MysticMag meets Julia Allard, a 500-hour certified yoga instructor, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, certified Reiki Practitioner, and Nutrition graduate. Based in San Diego, CA, Julia’s passion for holistic health extends beyond boundaries as she works both in-person and virtually, connecting with individuals worldwide. Inspired by her personal healing journey a decade ago, she channels her expertise to guide others on their paths to wellness. When not immersed in health and wellness, Julia enjoys reading, hiking, and riding the waves while surfing.
Your approach to health and wellness involves looking at various aspects of life in relation to overall well-being. Could you elaborate on how you integrate Bio-individuality into your practice, ensuring personalized solutions for each individual’s health journey?
My coaching style is not a one-size-fits all approach. Instead, I recognize that every person is unique and has varied needs, lifestyle habits, personal experiences, beliefs, values, and genetic makeup. What may yield great results for one person, may not yield any results for another. A food that can be good or healthy for one person, can be detrimental to another’s health. I make lifestyle and nutrition recommendations based on client’s preferences, skills, schedule, and abilities.
Hormonal imbalances manifest in various ways, impacting physical and emotional health. How do you identify the root causes of these imbalances, and what strategies do you employ to guide clients in restoring hormonal health effectively?
I offer a free 20-minute consultation to new clients. Before the consultation, I send them an intake form to complete, which helps paint the picture of what their overall health and lifestyle looks like.
As a health coach, I do not utilize hormone testing. Rather I look at symptoms and identify what may be causing them. Some things that can cause your hormones to be imbalanced are poor diet, excess weight, stress, lack of physical activity, poor sleep, and environmental toxins.
I take a holistic approach to hormone health, so I mostly focus on diet, exercise, supplement use (as needed), and lifestyle changes. I do not diagnose any conditions, however if a client has already been diagnosed with a specific condition like hypothyroidism or PCOS, I can recommend specific diet and lifestyle changes to improve their symptoms.
In my 1:1 coaching, I teach women how to balance their blood sugar, support liver detoxification, support their adrenals, track and sync with their menstrual cycle, manage stress, and embody their feminine energy – all of which can help lead to hormonal balance.
In your experience, many individuals may have been told that certain symptoms related to hormonal imbalance are considered normal. How do you empower your clients to recognize these symptoms and take proactive steps towards addressing them?
We are told that there are certain things that women just “go through”. We are told that fatigue, period pain, mood swings, etc, are just “part of being a woman”. These are all symptoms of a larger issue that needs to be addressed.
Most women I have encountered are always doing so much that they hardly have time to talk or think about themselves. I provide a safe space and support for clients to discuss any issues that they are having. A lot of the time people don’t even realize they have an issue or symptom until they start talking about it out loud. Others may have realized it, but not proactively done anything about it because they were told that was “normal”. Sometimes just feeling heard and that their concerns are valid can be extremely empowering in and of itself.
For such a long time it was so taboo to talk about your menstrual cycle or menopause, even amongst other women. I think we are finally reaching a time now where we are starting to feel more comfortable having these conversations and acknowledging that many of us are going through a lot of the same struggles (whether we discuss them or not).
Your practice emphasizes a scientifically-driven, personalized approach to achieving health goals. Can you share an example of how tailoring plans based on an individual’s unique needs has led to notable progress or transformation in their health?
Health coaches can really help bridge the gap in western medicine. Most MD’s only take one nutrition class and are only able to spend a very short amount of time with their patients. A lot of the time people are diagnosed with a condition, given a pill, and then have no idea what to do after that.
In my practice, I offer clients a list of foods that are good/bad (specifically for them or their condition/s), share recipes and resources, and provide ongoing support between our 2-week sessions.
Through diet, exercise, and lifestyle recommendations, I have helped clients lose weight, achieve better lab values, reduce stress, sleep better, balance their hormones, and reduce menstrual symptoms.
Wellness isn’t just about physical health but also involves creating a positive relationship with oneself. How do your holistic practices, such as yoga and Reiki, contribute to this aspect of well-being for your clients seeking a more profound connection with their bodies and minds?
