Ep. 237 10 Life Lessons I Learned in 2025 & A New Year’s Practice

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Episode 237 Transcript:

Happy, happy New Year, baby. What is up, y'all? It's your Ayurveda gal Friday here, Katie Silcox. I'm sitting here with Ojas. Naughty, naughty. Listen, she is looking at me like, you know what, mom? I'm going to bark. I'm going to bark my ass off during your podcast. So, hey, she's here, y'all. If you hear some barking, it's Ojas. As 2025 has come to a close, I want to let you know that there is light, there is hope, there is newness.

It is the year of the horse. We talked about it in the last podcast. If you didn't hear my sweet little podcast on Christmas, please go listen to it. And it's not like, oh, it's so good because I did it and I'm great. I mean, yeah, I am great. But like, go listen to it because it's so sweet. And there's this beautiful meditation at the end.

2025 Was The Year of The Snake

Anyways, the year of 2025 for me was bonkers and beautiful. And I fell in love. And I also fell out of love. And I fell in love again. And I fell in love with this new person in my life called my own heart. And then I fell out of love. And all of that happened, by the way, in one day and every day. And I also did meet someone great.

And a lot of beautiful, beautiful experiences happened for me in 2025, including the experience of unbelievable love and support and resources known and unseen and unknown just come to me. And also, as you all know, my house burned down. And, you know, everything I owned, basically.

I should stop saying my house burned down. It didn't totally burn down, but you all know what I'm saying. Anyway, 2025 was like a really hard, challenging year. And I think for a lot of us, the year of the snake.

A Year-End Reflection

The snake's all about shedding its skin, letting go, burning away everything that's not going to be going forward with us into 2026. And so I really want you to take a moment sometime today, over the next few days, and just really consider 2025.

What was the snake-like shedding for me? What was I invited to look at to let go of? And I know we've all heard that kind of thing a million bajillion times. It's like the astrology joke is like, hey, the astrology is going to present challenges that you must open to and overcome. But really, doing it is a different thing.

And so I just really encourage you to take a moment sometime today, if you can, sometime soon, and really think about what am I shedding? What was I asked to shed in 2025? So you can really see what you want to bring into 2026, and what maybe not so much, right?

2026 is the Year of the Horse

2026 is the year of the horse. Let's effing go energy. Last time in my podcast, I sat on the horse. I'm on it. I want you to visualize yourself on the horse. You're on it. You're squeezing it. It's so powerful. Can you feel its muscles, its capacity to run? Go and get shit done. Okay. But 2025 did not come to play. So we've got to revisit it.

The Life Lessons I Learned in 2025

And I want to tell you the life lessons that this wild year taught me, what the snake shedding skin taught me. And I invite you to do the same for your own life. For me, I think there's this false idea, and I always really, really try to kind of lay it out and bring it to light.

The Spiritual Path Often Isn't Easy

But there's this false idea that, like, if you are on the spiritual path, then you have your life together all the time. And why I love the Shakti School is that you can be launching a school and really, really having a heart for the divine, and still sometimes just really be like, wow, this is a lot, right? Rebuilding a burned-down house, navigating relationships, family, aging parents, tending to illnesses, children, pets, jobs. And yet what I learned in that is that life still comes up and knocks on the door and says, what are you going to make for dinner? And I know that is like a crazy thing that I learned, but I really did learn it, and it's like, do what you can do today to nourish yourself.

No matter what's going on in your life, divorce, illness, heartbreak, loss, grief, all of those things, we still have to cut vegetables, fry up a little oil and spices and nourish our bodies. What's for dinner? And it's honestly been in the moments where life felt the hardest, where I leaned the most into going to the gym and doing my yoga and doing my meditation and just chopping freaking vegetables and making kitchari and eating right. And I know that seems like a weird one, but I really thought that was important to share, because when life gets really hard, the self-care goes out the window, and that's also okay.

There were days, oh my God, during the fire where I was like, you know, eating granola bars on the front porch, right? So, number one. Number two, this wound is the way is more than just an annoying, at this point, internet meme. It's a life path, and it's a life path that I am 1,000% committed to.

Opening to the Messy Reality of Life

The parts of me that I don't like are the way. Opening to it, not wallowing in it, not identifying with it, not making a story about it, but opening to the places I feel so cracked open, broken, that's where the sacred slips back in. That's where it actually can be revealed.

