[g_podcast id="7094608"]
In this episode I interview Lena Bopp from Lenatura. Among other things, we talk about:
Lena has attended many of my webinars as a viewer and has long been an active reader of my blog and now also listens to the podcast. She has already interviewed me in her podcast "Unbeschwert ernährt" and I was so fascinated by her story that I invited her to join the Darmglück podcast.
Lena is employed part-time at the Saarbrücken Nutrition Center and works freelance for her passion project Lenatura.
Every day she helps people with pre-existing conditions such as obesity, intolerances, fatty liver, irritable bowel syndrome, MS, etc. She uses nutritional therapy and nutritional therapy to improve their health. In addition to nutritional therapy, she incorporates the holistic approach from Ayurveda, takes her clients' life circumstances into account and works with them on beliefs, values and their own intuition.
She wants to prevent people from becoming as ill as she was and so that they can recognize their digestive complaints as early warning signs and take personal responsibility in good time.
Lena struggled with constipation as a child and bowel and digestion have always been part of her life. This is how she unconsciously came to the dietary path.
The doctors diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome and she then decided to give up gluten herself. This made her feel better. But she had to experience first-hand that diet alone doesn't always solve everything.
Because when years of stress led to chronic fatigue syndrome or burnout, suddenly nothing worked for her.
She was actually fit and very sporty before, took sports classes and ate a healthy diet. She had intestinal problems, but she didn't pay much attention to them.
In retrospect, she started getting quite a few vaccinations and went traveling. A few months later, when she returned, she developed an inflammation of the parotid gland. After that, she often had to cancel the sports classes she was giving because she was ill. And just a few months later, she collapsed while traveling in Marrakech. Back in Germany, there were many visits to the doctor and various diagnoses, which caused her to panic. Pain, shortness of breath, tiredness, heaviness, insomnia were all symptoms she felt.
She then went back to her diet, cooking for herself again, lots of vegetables, back to what she had practiced in the past and had pushed a little into the background due to the illness.
But that alone was not enough, so she also came across the topic of "nourishing the soul".
Meditation, therapy and intensive work on the soul helped her to find a way to nourish her soul. helped her out of the hole. She says it was a wonderful experience, but also exhausting and a long journey. But it was worth it! She now calls it her life 2.0.
There's a saying that you have two lives and that the second one begins when you realize you only have one.
And since then, whenever she gets a bloated belly again, she always asks herself which mental issues need improvement so that she can get back to her center.
It took about a year before Lena was able to say "I'm feeling really good now" again.
The last step was that she changed her job and can now live her dream of nutrition and her heart project. It felt like she had turned everything upside down in her life, with moving house, changing jobs and so on.
In hindsight, she knows that she didn't listen to her gut feeling and ignored the early warning signs, for example with the job she wasn't happy in and the bloating and physical symptoms that she didn't recognize.
Her heartfelt project is to prevent people from becoming as ill as she was.
For someone who doesn't have coeliac disease but only a gluten sensitivity, Lena encourages them by telling them that they don't necessarily have to go without it for the rest of their lives. The symptoms can certainly improve.
Lena strengthens her customers' gut feeling and awareness of their own body signals so that they are happy to voluntarily leave out things that are not good for them because they simply feel much better as a result.
However, once you've become so strong and your immune system has improved, you can definitely try to add things back in that were previously better left out.
A year ago, Lena added Ayurvedic knowledge to her advice. It is a holistic medicine, and it helped her to get to know herself better, learn what her basic constitution is and how she could bring her body back into balance.
It was important to her that Ayurveda also fits into the Western lifestyle. Ayurveda is tailored to the individual, you can adapt the general nutritional recommendations that come from science and medicine to your individual needs with the help of Ayurveda.
Often it's only the small steps that are important, for example drinking water or lemon water in the morning, integrating more spices, eating cooked food / something warm more often....
Lena doesn't work with lists, but rather with small things that we often already know intuitively so as not to overwhelm our customers.
Ayurveda is more about balancing characteristics, i.e. knowing the effect of food and preparation methods and using them accordingly.
In Ayurveda, the basic constitution Vata, or the air element, stands for the permanent basic stress that we have. Being constantly on our minds, for example. And so we can try to reduce this with grounding things.
For example, feeling into your feet, getting in touch with nature, eating grounding things such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and beet. Warming teas can also help.
If the grounding or the root is missing, then you get problems with the gut. It covers Lena's view also fits in nicely with mine, as I always say that the gut is our root.
To bring this back into balance, you can take more care of your gut on the one hand, but also of your other roots, such as your family. Or perhaps you should spend more time at home and travel less.
This is a good way of explaining what stress has to do with the gut: if you have too much on your mind, too much air, then the root is no longer right in the end.
