Thrive with Cate Stillman Podcast

In this deeply personal episode of the Thrive with Cate Podcast, Cate Stillman sits down with Elsie Escobar — Hall of Fame podcaster, co-founder of She Podcasts, former Director of Community and Content at Libsyn for 15+ years, and now founder of Multimodally — for a decade-in-the-making catch-up between two women who first met on yoga mats in the mid-2000s and have been building parallel arcs ever since.
Elsie opens up about the transitions that quietly reshaped her life: stepping down from She Podcasts to be fully present for her teenage daughter's mental health crisis, being let go from Libsyn after a 54-day Catholic novena where she asked the Virgin Mary for clarity, and rebuilding from the ground up through a new brand designed around voice-led leadership and modular life design.
Cate mirrors the parallel arc: cancer, hip replacement, tech stack overhaul, and the deliberate rebuild of Yogahealer into Club Thrive and Wellness Pro Academy. Together, they map the Medusa myth as the truest guide to what midlife identity work actually looks like — and why the offspring of Medusa (Pegasus and Chrysor, prana and tejas) are exactly what emerges when a woman finally leaves the temple, enters the cave, and prostrates to herself.
This is a conversation about what happens when leadership, motherhood, and nervous system collapse all arrive at the same threshold — and what actually gets built on the other side.
Together, Cate and Elsie explore:
Trust the Sap, Not the Bark: Why the essence of who you are matters more than the identity culture has known you by — and why every heroine's journey requires leaving the safety of shore
Motherhood as Forced Initiation: When your child's need for presence overrides every career trajectory, and how Elsie navigated her daughter's self-harm season while running the world's largest podcasting community for women
The Corporate Squeeze: How Libsyn transformed from indie community to advertising machine, and the slow death of doing work that no longer aligns with your zone of genius
Sacred Ritual as Digestion: Why the 54-day novena worked where willpower failed — and how Ayurvedic ritual, Catholic devotion, and yogic Ishvara Pranidhana all serve the same nervous system function
The Medusa Map: Athena's temple (culture), the cave (Svadhyaya), taming Kundalini, and the offspring — Pegasus (organized prana) and Chrysor (the sword of discernment). Why this is the truest map for post-institution womanhood
Voice-Led Leadership: Elsie's new framework for creators moving beyond "which medium" to "what's the message" — and why the tool debate keeps women stuck
Multimodally and Small-Not-Scale: Building a media business for 200 potent people instead of 200,000 followers, and why the future belongs to modular, self-funded, integrity-led brands
The Nervous System Tax of Leadership: How years of "just push through" quietly build a body that no longer responds to safety — and what it takes to turn the volume back down
80/20 and Your Fractal: Cate's Club Thrive framework for mapping the identity leaps you've already survived — so the next one feels less like extinction and more like continuity
This episode is an invitation for every woman standing at the threshold of a career exit, an identity shift, a mothering season she didn't ask for, or a nervous system that finally called time. If you're being asked to release who you've been, this conversation is your permission slip and your map.
Notable Quote: "You have to trust in the sap more than the last version of your identity — because culture wants you to perpetuate that, and your integrity won't let you anymore."
Connect with Elsie Escobar:
Website: multimodally.com
Short link: elsi.link/MM
ELEAGUE — mentorship for voice-led leaders
Connect with Cate Stillman:
Website: wellnesspro.academy
Podcast: Thrive with Cate
Books: Body Thrive, Master of You, Primal Habits, Uninflamed
Forthcoming: Rewilding Medusa / Finding Persephone
If this episode named something you've been sitting with, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with the woman in your life who is quietly standing at her own threshold

