Shownotes
What if the way we've been taught to chase wellness is part of what keeps us from feeling well? On Wellness Reimagined, host Navya talks with clinical herbalist Bonnie D'Arcangelo about diet, stress, and sustainable habits.
Bonnie shares why restriction backfires, how small consistent steps beat all-or-nothing goals, and why unresolved stress can undo even the healthiest diet.
About the Guest:
Bonnie D'Arcangelo is a clinical herbalist and holistic health consultant based in Michigan. She works with clients managing chronic conditions using herbal medicine, and explores the emotional root causes that often sit underneath physical health issues.
Key Takeaways:
- Consistency beats intensity: a daily 30-minute walk often outperforms occasional hard workouts
- Set small, realistic diet goals instead of banning foods completely
- Keep a simple food journal to build awareness without judging yourself
- Look for the emotional or stress-related root behind a physical health issue
- Pair a calming scent, like lavender, with deep breathing to reset
- Give yourself grace after a setback and simply start again
Connect With the Guest:
Hub: bonniedarcangelo.com
Clinical practice: veusebeiaphytotherapycenter.com
Herbal products: aetherbal.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bonniedarcangelo
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Cold Open — What If Wellness Itself Is Part of the Problem?
[02:30] (approx) Meet Bonnie D'Arcangelo — Clinical Herbalist and Holistic Consultant
[07:00] (approx) The Biggest Misconception: Eating Healthy Isn't Always Enough
[13:00] (approx) Becoming the Observer: Food Journals and Small Steps
[19:00] (approx) The Hidden Role of Stress in Chronic Health Issues
[24:00] (approx) Turning Everyday Moments Into Intentional Meditation
[29:00] (approx) Closing Reflection — Your Path to Wellness Is Your Own
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Transcripts
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00:00:08 Navya: The listeners. We talk about wellness like it's something we can buy, something we can schedule, and something we can check off a list. But what if the very way we approach wellness is a part of what keeps us from actually feeling well? What if the frameworks we have inherited, the languages that we use, the goals that we chase are all pointing us in the wrong direction. Tonight we are asking what it means to reimagine wellness from the ground up, to question the narratives we've accepted without even realizing it, and to discover what might be possible when we let go of the scripts that we've been handed.
00:00:50 Navya: I am Navya and you are listening to Wellness Reimagined. This is where we step outside the familiar conversations and explore what it really means to care for ourselves in a world that constantly tells us we are not doing it right. Joining me today is Bonnie Darkangelo. Hi, Bonnie. It's great to have you here with us.
00:01:11 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Hi. Thank you. It's great to be here with you.
00:01:13 Navya: Thank you so much. So, Bonnie, before we begin any quick introduction for our listeners to know you better.
00:01:21 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yeah. So I am a clinical herbalist. I have a clinical practice here in the US where I meet with clients. Usually they have chronic medical conditions and they are seeking a way to manage them naturally. And sometimes I get clients who just want to make sure that they won't have any health issues later on in life. And so they want help and advice on how to maintain health and improve their current health. And so primarily, I use herbal medicine as my modality for helping people to heal and restore their bodies. Um, but a lot of times I find that people's health issues often have an emotional root cause as well. And so in my practice, we work through some of those underlying belief systems that can be leading to some health issues as well.
00:02:14 Navya: Okay. Perfect. So, um, you know, let's just hop into it with like a very basic thing. I mean, when people think about wellness today, what is the biggest misconception that you see them carrying? And how does that misconception, uh, sort of shape the way that they live?
00:02:36 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: So I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that if you eat healthy and you exercise that you won't have any health conditions. And unfortunately, we live in an environment that is increasingly toxic and our body has to deal with all of these toxins. And so maybe two hundred years ago, you could eat healthy and exercise and maintain health. But nowadays that's not true. We also see a depletion of the nutrient value in the food that we're eating as well. And so oftentimes people find it hard to get all of the nutrition their body needs just through a healthy diet. And so we need to look at other things like helping the body to maintain a healthy detox system and some supplementation to help support some nutrient deficiencies is also very vital.
