Classes didn’t even start until 10 am, but I had a morning routine to complete, a self-help journal to fill out, a workout to check off, and a vision of the woman I was becoming. I wrote my “gratitude list” in my journal, my writing trailing off because I I could hardly keep my eyes open. Then, I moved on to my workout instead of just going back to bed like my body was asking me to.

That was the pattern I lived inside for a whole decade.

For my entire twenties, I was chronically stressed, in pain, fatigued, and getting sick in ways I couldn’t explain. But I had a very clear image in my head of the woman I was supposed to be: a high performer, an early riser, with a fantastic physique, very fit, financially abundant, with a multitude of interesting hobbies, well-read and well-travelled, and with a thriving social life.

I wanted it all at once, and I thought if I just kept pushing, I would get there.

So I did exactly what the self-help books and gurus told me to do: 5:30 am wake-ups, morning runs, meal prepping, caffeine to push through the exhaustion, gym five times a week, meditation, affirmations, visualizations, gratitude lists, doing more, more, more. It was exhausting. And the entire time, my symptoms kept getting worse.

I was completely overlooking the signals my body was sending me:

It was asking me to stop. Slow down. Rest. Do less. Expect less. Tend to my heart.

But I couldn’t hear any of that, because the image of who I should be — shaped by society’s standards, social media, and my own perfectionism — was standing directly between me and any chance of healing.

I kept pushing, yet I always felt like I was a fish swimming upstream. I was doing everything “right.” So why wasn’t I feeling any better?

Here is the thing I needed to learn and couldn’t see while I was living inside it:

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You cannot optimize what is barely functional

Imagine a car with a cracked engine block. You keep tuning the carburetor. You change the oil every three thousand miles. You upgrade the tires. You wash it every weekend. And every time you turn the key, you’re confused about why it still won’t run properly. The engine needs to be rebuilt before any of the tuning matters. You have to return to baseline first.

That was me. I was so dysfunctional that I couldn’t even see the dysfunction clearly, even when it was staring me in the face. My body was literally screaming at me, and yet I journaled about my goals.

It took a lot of time and unraveling of false identities to realize that I was actually, truly, very unwell. The first time I allowed myself to admit that to myself, I cried for hours on end. It was like someone had loosened the pressure valve and I was finally allowed to deflate.

For the first time in my life, I recognized that I was not OK, and that I hadn’t been OK for a very long time. I was actually very sick, and my constant drive to optimize was making my life hell. For years, I had been comparing myself to people on social media who showed their “perfect life,” and I had been so disconnected from myself that I believed my life should look the same.

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Get really honest

Now, your story won’t be identical to mine. But after working with dozens of individuals with chronic health problems, it’s become clear that many of them were, on some level, in denial. If this statement sparks something within you, this might be you.

What if, for just a moment, you could allow yourself to drop the expectations and get really honest?

Take a truthful, compassionate look at your physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Ask yourself:

• Is your body functioning well enough that you can pursue your career, your hobbies, and your social life with relative ease?

• Are you able to feel and process your emotions as they arise, or do you shove them down to tend to them later?

• Can you sense when your body needs a break, or when your mind is spinning out of control?

Or do you constantly feel like your body is screaming at you but you are too busy to listen? Have you defaulted into overriding its signals? Did you perhaps even forget what it feels like to be well at all?

If your honest answers told you that you are not okay, you are not alone. It may just be time for a whole new approach.

Give yourself permission to be unwell

Accepting reality as it is right now is one of the most healing things we can do, because dis-ease comes from separation from truth. When we live in denial, we are separating ourselves from truth. You are not currently able to perform at a hundred percent, and that is valid. That is the ground you build on.

Now, there is a fine line here, and I want to be honest about it. You should not remain in the identity of someone who is sick or unwell indefinitely. Illness consciousness does not serve us, and we always want to keep our mind focused on the real possibility of healing and becoming well. But the other side of the coin is just as damaging: holding on to the illusion that you need to live up to some imaginary standard. This is the message we are fed all the time — by parents, by TV, by social media. You should be more. You should be doing more. You should be further along.

Once I understood that I had been approaching my life from the completely wrong angle, I began to make some serious changes. I entered a period of deep, deep rest, where I eliminated all unnecessary noise from my life to the best of my ability. I focused on getting enough sleep. I took daily naps. I cut out stimulants like caffeine and replaced them with herbal tea. I took long, aimless walks around my neighborhood and admired the trees. I stopped trying to do everything, to be everything, and to have everything. I focused on what truly mattered: reconnecting with myself and with my body’s natural pace.

The beautiful thing is, when I finally began to simplify and slow down, and when I stopped needing to constantly optimize myself, my symptoms began to fade.

First, the chronic shoulder tension I’d had for fifteen years.

My jaw unclenched.

My allergies disappeared.

My natural energy returned.

My body could finally relax, because I had allowed it to stop pushing.

Now I am at a point where I can start to push again. But it is coming from a completely different place. I wake up early without an alarm clock. My body naturally wants intense exercise now. My mind craves intellectually challenging inputs. I built the foundation of my health first, and from there I can optimize.