In this special episode of the Thrive with Cate Podcast, Cate Stillman joins Nina Pullella's Wild Woman Collective of Oahu to teach the framework she's spent 25+ years refining — how to translate detox momentum into lifelong evolution, and why the window right after a cleanse is the most important moment of your year.
You did the work. You went into the cave. You ate the simple food, kept the early bedtimes, and sat with your habits long enough to feel what they were really doing to you. Now you're standing at the edge of something — a new identity asking to be claimed.
This is what Cate calls your New Floor.
After 24 years of guiding twice-yearly detoxes, Cate noticed a pattern her advanced Ayurvedic training never taught her: people in community heal faster than her premium one-on-one clients doing the same protocols. That insight became Body Thrive, then Master of You, then Club Thrive — and the spine of everything she now teaches inside Wellness Pro Academy, where Nina Pullella built her own thriving Wild Woman Collective.
Together, Cate and Nina explore:
The Four Aims of Life (Purushartha): Why Artha, Kama, and Moksha get easier as you dial in Dinacharya — and why Dharma becomes the question that drives everything else
The Keystone Habit: How to identify the one habit that makes every other habit easier
Master of You's 5-Element Framework: Body (Earth), Vision (Fire), Time (Air), Space (Ether), Flow (Water) — and how to architect your environment to preference the habits you want
The Medusa Map: Cave, taming Kundalini, Pegasus (organized energy), and Chrysor (the sword that cuts the 80 from the 20). The post-detox is your sword moment
The New Floor vs. The Old Floor: Why retox-detox cycles trap most women — and how to identify what your past identity needs to surrender so your future identity can land
Why Community Heals Faster Than 1-on-1: The data set behind Club Thrive and the club business model Nina now uses with Wild Woman Collective
Trade-offs and Trade-ups: How to make the new floor sacred by naming the specific old-floor sacrifice and the specific 3-year outcome that makes it worth it
This episode is an invitation to stop treating the cleanse as the destination — and start using it as the doorway. Whether you've just finished a detox, you're an Ayurvedic practitioner guiding others through one, or you're simply ready to name your next identity, this conversation gives you the map.
Notable Quote: "The new floor is sacred. The old floor is the sacrifice."
Connect with Nina Pullella:
Wild Woman Collective of Oahu
Connect with Cate Stillman:
Website: clubthrive.global
Podcast: Thrive with Cate
Books: Body Thrive, Master of You, Primal Habits, Uninflamed
If this episode named something you've been feeling, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with the woman in your life who just finished a cleanse and is wondering what's next.

In this honest and timely conversation, I sit down with Marcus Fernandez—homeopath, educator, and host of Beyond the Shed—to unpack what women between 35 and 70 truly need to know about the men in their lives. Marcus reveals a pattern he's seen across 30+ years of clinical practice: it's almost always the women who bring the men into wellness, and far too often, they arrive only after something has already broken.
After three decades treating Gen X men in his London clinic and working in a cardiology ward early in his career, Marcus pivoted to creating Beyond the Shed—a therapeutic podcast space where men finally talk about the things they've been carrying in silence. He now bridges natural medicine, masculine psychology, and practical lifestyle design to help families heal together.
Together, we explore:
The Suppressed Emotion–Heart Attack Connection: Why "tough guy" conditioning lands Gen X men in cardiology wards at 55, and what the mind-body link reveals about grief stored in the chest.

The MEDS Framework: Meditation, Exercise, Diet, Sleep—Marcus's four non-negotiables that work for any man, regardless of budget or starting point.

The Driveway Ritual: A simple 2-minute box breathing practice that helps men transition from "work mode" to being emotionally present fathers and partners.

The Silent Epidemic: Why suicide is the #1 cause of death for men under 50 in the UK and US—and why nobody is talking about it.

The Cave & The Shed: Understanding why men retreat, how to create the right environment for them to open up, and why women are Beyond the Shed's biggest fans.

Generational Shifts: Why Gen Z boys are skipping the pub, questioning authority, and starving for genuine male mentorship.

The 56-Year-Old Crisis: Disappointment, purpose loss, and why this midlife threshold mirrors the ancient Vanaprastha stage of stepping back from worldly life.

Reclaiming Human Connection: How AI slop is creating a craving for real, in-person, kinesthetic experience—and why collaborative intelligence beats chitter-chatter every time.

This episode is an invitation for women to understand the men they love with more depth, and for men to recognize themselves in patterns they've never had language for. Whether you're a wellness professional, a wife wondering how to reach your partner, or a man quietly running out of fuel, this conversation offers practical tools and permission to start somewhere small.
Notable Quote: "What's a heart attack? It's like the heart breaking. All that emotion that was behind it—these really tough guys just kept it in, kept it in, and then something physically happens."
Connect with Marcus Fernandez:
Website: marcus-fernandez.com

Podcast: Beyond the Shed

Book: Homeopathy at Home

Centre for Homeopathic Medicine (London)

Connect with Cate Stillman:
Website: https://clubthrive.global/

Podcast: Thrive with Cate

If this episode opens a new conversation in your home or relationship, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with the woman—or the man—who needs to hear it.