00:03:32 Navya: This is, I think, very important for me because, um, you know, two things about me. One, I can't, I, I just don't like to exercise and two, I try to eat healthy, but it's, it's not like a habit sort of a thing, but I do develop certain medical conditions like, I mean, RA for that matter, right. And whenever I talk to my family or anybody for that matter, the one thing that they constantly say is listen one, you need to exercise. Two, you need to control your diet, which is you need to eat healthy. Now, this is something which I tell them, my parents, my friends, everybody. And now I'm going to tell them that this is not the only thing which is keeping me sick. Okay? So there are other things which are to be taken care of.
00:04:23 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Well, it is very important to eat healthy and to have exercise, but exercise can look different for everybody else. That doesn't mean that you have to go to the gym and hop on a treadmill, or lift weights or anything like that. Exercise can be taking a walk, and there's actually scientific evidence that taking a walk out in nature and in the woods has significant health benefits, and that our bodies endorphins increase and our cortisol levels decrease. And so a simple thirty minute walk every day can have significant health benefits. And there's actual evidence that shows that if you're consistent with your exercise. So let's say you walk every day for thirty minutes. That is much better for you than the person who goes to the gym two or three times a week and works out for an hour and a half. The body actually responds better to consistency. So exercise doesn't have to be painful. It's just a form of movement. Now, diet is another thing that is very challenging for people. But I find with my clients, we have these conversations that restricting a diet completely is not healthy either. If let's say you really like cookies, okay. They may not be the healthiest thing for you to have that much carbs and sugar on a daily basis, but you can set weekly goals for yourself and say, I'm going to have cookies on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and then the rest of the week I'm going to refrain. And so baby steps are always better than completely restricting stuff. Because we know if we tell ourselves, I'm never going to have another cookie again, or another dessert, whatever it is you like, that is not going to happen. You are going to eat dessert. So looking at how we can include more leafy green vegetables in our diet. So taking your current diet and then just adding some green vegetables to it can be a great improvement. And in my clinical practice, when I'm working on people's lifestyle choices like diet, I don't like to impose severe. In fact, I don't impose anything on my clients. I let them choose. And most often or not, they'll come around and they'll say, I could eat more vegetables. And so then we discuss which vegetables do you like? Okay, you really like spinach? So how, how can we add more spinach into your diet? And that's really kind of creating an evolution of health for yourself that can be sustainable at the same time. And adding in little things here and there versus saying, I'm absolutely not going to have this food because it's unhealthy. You're just never it's unrealistic.
00:07:11 Navya: Yeah. You know, also because it happens. I mean, it's, I think it's human behavior when you refrain from doing a certain thing like that, when you put limits to a certain thing, that this is something that I'm not going to do. You're bound to get attracted to it. So yeah, you know, I, I want to ask you, talking about these misconceptions, if that's the story most people are working from, what would it look like to take a step outside of it? I mean, even if it's just for a small little moment.
00:07:48 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: So taking a step outside of your current paradigm sometimes. Okay. One thing I'll have my clients do when we know that they're maybe not having the most healthy diet in the world. I'll ask them to keep a diet journal. You don't need to change anything. I just want you to write down everything you eat. Okay? That act makes you more conscious and aware of your actions versus just unconsciously eating and not paying attention to it. So that's one way to kind of step outside and hit the pause button a little bit and become conscious. And most people, when they start to write down what they're eating.
00:08:29 Navya: They start to.
00:08:31 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Naturally start to change their diet just out of the simple act of consciousness. It's kind of the reverse of I'm telling myself I can't have something, so I want to have more, so I have more of it. Um, the same thing is, is when you start realizing how much of something you are eating, you stop eating as much of it. And so finding a way to kind of step outside and become the observer of yourself can be really, really, really helpful. And if you think of yourself as if I was observing somebody else who had this same behavior that I have, what would I think of them? And suddenly you can put yourself in a different perspective and that's the most important thing. And then you need to make sure that you set realistic goals for yourself. If you're going to set a goal for something, it's not an all or nothing. I always like to tell a story of a client of mine who didn't like to drink water. He hated the taste of water, and he drank soda all the time. And he his kidneys were starting to fail, and he had other health issues, and I really needed him to drink some water. So instead of telling him, you have to drink eight glasses of water a day, he was never going to accomplish that. I had him start with one glass of water a day and I made him a special herbal preparation called an oxymel, which is essentially a vinegar extract of herbs mixed with honey. It's kind of tangy. It's kind of sweet, but it also has the benefit of having some herbal medicine.