And if the gut is not in order, then things are not right on a mental level either, for example you become
Impatience, fast talking, worrying, getting angry quickly are also all signs that are linked to the Vata dosha, which explains why people with intestinal complaints often have these characteristics.
From Lena's point of view, Ayurveda simply offers a great explanatory model for such connections. We understand it better and when we understand it better, we feel better and can take personal responsibility and move in the right direction.
Lena and I both have a similar approach. We see that nutrition is important, but that it's not everything.
When you're ill, it's essential to take nutrition on board, but nutrition alone doesn't go far enough, doesn't go deep enough.
Lena Bopp was originally a social insurance clerk and health insurance specialist at AOK RLP/SL
She has also trained as a fitness and health coach (fitness courses, spinning, synchronized swimming), nutritionist BTB (cooking courses, lectures on healthy eating), nutritional therapist B.Sc. and Ayurveda life coach. Since May 2018, she has only been working in the field of nutrition and is finally happy, as she says.
Lenatura originally stood for naturally healthy nutrition. The blog has been around for a very long time, but back then she only worked with healthy people.
Through her life coach training, she added the mental level and asked herself who she could help best. Her main focus is on irritable bowel syndrome and intolerances. But people who are under stress or feel unhappy at work are also in good hands with Lena
Lena has a podcast called Unbeschwert ernährt. Interview with Julia in Lena's podcast :
You can find her on Instagram at @lenatura
Her website is www.lenatura.de
And her Facebook group is called Unbeschwert ernährt
So that was our interview. I'm impressed that Lena has such a holistic knowledge of nutrition and health at such a young age. Her interview has definitely made me curious to read more about Ayurveda.
I hope her story has encouraged you to realize that there are other ways besides just fighting symptoms and that it encourages you on your path to your own, individual health and well-being.
Next week, as always on Tuesdays, there will be the next Darmglück episode, I look forward to seeing you again. See you soon!
Now I recommend you subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you like what you hear, I'd really appreciate a review on iTunes or Apple Podcast. Because these reviews also help other people to find the podcast so that we can spread the knowledge about gut and health more.
In this episode I interview Lena Bopp from Lenatura. Among other things, we talk about:
- How she ended up finding her health path through irritable bowel syndrome and burnout
- How she ignored her early warning signs and then collapsed in Marrakech
- That the experience of illness can improve your life and you can even say afterwards that it was a good experience
- Why the realization of her heart project was important for getting healthy
- What stress has to do with the gut
- How the wisdom of Ayurveda can tell us a lot about our health
Lena has attended many of my webinars as a viewer and has long been an active reader of my blog and now also listens to the podcast. She has already interviewed me in her podcast "Unbeschwert ernährt" and I was so fascinated by her story that I invited her to join the Darmglück podcast.
Lena is employed part-time at the Saarbrücken Nutrition Center and works freelance for her passion project Lenatura.
Every day she helps people with pre-existing conditions such as obesity, intolerances, fatty liver, irritable bowel syndrome, MS, etc. She uses nutritional therapy and nutritional therapy to improve their health. In addition to nutritional therapy, she incorporates the holistic approach from Ayurveda, takes her clients' life circumstances into account and works with them on beliefs, values and their own intuition.
She wants to prevent people from becoming as ill as she was and so that they can recognize their digestive complaints as early warning signs and take personal responsibility in good time.
Lena's health story
Lena struggled with constipation as a child and bowel and digestion have always been part of her life. This is how she unconsciously came to the dietary path.
The doctors diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome and she then decided to give up gluten herself. This made her feel better. But she had to experience first-hand that diet alone doesn't always solve everything.
Because when years of stress led to chronic fatigue syndrome or burnout, suddenly nothing worked for her.
She was actually fit and very sporty before, took sports classes and ate a healthy diet. She had intestinal problems, but she didn't pay much attention to them.
In retrospect, she started getting quite a few vaccinations and went traveling. A few months later, when she returned, she developed an inflammation of the parotid gland. After that, she often had to cancel the sports classes she was giving because she was ill. And just a few months later, she collapsed while traveling in Marrakech. Back in Germany, there were many visits to the doctor and various diagnoses, which caused her to panic. Pain, shortness of breath, tiredness, heaviness, insomnia were all symptoms she felt.
She then went back to her diet, cooking for herself again, lots of vegetables, back to what she had practiced in the past and had pushed a little into the background due to the illness.
But that alone was not enough, so she also came across the topic of "nourishing the soul".
Meditation, therapy and intensive work on the soul helped her to find a way to nourish her soul. helped her out of the hole. She says it was a wonderful experience, but also exhausting and a long journey. But it was worth it! She now calls it her life 2.0.
There's a saying that you have two lives and that the second one begins when you realize you only have one.
