The Power of Choice Lives in Each of Us with Ara Katz

Seed Health co-founder Ara Katz had to learn that even discernment, taken to an extreme, can quietly become its own dimmer. In this episode, she and Cecily explore how real choice works: not a strategy or a cognitive matrix, but an inner compass that's always recalibrating. On discernment as a survival instinct, the grace of doing nothing, standing in the middle of the tornado instead of fleeing it, and why how you do anything is how you do everything.

Ara's new book, Your Vagina is a Universe, will be released March 9, 2027 and you can follow her on Instagram.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Chapters:

1:10 Welcome to Undimmed and the second awareness, Choice
3:35 Where Ara is now: centered amid uncertainty
4:51 Writing the book, stepping back from Seed and resetting her compass
7:00 “How you do anything is how you do everything”
9:31 How Ara and Cecily met
12:59 What Seed is, and how the book came to be
17:24 Rewriting 80,000 words because her gut said “this isn’t it”
19:45 Where her discernment came from
21:30 When boundaries swing too far
25:25 The places where you’re “eating McDonald’s”
30:42 Doing nothing, negative space and Option D
37:20 Culture, the clock and the myth of the five-year plan
41:17 Working motherhood, and why Ara never drinks
43:00 Her dimmers: matcha, exercise and healthy habits taken too far
47:10 Getting off the witness stand
47:47 How Ara self-soothes: calling friends, moving her body, time and space
51:08 Safety, trust and self-love
53:46 Being big everywhere: her north star
55:26 Outro

Cecily Mak 0:00

When I think of my friend Ara Katz, I think about discernment. I think about how thoughtful she is about every facet of her life. Something I noticed when we first met. It's something we talk about in depth in this episode. She also noted at one point that if she publishes a memoir someday, she's going to title it Option D, none of the above. This is a gentle reference to the fact that a lot of people go to Ara for advice. They seem to have everything planned out. They know what their options are. They're kind of coming to her for the last bit. And she has this beautiful ability to point out that sometimes the right path is something we haven't even considered yet.

Ara Katz 0:44

The way to think about even decision making is that there are so many beautiful unknowns to each of the paths that you think you know, and that any one of them is going to deliver an experience and wisdom and beauty and introduction to people and ways of moving through the world that you can't even contemplate.

Cecily Mak 1:10

Hello and welcome to Undimmed, a podcast about living with presence. I'm Cecily Mak. This season we're exploring the eight awarenesses, a framework that any of us can use to explore and shift our relationship with unwanted habits of many kinds. The awareness we're talking about today is the second awareness, a choice. I choose what I consume. I could not imagine a better guest for this episode. Eric Katz is founder and chairperson of Seed, a microbiome science company. She also lives her life as an embodiment of discernment. You'll hear that shine through in this episode. You'll notice that rather than focusing on any particular dimmer habit or tendency, we talk about choice as something that we can integrate into our entire lives. It affects everything we do and how we orient ourselves to the world around us. Throughout the episode, Eric and I talk about the might of our internal compasses, how we can tune into ourselves and honor our own answers to life's big and small questions. She does this in her life with beautiful grace and strength. And you'll hear that come through in our conversation today. One of my favorite moments is when she talks about how we do one thing is how we do everything. She asks people who she's interviewing how they do things like organize their kitchen. This is stuck with me. We'll get a preview of her upcoming book, Your Vagina is a universe. This is a courageous work about women's health, our bodies, and the microbiome of the vagina, including the stories that we've inherited. So let's start with where are you in the world today? And though your accomplishments as a founder and beyond precede you, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about where you are and where your where your heart is today. We'll start with today.

Ara Katz 3:35

Well, I'm sitting uh less than a probably a quarter of a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, um, which makes my heart really happy. Um in Sagaponic in New York, which is where I moved back home with my family, um, to the well to New York City, but New York in general, um, which has been like a really um beautiful journey over the last year. But you know, I I think my heart is in a um a really like centered place and centered in the face of a lot of uncertainty, um, which I think is like the important addendum to that.

Cecily Mak 4:17

Yeah.

Ara Katz 4:18

And I feel like the way you move through choices every day um when you feel that way, is such a a different way of life. Yeah. Um, so that feels really good.

Cecily Mak 4:34

And you just noted that kind of governing and navigating life feels cleaner or better. Is it because your compass is reset or what is it that's happening on the inside that makes it feel more? I want to let you use your own words.

Ara Katz 4:51

Well, first of all, I wrote a book over this last year, um, which was not at all about any of this, but I think well, I thought it wasn't about any of this. And I think one of the things that maybe I can't help myself because I've learned that that's just who I am, is you know, I can't do things that are not fully integrated. You can't write um about these things authentically, at least I I couldn't, and I couldn't do it honestly without it also being kind of an excavation of you know the way we have to reconcile kind of this inner knowing with the amount of information um that we get about what not just our bodies, but you you start to realize that they are a just symbolically, metaphorically, and also literally, you know, expressions of the ways that we leave ourselves, and they are very clear reflections of the choices that we make and how we live. And so, and the way we talk to them, treat them, see them, care for them, not care for them, nourish them, malnourish them, all is a very much deeply a reflection of your compass and where you are in any given moment. And so, you know, writing the book kind of snapped me into a an excavation that I think was very long time coming. It also happened right when I stopped operating, you know, the company that I founded, Seed, um, over the last decade. And so I became I moved into the chairperson role and not having to operate a 200% company as a lifestyle. Wow, yeah.

