The Real Meaning Of Karma Through Science And Soul - Episode 327

I unpack karma as action rather than revenge, using ancient teachings to show how intention and attachment shape the consequences we live with. I connect that spiritual idea to neuroscience, stress physiology, epigenetics, and Saturn as a symbol of time and accountability, then bring it home with one clear practice: stop betraying yourself. 

• why I shifted toward solo, research-led conversations without a sales pitch 
• karma defined as action and cause and effect, not punishment 
• intention as the real generator of consequences 
• releasing attachment to outcomes as a discipline 
• karma as “residue” through neuroplasticity and stress load 
• resentment, cortisol, inflammation and the health cost of replaying harm 
• forgiveness as a physiological act of self-rescue 
• generational trauma, epigenetics and what families pass down 
• Saturn, Capricorn energy and the long arc of consequence 
• the core practice of catching self-abandonment and choosing yourself 

If this podcast moved something in you, share it with another person who may also find it fascinating, interesting, unbiased, and worthwhile. 
Please remember to subscribe. And also, if you could just rate it and review it, Apple and Spotify are the best ways to do that. 

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Transcript

Sandy Kruse 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse. Welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. For many years now, I've been a trusted voice for people in midlife and beyond who want a deeper, more honest conversation about wellness. One that includes the physical,

Why This Show Went Deeper

Sandy Kruse 0:25

the emotional, the mental, and the esoteric. Most episodes are solo now because I want to bring you thoughtful research, lived experience, and grounded insight without noise or bias. And when I do bring on a guest, it's because their work genuinely adds something meaningful to the conversation. Here we explore the full spectrum of what it means to be well, how the body functions, how the mind heals, how the spirit expands, and how all of these layers shape life lived with clarity and joy. Thanks for being here. And if this show resonates with you, please follow, rate, review, and share it. It truly helps the message reach more people. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. Today I'm going to talk about a topic that a lot of I'm going to say maybe I shouldn't say a lot of people get wrong. I think a lot of people get the TikTok version. So I actually decided to go much deeper because I think that my audience is very intelligent and you guys deserve the depth of the true meaning of karma. And this is the science and the soul and the law of Saturn. You know, people talk about planets and the energy around the planets. I do believe, and I say this all the time, that you know, we would be, I would say, naive to think that we live here alone in our own little planet we call Earth without any influences influencing things around us. I think that's very naive to think that because I've talked about this so many times that in our world there are so many things that affect our energy. And so this podcast is going to be all about karma and all the research that I've done. I get a I've been getting a lot of feedback, like a lot since I've changed direction of my show. So to give you a little background information, I started my podcast around February 2020, right before the pandemic. I am a registered holistic nutritionist. I am also a certified metabolic balance coach. I have numerous certifications in health and wellness, and I'm a big believer in whole body health. And that is the body, the mind, the spirit, and the soul. And my college training as a nutritionist does train on holistic health. I remember reading, uh, what's her name? Caroline Miss, like the Akashic Records. Like we learned everything, but then I also learned about sports nutrition and you know, endocrinology and basic physiology. And, you know, it was just a great program. It's a two-year college diploma. So that's my background. I started this podcast from nothing, no real connections in this industry. I went back to college when I was 46. Now I am 50. Oh my god, I'm 56. I went back to college six 10 years ago. Geez, time flies. I used to, in order to build my brand, have a lot of really prolific physicians and doctors. And I talked a lot about hormones and menopause and the things that really needed a voice in this space of wellness. And then as things progressed, I felt like you guys deserve more. And I think I get a lot of feedback about how I went on solo episodes. And I have gotten great feedback because they are unbiased. So nobody's trying to sell you something at the end of my podcast. Sometimes we need that. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that most of my platform is not about that. I have had feedback saying, holy smokes, like you took on this topic in a way that I've never heard before. I don't think I need anybody's voice to add credibility to something that I built myself for over six years now. And the difference is that usually somebody with credibility comes with something that they're selling or their book that they want to talk about or their show or their supplements or, and that's all okay. I chose to not do that. I bring research to you that's interesting to me without trying to sell you something at the end of it. I've always believed in this, but I believe in this more now, since January, more than ever, that you don't need an expert to tell you what to do. I am trying to empower my listeners to say everything comes from within you, and then you get to pick and choose who you want to help you if you need the help. And a lot of us do. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, you might have an endocrinologist who you really like, and they're the only ones who can really help you to the depth that you need help with. And that's all great, and that's all okay, but all the power starts with you. So no expert, no person who's got all this credibility on any podcast can tell you what's right, and they can also maybe not give you all of the story because they're trying to sell their story. Whereas I'm coming here talking about a topic. Now, if anybody else is, you know, confused about the direction that my podcast has going, I'm gonna clarify this a little bit better. I actually translate real human experiences into conversations that matter to the masses. So that might feel unfamiliar to some from what I've usually done. That's okay. I do hear from a lot of people on Instagram. Make sure you're following me. On Instagram, I'm most active. It's Sandy Knutrition. You can follow me on TikTok, any other platform that you're on in social media, I'm probably there. Also, be sure that you're subscribing wherever you are listening to this podcast because it helps me to just get more listeners. And if any topic resonates with you, please share it. Okay, now let's get to today's topic. It's all about karma. I'm gonna start by saying the word karma does not mean revenge, it also doesn't mean payback, and it doesn't even mean punishment. What it means is action. That's the literal translation. And the people who first taught it, I think