00:10:09 Navya: talking about the misconceptions and, you know, wellness in general, if people I mean, you know, if this is the kind of story that they are working from, what would it feel like to take a step outside from it, even if it's just for a small little moment?
00:10:28 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yeah. So it's important to take a step outside of ourselves and Observe what is taking place as if we're helping somebody else. And so one thing that I have my clients do is I will have them keep a food journal if we're working on their dietary habits and the simple act of writing down and observing what they eat on a daily basis helps them to become conscious of what they're consuming. And it's kind of the same effect. But the reverse effect of if you tell yourself you can't have something, you're going to want it more. But if you start to realize that you're eating a lot of something and you become conscious of that, you find that they start to eat less and less of something because they're recording it and writing it down and becoming conscious of that act of what they're consuming. And so we can do this in several different ways when we step outside of ourselves. If you were to think of yourself as somebody else, if you were observing somebody else doing the same actions that you're doing, what would you think of them and what would your opinion of them? B and so and then we can play that back at ourselves. And we don't want to be a negative critic where we start becoming hard on ourselves and treating ourselves poorly. We need to have compassion for ourselves and give ourselves the time that we need to unfold some of these bad habits that we have. You know, if you're thirty five years old and you spent the last thirty five years building those habits that you currently have, it's going to take you time to change those habits. And it can't. And it's not going to happen overnight. If you set yourself an unrealistic goal of saying, I'm going to exercise for an hour every single day, and you normally never exercise, that's a very high goal that is going to be really hard for you to achieve. But if you say, I'm going to start out by exercising for fifteen minutes a day, that is a much more realistic goal that is easy for you to adapt and maintain.
00:12:30 Navya: Right. I mean, you know, it's it's quite interesting how much of what we call wellness is actually about control. You know, about fixing, about becoming something that we we are innately we're not. And maybe I think that's the very thing which is keeping us stuck all together.
00:12:51 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yeah.
00:12:53 Navya: So, um, you know, when you look at why people struggle with wellness, not just the, you know, surface habits, but the deeper patterns, what do you notice that is really going on underneath?
00:13:10 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Most of the time when people are struggling with their health. There is some kind of underlying emotional reason for it. Sometimes there's a trauma that has occurred in their life. Sometimes there is a lot of stress taking place in their life. And so to really achieve optimal health and wellness, we have to look at some of the underlying emotional currents that are taking place in our lives. If you're under severe stress, you're not going to be able to make positive changes in your life in the same way that you would be able to if you addressed that stress and what you can do to change that. And sometimes we're in stressful situations that we can't change. We could be going through a divorce, you could have a new baby. There's lots of different life adjustments that are hard to manage the stress, but there are also stress management techniques that one can do during those stressful times that can help us to cope with the stress. And that's one of the beautiful things about herbal medicine, is herbs can be a really important ally in our life to help support our wellness goal. There is a lot of herbs that can help to reduce the overall stress levels in the body help to reset the nervous system. There are even herbs that are called, you know, happiness, herbs that make people feel happy and elated. And they're not addictive or habit forming like some of the pharmaceuticals are. So finding ways to support yourself with different modalities, you know, there's also aromatherapy and, um, there's a lot that can be done with aromatherapy. I do every morning. I have an aromatherapy blend that I use during my meditation. And when I'm doing a meditation or I'm working on anything, I smell the aromatherapy blend before I begin and when I end, and then every morning I use that blend and I smell it and I allow my memory to trigger and remember the things that I'm working on. And it helps to, on a daily basis, move you through because scent is so deeply connected to memory that aromatherapy can be a really excellent tool. So if you have, say, a very stressful job when you get home at night, have a simple meditation practice where you have your deep breathing exercises, you work to calm your nervous system and then pick an essential oil that is very pleasant to you. Like lavender is a very calming, essential oil. And when you're done with your meditation, do some deep breathing and smell that lavender. And then you can take that to work with you. And if you feel that you're under an immense amount of stress and pressure at work, take out that lavender essential oil and take a deep breath and allow that to move over the body. And it can be a tactic that will help move you into a place of a little bit of ease throughout your day. And so sometimes when we're talking about health goals, our health goals can be that simple. You can do all the diet and exercise in the world and have the most perfect diet and the best exercise. But if you're under intense stress every day at work and you're not doing anything to help reduce that stress load, you're not going to be any healthier than the person who's eating the worst diet and doesn't exercise.