And when I am pushing too much or going beyond my body’s capacity, I am quick to notice and course-correct.

Healing is never about perfection. It is about feeling truly at home in your own body and working with it instead of against it.

If any part of this sounded familiar, I want to leave you with one question. Just something to ask yourself in a moment of raw honesty:

What is your body actually asking for that you keep putting off until next week?

With love,

Laura

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“Picture this new version of yourself: How much money does she make? What is she wearing? How is she breathing? How does she greet others?” the voice asks.

We are harnessing the Lions’s Gate Portal, a powerful astrological time in the year, to manifest our future selves through visualization techniques. It feels good, it feels like I’m being productive. The voice tells me to be proud that I’m showing up for myself and for putting in the work to create my dream life.

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I can see my future self clearly: she is calm, relaxed, wearing only natural fibers, emanating pure love, and moving effortlessly through her day with a quiet confidence that can’t be shattered. She rises with the sun, nourishes her body with whole foods, and radiates health. She earns well, she runs her business with ease, and she serves others from a place of abundance and pure intentions. Money is just a by-product of her natural expression. She is everything I’ve ever wanted to be and more.

“Now open your eyes and make sure you remain in that frequency,” the voice tells me. “This new version of you is already a frequency inside of you. Your only job is to hold on to it.”

I try to hold on to it, but at the same time I can’t help but cringe.

I’ve been enthralled by the world of spirituality, self-help, and self-improvement since around age 13, and since then I’ve tried all the things: Visualization boards. Manifestation. Affirmations. Hypnosis. Holotropic breathing.

I read all the books, bought dozens of courses, and done the practices with serious rigor and intensity. Constantly trying to arrive at a version of myself that I was not.

And for the longest time, I really believed that you can (and should!) manifest your dream life. Yet somehow, these new-age visualization and manifestation techniques never worked to make me feel consistently calm, content, and resilient.

I thought the reason these techniques weren’t working for me is because I was doing them “wrong”. Because everyone tells you this stuff works, right? This is how you “level up” and achieve your “dream life”.

I now realize that it wasn’t me who was wrong, it was the underlying assumption of these kinds of practices that is inherently mis-aligned.

Any idealized version of you that you conjure up in your mind is merely — and can never be more than — a projection of your ego. That means it is created out of memories and past experiences, which then inform what you think you want.

Any projection into the future is by necessity a reflection of the past. And how could it be any other way? The ego is always limited by that which it already knows.

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I’m coming to understand that moving closer to who we are in Truth has nothing to do with conjuring up new images, new projections, and new ideas of an ideal life. Instead, it has everything to do with letting go: of false identities, false goals, and false desires.

What if the highest reality that the universe has in store for you looks nothing like the dream life you’re trying so hard to manifest? The dream house, the dream body, the relationship, the family, the income level, even the level of health you desire?

If you pause to think about it, would life really guide you to any place that isn’t in your highest interests? That doesn’t lead you to the exact lessons you’re meant to learn?

What if all you need to do in each moment is to allow everything to fall away that isn’t true? Again and again, let all masks and ways of being that are not an expression of your true nature just melt away? Who and what would remain? You do not need to manifest anything. You can simply allow yourself to be, to trust, and to attune.

Can you trust that you do not need to direct the trajectory of your life, and instead that you can let go of the steering wheel completely and let the Divine move you?

Can you take everything you’ve ever wanted and desired, even the things you hold most dear to your heart, and can you let them go? Can you give them up to God in complete surrender?

From this place, you can be guided. From this place, there is no ego conflict. From this place, you are free to just be, in your truest expression.

As a result, your life might turn out far more beautiful than anything you could ever conjure with your mind.

Even if that looks nothing like your “dream life”.

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With love,

Laura

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I had always felt a little too chubby (let’s be honest, how many young women don’t feel this way at one point or another), and this seemed like the perfect way to lose those last 5 pounds without needing to restrict my eating. The rules were simple:

• eat mainly carbs from fruit and potatoes

• minimize fat intake (no oil!)

• no animal products

• raw foods for breakfast and lunch, then a cooked high-carb dinner

• no coffee

• as much added sugar as you want

• eat as much as you want, and even beyond the point of satiation

• do 30 minutes of cardio per day

The promise: you’d be slim like a bikini model, naturally detox your body, and have a flat stomach with flawless digestion. The YouTubers with names like “Freelee the Banana girl”, who became internet famous for eating up to 100 bananas in one day, appeared to have all of these things, and shared their perfect blood markers to prove how healthful the diet was. I — being young, impressionable, and somewhat insecure — fell for it. Hard.

I woke up the next morning and resolved to start eating this way right away. So I went out to buy a whole crate of bananas which I then processed into smoothies for breakfast AND lunch on most days. People in the supermarket gave me the weirdest looks, so I joked that I had pet monkeys living at home that I needed to feed. My roommates thought I had lost the plot and complained about the constant smell of overripe bananas emanating from the pantry.

