Women In Wellness: Kiele-Jael Stanton On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Shift to focus on your energy system. Your energy system is the primary system in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and it rules the body and all other systems: digestive, nervous, circulatory, urinary, lymphatic, endocrine, muscular, skeletal, reproductive, and respiratory. You need energy to get all other systems to respond and function properly. Doing this simple shift to focus on the energy system as a whole will help you understand your body’s health from a holistic point of view.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kiele-Jael Stanton.
Kiele-Jael Stanton aka The Sensual Chef is a certified Health-Supportive Chef, Sensual Culinary Guide, and the founder of Kiele Jael Wellness. Kiele’s approach takes a new spin on traditional food wisdom, where she combines her love of food education, cooking, wellness, self-love, and sensuality, into one delicious experience that teaches women how to take care of themselves through nourishment.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I started my business in the culinary, health, and wellness worlds because I saw a need for the type of work that I do. I noticed that there weren’t many chefs that taught holistic healing, self-reliance, and culinary skills all in one. My business came about due to my own past experiences where I focused on root-cause healing, sensuality, and slowing down in order to bring myself back into alignment.
I was born and raised on the beautiful island of Guam. I was always fascinated with food because I had always loved the feelings I got while cooking. It is also the central aspect of my island roots. Cooking, to me, sparked curiosity, showed immense skill and was a language of love. I moved to Brooklyn, NY from Guam in 2000 right after high school to attend Pratt Institute. I graduated in 2004 with a communications design degree and immediately got a job in the fashion industry designing handbags and accessories. I worked as a handbag and accessories designer for 15 years. It was a fun, adventurous, lucrative career where I worked really hard and hardly ever had time for play. My life revolved around work. I traveled 6 months out of the year, and created new collections constantly. I suffered from overwhelm, burnout and fatigue often; needless to say it was a high-stress environment, and I embodied the hustle lifestyle fully. My self-care routine was non-existent and my idea of health was skipping breakfast, eating a low calorie salad at 2pm, and working on the weekends.
In 2008, everything changed. I suffered from metal poisoning that left me sick and in need of some self-care, self-love, and nourishment prioritization. The metal poisoning left me with rashes and lesions from head to toe, epilectic twitching, damage to my nervous system and digestive system, and a sense of feeling ill 24/7. Doctors had no idea what was wrong with me and only gave me different steroid medication that suppressed my symptoms but made me more ill. After 7 months, multiple biopsies, and no answers, I finally discovered the thing that was poisoning me — my braces. Months prior I decided to get braces to straighten my teeth, not knowing that I was allergic to nickel, which was 15% of the brace system in my mouth. I immediately got them out and decided I needed to try something different. I was feeling limited and agitated that I couldn’t rely on myself to heal. Turning my negative into a positive, I decided to focus on that and found health-supportive cooking.
I got off all prescription medications and learned everything that I could about food and healing. Within a year I was 100% healed, and proud I did it naturally. My inflammation went away, my skin was glowing, and my digestive and nervous systems finally healed. One of the biggest takeaways that I learned from this experience was how crucial it was to not only eat certain foods, but that cooking was an integral part of the process in my healing journey. Cooking gave me confidence, intuition, and helped me feel connected to my food and myself even more. I was so thrilled with my results that I wanted to learn more so I could help others discover this power. I saw the need to help women who suffered from illness, confusion, burnout, stress, and overwhelm and wanted to share the benefits of connecting back to themselves through a simple daily tradition that we all need to do: cook.
I decided that I wanted to learn more, and instead of opting for a basic health coaching or nutrition certification, I got the certification and training I longed for from a health-supportive culinary school. There, they educated their students in whole food education and nutritional cooking centered around healing. After my training was over, I went on to study with an eastern medicine mentor and expanded my education in Traditional Chinese Medicine, focused on healing foods and cooking. The one thing that I loved to focus on was how to connect to your nourishment in deep, sensual ways. I realized how disconnected I was from my body where I wasn’t prioritizing my health or nourishment at all. I loved how learning about ancient food wisdom and the energetics of cooking helped me connect to myself in ways that were meaningful and practical. I couldn’t wait to share this with the world.