Karma Means Action Not Payback

Sandy Kruse 8:17

it was the Rishis of Abanishads, I can't pronounce it, the Buddha, Krishna, uh, Bhagavad Gita. I'm sorry for butchering these names, but they were not describing a cosmic referee that's keeping score. They're describing a law of nature as exact as gravity, that every action sets something in motion. And what is set in motion returns. So, 3,000 years later, a neuroscientist at Emory University trained a mouse to fear the smell of cherry blossom. I've talked about this on my podcast with Mark uh Mark Willin, who wrote the book, It Didn't Start With You. Well, that mouse had children, then grandchildren. None of them had ever smelled cherry blossom in their life, and every one of them was born afraid of it. Okay, this is all a part of karma, not the bumper sticker version. This is the real one. And today I'm gonna talk to you all the way through it with the ancient teachers, the modern research, the generational thread that runs through your own family. And yes, I'm even gonna bring in some astrology because Saturn has been called the Lord of Karma for a reason, and I've lived on the edge of this. So, and I'll I'll explain that in a bit. I am a big fan of bringing science and soul to everything. I like to bring in research, and this is an episode I've actually wanted to make for a long time because karma is one of the most misused ideas in modern language. We say it constantly, you hear it all the time, you see TikToks, and almost every time we mean the cheap version. Okay. I'm gonna give you the real one. And this is the one with great traditions, and it's actually taught the one that research is now catching up to, and the one that once you understand it, it changes how you live inside your own body. So let's begin with you know, the word karma actually comes from Sanskrit to do, to make, to act, it translates simply to action or deed, not fate, not judgment, or action. And from that single root, the great traditions built

Ancient Teachings On Intention

Sandy Kruse 11:03

one of the most sophisticated theories of cause and effect that humanity has ever produced. It started with the apanishan. They gave one of the earliest statements of the law. You are what your deep driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will, so is your deed, and as your deed, so is your destiny. A person becomes pure by pure action and corrupt by corrupt action. Notice what he's saying. Your actions don't just earn you a reward or a punishment, they make you. You become the thing that you keep doing. Then there is the Buddha, and this is the piece that almost no one knows. In the Buddhist teaching, karma is not primarily the outer action at all, it's the intention behind it, underneath it. So the Buddha said it directly: it's intention. So that's karma. The will underneath the deed is what generates the consequence, which means two people can do the identical thing and create completely different, I guess, karma because what was moving underneath was different. So sit with that for a second, it dismantles the revenge fantasy entirely. So karma was never about the surface, it was about the heart in the moment of acting. Then there's the Bhagavad Gita, and this is the teaching that reorganized my whole understanding. On the battlefield, Krishna tells Arujna, you have a right to your actions, but never to the fruits of your actions. Do your work fully with everything you have, but release the grip on the outcome. The moment you act for a result, you've tied yourself to it. You've created attachment, and attachment is the hook that karma hangs on. The free human being acts well and lets go of the fruit. That's not being passive, that's the highest discipline there is. I mean, how many times have you heard that? I've heard that so many times. Like, don't be too attached to the outcome. Like, this is not easy to do, believe me. I find it virtually impossible. And then there's the most literal theory of all. It's there the the Jains. In Jainism, karma is not a metaphor, it's almost physical. They taught that karma is a kind of subtle matter, fine particles that actually cling to the soul according to how you act, weighing it down, clouding its true nature. Cruelty makes the soul heavy and dark. Purity lets it lighten and rise. 3,000 years before anyone could measure a thing, they intuitively indicated that your conduct leaves residue on you. Hold that thought because the science is about to say something kind of close to that. So there's a thread that runs through all of this, and none of them are describing punishment from outside, they're all describing a similar thing that action leaves a mark on you, on the world, and that mark shapes everything that comes next. So let's talk about the Western echo, and then there's the science. So now here's what fascinates me. And this isn't only an Eastern idea, the West arrived at the same law from completely different doors. Even physics gives us the echo, Newton's third law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We accept that without question when we're talking about billiard balls, right? The traditions simply applied to conduct. But here's where it stops being philosophy and becomes more measurable. You don't have to talk or sorry, take karma on faith to watch the machinery turn. Start with the brain. There's a principle in neuroscience, there's so much stuff about the brain that's held since 1949. The shorthand is neurons that fire together, wire together. We've all heard this now, right? So every, and this is the neuroscience around karma. Every time you repeat an action, a thought, a reaction,

