A Personal Note From Orion

Welcome back, stellar listeners! We’re joined by Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist and author renowned for her transformative work in helping women reclaim their femininity and power. 

In this episode, Kelly shares invaluable lifestyle change tips, highlights from her journey from conventional psychiatry to embracing holistic practices, and profound insights from her book The Reclaimed Woman.

We’ll dive into Kelly’s personal story of embracing self-compassion, the pivotal role of creative expression in emotional processing, and her innovative programs like Vital Mind Reset and Reclaimed, which have empowered countless women. We’ll explore themes of self-love, the importance of honoring your body’s signals, and the transformative practice of “entering through the upset.”

Kelly also opens up about the societal pressures on women, the pitfalls of ignoring intuition, and the power of intrinsic motivation. Join us for an episode filled with wisdom, practical advice, and inspiration to help you live a more vital, connected, and empowered life. So, get ready to be inspired and take another step toward your stellar life!

 

 

In This Episode

• [02:50] – Kelly Brogan recounts her life journey, detailing her transition from conventional psychiatry to holistic practice.
• [05:03] – Kelly outlines the creation of her Vital Mind Reset program and highlights its success in helping people overcome health challenges and shed diagnoses.
• [15:07] – Kelly discusses how she handles criticism, emphasizing the concept of “entering through the upset” and the practice of self-compassion.
• [25:39] – Kelly emphasizes the value of self-care rituals, such as modifying breakfast habits and rethinking one’s relationship with peeing.
• [35:29] – Kelly stresses the role of creative expression and its impact on overall well-being.
• [44:03] – Kelly shares tips for living a stellar life.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hi Kelly. Welcome to the Stellar Life podcast. It’s an honor and a pleasure having you here. Thank you so much for being on the show

The pleasure is all mine. Thank you.

Before we begin, maybe you can share a little bit about your life story and your passion.

That could take up the whole session. I guess I have really come to appreciate my journey, which at many points has appeared to be like a dumpster fire of a life path with many, many dark nights of the soul, many shed identities, many experiences of really recognizing that I had it all wrong and also learning to have compassion for the part of me that thought that I had it all right. Looking at the arc of my process and my journey, I now see it as a typical archetypal individuation process. 

The sacrifices of identity that I have been asked to make are all in service of my coming more and more into my actualized sense of self. But I have been a conventional doctor, actually a psychiatrist and total card-carrying cult member, who believed that pharmaceuticals were the answer to every human challenge.

I have really come to appreciate my journey, which, at many points, has appeared to be like a dumpster fire of a life path with many dark nights of the soul.

I have been somebody who was probably accurately described as a man-hating feminist. I have played very conservative roles in my public appearance, where I made sure to curate exactly the aspects of my intellectual self and professional self and to bury all of the rest that might otherwise garner me any kind of criticism.

I have flipped to the other polls, in fact, no pun intended, as pole dancing itself has been a very instrumental, spiritual, transformational practice for me in my more recent years. As I’ve traveled my path, which has involved a lot of relational challenges, loss, and self-reinvention, I guess I’m also a mother of two teenage girls, and that has been one of the deeper opportunities I’ve encountered in this lifetime to understand the anatomy of human intimacy and to shed a lot of covert control mechanisms that I had really operating behind the scenes. 

But as I have moved through these different portals, I’ve come to see that in the women I work with, I watch them moving through the same opportunities. I’ve come to study what makes you interested in this self-initiatory process. What is it that holds you through the confusion and the pain of identity dissolution? What prepares you to rest in the uncertainty of knowing that you’re no longer who you were but not yet knowing who you will become? 

I’ve come to look at it as a hierarchy of engagement. I am a big believer in self-initiation, starting with self-care. So, I developed a program called Vital Mind Reset, which is essentially the health protocol that I use myself to resolve. Initially, the intention was to resolve my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and postpartum in my first pregnancy and then turn into this program.

Thousands of people have done this, and I’ve had the privilege of witnessing these absolutely history-making, sometimes literally, medical outcomes of people shedding diagnoses and medications, and really that sick identity, that sense that something’s actually very broken about me. That is what I believe most of us, especially women, carry.

If your relationships are still patterned by your childhood traumas, you will continue to experience projection, and you will idealize and vilify those that you interact with.

I don’t carry that, of course.

