Empowering Wellness through Movement with Nadia Sehweil of BodyTree Studio, Abu Dhabi
Embark on a journey of holistic wellness with Nadia Sehweil, co-founder of Bodytree Studio, on this transformative episode of The SEAM Podcast. Bodytree Studio, the first of its kind in Abu Dhabi, stands as a holistic women's wellness space, fostering well-being through comprehensive mind-body practices. Join us as Nadia shares her journey of creating a supportive community space that offers yoga, pilates, and nourishing meals for women.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
I am so lucky that I have such smart, amazing, outgoing friends, and when I get to interview them. Today I'm with Nadia Sehweil who is in Los Angeles from Abu Dhabi. So I've made you come in and do this and I'm really excited. And what I want to start with is just tell us, not just who you are and where you're from, but why you have this deep-seated interest in women's health.
Nadia Sehweil:
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, and I'm so lucky that I have friends who do incredible things and thank you. So I met you in Abu Dhabi and I think that's just a reflection of the relationships, so we're able to build in a place like that. I grew up in the UAE, lucky to call it home. So my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 47. I was in college at the time, and that really changed things for us as a family. My father had been sick when we were in school. He'd had major heart issues and we almost lost him. And then mom got sick and when my mother got sick, I think that rocked the family because moms are the foundation of not the fathers. And I don't want to take away from what happened with my father, and that was very traumatic.
But I think we all leaned on my mother a lot, and the way she managed her treatment and the way she came out of it was very inspiring. She had to have a big chunk of her colon removed, and she went through chemo, which again, a lot of people go through, but she went through severe depression after her chemotherapy, and she decided she didn't want to be on medication forever. She understood how it affected her and then how it affected her relationships and her family. And she decided to turn to yoga, meditation, and Pilates. And she became a yoga teacher, a regular meditator, and a Pilates instructor, and just changed her outlook on life or chose a positive outlook. And that just really inspired the family. She kept us together throughout. Obviously, it caused a lot of anxiety in us and my younger brothers, but we all kind of went through it, came through it together, and I don't know, that was so inspiring. A couple of years later, I moved back home after college, after I graduated, worked for my father for a few years, and then a few years into working with him, my mom and I decided we wanted to start a studio.
WHEN MY MOTHER GOT SICK, I THINK THAT ROCKED THE FAMILY BECAUSE MOMS ARE THE FOUNDATION
Amy Cohen Epstein:
So how old were you at this point?
Nadia Sehweil:
It was in 2007. So I was in my mid-twenties
And we decided to start a yoga and Pilates studio: myself, my mother and a friend of ours named Alina. And we started with two small spaces. Abu Dhabi had no studios at the time, so we were the first yoga and Pilates studio. We weren't sure how it would do, how people would take it, but I felt so inspired by my mom's journey. I felt we had to offer something. Also, it's frustrating not to have things like that in the UAE. And so we started a few years into it. We decided we wanted to expand what we were doing. We wanted a full wellness space, not just movement, but we wanted to add meditation. We wanted to add kids programs, we wanted to add pre and postnatal. We wanted to have a healthy cafe, we wanted to run retreats. We just wanted a full service offering. And so we found a new space and fit it out. And when I had my daughter in 2012, we opened our larger space and opened our first or Abu Dhabi's first fully integrated wellness center.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
That's amazing.
Nadia Sehweil:
So we've been running this for, I want to say a little over 15 years now. And then I also opened a healthy cafe with a good high school friend of mine, Mira Naman. And she is a chef, a pastry chef actually. But I called her up, she was working a corporate job at the time, an events job that she wasn't really happy in. And so I said, why don't you leave that and do something completely different and instead of making junky pastries, why don't you come and let's make something healthy together. And so again, we created not the first, but one of the first healthier cafes in town. We started with smoothies and small little offerings, and then we just expanded that as well. And so we've turned it into a fully integrated healthy cafe and we're expanding that business as well.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Okay, so to back up a minute. So when I lived in Abu Dhabi for five years, 2007 to 2012, it was just when you had opened Body Tree Studio and Nadia and I became friends, you were originally my Pilates instructor. I was, and then we blab so much that we moved on from that and took it out of the studio, let's say. So why was it called Body Tree?
Nadia Sehweil:
Okay. Well, we started out with two studios with Soma Pilates and Yoga Tree, Alina owned Yoga Tree, and we own Soma Pilates.