Cecily Mak 6:54

Thank you for using that word too, because it is it's not just a job, it's your whole life.

Ara Katz 7:00

No, and when you're a founder, it's it's just um, and when you're somebody who approaches, you know, I always say to everybody, you know, that I've ever ever hired, um, I always ask the question, I first say, you know, how you do anything is how you do everything. And so I want to know how you do anything. I want to know how you organize your kitchen. I want to know because you know, the these things again, nothing sits in its ice some isolated place in ourselves and and certainly in our lives. And so, you know, the the writing of the book being done done at a time where I picked my head up and had more space and more time and had to really contemplate what it was I going to use it for, you know, and then also a lot of life circumstances that, you know, meant moving across the country. And so, you know, I wrote it at such a traversing moment. There were just lots of terrain that it took me through and that life was taking me through while I was writing it. And I think that that in itself was work um that was really beautiful and really get to like, you know, because it's not like what am I saying to somebody else? But I have to say something that also feels true, true to me. And then I think I did a lot. I mean, I've been in and around psychedelic world for over 20 years, um, but predominantly in the spaces of like ayahuasca, psilocybin, always guided, always solo. Um, and then in over the last year, um, I discovered and really felt called to, you know, MDMA therapy. Um, and I think that had a very different, uh such a different energy. Um, and I felt that, and there was quite a lot that came from that, um, that between the book and writing and you know, these things, as I said, never exist in a silo. And and I think that that, you know, put me in a place where um you it it it recalibrated the compass. And I think it also it gives so much grace to the knowledge that um and the knowing that your compass is always being recalibrated, yeah. Um, and it and is always becoming another compass. And so the the those changes can be met with kind of a knowing instead of a you know suffering or resistance or friction, um, which I think is also like really important.

Cecily Mak 9:31

Yeah. Wow, you touch on so many seeds, and I I also I I'm I'm excited to talk about at least three or four threads that you just were able to weave in. But one that I have just as a fellow author, and by the way, how Era and I met for our listeners was through kind of a social connected networking thing around investing and and founders. And then we had a real deep dive because Era, you so graciously agreed to read my book as thoughtfully as you did.

Ara Katz 10:06

The worst possible timing of my life.

Cecily Mak 10:10

Sorry. I know. I think it was in the middle of your move and your own early book birthing process and just full company transition chaos. Yes. Something compelled you to say yes, uh, for which I'm very grateful. I wish I'd known how much you were juggling. No, no, it was perfect. I get my best, I think one of my best friends was like, Why are you reading someone else's book when you're supposed to be writing your own? Great question. Great question. And then many time moments and instances, the answer would have been like, oh wow, I should really look at that. But in this case, I was like, I know I'm supposed to be reading this book.

Ara Katz 10:44

Yeah. Well, when we met in New York the the the evening before we did the interview, and you did such a beautiful and thoughtful interview that still sticks with me in a lot of ways. Um you opened it up and and I saw how many handwritten notes you had taken throughout. And as an author, it was so moving to experience care and attention to something that I had uh offered, not really knowing how it was gonna be received. And when I was putting together the season, I thought of you as the ideal candidate for choice and discernment and thinking about what we consume. And we're gonna get into your special relationship with that because you've actually been choosing to not drink alcohol your whole life, and your relationship with dimmers is gonna be a different conversation than many might expect. But I'm curious about this choice you just touched on to spend the amount of time and life force and energy you have and continue to into birthing this book. Tell us about the choice to write this book, which I cannot wait to get my hands on, by the way. Yeah, you know, it's I I will say, you know, the choice to read your book came from a far more centered place than the choice to write this book. Um, and that's just has very truly, um, or truthfully, to do with timing of my life. Um, I chose to read your book when I was far enough into the process I had just described and just kind of the compass recalibration, so to speak. Um the the way that the book happened was very interesting because it got sold to Simon and Schuster while I was still CEO of Seed. And even then, like as a as a founder, you know, I I never identity-wise, like ego-wise, never was about like I could have turned myself as the founder of Seed into a very large wellness influencer and taken, you know, there's a lot of things I could have done from a maybe a bit more of an ego place or wanting to have a platform place.

Cecily Mak 12:59

And what is seed for people who don't know?