Being stressed and disconnected from oneself can have a serious impact on overall health. I am a strong believer in the mind-body connection, meaning that if you are having issues in your mind they will manifest in your physical body and vice versa. Life moves so fast, we can often feel like we are burning the candle at both ends. If we don’t take the time to pause, reflect, and take care of ourselves, we will eventually reach a state of burnout. This can cause a negative cascade of physical and emotional symptoms.
I encourage everyone I work with to engage in some form of movement, for the physical aspects, as well as stress relief practice. Yoga is a great practice because it is low-impact, offers many different forms, and can be accessible to all skill levels. I first began practicing yoga about 10 years ago and I got my 200-hour certification in 2018. What drew me so much to the practice from the start was not just the physical aspect, but the spiritual and mental aspects. I joke that there is the version of me that existed before and after yoga. Before I began my yoga practice, I was depressed, I was selfish, I was impatient, I had body-image issues. In yoga we work with the body to quiet the mind, and work the mind to quiet the body.
Yoga helps to provide more mental clarity, engage deep breathing practices, release tension, regulate the nervous system, reduce pain, and balance hormones (by reducing adrenaline and cortisol).
The story of how I got into Reiki is actually pretty interesting. I was attending a spiritual event. The medium who was running the event handed me a brochure for a Reiki training and basically told me I was meant to practice it. I got certified in Reiki level 1 & 2 in October of 2021. At first I practiced it mostly on myself and I started having crazy breakthroughs. I rarely ever cry, but I would have these sessions where I would be hysterically crying and could feel so much trauma and pain finally being processed and released. I soon after began practicing it on other people and it made it even more powerful. My favorite reiki success story was actually with my mother. She had surgery on her achilles tendon years ago and had been unable to walk down the stairs since then without being in pain. She is not very familiar with energy work, but she let me do reiki on her anyway. After performing reiki on her heel, within a few minutes her pain had gone away and she now is able to walk up and down the stairs normally. Reiki helps to facilitate healing on all levels – physically, mentally, and emotionally. It can also help to promote relaxation, reduce stress and anxiety, increase happiness, reduce pain & tension, and release emotional pain and trauma.
How can the Lunar Cycle Syncing Program help women with hormonal issues and painful periods?
I used to hate and dread my period, which I think many women do. Our periods are something that we experience every single month, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be painful. It can actually become a beautiful and intuitive experience, once you learn how to connect with it properly.
When many women think of their menstrual cycle, they are only thinking about the menstrual phase (aka the part where you bleed), but the menstrual cycle is so much more than that. There are four phases of your cycle – the menstrual phase, follicular phase, ovulatory phase, and luteal phase. During each of these phases your energy level is different, your exercise abilities are different, your hormone levels are different, your libido levels are different, your nutrition needs are different, and your mood is different. Cycle syncing is the practice of tailoring your diet, exercise, and lifestyle habits to align with the four stages of your menstrual cycle. This can lead to increased productivity, more energy, decreased period symptoms, balanced hormones, improved health, improved mood, reduced stress, a safer relationship with physical activity, better fitness results, and reduced PMS. Cycle syncing encourages women to embrace the changes in their body during their 28-day cycle, rather than just showing up the same every single day (when you definitely do not feel the same). It encourages you to slow down and speed up as your body allows it.
I spent about a year implementing cycle syncing into my own health and researching everything I could on the topic. I used my knowledge and my skill set to create the Lunar Cycle Syncing Program. The program is self paced and once you purchase it you receive lifetime access, so you can go back and repeat it over again (which I strongly encourage). I break everything down for you in a way that is very easy to understand and follow, so you too can begin to sync with your menstrual cycle. In the program I teach you about cycle syncing and its benefits, common hormonal imbalances, how to track your cycle, and give you nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle recommendations for each phase.
Each of the 4 phases comes with a food guide or grocery list, 7-8 recipes, and 2-4 yoga videos. I also include a link to my “hormone healthy” amazon product list and provide different handouts on hormone balance.
If you would like to find out more about Julia Allard, please visit https://www.organicauranutrition.com/
