Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Vibes Tribe: Building a Haven for Women in Midlife
The journey from burnout to vibrant health is rarely a straight line, but Kavita's transformation from investment banker to wellness advocate offers a roadmap worth following. When her son began habitually completing her sentences with "tired," she realized she didn't want exhaustion to define her legacy. This moment sparked a profound shift in how she defined success – prioritizing feeling amazing over financial achievement.
What followed was an exploration into natural healing modalities that began with essential oils and expanded into yoga, Ayurveda, and aromatherapy. As Kavita experienced the transformative benefits of these practices, she recognized a critical gap in wellness resources for women in midlife. The hormonal changes of perimenopause and menopause create unique challenges that had long gone unaddressed in mainstream healthcare conversations.
This realization birthed Vibes Tribe, a platform specifically designed for midlife women seeking natural approaches to anxiety, inflammation, and hormonal balance. In just over a year, the community has grown to nearly 8,500 members who access hundreds of classes across various modalities, from breathwork to Ayurvedic medicine. What sets Vibes Tribe apart is their commitment to authenticity – every class and teacher undergoes rigorous vetting by the team who personally experiences each offering before sharing it with members.
The results speak volumes. Members report life-changing benefits from simple daily practices: one woman overcame debilitating anxiety through breathwork, another eliminated prescription medications by following an anti-inflammatory diet. Perhaps most importantly, the platform provides community validation that many midlife symptoms aren't imagined – they're real, shared experiences that can be addressed with the right tools and support.
Ready to redefine your relationship with vitality? Visit vibestribeco.com for a free ticket to their monthly workshop or join their "Holistic Anxiety Relief for Women" Facebook group to connect with like-minded women on similar journeys.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. My name is Joe Grumbine, your host, and today I have a very special guest and her name is Kavita, which is a very interesting name and I love it, and we've got a great story once again of transformation. She came from an investment banking background and she went through her own personal journey of health, healing and health and you know that's where we tie into this podcast and she's got certified in yoga, ayurveda, aromatherapy and much more. Kavita, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Good, good. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Good, good. Thank you so much for having me. Well, it's always a pleasure. I love to hear people's stories to health, and we've all got such a unique one.
Speaker 2:I'd sure love to hear yours. Yeah, absolutely so. You know, I spent the first part of my I would say life in hustle mode, which, you know, at the time was like a badge I wore of honor, like, yeah, I only slept four hours last night because I was working I'm so cool, you know and that really dictated, I think, a lot of what happened to my health, which is to say that I drank more coffee than water and I maybe in 10 years, had five home cooked meals. So really just set up a otherwise very healthy mind and body for disaster.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think we've. Many of us have been there, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Right, but at the time, you know, there wasn't that much knowledge. You know, I feel like or maybe it's as I got into the industry there was a lot more knowledge, but at the moment I, it was like I was like why is this bad? Why is this lifestyle not the right way to live? I was like why is this bad? Why is this lifestyle not the right way to live? And I think I just I had this moment when my son actually said he they started completing my sentences and I'd be like, oh, I'm, and they're like, let me guess, tired and I'm like that's not how I want to be remembered.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be remembered as tired, and I think I just shifted my goal from or really my definition of success, from making the most amount of money or fame, if you will to just feeling amazing. So I just made that my new goal, and that's where all the certifications came in, because I was like I actually care more about feeling amazing and vibrant and energetic than I do about anything else, not to say I don't care about those other things but they became secondary and this became the new goal.
Speaker 1:So where did you start? You're in this corporate world, you're in this grind, you've got a kid, whatever else you have going on in your life and then, all of a sudden, did you always have experience with this other stuff? Or did it all of a sudden you read a book or saw a sign, or what happened?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, nothing Like I said, I lived the most non-organic, non-healthy lifestyle. What happened is I sort of had this moment of you know I don't know if you want to call it breakdown or whatever it was, but I sort of rage quit and I was sort of one of those people also probably still am who I would have conversations with random people all the time. And so I ended up meeting this woman and I was telling her how I always was tired and I was forgetting things all the time and I had post-it notes and I just had this crazy brain fog and lack of clarity and I didn't know what was going on and all my blood work was reflecting a very healthy and different story from what I was actually feeling. And so she introduced me to a botanist who lived in an adjacent town, who had a business in the essential oil world, and so that was my first intro into sort of a natural, healthy living.