Ara Katz 13:01

Oh, sure. See Seed is a we're a microbiome science company, like predominantly a biotech company, but we are best known for our innovations in biotics. So DSO1, which is a daily symbiotic, is now the number one probiotic in the US. Um, we you know really work at this kind of intersection of frontier breakthroughs in microbiome and how those get translated into non-drug applications of biotics. So probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, symbiotics. And it's a brand that's very beloved for many, many reasons. Beautiful brand. The aesthetic, the way we communicate science, a lot of the ways, you know, we kind of show up in the world. Um, and I think our our product is certainly uh, of course, tantamount to all to all of that, but I think the most important thing is just how, you know, the clinically effective um our products are, and also how much, you know, the PM people come up to me all over the world. I was in Cleoquat, Canada, which you can attest to, it has like six people that live there. And then one of the women that works at the hotel came up to me one night during our cocktail hour, and she said, Can I just talk to you for a second? And she said, Is that okay? Because she like we were guests, and it was like, you know, it's a very small place and a little bougie, but in the best way. Just a little. Um, and she said, Can I just tell you something? I figured out who you were, and I just want to tell you that my best friend in the world had brain cancer. And when she was going through chemotherapy, DSO1, our our probiotic, um saved her life. She said it made all of chemo, her nausea, her diet, her um GI uh distress, um, and her, and obviously her digestion and and you know, regularity and just her immune health um was so vastly improved. And she has never stopped taking it since then. And she said, and I just wanted to thank you. And so, you know, it was a really it happens all over the world. I'm I'm really grateful to say, but um, you know, all to say that the reason that I wanted to write the book and that we even talked about writing a book, I will be honest, when I was running seed, it was very much a founder books are very now, I wouldn't do it just for this reason, but founder books are very good accelerants for consumer businesses. I can point to 20 examples of that. So certainly my publisher, that my agent was certainly very excited about that. And the publisher, I think, in part honestly bought it because seed can be a helpful marketing platform for a book. And we have a massive audience, you know, millions of people, you know. So um, I think there's certainly like a commercial aspect to it. And when I first wanted to write it, I I pitched it really more about women's health in the microbiome because I felt that there had not been a book that really specifically focused on all of this extraordinary microbiome research, but through the lens of women's health, because there are actually real differences. And so that was kind of what was bought, and then it kind of got a little switched to, but can we make it about vaginas? And so it was really interesting because I know how prescriptive and actionable they want these books to be. Here's the 10 things you can do for your vagina, right? And I kept saying, you know, that this area and domain of science is just early and it just kind of almost does it, it just doesn't work that way, the same way that the gut microbiome works. And it really was something I like resisted, honest, to be honest, like kind of, and this is very not me. Um, but I really procrastinated because I was like, how do I write this authentically and make it compelling? Um, and also make it something people would actually want to read and not be like, well, there's a lot of science, but what do I do? It was really one of the most challenging storytelling exercises I've ever gone through. I'm a I've been a storyteller since I was a teen, you know, I've made movies, I've produced films, I've it's I've written for brands. And this was like honestly one of the hardest. Um, and I think I had a little bit of like getting over myself in the sense that I'm very good at doing, like, if you asked me to write for you, I could write for you. I can write for brands, I can write for other people, I could put content strategies together. I can do it for other people, but to have my name on it felt like deeply uncomfortable. And I think that it all happened fast, and then I didn't like realize what I had gotten myself into.

Cecily Mak 17:24

So you made this choice, it sounds like, to invest everything that you invested in this book largely a little bit in a moment of momentum, not in the classic era. I'm gonna be very thoughtful and intentional about my time. Is it turned out to be something that is maybe containing an unintended or unexpected lesson or learning?

Ara Katz 17:50

I mean, there were a lot of learnings. I don't think I'll go into another process like it without truly giving myself the grace of the time that it actually takes to do it in a way that I would want to do it. Yeah. Um, for example, turned in the first manuscript, the publisher wrote me an all-caps email about how much they loved it. And in my gut, I was like, mm-mm, this isn't it. And then I went away for four days and I rewrote the whole thing. 80,000 words. And I was like, this is not it, it's just not it. And my agent was like, mmm, are you sure you want to do that? And it's not about perfectionism, actually, and it's not about it being my idea ever. Um, but I am somebody that is a seeker, and I'm and part of that seeking is to get to truth. And truth, you know it when you read it. You just know it when you read it. That's a compass thing I've always had. It's not about that the book was thoughtless, it's just I do have a lot of faith that I always will figure something out and I'll find a way to do it my way. Um, but I would say that the underestimation was the amount of time and what else was happening in my life that needed to be deprioritized in order to do it. And all these things are really good metaphors and symbols and direct reflections of the way we approach so many things. And what it really taught me was that when I want the next time I want to do something that that requires that level of depth and thoughtfulness. It could be a relationship, it could be a friendship, it could be something I want to do with my children. You you there has to be enough space and time for it, or I end up feeling misaligned with it with what the outcome of it I want.

Cecily Mak 19:45

When did that discernment muscle for you develop?