You can spray all sorts of potpourri in the room, and the stink of that will permeate. So, to get at the transformation of that disempowerment, I feel I have, to some extent, provided a meaningful solution. But what I found is that you can get your health in check. You can feel like somebody’s finally home in your body, and your nervous system is better regulated.

If your relationships are still patterned by your childhood traumas, you will continue to experience projection. What that looks like is that you will idealize and vilify those that you interact with. It could be your lover, your husband, your mother, your child, your employee, or your boss.

You will have the same patterns of struggle in your relationship that ultimately may cycle you back into the doctor’s office kind of identity. I found that there was a whole nother leg of the journey to embark upon once my Hashimoto’s was in remission, and I didn’t have a single health symptom for 15-plus years. I still had a lot of self-discovery to explore. That is the subject matter of my second program called Reclaimed and the associated book that’s been a bit hot to handle, and I don’t think it’s going to shock anyone in your audience. 

From what I’ve learned about counternarrative kinds of perspectives about what women can do today, to take full responsibility for our experience and to resolve the continued thread of disempowered victim consciousness that fuels a lot of our resentment, disappointment, bitterness, and, worst of all, this feeling of living behind a glass wall and being in that automated, to-do, listen anchored perception. They call it functional freeze in neurobiology.

We just feel and know that there’s more for us here—the sensuality, fulfillment, enthusiasm, and aliveness we are incarnated to embody. When you don’t have a relationship to that, it will hurt, and you will suffer. I do believe it’s by design. It’s meant to be that way as an invitation back to the path.

There’s so much in what you said, and I can go in many directions. I’m going to go a little bit backward. Let’s talk about your awakening from traditional psychiatrists prescribing pills to the more awakened conspiracy theorists. They are not conspiracy theorists you are today. How did you do that? How did you find the courage to stand with your truth the way you do it today?

I imagine many would say something similar because when you are operating from your wound as a woman, it can often be celebrated by society. You can experience many rewards. There can be a lot of reinforcement. I am one of the hallmark examples of that phenomenon. What I mean by that is that my mom is Italian, and so I am second generation. She and my dad raised me to focus my attention and energy on my performance, achievement, and success. I was specifically encouraged to be a self-sufficient woman who’s got herself right, financially and otherwise. 

I was motivated extrinsically. I was motivated by rewards and punishment around my grades and academic achievement, which worked. I was 4.0 till the last test I took. I’m a pedigreed clinician and all of the rest. Pulsing beneath that performance is a fundamental self-rejection of mine. In my opinion, my feminine nature, my feminine essence, and the worth and value I have as a woman for simply waking up in the morning.

So, for simply being and doing nothing for anyone, caretaking no one, and making myself useful in no way. I am just actually still beginning to access this many years in the thawing process of my own system. I’m not alone because this is the ideology of feminist values that have actually just allowed for the colonization of masculine values. So we have, as women, come to understand that, of course, I think, subconsciously, we are afraid of men.

Biologically, we are vulnerable. That is an indisputable fact. We have developed this means of compensating for the white noise of fear we walk around with, saying, “I see you over there, strong and safe, and I want that. So I’m going to copy you.” It’s like dressing up like a monster on Halloween and laughing about it. And the truth is that the fulfillment that lies at the end of that road, not that there’s an end, doesn’t ever touch what we long for as women. 

When you are operating from your wound as a woman, it can often be celebrated by society.

I’m not looking for it; I discovered it. As a career activist in the medical freedom world, I’m not actually looking for freedom, as it turns out. I got to one of the summits in these past years as a single woman, where I have the accolades and achievements, the New York Times bestseller, and the seven-figure business, and I’m totally self-sufficient. I take care of my kids entirely on my own.

I feel that I want to look down the mountain and be like, “Ladies, it’s not up here. Turn around and go back.” I’ve come to understand the choices that I made to prioritize my career over my role and other choices.

These are choices, thanks to feminism, to become a wife and a mother. I chose to prioritize my career and to gaslight myself around the possibility that I could have it all and be both a mother and a career woman. Or the trifecta of a wife, mother, and career woman, which have only been revealed to me more recently on my path. When I engaged in the renegade activist angry b*tch moment of my career, it certainly looked like I was courageous.

I wonder what you looked like when you were that renegade angry.

Oh, you can find it. You can search for me on YouTube and scroll back to 2013, and you’ll see. I have blown-out barrel curls. This is my opinion about my own appearance. I look tired. There’s a heaviness, almost like a sadness, around my eyes. I can see it in myself until I actually left my second marriage in 2021. The deep work that catalyzed me, and I literally look like a different person.