While still working full-time in fashion, I began part-time cheffing for women’s retreats and working in high-end NYC restaurants on the side. I then became a private chef, taught in-home cooking classes and hosted culinary events in NYC. Although it was fun cooking for events and teaching classes, it wasn’t sustainable for long-term impact. I wanted to create a company that focused on educating women for a lifetime healing and sensual nourishment. The purpose was to teach holistic health from a sensual approach that educates women how to heal for life and cook with pleasure. That’s when in 2018, The Sensual Chef emerged, and Kiele Jael Wellness was created. Through my experience, I saw a need for women to connect to their health through food and cooking, in deeper, tangible, meaningful ways that focused on root-cause healing as a lifestyle.
And now, through my programs, coaching, and online courses, I have helped hundreds of women improve their relationships with food, and become passionate and confident about cooking, to see it as a meditative process. They have been able to mitigate symptoms and even heal illnesses like type 2 diabetes, Hashimoto’s, adenomyosis, PCOS, arthritis, and hormonal imbalances. It’s such rewarding work and I feel honored to touch women’s lives in this way. It’s my mission, passion, and purpose in this lifetime.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
The most interesting story that has happened to me since I started my career is seeing the evolution of sensual cooking and how it has helped so many women. It constantly amazes me that it’s growing and becoming more accepted in society every day. The main takeaway that I received from this experience is that if you truly believe in something, you know it could work, and show up every day, it will flourish and blossom.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The biggest mistake that I have made was not listening to my gut and intuition when it came to big business decisions. For example, at the beginning of my career, I listened to a business coach and public relations group that told me to not incorporate sensuality into my work. They said it would be too confusing for people and they weren’t ready for it. That was back in 2018/2019. But I knew deep down that, even if women didn’t know it yet, this was exactly what they were craving in the kitchen and would make the biggest impact. So after about four months of taking their advice, which felt deeply wrong, I decided to make sensuality the main focus of my work. Since then I’ve followed my gut, worked really hard to get my messaging right, and now the sensuality aspect is what is sought after and actually sets me apart from other health-driven chefs and health coaches around the world. I’ve perfected my craft and expertise with sensuality at the forefront of my purpose, and based on my clients’ transformation, it works and they love it. So, the moral of the story is to follow your gut and listen to your intuition.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
My methods focus on root-cause healing and helping women learn the proper skills to help them heal naturally, nourish themselves with confidence, and take responsibility for their health. It’s not about eating to be healthy, it’s about cooking to heal. There’s a difference.
Remember there is no one diet and no one way of eating for everyone. We all have individual nourishment needs and it’s been my goal to teach women how to eat, cook, and live with balance. To me, if everyone learned this knowledge, we’d be in a much more peaceful, healthy, and vibrant place in our health. We’d also be filled with less anxiety, chaos, and confusion, and more self-love, compassion, and groundedness.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
- Shift to focus on your energy system. Your energy system is the primary system in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and it rules the body and all other systems: digestive, nervous, circulatory, urinary, lymphatic, endocrine, muscular, skeletal, reproductive, and respiratory. You need energy to get all other systems to respond and function properly. Doing this simple shift to focus on the energy system as a whole will help you understand your body’s health from a holistic point of view.
- Before you start to cook, take the time to ground yourself in your kitchen space. This is especially helpful for individuals with high anxiety, who are workaholics, and constantly “don’t have time” for anything, especially cooking. Try doing a quick deep breathing exercise in your kitchen, set the intention to slow down, relax, and nourish yourself. Reframing the brain to include nourishment as self-love takes practice. If you practice this daily, you’ll feel more calm, confident, and more likely to enjoy your cooking.