The influencers who sold this diet lived in the tropics, where it’s much more feasible to eat a lot of raw fruit year-round. I was living in Germany where we have seasons and very cold winters. Yet even in winter, I would drink huge smoothies consisting of 10 bananas and frozen fruit for breakfast. In summer, this would be preceded by eating half a huge watermelon, also often refrigerated. A lot of cold food, a LOT of fructose. I remember sitting at the radiator in my apartment after breakfast, shivering, teeth chattering, my lips blue from the cold foods. I then had to chug about half a liter of tea and take a long hot shower just to get my body temperature back to normal.

I already had health issues prior to starting this diet, and looking back, eating this way made everything so much worse. Pair this with contraceptive hormones and a lot of stress, which resulted in a perfect storm of symptoms: I was constantly hungry, tired, bloated, had massively unstable blood sugar, and trouble concentrating. I was losing hair. I had no libido. My allergy symptoms reached an all-time high. I was anxious, constantly overwhelmed, and had severe chronic pain. I would fall asleep in every single morning class I attended because my body was so low on energy.

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I kept this way of eating up for about 4 years. The diet was wrecking me, yet I was so deeply brainwashed. Not only was I convinced that I was doing something good for my health, I actually thought that everyone who wasn’t eating this way was a moron and was missing out. When in retrospect, I was the moron. People close to me could see that it was not doing me good, and tried to talk to me about it, but I would not listen. I genuinely thought I would get fat and unhealthy if I deviated from the high-carb, high-raw protocol.

Pretty much everyone I was influenced by on social media at the time now no longer follows this diet. They didn’t admit it at the time, but many of these people (primarily young women) developed massive health issues like SIBO, amenorrhea , depression… or they had gone back to eating animal products but were lying to their audience about it because they had built their entire brand identities around this diet.

Eventually, my worsening health required me to also recon with reality and start to make some serious changes. I found Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of health, which describes an entirely different way of eating: one that is tailored to your unique constitution (Dosha) and that takes into account the season and the strength of your digestive fire (Agni) at different points throughout the day. In Ayurveda, emphasis is placed on eating warm, well-cooked foods that digest easily for your body.

It was a radical shift in perspective and it took me many years to let go of the brainwashing I had willingly been subjected to. The more I moved away from the diet cult and started focusing on what actually digests well for me, the more I started to feel like myself again. Not only did I neither become fat nor ugly, I am actually glowing and can safely say that I look and feel WAY better now at 31 than I ever did in my 20s. My hair stopped falling out. The glow in my face has returned. I have sustained focus and energy throughout the day that I could never have dreamed of back then.

I still eat a plant-based diet, and I still love fruit, but I am much more in tune with what my body craves and how its needs change throughout the seasons. In winter, I eat three warm meals a day, stew most of my fruits, and cook my vegetables. My meals provide me with comfort, warmth, and nourishment instead of making me freeze. In summer I also incorporate more raw and cooler foods, but I always ensure I also eat plenty of healthy fats and protein. I eat until the point of satiation, not beyond. I include spices that support my digestion and I follow my meals with herbal infusions. No more huge family-sized salads or smoothies the size of my head.

As a result, my body feels nourished, my digestion is incredible, and bloating has reduced significantly. My energy is more stable and my chronic pain, allergies, and and anxiety have essentially vanished. And most importantly, my body has started to trust me again. It took me years to undo the damage that the old way of eating had caused me.

Your body is the best guru. It knows more about what you need than any influencer with a smoothie bowl and a ring light. It doesn’t matter if a food is considered “healthy”. What matters is whether your body can actually use it. And this can change throughout different periods of your life, depending on many factors: where you live, your health history, your stress levels, etc. There is no one-size-fits all for optimal diet. If anyone tries to make you think there is: run. Run fast and run far.

In future posts, I’ll share more about Ayurveda and how I’ve applied many of its principles to work with my unique bodily composition in order to restore my health. If this article resonated, let me know in the comments below. I read and reply to every comment.

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With love,

Laura

nothing.

I just felt… completely fine.

After over a decade of suffering from the worst hayfever of anyone I know, this is absolutely crazy. It’s peak grass pollen season and I’ve got ZERO symptoms.

Every year it was the same shitshow: Starting mid- May, I could barely spend time outside without getting severely ill: difficulty breathing, eyes tearing up, sneezing attacks that didn’t stop, and my throat so incessantly scratchy that I wanted to rip it out.

I felt gross, constantly tired, extremely irritated, and experienced a kind of overwhelming helplessness from being vulnerable to literal air. And it kept getting worse every year.

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Your body is designed to heal

Over the last 10 years, I went to every imaginable doctor, who gave me all the standard pharmaceutical treatments. Medications, stronger medications, de-sensitisation injections, the works. But nothing helped, my allergies kept getting worse.

The medical narrative is that allergies cannot be healed, they can only be managed. In other words: you’re stuck with them for the rest of your life, but you can take medications to make the symptoms less severe.