Now you found yourself. You found what makes you happy. You connected more to your body. What is it?

I don’t even really value happiness. I wouldn’t say that that’s something I’m after. I am interested in aliveness. For me, the worst feeling is that disconnection of the robot life, that disconnection that I’m with my daughters. I feel like I should be feeling something.

In these past years, the tools that I have curated have chiefly been in service of unlocking vital force energy from beneath my shame. I went headfirst into every uncomfortable belief that I had about myself and other women. I began to use my relationships with other women, sometimes anonymous women out there, sometimes women in my life. Of course, my mother and I worked through this process of identifying the places where I have rejected and projected aspects of myself.

Wow, that’s amazing.

I wouldn’t say that happiness is something I’m after. I am interested in aliveness.

It’s actually pretty simple, right? So I’m a New Yorker, very pragmatic girly, and I like it to be simple. My approach is predicated on really simple, accessible practices and one I call the ‘villain crown.’ Anytime I feel judged by somebody else, and sometimes when you’re in my position, and you’re as a pedigree doctor, posting videos of yourself pole dancing in a bikini, there is confusion, disgust, frustration, and anger. There are often threats, and I invited all of them.

This was back in 2022. I saw the opportunity because I’ve experienced pushback over my career as an activist for a decade. But it never bothered me. I was on the disinformation dozen list in 2020 and found it kind of funny. It has never bothered me that people push back against my perspectives on pharmaceutical holistic medicine. It never, ever got to me. That included death threats.

I saw this fork in the road. I had the option to defend myself and go into my Instagram comments and litigate my position, which I happen to be very good at doing, or to, as I call it, enter through the upset. To read a comment where somebody said, “You’re a reckless narcissist who’s endangering the women you purport to help, and why don’t you just stay in your lane and continue doing what everybody’s here to hear you talk about, which is not pole dancing or whatever.” I could read that.

Let’s say I feel this somatic sequence, a rush of energy, like a clench in my chest, and then a rush of energy up my throat. Normally, I would avoid any associated feelings of shame and what’s beneath that shame by acting by meaning, like springing into action. 

I’m committed to being the best husband to myself, one who creates the conditions for me to feel attended to.

So I would like to write a response, let’s say. In this case, in entering through the upset, I am committed. I call it self-husbanding. I’m committed to being the best husband to myself, one who creates the conditions for me to feel attended to, feel a sacred presence, and feel total radical approval and curiosity. I invoke that energy. You could call it witness consciousness. There’s nothing new being invented here. And for me, this framework really helps.

It doesn’t matter if it’s new or not. It’s the way you frame it. It’s landing in a different way from me.

It just makes it like I’m a person. I’ll imagine this masculine energy showing up inside of me. It’s like, “Hey, baby, what’s going on? I see you.” That energy is watching. It’s watching this clench. It’s watching these rushes. I see that, but it’s storyless. It’s not about, “Hey,” and then he did this, and then she did that.

So first, for 90 seconds, if you commit to that every single time, you’ll notice the challenges you have in committing to that. In a moment of upset, I often prefer to voice a note to a girlfriend to write an email or send a text to diffuse that pressure and threat of energy. The meta commitment you’re making now is, “I am here. This is my priority. You are my number one, no matter what is happening.” So, like, you go to a bathroom and lock the door, you find 90 seconds. That’s all it takes to be with simply. You’re not fixing anything you’re attending to.

After that, you might try on the villain crown. Consider the possibility of allowing somebody who’s judging you to be allowed to be right. “Maybe they’re right that I am a reckless narcissist. Maybe they’re right that I’m having this horribly embarrassing.” It’s not, though, because it’s only terrible. I will only feel something if a part of me already believes that I’m embarrassing myself, that I’m womaning wrong, that I’ve made a big mistake. I’m telling you this because I have been criticized my entire career.

Ignoring our gut feelings leads us down paths of poor decisions and internal conflicts. We must reclaim our feminine essence by trusting our intuition. Share on X

I’m a very polarizing figure, a controversial figure. And I have given zero about it. Sometimes, I give a lot about it, and it hurts so much, and I feel, “Wow, maybe I should just give up because I’m not only up, but I’m up so publicly that everybody saw and can’t undo it.” So it’s existential. It’s that brokenness. It still somehow has a flavor and a thread in there. If I allow this to be true, I invite the part of me that agrees to the table, and I express curiosity and interest. So what if it is? Maybe it’s true. 