Speaker 2:Now, of course, as a botanist, she had a whole very healthy lifestyle, but you know, my first intro was really into oils and even though I had them before, I never really understood the difference that formulation makes. So essential oils can really be a form of medicine, and so whatever she created for me, I started to already feel better within a couple months and her company needed some help. So it kind of just worked that I came and ended up taking a job working as her CEO and learning, and that's where my first certification in aromatherapy came in.
Speaker 1:Wow. So you had a beautiful weaving of your experience with this thing that you needed and you were able to really get immersed in it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. And then, once I started to feel a little better, like I said, as I shifted that definition of what success looked like, I just, you know, I started to explore yoga and Ayurveda and really come back to my roots, as I'm Indian by you know, cultural but none of this really was appealing until I was like, wow, I feel so good, Like this is why all those yoga hippies are so like happy. There's something to it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. So from this point now you're now you're running a company that's doing the thing that's helping you. Where do we go from here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So I think I felt like all this information was so disjointed and I really had to go out and learn and get all these different certifications and seek out, and I felt like there needed to be a platform that made it that all easier, and so that's where the idea for Vibes Tribe came in, and what's great is I get to continually collect amazing teachers and learn about these different modalities, because what works for one person might not work for another. I know, on my journey I met a runner and I tried running and I think I like killed my adrenals, like it was a total disaster for me, but for her it was amazing.
Speaker 2:It brought her so much energy, and so I do really think that people need to experiment with what works for their energy and their body and find what works for you, because sometimes the first thing you try doesn't.
Speaker 1:Isn't that bizarre? How you know, in this health world, I put quotes around it because there's so many charlatans and people that and right in the midst of the sincere people that are actually doing the healing, and yet there isn't a one hit wonder. There isn't one answer for everybody. You know, one person finds beauty and relief in one thing, the next person finds it toxic.
Speaker 2:Correct, correct, exactly Like even with the oil. Some people swear they shouldn't have it in their skin products and I swear that that should, you should bathe in it with the proper solution, right. So it just. I think the important thing is to look at it as with some joy and fun and say, okay, I'm going to try. And it's like something cool which you know you get to a certain age, how many cool new things you get to try. So it's like I'm going to try this modality.
Speaker 2:The other day I was feeling very stuck in my house in terms of like how it was, and we actually just had a feng shui expert come in to help create calm environments and sacred spaces, and so it was just a fun new way to look at cleaning my house, which I had to do but didn't want to, and it made it fun and I did feel better, right, like energetically. Once everything was clear and flowing, I felt better as well. So I think it's just that kind of thing where it's bringing in new modalities for fun, experimentation and then seeing what works best for you.
Speaker 1:Nice, so tell me about this project.
Speaker 2:About Vibes Tribe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, it started because, again, I felt like there was this need to bring a platform together, and it is for women in midlife, because I do feel that there is a unique set of needs in our health that happens that's never been addressed, like no one, not for very, very long time, did even people talk about menopause or what was happening to our brain and body during this time, and so I felt like bringing in all those resources, especially a lot of the different natural modalities like breath work and meditations and even like more gentle yoga, specifically for it was going to be really important to keeping women sane, because I've really seen a lot of friends like going crazy, right, because your brain, it really affects the brain and it causes anxiety.
Speaker 1:You get to a certain age where it all comes flying apart, right.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden you're like, oh, like I feel like I'm going through you know the beginning of hormones all over again. Right, like I'm a teenager.
Speaker 1:Only the bad way, yeah over again.
Speaker 2:right, like I'm a teenager. Yeah, exactly. So I just saw that there was really this need to help people recenter reclarify, get their purpose and do it in a way that was really dictated for them. Like you know, women speaking to women of the same age kind of experience sharing, as well as providing all these different tools, and so the project is to continue to grow that platform so that those voices can be amplified and brought to the right audience. What's great is it's been growing amazing. We're almost at eight and a half thousand members. Yeah, so it's. I think that the need was clearly there. I was not the only person, and my friends are not all the people going crazy in this stage of life. How does it work? Is it a website?
Speaker 1:It's a place. How's it go? To hundreds of different types of classes and modalities, as well as different affirmation and positive products and we call it the pink rebate.
