enough and you’re not measuring up and then you overeat and you’ve just proven to yourself that you’re not good enough, that you can’t stick with it, that you can’t do the thing right? And so therefore you have to punish yourself again.
And you like just becomes this doom spiral,
Isabel Chiara: right? And then in order to not feel so horrible, we say, okay, well we’ll just diet tomorrow, but today I’m gonna eat whatever I want. So we have all these things that we keep setting ourselves up in, and we’re not now in a catch to. Um, and there’s, you know, so many plenty of other, um, things that, uh, you know, just another thing that I think is really big is doing something that is new to us.
A lot of people have that. The, the, uh, I call that also a, um. Integrate, what do I call it? It’s eating into the biss of the unknown is what I call that.
Ruth Soukup: Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara: And, um, it’s, we don’t know. So sometimes our bodies, our body’s the one that’s really speaking to us. Mm-hmm. You know, if we’ve suppressed it with food, it doesn’t really matter.
So eating into the abyss of the unknown is really about, um, something, we’re doing something new, or we’re gonna meet somebody new, or we’re going for some, a job interview or we’re going to. You know, help a bunch of people that we don’t know. We don’t know who we’re gonna be around. Right. Yeah. And that can create a lot of unsafety mm-hmm.
Inside of us. And yeah, so sometimes I, I also have gotten to the point where I’ve noticed things that are about to happen three or four days from now. My body’s reacting four days prior and saying, you know, getting, starting to get anxious. Yeah. And I think that happens a lot. And people, a lot of people don’t notice that.
Unless you’re like really in tune with yourself, you’re not noticing that, and maybe you need, you need some kind of comfort. So I don’t say food is bad, you know? Mm-hmm. I never would say that food is like the greatest gift to us to get us to really learn about ourselves, know about ourselves, and really nourish ourselves.
It’s been our greatest asset. It’s helped us when we really needed it most.
Ruth Soukup: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a great way of reframing it. Yeah. To really, I and I, I, I talk a lot about that too, of changing the paradigm of from food as. The enemy or something that you’re fighting with or something that is a temptation, right?
Like all these negative connotations that we have when we’re trying to lose weight and get healthy and all the things and, and I mean so many, like so many areas, right? Even as you’re talking about, I’m like so many things that are so screwed up in our brains about food and what we’ve grown up with and the comfort and the emotions and all the stuff that goes into it, right?
But to reframe it of just like. This is nourishment. This is nourishment for your body, for your soul, and how do you, how do you reframe it into a way that it becomes a very positive thing versus a very negative thing? I just think that is so, it’s such a huge, powerful mindset, mindset shift to make for most people, but it’s literally life changing when you can, when you can make that, when you can make that shift.
Isabel Chiara: It’s the same thing with people. As long as we’re talking about nourishment, it’s the same thing with people in our lives that we get upset with, that we get angry with, but they’re really kind of pointing out something within ourselves that we’re not okay with. If we look at it like that, like why did that person just step in my life and now my life is, you know, whatever you say, or somebody would say a mess or, I’m so confused now, or I’m so like that person.
And it’s hard to say, but if we, if we really go back on some of the people, we say, oh, well that person caused me to find another way of life, or made me leave a really terrible relationship and I found something else. And, uh oh, by that person, I signed up for a new course and I learned this, and now that’s my new business.
So I just think that there’s a gift in every situation. It’s really hard to look at it like that. I’m not saying it’s easy. Not always for sure, but you know, I, if we do, I, I also say also, um, that I don’t know what the, I, if I’m in the middle of something with somebody, I go, I don’t know what the gift is yet, but I know there’s a gift inside of this right now.
I
Ruth Soukup: have to tell myself about that myself, that about my teenagers, like, there’s gonna be something here that I really appreciate someday, but it’s not today.
Isabel Chiara: Well, because I like to look really deeply at things, you know, and to see where it, what it, what it really is. And if it’s pointing out something now the times, I think when you, if you keep doing that type of exercise with yourself, where you’re looking at, um, how this is serving me the most, that eventually the angry part or the anxiousness part might get less and less, and it might be a quicker fix.
Yeah. To start to look at life like that, it’s like a habit. Maybe it doesn’t happen as much. Also, I feel like if we’re starting to look at it and we’re getting it, yeah. And then we create bigger boundaries with ourselves and with others Yeah. That are justified. The people around us start to change. Yeah.
So, because a lot of people leave, they leave, they’re, your energy’s shifting and now you’re, you’re like, uh, you know what? That’s really not working for me anymore.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Well, it’s, I mean, that’s, that’s the, that’s so true of anything, right? Like you change, you change your, you can’t change other things. You can’t change those circumstances, but you can change yourself and how you respond.
