Health is a constant topic up for discussion that has now been inundated with people who use fear tactics to convince society to alter their way of living. So much so that your pals have turned into a grass eating gaggle that do nothing but tell the world they are #plantbased, #dirtyWhole30, #Vegan4Lyfe, or whatever else there is. It has not only ruined the way we interact, but we don’t really know what’s best for us. Not your friend. Not some celebrity with a snatched post-baby bod. Just us as individuals. But then I met Fern Olivia, Founder of Thyroid Yoga® and Ajai Alchemy. She’s the aforementioned bestie who found what worked for her, shares it with the world, without the pyramid scheme sales pitch.
This past Tuesday, I chatted with Fern at Saks Fifth Avenue’s pop-up Wellery about how finding out she had Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism changed her life, before taking us through a Thyroid Yoga session later that evening.
Let’s start with what you do.
Sure. So what I do is that, my main passion, I have so many of them, but my number one passion is empowering women to tap into their sensuality, into their health through ritual and from there, knowing how to heal their body. So using the intuitive wisdom from the senses, tastes, smell, seeing, feeling, all of the senses that are available to us to be able to understand how we can heal our bodies.
I do that through classes, through experiences, through essential oils, through products, through community really helping women to understand their needs and be in connection.
You created something called Thyroid Yoga. Could you tell me a bit about what is so special for this type yoga for it to focus mainly on the thyroid gland. And how did the idea come about?
I have a condition called Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition that made me very sluggish, for years I had trouble losing weight, had awful skin, bloating and constipation. My thyroid is in balance now but for almost a decade, I just didn’t understand what was going on with my body. I felt tired all the time, I was always getting sick, sick with food allergies, feeling irritable, bloated… it was miserable and I felt hopeless and isolated.
You sound exactly like me right now. I just came from the gyno and I just have been trying different things out. So it’s interesting what you’re saying.
It’s no coincidence that you’re here with me right now. I was bouncing around from doctor to doctor, trying everything that I could to start to feel better – but nothing was working. I was in a miserable job, miserable relationship, I just didn’t feel I was aligned with my path. On a lunch break from my job in Finance, I found myself in a yoga class, and then from there, I began to experience a feeling that was brand new to me – I started to feel understood and I could tap into my own healer. Through yoga, I began experimenting with nutrition theories and elimination diets, and discovered which foods were aggravating my body, and from there, discovered what activities were aggravating my body. I started to understand how heal myself and I became my own researcher, my own alchemist. And from there, I created Thyroid Yoga®. It’s not just any yoga, there are specific poses that can recalibrate your thyroid – that’s exciting!
The thyroid, known as “The Master Gland” and what I’ve called “The Beauty Gland,” is the butterfly-shaped gland at the base of the neck. It regulates many of your body’s major functions such as metabolism, hormones and energy levels – and is also responsible for your hair, skin, nails, and sex drive. It produces hormones that influence every cell, tissue and organ in your body.
Your thyroid regulates your metabolism—the rate at which your body produces energy from nutrients and oxygen—and in turn stimulates and synchronizes all metabolic cellular functions, such as your energy levels and heart rate, as well as your fertility and reproductive health.
Since your thyroid gland is connected to your gastrointestinal function (also known as your digestion), adrenal hormone metabolism, blood-sugar levels, stomach acid production, brain chemistry changes, and liver detoxification, its dysfunction can contribute to many clinical manifestations in your body.
So if you have PCOS or you –
I do, yeah.
I know, I could see. I’m intuitive as well. So, I can help with what you’re experiencing. I had PCOS as well and when we have PCOS, it’s all tied back to our hormones, they’re just not communicating properly. And PCOS is a blanket term – many traditional gynecologists use this term because they’re think, “I don’t know what wrong, it must be PCOS. You’re not getting your periods on time, you’re not losing weight, it’s PCOS.” It’s so common but there’s a lot of triggers and a lot of ways that you’re able to heal it – and many times, traditional OBGYNs will put you on birth control, which will mask the symptoms – but what we really need to do is heal the adrenals, the microbiome, and prevent inflammation that’s causing the cysts.
Sugar, no sugar. No sugar what so ever. With PCOS and hormone imbalances, often times your adrenals are are taxed; just a lot of stress from environmental, energetic and food triggers, and sugar adds to that inflammation.
So then, what’s your original background?
Biomedical Engineering is my undergraduate degree. I studied pre-med, and math, and then I also studied entrepreneurship as I dreamed of starting my own company someday. I didn’t know when I was going to start a business but I knew that at some point in my life I wanted to be the queen of my own empire, and I knew I wanted to be of service.
I landed in the Financial Industry after college, and worked on Wall Street and Times Square in New York. I would walk into work in suits and uncomfortable heels and realized, “This is not the place for me, I don’t want to be working in a corporate job.” I didn’t feel passionate about what I was doing and I didn’t feel I had purpose. It was that I felt very disconnected from what I wanted to feel and how I currently was feeling. And then it turned out that I realized, I thought, “This is making me sick. This job is making me sick.” Fluorescent lights, moldy rugs, and being trapped inside an air-conditioned building, and commuting on the subway every day was not how I wanted to live my life.