Speaker 2:So instead of things being expensive, we sell them basically at cost we can do as a part of the membership. So just kind of reminders that you know we're stronger than the storm, it's one of our best selling shirts and that sort of thing to keep the positivity. Because, like I said, I think it's very easy to get in your head when you're a little bit imbalanced and kind of go down this windfall. I know that that was happening with me. I was making kind of mountains out of moleholes, right, everything was overwhelming. Preparing meals for the week was overwhelming, and so trying to bring back that sort of clarity and that like balance of like okay, it's not that big of a deal, it's more that I'm not in balance, I'm not grounded.
Speaker 1:So, as somebody who's dealing with a platform like this, you get approached by people all the time and, as I was saying, there's good people and bad people. What do you do to sort of filter out? You know, how do you raise the bar and keep it with this product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one the experts that I take is mostly only, I would say, on referral or somebody we've like seeked out because we really like love their, what they're teaching. I'm big on education. I feel like you have to study the matter to be talking about it, and then we take and experience the classes as a team to see if we feel like what they're saying works, because look, a lot of these-.
Speaker 1:You push yourself in the actual product before you just go and-.
Speaker 2:Correct, exactly. So we'll take the course, we'll go through it, we'll discuss did we feel like it was helpful? Is it going to be useful to our members? And then, if it is, if the answer is yes, then we put it on, and it's not just like yes, it's like a hell, yes, yeah, yeah, good, good. This is a definite great addition, and we have multiple people on the team. Do it because, like I said, not everything works for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's really important. You know, it's a, in some ways, you, you let a team guide things and you just drift around, but at the other side, if you have some leadership and a team, you can actually stake a course and go down it and maintain it, and I think that there's real power in that. I like what I'm hearing. You know, we didn't really know each other much before you came on and I said, well, let's just, let's just learn this as we're going.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of the things that I like to talk about have to do with the holistic approach, rather than a single minded answer to things. You know, Western medicine likes these single molecule answers for everything, and you know, in certain cases it works. But then they try to put it all in this giant envelope and say, well, it'll work for you, it'll work for all these people. And then you have all these problems that come whereas a holistic approach. You take the problem and you say, well, let's see what might fit in that, and you have all these things and you start to I don't know operate with a little common sense. And so from now, from the client point of view, I suspect you've had a lot of growth. How did it all begin? Tell me about some of your first clients that came through.
Speaker 2:I mean, my first clients were friends, so it was like it was friends and family. And then we sort of spread word. We have a Facebook group where it's called holistic anxiety, and so through that we really grew pretty quickly because we were offering live breath work, live classes so people could experience some of the experts and teachers that we had. And then again, it's like whatever resonated and then we kept the price really affordable because, again, we wanted people to be able to. It was really this plight of I want everyone to have this, these tools, because I feel like as a world and society we will just all be better off if we're a little bit more grounded and a little less reactive.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. It's growing organically. You go from a Facebook group.
Speaker 2:Well, we run ads now too.
Speaker 1:but yes, right, right right, but I'm just trying to walk through it and then at one point, you create this platform. Now, that's a nightmare to a lot of people. I mean, there's so many platforms and I don't know, I don't know how many webmasters in my life, and most of them have been a disaster. How do you, how did you find a you know, a system that worked for you? I mean, it's a little technical, but it's kind of important to me anyways.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, I'm all about, you know, using tools that are already out there. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. So we host the platform on kajabi, which is a online platform to help host classes nice things like that so it's really great. It can be interactive and so I think some of the teachers have like quizzes and pdf downloads and you know different things, but I again, not about reinventing that's good.
Speaker 1:Get something that works and just use it yeah exactly, exactly I suspect you probably got some stories that just are remarkable. You know, when you, when you deal with a group of people which is I don't know half the world's population, and then you deal with a subset of that people, which is maybe an eighth of the world's population, you probably have some dramatic impact. You know, when you deal with something like menopause and you know you add to it all the life's traumas and issues, I suspect you probably have some transformative stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been. It's been truly amazing to watch. You know, we had one member say it was sort of her last chance, like she. It was like she was completely lost. And I think we we do do a monthly free workshop where anyone can kind of come on and we coach and provide it.