Ara Katz 19:52

Let me say that I think it transmuted because I think it started as a methodology of survival um at a very young age, where I was like kind of running the household. And my mom, you know, my mom died when I was 16, and then um my parents were already divorced, and there was enough happening in our house, and I I was always a very young, autonomous, sovereign person from a very probably too early age. And so discernment was a survival mechanism and also a strategy because it delivered, of course, control and power and all you know, all the things that when you are given that much power at an age where you maybe shouldn't have that much, I had to look at actually its origin and also think about the areas where it also created distance. Um you know, when when people just like trust everything you say and people think very highly of the the way you make decisions and all of this, you know, it actually has its own, it has its own lack of grace that it gives you because it doesn't really leave a tremendous amount of space to be wrong and uncertain. Yeah, yeah. So it becomes a bit of an identity, yeah, and and it can also kind of turn into distance and armor. Very much so. And it did, and I think it did for a long time. Um, and I think I'm really excited for it not to be now. To the extent that's possible.

Cecily Mak 21:30

How how is it not control for you, or or is it part of being able to control things for you? Because I know a lot of a lot of us who come into this space in life where it's like, hang on, certain things aren't working for me anymore, certain relationships, certain habits, certain lifestyle features, whether it's work, home, elsewhere. We we develop boundaries, we get really good at deciding what's no longer allowed in. This actually goes to the second awareness. I choose what I consume, or I choose what I allow into my life, into my body, into my being. And I hear from people all the time that sometimes that pendulum can swing too far, and you find yourself a couple of years in kind of isolated or in a place where it's uncomfortable to be in situations where you need to adapt and maybe like go with the flow a little bit more. Yes. How have you crafted that in your own life?

Ara Katz 22:29

I think look, any anything that turns into um an intensity that has an extreme to it moves beyond being discernment. Right. It moves into being a dimmer, right? If you if you think about your your definitions. And so I think if you're really discerning and you've done the work to become more discerning and you're also holding a lot of the space to say, there's no like one day I will be something, right? There's no, there's no like nirvana to reach, and there's no moment of uh discernment enlightenment that you will one day get to. But again, if I go back to the compass, which is if you just imagine and and hold that these things will shape shift nine million times in a given day, month, year, season of your life within a relationship, within um a dynamic with your with your work, with yourself, with your body in the face of illness, whatever, and you and you allow it to be um in terms of its uh elemental state, then there really isn't a lot of room for it to become that. You may say, I feel like I have used this notion of access to a point that it's serving another master. Um, and there's something about why I am not being in relationship with people in community that is not about my bad discernment or taking it to an extreme, but it's really about something that is more than that. And I just need to look at it, you know, and just like hold it up, turn it around, be curious, and just really look at it and be really curious. I think when these things have a lot of attachment to them, and again, I just use the word intensity, or I think what resonates a lot when I speak about this is like anything where the volume is turned really high up starts to fall out of the energy of discernment. For my own life, I I think I um there's a there's kind of a peacefulness that I certainly am always kind of working towards. And that doesn't mean that there aren't gonna be really hard things and that you don't get upset and angry. It's just the way you metabolize it. And I feel like discernment is is actually, you know, it's almost like standing, you know, 10 to the tenth above yourself sometimes, not just in the moment saying, you know, because I see it, I see it all the time when people, especially with access, you know, people are like, I'm at a point in my life where like no person is gonna do this to me. And and you know, the truth is if no person ever was doing anything to you, I don't know where wisdom and our lived experience and heartbreak and all those things fit. Um, so I think the extreme of any of that stuff does not serve us.

Cecily Mak 25:25

Yeah, yeah. And what would you say to someone who maybe has an awareness of a need to be a little bit more discerning, maybe a need to be a little bit more intentional uh about what's coming in and maybe is struggling with tuning into and listening to that. I remember you you made a comment when we were together in New York some months ago that you're so somebody said to you that you're so thoughtful about everything that you eat and the clothes you wear and the people you share space with, but that you were eating McDonald's in certain areas of your life.

