Podcasts about chi nei tsang

 Can Yoga and Hikes Transform Your Health?    In this episode, Nathalie recounts her recent retreat in Sedona, sharing experiences and various therapies, including NAD IVs, EBU, VSEL treatments, and Chi Nei Tsang. She also delves into her extended stay for alpha brain training at the BioCybernaut Institute. Nathalie highlights the importance of nature, innovative health approaches, and reconnecting with oneself for optimizing longevity and healthspan.   Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible: BIOPTIMIZERS Mag Breakthrough:  BiOptimizers.com/BIONAT code BIONAT to save 10% off your purchase   Find more from Nathalie: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmholC48MqRC50UffIZOMOQ  Join Nat's Membership Community: https://www.natniddam.com/bsp-community  Sign up for Nats Newsletter: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/i7d5m0  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathalieniddam/  Website: www.NatNiddam.com    Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/biohackingsuperhumanperformance  What We Discuss: 00:13 Introduction to the Sedona Retreat 01:16 Daily Activities at the Retreat 04:33 Innovative Treatments and Therapies 05:58 NAD IVs: Benefits and Experiences 10:20 Exploring Flowpresso and Craniosacral Therapy 12:05 Chi Nei Tsang: A Unique Therapy 14:53 EBOO: Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation 17:47 VSEL and Exosome Rejuvenation Treatments 22:16 Unexpected Adventures and Neurotherapy 32:36 Alpha Brain Training at BioCybernaut Institute 35:15 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes   Key Takeaways: The retreat days start with yoga, followed by hikes and various treatments, emphasizing a connection with nature and a healthy rhythm of early mornings and early nights. NAD IVs are customized per individual needs. It's crucial for cellular function, and while the treatment can be uncomfortable, methods like Nano V and PEMF mats can help improve tolerability. Attendees experience various treatments such as Flowpresso for lymphatic drainage, craniosacral therapy for energy realignment, and Chi Nei Tsang for abdominal organ manipulation. VSELs help with anti-aging and restoring balance in the body.   Resources: Paper on VSEL's: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9846763/ Katrine Volinsky Interview: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/24607731 DR Craig Koniver NAD Interview: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/21664538 Chi Nei Tsang: https://www.chineitsang.com/what-is-chi-nei-tsang Biocybernaut Institute - Dr James Hardt. The Art of Smart Thinking   Next Retreat will be first week of May 2025- interested parties can get their names added to a list by contacting Ciel@nathalieniddam.com

Kim Knight is an empowerment coach and emotional alchemist who assists clients in transforming (or transmuting) their feelings of overwhelm, unhappiness and chronic illness into a natural state of joy and health. In this conversation with Kim we discuss:The chronic conditions that changed the direction of her lifeThe single session that became a turning point in her heath journeyThe power of daily inner smile meditationThe link became emotions and her chronic illness and depressionCommitting to believing in God 1 percent more every dayWelcoming and validating the "negative" feelings as well as the positive...and more!Learn more about Kim at emotionalalchemyacademy.com, The Art of Health, and Ren Xue.Support Terrain Theory on Patreon! Our recently-launched member platform gives you access to a ton of free & exclusive content. Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/TerrainTheoryTerrain Theory episodes are not to be taken as medical advice. You are your own primary healthcare provider.If you have a Terrain Transformation story you would like to share, email us at ben@terraintheory.net.Learn more at www.terraintheory.netMusic by Chris Merenda