About this episode: In this closing episode of the Thrive with Cate Stillman Gut Health Challenge series, Cate brings everything full circle — from her healing condo in Mexico, fresh from osteopathic bodywork that finally released post-surgical swelling — to guide members through the most important question of the entire week: What are you ready to release for good?
Drawing on Pareto's 80/20 principle, Cate leads members through a powerful breakout room exercise to identify what is clearly outdated in their lives — the patterns, habits, mindsets, and identities that no longer belong on the next floor — and what is genuinely emergent in the 20% that will carry them forward.
This session weaves together Ayurvedic wisdom on Agni, Ama, and Svastha with behavioral psychology concepts like mental rehearsal, first attempts at learning, and the dangers of Pragnaparada — the failure to live into embodied wisdom. Members share real breakthroughs: from rediscovering the joy of sprouting and fermented foods, to finally hearing the body's hunger signals clearly after years of externally driven eating rules.
Cate also speaks to the importance of not disrupting the body's reset before it's complete, how your people set replaces willpower, and why the emergent self is not something you build — it's something you uncover by releasing what no longer fits.
Key Takeaways:
The 80/20 Identity Map: How to identify what's clearly outdated versus what's genuinely emergent — and why that distinction changes everything
Karma vs. Kriya: The difference between carrying outdated patterns into the future and taking spontaneous, aligned action from your new floor
Mental Rehearsal as Healing: Why visualizing the aligned choice builds the same neural muscle as living it — and how to use it after any backslide
Honoring the Full Reset Cycle: Why disrupting a fast or reset before the body is finished creates backlash — and how to support the complete cycle
People Set Replaces Willpower: How surrounding yourself with the emergent 20% makes transformation sustainable rather than effortful
Svastha & Self-Authority: What it means to be truly seated in the self — with full command over your physiology, intuition, and next aligned action
Resources & Links: Wellness Pro Academy: https://wellnesspro.academy Yogahealer: https://www.yogahealer.com Gut Health Challenge: https://guthealthchallenge.scoreapp.com
About the Host – Cate Stillman: Cate Stillman is an Ayurvedic practitioner, author, and founder of Yogahealer and Wellness Pro Academy. For over 25 years, she has guided wellness professionals and individuals to align their habits, health, and business with natural intelligence and sustainable practices.

About this episode: In this episode of the Thrive with Cate Stillman Podcast, Cate shows up on her 53rd birthday — fresh from surgery and fresh from an all-night mission helping a neighbor navigate a financial and legal crisis — and delivers one of the most honest, layered conversations in the Gut Health Challenge series.
What begins as a reflection on Maslow's lesser-known final insight — that self-transcendence, not self-actualization, sits at the true peak of human development — unfolds into a rich exploration of how gut health, identity, and meaning are all deeply interconnected. Cate draws a direct line between the health of your microbiome and the personality you inhabit, introducing the concept of the microbiome signature and what loss of microbial diversity actually costs you at an identity level.
She also explores the gut-brain-vagus nerve connection through the lens of her own surgical recovery, the emotional and psychological layers that surface during fasting, and why waking at 3am with memories and gut noise during a reset is not a problem to fix — but information to receive.
This session also features a powerful long-term member share from Michelle, a Waldorf teacher who reflects on cycles of deep self-care, dissolution, and return — and what it means to serve others from a genuinely fuller self.
Key Takeaways:
Maslow's Hidden Peak: Why self-transcendence — doing something for someone beyond yourself — is where the most meaningful life is actually lived
The Microbiome Signature: How your gut microbial diversity directly shapes your personality, emotional patterns, and future identity
Gut-Brain-Vagus Nerve: How the vagus nerve connects gut health to brain state — and what Cate's fainting episode revealed about nervous system sensitivity
Food Noise & Shadow Work: What food noise really is, why it's largely unprocessed emotional material, and what life looks like on the other side of it
Waking at 3am During a Fast: Why memories and gut noise in the night are information breaking through — and the rewrite memories practice for working with them
Altruism as the Highest Health Practice: Why doing the hard inner work is simultaneously the most generous thing you can do for everyone around you
Resources & Links: Wellness Pro Academy: https://wellnesspro.academy Yogahealer: https://www.yogahealer.com Gut Health Challenge: https://guthealthchallenge.scoreapp.com
About the Host – Cate Stillman: Cate Stillman is an Ayurvedic practitioner, author, and founder of Yogahealer and Wellness Pro Academy. For over 25 years, she has guided wellness professionals and individuals to align their habits, health, and business with natural intelligence and sustainable practices.