That's where everything gets a lot more soft, like ghee. Number three, the archetypes show up not when we necessarily ask them, but when they are absolutely needed. And when my house stuff happened, I really felt this other thing show up, and it was strength, and it was like Durga energy.

It was like invincible love, right? Like, you've gotta do this. You've gotta do this. They're like cosmic first responders with ancient job descriptions.

Life lesson number four, when the divine wants you to transform, you're gonna be asked to transform, right? It's time. And I do not like it. Not one bit, right? But so often the things that are unexpected and unplanned for are the soul lessons being given.

Aging Parents

Another big thing I realized is that family is really important, and when your parents start to age and show signs of their temporality, we're walking right onto the holy ground. I won't go too deeply into all of it personally, but just looking at my parents this year and seeing the way their bodies are changing and their minds are changing has really been a place of a lot of sweetness and loving them, right, for who they are exactly as they are with what they give and feeling really grateful for them. And I know my mom listens to this podcast, and she's gonna be like, why are you saying my face looks old? My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.

But yeah, just really using this time with our parents, with all their flaws and all their beauty, to just really appreciate them.

Life Lessons from Panchakarma

Ooh, ooh, ooh. Another big one for me was Panchakarma this year.

Really, I got to go twice to my favorite Panchakarma center, and I'm doing a whole podcast on this, so I don't want to spoil it, but Panchakarma remains the only legal psychedelic the Ayurveda world will admit to, at least. And we are going to have a whole podcast on the psychedelics of ghee. Maybe it already came out.

Anyways, psychedelics and ghee. Number seven, things not going as planned is the spiritual curriculum. God's favorite hobby, and I know I'm kind of repeating the same things over and over, but that's intentional.

God's favorite hobby is to gently, and sometimes not gently, dismantle your human agenda. And I think every year we have to go through a recalibration, and it can feel like a downgrade in order to up-level.

Another life lesson that I've realized, eight, oh my gosh, how much I love the Shakti School. I mean, it's every year I care about it more, I value it more, because selfishly of what it gives to me, just how great it is. Our students and our teachers are basically like mystical superheroes that are also like flawed humans. And every year our community gets bigger and stronger and funnier and deeper and wiser, and I love you.

I love you, Shakti School. Thank you for being in my life. And thank you to everybody who makes that happen.

Dreaming Big, Integrate the Life Lessons and Persevere

Another life lesson that I'm learning, and 2025 taught me, is making big plans is not always the best idea, and it's my favorite thing to do. But last year, every single freaking plan that I had, almost to a T, did not occur, at least not in the way I thought it was. And guess what? I'm going to still make big plans, because I think we're meant to.

I think we're meant to dream big, plan big, think big, dream big, and then watch the way that God laughs. So don't stop dreaming big, don't stop planning big, and know that, you know, a lot of it may or may not happen. And being in that kind of juxtaposition of what we want and what actually occurs and being okay with both, but also continuing to dream big is, I think, a really cool, cool way to be.

The last thing is, like, life's not going to slow down and chill out, and that's okay. It's not supposed to. If you're listening out there and you're young, like, you should be dreaming big.

The Stress Sandwich

If you're listening out there and you're in your 40s and 50s, Ayurveda calls this the stress sandwich of pitta, time of life. It's supposed to be intense, and that's okay. And if you're listening out there and you're in your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 100s, like, it's supposed to be about do what you love.

Get those last remaining desires out of the way. Go on the trip, right? Get a hot boyfriend, Florida lady. Did you guys hear about this? The number one community for STDs is the aging community, and that's hilarious.

I don't want anyone to have STDs, but old people are getting it on, and I think that you should. You should live out those last desires, but then don't stay there, right? The last part of life is about letting go of everything and learning what your true essence is and your true spiritual home, which is your soul, your infinite nature. Life is not going to stop, and neither should you, and so I want you to create the thing that you want to create now.

Write the book now. Join the thing you've been waiting to join, right? Get involved. Do it.

Do the freaking thing. Heal now. Laugh now.

It's so cheesy, but, like, love the person now, and you got to do it all the while feeling like maybe you can't, and that's what I've learned this year just to keep going, and I hope that this inspires you to take some time in the new year to really consider what matters.

Thank You Listeners!

Thank you all for being a part of my experience through the podcast in 2025, and I wish you all the most beautiful new year. A big special thanks to Kevin Carlell of Goodbye Gemini, who wrote this beautiful podcast music, and to DJ Juan Pablo Jimenez in southern Spain for mixing it and making it magic.

Thank you.

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From my heart to yours,

Katie