Aujourd'hui , dans l'épisode 40 du podcast, on va parler du Chi Nei Tsang. Mais qu'est-ce que le Chi Nei Tsang ? Il s'agit d'un massage chinois du ventre qui permet de dénouer les tensions physiques et émotionnelles, de détoxifier le corps et de retrouver un ventre serein. C'est Séverine Héron, praticienne en massage bien-être dans le Tarn qui va nous expliquer tout ça ! Je suis Audrey Boyer, naturopathe, passionnée par l'humain et fondatrice d'Aqui Ba Pla! podcast. Retrouvez toutes mes actualités sur www.audrey-boyer.fr

La semaine dernière, vous avez pu découvrir le soin Chi Nei Tsang grâce à Camille qui le pratique depuis des années avec passion. Si vous ne l'avez pas encore écouté, je vous invite grandement à le faire, et autrement je vous laisse découvrir cette semaine le petit conseil de Camille pour prendre soin de vous au quotidien ! Allez, à vos casques ! — Pour découvrir le travail de Camille et réserver un soin avec elle, rendez-vous sur son site internet et son compte instagram ! Découvrez HEALTHY CYCLES, mon programme en ligne et en autonomie pour vous aider à reconnecter avec votre cycle menstruel, équilibrer vos hormones et soulager vos maux ! Rendez-vous juste ici pour embarquer dans l'aventure ! Vous préférez un suivi individuel et main dans la main ? Je vous propose mon ACCOMPAGNEMENT HOLISTIQUE, individuel ou en couple, mêlant naturopathie, phytothérapie, aromatologie, symptothermie et bien d'autres techniques pour vous reconnecter à votre corps et atteindre enfin votre objectif santé ! Par ici pour découvrir toutes les informations et par là pour réserver un appel découverte gratuit ! Je vous propose également de vous former à la symptothermie avec mon programme HEALTHY SYMPTOTHERMIE, pour vous permettre d'adopter une contraception 100 naturelle et fiable à 98,2% après formation (contre 97,6% de fiabilité pour la pilule, chiffres de l'OMS) ! Par ici pour en savoir plus et rejoindre l'aventure ! Et enfin, n'hésitez pas à découvrir mes ebooks : HEALTHY FOOD, le guide de l'alimentation hormonale et HEALTHY PUBERTÉ, pour accompagner les jeunes filles vers leur vie de femmes. Si vous aimez Healthy Living et souhaitez m'aider à faire connaître le podcast, n'hésitez pas à le partager autour de vous auprès de personnes que cela pourrait aider ou intéresser. N'hésitez pas également à laisser des appréciations et commentaires sur votre application d'écoute préférée. It means the world to me! Pour ne rien manquer des actualités du podcast, pensez à vous abonner sur votre plateforme d'écoute préférée, à me rejoindre sur insta et à vous inscrire à la newsletter dans laquelle je partage chaque mois une avalanche de good vibes et astuces healthy ! Je vous retrouve également sur youtube avec du contenu vidéo inédit ainsi que certains de mes épisodes préférés en versions sous-titrée, accessible aux sourds et malentendants ! Création originale : Marion Pezard Réalisation & production : Marion Pezard Montage & mixage : Marion Pezard Musique : Alice, Hicham Chahidi

Je vous propose aujourd'hui de découvrir un soin hors du commun issu de la médecine traditionnelle chinoise : le Chi Nei Tsang. Avec sa portée holistique et son impact à la fois physique sur les organes mais également sur le centre émotionnel qu'est le ventre, il fait de vraies merveilles ! Je suis donc très heureuse d'avoir reçu Camille au micro pour vous en dire plus sur le sujet, et il y a fort à parier pour que vous ayez envie, comme moi, de réserver ce soin illico ! Allez, à vos casques ! — Pour découvrir le travail de Camille et réserver un soin avec elle, rendez-vous sur son site internet et son compte instagram ! Découvrez HEALTHY CYCLES, mon programme en ligne et en autonomie pour vous aider à reconnecter avec votre cycle menstruel, équilibrer vos hormones et soulager vos maux ! Rendez-vous juste ici pour embarquer dans l'aventure ! Vous préférez un suivi individuel et main dans la main ? Je vous propose mon ACCOMPAGNEMENT HOLISTIQUE, individuel ou en couple, mêlant