And we decided to collaborate a couple of years into it. I just said, this is silly. We need to have a fully integrated, I mean, we'd always envisioned a wellness studio and we adored Alina and we worked really well together. So I said, let's just joint venture and let's turn this into a bigger space. And that's what we did. And then we created the name Body Tree. We love the name Yoga Tree. That really resonated with people more so than Soma Pilates. So we wanted to keep that name Tree. Tree always meant a lot to all of us. It's a word that symbolizes rooting and it's got many branches and many branches of life. And so we wanted to keep that word in there. So we felt Body Tree that came from Bodhi Tree was inspiring. And then one of my other very close friends, Caroline Solum, created the logo. She had spotted something that was inspiring.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
I know she created the logo.
Nadia Sehweil:
She actually created the Body Tree logo in 2012. Sorry, I lose track of time. But as I was having my daughter here in Los Angeles, we were actually opening our studio in Abu Dhabi, opening the doors there for our new studio.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
There's something that we have to hone in on that's really significant that you kind of gloss over — like no big deal to you. But creating, especially at that time back in 2000, even 2010 or 2012, a real wellness center for women in Abu Dhabi — and of course men can go there too at different times — I think it's significant. And even in a city like Los Angeles or New York or Chicago, Atlanta, there are few places like Body Tree that not only are for movement and workout, but really mind, body and soul. And I just think it's incredibly inspiring and it's so incredible for the women who live there to have a place to just root themselves keeping with the tree metaphor hundred percent and really understand what wellness means. So I want to talk a little bit about how the nutrition aspect got there and your intense and significant interest in nutrition as well, because not a lot of people are. I would describe you as a constant learner of life and constantly poking and prodding to learn new things and figure out what's happening and what's good for us and what we need to do. And then you bring it home. It's like you're learning these things all over the world and your community gets to enjoy it because of your and your partners, but really I think your just desire to keep learning. So the nutrition aspect, tell me about that and what you love the most about it. Yeah,
Nadia Sehweil:
I mean, I think I became interested in nutrition right around the time my mom was diagnosed with cancer. But for me it's always the why. So why did she end up with cancer? What is the root cause? How do we avoid going through this again, because it's so traumatic, it's so stressful. No one wants to go through chemotherapy, nobody wants to go through that whole treatment. And then the side effects and then the medication you have to take after that. And then the other things that can trigger hypothyroid like depression, it's always a whole slew of illnesses that will follow. And so I just wanted to know what's the root cause? Why did she have colon cancer? And so I like to dig. And then I was also going through different things when I was younger. So I had endometriosis, very painful menstrual cycles. When I was younger, I was put on the pill for a whole year continuously where it changed my moods, it affected a lot of things.
It was just frustrating. I'm like, why are we always medicated? Then again, there are tons of side effects and I just like to deep dive. I'm like, can we avoid certain things or can we treat certain things differently? And so that's when I started digging into nutrition and I met different, and again, I feel like wellness is a lifelong journey. Nutrition is a lifelong journey. You're going to learn things, certain things will trend. And I think it's interesting to deep dive understand, does this work for me? Does it not what's best for my body? I'm a huge believer in working with functional medicine doctors or naturopaths. Do a little deep dive into your genetic testing, deep dive into what works for you, what intolerances do you have. It's not the same for all of us and keep tweaking. And I feel like that really can make a huge shift.
So when I shifted my nutrition, when I shifted the way I thought, the way I slept, the way I moved, that just shifted my health for me. And I saw that with my mother when she shifted the way she ate and when she became, she's always been healthy, but I want to say healthier. And for her, I think meditation works immensely, even more so than nutrition. We saw a huge shift in her health and she's been in the clear for many, many years now. Thankfully she hasn't had cancer again, she manages all her other, I want to say the side effects of the cancer quite well. But again, it's mostly lifestyle and it's mostly nutrition and stress management and mindset, positive thinking and mindset.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
I think of wellness, exactly like you're describing it as a big circle. And it really has to contain all of that in order to live a healthy life and a healthy have a healthy lifestyle. But also it changes. So what would be in that circle for one person in your pre-teen years, in your teen years?
The more you get to know yourself and then you can figure out and grow and change what needs to come in and out of your life in order to keep you healthy and to keep wellness at the top of your mind.
SAY THERE'S A BIG GAP IN WOMEN'S HEALTH. THIS IS REALLY FRUSTRATING AND IT'S SAD THAT IN TODAY'S WORLD WE JUST DON'T HAVE MORE ANSWERS.
