Megan Liebmann-Gudat on Relationship to Rituals and Nature

In episode 55 on The School of Unlearning podcast, the theme of relationships is explored as it relates to rituals and physical spaces in nature. This conversation builds on a five part relationship focus and grounds us back in our bodies and in to the natural world around us as we find our center and slow our pace down, all in the effort to be more attuned to our needs and those around us. Our guest is Functional Medicine Practitioner and Clinical Herbalist Educator and Practitioner, Megan Liebmann-Gudat. Megan specializes in helping women in the peri-menopause and menopause stages of life and health through dietary, lifestyle and mindset approaches. 

In this podcast, we discuss: 

• How to zoom out of the singular obsession of romantic relationships and move into a broader view of how to manifest love in life. 
• Elisa and Megan discuss why the “eradicate” approach with chronic health conditions isn’t working or healing. 
• Megan shares how our dialogue with our symptoms and ailments is foundational and the most powerful way to embark on a healing path. Megan asks us to invite a conversation with our symptoms to the table? 
• How we can match our environment with our biology and what this does for our health. 
• Relationship to space: Megan highlights how we can cultivate trust to a space, which she says is often one of our first relationships.  
• Megan introduces a “sits spot” which is a space she brings her children to a few times a year to notice seasonal changes and shifts in the terrain. 
• We cover what an “access point” is in healthcare and how knowing where to begin is maybe the most important thing. 
• Pacing and our relationship to slowness help improve our ability to be present and notice what is arising. 

Top 10 Takeaways: 

1. When dealing with chronic health conditions, move beyond “eradication” and dip into curiosity and conversation with the condition and it’s symptoms. 
2. Being in relationship to the healing is more important than the protocol itself. 
3. Our first relationship to trust is often our relationship with a physical space, a home. 
4. A powerful way to be in relationship with physical spaces is to do what Megan calls a “sits spot” is an activity of mindfulness and noticing. Find one spot in nature and sit with it as the seasons change, draw and document what changes.
5. One way to mitigate the feeling of loneliness is to integrate other ways of bringing spiritual practices in, starting with nature or outdoor spaces. Realizing that we are not in fact alone. 
6. Megan reminds us that we can’t speed up nature, so making a practice of keeping seasonal journal for your surrounding environment is a powerful way to bring presence into your life. This practice slows us down. 
7. Take what you think you can do and divide it in two and take what you think you need and times it by 3. 
8. Megan on embracing slowness: a major theme from all of the relationship podcasts so far has been pacing. And, Megan doubles down on how our pacing impacts our ability to connection. 
9. Attunement matters when we consider how to shift our relationship to health, and this begins with a slowing down. 
10. Access point is everything for practitioners of health and change. And, the access point is figuring out where the person is willing to shift, and that begins the great conversation and practice of healing. 

Follow Megan on Instagram at @meganliebmann_ and for more on her body of work, visit www.amethystandrose.com

Elisa Haggarty is a Conscious Leadership Coach who works with executives and teams to shift the way people relate and collaborate through radical responsibility, curiosity and emotional intelligence. You can follow her work HERE and follow her on social at www.instagram.com/elisamaryhaggarty and www.instagram.com/thesoulpodcast