naturopathie, phytothérapie, aromatologie, symptothermie et bien d'autres techniques pour vous reconnecter à votre corps et atteindre enfin votre objectif santé ! Par ici pour découvrir toutes les informations et par là pour réserver un appel découverte gratuit ! Je vous propose également de vous former à la symptothermie avec mon programme HEALTHY SYMPTOTHERMIE, pour vous permettre d'adopter une contraception 100 naturelle et fiable à 98,2% après formation (contre 97,6% de fiabilité pour la pilule, chiffres de l'OMS) ! Par ici pour en savoir plus et rejoindre l'aventure ! Et enfin, n'hésitez pas à découvrir mes ebooks : HEALTHY FOOD, le guide de l'alimentation hormonale et HEALTHY PUBERTÉ, pour accompagner les jeunes filles vers leur vie de femmes. Si vous aimez Healthy Living et souhaitez m'aider à faire connaître le podcast, n'hésitez pas à le partager autour de vous auprès de personnes que cela pourrait aider ou intéresser. N'hésitez pas également à laisser des appréciations et commentaires sur votre application d'écoute préférée. It means the world to me! Pour ne rien manquer des actualités du podcast, pensez à vous abonner sur votre plateforme d'écoute préférée, à me rejoindre sur insta et à vous inscrire à la newsletter dans laquelle je partage chaque mois une avalanche de good vibes et astuces healthy ! Je vous retrouve également sur youtube avec du contenu vidéo inédit ainsi que certains de mes épisodes préférés en versions sous-titrée, accessible aux sourds et malentendants ! Création originale : Marion Pezard Réalisation & production : Marion Pezard Montage & mixage : Marion Pezard Musique : Alice, Hicham Chahidi

Achieving Vitality by Leveraging Ancient Healing Sciences and Modern Technologies In this DreamVision interview Part 2 on Vitality, we talk with Leslie Finkel, a distinguished Energy Healer, Biohack Mentor, and the visionary founder of Unstoppable Healing. With a profound expertise in the ancient Taoist practice of Chi Nei Tsang, Leslie guides clients through transformative journeys, alleviating chronic pain, emotional trauma, and a range of health issues including PTSD, ADHD, and digestive disorders. He's a 1/3 Splenic Projector who emphasizes the importance of believing in the body's ability to heal and recover, which stemmed from his own healing journey.  Tune in to learn about his innovative approach which combines this 5000-year-old healing science with cutting-edge wellness technologies in his Unstoppable Biohack Wellness Concierge Program, and receive practical tips for grounding yourself even while eating lunch! Take the free Client Attraction Personality Type quiz at  https://NancyOKeefeCoaching.com  and learn your Human Design Client Attraction Personality Type and gain an understanding of all of the other types so you can improve your marketing by speaking the language of all the types. Learn more about Nancy here: https://www.nancyokeefecoaching.com

Have you ever struggled with digestive issues? If so, Chi Nei Tsang could be the alternative therapy you've been searching for. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Jaz, a seasoned Doctor of Chinese Medicine, to delve into this unique treatment.Dr. Jaz, an expert in Acupuncture and Chinese Herbology, has been a practitioner in the Health and Wellness field since 2005. Her global pursuit of knowledge has taken her to Thailand for a Chi Nei Tsang and Qigong teacher training course, and to China for an intensive internship at the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.In this episode, she discusses the healing powers of ear seeds, the crucial role of the vagus nerve in digestion, and how integrating meditation techniques such as the Inner Smile and Six Healing Sounds can promote emotional balance. We'll also dive into her online classes, the specifics of postpartum care, and the critical importance of self-care for new mothers. Tune in to discover holistic solutions that could transform your wellness journey.