Ara Katz 26:09

Yeah. I I can't take credit for that line that came from a very, very smart uh person that I I do a lot of this work, you know, kind of work with. But um I think she knew how to land the metaphor that would land in the ripple effect of it. And you know, and and look, I think any there's there's there's no perfectly integrated, um, you know, aligned person ex that that sits at the right longitude and latitude for every single moment of their lives. And that's what I'm saying about kind of the grace and the space for uncertainty and and the areas where you're you're not fully aligned, um, or where you're you're living kind of incoherently, the more that you are aware of these things, the more the places that you're eat McDonald's or that are out of alignment or incoherent become unseeable, become you you can't not see them. Yeah. And that is a true gift. So, like this, the the better your compass becomes, the things that you know are magnets are so clear. Because if you're just like generally, I'm facing you know, some part of north moves a little here or there, and then something comes in, someone, a dynamic, a relationship, an investment opportunity, whatever, whatever it is, and it goes like this, it's such good information, but you can't feel the this unless you also feel the this, yeah, you know, right more regularly. And the more regularly the compass is generally going in the right direction or in the same direction, moments and places in your life that are incoherent, you really can't not see them. And so then, of course, the question is well, what do you do about it? Yeah, but the beautiful thing is I almost think of it as negative space, uh, like of a painting, in the sense that the more you practice and do the things and notice what it feels like when the compass is generally um aligned, the more you want those other things to not feel like that. And the more you want to do more of the things that feel not dimming, right? Yeah. And I think that, you know, in many ways it's, I mean, look, there's neuro neuroscience to this, and um there's uh like a psychosomatic aspect to this, and um, and there's a just an emotional piece to this, and there's also just a hey, if I could feel like this, why would I want to feel like this? You know, this volatile, um, kind of ungrounded, uncentered place. And and I also think, again, like the more you're the more you kind of know what um center feels like and what two feet on the ground uh on the earth feel like, um, it some of the things that don't allow you to feel that way become intolerable. And then I would say, you know, the smartest people that I know um who have been the most helpful to me would say, is it about that you don't give them access and you remove yourself? Or is it your practice to stand there in the middle of the tornado unflappable? Because I think it's very easy. Again, I don't know if discernment is always remove yourself, always get the kill the relationship, always. Is it actually that those things are our greatest teachers? They have so many gifts in the wind, you know, in the in the in in the storm. And I don't know if the answer is always kill it, move away from it. Is it what do I, what can I get that feels good? What can I metabolize in a way that doesn't move me in a negative or um ungrounded place? Um, and is that actually even more resilient and even more discerning? Um and again, I go back to extremes. I think when anything is at an intensity or an extreme, like access, um you you know, you of course you're gonna end up alone. But you're you're probably practicing the same thing you were doing when you were going to parties every single night and when you were in community all the time and realized that you had no space for yourself.

Cecily Mak 30:24

Yeah.

Ara Katz 30:24

So it's the same exact thing, very similar to dimmers, right, that we've talked about. It's still a dimmer. You're just it just looks different.

Cecily Mak 30:31

Yeah.

Ara Katz 30:32

You know, so I think these things, it's like the curiosity of what what lies beneath is probably the the more rich place to spend time.

Cecily Mak 30:42

So one of the things that we touched on recently was this notion of, and you just mentioned it now, negative space. I think when I think about choices, I think about well, there's A or there's B, or there's go this way or don't go at all, or they're very binary things in each direction. And one of the things I've heard you speak to is this notion of actually doing nothing and the the like beauty and grace and optionality that can arise out of doing nothing. And it's an interesting concept for somebody who's trying to make a choice about what they're going to do or not do. How has that shown up in your own life in a way you can share? And how can we use that as a practice in in our own discernment?

Ara Katz 31:33

I think, you know, I it it's very similar to I was telling you the other day, you know, whenever um like employees or friends kind of come to me asking for advice, you know, they they it's always presented, like you said, in these very binary um ways. Path A, path B, path C. Um, and I joked that my memoir would be called D, none of the above. Because I think people please write it. Yeah, people genuinely don't, I think, often like really hold again the space for uncertainty. And like, where does the there's a path D and probably E, F, G, and H and beyond that are not even contemplated yet, because the framework that I'm currently working from is attached to three options, maybe none of which that are right. And I also feel that when something isn't presenting itself as right, as tapping into a kind of knowing, you know, I always think like if you know, three people were standing in front of you with their arms out onto the dance floor, who would you just gravitate towards? Like which one would you gravitate towards, like a little, you know? And if you're really not seeing or feeling that, it's very hard to remember that tomorrow, two days from now, even a week or two weeks from today, you are not gonna feel the way that you feel in this particular moment. And I think that time and space almost always surface gifts. Yeah, and they really do. Um, and I think we are, you know, our human brain is kind of made for the now, but we are actually stuck in this place between the now that that can feel threatening, and then we imagine future threatening events, you know, and then we are also attached to those. So we live in this kind of um, you know, a bit of this, and and so then we create strategies and plans, and here's what I'm gonna do. Like people ask you, um, I've never asked anyone, you know, when investors or employers interviewing employees, they say, What's your five-year plan? If anyone has one, I do not believe them.

Cecily Mak 33:55

Yeah.

Ara Katz 33:56

And I don't know then if they're the kind of mind that is built for, you know, resilience. And I think it's of course exciting to have dreams. And I'm I'm I would never want to kill the aspirations or that idea, but it is the it is our experience of them that's the issue, not and their attachment to them, not the having it in the first place. And so, you know, I I took to me the those those pathways um and the remembering and also the sovereignty that comes from, and I say this especially like with holding like women um in my heart, especially, the sovereignty that comes from I don't know. And by the way, it's not my job to know. I don't need to figure this situation out. I don't need to figure it out today. I don't need to figure it out maybe even tomorrow. I may be putting undue pressure, timing, and or not really deeply listening to my knowing and myself by trying to have a choice. I say all that to say that there's also a beautiful amount of work from um, so there's the not knowing, and then I think there's a beautiful way to even make a choice with not knowing too, because people are like, okay, this all sounds great. But I have two job offers on the table and I have to pay my rent. So, like, please let's get like very practical. And there's, I'm not remembering the name, she's a Yale sociologist, and she writes beautifully about liminal space and life decisions. And the core idea is that choose one because you are such and you have so much agency in what it becomes and what you make of it and what you take from it, and that we as humans get very again attached to what we think a path means. But I think anyone that takes a choice knows that it usually brings you to another beautiful place and decision. You know, the the way to think about even decision making is that there are so many beautiful unknowns to each of the paths that you think you know, and that any one of them is going to deliver an experience and wisdom and beauty and introduction to people and ways of moving through the world that you can't even contemplate.