And since then, whenever she gets a bloated belly again, she always asks herself which mental issues need improvement so that she can get back to her center.
Following her heart was the last step
It took about a year before Lena was able to say "I'm feeling really good now" again.
The last step was that she changed her job and can now live her dream of nutrition and her heart project. It felt like she had turned everything upside down in her life, with moving house, changing jobs and so on.
In hindsight, she knows that she didn't listen to her gut feeling and ignored the early warning signs, for example with the job she wasn't happy in and the bloating and physical symptoms that she didn't recognize.
Her heartfelt project is to prevent people from becoming as ill as she was.
How much does it affect your quality of life if you have to go without gluten all the time, for example?
For someone who doesn't have coeliac disease but only a gluten sensitivity, Lena encourages them by telling them that they don't necessarily have to go without it for the rest of their lives. The symptoms can certainly improve.
Lena strengthens her customers' gut feeling and awareness of their own body signals so that they are happy to voluntarily leave out things that are not good for them because they simply feel much better as a result.
However, once you've become so strong and your immune system has improved, you can definitely try to add things back in that were previously better left out.
Why did she add Ayurveda?
A year ago, Lena added Ayurvedic knowledge to her advice. It is a holistic medicine, and it helped her to get to know herself better, learn what her basic constitution is and how she could bring her body back into balance.
It was important to her that Ayurveda also fits into the Western lifestyle. Ayurveda is tailored to the individual, you can adapt the general nutritional recommendations that come from science and medicine to your individual needs with the help of Ayurveda.
Isn't a change in diet, especially according to Ayurveda, incredibly complicated?
Often it's only the small steps that are important, for example drinking water or lemon water in the morning, integrating more spices, eating cooked food / something warm more often....
Lena doesn't work with lists, but rather with small things that we often already know intuitively so as not to overwhelm our customers.
Ayurveda is more about balancing characteristics, i.e. knowing the effect of food and preparation methods and using them accordingly.
What can we do to reduce stress?
In Ayurveda, the basic constitution Vata, or the air element, stands for the permanent basic stress that we have. Being constantly on our minds, for example. And so we can try to reduce this with grounding things.
For example, feeling into your feet, getting in touch with nature, eating grounding things such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and beet. Warming teas can also help.
What does Ayurveda say about the gut?
If the grounding or the root is missing, then you get problems with the gut. It covers Lena's view also fits in nicely with mine, as I always say that the gut is our root.
To bring this back into balance, you can take more care of your gut on the one hand, but also of your other roots, such as your family. Or perhaps you should spend more time at home and travel less.
This is a good way of explaining what stress has to do with the gut: if you have too much on your mind, too much air, then the root is no longer right in the end.
And if the gut is not in order, then things are not right on a mental level either, for example you become
Impatience, fast talking, worrying, getting angry quickly are also all signs that are linked to the Vata dosha, which explains why people with intestinal complaints often have these characteristics.
From Lena's point of view, Ayurveda simply offers a great explanatory model for such connections. We understand it better and when we understand it better, we feel better and can take personal responsibility and move in the right direction.
The holistic approach
Lena and I both have a similar approach. We see that nutrition is important, but that it's not everything.
When you're ill, it's essential to take nutrition on board, but nutrition alone doesn't go far enough, doesn't go deep enough.
About Lena's passion project Lenatura
Lena Bopp was originally a social insurance clerk and health insurance specialist at AOK RLP/SL
She has also trained as a fitness and health coach (fitness courses, spinning, synchronized swimming), nutritionist BTB (cooking courses, lectures on healthy eating), nutritional therapist B.Sc. and Ayurveda life coach. Since May 2018, she has only been working in the field of nutrition and is finally happy, as she says.
Lenatura originally stood for naturally healthy nutrition. The blog has been around for a very long time, but back then she only worked with healthy people.
Through her life coach training, she added the mental level and asked herself who she could help best. Her main focus is on irritable bowel syndrome and intolerances. But people who are under stress or feel unhappy at work are also in good hands with Lena
Lena has a podcast called Unbeschwert ernährt. Interview with Julia in Lena's podcast :
You can find her on Instagram at @lenatura
Her website is www.lenatura.de
And her Facebook group is called Unbeschwert ernährt
So that was our interview. I'm impressed that Lena has such a holistic knowledge of nutrition and health at such a young age. Her interview has definitely made me curious to read more about Ayurveda.
I hope her story has encouraged you to realize that there are other ways besides just fighting symptoms and that it encourages you on your path to your own, individual health and well-being.
Next week, as always on Tuesdays, there will be the next Darmglück episode, I look forward to seeing you again. See you soon!
Now I recommend you subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you like what you hear, I'd really appreciate a review on iTunes or Apple Podcast. Because these reviews also help other people to find the podcast so that we can spread the knowledge about gut and health more.