Welcome back to the Body of Wisdom podcast! In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by Sarina Stone, an internationally renowned Medical Chi Kung (Qigong) instructor, abdominal massage (chi nei tsang) expert, natural health advocate, and author of seven books (as well as the host of Mantak Chia's podcast!). Sarina shares her incredible journey from Renaissance fair performer to Taoist practitioner. Discover how a chance encounter with a cassette tape and a dedication to self-healing led Sarina to become a master teacher and healer. We dive into the power of the mind-body connection, the simplicity and effectiveness of Taoist practices, and the transformative impact of cultivating self-awareness and a connection with natural healing modalities. In this episdoe we cover:  How a cassette tape led to life-changing healing from scoliosis Mantak Chia's advice to Sarina when he first saw her 'healing hands' The simple yet effective Taoist practices that have changed Sarina's life The principles of chi nei tsang (Taoist abdominal massage) and its benefits The importance of knowing that we all have the power to heal ourselves and create our reality The quantum nature of Taoist teachings The importance of taking the practice out of the dojo and into the 'real world' Predictions from Taoist masters as to humanity's future The importance of raising healthy, conscious children And so much more! I was fortunate enough to take a weekend course with Sarina in 2023 and she will be visiting Australia again in 2025 - I'd highly recommend studying with her if you're interested in learning more about chi nei tsang or Taoist healing techniques.  So much gratitude to Sarina for this incredible episode and for her teachings.  Sarina's website: https://www.sarinastone.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_taolady/  Online certification courses: https://www.sarinastone.com/online-store/Online-Certification-Courses-c124212346  Online consultations: https://www.sarinastone.com/online-store/Private-Consultations-c21680973  Inner Alchemy Practices (Inner Smile, Microcosmic Orbit etc): https://www.sarinastone.com/online-store/Classic-Medical-Qigong-Inner-Alchemy-c21680972   

Meet Takkesh, a Movement Therapist who blends a diverse array of disciplines including Zen Shiatsu, Thai Massage, Osteopathic Technique, Chi Nei Tsang, Acro Therapeutics, and Watsu. With a focus on enhancing performance and creativity, Takkesh specialises in guiding elite athletes and professionals to uncover their flow state—the pinnacle of their abilities. Through meticulous attention to physical imbalances and movement patterns, Takkesh empowers clients to transcend barriers, sharpen focus, and elevate overall well-being. His approach, rooted in biomechanics and sustainability, not only strengthens mindsets but also nurtures nervous systems, unlocking clients' true potential for enduring success.Driven by a passion for transformation, Takkesh is dedicated to simplifying and enriching lives through holistic practices. By fostering resilience and aligning body and mind, he inspires clients to embrace a balanced and fulfilling existence. Join Takkesh on a journey toward discovering your flow state and achieving extraordinary accomplishments—wherever you are in your pursuit of peak performance, he offers the expertise and support to help you thrive.Takkesh's LinksINSTAGRAMSURF FLOW INSTAGRAMCooper's LinksINSTAGRAMTIK TOKThe Good Human Factory LinksINSTAGRAMWEBSITEMERCH - CODE - PODCAST 25% OFFWORKSHOP ENQUIRYTHE GOOD HUMAN FACTORY™️ 2020 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet Takkesh, a Movement Therapist who blends a diverse array of disciplines including Zen Shiatsu, Thai Massage, Osteopathic Technique, Chi Nei Tsang, Acro Therapeutics, and Watsu. With a focus on enhancing performance and creativity, Takkesh specialises in guiding elite athletes and professionals to uncover their flow state—the pinnacle of their abilities. Through meticulous attention to physical imbalances and movement patterns, Takkesh empowers clients to transcend barriers, sharpen focus, and elevate overall well-being. His approach, rooted in biomechanics and sustainability, not only strengthens mindsets but also nurtures nervous systems, unlocking clients' true potential for enduring success.Driven by a passion for transformation, Takkesh is dedicated to simplifying and enriching lives through holistic practices. By fostering resilience and aligning body and mind, he inspires clients to embrace a balanced and fulfilling existence. Join Takkesh on a journey toward discovering your flow state and achieving extraordinary accomplishments—wherever you are in your pursuit of peak performance, he offers the expertise and support to help you thrive.Takkesh's LinksINSTAGRAMSURF FLOW INSTAGRAMCooper's LinksINSTAGRAMTIK TOKThe Good Human Factory LinksINSTAGRAMWEBSITEMERCH - CODE - PODCAST 25% OFFWORKSHOP ENQUIRYTHE GOOD HUMAN FACTORY™️ 2020 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet Takkesh, a Movement Therapist who blends a diverse array of disciplines including Zen Shiatsu, Thai Massage, Osteopathic Technique, Chi Nei Tsang, Acro Therapeutics, and Watsu. With a focus on enhancing performance and creativity, Takkesh specialises in guiding elite athletes and professionals to uncover their flow state—the pinnacle of their abilities. Through meticulous attention to physical imbalances and movement patterns, Takkesh empowers clients to transcend barriers, sharpen focus, and elevate overall well-being. His approach, rooted in biomechanics and sustainability, not only strengthens mindsets but also nurtures nervous systems, unlocking clients' true potential for enduring success.Driven by a passion for transformation, Takkesh is dedicated to simplifying and enriching lives through holistic practices. By fostering resilience and aligning body and mind, he inspires clients to embrace a balanced and fulfilling existence. Join Takkesh on a journey toward discovering your flow state and achieving extraordinary accomplishments—wherever you are in your pursuit of peak performance, he offers the expertise and support to help you thrive.Takkesh's LinksINSTAGRAMSURF FLOW INSTAGRAMCooper's LinksINSTAGRAMTIK TOKThe Good Human Factory LinksINSTAGRAMWEBSITEMERCH - CODE - PODCAST 25% OFFWORKSHOP ENQUIRYTHE GOOD HUMAN FACTORY™️ 2020 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us on a journey of somatic liberation and sensual awakening with our esteemed guest, Rahi Chun, a Somatic Sex Educator specializing in pelvic and genital dearmoring. Rahi's expertise transcends traditional healing; it's a profound exploration of trauma recovery and embodied empowerment. In this conversation, Rahi illuminates the path of pelvic and genital dearmoring, unveiling its potential for those burdened by trauma stored within their bodies. Drawing from personal and professional insights, he guides us through the intricacies of somatic healing, offering clarity and compassion to those navigating their own paths to wholeness. Discover what dearmoring entails and how it's integrated into sessions with clients. Explore the profound benefits—physical release, emotional catharsis, and the reclamation of sensual sovereignty—that ignite the flames of healing, pleasure, and liberation. As we conclude, we reflect on the ripple effects of pelvic and genital dearmoring on intimate relationships, emphasizing the importance of communication, consent, and mutual exploration. Tune in now! About Rahi: Rahi combines his training and experience as a CA state-certified Somatic Sex Educator/Sexological Bodyworker, Certified TRE Provider, NeuroAffective Touch Practitioner, Life Coach with an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology, with certifications in Family Constellations Therapy, DeArmouring Arts, Chi Nei Tsang & Karsai Nei Tsang, and STREAM (Scar Tissue Remediation and Management) in his facilitation of Somatic Sexual Wholeness. Website: https://somaticsexualwholeness.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rahichun/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rahi.chun/ WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/skWchY8GrX4 ---- About Sex Ed for the Modern Bed: Meet Taara! A sex educator, podcaster, and somatic sex educator, Taara is on a mission to help people discover their authentic sexual selves. With a passion for supporting individuals to embody consent and boundaries in their bodies, Taara provides non-judgmental sexual education to all who seek it. Since 2014, Taara has been working as a non-monogamous educator and podcaster with her partner. But in April 2021, she decided to take her knowledge to the next level and enrolled in school to become a certified Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodyworker. As an advanced student with The Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education and a certified "Like a Pro" graduate with the School of Consent, Taara has dedicated her life to helping others explore their sexuality in a safe and supportive environment. When she's not educating others, Taara can be found spending time with her furry friends, experiencing the pleasure of nature, and always learning more about sex, sexuality, and relationships. Join Taara on her journey towards discovering your authentic sexual self - you won't regret it! www.sexedforthemodernbed.com/ --- WORK WITH ME: https://www.sexedforthemodernbed.com/services --- SAY HI ON SOCIAL: Twitter: twitter.com/sxuninterrupted Instagram: www.instagram.com/sexedforthemodernbed/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/sexuninterrupted/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/sexuninterrupted Music Credit: Shake - Anno Domini Beats (Theme Music) © SU Lifestyle Media Inc.