Maybe this person is right, then maybe I can just hold that for a minute, just in the privacy of my own home with myself. I’m just going to hold that possibility. Then, the flip is that whenever I feel judgmental of somebody else, I consider the possibility that even in their judgment, I am exhibiting exactly the same thing that I am accusing them of. That is another time I put on that villain crown and allowed myself to practice being bad and wrong. We didn’t get so much into the origin story of my activist career, which can be summarized by the fact that I was diagnosed postpartum with my first health condition on a routine physical, which is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. And I had some brain fog.

I had postpartum depression, too, and I didn’t even know I had it just later on. 

I don’t use that term or, like, “diagnoses,” especially for this reason because what we call Hashimoto’s or hypothyroid, for example, what we call even postpartum bipolar or postpartum mania, is often psychiatric. A psychiatric diagnosis actually has no validity. There are no tests, and there’s no objective assessment. You’re not getting a spinal tap. Nobody’s analyzing anything. It’s essentially like a quiz you take, and if you meet the criteria, you get a diagnosis. By the way, good luck shedding that diagnosis outside of my related containers because you’ll probably have it for life.

It will always mar your record. And the truth is that there are so many physiologic imbalances. So, I’m describing one of them, which is the thyroid. We could call it dysfunction, but I don’t believe the body makes mistakes. So, let’s call it imbalance. Thyroid imbalance has literally the same diagnostic criteria as depression—low energy, poor concentration, decreased mood, flat mood, and sleep disturbance. It’s literally point per point per point.

The nuances are often that women get diagnosed postpartum with bipolar or mania or even postpartum psychosis. When you look at these autoimmune conditions, the thyroiditis type, you have this window. I was in my skinny jeans three weeks postpartum. That is not normative.

I don’t believe that the body makes mistakes. It’s just imbalances.

That was because I was in this flare of reactivity, and my thyroid tissue was literally being hyper-stimulated by my own body. And then, there was enough thyroid tissue destruction that I developed the symptoms of low thyroid over time. This is very common. I treated this in my practice for ten years. It’s so common, and it doesn’t mean that your body is doing anything wrong. In fact, this was the invitation for me because your thyroid is your fifth chakra.

It’s the invitation to speak your voice to your rhetorical mark on your life. When I was diagnosed, as much as I had been committed to the allopathic model, interestingly, I didn’t want to take a prescription for the rest of my life, which is fine for me to prescribe to all of my patients, but I didn’t want to do that. You could call it sacred laziness.

Like, I just wasn’t down to walk a prescription to CVs every month for the rest of my life. And so I actually went to a naturopath. I changed my diet. And again, I mentioned I’m Italian American. Cheese and bread were literally my whole diet. And you see Candy and McDonald’s and all the things I’d never heard of, anything meditating or detox. I never took supplements, none of that. So, all I did in the initial stages was change my diet.

I watched my antibodies go from the high 2,000 to my TSH of 20 normalize in black and white. There was no explanation for this in the conventional model, which is very common. These outliers of medical cures are treated like anomalies instead of being investigated. Well, I investigated this. I wanted to know how the hell that happened. I found a huge amount of literature on the role of these lifestyle changes, specifically gut-brain physiology and nutritional influence. And I had never heard of any of it.

In fact, I was taught to dismiss and deride any lifestyle choices beyond, like, “Oh, if you have diabetes, don’t drink a big gulp slurpee from 7/11. If you have heart disease, go light on the salt.” That was the extent of my nutrition education in my four-year Ivy League training, and I put this condition into remission. I was enraged.

This is where I’m circling back to my woundology because I went from idealizing this system that ultimately parentified the medical system to vilifying it. I just flipped to the other side. And now, I devoted ten years of my life to fighting this system. I published a book with an exploding pharmaceutical pill on the cover. I dedicated myself to taking every single woman I ever met off of these meds, whether it was birth control or antidepressants or whatever. 

Do you think there is a percentage of the population, if any, that does need those pills, or nobody should ever touch them?

I don’t like to speak in black-and-white terms because I used to do it all the time, and my answer would absolutely have been no. Why? Because your body doesn’t make mistakes. And until you can understand the language that your body is speaking, which is an invitation to change something about your perception of your reality, which often requires changing some aspect of your reality, from your diet to your marriage to your place of employment or toxic home. Until you can respond to the very specific question that your illness is asking you, only you can answer this.