Neuroscience Of Habit And Consequence

Sandy Kruse 16:04

you physically strengthen the neural pathway that produces it. So your habits are not abstract, they are wired structures built by repetition. So when you act in a certain way, again and again, generous or bitter, honest or deceitful, you are literally constructing the brain that makes that behavior easier next time. You become what you repeatedly do. There you go. Now go back to the Jains and their idea that karma of karma as a residue that clings to the soul. Listen to what holding a grievance does to the body. When we carry resentment, we replay an injury, we rehearse it, we keep the wound open, we keep the nervous system locked in a low grade stress state. Cortisol stays elevated. The body cannot tell the difference between the original wrong and the hundredth time that you relive it. To your physiology, it's happening again, right now. And chronic hostility and unresolved resentment are linked in the research to higher blood pressure, poor cardiovascular outcomes, elevated inflammation. So there you go. The bitterness is clinging to you, it weighs you down. The genes called this karmic matter. We call it allostatic load. Same phenomenon. And then this is where the forgiveness research comes in. Work like Dr. Everett Worthington's reach model, which I've talked about on my show before. The findings are consistent. When people genuinely move through forgiveness, the markers shift. Lower cortisol, calmer cardiovascular response, better immune function, forgiveness, it turns out, is not something you do for the person who hurts you. It's a physiological act of self-rescue. And then there's Carl Jung, always got to bring in Young, right? Who gave us maybe one of the most haunting lines on this? He's often quoted as saying that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. So the patterns you refuse to look at don't disappear, they run you from below, and then you blame destiny for the results that you are quietly authoring the whole time. The karma described in the language of depth psychology. So I'll be precise with you because I always am. Science does not prove a cosmic ledger, that part lives in the realm of soul and faith and tradition. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the mechanism, how action becomes consequence, the brain, the body, in the world around us, that's not belief. That's observable. The ancient word for it was karma. The modern words are neuroplasticity, allostatic load, and the unexamined consciousness. You see how it's all connected? It's pretty cool. Let's talk about generational trauma. Now, I'm gonna take you somewhere that a lot of conversations just won't go, um, about karma, because karma, it's never only personal. The traditions always understood it as something that runs through a bloodline. So in the Vedic tradition, there's a concept that's