00:16:42 Navya: Right? I mean, I think there's just something so powerful in recognizing that the struggle is not a personal failing. I mean, it's often a response to systems and all sorts of stories that were, you know, that were never designed to support our actual well-being in the first place.
00:17:04 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Right. You know, our systems and our way of life is not designed to support our well-being. It is an antithesis to the human being. Um, and if you look throughout history, you know, this, the nine to five job that a lot of people live and some people work ten, Ten twelve hours shifts during the day. The. The body has to be able to rest and reset itself. And it needs certain enjoyments and pleasure. You know, pleasure is not something negative. Pleasure in excess or pleasure that harms others can certainly be negative, but experiencing joy and pleasure in one's life is very important to having a well rounded health for the human being. And if you're overworked and under a lot of stress, it will be very hard for your body to heal. So what happens when we're under significant stress all the time is it causes oxidative damage in the body. We have free radical oxygen species that are caused by stress, and this is where some diet and herbs also can help because there's a lot of antioxidant foods. Um, particularly the Indian diet uses a lot of turmeric and its cooking, which is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. And so making sure that if you are under a lot of stress, you're getting enough of those herbs and foods in your diet and those breathing exercises that are helping to reduce that stress on your body. And exercise can actually be a negative thing. In some instances, when you do heavy exercise, like running and lifting weights, it actually releases cortisol in the body, which the body doesn't recognize. The difference between the cortisol caused by stress and the cortisol caused by exercise. It's just one singular hormone that is released in both instances. And so high impact exercise is not one hundred percent the best thing for everybody. So understanding that your wellness journey is going to be different than somebody else's wellness journey is very important. Not everybody should be doing the same thing as another person. And that's the same is true with herbal medicine. People hear these fads about taking this supplement or that supplement, and they think that it's going to have this health benefit that it had for their friend, but it's not. It's not a one size fits all. You're a different person, and you need to give yourself the grace and understanding to find your own journey.
00:19:53 Navya: Definitely. But, um, how does this show up in everyday life? I mean, in like the very small moments that people might not even notice.
00:20:05 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: So I had a spiritual teacher of mine tell me one of the most important things he said, somebody had asked him how he is able to spend so much time meditating. And he said to them, What do you think I'm doing right now? He said when I'm walking up the stairs. I walk with intention and I am in a state of meditation. When your feet touch the ground, it's about turning everything in life into an intention and an action in which you're aware you're drive to work can become intentional. You can appreciate the trees that you see, the clouds in the sky. You can take a different route where you pass by a playground where children are playing so you can remember the joys and pleasures of being a child yourself. It's about creating intention in your daily life, which brings joy and happiness to your being.
00:21:05 Navya: And you know, it's, it's just very beautiful how meditation, like we've brought meditation to this one single point wherein you need to be somewhere in the mountains, very secluded, not surrounded by anybody, but I it's it's just lovely how meditation is not about that. Right. It's I mean, it's just about being present in the nature with yourself. It could again, it could be in a park. Right. Appreciating the things, as you mentioned, appreciating the children playing in the park or the trees or just the, the weather, just it's about meditation is about being there and being present, which is, I think most of us get confused between the two of the statements.
00:21:52 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yeah. You know, meditation can be whatever you create out of it. And that's the really beautiful thing. And also the negative thing, because in many ways, if you are focusing on something negative, if you're constantly thinking about negative things, that's a form of meditation too, and you're creating an energy that surrounds you that's negative. And so being aware of your thoughts, your actions and your intentions can bring more health and healing than any diet or exercise regimen ever could.
00:22:31 Navya: So, um, you know, if someone's listening right now and they're starting to recognize that in themselves, right? I mean, falling into the wrong track or something, what is that one way that they could begin to relate to those moments differently?
00:22:52 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Well, the first we already said is the recognition that you're doing it being the observer of yourself. And then I like people to sit back and think about and unwind. Why are you doing that behavior? What is it that causes you to do that? Is there some trauma from your childhood that has caused you to have that behavior? Did somebody say something to you throughout the course of your life that gave you a negative impression of yourself? We have to unwind. The same is with a health condition. If somebody has, you know, chronic kidney disease. Well, when did you first start having kidney trouble? Was there something going on in your life at that point in time? Um, so I'll use an example of a client who has fibromyalgia. Um, which is just chronic pain without any known cause. And in helping them unwind, they were able to pinpoint that the point in their life in which it started, they were being sued by somebody. And we're going through this very stressful time in their life in which they were wrongfully accused for something that they did not do. And that Stuck with them and manifested as chronic daily pain and being able to unwind where that started from. Help them to move towards their journey of healing. So recognition is the first step for everybody.