I think of like, just you saying that reminds me of just my relationship with my husband, right? We’re two very strong-willed. Strong-willed people and that like can be great, it can be magical and it can also be like butting heads because we’re polar opposites in so many ways. And for many years, right?
Like first however many years of our marriage, we, we would butt heads and we would have these giant fights, right? Because we’re both so stubborn and we wouldn’t back. Neither of us would back down and we would not talk for days because we’d be so mad at each other until, but we both have terrible memories.
So then finally we would. Both forget what we were mad about and then we would make up. And at some point, and I don’t remember when it was, it was many, many years ago, thankfully, but at some point in our relationship, we kind of adopted this. You do you boo. Like that’s our, that’s our mantra for our marriage, right?
Is you, do you boo. And it’s amazing how that shifted because the things that used to annoy me about him, right? Like that I would wanna change Now I just, you do, you boo like doesn’t matter to me and you’re, he. So he’s not trying to change me and I’m not trying to change him. And instead of feeling like, no, no, you have to do it my way, where there’s this.
Friction. It, it’s, we both somehow changed to just allow each other to be right and, and it come and we never fight anymore. Like it’s so rare because that’s the mantra and that, and that wasn’t changing him. I didn’t change him. He still is who he is and he didn’t change me. I still am who I am, but we changed our approach.
Of, of just like, it’s okay, I can let this person be in my life and be who they are, and I can be who I am and it doesn’t matter. Like it’s almost, it’s, it’s amazing. It just reminds me of what you were saying, right? Like, you go, you change your perspective and you see the gift in that and it, it changes how you view everybody else,
Isabel Chiara: right?
But also, it’s so great for you, right? It’s because you don’t have any of those. Feelings all day long that are, you know, you’re festering anger in your body. Yes. ’cause I never realized this, but that kind of anger stays in your tissues, really stays in your body. I can see that you’re holding onto that. I can see that.
And then to actually build you up from the inside out too. Yeah. Like you’re, you, it’s also, it also creates that protective wall around you. Yeah. Nom not accepting this behavior, or, no, I’m not gonna accept this behavior. And then poof, you know. Then
Ruth Soukup: you’re a, then you’re a hot mess. So going back to going back to the kind of these, these underlying triggers, right?
And how you work through this with people, um, how, like how do you catch yourself basically once you identify it and kind of go back there? And the app part is really interesting. I wanna talk about that in a second. Um, but once you kind of go, oh yeah, this, this is the, this is the trigger, right? For me, this is the craving that I have.
This is the trigger. This is the underlying reason. This is the thing that happened in my childhood that causes this, that I keep going back to and reliving over and over again. Right? Yeah. Once you actually like, because a lot of times it’s identifying and it’s taking it out of the subconscious and making it conscious, but how do you then.
Is that all it takes, right? Is there another step to, well, you wanna hear it. Surprising to changing the behavior.
Isabel Chiara: I, so then the next step of that would be to bring the person back through their whole life. And not that you have to go through every single thing. You do not move forward in the life without that.
You have that feeling. It almost, it kind of. Ends up in your body, ends up in your psyche Somehow when you look at that, you look at it differently and all of a sudden it’s like you, you melted this whole like, energetic thing that you held onto your whole life that you move forward in your life with. So it kind of, it melts on some level and then you, I, I have people move through their life without that be, without that sensation, without that feeling, and so they could feel, you feel.
Actually in your body. Um, I have people with their eyes closed ’cause they’re kind of experience, they’re having this whole experience mm-hmm. Move forward in their life without that particular behavior in it. And it’s now you come to the point of the age that you are now or your present time and it.
Kind of is released somehow. Yeah. In the body it’s energized and it’s, you know, people would, will, would probably say, huh, I don’t know about that one. But when you’re doing it, you kind of feel like a weight is taken off of you get, get that food. Yeah. Kind of weighs you down, weighted down effect that we keep doing to ourself when we eat or binge or that kind of behavior.
We’re not taking care of ourselves. You kind of releasing, you’re like releasing layers from your body.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah, no, I can, I can 100%. Yeah. See how that, how powerful that would be. I mean, I think about just in my own life and in trauma, right? Childhood trauma and having to go through a lot of therapy, but then it, through the process of that, learning how to release it and let it go, and then being done with it, right?
Like that, that those particular traumatic things that caused all sorts of depression and PTSD and things in my twenties, right? Have not affected me for 25 years because I was able, I was able to fully release them. I can talk about it without breaking down. Right. It doesn’t, it does not impact my life like it is healing.
I think that what comes out of, like what I hear you saying is that healing is possible. That whatever defines you as a child does not have to define you. As an adult, nor does it have to, does it have to rule your life to the point where it’s causing self-destructive behavior anymore? It is 100% possible to just let it go, but it takes some work.