There’s no expert or guru that you will ever find who can answer that question. Can people open their minds to possibilities? Can they inspire you? Can they jog your intuition into some sort of activation? Absolutely. And in the end, it’s your question to answer.

You are your body. It is you telling you about you.

You might as well get on your own d*mn team and stop triangulating against your body. When a woman takes a pharmaceutical, she is fundamentally saying no to her body. She is fundamentally saying, “What you’re doing is not aligned with what I want.” Well, you are your body. That is you. It is you telling you about you. We split and triangulate against ourselves all the time, every time. As women, we make what I call the ‘poor bargain.’

Anytime you have that little no inside, you ignore it. You go on a first date and are like, “Mmm, this is not for me. I don’t know why. He looks good on paper. He’s hot, sitting across from me.” I just have this feeling every time we ignore that, we make a poor bargain. We split against ourselves, and we inspire all sorts of drama.

We do this with the body as well. It’s not to say that one is better or one is worse. Your experience of your body, your experience of your relationships, is how you are meeting your needs. 

If one of the deepest needs we have as women is for safety, not freedom, then it may be the case that you have a relationship with a parentified authority called a ‘doctor who knows better than you’ and can punish you and reward you. It’s like a covert subdom relationship that nobody’s talking about, but that’s essentially what’s happening. It’s marginally consented to and whatever.

The quickest way to transform how you feel today is to change your breakfast. It's a small but powerful shift that can set the tone for your entire day. Share on X

So, that may actually be how you meet your needs for attention, care, and boundaries. When you have a chronic illness, you don’t have to learn to say no. Your illness says it for you. You don’t want to go out to dinner with somebody. “Oh, I have a migraine.” “Oh, I’m in an episode,” or whatever.

It’s the installment of a lot of need-meeting strategies. Of course, they’re subconscious, usually. So, it’s not that this is a spiritual meritocracy. That’s why I don’t. You won’t hear me really use the word like an awakening or whatever because now it’s so infused with one being good and the other being bad.

Sheep who are asleep are bad, and people who are awakened and enlightened, well, certainly, I have not reached a destination, and it’s a process. What makes sense at one point in your journey may be just, like, irrelevant at another point. In my household, we don’t work with pharmaceutical companies. It’s not relevant.

When you have a chronic illness, you don’t have to learn to say no. Your illness says it for you.

We don’t talk about it. It’s not even a thing. If somebody has a headache, it’s not like, “There’s no way I’m taking an Advil.” It’s just literally not a thing. That is, to me, more the maturational model. You get to this place where you don’t need to make the choices you are not aligned with, bad and wrong, to honor your true alignment. When you’re in that ‘erotic caress of the enemy,’ you have to make your ex bad and wrong.

You have to make that friend that you’ve ended the relationship bad and wrong. You have to make your kids bad and wrong. You have to do your job. You have to make the government bad and wrong to feel yourself and find yourself in polarity. It’s just a maturational stage. When you get into these more adult territories, you stand in your own shoes. You focus on the life that’s in front of you and the fact that you are in control, designing the whole damn thing.

Life is so much more interesting when you’re in polarity, and when you’re better than anybody else when you’re awakened, and there are the sheep, and you know everything, you’re the smartest person in the room. It’s way more interesting. Like, “Yeah, what they represent is exactly in me. It doesn’t make me feel so great.” It’s a matter of maturity, and I’m still very much a child. I keep telling people I’m 27 every year. Just being human, we keep judging, even when we get into those points. I understand that they are my reflection and my shadow, and I need to embrace them. It’s still, like, super, super hard to handle.

It is until you start to experience the yield. Why the hell would you do that? Because then you’re just engaging in, like, “Oh, this is what a good person is.” A person does embrace their enemy kind of thing. And you’re still in the trap of—

Trying to trap within a trap within a trap.

In the end, we are easily conditioned creatures. You’ve got to experience the reward to develop the intrinsic motivation to be curious about what you judge. I used to judge slutty women. Women who were very objectifying of their own sexuality, who, like, wore inappropriate clothing, probably would include what I’m, like, literally wearing right now, who didn’t know when the right time to be professional.

I love what you’re wearing right now, by the way. So beautiful.