Cecily Mak 36:25

Yeah.

Ara Katz 36:25

So there is no like it's a you know, it's a simplistic way or a you know, complex way of saying there's no wrong one, which I also agree with. But I think there's again, we we really suffer in attachment. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of ways to even hold the D, none of the above, because you can say, I'm gonna do A, but I'm actually gonna do it in this way that I never even thought A could be. I never even imagined that A could unfold in this way. And by the way, I have so much agency in what that looks like, and and that can be its own sovereign, you know, um, kind of agentic moment of life and catalyst for something that you never even imagined. And so yeah, I think I think we the amount of time we spend suffering about these things versus just the doing of them, um, I think maybe often doesn't serve us.

Cecily Mak 37:20

And it's very um counter to what I think our culture, you know, largely spearheaded by patriarchy all these years, has hammered into us that we need a strategy, that there has to be this kind of cognitive fact-based matrix within which we make choices and decisions. And I don't know. In all of my work in this arena, and again learning from community and readers, very rarely do people say it was their list or their strategy or their plan that yielded the transformative outcome when they're faced with choice around how to live, how to navigate, you know, how to read the compass. It's it's not that cognitive uh orientation. It's something which deeper. And if we don't have the space in the room to hear and experience that, I love your use of the term negative space, then we never get to it because we just stay in this kind of tick-tock go go and ten years go by and we wonder what happened to our life.

Ara Katz 38:32

And then you get to a point in life where you're where you suddenly value time. And, you know, by the way, you know, the industrial industrialization moved our life onto a clock. Um and there's many aspects of industry and the way our systems are organized that moved our lives also onto kind of a biological clock, um, in the sense that this year these years are for doing this, these years are for doing this, these years are for doing this. And if you're somehow not at a certain kind of biomarker uh in your life or bank account or um place and career, whatever by the age of this, then you've somehow, you know, and and so like all those notions of um time and success and measurement um are so so antithetical to you know the kind of uh existential um, I think, knowing that we intuitively have. And so, you know, we really do live in so many ways in a level like just from a cultural perspective, in like this this in insane uh, you know uh space of cultural incoherence that this that grates against our humanity every single day. Um and everything from I mean I think about this just as like a working mom, which is probably the most ludicrous idea in so many ways, the doing it all, the inheritance of a personality of um a frazzled multitasker. And yet you ask women, I write about this in the book, you ask women the number one reason that they don't get a medical problem checked. And they say it's time. And so, you know, time is a the way that we have attached ourselves and then codified kind of a whole meaning system around time, from how we spend the minutes of our day to the notion of even productivity alone is ludicrous, you know, of ourselves as little factories or machines. You know, and then you have a like legal, fiduciary, and political systems that, you know, really reinforce specific ideas about ourselves, our bodies, how we're supposed to do things. I mean, you know, and that that really communicate some very, very detrimental um ideas again that just go so far against our humanity. We have to give ourselves so much grace because we just live, we live in starting in a tough place. We're starting in an impossible place. We're starting in an impossible place.

Cecily Mak 41:17

And that we're suffering so much as a result. And we are doing things to soothe ourselves in that process. And the the word grace has come up multiple times. I think that's probably one of my biggest takeaways from from this whole exploration and I share in the working mom journey with you. And my worst dimming years were in that potent first 10 years of motherhood because it was so hard to rev on both sides of my being right brain, left brain, caring, tending, you know. And then my whole system didn't know how to kind of disconnect from one, go into the other, feel like I could rest, feel like I could be social. And I think it's um it's totally understandable that we all make choices to self-regulate or soothe in a whole myriad of ways. I know you never drink. It's amazing. I mean, it's the man many or most of the people that I speak with about this work, and most certainly the people who interviewed me along the way at the book tour, have some intimacy with self-soothing with alcohol or drugs of some kind. And you've been making a choice throughout your whole journey to not have it be part of the colour.

Ara Katz 42:41

Well, I had a bad I had a bad experience at 15.

Cecily Mak 42:44

Well, there you go.

Ara Katz 42:44

I grew up in New York City, and high school, like 15 was late to be drinking alcohol, but I just had that bad that one bad experience, and that was it for me. Um and I was like, never, never again um will I ever put that in the room in that body.

Cecily Mak 43:00

What have you what have you found yourself in your life going to instead? And do you have any active dimmers today that you have a relationship with?