The truth is, allergies can be cured holistically by addressing the root cause of the problem. From a naturopathic perspective, allergies are a symptom of chronic systemic inflammation. This inflammation can stem from stress, toxin accumulation, hormonal dysregulation, compromised gut barrier integrity (more on this later), and poor sleep.

Your body is an incredibly intelligent organism that is designed to heal, and it will do so naturally when you provide it with the right conditions. Once I understood this, I stopped looking for ways to simply manage my symptoms, and instead began taking radical responsibility for my own healing. That is when my symptoms finally started to disappear.

What didn’t help

Before I get into it, I want to mention some holistic approaches which did NOT help me heal my allergies:

Elimination diet

A few years ago, my functional medicine doctor put me on a very strict elimination diet. I was not allowed to eat sugar, most fruits and most vegetables, or any legumes. This was very challenging for me as someone who eats a plant-based diet. I religiously followed the diet for 6 months, and also purchased highly overpriced supplements recommended by my doctor. It was VERY stressful. I couldn’t go out to eat with friends. I constantly had to plan ahead what I would eat and make sure to buy the right ingredients. The diet did not fit easily into my lifestyle and I found it difficult to socialize. My symptoms did not improve.

Elimination diets have their place, and they can be valuable to uncover hidden food intolerances that may be causing issues. Personally, I didn’t discover any food intolerances and the stress of following such a strict diet was probably just making me sicker overall. I will say that cutting out refined sugar for a while was beneficial and improved my digestion, but that’s about the only positive thing I can say about that.

I should also add that food intolerances can be healed. Just because you can’t tolerate a food right now, doesn’t mean you won’t be able to tolerate it for the rest of your life. When your immune system, nervous system, and digestive system become more robust, and when you detoxify your body, you’ll likely find that you can metabolize trigger foods more efficiently.

Probiotics

I have tried several different probiotic supplements prescribed to me by several different doctors, but none of them helped cure my hayfever symptoms. That doesn’t mean probiotics don’t work, but for me, taking them in isolation without addressing deeper systemic dysregulation and toxicity in my body did not have any noticeable effect. I would consider them an add-on to try once you’ve gotten your daily habits in order, managed your stress, detoxified your body, and regulated your nervous system.

Acupuncture

I visited a Chinese acupuncturist twice weekly for several weeks leading up to pollen season. I had high hopes for this treatment because I had read about how effective it can be for some people, and also the concept of energy meridians in the body just makes sense to me. Despite my optimism, I didn’t see any improvement in symptoms from this.

Now that we’ve seen what didn’t help, here is what did work for me to become 100% symptom- free and medication-free! (I still can’t fully believe that when I write that.)

How I healed my allergies naturally

This is an overview of everything I’ve done in the last 6-12 months. It’s a lot, so I will try to keep it brief, but please feel free to DM me or comment if you have any questions. I will be addressing frequently asked questions in future articles and I’ll also be going into more details on specific protocols.

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Lifestyle changes

• Circadian hygiene. One of the first things I began taking seriously when healing was the timing and type of light exposure I got throughout my day. Your body is not an independent biological system, but an energetic interface with its environment, most notably with sunlight. Sufficient and correctly timed natural light exposure is essential for deep sleep, hormonal regulation, stable energy, and immune system function. Here’s how to do it:

  • Sunlight first thing after waking: the rule is natural light before screens, always. You should be getting 10-20 minutes of natural light on your eyes within the first hour of waking (even on cloudy days), to suppress melatonin production, increase cortisol, and make you feel awake and alert.

  • Go outside as much as possible, especially around noon. The spectrum and intensity of sunlight varies throughout the day, whereas artificial lights (which we have indoors) do not. Our biology is extremely sensitive to these changes in sunlight spectrum and intensity, which send vital signals to your body to modulate your hormones, which ensure your body functions properly. Therefore you should be going outside as much as possible during all seasons to synchronize your biology to the sun.

  • Minimize blue-light exposure 1-2 hours before bed. Blue light suppresses melatonin production, making it more difficult to fall asleep and have sufficient deep sleep. Turn bright lights off at least an hour before bed, and instead use candles, dim red light bulbs, or salt lamps. If you need to be looking at screens, use blue-light blocking glasses to minimize the amount of blue light hitting your eyes.

  • Sleep in a pitch-dark room. Your room at night should be fully dark, to the point where you can’t see your hand when it’s right in front of your face. Using a sleep mask over your eyes is a good start, but since your skin also has photoreceptors, I’d highly recommend investing in proper blackout curtains to ensure you are getting the most deep, healing sleep possible every single night.

• Sleep 7-9 hours per night. Your body does its most important healing and repair while you are in deep sleep. Getting to bed between 10 and 11 pm has been non-negotiable for me this past year, and that meant saying no to a lot of late-night social events. When healing becomes your main priority, saying no to things that take you away from good sleep becomes the obvious choice. I’ve never regretted a night when I didn’t go out and woke up early in the morning feeling refreshed.