I just had a very narrow definition of how a woman could be respected. And I thought that respect for a woman was very important. I didn’t realize that most of us, as women with a feminine essence, want to be cherished far more than we want to be respected. Nonetheless, I have a friend who is a pole teacher for me for a period of time. I would have seen the way she dresses, the way she moves, the way she lives and conducts her life and the way she shows up on social media. And I wouldn’t have, like, overtly been, like, a b*tch, but I would have written her off, like, actually worse than judging.

Chronic illness can sometimes be our body's way of setting boundaries without us having to directly communicate them. It's a mechanism we develop to navigate our limits. Share on X

“It would be dismissive and dehumanizing, but I’m better than you,” positioning myself as superior and, like, “Oh, poor girl, she could never have what I have going on. I don’t know exactly what it would sound like, but something like that. I wouldn’t have found any real value or potential connection through any dynamic friendship or relationship with such a person. And in the process of opening myself to such a connection. I hired her as a teacher. From my first experience with her, I was in her home with her poll. She’s literally the loveliest human.

She’s so kind, so warm, and so down to earth. She said, “Okay, I’m going to put some music on, and I just want you to walk around the pole to the music. Let the music inspire your movement around the pole. But you’re not dancing; you’re not doing choreos. You’re just literally walking around the pole.”

If I could have pressed the eject button on my existence at that moment, I would have done it. If I could have run out the door, immolated into a pile of ash, I would have done it. I was so overwhelmed, and the shame gripped me. I had the same experience when I started taking singing lessons. I realized, “I was outside of my zone of mastery, my zone of genius. I don’t know how to do this perfectly.”

Focus on the life that’s in front of you and the fact that you are in control.

Not that I’m a perfectionist, because I’m really not. I don’t know how to do this in a way that will inspire approval. And moving through those few minutes was an initiation. It truly was. What opened up to me and for me, brings tears to my eyes, is that the journey that started that day was life-changing. Why? Because I had so much shame holding these sensual, playful, erotic parts of me, these creative dimensions of me hostage. I could have lived my entire life just being a good girl.

It would have been a good life on paper. The gifts that came through my opening were the possibility that I even had just a little flavor and taste of what this woman had coursed through her body. To this day, I watch this woman dance, and I’m like, “You are another species from me.” And it’s just true and not true. Because when I move and dance, I feel a little bit of her in me. That’s why we were talking before we started.

I collected all these women who’ve inspired me. I have an online collection called Faces of Fierce Femininity with Miss Jaiya, Mama Gena, Sheila Kelley, and all these women. I gathered as many as I could in person. There were ten other women in Miami last year for this event, which I called Audacious Embodiment.

I could totally resonate with that when you were talking. I think every woman who is listening to this can relate.

We do this for each other as women. I call it ‘holding out a hand in the dark.’ These women did that for me, and I wouldn’t have ever even known I was walking in the dark, let alone felt her hand, if I was arrested for my superiority and my judgment. Being neutralized has afforded me access to my own flavors. It’s also why I love pole because, as somebody who’s still a beginner years later, you can access so many different dimensions. You can access ratchet, raunchy pleather, thigh-high boots, and low flow to trap music. 

I was a ballerina in my earlier life. You can wear a leotard, climb up that pole, and spin around to classical music. You can have something flowy, sweet, and feminine. You can access so many different flavors. I did a whole podcast about this on my own show called 10 Spiritual Lessons I’ve Learned From Pole Dancing. I would not have even touched that realm if I stopped at those women who are sl*ts or whatever. It wouldn’t have ever sounded that st*p*d in my mind. But that’s essentially the distillation. Those women are lost. I actually think that’s a better, more accurate summary. 

They must be really damaged, relative to me. Meanwhile, one of my earliest experiences with the practices I teach in my book and program was when I received an email from somebody I love very much. And, of course, it was in the context of great contention. And the email said, “You are a deeply injured soul who is incapable of love.”

When I got this, it was so much a gut punch because it was. Again, we talked about this earlier, that same core belief that I am broken, damaged goods and that if I can’t succeed in hiding that successfully from people for the rest of my life, I’m actually in mortal danger. 

At that point, I had already been working on these practices and was like, “Oh, this is a big one.” My goal for women is to get to where you know how to alchemize literally anything that comes at you. So something like that comes at you. And there’s a little party that’s like, “Oh, let’s go.” So I tried that on. I entered through the upset for a minute or two, and then I tried that sh*t on. What I found was the part of me that absolutely agrees. I didn’t need anyone to say that to me.