Nadia Sehweil:
I also want to say there's a big gap in women's health. This is really frustrating and it's sad that in today's world we just don't have more answers. And there's some great women out there doing great things, great gynecologists, again, functional medicine, doctors, nutritionists. But I still don't think we've cracked the code. I don't think
Amy Cohen Epstein:
We absolutely not even close.
Nadia Sehweil:
We don't really fully understand. And I think we need to start looking at our health from when we're a lot younger, when when we become teens, the way we eat and the things that we do, the choices we make, I don't think we're educated enough when we're that young, not
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Even close.
Nadia Sehweil:
And I think that sometimes there are a lot of things that we're are prescribed to us or choices we make when we're younger that might not be right for us at the time, but then impact our health later on. And I think it's really important to have an understanding of what we're, and again, I'm not averse to things like the pill, but I think there's a time and a place. I don't think it's right for everyone. I think we should test our hormones before going on the pill. I don't think we should just be prescribed the pill or hormones for that matter. I think we should be very specific about what we're taking. And I feel like if we start that at a younger age, then we go into our twenties more equipped for our twenties. Our twenties are pretty volatile. I mean, we talk about our teens being very volatile when we're 15, 16, but I think our twenties are pretty hard too. And I think we do suffer from different hormonal issues in our twenties. And then later on if we decide to have kids, I feel like we're not always necessarily prepped for that. And we're not prepped post kids. And then a lot of us go through post postpartum depression. And so I don't know. I feel like there are better ways to support women, and we're not there yet.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
We're definitely not there yet. I was just had an interview two days ago with someone and we were talking about how great would it be if we could rewrite elementary school, middle school, even high school curriculum to really change the health class that they all get, split them into girls and boys or just give them all really solid information about what it means to be healthy,
Mind, body, and soul. So we could have a whole discussion about social media and body image, but really understanding what your body needs at different stages. And one of the things this gal talked to me about was this second puberty that women have right around 18, 19 years old. That coincides for a lot of us when we leave home for the first time and go to college and your body goes through this really second puberty where it's growing in a different way, holding onto what you put into it in a different way, coinciding when most of us have the most unhealthy time in our life,
Nadia Sehweil:
Absolutely unhealthy. We don't have access to healthy even if we wanted it in college. It's impossible. It's
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Impossible. And your choices for food are impossible. Your sleep pattern is completely off. You are eating at weird hours of the night and the day you're not exercising regularly because all of a sudden you don't have time or you played sports on a team and that's gone for you. And it's really hard. And girls in particular are absolutely not educated going into that phase.
Nadia Sehweil:
They're not.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
They're not. And like you said, it doesn't just impact them. Then in real time it's stored up for later.
Nadia Sehweil:
It's stores definitely. And then you'll see it in your twenties. And then in our twenties we have our first jobs, or maybe not our first jobs, but our first serious job out of college. And there's a lot of pressure attached to that. And then we don't know how to manage pressure and stress. So that's another thing we don't know how to manage. And as women, there's just a lot that we carry a big load. If we're close to our families, we'll carry that emotional load, that responsibility, and then you carry the responsibility of your job. If you have a partner and you choose to get married, that's another responsibility than kids. So we keep layering these responsibilities over the years and every decade our responsibilities grow and they say every decade our metabolism slows down. So life is a little unfair that way. Yeah,
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Definitely.
Nadia Sehweil:
So you have more stress, a slower metabolism, but you're expected to perform at a higher level,
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Always getting to a higher level, constantly moving forward.
Nadia Sehweil:
So how do we manage all of that? And then how do we manage our hormones and how do we manage our hormones where I think men and people in the workplace understand that this is something real. We can't have eyes rolling when we're going through something. Women do actually have hormones. Yes, they have cycles. Yes, our moods shift. Yes, there are ways to manage it, but I think there's just not enough empathy.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
And forget about the workplace and the menu work with just in science and medicine and the number of doctors that you will go in to see, I would say nine out of 10 gynecologists as a woman, you go to see, dismiss you or say it's perimenopause. So you're in your late thirties, early forties, it's just perimenopause, which by the way can last 10 to 15 years.
Nadia Sehweil:
It can last forever, literally.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Just supposed to figure out how to bear through it when more and more research is coming out into different things that we can do to. But how can you stay healthy? What can you add back into that wellness circle that you've created yourself?
Nadia Sehweil:
And how you thrive through this period too? Because if you understand your cycle a little better, you understand what you're going through, then you can manage your day-to-day life. You can
Amy Cohen Epstein:
And thrive. I love that —
Nadia Sehweil:
You can plan for it.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
As opposed to just survive.
