Episode 76 - The Principles of Matriarchal Wealth Ecology with Isha Vela
Money isn't just a tool. It's a relationship, & most of us were never taught how to have a healthy one. Isha Vela, somatic psychologist, financial strategist, & founder of the Wealth Ecology Institute, joined Iris to unpack why so many women, especially women running businesses rooted in service & care, feel a deep discomfort around money, & what it takes to heal that relationship.
Vela's path into this work began with her own unraveling. After earning a doctorate in trauma psychology & completing a four-year somatic certification following burnout, she found herself doing what she describes as decolonization work, uncovering how deeply her shadows around money, relationships, & self-worth were intertwined. That process eventually led her into finance, where she began having what she calls conversations with the spirit of money, & realized it wanted to move, to circulate, rather than simply accumulate.
This conversation covers the six principles of wealth ecology, why circulation matters more than accumulation, how to decolonize your relationship with money, the coming "great wealth transfer" into women's hands, & why healing your money story is inseparable from healing generational & ancestral wounds. As Vela puts it, the land is not an asset. It's a relative. And a satisfied woman is ungovernable.
Topics covered
In this episode, we discussed
- Isha's journey from somatic psychotherapy to founding the Wealth Ecology Institute
- Six principles of wealth ecology: stewardship, sustainability, circulation, enoughness
- Relating to money as a lover rather than something dirty or shameful
- Why commitment, not inspiration, creates actual behavior change with money
- The spiritual bypass pattern of believing you're above money
- Decolonizing money: separating the energy of exchange from its historical abuse
- Ancestral colonial wealth & the grief work of tracing extraction in your lineage
- The great wealth transfer: trillions moving from boomers to women by 2030
- Funding women-led innovations in the Global South versus polished pitch decks
- Raising financially literate children equipped for matriarchal economic systems
- Matriarchies as ancient & ongoing, not a new invention
Listen to the Episode
Timestamps
03:56 Isha's path from trauma psychology to somatic work to founding the Wealth Ecology Institute
07:31 The six principles of wealth ecology: stewardship, sustainability, relational accountability
10:15 Circulation over hoarding: shifting from the patriarchal pyramid to the circle
11:11 Enoughness over endless expansion: what nature teaches about knowing when you have enough
13:37 Reframing money as a lover: healing a relationship built on neglect & resentment
14:56 Why inspiration doesn't create change, commitment & practice do
17:44 Iris's own money story: growing up believing money was "dirty"
21:17 The "leaving" archetype: spiritual people who believe they're above money
24:18 Decolonizing money: separating the energy of exchange from how money has been abused
30:03 The Great Wealth Transfer: trillions moving into women's hands by 2030
The Six Principles of Wealth Ecology
Vela outlined six overarching principles, not ranked or sequential, that form the foundation of wealth ecology:
Stewardship Over Domination
Money isn't something you own. It's something you hold, with responsibility. Rather than asking "how do I control this wealth," wealth ecology asks: how does this money want to move, & how can I co-create with it?
Sustainability Over Extraction
Every business decision gets examined through this lens: Is this business extractive? Is it sustainable for your body, not just your bank account? Is what you're selling ultimately depleting something, people, land, energy, that can't be replenished?
Relational Accountability Over Individual Accumulation
"Our first and most important relationship is with the land."
This principle asks you to track the thread of every purchase & transaction backward & forward. How does this purchase impact a community? Where was it made, & who did it extract from to arrive in your hands?
Capacity Over Speed
Building at the speed of trust, not urgency. This principle honors the vulnerable, scared parts of ourselves & recognizes that meaningful growth in community happens slowly, not through overriding pace for the sake of speed.
Circulation Over Hoarding
"In the patriarchal pyramid, wealth flows to the top and it's siphoned from the ones at the bottom... wealth ecology shifts into a circle where the wealth flows outward to where it's needed, not to where it already lives."
Vela describes this as the central principle. A circle strengthens itself as wealth moves through it; a pyramid collapses at the bottom while strengthening only the top.
Enoughness Over Endless Expansion
This principle borrows directly from ecological balance. Just as a deer population self-regulates based on available food, wealth ecology asks: how much is actually enough? Most of us were raised inside what Vela calls a "hungry ghost system," one built on the belief that more is always better, rather than checking in with the body to distinguish between want & need.
"What I have found through my own process is that I need a lot less than I think I do."
Money as a Lover: Reframing the Relationship
One of the most striking reframes in this conversation came through Vela's own healing process, learning to relate to money as a lover rather than something dirty or shameful to avoid.
"I used to have a relationship with money that was about neglect, that was about maybe some resentment... you're dirty, you are getting taken care of by somebody else, I don't want to deal with you."
Through healing, Vela recognized that money had always shown up for her, even during periods when she felt broke or abandoned. Taking care of her relationship with money became, in a very real sense, an act of taking care of herself.
Iris's Own Money Story
Iris shared her own version of this pattern, growing up in a modest Dutch family with the belief that money had to be worked hard for & guarded carefully because it could disappear at any moment. This created a relationship where she avoided looking at her finances entirely, wanting only to focus on serving her clients through her business, not the money side of running it.
"I think this is something a lot of entrepreneurs have... it was a bit similar to you where it was like, dirty. No, money is something that belongs with the disgusting people at the top who do bad stuff with it."
Vela named this as a recognizable archetype, often found among spiritual people & healers, a pattern of believing oneself "above" money. The healing path for this archetype involves grounding into the earth plane & recognizing money as a tangible medium for doing good, not separate from spiritual or healing work but part of it.