So, that’s the path how I got to where I am today. My degree is in biomedical engineering and then I studied nutrition and became a Certified Health Coach and then a Certified Yoga Instructor, and from there, I’ve followed my journey to become a Certified Reiki Practitioner and most recently a Certified Psychic Healer. Then also I studied Ayurveda, Daoist Theory and Chinese Medicine through my studies of Katonah Yoga™, and Functional Medicine. Together, these practices and modalities are what I’ve woven together to create Thyroid Yoga®.
In a day, what are certain things that you would eat? Let’s say before you used to have chicken wings and now you’re kind of like, “I don’t do any of that, I do this.”
I still will eat chicken wings. Not the typical chicken wings – they have to be gluten free, organic, and I’d probably have to make them myself. I’m not vegan, though I am mainly plant-based. I believe in healthy protein, but I won’t do fried chicken or anything dairy (hello, inflammation!) but organic happy chicken, great! I think protein is a vital part that most women miss in their diets is protein; the building blocks for hormones are protein.
So like many woman, I also went vegan for many years, and I thought that it was the healthiest diet. Truth is, it’s a very high fat diet, high carb diet, if you just are pure vegan it’s really hard to get the complete spectrum of proteins. Now I eat clean animal protein, chicken, fish, meat, and I really listen to my body. Foods that really help me are things like eggs or salmon. Protein that fills you up, so you don’t crave the carbs later.
To stay lean and balanced, I try to avoid carbs and grains. Sweet potatoes, summer squash, and yucca are great carbs. But gluten, absolutely not for healing a thyroid condition or PCOS, or adrenal fatigue – you really want to cut down on sugars and those starchy carbs and grains.
Then how did you get into psychic healing? Or did it just sort of transition with everything you were doing?
Yeah, so it found me. I just realized I have a really strong intuition in working with clients, I would bring up a condition in conversation, without diagnosing, and they would respond, “Yeah, I do have that.” And I’m like, “I know.” They’ll ask, “How do you know?” I’ll say, “I just know.” I started figuring out that I just intuitively would know their background or that someone in their family was abused, and they held on that trauma, and that trauma would be held in their belly because they held somebody else’s pain for so long. I would start to see things and I think, “I really want to refine this for my own life,” before anyone else’s, I want to understand where I’m holding pain. So in my body I’ll say, “Oh, my left heel is hurting, that’s related to my inner thigh, my inner hip. There’s something going on with my relationship to my own mother. I need to look at that.” Our bodies aren’t just these disintegrated parts – our bodies are connected.
I became fascinated in these connections. I found out about a certain Intuitive Healing course in LA at The Den, a meditation center in Los Angeles, and I never open promotion emails in my inbox because I get so many. It was just, “Delete, delete, delete.” And then one day, I just thought, “I’m just going to open this one.” Inside was this training, and my soul was saying, “Yes.” It was this automatic yes, go to this info session. I said, “I know that I’m going to say, I know that I’m going to be doing this.” I was so excited, my soul was, “Go, go, go, go, go, yes, sign up.” I signed up that day, and I knew it was the next step in my journey.
Hmm, that’s so interesting.
You get guided. You really get guided to the people that you’re supposed to meet, and the places you’re supposed to go. It’s really exciting how that starts to unfold when you just listen and follow your intuition. I have a prayer that I say every night, “Universe, angels, mentors, guides, bring me the people in my life I need to help, to serve, to be my teachers, be my mentors, give me the lessons, the experiences I need and help me to evolve for my greatest good. Contribute to the planet, to heal my body, to find love, to be in abundance, all of the things.” And then I say, “God, universe, higher power, allow me to let whatever doesn’t serve me leave with grace. People, experiences, anything, let that leave my life. And may I not resist it.”
So, it’s really powerful because then you begin to surrender the control.
How do you feel being in New York today?
Happy!
I feel as if I’m at this point in my life, so I traveled to Morocco and Spain in March. And while I was in Spain, I went to Barcelona for one day and I was like, “I need to be here,” and so I’m moving to Spain next year. For the past few years, I’ve just been over New York. Not over it in the sense of, I don’t think it’s a great place but it’s the pollution, and seeing so much poverty, and the cost of living is rising but the wage to live isn’t rising. There’s so much disconnect that I find it to be toxic. So, I’m sort of in that transition stage but I want to get to a point where I can come back to New York and visit and be, “Oh, this is a nice place.” I’m happy to be here. Are you at that point?
I’m at that point. I lived here for seven years. I left for two. Now when I come back to teach, I’m relaxed, I’m content, I’m excited to be back.
Oh my God, when I leave, it will be seven years.
Seven years. How old are you?
I’m 30. I turn 31 in October.
You’re having your Saturn Return. You pretty much leave your old life and whatever is not serving you and you enter a new one. So, it happens about every 27 years. You’re on the cusp of maybe the end of it; so 27 to 30. Usually it lasts a couple of years. It’s different for each person; you can check your chart or talk to an astrologer.
