#45: Sofie Royer
"I have a crazy amount of gummy vitamins."
#45: Sofie Royer
Welcome to Health Gossip. Today’s guest is Sofie Royer, an artist and classically trained musician (3rd album out now). Sometimes I don’t know much about a guest before inviting them on, relying more on instinct than qualifying information, and this was partly the case with Sofie. But her responses reaffirm the basic message of this newsletter — that, by virtue of being alive, everyone has some kind of relationship to ‘health,’ and that these relationships are worth exploring.
Location: Paris (but I live in Vienna)
Big 3: Leo/Leo/Sagittarius
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
I measure my health very energetically. If I have energy, I equate that to feeling good. Not necessarily aches, or pains, which I have quite frequently from exercise or playing/lugging around instruments (flight cases are so heavy!).
Can you recall a moment when your relationship to your health changed?
I grew up in a very health conscious family, but it wasn’t obsessive or “almond.” When my parents were in the US they would send me to school with homemade dried fruit, meals would be cooked at home, no junk food, soda, or candy ever. As a teenager I realized how normal this should be, but as a little kid I was horrified to pull out my shriveled brown dried pears and saffron zucchini with rice which stood in stark contrast to square cafeteria pizza and gushers (my dream meal as an eight year old).
I did so many sports when I was younger (tae kwon do, rhythmic gymnastics competitively, ballet for over a decade) and though I do it less intensely as an adult, it changed the way I approach exercise and my body. I also grew up with herbal medicine, which is still reflected in Austrian health today (there’s herbal pharmacies where you can get any herb under the sun…). That’s something I enjoy.
In terms of negatives, my father is a huge hypochondriac. I feel like that’s invariably rubbed off on me. I already had slight inclinations towards obsessive compulsive behavior with hygiene; my mother’s diagnosis of multiple myeloma six years ago kind of made me veer off into the deep end.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
I’m a self-employed musician and artist, so there’s not a lot of built-in routine. I’m trying to create more routine for myself but commitments get in the way fast! So I try to keep it small. I walk a lot, I do a twenty-minute calisthenics exercise routine almost every single day, stretch… good quality sleep.
I do smoke the occasional cigarette (and have been smoking on and off since I was 15). I don’t even really drink, so if there’s one habit I’d love to kick for good it’s smoking.
How do you start and end your days?
It really depends where I am and how I’m feeling. When I’m home, after I brush my teeth, I drink hot water that’s been steeped with lemon, ginger, goji berries, or some type of green tea. Maybe shilajit. Whatever kind of hot beverage I’m in the mood for that day. Then I have AHCC, which I take religiously. Sometime before lunch I’ll end up having my first coffee, usually black, sometimes with a teaspoon of MCT oil. I’m not a big breakfast person and usually skip straight to an early afternoon lunch, but it also depends — my boyfriend has been making plain oatmeal with cinnamon, turmeric and black pepper and whatever berries or bananas we have at home, sometimes I like a simple Mürbes kipferl with fresh butter (a very Austrian crescent-shaped bun made from unsweetened yeast dough). If I’m somewhere else, on the road, it’s usually tea or coffee and an egg dish and some fruit because I likely won’t be able to eat lunch.
If I’m at home and have time, I’ll stretch, foam roll, and jump on my rebounding trampoline before getting in the shower. I wish I could start every day like that!
I have a crazy amount of gummy vitamins. My favorite at the moment are vitamin C and zinc toffees from a Swiss pharmacy, and my all-time staple is something called ‘Vitalité 4G’ that you can get at French pharmacies (4G stands for guarana, ginseng, gelee royale and ginger). Iron supplements, red meat here and there — if I don't manage to stay on top of this I have an iron deficiency. Also, chlorella! I love chlorella!
I also had some great Russian fish oil gelatine gummies that tasted so good that I bought in Tbilisi and can’t seem to get ahold of here. It’s such a fun way to take vitamins and I’m convinced (or deluded) that they’re absorbed better by the body, with the minimal sugar making the vitamins enter your bloodstream faster.