Reclamation is just taking every single opportunity to go in when you would normally stay focused outward.

I already felt that and believed that. The part of me that absolutely is like, you are a Yemenite, deeply injured soul, and that I’m incapable of love. Well, at that point, I only knew control, micromanagement, and strategy and manipulation. And I was really good at it, which is why I’ve had long-term relationships my entire adult life. 

I didn’t know what intimacy and secure attachment were, and that was true, too. “Well, look at that. What’s for lunch?” So it’s like the whole thing just gets alchemized. Then, the part of me that held those beliefs felt seen and included. It feels finally connected. These parts always come bearing creative gifts. They always do. What I mean by that is you’ll get an impulse within a day, sometimes ten minutes. That is a creative expression.

You’ll want to write a poem. You’ll want to put on music and dance. You’ll want to find a mentor or coach to learn more about something. You’ll want to paint a picture. This is the creative energy that many women are far more expressed in than those of us who’ve been in the entrepreneurial realm or, let alone, doctors, lawyers, and all these kinds of tracks that are so masculinizing and disconnecting. 

But this is our essence creative. We come from sex, literally. And it’s a part of our vital force. It’s a part of our extension into the erotic artistry of our lived life, our daily life. Like this opportunity, we have to make love to life and not wait for the perfect partner to ravish us. So it’s a part of that. Reclamation is just taking every opportunity to go in when you normally stay focused outward.

One of the things that I guess holds the relationship, regardless of everything we’ve been through, is that we love each other very much. But when you own your part in the relationship, you have the understanding that everything is a reflection of you, and you just own your happiness. You don’t need somebody else to fulfill you. If I get really upset, I just take a moment to pray, meditate, or go out for a walk. I’m in Israel now, so I don’t have a pole dancing studio yet. But the more you talk about poles, the more I’m just like, “I want them.” 

You talked about boots. I’m like, “Oh, my beautiful, very tall, shiny blue boots.” Those things, such as self-care and self-reflection, are so important because that’s what moves the whole relationship. We live in a movie where we are the main characters, and everybody is just kind of like our kids, even our partners—they kind of circle around us. We’re the sun. They move with us. And when Dyer said, “When you change, the world around you changed, all the players change.” They evolve. We jump timelines. It’s very interesting. I love that. What’s your thought about timelines in quantum fields and all that? Are you into that? I do believe in those. I’m way more woo-woo than you are. 

Whatever works for you.

No, it’s all good. I had those intense experiences, like psychic experiences. Also, when I take care of other people, I do hypnosis and coaching. Sometimes, when there is a difficult part, I just open myself, and there is almost a channeling that’s coming through, which helps create healing for the other person. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know if it’s a different realm, guides, or angels. No, I don’t need to know. 

I just like a reflex that we have, and I would consider it like a masculine reflex, even an immature masculine reflex, to have the theory of everything worked out, that you have a womb. For example, you have a channel to God and an open source, which, to me, is like baseline facts. And so how you open that, care for it, and become like this custodian of that channel is really in your lived experience. And when we try to overlay all of these, and again, I am literally the chief of this. So, overlay all these explanations and validations. It’s almost like it somehow takes away from it.

Like there’s no validation, it’s all God in different forms and shapes. It’s almost like when people go through near-death experiences, someone will see Jesus or Moses, depending on their set of beliefs. Sometimes, our thinking mind needs to have those explanations so we can put things aside and just be open with our magical mind to connect the source to God, to whatever is making our heartbeat without us thinking about it, and channel and connect to this information as we are kind of like the cell within the universe, and the universe is also within us. It’s pretty beautiful before we say goodbye for now. I want to spend more time with you, but I want to respect your time, too. What are your three quick tips for living a stellar life? Where can people find you?

Three quick tips. I love quick tips because I’m really into activating the shift of a story. I have this workshop called Calm Body, Clear Mind. It’s like a free workshop that I have. And it’s all about these quick tips related to lifestyle change like, “Change your breakfast. Here’s what you can eat, and you’ll feel different today.” I love that because it can ignite in you like a remembrance of the power that you’ve always had. 

I would say changing your breakfast is one. Another is to develop a different relationship as a woman to the way that you pee, and I could go on and on about this. I talk about this in my book, but suffice it to say that if you change your language about going to the bathroom. So, whenever I’m talking about when you’re with somebody else, but also when you notice that you have to pee. So, a lot of like pelvic floor people are not going to love this recommendation, but it’s just a temporary practice where you literally honor every single time you have to pee, and you don’t make your body wait.

