Tips to Become Your Own Body's Healer
By Melanie Yukov, INHC
Melanie's Journey
Cindi Michaelson
We’re here with Melanie Yukov. Melanie is such a beautiful human being. And she comes to us with a lot of background in herbalism. She’s a speech pathologist. So she knows a lot about flower essences, I want to turn it over to Melanie right away and say, Melanie, please tell us about you and all of the amazing background that you have.
Melanie Yukov
Thank you so much. I have been on a really long healing journey myself. And I think it’s a nice thing to do to just start with what brought me here to doing and sharing this and how that has brought me to all the pieces of education that I have come into contact with.
So I have had, you know, immune and digestive issues since I was a child. And you know, how life is there’s toxins, there’s stress, and I just became more and more sensitive and didn’t know, my parents didn’t know, right? It was like, okay, she’s having these rashes and whatever, but they would just bring me to the doctor who would give me you know, the antibiotic or whatever. And it was great intentions, but things just got compounded.
And I just have this history of a lot of anxiety issues, I developed such bad sleep issues in college that it started in high school, but in college actually went a semester without sleeping. So I was hallucinating. So it was pretty bad. And I just realized, like the source of all this is my perfectionism, hard work ethic.
I mean, I have a history of working myself to the ground, and that just self critical judgmental nature. And FOMO, you know, fear of missing out I would just rushing and going and doing and doing and going and doing, and not knowing how to express my emotions and, and they became bottled up inside of me.
And I would develop things like constipation, and then gut, dysbiosis, and IBS, and then travel to third world countries and get a stomach bug and can’t handle that, and just all the things, hormonal issues, and I was detached from my own body. And what I’ve learned is that the relationship you have with your own body is reflective of the relationship you have with food. So that’s what brought me to studying herbalism and studying, being a health coach and all of that.
Crissy Fishbane
Thank you so much for sharing that. So much of what you said resonated with me as a person and a human. I think it probably resonates with a lot of our moms. So much of your story is about a struggle that you’ve been through, I’d love to know, where are you today in your journey?
Melanie Yukov
I feel so much more empowered and have a better relationship with myself and with food and just have a wealth of techniques and tips and just tricks and hacks. I know what to do if I’m not feeling well. I know what tea to make. I know what herbal remedy to go to. If my stress and my nervous system isn’t, isn’t working well, I know what vagus nerve practice what breath work practice to use to get my body into balance.
And I really believe that, you know, our bodies want to heal, and they have a lot of wisdom. And it’s really just about knowing what to do to support so that you can basically get out of the way of your own healing and be your own healer. So that’s what I love to educate people and empower them with.
I really believe that our bodies want to heal, and they have a lot of wisdom. It's really just about knowing what to do to support so that you can basically get out of the way of your own healing and be your own healer.
Gut Health & Vagus Nerve
Cindi Michaelson
It’s so interesting to me, Melanie, when you talk about this and your ability to heal yourself. And I think that a lot of people would love to do that more, especially when it comes to their gut health and all that we’re starting to hear about gut health and the issues that come with that.
What kind of issues do you see most people present when it comes to their gut health?
Melanie Yukov
It varies. But yeah, I get a lot of people who physically will experience things like constipation or diarrhea, gut dysbiosis, emotionally, not being connected with their own bodies, a lot of the same things that I went through and not having the tools to know, you know, what it means and what they can do to change that relationship.
A lot of people know kind of what’s good for them, but they just don’t know how to follow that wisdom. It’s like they just need that support to know and trust. And I also get people who are really confused by all the information out there.
And you know, it’s confusing, so I get people with inflammatory bowel disease, people with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, food sensitivities, leaky gut. And these are all the physical manifestations but sleep issues, anxiety issues, information issues. And basically this is just a body that’s out of balance, and just need support with how to get back in balance. That’s essentially what it is.
And I really believe that blocked energy also manifests itself in all these diseases too. So if you move your energy in the right direction, which I teach people how to do, then you don’t have pain, inflammation, all these things,
Crissy Fishbane
Melanie, for our listeners, could you please explain what gut dysbiosis is?
Melanie Yukov
Sure. It’s just basically like an imbalance of gut bacteria. We all have bacteria in our gut, trillions of bacteria, scientists haven’t even been been able to dissect all the little, because it’s so complex, right? But you can have an imbalance of bacteria where certain bacteria grows into proliferation that isn’t supposed to and just gets out of balance.
And then you can have bacteria fermenting in the wrong places and you’ll get like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or you’ll get things like H. Pylori, which Yeah, we all have H. Pylori, but if you have, you know, stress with with h pylori, then you can have too much H Pylori, and just like the tipping point, and then things just get out of whack. And once they get out of whack, it can be challenging to know what to do to get it back.