• Quit sugar. I removed added sugars from my diet: things like baked goods and candy. I still ate lots of fresh fruits and used honey as a sweetener. By no means did I do this perfectly, but I definitely noticed my digestion improved as a result.

• Quit coffee. I spent the last 6 months slowly weaning myself off of coffee, in order to let my nervous system re-calibrate back to baseline. I didn’t do this overnight, but instead gradually so my body could adapt. I am shocked by how much my energy has improved. I no longer wake up feeling groggy, but instead energized. In the evenings, I get naturally very sleepy around 9 pm — this is how it should be! I fall asleep almost immediately after hitting the pillow, my sleep quality is amazing and I never wake up in the night. Also, my digestion has improved A LOT as a result. I drink organic herbal tea after lunch instead of an afternoon coffee, which has further improved my digestion.
  

Supplements

After getting extensive bloodwork done, I discovered I was slightly deficient in several key vitamins and minerals. I treated these deficiencies both using IV infusions and oral supplementation, according to my doctor’s recommendations. I also took some additional supplements in which I was not deficient, but to maintain levels.

• Iron. Where I live, ferritin values between 16 and 169 are considered “normal range” — I was at 92. According to my doctor, the value should be at 150 minimum if you are a woman, i.e. much higher than what is considered normal. The first time I got an iron infusion, I felt this crazy rush of love flooding my body, like I wanted to hug every person I saw and an intense elated feeling. The nice thing about these infusions is that you can do them once every 6-12 months and you don’t have to take iron supplements orally, which can sometimes be difficult to absorb well, especially if your gut is compromised.

• Magnesium: 400 mg daily, once in the morning, and once right before bed. It helps a lot with sleep, muscle recovery, and digestion. Most people are deficient in magnesium.

• Vitamin D & K2, co-enzyme Q10, copper & zinc, B vitamins. All play vital roles in immune system, metabolism, and nerve health, so I’ve made sure my needs are covered.

Superfoods

I’ve also been supplementing some superfoods into my diet:

• Psyllium husk has been a staple of mine for many years now. It has a profoundly beneficial effect on my digestion and helps me to have complete, regular bowel movements every day. I drink two teaspoons mixed with water in the mornings on an empty stomach, at least 30 minutes before breakfast. If you are just starting out, I would recommend taking one teaspoon and gradually increasing to two. It’s also very important to drink enough water throughout the day, otherwise it can cause constipation.

• Black cumin oil (Nigella sativa). This seed has been used for thousands of years for healing purposes, and it has potential anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits. It contains thymoquinone, an active compound that blocks the release of histamines. I take one tablespoon per day with my breakfast. It’s also scientifically proven to help with allergic rhinitis, which I’ve had since age 16.

• Nettle powder. Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is a natural antihistamine and has anti-inflammatory effects. It interferes with histamine receptors and inhibits tryptase and other enzymes that promote the response of inflammatory chemicals during an allergic reaction. I picked my own stinging nettle leaves last summer (use gloves!) and let them dry, then I ground them up to powder in a food processor. I put half a teaspoon per day onto my breakfast. The taste is quite intense but you get used to it.

• Local raw honey. Honey has been used for healing purposes since ancient times. There is not much convincing scientific research on the effect of honey consumption on hayfever symptoms, but I still believe it is healthy. I take 1 teaspoon with my breakfast daily.

Detoxification

As mentioned before, toxin accumulation in the body leads to systemic inflammation, which can cause illness such as allergies. Living in the modern world means our bodies are constantly exposed to toxins such as heavy metals, microplastics, mold, or chemicals. Your body is designed to get rid of toxins, but when the load becomes too high, it becomes overburdened and it can’t keep up. That’s why regular detoxification protocols are important, to help our bodies return to healthy levels.

Reducing toxic load

The first step of detox is to stop exposing your body to so many toxins in the first place:

• I quit alcohol completely. Quitting alcohol is unquestionably the best decision I have made in my life so far. I was never a heavy drinker, but I did drink socially occasionally. When I made the firm decision to quit alcohol, it was really a pivotal moment when I chose to prioritize my health over societal expectations or norms. This decision allowed me to enter social events without feeling torn or conflicted. I stopped going to bars and I started attracting new friends who like to do outdoor or sports activities together, which I find much more enriching than hanging out in bars or going clubbing. I am certain I would not have healed from chronic pain, debilitating anxiety, digestive issues, and allergies if I had not made this decision to quit alcohol. Everything else was downstream from there.

• I threw out my perfume collection. Conventional perfume contains up to 100 different toxic chemicals including polymers, which are absorbed through your skin and lungs. It can also cause allergic reactions and asthma. If you already suffer from allergies, skin inflammation, or lung problems, you need to be staying away from this stuff!

• I replaced all products with non-fragranced: dishwasher soap, cleaning products, laundry detergent, shampoo, body wash, body lotion, hand lotion, candles. Fragrances in household and personal care products provide a perfect cocktail of undisclosed and unsafe chemicals that your body absorbs through the skin or through the lungs. The less artificial fragrances you are exposing yourself to, the better.