Join us on a journey of somatic liberation and sensual awakening with our esteemed guest, Rahi Chun, a Somatic Sex Educator specializing in pelvic and genital dearmoring. Rahi's expertise transcends traditional healing; it's a profound exploration of trauma recovery and embodied empowerment. In this conversation, Rahi illuminates the path of pelvic and genital dearmoring, unveiling its potential for those burdened by trauma stored within their bodies. Drawing from personal and professional insights, he guides us through the intricacies of somatic healing, offering clarity and compassion to those navigating their own paths to wholeness. Discover what dearmoring entails and how it's integrated into sessions with clients. Explore the profound benefits—physical release, emotional catharsis, and the reclamation of sensual sovereignty—that ignite the flames of healing, pleasure, and liberation. As we conclude, we reflect on the ripple effects of pelvic and genital dearmoring on intimate relationships, emphasizing the importance of communication, consent, and mutual exploration. Tune in now! About Rahi: Rahi combines his training and experience as a CA state-certified Somatic Sex Educator/Sexological Bodyworker, Certified TRE Provider, NeuroAffective Touch Practitioner, Life Coach with an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology, with certifications in Family Constellations Therapy, DeArmouring Arts, Chi Nei Tsang & Karsai Nei Tsang, and STREAM (Scar Tissue Remediation and Management) in his facilitation of Somatic Sexual Wholeness. Website: https://somaticsexualwholeness.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rahichun/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rahi.chun/ WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/skWchY8GrX4 ---- About Sex Ed for the Modern Bed: Meet Taara! A sex educator, podcaster, and somatic sex educator, Taara is on a mission to help people discover their authentic sexual selves. With a passion for supporting individuals to embody consent and boundaries in their bodies, Taara provides non-judgmental sexual education to all who seek it. Since 2014, Taara has been working as a non-monogamous educator and podcaster with her partner. But in April 2021, she decided to take her knowledge to the next level and enrolled in school to become a certified Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodyworker. As an advanced student with The Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education and a certified "Like a Pro" graduate with the School of Consent, Taara has dedicated her life to helping others explore their sexuality in a safe and supportive environment. When she's not educating others, Taara can be found spending time with her furry friends, experiencing the pleasure of nature, and always learning more about sex, sexuality, and relationships. Join Taara on her journey towards discovering your authentic sexual self - you won't regret it! www.sexedforthemodernbed.com/ --- WORK WITH ME: https://www.sexedforthemodernbed.com/services --- SAY HI ON SOCIAL: Twitter: twitter.com/sxuninterrupted Instagram: www.instagram.com/sexedforthemodernbed/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/sexuninterrupted/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/sexuninterrupted Music Credit: Shake - Anno Domini Beats (Theme Music) © SU Lifestyle Media Inc.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous guide au travers d'une méditation douce pour oser rayonner et croire en vos rêves en alignement avec les énergies de la Nouvelle Lune en Sagittaire. Pour retrouver l'analyse Astrale de cette nouvelle lune rendez vous sur l'Instagram d'Adeline : Instagram d'Adeline   Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  16 décembre : Matinée Bulle Bien Être avec Mary et Adeline : réservation au 07.44.75.01.45 ou 06.50.68.61.68 17 décembre : Atelier Candlelight Yule chez Just'Yayoga : réservation par ici   Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous présente la vibration numérologique du mois de Décembre 2023. Ce mois ci c'est un nouveau cycle qui s'ouvre avec la vibration 1 !  Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  Matinée Bulle Bien Être avec Mary et Adeline : réservation au 07.44.75.01.45 ou 06.50.68.61.68 Atelier Candlelight Yule chez Just'Yayoga : réservation par ici   Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

In this episode, Oni Blecher speaks with Tahnee Taylor. Tahnee is a yoga teacher with a deep and resonant love of Yin Yoga and how it meets the alchemical magic of Taoism. She is also a practitioner of Chi Nei Tsang, which is a Taoist abdominal massage and she is a passionate advocate for the inherent shamanic wisdom of the body - hers, yours, ours. She is the mama of two home-birthed babies and co-parent of SuperFeast, the Taoist tonic herb company founded by her husband, Mason. Tahnee co-hosts the SuperFeast podcast and educates around yoga, Taoism, health and motherhood.In this interview, Tahnee shares how her deep experience and resonance with yin and Taoist principles and the intersection between them has influenced her motherhing and her interaction with her many roles as a woman and human. Enjoy this interview. Find Tahnee here:@tahneeyogatahneetaylor.com