Crissy Fishbane
Thank you for that, I would love for you to also share what makes you different from other health coaches, because you bring a lot of unique background and knowledge to the table.
Melanie Yukov
So I’ve been on the other side of things where I have gone to health providers and just been given a list of supplements, and then add restrictive diet and handed to me, and then your legs, you know, and it’s like, it just doesn’t work. For me anyway, it didn’t. So I started searching, you know, other tools.
So what I do is I teach people how, for example, to do self massage. And that’s so important like because we store so much, you don’t realize how much tension you have in your gut until you like try to tune into that area that we often ignore.
So I teach about vagal breathing, vagus nerve, hugely important in digestion. So vagal breathing, getting into that rest and digest state, getting into self massage, releasing tension. So breath, work, all of that, teaching people how to make foods more digestible and understand what foods are better for them to digest, or to eat, teaching them what plants can support them. Because that’s an amazing thing to go to.
And not to say medication is bad for everyone or anything like that. But whenever I can go to the more natural way first to try that, or to get off of the other stuff. I think it’s always you know, amazing. And then just a lot of wisdom with emotional work to just helping people with those Mind Body practices.
Crissy Fishbane
I feel like it’s become more widely known, but just for any listeners that don’t know, I think the vagus nerve is so fascinating. Can you just share a little bit about that too?
Melanie Yukov
Absolutely. It’s the 10th cranial nerve, it’s the most important, you know, if we could hone in on one it is it’s called the wandering nerve because it it starts back here it goes around your ear, and it goes through here and it just goes to almost every organ system and even ones that it’s not directly affecting, it’s indirectly affecting like, we share source nuclei in our face with our vagus nerve.
So I will do things like face massages, and you’ll notice like all the tension that we store that we don’t even know we store and and people know and I think have heard things like you know, take a cold shower, put your head in a bag of ice or something, you know, or gargle until you’re like crying. That’s good. I don’t particularly like pain, or suffering in order to heal. So I teach people how to do it in different ways using their voice using massage, as I was saying using breathwork. Because these are all easy, natural ways that aren’t painful.
Living in Harmony with the Body & Reflux Elimination
Cindi Michaelson
You make me laugh. This is a perfect segue into my next question for you. How would you teach living in harmony with the body you’ve touched on so many different things, but I’d love to hear how you would teach living in harmony with the body.
Melanie Yukov
The most important thing I feel like I do as a coach and the most important thing that I’ve learned as somebody who also has dealt with so much with my health is how to tune into emotion.
So what I do is I guide clients through a practice where first I let them feel sensations in their body, and I let them describe them. For me. We use a lot of colors and sensations like what are you feeling? And then from there, I guide them through a series of questions that takes them into what emotions are, are stored there. And literally, like they I guide them through having a conversation with their parts. It’s called parts work.
And so we all have these different parts of ourselves that we tend to push away. Who wants to sit with anger or sadness, or loneliness or any of these feelings, right? So we tend to push them away, but actually in me guiding people and how to interact with them. It’s like a weight lifted off your shoulders. And you essentially get out of the way of your own healing, because you let these parts of you have a voice, if that makes sense. So it’s one of the techniques I use. Yeah. And I find it to be important.
Cindi Michaelson
So this is the question that I tend to ask a lot of our experts, how do you do this with kids? Can you do this with kids?
Melanie Yukov
Depending on the age of the child, I use Emotional Freedom Tapping, which is basically tapping on acupressure points while saying affirmations. I’ve done this with kids as young as four years old, in speech therapy. So these this is not even a typically functioning child, where, you know, I’m pushing a child to say sounds and they’re getting down on themselves, you know, because how hard is that to be saying words over and over that you can’t say and then it’s like, okay, let’s and then I just have them repeat me saying little short sentences as we tap on acupressure points. And they feel better after you know, it’s just it’s a release, right. So that’s an example.
In terms of parts work, I’ve done parts work with kids as young as 15. And she told me she was like, this is like really uncomfortable, but I do feel better after. And I have her actually on video, a video testimonial of her talking about the emotional work, she was seeing me as a kid with arfid restrictive eating disorder. So having a very, very small, picky, very, very picky eater, we call it a problem eater. There were small, small amounts of food that she would eat.
And then also she wanted to see a health coach, because she wants to be healthy, you know, in addition to that, so she was 15. And so we did the health stuff. And then I also combined the emotional work.
Crissy Fishbane
So essential to have both pieces, particularly for for issues like that. You had previously mentioned reflux as one of the issues, can you go into what some of the causes of reflux are?