• I replaced plastic cookware and food storage items. Whenever hot food or liquid comes into contact with plastic, there is a high chance that microplastics are leeched into the food. I now cook with wooden cookware, and I store my food in glass or stainless steel containers instead of plastic. I also replaced my plastic kettle with a stainless-steel version.

• I started buying only organic foods whenever possible. Pesticides and herbicides in conventional products contribute to leaky gut, which is when the intestinal lining becomes damaged and allows undigested food, bacteria, and toxins to pass into the bloodstream. This leads to systemic inflammation including allergies. Even organic produce should be washed well; ideally with baking soda or food-grade hydrogen peroxide to get rid of the chemicals on the surface.

  

• I installed a water filter and an an air filter. I live in the city, where the air and water quality is not the best. A HEPA air filter runs in my apartment to filter out dust, pollen, and toxins. I attached a water filter to my kitchen tap which is made from activated carbon that filters out a lot of toxins.

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Supported my elimination pathways

Your body is well-equipped to get rid of toxins. There are 5 main channels through which it can do so, which are:

• Skin (sweating)

• Bowels (pooping)

• Kidneys (urine)

• Liver (packages toxins in bile)

• Lungs (breathing out)

If any of these pathways are not working properly, your body will struggle to get rid of toxins effectively, meaning they will circulate in the bloodstream or become stored in the body, causing illness. Before embarking on any detoxification protocol, it is essential to ensure that the elimination pathways are all open and functioning properly.

How I supported my elimination pathways:

• Enemas once a week using chamomile tea. I was skeptical to try this at first, but the relief I felt after my first few enemas was immense. It helped my gut to get rid of undigested food, and particles that had become stuck in the digestive tract. I do an enema now whenever I feel unusually heavy or bloated, and it always helps me to feel better. Supporting the bowls also takes pressure off the liver, which is a key organ for detoxification.

• Castor oil packs on my belly to help break up lymph and improve liver function.

• Sauna at least once a week to eliminate toxins through the skin and take the burden off your other elimination pathways, particularly the liver. Always take a small towel with you to the sauna and wipe sweat off as it appears, so that toxins don’t get re-absorbed into the body.

• Deep breathing, hydration, dry brushing, regular movement, and yoga all get lymphatic fluid moving, which carries toxins towards the elimination pathways and out of the body.

Herbal support

Herbs have changed my life. I started taking herbal tinctures 3 months ago and I am convinced of their powerful effects for health and detoxification. They help to open the elimination pathways, manage microbial overgrowth, support the liver, improve circulation, regulate hormones and the nervous system, and pull heavy metals from the body. They helped me to get rid of chronic sinus congestion that I’d had for over 15 years. As an unexpected additional benefit, my menstrual cramps have completely disappeared since I started taking herbal tinctures.

My favorite herbs I’ve been taking in tincture form:

• Lemon balm, chamomile, St. Johns Wort, rose hips, red clover, echinacea, dandelion root, parsley leaf

I am very excited about herbalism and its powerful healing potential, and I will be studying and sharing more about it on my Substack in the future. I just wish I had found them sooner.

Nervous system regulation, God, and subconscious reprogramming

Everything I have described so far will not work if your nervous system is not regulated and your subconscious programming is working against you. A resilient nervous system, faith, and the right mindset are the most important parts of healing yet often the most overlooked. Your body can only detox and heal when your nervous system is given the chance to reside in a parasympathetic state for prolonged periods of time.

• Mental rest and naps. During naps and deep mental rest, your brain produces theta brain waves (4-7 Hz), which is where deep healing takes place. The more time you can spend in this brain wave state, the faster you will heal. I’ve been taking daily 10-15 minute afternoon naps every single day. If I can’t nap, I’ll simply lie down, put on an eye mask, and get mental rest. It’s really simple, incredibly powerful, and massively underutilized.

• Prayer. I only found prayer a few months ago and it has been the most profoundly healing practice I have ever experienced. Through prayer, I understood that I am always divinely held and supported, and thereby was able to release years of inter-generational fear conditioning. I have never cried so much in my life as I have during prayer: Through the perception of God’s unconditionally loving presence, my psyche and body finally felt safe enough to move through stagnant and suppressed emotions, in particular shame, guilt, and fear. Stagnation — whether emotional, lymphatic, or energetic — leads to illness, and when this stagnation is shifted the body naturally returns to dynamic equilibrium. Learning to let go, trust, and surrender to God’s will has softened my heart in ways that words can’t begin to describe.

• Written affirmations. I pasted affirmations around my room. They say things like “I am fully healed”. “I have a strong immune system”, “My body is always working in my favor”. I wrote them in the NOW so my mind would accept it as a reality that was already true, not as something that would be true “one day”. For months, I’ve been seeing these affirmations throughout my daily life: while brushing my teeth, doing the dishes, or sitting on my yoga mat. With affirmations, repetition is key, so the more you can see/hear/speak them, the more likely they are to take root in your subconscious.