Teaching our young girls who grow into women that you got to put your mask on first and that you have to speak up and you have to have the confidence to do so. And I do go back to saying the more in touch you are with your body and how you feel about yourself and your self-confidence later in life, you probably will have even younger, but later in life you'll have that, wait a second, something's off, something's different. And I'm going to find out the answer for it. Not all of us are major diggers like you who will look all over the world for different answers, but ask those questions.
Nadia Sehweil:
I don't always find the answers. No, but it leads you on path. And even if you don't find answers, then there are ways you can support your body through whatever you're going through. And I think that's really, really important.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And as women, were still taught all over the world that you just get through it. And if you're a little off or a lot off and no one's telling you actually what it is, then you'll be fine. Keep moving forward.
Nadia Sehweil:
Absolutely.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
And that's really detrimental. And it doesn't allow you to thrive at all. Maybe barely survive. So that's definitely something to, I don't know, hone in on. And if we could put that in standard education in all over the world, that would be really helpful.
Nadia Sehweil:
That would be,
Amy Cohen Epstein:
What are the ways in which we can move at this stage of our life? I'm a little older than you, but our forties-ish that you think really hones in for the right reasons.
I THINK IF THERE WAS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE I COULD GIVE EVERYONE: PUT ON A WATCH AND JUST TRACK YOUR FOOTSTEPS AND TRY TO HIT EIGHT TO 10,000 FOOTSTEPS A DAY JUST AS A MINIMUM, ANYTHING OVER THAT, GREAT. THAT'S A BONUS.
Nadia Sehweil:
Yeah, I mean I think again, it's so personal. So you need to understand what's right for you. Some of us can do high intensity and that works really well for us. Others need things that are low intensity and low impact. But I think movement every day is really, really important. Some form of movement.
I think walking is probably the most important thing. I know people talk about it a lot, but it is really underrated. I think if there was one piece of advice I could give everyone: Put on a watch and just track your footsteps and try to hit eight to 10,000 footsteps a day just as a minimum, anything over that, great. That's a bonus. If you've just been sitting at your desk for too long, get up and do something. I don't know, just go up the stairs, but just move throughout your day. I think that's really, really important.
And then if you love working out again, find what's right for you. So I love Pilates. I am a Pilates instructor. It, it's been the foundation of movement for me, but there's so much more to movement than just Pilates. So I love learning about fascia and there are lots of techniques like eldoa and things my mother's deep diving into right now that I'm loving, especially being over 40. These are things that help you release tension in your body but also tone parts of your body in a different way. But I'm also an exercise junkie, I'll admit. I love it. I love the endorphins. I love running. I love a good intense hike. I love high-intensity intervals. I like sweating almost every day. I enjoy, I love going into an infrared sauna and sweating it out which makes my body feel really safe.
I enjoy what that gives me, but I have to be careful not to overdo it. I am an extremist, so there is such thing as too much. And understanding what that too much is, whether it comes to watching food or over exercising, I think we always have to strike that balance and be conscious. But I would say things like yoga and Pilates are phenomenal and there are things that you can do wherever you go and you can apply Pilates principles into everything you do. So I love to weightlift as well. I apply my Pilates principles to that. I love yoga. I apply my Pilates principles to that. I think meditation is incredibly important. And if you can't meditate, then at least learning to do something where you can just kind of slow down and be in the moment. That's why I say walking, walking is such a good way to just, it's such a natural form of meditation. If you can't sit there and close your eyes and you don't really want to. Deep dive
Amy Cohen Epstein:
Americans, were really bad at walking.
Nadia Sehweil:
Yeah, I don't know. But there are parts of the US where they make it easier to walk and people enjoy it. But you're right, in general,
You don't just walk. I know Europeans are better at it, I think, than Americans in the UAE. We are a driving culture too, and diabetes is huge there. And so there have been huge drives by the government to try to get people out just walking and moving a little bit more and a little bit more awareness on food as well, because food has shifted, has westernized so much. And with the Westernization, you've seen this increase in diabetes,
Is quite sad. So there's a huge drive there to get people to move. But it's very similar to the US there.
But what's been great about the UAE is it's a young country. They've developed it very carefully and with a lot of purpose. So you see the areas they develop, they build parks, they build walking.
They build trails, they build things close to the water where you can walk and exercise. So again, very mindful, very purposeful, really trying to get people to integrate movement into their lifestyle. Most of the developments coming up will always include some form of, I don't know, an outdoor park or like you said, somewhere to walk or cycle and gym everywhere, community gyms, everywhere.