I drink so much water (maybe too much sometimes), especially when I’m singing or performing or rehearsing. I try to throw electrolytes, magnesium, or collagen powder in there so I don’t flush myself of minerals; travel-sized sticks are knocking around my purses always.
Evenings I’ll do a 20-minute Lydia Magnoli full body workout, which is easy to upkeep since it’s so short. The bonus is you can do them from anywhere, with your own bodyweight (at home I’ll add ankle weights and dumbbells). Magnesium, steep some vervain from my mother’s garden, castor oil, sleep. Sleep is so important. My bedroom is my sanctuary, I love it so much. My bed with a sheepskin-covered hot water bottle in the winter... heaven!
I am also really obsessive about ‘Lüften,’ which I don't know the name for in English. It just means opening all the windows in your home multiple times a day to let fresh air in (specifically in the fall and wintertime; in the spring and summer, I will have several windows open all day and night anyway). I don't like air conditioning and every time I'm back in the US it really bums me out. I feel like the air isn't fresh.
What do you do when you need a ‘reset’?
Lymphatic massage, NAD drip, dry brush, stretching, fasting, more vegetables/fruit, and sticking to a rigorous vitamin routine. When I’m sick with a flu or grippe, I make myself chicken soup and rest as much as possible.
What’s your relationship to self-healing?
After my mother became ill, my hypochondria was exacerbated. I would run to the doctor at every smallest ailment and get bloodwork done twice a year (thanks to the Austrian healthcare system), but I’ve been more relaxed about it in the past two years. I haven’t really had anything serious in my life thus far, and I feel like small things (AHCC daily, chlorella and bromelain, magnesium for muscle pain, period pain; vitamin c and zinc when you’re ill, eating a balanced diet) make a big difference.
Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?
Honestly, no. My mother instilled a lot of herbal, TCM, supplement junkie thinking in me from an early age, but also showed me that it isn’t entirely possible as a substitute for something serious. I wish the disciplines worked together more complimentarily, rather than there being this disjointed apparatus where both parties — Western and holistic (to put it in extremely blanket terms) — ignore the benefits of one another.
When do you feel the most nourished?
I love when my friends and I cook for each other. The other week we had two dinners at each others’ homes and it was the best. Also when I’m doing something extremely attached to nature, eating figs right off the tree for breakfast near the Atlantic coast in France where I have no cellphone service, herding my grandparents’ sheep, tomato and cucumber and red onion salad made from Georgian vegetables by my boyfriend’s father in Tbilisi, anything my dad makes — he’s Persian and such a good cook — my uncle cooking for me on his fire stove in his log cabin he built himself, that kind of stuff…
Do you have a favorite meal?
I go through phases so much depending on my mood, the season, where I am. I had a big hyper fixation on the beef pho at Pan Viet in the 3ème and would go every single day. I also love my father’s ghormeh sabzi. Stocked always: raw sheep’s yogurt, natto, mustards, aged fermented soy sauces, high quality olive oil, berries, spinach, baby cucumbers, pickled foods!
Are there any principles or mantras that guide your day-to-day?
Just try to do my best within whatever capacity I can that day. Give myself grace, give others grace.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Still applies to me today, annoyingly enough — enjoy the moment more, be more connected to the now.
To the person reading this?
Be yourself, but never stop learning and learning about who you are.
What would you like to see or create more of in the world?
Understanding, compassion, unity (so trite but so true).
What Sofie’s reading: “Deja Vu and the End of History by Paolo Virno, my Paris Review subscription… then I recently bought Valerie Solanas’ Up Your Ass / Young Girl's Primer at La Fab while having a look at the Harmony Korine exhibition... really recommend! Also The Vegetarian by Han Kang that my friend lent me, great read.”
What Sofie’s watching: “A lot of German reality TV in preparation of a movie role. The last film I really enjoyed that I saw was Wild at Heart by David Lynch, and my all-time favorite, Lost Highway — rewatched after his passing.”