Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has revealed that she consulted an Ayurvedic doctor during both her pregnancies.
On the latest episode of her Confessions of a Female Founder podcast – released on her son Archie’s sixth birthday – the Duchess discussed her interest in the ancient Indian holistic health system while interviewing Hannah Mendoza, the founder of Clevr Blends.
The conversation also explored the benefits of adaptogens, including mushrooms.
Acknowledging that some might view this approach as unconventional, Meghan noted, "I think a lot of people when they hear mushrooms, they go ‘OK, she’s talking about being hippie-dippy, grounded in all these things’".
She also admitted that the fungus often carries other "connotations".
“If you aren’t familiar with adaptogens, you can go to this place of ‘Oh, it’s feeling a little psychedelic and super woo-woo’,” she said.
This comes after the Duke of Sussex’s admission in his autobiography, Spare, that he took magic mushrooms in California in 2016.
Adaptogens are active ingredients in certain plants and mushrooms which are said to impact how the body deals with stress, anxiety and fatigue.
Meghan described how she turned to an Ayurvedic practitioner when pregnant with both Archie and daughter Lilibet and how it was about seeing “food as medicine”.
“So there are these items and ingredients that have been part of our natural ecosystem and dietary system for a long time, whether acknowledged or not, that somehow you say mushrooms, and now people have a connotation attached to it,” she said.
“But it’s really just a food trend that I believe you were far ahead of in terms of saying, ‘Hold on, these have properties that can in some way make you feel differently in a really safe way’.
“During my pregnancies, I had an Ayurvedic doctor and so much of it was about seeing food as medicine.”
Harry told in his memoir how the couple listened to Sanskrit songs in the delivery room with Archie on the advice an Ayurvedic doctor and whispered to their newborn that they loved him after the practitioner told them babies absorb everything said to them in the first minute of their life.
Ayurveda, which means the “knowledge of life” in Sanskrit, is a holistic approach to balancing the body, typically using natural herbs and massage.
Meghan also spoke of facing “so much exposure” and being under a “microscope”.
“Some might look at it and say, at least for me, it will have so much exposure, whatever I put out in the world will have so much attention,” she said.
“I go, yeah, and there’s a flip side to that coin, which we know, it’s a microscope that a lot of people don’t have to experience.”
The duchess said she realised people “believed in me” after she went into partnership with “global powerhouse” Netflix and when her first As Ever products sold out.
“When I think about big milestones for my own business with As Ever,” she said.
“I mean, Netflix coming on as my business partner, huge, just having a global powerhouse that believed in me and the site selling out in the first 45 minutes of launch, everything, every single piece that we had been working on.
“That told me that customers, people, believed in me in this vision, that’s all you really want as a founder.”
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