Commitment, Not Inspiration, Creates Change
Vela was direct about a common trap: inspiration alone doesn't move people to actually circulate their wealth.
"I meet a lot of people who are inspired and don't do anything with it. So for me, it really is about a decision."
Her own turning point came during a financial low point, going through a divorce with a dwindling bank account, when she made a commitment to donate $50 a month to support Black children's education. That small, consistent practice, not a grand gesture, became the foundation of her stewardship practice & expanded her capacity to give without it feeling like loss.
This distinction matters practically: wealth ecology isn't about waiting to feel ready or abundant enough to circulate money. It's a practice built through repetition, even (especially) when it's uncomfortable.
Decolonizing Your Relationship with Money
Perhaps the most challenging thread in this conversation involves the deeper ancestral work required to fully embrace wealth ecology, particularly for those whose ancestors benefited from extraction & colonization.
"Separating how money has been used from the energy of money... it's because it's been used to dominate, to hurt people, to exploit people, to extract from people and the land, we've just become disgusted with it altogether. We've thrown the baby out with the bathwater."
Iris spoke candidly about the discomfort of tracing her own Dutch ancestry & confronting the extraction her country's wealth was built on, describing the resistance many people feel when asked to sit with this history rather than minimize it.
Vela reframed this not as an invitation to sit in shame, but to move through grief & remorse toward genuine repair. Just as in interpersonal relationships, accountability isn't the end of the process, it's what makes deeper repair & connection possible. They noted that some people with ties to Indigenous land now pay regular reparations, describing it as lightening an ancestral load that extends both backward & forward through generations.
The Great Wealth Transfer
One of the most concrete opportunities Vela named: an enormous transfer of wealth already underway, from baby boomers to younger generations, with women positioned to receive a significant share.
"We're looking at trillions of dollars... by 2030, I think two-thirds of the wealth will have moved and will be in women's hands."
Because women statistically outlive male partners, much of this transferred wealth will land directly in women's hands. Vela's hope is that women receiving this wealth will have the financial literacy to deploy it toward innovations already emerging from women in the Global South, who are often deeply connected to ecological wealth systems but lack access to funding & investment networks that take their ideas seriously.
They offered a concrete example: a woman who created sanitary napkins from bamboo but was denied a grant because her pitch wasn't polished enough, despite the clear community & environmental benefit of her innovation. Vela's vision involves matching this emerging wealth with grounded, Earth-connected innovation rather than funneling it back into extraction-based systems.
Raising the Next Generation Inside This Work
Vela, a queer world-schooling parent of two neurodivergent teens, is intentional about equipping their children with these frameworks directly, rather than leaving them to feel burdened by inheriting a broken system.
"We have a responsibility to them to equip them with the tools so that they can feel not burdened, but excited about the responsibility."
This isn't about shielding children from the state of the world, their kids see the news, they're aware. It's about naming the project explicitly: we are matriarchs, we have a responsibility, & we're building this together, with real tools & real principles rather than vague anxiety about an uncertain future.
The Bottom Line
Money is never just money. It's a relationship shaped by everything we were taught, or never taught, growing up, & often carries the weight of generations before us. Whether that relationship looks like scarcity, avoidance, guilt, or quiet resentment, wealth ecology offers a different starting point: money as a sacred exchange, meant to circulate rather than accumulate, & meant to be stewarded rather than hoarded or dominated.
This isn't abstract theory. It's a practice, one small commitment at a time, whether that's $50 a month toward something you believe in, tracking the thread of where your purchases actually come from, or simply asking yourself honestly what "enough" feels like in your body rather than in your bank account.
For women, particularly women running businesses built on service & care, this conversation offers real permission, permission to look directly at money instead of avoiding it, to grieve what scarcity thinking may have cost, & to imagine a wealth system built on circulation instead of extraction. With trillions of dollars moving into women's hands in the coming years, how we heal our relationship with money now may shape far more than our own lives.
Key Takeaways
- Wealth ecology reframes money as something to steward, not own, with responsibility for how it moves & who it serves
- The six principles (stewardship, sustainability, relational accountability, capacity over speed, circulation over hoarding, enoughness) offer a practical framework for a matriarchal approach to money
- Circulation strengthens a system; hoarding collapses it - moving from the patriarchal pyramid to a circulating circle changes what a wealth system can sustain
- Healing your money story often starts with recognizing your money archetype, whether that's scarcity, neglect, or believing yourself "above" money entirely
- Inspiration doesn't create lasting change, commitment & consistent practice do, even in small amounts like Vela's original $50 monthly donation
- Decolonizing money requires separating the energy of sacred exchange from how money has historically been used to dominate & extract
- Confronting ancestral & generational wealth history is uncomfortable but necessary for genuine repair, not to dwell in shame but to move toward remorse & restoration
- The Great Wealth Transfer will move trillions of dollars into women's hands by 2030, creating a significant opportunity to redirect resources toward regenerative, Earth-connected innovation
- Equipping children with these frameworks now helps them feel empowered rather than burdened by the systems they're inheriting
About the Host
I’m Iris Josephina, a functional hormone specialist, orthomolecular hormone coach, circadian biology practitioner, and entrepreneur. Through Cycle Seeds and The Inner Rhythms Podcast, I support people in reconnecting with their cyclical nature, deepening body literacy, and reclaiming hormonal harmony from a place of sovereignty and embodied knowledge. Most people know me from Instagram, where I share stories, tools, and inspiration on cyclical living, menstrual cycles, fertility, hormones, and more.
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