Discover how high-performing women can shift from pushing through to truly healing by listening to their bodies, creating nervous system safety, and rebuilding trust with themselves through awareness and consistent support.
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Influential Woman · Holistic Health & Wellness
Dorianne Gigi Walkama
Founder / Ayurvedic Health Practitioner, MyGutGirl
Newburyport, MA 01950
1Article published
Her Story
About Dorianne
Dorianne Walkama is an entrepreneur and Ayurvedic practitioner based in the Greater Boston area, specializing in gut health, nervous system regulation, and women’s wellness. She is the founder of MyGutGirl and creator of the MyGutGirl Method™, a structured, holistic approach designed to help midlife women reduce bloating, restore energy, and rebalance hormones through sustainable lifestyle practices. Her work integrates traditional Ayurvedic principles with modern gut-brain science to support long-term healing in a practical, accessible way.
Her career spans more than two decades across health, fitness, consulting, and wellness entrepreneurship. She previously owned and operated Pilates studios, trained instructors as a Master Instructor Trainer, and developed patented home fitness equipment before transitioning into integrative health coaching. Dorianne later formalized her training in Ayurveda through the Ayurvedic Institute and advanced practitioner studies with Kerala Ayurveda, including clinical immersion work in India, which deepened her focus on digestive health, stress physiology, and mind-body balance.
Today, she works primarily with women over 40 who experience fatigue, digestive discomfort, hormonal imbalance, and chronic stress. Through one-on-one consultations, workshops, and her GLOWUP program, she emphasizes a step-by-step healing sequence that begins with gut and nervous system regulation before addressing hormonal and energy restoration. Her philosophy centers on empowering clients with simple, repeatable daily rhythms that support the body’s natural ability to heal and maintain balance over time.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dorianne
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to courage, determination, and learning to trust both myself and the process; even during the moments when life didn’t unfold the way I expected. Like many people, I’ve experienced setbacks, failures, and seasons where I felt knocked down. But each chapter, challenge, and past endeavor contributed to who I am today.
I truly believe my success is the culmination of all of those experiences; personally, professionally, emotionally, and spiritually. Every role I’ve held, every struggle I’ve navigated, and every reinvention taught me something valuable about resilience, awareness, and listening more deeply to myself.
Over time, I learned the importance of trusting my gut. Both literally and metaphorically. Trusting the wisdom of the body. Trusting intuition. Trusting that even when things don’t make sense in the moment, there is growth happening underneath it all.
More than anything, I would say determination has carried me forward. The willingness to keep getting back up, keep learning, and continue evolving into who I’m meant to become.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received was from one of my professors while I was earning my MBA. He told me, “No matter what happens in life, there is one thing nobody can ever take away from you — your courage.”
That stayed with me for years. Through every transition, setback, reinvention, and new beginning, I’ve come back to that reminder. Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the willingness to keep showing up, trusting yourself, and moving forward anyway. And I believe that when women reconnect with their courage, they reconnect with their power.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to a young woman entering this industry is to understand that your work will go far beyond teaching or educating. Whether you are working in Pilates, wellness, gut health, or consulting, people will trust you with more than their physical health — they will trust you with pieces of their story, their struggles, their fears, and their vulnerability.
That is both a privilege and a responsibility.
You have to learn how to hold space for others while also learning how to protect and care for your own energy. The stronger and more grounded you become within yourself, the more powerfully you’ll be able to support others without losing yourself in the process.
So my advice is: continue doing your own inner work alongside your professional work. Learn how to breathe through stress. Learn how to listen deeply without carrying everything emotionally. Prioritize your own nervous system, your own healing, and your own self-care.
Because the women who create the greatest impact in this field are not the ones who give until they are depleted; they are the ones who lead from steadiness, compassion, authenticity, and strength.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges right now is that the gut health and wellness space has become extremely crowded and noisy. There’s an overwhelming amount of information available — supplements, restrictive diets, quick fixes, social media trends — and many women are left feeling more confused and discouraged than empowered. They’ve often tried multiple approaches, spent a lot of money, and still don’t feel better.
So one of the biggest challenges is finding a way to rise above that noise and help people understand that true healing is rarely about another quick fix or one-size-fits-all solution.
At the same time, I believe that is also the greatest opportunity. My approach is different because it begins with safety, nervous system regulation, and reconnecting women with the wisdom of their own body. Before protocols, supplements, or rigid food rules, I focus on helping the body feel supported enough to heal.