When you’re going to go, you don’t say, “I’ll be back quick. I’m just going to go for 1 minute.” You don’t use any of that language that makes clear you’re prioritizing somebody else’s comfort and even connection over your own body’s needs. Then you go pee, and you literally enjoy the experience, the readily available pleasure of going from having to pee to nothing. Having to pee that’s like an extremely pleasurable somatic experience. 

In the simple reclamation of our bodies’ biological impulses that were taken from us in our industrialized schooling, where we had to literally raise our hand to go to the bathroom, ask permission and sometimes be denied, or that the co-option of our biology started in this programming, it’s a huge reclamation.

Developing a respectful relationship with your need to urinate—recognizing and honoring it without delay—is about tuning into your body's natural rhythms and affirming self-care. Share on X

I would say the third one is to begin the practice of entering through the upset. You can begin the practice by just noticing when you’re upset and noticing what your tendency is right to do. Reach out to a friend. Do you need to send the email? I need to go lie down in bed. Like what is needed to have a beer or whatever. What is your tendency? The first thing to do is to notice some of these automated, reflexive, trauma-based responses, followed by the practices. This can come later. 

My handle’s always Kelly Brogan, MD. I have a book called The Reclaimed Woman that is essentially the summary of my past three years of toil and trouble in feminine reclamation. 

It is really a curation of the tools and the stages to orient women around where they might be in the journey. There’s a companion program called Reclaimed. We just finished our first round of it, and it was all that I hoped and dreamed about because, for me, growing this field of women who are taking responsibility for their lived experience of embodiment creates a safer world for me to live in. I enjoy and derive great fulfillment from spreading the word.

Kelly, thank you so much for being the trailblazer you are, for being fearless, for reclaiming your own femininity and power, and for having other women do the same. It’s so beautiful. We need more than that in the world. More people like you. I love that. I appreciate you. Thank you for doing what you’re doing. 

And thank you, listeners. Remember to change your breakfast. Develop a different relationship to the way you pee, meaning respecting your body’s needs and taking the time to just be with your body whenever she needs you or he needs you; whoever is listening to this very women-centric podcast enters the app set, which is so good, especially in today’s world, where we just try to distract ourselves from pain by scrolling through social media or by just attacking. If you just enter the upset, take a moment with your body. You just allow yourself to be okay with your shadow. Part with your darkness, and love yourself whole and complete, light and dark, because you are perfect just the way you are.

“Whatever you do or don’t do, you are worthy of love,” as Dr. John Demartini says. “When everything good happens, run to the mirror and say, ‘I love you.’ When something bad happens, run to the mirror and say, ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you no matter what.’” That’s from Louise Hay. I guess this was a lot about self-love and reclaiming that love for yourself and your body independently of what other people think. So, thank you so much and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Change your breakfast for an immediate positive impact on how you feel. Try incorporating whole foods and protein to start your day with balanced energy. 

{✓}Develop a respectful relationship with your body’s need to urinate. Recognize and honor it without delay to maintain comfort and health.

{✓}Begin the practice of “entering through the upset.” Notice your reflexive responses to discomfort and address them consciously to promote emotional resilience.

{✓}Don’t ignore your gut feelings. Trust your intuition for better decision-making and personal alignment.

{✓}Be mindful that chronic illness can sometimes reflect unmet needs for boundaries. Create clear, direct ways to communicate and uphold personal limits.

{✓}Experience intrinsic rewards like compassion and curiosity. Shift focus from societal expectations to what truly brings you fulfillment.

{✓}Seek to feel connected and vital rather than solely aiming for happiness. Embrace practices that unlock your vital energy and expressive creativity.

{✓}Take 90 seconds for mindfulness and introspection during moments of upset. Use these moments to prioritize yourself and realign.

{✓}Engage in creative activities like writing, dancing, or painting to process emotions and connect with your vital force. These expressions are essential for emotional health.

{✓}Visit kellybroganmd.com to join Kelly Brogan’s Calm Body, Clear Mind workshop. 

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About Kelly Brogan

Kelly Brogan, M.D. is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the NY Times Bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, Own Your Self, the children’s book A Time For Rain, and co-editor of the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression. She is the founder of the online healing program Vital Mind Reset and the membership community, Vital Life Project. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and she has a BS in Systems Neuroscience from MIT. She is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms.

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