Yeah, when I left here, I was, “I’m never coming back.” I literally was done when I moved to LA. One of my psychic healers in New York was said, “You’re going to come back and you’re going to come back when you want to come back.” And I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting, I don’t know what that’s going to be like, but okay.” And now I come back frequently and it is because I want to come back.
I come back because I love to see friends, I love to host events, I love to see people I cherish here. When I come back, it’s different. I don’t have that erratic stress. When I moved to LA and I was worried about how my body would respond when I came back to New York, one of my teachers told me, “You just have to get your nervous system strong enough so when you come back to visit, the old stuff that bothered you, can’t shake you.”
I’ll go on a subway and as annoying and stinky as it is, my body doesn’t freak out as it used to. At first, I do get a little anxious if I’m in traffic and I’m late or, you know, things like that. But I know, “It’s fine, it’s going to be okay.” You know? Before it would completely mess up my day. I’d run to catch something, run to get in the subway, run to get to the train. Because in New York you have this mentality that, “Oh, my gosh I have to run, I have to go fast because if I don’t go fast I’m going to get stepped on and trampled.” Most people subconsciously feel that need to always be on the go, moving fast and speeding along – but it’s false programming – It’s just what the core belief is here. Once you get past that, you go out into the world, you travel, and then you come back. Your body and soul are in a different place. It is very healing to leave.
So when I come here, I treat myself really well.
What are some healers or spas that you really like in the city?
I am all about spas here. Tournesol is a great healing center, I was just there this morning – it’s located on 36th in between Madison Park. Go see Carey Davidson – she does vibroacoustics. It’s the coolest thing to heal your body. She’s intuitive, so she can read your body and where the tension is and I would highly recommend exploring this unique healing modality. Vibroacoustics are great for many conditions thyroid, adrenals, PCOS, you name it. For yoga, The Studio on Bowery. It’s owned by my teacher and mentor Abbie Galvin, she’s incredible. For spas, I go to Aire Ancient Baths in Tribeca, Great Jones Spa, and HigherDose for infrared sauna. My doctor, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is amazing for nutrition and hormone health. See her at The Ash Center for Comprehensive Medicine and while you’re there, get an IV vitamin drip. It’s my favorite go-to for staying healthy in between flights and keeps my hormones happy.
Can you tell me about vitamin drips for a second?
Yeah, it’s like a cocktail of all the vitamins injected into an IV. So, it’s great for revving up your body’s immune system. They have different cocktails for different things such as jet lag, or vitamin … If you’re deficient in any vitamins, hormone health, weight loss…. There are so many different vitamins and nutrients that can stimulate your body. So she’s a great resource for nutrition too and intuitive.
What are you doing today at Saks Wellery?
I’m here doing consultations all day and then teaching a Thyroid Yoga® class at night. It’s really exciting, I love bringing this practice to mainstream venues where I can reach those who may never have been exposed to this work otherwise. Saks had seen what I had created and asked me to come share it, and we’ve got a little shopping experience with my Ajai essential oils, and the class happening in the evenings – meeting and empowering many incredible people is obviously my favorite part!
At this point in your career, do you private train mostly?
Recently the main focus of my career was seeing clients privately, now I have a small client practice and most of my work is training teachers, leading retreats, and offering one-day Thyroid Yoga® intensives. So, instead of a couple of hours, we have one day filled with yoga, meditation, breath work, essential oils, sound healing, reiki, nutrition, and it’s like a personal day retreat. I hold these at gorgeous spaces in New York, LA, or wherever in the world I may find myself in! I also offer Thyroid Yoga® training one-on-one intensives as well – so if you’re a yoga teacher or wellness practitioner looking to make a bigger impact, this may be a great experience for you!
How is a one day intensive different from a couple hours a day?
It’s six hours and we go through every ritual in depth – the morning practice, the night practice, nutrition, reiki, breath and meditation. It goes far deeper than a 1-hour yoga session. You really tap into childhood patterns and traumas, and we really figure out why you’ve been holding on to a dis-ease in your body. I give you rituals to start to get you out of that funk. It’s pretty intense. We’re going to get deep. It’s not just going to be a two-hour thing that tomorrow you forget about. It changes you.
How would they be able to maintain doing the yoga when you’re not there?
I record our sessions so my clients can always replay that. I offer a follow-up session after the private, where we catch up on a video call. We can talk about anything that’s been challenging and we check-in. I always check-in with my clients that I’ve done retreats and intensives with. So, a couple months later, “Hey, how are you doing? Are you doing this practice, how are your rituals? If you’re feeling challenged or uninspired, how can I help you?” I have the most amazing, dedicated clients that travel all over the world to see me for a day, so what’s very cool about an intensive is that it makes it more accessible for someone that’s traveling far, we’ll get a longer time together, and we can form a beautiful partnership. I’m invested into my clients’ sustained health and happiness!
Do you work mainly in the states or do you travel all over?
I travel all over. I’m going to Costa Rica for a month just for myself on Thursday. Then I’m going to Australia and I’ll be training teachers and offering privates when I’m there.