Why I decided to become an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach?

When I decided to enter the space of wellness I thought I wanted to be a fitness trainer.
I was physically active and earning money while teaching others to live the same way seemed like an easy choice. However, after a short stint of assisting a celebrity fitness trainer in Mumbai I realised that I wanted to expand my definition of wellness.

So when a friend suggested The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) to me I discovered that it seemed like a good fit.
IIN has a holistic view towards health which includes not just food, sleep and movement but everything else that nourishes us in life – including the quality of our personal and professional relationships, presence of a supportive community, a pleasant home environment – essentially joy in all areas of life seemed like the right take on personal wellness.

Of course I was the healthiest person I knew, so this would be a cake walk – I thought.

However, a few months into the course I experienced a health crisis.
While there were cues right from the beginning – a few seconds of black out in the gym, low energy, fatigue, infrequent headaches it soon snowballed into panic attacks, low blood pressure and low salt levels among other things. (Read more about that here).
This came as a shock to me – how could it happen to me?
I was eating healthy and working out regularly?

What became clear to me much later was the fact that I was living a life out of alignment with my true self.

Instead of giving myself time to explore what I needed from life and this new career I went into fear mode and decided to take up a job, even though I knew I was done with it.
Not only did I dislike the job, but also the city I was living in.

So I started using the only numbing mechanism I knew of – since my childhood – over working.

We all have our addictions when we try to escape the present moment – for some it is alcohol, drugs, sex, smoking, junk food and for some of us it is burying ourselves in work.

It took me a year and a half after IIN and a lot of work on myself to figure this out.
This had been a pattern of mine since childhood.

When I didn’t like the phase of life I was going through, I’d numb myself through work.

I used to be so proud of leading a healthy life – except that I wasn’t alive in the life I had chosen at that point. Essentially nothing was wrong with me, but everything was.

I was one of those classic cases that Joshua, the founder of IIN categorizes as people who think there is nothing wrong with them. (face palm to myself).

I still remember the day I was walking in the park after work with tears streaming down my face.

I was on the phone with my dad telling him – “I can’t do this anymore.”

I felt so broken and clueless.
A month later I quit my job and moved back to my hometown.
I felt so defeated at the time.
I knew I was meant for bigger things in life but all I felt was burn out from having to do so much.
In retrospect I realize that when we ask the Universe for a life beyond our wildest dreams, sometimes what IS has to fall apart for something better to take its place.

Early on in my work as an IIN health coach, I hit another cycle of burn out and ended up questioning myself – Why is this happening to me again?

I am doing my own work now – something that I love.
The catch was I hadn’t had a personal transformation.
I had not given myself the space to breathe.

The truth is I was doing what I thought I should be doing.

Now, as a child we are so trained in ‘shoulding’ because there is always someone telling us what’s better for us that we learn not to trust ourselves.

This is the reason I love IIN’s exploratory approach, although I hated it early on.
The reason being, I did not know how to listen to and trust my own self.
It felt absurd.

I liked the idea of what they proposed but had not been able to implement it in my life.
I was not embodying it yet because I had decades of conditioning which said – You don’t know better.

So when I started trusting myself, still afraid, a lot started coming up for me.
A surge of unfelt emotions which I had been escaping for years and then the real me – not someone who I thought I should be.
It was almost like meeting the 5 year old me and asking her what she’d want her life to look like.

As I became my own first client I would often laugh out loud in moments when I’d remember Joshua’s simplistic advice which I’d scoffed at earlier.

His words, “Given half a chance the body will heal itself by itself,” are my bible now.

The pace at which we are living life these days, we refuse to give ourselves time to be still, go within and ask ourselves what we need.

Most people like me become such slaves to getting advice from diet books and experts that we forget that we are our biggest experts.

If this confuses you, I know how it feels because just a couple of years back I had dismissed it as hogwash.

But it is true. I have had my biggest client breakthroughs, when I have asked them – “What do you think you need the most right now?” and then listened deeply without wanting to give them advice.

“This is really bad for the ego,” as Joshua put it.

But once my clients come up with this answer is where I step in and guide them with my knowledge.

Sometimes it is a healthy meal and sometimes it is about making a decision to let go a toxic job or a work colleague.

I meet them where they are, not where I want them to be.

Another one of the nuggets from IIN that has begun making sense to me only now.
Why? Because I don’t rush myself to reach any destination at all now.

There are so many tools I’ve learnt at IIN which are rooted in the fact that make healing about the person not the theory. I truly believe in it.
I have had countless people who have got massive breakthroughs in my free exploratory call  with them.

So if my story resonates with you and you’re looking to dig deeper I know that’s where the gold lies. While the right food truly is medicine, you can’t heal with food what needs to be felt and released – your emotions.

I would highly recommend anyone who is looking to create a career in health and wellness to enroll in IIN whether you’re just a beginner or are further ahead in your journey.
This approach is unique because it is not about a theory but about the person in front of you.
In a service based career like health coaching this will make the biggest difference.
We are not carbon copies of each other that the same diet or lifestyle cannot be copied by everyone.
We need to find balance in our lives and that looks different for different people.

I would never be able to advocate IIN with such confidence had I not experienced my own transformation. The fact that I have is reason enough for me to say – if you follow the process, you will see the magic.
I cannot predict how your life will transform, but I can promise that if you’re looking for answers IIN can truly open the doors to personal transformation for you.