Ancestral Karma And Epigenetics

Sandy Kruse 20:12

called it's ancestral debt. So the idea that we inherit not just our ancestors' features, like I might look like my grandmother, but also their unfinished business, their unpaid debts, their unresolved wounds, that something can be handed down a family line, waiting until somebody finally has the awareness to clear it. I believe I am one of these people, healing things, lineage, family lines, like very powerful stuff when you're using it to help heal the world. So for most of modern history, science would have called this like a superstition. Genes are genes. The thinking went that you inherit a sequence and the experience your grandmother had cannot possibly be written into you. And then the research started coming in and it broke that assumption wide open. So I mentioned the mice in 2013. The two researchers at Emery trained the male mice to fear the smell of some sort of a chemical, and it smells like cherry blossom. So, and they paired it with a mild shock. So the mice learned to dread that one specific scent. Then the researchers led them to have offspring and took measures to make sure that those babies could never learn the fear socially. The offspring had never smelled that chemical, and so they. Had absolutely no reason to react to it, and yet they were born more sensitive to that exact scent and only that scent, not others. So were the grandchildren. When the scientists looked at the father's sperm, they found an epigenetic change, altered methylation on the very gene that codes for the receptor that detects that smell. The fear of an experience the offspring never had was written into their biology and passed down to generations. So a parent's anxiety could shape later generations through epigenetic changes to the receptors for stress hormones. So now bring it to humans. Mount Sinai, there's a Dr. Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai spent years studying the children of Holocaust survivors. She and her team found that both survivors and their grown children carry changes in the methylation of a gene called FKP5, a gene that helps regulate the entire body's cortisol and stress response system. So this was among the first evidence in humans that the imprint of a parent's trauma experienced before the child was even conceived could show up in a child's own biology. This field is young and you know it's careful. The inheritance is more complicated than a simple copy passed down. And, you know, good scientists are still working at, you know, exactly how, but the direction it points to is still very profound. The body remembers what the family went through the grief, the famine, the terror. It leaves a residue that doesn't always stop with the person who lived it. So when old traditions, you know, speak of ancestral karma of a debt that travels down a line, they weren't really being mystical. They were describing in only the language they had something that we can now measure kind of in a gene. And here's the soul side of it. The healers who work with this, there's Bert Hallinger's family constellation work, or in the wellness world, Yvette Rose's work on ancestral patterns in the body. I recorded with her. Listen to it, it's fabulous. They all describe the same thing from the inside that we can carry our family's unfinished pain unconsciously and act as though it were our own until someone in the line finally turns and faces it. That person becomes what's sometimes called the cycle breaker, the one who clears the debt. And I think a great deal of the deep healing work we do as women in midlife is exactly that. We are clearing karma that's not even ours. We're paying down a debt that maybe we didn't open. So no one downstream ever has to deal with it again. You hear about family curses. I recorded a podcast on this in January. And one of the things I did talk about was when you see people who have the same thing happen at the same age, and there's no real explanation for it. Like you were, let's say, a teen mom, you got pregnant at 16, and then your 16-year-old daughter gets pregnant, and then you know, like it goes on and on. It's like, how do you explain that? Is it karma? Is it, you know, what is the reason for this? So let's talk a little bit about Saturn. This is a planet, and Saturn's often referred to as the Lord of karma. And this is the part where astrology stops being just decoration and starts telling a similar story. So I'm I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not a big

Saturn As Time And The Long Game

Sandy Kruse 26:44

believer in predictive astrology. However, I do study it, I do study full birth charts. I'm not talking about just the fact that, you know, you might be a Gemini son. Big deal. That's one small little piece of a massive puzzle. That's not easy to decipher. However, astrology is very interesting because the time that you were born, when you were born, where you were born, the planets around you, all of that I believe has meaning. So every piece of what I just described time, structure, inheritance, consequence, the bones of a family line, the debt that travels with it actually belongs to like one planet, and that's Saturn. In the Vedic tradition, Saturn is named outright as the Lord of karma, the one who weighs every deed and returns it exactly without sentiment and without mercy, but also without cruelty. Saturn doesn't punish out of spite, Saturn simply collects what is owed, and Saturn is the planet of time itself. It nearly takes 30 years to cycle the chart, which is why Saturn's consequences never come fast. They come later, they come complete, and Saturn plays the longest game there is. Saturn also has rules, everything's structural and inherited. They have like Saturn rules, the bones of the body, the skeleton you're built on, the father. Like this is all the symbolic sides of Saturn, the father, the lineage, the ancestral line, the debt passed down. So that generational karma that I walked you through, that gene that I mentioned, the FKB5 gene, the ancestral debt, the pattern running through the bloodline, astrologically, all of this is in Saturn's house. He is the planet of what we inherit and what we owe. So now Capricorn. Capricorn is the sign that Saturn rules. So it carries Saturn's entire signature, patience, endurance, the long view, integrity that it has to be earned rather than handed over, and a very, very long memory. Capricorn doesn't react, Capricorn waits, Capricorn builds, and Capricorn doesn't forget. So a stellium, a stellium is when you have three or more planets that are clustered together in a single sign, and that's a concentration of energy, all saturated. So Capricorn stellium means that a person is carrying a concentrated dose of Saturn's domain. So multiple parts of their nature all running on that disciplined, accountable, consequence-bearing, long memory. Okay. So when someone has a Capricorn stellium in their chart, Saturn isn't a background influence in their chart. So Saturn is running the room. And here's the teaching, one that I've actually come to understand very deeply. When you wrong a person carrying that much Saturn energy, you're not simply hurting someone, you're stepping directly into Saturn's jurisdiction. You're putting an action into motion in front of the one energy that exists to return actions to their source. So Saturn collects, not loudly, not quickly, but completely and precisely and on time. When they say, you know, this is again, this is I'm taking like a little TikTok meme and I'm I'm bringing a little bit more depth to it. But when they say don't test a Capricorn, it's not a personality quirk. It's that you've wronged someone standing inside the Lord of Karma's own court. So I find this like super, super interesting. So now I'm gonna tell you a little bit of just an interesting nuance. So rising sign, I or ascendant sign, I am a cancer. So the ascendant of a person is the mask. So it's like the front door. It's the first thing that anyone meets in you before they know anything really about you. And I am a cancer rising, so I'm ruled by the moon, I lead with softness, warmth, kindness, the instinct to hold space, to care, to nurture. So people, when they meet you, they meet you by your ascendant or your rising sign. And it's not performance, it's just, you know, we all have, I guess, personas. So I am very soft and I am very kind. It's not just, you know, the outward what it looks like. But what people do with that is they underestimate me as a softie. They mistake this softness for weakness. They see the kindness, they, you know, file me as a certain way, the underdog, someone who can be tested, someone, and it's you know, it's kind of something underestimated is a good way. So, you know, cancer and Capricorn, pretty, pretty opposite, two very ends of you know, an axis. So the moon's softness and Saturn's steel are wired into the same wire. So my cancer rising and my Capricorn stellion live on that same axis. I am the nurturer, but I'm also the task mask master as well. So I have the open hand, but I also have the long memory. So the warmth that you meet at the door and the consequence that you never see, it's all there. So I find this super fascinating because I've actually seen situations where this is played out. And I I encourage everyone to go and just do a little more depth into your birth chart because I think you'll find it very fascinating. I actually want you to know what you know what to do with this information. So I'm gonna bring it all home for you. So, karma, if karma means action, and action becomes consequence through the brain, the body, the bloodline, time itself. And if Saturn is the patient law that returns every deed to its source, then the most freeing thing I can tell you is this you