I THINK THE MINDSET'S REALLY CHANGING THERE. AND YOU SEE A LOT OF THE WOMEN IN THE UAE DRIVING THE CHANGE, A LOT OF THE WOMEN ARE ACTUALLY INTO WORKING OUT. THEY LOVE ALL THE TRENDY WORKOUTS.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
It's amazing.
Nadia Sehweil:
I think the mindset's really changing there. And you see a lot of the women in the UAE driving the change, a lot of the women are actually into working out. They love all the trendy workouts. You'll see them at Barry's bootcamp, you'll see them at our studio. You see them all the cool cycling places and the women's only classes are jam-packed. That's awesome. It's really incredible. Really, really incredible.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
It's always us. Yeah,
Nadia Sehweil:
They have a really good understanding of what health means. We're also seeing cancer on the rise in the UAE, especially amongst women. And so they're just looking into this a little bit more. And I think women understand that they have to take control of their health. So again, it's nice to see that they're more aware of healthy eating.
Does that mean? How can we modify the way eat and moving a lot more and getting their families to be healthier?
Amy Cohen Epstein:
The two things that any doctor will tell you, and specifically there's a couple of gynecologic oncologists I work with and people ask, what's the takeaway? What's the one thing I can do to be healthy? And the answer is, there's two things. One is don't smoke. It's the single worst thing you can do yourself. Absolutely.
That has long-term effects you don't even know about. And two is try to get to a healthy weight where your body feels healthy and that is very personal. So it's understanding what that means for you and try and stay within five pounds of your entire adult life. Because when you have too much excess fat on your body and not enough muscle, that helps you then keep the fat away. So building muscle when you're young and then being able to keep that along as you get older. Bad things in our body feed off the excess fat, right? So cancer, I'm just talking about women's cancers, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, and then everything else that we share with men in our livers or colons, all of that. It doesn't mean that if you're overweight, you will get cancer, but you are significantly increasing your chance.
Nadia Sehweil:
And there's more and more research looking at metabolic health.
How do we manage our insulin? How does our body react to certain food? There are all these wearables now, and I also caution people with wearables. I think they're great to put on for a little while to get an understanding, but that just captures a moment in time.
So, you have to look at your whole lifestyle, but take that and get an understanding and use that. I think things like that have become so beneficial. And I wish we knew more about this when we were younger and I wish I knew that going into my first pregnancy…
I think we all are who we are. We need to accept ourselves a hundred percent, but also understand that yes, I agree with you. I think know what's right for you and what's right for you might not be right for me, right? We're all built a little different, but keeping within that range I think is important.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
It is just science. I mean it is so a hundred percent. And I think that there's just a lack of information for so many women in different parts of the world, different parts of America. And doctors often are, like you said at the beginning, are so quick to prescribe. And for every action there's an opposite and equal reaction. So if you have high cholesterol, the first thing a doctor's going to do is give you a statin.
There are a lot of reactions to the statins and the way your body feels and your muscle aches and bone issues, all of those things. And if you add in a naturopath or a holistic nutritionist into your mix, and you really go through, well, let's talk about your lifestyle, your diet, your workouts, and then let's get to a medicine if we need it. There are so many other ways to tackle problems than just prescribing. And what's another thing that come back to come back to this perimenopause menopause stage? Of course I'm in. So many doctors will prescribe women in their forties to go back on birth control even if they can't have babies anymore, in order to regulate your hormones to help you through this period. And again, pardon the pun, and again, that doesn't actually get to the root of what's going on.
It's just like masking tape that's going to come off….
Well, I'm so lucky to be friends with you…. The women who will live in Abu Dhabi for a long time, women who will come and go [from BodyTree Studio], people like my husband who are there all the time, who now get to eat healthy. When he is there, he eats from Nectar and he didn't even know it was your cafe. But I think it's really incredible. And it's like you said, you've changed lives for the better in such a positive way. And once in a while, I know you don't do this, but I hope you just sit and smile and take in what you've built because it's really, really impressive. And it's just so solid because it comes from a place of love and understanding and education and it's pretty awesome.
Nadia Sehweil:
Thank you. But I just want to stress, I didn't build it alone.
There were a lot of people in the community that helped build it. And incredible people that I work with who help build it, who really put a lot of love into it, and a lot of our clients who can always choose to go elsewhere, who still choose to come back. And so that's huge. That means a lot.