Speaker 2:And so you know, she joined the breathwork class and she said that she literally couldn't. She was always shallow breathing, like she couldn't take a deep breath. She was so anxious all the time and just had like really lost a lot of hope in life. And through just the breathwork classes she's like I was, I was finally able to clear that weight, you know, and it wasn't like oh, now I'm all better, but she was like I now feel like I understand the steps I need to take to get better. And I think to me that was just one of those examples of like it doesn't have to be a lot, it doesn't have to take hours, right, it's a matter of taking 10 minutes a day, committing to doing that for yourself. Just honoring that commitment kind of feeds a cycle of belief in yourself, right and then and feeling better.
Speaker 2:And we have the same thing with someone who is really, really in a lot of pain, and we have a Ayurvedic doctor who talks about inflammation and how to relief it on our platform as well, and through her diet program that she had suggested she was out of pain, like she was off all prescription meds. Like I thought that was so incredible to be able to do it naturally. So there are so many sort of heart touching stories and what's great is people also find support with each other. Like it's like, oh my God, I'm depressed and anxious, and someone will be like yeah, me too, but I don't know why. Like I don't know why either. Like nothing in my life suggests that I should be this way. I just am. And so I think just providing that thing of it's OK, wherever you are, it's OK, but what is the next step forward? Like what's the next positive step you can take? And don't do it alone, do it in community, do it with other people and other women.
Speaker 1:But you have group sessions where different clients are able to interact.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. So once a month we do a live sort of community workshop where people can come on and they can get coached if they want. We'll do a breakout room if we feel like we need to help a certain subsect, but if not, it's really just leading through one of the modalities that we're teaching.
Speaker 1:I find that to be some of the most powerful tools and, as a person who's in an instructor role or an admin role, I think you can often gain a lot of insight as to what the group needs as far as direction or you know. Sometimes you learn a thing yourself that would be kind of. My next thing is you've probably had some epiphanies through this. Why don't you share something that you've gained?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I learned. I learned so much from the community and the teachers. I would say one of the biggest things I learned is I didn't have from the community and the teachers. I would say one of the biggest things I learned is I didn't have the best morning routine and I know everyone talks about it being like the pivotal thing, but it really was for me. So changing to do a little bit of. I always meditated a little bit, but more like intentional. And with journaling I felt like that was, and we have a journaling course that I'd taken from Dan and who who does a lot of the classes, and I just found it to be, you know, super, super illuminating on what's really important and what I'm really worried about, cause so often we think we're worried about one thing but then when we start going down the path of journaling, all the different components were like, oh no, it's actually that I'm worried about this, right, like it's actually-.
Speaker 1:Good to hear you more. When I consult clients, that's generally the first thing I say is well, let's figure out where you're at, start writing it down. And then, all of a sudden, people are if they do it, it's more work than most people will do. But if you do, it will do. But if you do it all of a sudden, you're like, oh wow, I didn't see that and and you know it's. It's a powerful, powerful tool. So you've been at this for how long? When did this begin?
Speaker 2:This has been so. I mean I've been on the health journey for a longer, but Vibes Tribe's been a little over a year.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, wow, that's a that's. It's moving quick. So where do you see?
Speaker 2:where it's moving quick so where do you see it headed? You know the goal is to be the number one trusted platform for women in midlife. So I also get a lot of is. Sometimes even I get lazy with what it is and the joy and sometimes I get that reminder of like wow, this works Right. So every time someone's like, oh my God, I feel so much better, you're like, oh yeah, like this works If the goal is to be vibrant and live a vibrant, healthy life, you know, practicing different natural, healthy modalities works.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, this is that magic moment where you get to give your pitch and let everybody know. How do you find this vibe tribe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a vibes tribeco and on our website there is a link for a free ticket and you can join our monthly event. That way it's always a great way to kind of get an intro into the tribe. Or you can join our Facebook group and obviously you'll be all in the know there as well, which is holistic anxiety relief for women. But those are the two places and I'd love to see everybody.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, beautiful. Well, Kavita, it's been an absolute pleasure to have this conversation and I would have to say I would highly recommend. If I was a menopausal woman, I would definitely want to investigate this, but certainly I know plenty of you and I would I would highly encourage it. Well you. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. This has been the Healthy Living Podcast. Again, I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and we will see you next time.