Ara Katz 43:10

I think we are all always on this path of even something that starts off as not a dimmer can become one and at certain moments, because I don't think it's about the dimmer. I think it's just about, you know, where is the compass pointing at any given time? And then, you know, dimmers are just simply like an expression of like our interior world, you know, of um and what are we doing about it. Um, yeah, you know, I mean, I went I've gone through periods of time where I'm like, oh, I think actually drinking this much water is just a dimmer, you know, or you know, or you know, which is which is a silly thing to say, but actually um, I think anything that I think I told you when I first read the book, I even I just tried to not have my daily matcha for for four days. And I I can't tell you how challenging it was. And I'm not, it wasn't from the caffeine. I didn't get a headache at all. And so, you know, I and I'm not saying that that's not all dimmers are meant to be punished and looked at and you know and analyzed. But I think that it's so it's a really beautiful thing to just look at them and say, I wonder what it is. Like, why was that hard for me? Like, what is it about that ritual of this thing every morning? Um, and you know, and I think I I go through periods where um, you know, exercise or um, you know, the things that actually in some ways look like non-dimmers can just become expressions of something that I'm experiencing internally um that just then needs to be worked through. Now I'm just not a person, and this may just be where my knowledge creates a ceiling on what I'm like willing to do. Um, because for me it would be like, am I eating like too many vegetables? Am I eating not like too many vegetables, but you know, just like am I going a little bit when you can eat wherever you go extreme, you know, there like orthora, you know, obviously there's orthorexia, right? Which is being almost like too attuned to the health impact of everything. Um you know, and so you know, that's a new word for me. What was it's orthorexia, yeah. Wow. And so, you know, anything first of all, anything can be pathologized, um, and anything can be analyzed, and anything can be done at an extremer intensity that for me is just it's it is really simply about actually when I look at those things, I sometimes say, um, what is it that's happening in this moment of my life or what's come up that um I practice that an intensity that just feels actually not as good or different than it normally does. And that can be anything. It really can be. And just in my as in my life, it just happens to look like very healthy habits, just because I I also have, you know, my mom died at 48, and I have two small children, and I just have a view of the human body and the um the devotion and honoring and reverence that I have for biology that just doesn't let me throw a napkin on the ground and doesn't let me put crap in my body. And and also you have to have so much grace that sometimes French fry is just gonna taste really good, and like, and that's okay. And maybe for me it's like a baked sweet potato fry or whatever it is, you know, and it and so you there's that's where like the grace comes in because I think, and it's also where the last thing I would mention, you know, that I think comes so much into all of this, which is presence, which is if you spend so much time in the analysis and the attunement and that you know, you just miss life. I mean, we literally spend our life constructing opening arguments, closing arguments, depositions, strategies. What am I gonna say? What can I feel? Look, you know, how is this person? I'm gonna anticipate how they're gonna, this is what I'm gonna say, defending things that haven't even happened.

Cecily Mak 47:09

Yeah.

Ara Katz 47:10

And I see I think and I I feel it in my own life. And I one of the things that's happened over the last year is that I'm not on the witness stand anymore for whatever reason. And that's like a very freeing place to be because I literally would hold myself guilty until proven innocent on so many things that are just a waste of life. What do you do? What are your go-tos when you have those moments of stress or pressure or difficulty or a crap day? I I have guesses, but I'd love to hear where do you what do you do for yourself to self-soothe?

Cecily Mak 47:47

I think there's a few things that are a couple are insular and are more, and this some will sound so obvious to some people, but if you are somebody that has been quite um insular and on a solo journey for your whole life, um just calling a friend or people that I like, like I have now my little coven. And and by the way, sometimes that's somebody like I like I've thought of calling you many times, right? Like I, so it's not like necessarily people that I've it's not somebody that I've necessarily spent a lot of time with, but there are people that I'm more um indulgent on like the people I feel really connected to um in a way that I never would have in the past, I would have been like, well, it's not gonna help me anyway. And now I have like best friends. I just like, you know, I mean, they were always my best friend, but I never utilized them in that way. I never thought of like calling somebody when I felt something ever, ever. It was just like, I know it sounds like that's a bit, that was a big one for me, and also other, you know, people that I deeply trust now that obviously are, you know, work in so many different therapeutic modalities that there's like one or two people in that domain that I actually will like proactively schedule time with, um, because I genuinely want to hear what they believe. And that's that's a newer thing for me. Um I think that's more unusual than people realize.

Ara Katz 49:14

I think in our culture, especially when we're surrounded with a lot of people who are accomplished and holding so much and doing so much, we make this we make this assumption that they're not available.

Cecily Mak 49:24

Yes.

Ara Katz 49:24

So I do to I text and I actually literally just call people out of nowhere. That is my and it works. It is actually my new mode, and I just call anybody and also it's beautiful because you're not saying like, do you have some time later? Because I'm feeling horrible right now. Actually, you're just calling someone and saying, and just being like seeing if they're around. Like it's it's so you know, there's no like suspended uh suspension of like when when will we connect? So that works really well. Um, and then on the more like insular piece, uh very very similar to time and space. There is no moment in my entire life that I can point to where moving my body for 15 minutes to an hour has never not adjusted and changed the intensity, the content of what I was feeling.