  

• Spoken affirmations. This may sound crazy, but it works: Every time I went outside in the Spring, I took a deep breath in and spoke out loud: “I embrace spring”. And I meant it. I used to feel a twinge of fear whenever I saw pollen in the air, so I began actively working to train my subconscious to feel good despite the pollen. This soon became my new reality and I now look forward to spring without feeling any fear.

• Grounding in nature: Spending time in nature is inherently healing. Plants absorb only parts of the sun’s light spectrum and reflect infrared light back, which has many proven health benefits for humans. Being barefoot outdoors (grounding) allows for an exchange of negative ions, which reduces inflammation in the body. I take my shoes off outdoors whenever I can and connect my bare feet to the earth. Walking barefoot has helped me understand that I am one with this beautiful planet we inhabit, a connection that has strengthened my ability to coexist in harmony with pollen.

That’s about it. None of these things healed my allergies overnight. It was the combination of these different habits, practiced daily over a several months, that helped me heal. Let your takeaway be that true healing is multifaceted — it requires environmental refinement, diet and lifestyle changes, and trust. With a firm conviction, the right priorities, and consistency, miraculous healing becomes possible.

All my love,

Laura

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1. Bitters. I’ve been munching on a head of chicory every day alongside my meals or as a snack, which is both tasty and healthy, because they contain bitters. Bitters are a class of secondary plant compounds that naturally occur in several plant foods. The amount of bitters in modern foods is much lower than it once was, since edible plants have been cultivated to be more palatable to modern-day taste preferences. Which is unfortunate, because they are super good for your health! They increase saliva production and bile production, which aids in digestion, particularly of fats. They have also been shown to support the immune system and to have anti-inflammatory properties. Besides chicory, other foods containing bitters are endive, artichokes, dandelion leaves, arugula, radicchio, and grapefruit. For maximum retention of bitters in these foods, it is best to consume them either raw or only lightly steamed.

   

2. Stainless-steel kettle. This has been on my wish list for a long time: a 100% stainless steel kettle to replace the plastic one I had been using for years. Whenever plastic comes into contact with boiling water, microplastics can be released, and that’s basically what you’ll be drinking with every tea or coffee. That’s why a glass or stainless-steel kettle is the much healthier choice, because it doesn’t contain plastic.

3. Spelt coffee alternative. One of my goals for this winter was to drastically cut down my caffeine consumption, in order to promote healthier digestion and a more relaxed nervous system. I’m down to one cup of half normal/ half decaf coffee in the mornings, which is a big win! To mimic that “coffee vibe” later in the day, I’ve been leaning on spelt coffee alternative, which is 100% caffeine-free but tastes pretty close to the real deal.

   

4. Dark chocolate + citrus combo for breakfast. I eat porridge every morning in winter, and I tend to get topping hyper-fixations that last for about a month or two until I move onto the next variation. This month was all about porridge topped with citrus, 90% dark chocolate, and nut butter. It’s been shown that daily consumption of cocoa flavanols found in dark chocolate improved endothelial function in heart-disease patients and mobilized circulating angiogenic cells, a type of stem cell responsible for vascular repair.

   

5. Weleda Skin Food lip balm. I don’t know what I’d do without an effective, low-tox chapstick to get me through the winter. It’s rated “Excellent” on the Yuka app, which I use to scan any cosmetic product before deciding to purchase it. I love Weleda, and this lip balm has served me well and kept my lips hydrated and kissable even in the coldest winter months.

   

6. Opal phone curfew. I used to often faff around on my phone until right before I went to sleep, which isn’t great for helping the body and mind unwind and promoting healthy sleep. For a few months now, I’ve been using an app blocker called Opal, where I can set customized app blocking schedules on my iPhone. The most helpful one has been “Phone Curfew”, which blocks nearly all of my apps at 10 pm, with no option to remove the block. I made sure to keep certain apps unblocked for the rare occasion that I might be out and about past 10pm, including google maps, Uber app, etc. But basically from 10pm my phone is completely boring and doesn’t keep me from my beauty sleep. At this point latest, I’ll turn the phone off (yes, off!) and I won’t touch it until the next morning when I’ve completed my morning essentials. If I don’t take measures to restrict my phone use, it will take over my life and leave me feeling depressed and unwell.

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7. The best falafel in town. After I get done teaching yoga one evening a week, it is usually pretty late and I’m not inclined to cook dinner anymore. Luckily for me, I pass by this awesome falafel shop that recently opened up on my way home. I go for the falafel makali wrap, which has fried vegetables alongside the salad and falafel. They have a great range of vegan sauces, all labeled clearly. I go for the tahini sauce and the mango sauce, which are simply divine — they’re not stingy on the sauces either! I look forward to my falafel every week and I quite possibly may be addicted.