- Revive your kitchen with new accessories. I recommend investing in five pieces. The first is a beautiful and sturdy cutting board that won’t slip on your countertop and is larger in size. Second is a well-made chef’s knife which is imperative to feeling confident and safe while you prep. Whether you use a German-style chef’s knife or a Japanese chef’s knife, it’s your personal preference. Just make sure it’s sharp and you get it sharpened every six months to a year. A bench scraper (or pastry scraper) is an amazing tool to scrape up any food bits off of your cutting board. I recommend getting a set of kitchen towels to keep on you to wipe your hands, clean up your cutting board, and use while you cook. In my opinion, you can never have enough. Lastly, a set of glass nesting prep bowls are necessary to stay organized and enjoy the mise en place. These are the five pieces that you need to have the perfect prep space set up for you. Having the right accessories will make your experience feel less chaotic and more enjoyable.
- Follow your cycle. The truth is women are cyclical. So, in a way, we’re somewhat predictable, if you know yourself well. I recommend following your cycle and getting to know it deeply. Take the time to understand how long your phases are, and how to listen to what your body is telling you, so that you nourish it well during each phase. This is important for hormone balance, mental health, and emotional stability. For your follicular phase, eat flax seeds, avocado, and green vegetables. For your ovulation, eat berries, pumpkin seeds, and fermented foods like kimchi. For your luteal phase, eat sunflower seeds, broccoli, red raspberry leaf tea and sweet potato. For your menstrual phase, have soups, sesame seeds, and nettle tea.
- My number one tip is that it’s never too late to start prioritizing yourself and your health. Self-love doesn’t have an expiration date. Sacrificing yourself is not sexy, admirable, or inspiring, and quite literally the opposite. So prioritize yourself daily. ‘Fill up your cup’ so you can feel good about being there for others. I would say the number number one tip for women who want to get started on this journey is to start looking at food not just as basic fuel, but as sensual, energetic matter. Whole, natural food has the ability to heal us in deep ways. It’s important to shift your mindset to not just focus on food as basic fuel, but as an abundance of flavor, texture, nourishment, and energy. By doing that it affects us on deep, emotional levels that help us make better decisions, digest well, feel good, and thrive in our daily lives. This shift is subtle, powerful, and extremely important.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
An annual global Sensual Wellness Seminar held in all the different continents to promote connection to health, nature, and each other. I would love to have different professionals teach seminars to help people take control of their health, become more connected to themselves, nature, and to focus on healing in sensual ways. These workshops would be very practical, such as how to organize and create a community garden, how to teach children to help in the kitchen, and how to focus on healing throughout the seasons in sustainable, practical ways.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
Here are my top five things that I wish someone told me before I started. First is that being an industry disruptor will be a difficult, long road. But if you love what you do, it’ll be fun and adventurous! When you’re creating something from scratch, focus on the long term, not the short term. Don’t focus on time, failures, and rejections. Focus on the small wins and celebrate every day! Secondly, just start now. It’s better to start before you’re ready, because there is no better time than the present moment. This is the mantra for life. Third, anything is possible if you just show up. You can create whatever your heart desires. Fourth, is that it’s important to be your work, not just do your work. This is the best way to know that your methods are clear, they work, and to feel confident about your mission. Be your mission. Lastly, to be fully present in everything you do. Focus on being grounded and using your senses has been an integral part of my journey personally and professionally.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
I’m especially passionate about sustainability, environmental, and mental health. No waste cooking is something I teach in my courses and programs. There are a lot of simple ways to use up all of your food, starting with only purchasing what you need when you go grocery shopping, choosing local foods and products, properly storing your food, and maximizing each food as much as possible using different cooking methods plus creating variety and flavor combinations. Having a sustainable mindset in the kitchen contributes to environmental changes and helps with our carbon footprints. You will naturally have less waste and use less trash. One of my priorities in creating the sensual cooking methods was to help with mental health as well. My methods promote a calming, meditational practice. All my clients say that my programs feel like a “break from life’s chaos” and are their “me time.” It helps them alleviate their stress and anxiety around cooking and brings them to a calmer, collected place.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Readers can take my quiz, “What’s Your Nourishment Style?” and join my community. You can also find me on Instagram @_thesensualchef
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Kiele-Jael Stanton On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.