Cecily Mak 50:17

Yeah.

Ara Katz 50:17

Whether it's a yoga class, where I for me it's a usually a modality with heat, just because I also think that moves you into a very different space. Um, I know there's some controversy over it biologically, but it it really moves me at least into a space that is is transformational every single time. Every single time. Um and then and then the last piece is just patient, really, it's like you know, breathing, the things that I think many people would mention, but the the last one is what we talked about earlier, which is time and space. Yeah, I just know that I now have trust, which we didn't talk a lot about, but trust is another one that that I will not feel the way I am feeling right at this moment, in the same way tomorrow. Yeah, or ever again, or ever again, or ever again.

Cecily Mak 51:08

Yeah. Is there anything that we didn't get to touch on that feels like alive in this arena of choice?

Ara Katz 51:21

I mean, I I think what I just said, which we didn't get to talk a lot about, is the notion of trust. I don't think safety and trust actually. I don't think I ever actually through three words that I never understood that I like intellectually could kind of understand, but I don't think I actually ever understood them until this year. Safety, trust, and self-love and loving yourself. I ne I think that we say those things, and I don't know if we and I can speak for myself, like did I actually understand what they need to mean to be true? And I I think I just I I they they were deep blind spots in all of my existential, intellectual, spiritual endeavors for whatever reason. How did I get this far without understanding what people meant when they talked about those things? And especially as a woman, I and just with my with my own personal history, what does safety mean? Um, what is trust? Should what should it feel like? Um, what does it actually mean? What does safety actually mean? Bodily, you know, it just just all of it. Um intellectual safety, like emotional safety, like what is the I, you know, and then also, and then the self-love piece was like, oh right, like you need that too. And you know, I think in many ways, I'm like, oh, I thought exercising and taking care of my body, and you know, it's like, and then you're like, oh whoa, it had nothing to do. I mean, maybe a part of it, but like if you when then, but then when you do understand it, you know, it's I feel like I used to play Nintendo when I was really little, and like in Mario Brothers, you know, you get this like green mushroom. Oh yeah, you know, you power up. I was like, you understand those three terms, and you like it's like getting five of those mushrooms. Um that that's in that's a new compass for me.

Cecily Mak 53:25

I love that. And it's you're so right, it's something that I think we could all stand to do a little bit of investigation and work on. You're you're sparking in me. I don't think I really fully grok that myself. Yep. And it's a great invitation.

Ara Katz 53:40

It I if you can fall in love with yourself, it's like the greatest love affair of like your life.

Cecily Mak 53:45

Yeah.

Ara Katz 53:46

And by the way, there's no bad, it's like a champagne tower, actually. Nothing bad comes from that. And I and I've thought a lot of the the one last piece I would end on, um, that all of that has kind of culminated in. And this is maybe a more positive way of talking about McDonald's. Is that when people say, you know, what what are you what are you working towards? How could this be meaningful for you? And I always say that now I I understand that to have as few places in my life, if hopefully none, where you are don't feel the full expression of yourself everywhere. Yeah. And you know, it's that David White poem, Sweet Darkness, which is the end talks about you know, anyone or anything that is too small for you. And that notion that if you are not, can't be big everywhere. Yeah, that's the McDonald's, right? The smallness. And I think that's that I just use that as a my north star.

Cecily Mak 54:44

Yeah, it's so true. And it's it there is something really beautiful that's reflected in that in nature, this biological compulsion that the world, the natural world has to keep moving and growing. Yes. Like the illness actually arises from stagnation.

Ara Katz 55:02

Yes.

Cecily Mak 55:04

And that could be in a blood vessel, it could be in our gallbladder, it could be in our heart, it could be in our spirit. And so if we can find those areas where we're stuck and just keep moving a little bit forward, that's actually, I would love to believe a form of self-love. All right, my friend. Thank you so much.

Ara Katz 55:24

Thanks, Cecily.

Cecily Mak 55:26

You've been listening to Undimmed. I'm Cecily Mak. Our guest today was Ara Katz, the co-founder of Seed Health, the microbiome science company that is a bit of a cult brand. She now serves as chairperson after a decade of leading it. Her forthcoming book, soon to be published from Simon and Schuster, explores women's health and the vaginal microbiome. We can't wait to hear what she's shared with us. You'll find links to Ara's work and to her book and release dates in the show notes. Her Instagram is at Ara Katz at A-R-A-K-A-T-Z. Undimmed is produced by Joanne Jennings with video editing by Kai HeartLife, music from Laura Inserra, and social and marketing support from Megan Beldin. To make sure you don't miss an episode, please subscribe to Undimmed on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And if you like what you're hearing, please take a moment and leave us a review. Your feedback and words help this work find the people who will be most touched by it. Season two continues with a new episode every other Friday with a Substack penned by me, biweekly in between. Thank you so much for joining us and be well.