I believe women are exhausted from being told they are broken or that they simply need to “try harder.” They’re craving a more personalized, compassionate, and sustainable approach — one that honors the connection between the gut, nervous system, emotions, lifestyle, and daily rhythm.
That’s where I believe The MyGutGirl Method™ stands apart. It’s not about forcing the body into healing; it’s about creating the conditions where healing can naturally begin.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity is one of the most important values in my life, along with trust, loyalty, compassion, and authenticity. I believe people can feel when someone is genuine, and both personally and professionally, I strive to show up as the same person in every space.
The way I support clients is an extension of who I am in my everyday life; grounded, compassionate, honest, and deeply committed to helping people feel seen, heard, and supported. I value building real relationships rooted in trust, because healing and growth happen most powerfully when people feel safe enough to be fully themselves.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Dorianne
Why High Performing Women are Exhausted
Why Listening to Your Body is the Real Measure of Strength
There was a time in my life when I thought being “strong” meant pushing through.
Pushing through exhaustion.
Pushing through stress.
Pushing through anxiety, bloating, brain fog, overwhelm, and the quiet signals my body was sending me every single day.
Like many women, I became incredibly skilled at functioning while disconnected from myself.
I handled responsibilities.
Built businesses.
Raised children.
Showed up for everyone else.
Kept moving.
And from the outside, it probably looked like I was managing life well.
But internally, my nervous system was constantly bracing.
What I have come to realize, both personally and through working with women, is that many high-performing women are not lacking discipline.
They are overloaded.
Modern women are living in a near-constant state of stimulation:
notifications,
multitasking,
mental load,
decision fatigue,
pressure to achieve,
pressure to maintain,
pressure to keep proving themselves.
And eventually, the body responds.
Not because it is weak.
Not because it is failing.
But because it is communicating.
The problem is that many women, myself included, were conditioned to interpret those signals as inconvenience instead of intelligence.
I felt the bloating.
The brain fog.
The fatigue.
The anxiety.
And like so many women, I immediately went into “fix it” mode.
I searched externally for answers.
Read every article.
Tried the supplements.
Followed the plans.
Filtered through endless wellness advice telling me what I should be doing.
Instead of slowing down long enough to listen, I doubled down.
Another supplement.
Another routine.
Another attempt to “fix” myself.
But the nervous system does not heal through force.
The body responds differently when it feels safe.
That realization changed everything for me.
Through my own journey, and now as an Ayurvedic Practitioner, I spend far less time teaching women how to control their bodies and far more time teaching them how to support them.
Because healing is rarely about doing more.
It is often about creating the conditions that allow the body to soften enough to function the way it was designed to.
And if you ask many high-performing women whether they are stressed, most will not immediately say yes.
They will say:
“I’m just busy.”
“I have a lot on my plate.”
“This is just a demanding season.”
“I’m fine, just tired.”
Because many women were taught that pushing through is normal.
That success requires self-sacrifice.
That being capable means carrying everything without slowing down.
So we override our bodies for so long that dysregulation starts feeling normal.
The tension.
The rushing.
The overthinking.
The fatigue.
The constant mental load.
It becomes our baseline.
So how do we begin creating the conditions that allow the body to heal?
We begin with awareness.
We listen to the body with more kindness and less criticism.
Instead of asking:
“What is wrong with me?”
we begin asking:
“What is my body trying to tell me?”
We create safety through awareness and by giving the body something supportive and consistent to respond to.
Simple things begin to matter:
consistent meals,
slower mornings,
breathing before eating,
rest before exhaustion,
less overstimulation,
more rhythm,
more presence,
more awareness.
Not because these are trendy wellness rituals, but because the nervous system responds to consistency and safety.
And that is something many ambitious women have quietly lost connection with.
We live in a culture that rewards overfunctioning.
Women are praised for how much they can carry, tolerate, and push through.
But there is a cost to constantly overriding ourselves.
The body keeps score.
I think many women today do not necessarily need more information.
They need permission to stop treating themselves like a project that constantly needs fixing.
They need a way to come back to themselves.
To rebuild trust with their bodies.
To recognize that symptoms are often communication, not punishment.
To understand that healing is not a war against the body — it is a relationship with it.
And maybe true strength is not found in how hard we can push.
Maybe it is found in how deeply we can listen.
Because the women I see healing most sustainably are not the ones forcing the hardest.
They are the ones learning how to soften, support themselves consistently, and return to their bodies with awareness instead of criticism.
Not perfectly.
But intentionally.
And in today’s world, that may be one of the most powerful things a woman can do.
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