00:24:30 Navya: Well, you know, when someone starts to make changes in their life, what, what exactly happens when they hit a setback or when, you know, life gets very, uh, complicated and they fall back into old patterns because I think, I mean, that is something which is inevitable.
00:24:53 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yeah. You have to have a complete practice of no shame or no blame. We've all been there. We've all fallen off the wagon. We've all lost track of where we were going. And when you're ready, you just start right back up where you left. As if nothing ever happened. You have to allow yourself grace. That's the most important thing that you can do is to allow yourself grace and forgiveness. Because if you can't give yourself grace and forgiveness, nobody else in the world is going to give it to you either. It starts with you. If you are kind and forgiving to yourself, then you will find that other people will be kind and forgiving back.
00:25:39 Navya: And I mean, how do you help someone sustain that kind of practice over time, especially, you know, when the world around them is still moving at a completely different pace altogether.
00:25:53 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: So start small, you know, small achievable steps. So in my daily practice, I was trying to have more mindfulness throughout the day. And so I started by setting an alarm on my phone that was very, very quiet. So nobody around me but me would hear it. And it goes off every hour of the day throughout a certain time frame, from ten thirty a m to seven thirty p m, and it would go off once every hour. And when the alarm would go off, I would spend fifteen seconds, maybe ten, depending on what I was doing. If I was at work or something, I would take a deep breath. I would check in with myself. I would remind myself of my intention and then continue on with my day. It was a constant reset throughout the day. And after doing the practice for long enough, I started to look at the clock. You know, two or three minutes before my alarm would go off because I, I knew my body had been programmed to it, but it takes time to program the body. Um, research has shown that it takes an average of forty days for somebody to make something a habit, and you don't want to set a goal that's too hard to achieve. So set your goal. If you have. Your ultimate goal is to exercise seven days a week for an hour a day. Just use that as an example. You start off setting your goal much lower, exercising for fifteen minutes a day, four days a week, so that you can have a little bit of grace for the days that you might miss it. And then after forty days of that becoming a habit, then you increase it a little bit and you slowly but surely add to it after you have assimilated that into your life so that it doesn't become a burden, it becomes something you begin to enjoy and look forward to. When the alarms first started going off on my phone, sometimes I felt scattered like it just went off. Could it really have been an hour already? Wow, the day is going by so fast. But now the space seems different because the body and the nervous system adjusted to it, and it starts to look forward to that fifteen seconds. That where I get to check back in with myself. So you want to make it something that you can do, so you can feel proud and have a sense of accomplishment over it.
00:28:18 Navya: And it's, it's quite beautiful, right? I mean, the idea that we can sustain change without setbacks is, I think maybe one of the biggest myths that we carry, right? I mean, real transformation is never, ever linear. And learning to move with that, I mean, rather than just against it might be the most important skill of all the other things that we need in our lives.
00:28:46 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yes, absolutely.
00:28:51 Navya: Yeah. I mean, you know, one thing that I'm definitely taking away from this conversation is that wellness is not something that we achieve. I mean, it's something we reimagine again and again in conversation. It's like a conversation with who we are becoming. So, Bonnie, if anybody wants to continue this conversation and get to know more about you, where exactly can they reach out to you?
00:29:20 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: So you can visit my website at Bonnie darkangelo dot com. On there, you'll find links to other podcast shows that I have been on. You'll find a link to my clinical practice, my herbal products company, and so many other wonderful things. So it's just a hub to take you to all the other things that I'm working on.
00:29:39 Navya: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here tonight and for bringing such depth to this conversation.
00:29:48 Bonnie D'Arcangelo: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It was beautiful.
00:29:51 Navya: And one thing for everybody who's listening, I hope this leaves you with the permission to question the stories that you've been told about wellness and, you know, to trust your own experience and to remember that the paths to feeling well does not have to look like anybody else's. You are unique and so is your path to wellness. So take what resonates, leave what does not, and know that however you're showing up now is enough. So until next time, this is wellness reimagined and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.