Stop Enforcing Start Choosing Yourself

Sandy Kruse 34:19

are not the enforcer, you don't have to be, and that's probably the most freeing thing. The entire exhausting project of making sure that the people who wronged you get what they deserve, you can put that down, not because whatever happened to you didn't matter, not because you're weak, you put it down because the law is already running and far more precisely than you ever could. Because the other thing I always think is if you do things out of revenge, then right there you're kind of turning the tables back onto you. So the only karma that is actually yours to manage is the karma that you're creating right now, the intention underneath your own actions, the patterns that you're wiring into your own brain, the cortisol you're keeping in your bloodstream, the inheritance that you're either passing down or clearing for everyone who comes after you. And underneath all of it, the deepest one of all is whether you keep abandoning yourself to carry everyone else, or you finally choose to come home to you. That is the whole assignment. So tend that, and you never have to worry or fear the law because the law is on the side of the person who always refuses to betray themselves. So I never really got that deep into that part of it. But let's say, I'm gonna give you an example. Let's say you spend your whole life abandoning what's right for you. That is actually a form of karma that might not be to your own benefit, because one should never ever abandon what's right for ourselves. And I've actually recorded podcasts about this, podcasts about women who decide to stop abandoning themselves because they were busy raising children. And these are very real things and the laws of energy and the laws of the universe. And even they always say, if you're on your flight and you need to use the oxygen mask, put yours on first. This is a very important energetic lesson in life. So here's the big thing to carry out of this episode. This week, I want you to catch the moment that you're about to abandon yourself for someone else. The moment you're about to carry what was never yours to carry, just to remain loyal, just to be nice, just to be a good person or you think, but then you're the one who's carrying the load for them. Say yes when your whole body means no, or stay loyal to someone who has always been loyal to you, not to somebody who's never shown you that loyalty. I want you to catch it and then always choose yourself instead. That's just one action. So karma means action. Remember, and this is the only action that was ever truly yours. Just stop betraying yourself. Do that, and the rest of the law will take care of itself. So that's it. The true meaning of karma, not revenge, but action. So I've given you a number of different thought processes around this. I've given you a little bit of neuroscience and epigenetics that's really catching up to this. And this is also the thread that runs through your own family line, and Saturn keeps the books so that you can put down the weight of the enforcement and just live clean. If this podcast moved something in you, share it with another person who may also find it fascinating, interesting, unbiased, and worthwhile. Please remember to subscribe. And also, if you could just rate it and review it, Apple and Spotify

Share Subscribe And Closing Thoughts

Sandy Kruse 38:59

are the best ways to do that. And I want to thank you each and every week for being here. I appreciate you guys so, so much. Have a good week. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit. And always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going, bring these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new excited conversations to help you live your best life.