Melanie Yukov
It is important to know, because people experienced reflux and can be experiencing it for very different reasons. Some people have low stomach acid, and that’s a reason why they experienced reflux, some people have SIBO are small intestinal overgrowth. And so these are all just different forms of dysbiosis.
And then there could be food triggers, you know, that are compounded, like, for example, chocolate or spicy foods that activate it, some people have H Pylori, and which is typical, we all have it, but when it gets out of whack, and because you have stress and all this stuff, then that can also lead to reflux.
So there’s lots of different reasons. And I do think it’s good to work with a functional medicine provider to figure out what you know, your root cause is for a lot of people, it’s also just emotions, and hey, when I’m around so and so who really makes me angry, reflux is a heat condition, right? So it’s like that lower esophageal sphincter can be, you know, working malfunctioning, right, and then you can get more reflux.
And also a lot of people are on protein pump inhibitors, which are prescribed by doctors for reflux. And it’s just a bandaid and actually causes small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So you just have like this cycle of people who develop, it can be complicated.
Cindi Michaelson
As we begin to wrap up our conversation, this is so good. Can you leave us with a few tips for reflux elimination?
Melanie Yukov
Sure. So I think I want to focus on how our relationship with like I mentioned our relationship with ourself our relationship with food is so important and I think it would be great to know like, are people actually eating together as a family? Because I find and working with people that you know, we’re always on the go we’re always in a rush we could be eating at different times not even taking the time to eat together and how does that impact reflux? Well, if you’re eating quickly and you’re not connected, and you’re eating too fast, you get reflux.
So my first tip would be to examine think about how much are you eating together as a family and see if you can make that more of a consistent practice. And make it a ritual like have one child light the candle guide in a little gratitude. Thank you prayer and that doesn’t have to be a religious right it just be a thank you to the food. Have somebody set the plates mats have another child you know put out the food put out the cups or you have a choice of which cup to put on the table, whatever it is just make it something to look forward to and and really just sitting down together would be my first tip.
Crissy Fishbane
Love it! When you were talking it made me think about I am notoriously a very fast eater and my daughter tells me all the time, “Oh Oh, mommy’s done already, Mommy, you need to eat slower, slow down.” Sitting down with a family and having that family meal. I mean, all honesty, it’s not something that happens every night. But when it does, it is magical. I love that time together as a family. And it is something I strive to do more of for sure.
Melanie Yukov
And that is really important too, if you have a child who is a picky eater to really create that safe and like relaxing atmosphere around food, because the environment is so important with that. So that’s one thing.
The other thing would be, you know, if you are a mom who has the ability to this is probably easier when you’re eating alone or at work or whatnot. But like just being able to think about where your mind is and not have distractions. So with one mom, I’m working on her, not eating at her desk in front of her computer, and not multitasking while she’s eating to just give yourself that time we’re on our phones all the time.
And trust me, it’s a struggle for me too, like we always want to be, you know, they’re so doing that chewing your food and getting awareness into your body. That could be even by tapping your feet, it gets you out of your mind and into your body when you’re thinking about a million things. So just doing that would be my second tip.
And then my third would be if you are dealing with a lot of digestive issues, sometimes what I’ve done in my darkest hour, is just visualized my body accepting this food, and blessing it. And really having that connection. I’ve done this with someone, she had horrible reflux. And I was just telling her, just imagine your esophagus, like having this white healing energy and that food just going down it with ease. And she did it. And she said that it felt so much better. So that’s taking back your own power and really being your own healer. Those are some some tips.
Crissy Fishbane
Most importantly, Melanie, we would love to know, where can we get more information?
Melanie Yukov
Sure. So you can sign up for my newsletter, and I have a class coming out which is going to be available for a limited time. And it’s going to be on how I supported my client and conquering reflux in just three months getting off of PPIs. And I will discuss four key plants that helped her conquer reflux to get off of her medications. And a lot of the plants I talked about also overlap with other digestive conditions. So here I spoke more about some of the Mind Body practices. And then you’ll get some herbal wisdom in that class as well. And then there’s an offer to talk with me if you continue to need more support.
Crissy Fishbane
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Melanie. This is such important information. And as we know we’ve worked with you in a variety of different capacities and you are just such a wealth of knowledge. So we are so excited to share this with the moms in our community. Thank you.
Melanie Yukov
Thank you. Thank you so much. I love the work you do. Thank you so much.
In addition to being a Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Melanie is also a Community Herbalist. She has been a practicing Pediatric Speech and Language Pathologist for 20 years with a degree from Columbia University. She integrates her passion for teaching children in her mommy and me Herbalicious Exploration Classes where she connects people of all ages to their roots, nature, and healthy practices through conscious community. What she has learned from her journey has led to her Core Beliefs which you can read about along with her many trainings and certifications here: https://root2risewellness.org/about.
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