   

8. Prayer. I didn’t grow up religious and prayer was never something that was practiced in my family. But recently I have discovered prayer in a context that is not attached to a specific doctrine or religion, and I have joined a prayer circle that meets online every Thursday evening. There is something so replenishing about offering it all up to God: all fear, pain, hopes, dreams, and uncertainty, recognizing that we are divinely held and supported at all times, and that we do not (and cannot!) control everything. Prayer allows us to soften and let go. It is the ultimate healing tool.

9. Loose- leaf tea instead of tea bags. I recently learned from Dr. Rhonda Patrick (FoundMyFitness) that tea bags can release microplastics when they come into contact with boiling water. Even the ones that don’t look synthetic, usually are! Furthermore, the tea in tea bags can be mouldy and you don’t see it. That’s why I’m now opting for organic loose-leaf tea (I have one mug every day after lunch!), which by the way is also cheaper. To seep the tea, I use a metal tea egg. At one point I’ll invest in a nice teapot.

   

10. Disliked: plastic-free gum. Speaking of microplastics, I think we all know by now that conventional chewing gum is made of plastic. Chewing gum gives me an outlet when I’m feeling a bit stressed or nervous. I’ve been chewing on plastic-free gum lately, but honestly, it sucks. It disintegrates while you chew it and gets stuck between your teeth. It also doesn’t have the right amount of resistance— too soft. I really hope they come up with a better product for this. Definitely still a gap in the market… new business idea anyone?
    
    I hope this list inspires you to make healthy living feel a little more fun and a little less overwhelming. You don’t need to overhaul everything at once — one small change per month, done consistently, already moves the needle. I’d love to hear from you in the comments: what habits, swaps, or indulgences have you been loving (or not loving) lately?

Love, Laura

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Cleaning and clearing my space

I want 2026 to feel like a clean slate, and my home is the first reflection of that. I’m cleaning every corner of my apartment, cleaning out my fridge, and lighting palo santo to refresh the energy. I’ll be emptying my laundry basket and carefully washing and folding everything in the next few days. My yoga mat, where I spend a good amount of time each day, will get a proper rinse and I’ll wipe it down with rosemary oil cleaner.

Caring for my plants

My plants are my only flatmates. They provide oxygen and make my space feel alive. Over the past weeks, their leaves have accumulated dust, which is not just bad for me (hello dust allergies), but also hinders their growth. I’ll be wiping the leaves lovingly and re-potting the ones that need new soil. They, too, deserve a fresh start in 2026.

Decluttering possessions

I’m sorting through papers, drawers, and items that have quietly become clutter. I’m donating, recycling, or selling what I no longer use — especially clothing made from synthetic fibers as I move toward a lower-tox lifestyle. I’m also letting go of items still stored at my parents’ house, like old sports gear from hobbies I’ve outgrown. Letting go of objects that belong to former versions of me feels like a deep exhale.

Tying up loose ends

Few things weigh more heavily than unfinished business. Before the year ends, I’m making sure all invoices and bills are paid, eliminating small but persistent sources of stress.

Closing cycles in learning

This year, I took an incredibly transformative online course about the body’s innate ability to heal itself (for anyone interested, here is the link). As I finish the final modules and review my workbook notes, I’m honoring the insights I’ve gained. I love online courses and have already purchased new ones which I am excited to start, but I want to make sure I’ve fully completed and integrated this one before diving into something new.

Reviewing my finances and goals

I use a mobile app to track my finances, and now I’ll be doing a review to see where I spent the most money, where I stuck to my budget (or didn’t!), and how much money is on my savings accounts and investment portfolio. Looking back over 2025, I’m also reviewing the goals I achieved: finishing my Master’s degree in Physics, making major strides in my health, and beginning to share my authentic self more openly online. Some goals, like learning Spanish or holding a handstand, will carry over into 2026. Others no longer resonate, and that’s okay too.

Digital decluttering

My devices deserve a reset as much as my physical space. I’m deleting unused apps, cleaning my laptop desktop, closing tabs, and removing old bookmarks. I’m also deleting old chats and contacts that no longer feel aligned. Digital clutter, I’ve realized, can weigh on the mind just as much as physical clutter.

Setting and visualizing goals for 2026

Every year I treat myself to a brand new Dingbats dotted notebook to use as my journal for the year. I write my goals on the first two pages and refer to them often throughout the year. Lately, I’ve learned to pair that ritual with visualization: feeling the emotions of already having achieved what I’m calling in. This year, I might even create my first vision board to reinforce that imagery.

Spending time in prayer and silence

As we pass through the Rauhnächte, this liminal time between the years feels charged with spiritual energy. I’m taking a break from socializing and instead spending more time in silence and prayer, asking for guidance and clarity as the next chapter unfolds. Next year is still a blank slate for me in so many ways, and I am learning to let go of control and surrender my life to a higher power.

When I clear away what no longer belongs — dirt, objects, unresolved tasks — I align my outer world with the person I’m becoming. Decluttering isn’t about minimalism, it’s about coherence. The energy that once felt stagnant begins to flow again. And that, to me, feels like the perfect way to step into a new year.

How are you preparing for 2026? I would love to hear from you in the comments!