Isabel Chiara: Right. But it does take work and it’s, the work I think is takes to look at it from the inside out and not
Ruth Soukup: Yeah.
Isabel Chiara: You know, I’m gonna a self-reflection and you have to feel the feelings at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s not. It’s not a, I think we’re scared to feel the feelings ’cause we weren’t, I wasn’t trained to feel my feelings.
Ruth Soukup: Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara: You know, I was trained to feel a couple of feelings, but not any, you know, sadness was like taboo. Yeah. You know, so. Um, so you’re, if you’re trying to keep sadness away from yourself or anybody’s trying to keep that away, then at the end of the day, you’re gonna end up feeling that way. One day you’re gonna feel it, and it’s gonna be like in kinda like a waterfall of sadness.
And you’ll, you, we will eventually have to deal with it or look at it now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but there’s hope. And that’s what I take away from it. Oh, I was gonna say the people that are doing the work. Like you’re doing work. Yeah. And you have your podcast and people get to think about the, all the conversations you have in your podcast and they get to own it or not own it.
Say, Hey, that’s similar to me. And they, we get to look at it from all the people that are doing the work. So I think that in order to release a lot of the, the, um, these conflicts within us or these patterns. The people that have gone through so many years of doing the work have made it easier for people to kind of shift through it now, because it’s almost in the consciousness of humanity that.
We can resolve these things in a quicker timeframe. It doesn’t have to be like 30 years or 40 years. There’s so many quicker ways in which to look at things. Yeah. About like quickness, you know, like, here, let’s deal with this. Let’s look at this, let’s get you nourished and then let’s move on. You know, who wants to stay and, you know, work at the work on that like every moment of the day, you know?
Ruth Soukup: Are there any like daily practices that you find kind of help? Help people stay on track or help kind of cultivate this idea that like, I can let the past go in my, in my daily life. Is there, how do you, how do you stay present in like, here’s where I am right now? Do you, are there any daily practices that you recommend?
Um, well first of all, I really think it’s important
Isabel Chiara: to pray.
Ruth Soukup: Mm-hmm.
Isabel Chiara: Pray and really I’m a big believer in that. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s just a really important way to connect and, um, to really ask for support. Uh, in your life also, um, to a higher power with whatever anyone’s preference is. But I just really think it’s important to pray.
And ultimately you’re like letting yourself hear yourself too. You can look at it like that if you’re against prayer, but there have been so many studies showing that prayer is, uh, kind of very healing. Um, and then I like to do a body scan. Where I, you know, start from whichever, you know, my, the top of my head and really have a dialogue with, uh, a lot of my, my head, my throat, my eyes, my heart, and I wanna know what.
These parts of my body are saying like, what do I need? I ask questions like, what do I need? What’s happening? Is there anything that, you know, what feelings are there? Because that’s the part that I avoided my whole life. So that is really key, um, in order to work your way through the whole body. And I think it’s a way to keep, to keep yourself clean and healed too.
Yeah, to really find out what your body’s saying to
Ruth Soukup: you. That mindfulness piece is so, so important of just being present in your body and, and right. Really, I, I, that’s, that’s been huge. That’s been huge for me my whole life, right? Like just learning how to deal through the, those emotions of being able to like express and know and identify what’s happening in your body and, and what the emotions are that are triggering it.
So, so huge. Isabel, I feel like we could keep talking about this for the next hour, but we are actually out of time. So before we go, can you just please let us know where we can find out more, find out more about you, find more, tell us a little bit about your app, um, how we can find that, and of course, we will link to everything in the show notes as well.
Isabel Chiara: Um, so I have an app and it’s called Nourish. And I, I have an offering for your guests too. Oh, great. That’s one free month. And we’ll put that in the show notes also. Okay. And, um, it’s a great way to really check in with, um, go through a lot of patterns and a lot of these things in your life. They’re, um. I call, they’re activations, but they’re kind of meditative.
They bring you through a whole process. There’s a healing at the end of each process, and it allows you to really look at yourself. It is phenomenal how, how deep it gets and, um, you’re being supported the whole time. I love that. Bye. My voice Anyway. And, um, so my website’s called Isabelle Chira.
And everything’s there. And, um, I have a book coming out also, which is gonna be, uh, called Nourish. But I have two other books that I’ve already written called Eat Your Words and another book called Bad Behavior of which you can find on Amazon, or you could find on the, um, on my uh, website also.
But it was such a pleasure being here with you
Ruth Soukup: today. Hey, well thank you so much for coming. I loved our conversation. And um, once again, we will link to all of those in the show notes. So if you didn’t catch the spelling or the names of all the things. Don’t worry, just check the show notes and thank you Isabelle, for being here today.