Et si cette Pleine Lune en Gémeaux nous invitée à nous réaligner ? Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose une méditation de lâcher prise pour prendre soin de vous ! Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  Journée Bulle Bien Être avec Mary et Adeline - 25 novembre Atelier Bien Être & Spiritualité : Rituel de Yule - 16 décembre Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Perpignan ou Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Consultation en Cartomancie Soin Holistique : le soin signature de 2h Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques Coaching Conscience de Soi (8 séances minimum) Préparation mentale (PNL) / Séance de coaching ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  ou alors contactez la par mail : adeline@prendsconscience.fr Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Trouver du sens - Quel est le sens de la vie ? La vie doit-elle avoir du sens ? Comment trouver du sens ? Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous présente quelques clés pour commencer à apprendre à vous connaître un peu plus chaque jour ! Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  Journée Bulle Bien Être avec Mary et Adeline - 25 novembre Atelier Bien Être & Spiritualité : Rituel de Yule - 16 décembre Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Perpignan ou Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Consultation en Cartomancie Soin Holistique : le soin signature de 2h Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques Coaching Conscience de Soi (8 séances minimum) Préparation mentale (PNL) / Séance de coaching ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  ou alors contactez la par mail : adeline@prendsconscience.fr Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose de réaliser une méditation de Pleine Conscience autour des énergies de la Pleine Lune en Taureau de 2023. Il s'agit d'une méditation de bien être où nous allons nous ancrer profondément. Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui avec Mary Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 28 octobre Atelier Bien Être - Portail du 11/11  Rituel de Pleine Lune en Taureau & Sabbat Samhain - 29 octobre inscription par ici  Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI   Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline    Instagram Prends Conscience Instagram de Mary    Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur   Youtube Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose de réaliser une méditation de visualisation pour accueillir l'automne et la saison sombre transformatrice. Idéal si vous vous sentez stressé.e ou submergé.e en ce moment, cette méditation vous permet de reconnecter à l'énergie cyclique de la vie. Pour cette méditation, vous n'avez pas besoin d'avoir déjà pratiqué. Il s'agit d'une méditation 100% guidée, vous n'avez qu'à vous laissez porter. Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui avec Mary Séance de Maditation 1h avec Adeline sur Cabestany (66) Atelier Bien Être & Spiritualité : 11/11/2023 Journée Bien Être et Parent/Enfant : 25/11/2023 Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI   Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline    Instagram Prends Conscience Instagram de Mary    Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur   Youtube Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose de réaliser une méditation de Pleine Conscience autour des énergies de la Pleine Lune en Bélier de 2023. Il s'agit d'une méditation de bien être où nous allons nous connecter à notre coeur et aux énergies d'amour pour oser être nous, authentique et bienveillant. Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui avec Mary Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 28 octobre Atelier Bien Être - Rituel de Nouvelle Lune en Balance - 14 octobre Rituel de Pleine Lune en Taureau & Sabbat Samhain - 29 octobre inscription par ici  Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI   Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline    Instagram Prends Conscience Instagram de Mary    Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur   Youtube Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous présente la vibration numérologique du mois d'Octobre 2023. Nous partons ce mois ci à 100 à l'heure avec une belle vibration 8, symbole de l'infini ! Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  Portes Ouvertes sur Céret (66) pour venir rencontrer l'équipe Prends Conscience 7 octobre Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 21 octobre Atelier Bien Être - Rituel de Nouvelle Lune en Balance avec Adeline & Mary - 14 octobre Rituel de Pleine Lune et Sabbat Samhain - 29 octobre (inscription : https://www.eversports.fr/e/workshop/dszt6E1)   Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose de réaliser une méditation de Pleine Conscience autour des énergies de la Pleine Lune en Bélier de 2023. Il s'agit d'une méditation de bien être où nous allons nous connecter à notre coeur et aux énergies d'amour pour oser être nous, authentique et bienveillant. Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui niveau 1 avec Mary - 30sept-1oct Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 30sept Atelier Bien Être - Rituel de Nouvelle Lune en Balance - 14 octobre Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram Prends Conscience Instagram de Mary    Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui, Adeline vous propose de réaliser une méditation de Pleine Conscience autour des énergies de la Nouvelle Lune en Vierge de 2023. Il s'agit d'une méditation de bien être où nous allons harmoniser ensemble nos énergies, pour accueillir avec sérénité le changement proposé pour ce nouveau cycle. Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui niveau 1 avec Mary - 30sept-1oct Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 30sept Atelier Bien Être - Rituel de Nouvelle Lune en Balance - 14 octobre Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram Prends Conscience Instagram de Mary     Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Aujourd'hui je vous présente la toute nouvelle saison du Podcast Prends Conscience !  De nombreuses nouveauté arrive pour cette nouvelle année avec notamment les méditations de Pleine et Nouvelle Lune. Des minis méditations, excercices de respirations, points astro et numérologie du mois !  Pour être au courant de toutes les actualités rejoignez nous sur : @prends__conscience  Événements à venir :  Stage de formation en Reiki Usui niveau 1 avec Mary - 30sept-1oct Atelier Pleine Conscience et Écriture Intuitive avec Adeline - 30sept Atelier Bien Être - Rituel de Nouvelle Lune en Balance - 14 octobre Consultations Individuelles : Adeline : Professeure de Méditation et Pleine Conscience, Cartomancienne, Astrologue, Numérologue. Sur Céret (66) ou via Google Meet. Guidance Spirituelle : guidance par tirage d'Oracle, Tarot, pour répondre à vos questions du moment et vous guider dans vos prises de décisions. Guidance/Soins : il s'agit d'une guidance spirituelle à la suite de laquelle je vous propose un soin énergétique adapté à ce qu'à révéler la guidance. Accompagnement individuel “Conscience de Soi” : un accompagnement complet pour travailler différents aspects à l'aide d'outils de psychothérapie simple, psychologie positive, PNL et Méditation MBI.  Thèmes Numérologiques et/ou Astrologiques ➡️ réserver votre accompagnement individuel avec Adeline ICI  Mathias : Hypnothérapeute, Magnétiseur, Lecteur en Annales Akashiques, et Sonothérapeute. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. séance d'hypnose Ericksonienne,  séance d'hypnose Arrêt du tabac,  séance de magnétisme énergétique,  lecture annales akashiques Mary : Energéticienne, Canal, Maître Enseignante en Reiki Usui, Karuna et Shamballa, Sonothérapeute, et Lectrice en Annales Akashiques. Sur Céret (66) ou soins à distance. une séance énergétique (enfant, adolescent, adulte) un massage sonore une lecture akashique  un massage du ventre certifié Chi Nei Tsang une séance SVH une cure minceur des 3 corps Rejoignez nous sur nos réseaux sociaux ! Vous y retrouverez toutes les informations sur les événements à venir chez Prends Conscience et soignez les premiers informé.e.s du lancement du Site Prends Conscience. Instagram d'Adeline   Instagram de Mary  Instagram de Mathias Retrouvez nous sur  Youtube  Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Hoy hablamos de dualidad en la vida, qué significa, cómo funciona y cómo es que nos relacionamos con todo en la vida desde esta visión de dualidad que muchas veces nos limita y nos afecta emocionalmente.En este plano percibimos al mundo en dualidad, existe el día y la noche, el cielo y la tierra, la luz y la sobra, el amor y el miedo y así también nos relacionamos con todo, tenemos la visión de calificar o juzgar en los dos extremos: lo bueno  y lo malo. Y con esta visión muchas veces nos limitamos y dejamos de ver el todo.Platicamos de este tema con Mariana Eguiarte, ella es orientadora en vinculación, certificada Chi Nei Tsang y sexualidad shamanica, Meditación somática y trabajo terapéutico a través del agua.Desde hace 7 años ha tenido la oportunidad de ir viajando y compartiendo talleres, clases y terapias por diferentes partes del mundo como Berlín, Suiza, EUA, Nueva Zelanda, India, Australia, Thailandia y México.Está también certificada en Agua terapia en Pai Thailandia y en la  formación para terapeuta en vinculación y constelaciones familiares en vincalma mx incluyendo la terapia del abrazo.Cuenta con una certificación  en massage y chi nei tsang medicina taoista. (Pai y Koh Phangan) y como  maestra de Qi GongFormación de educadores en movimiento somático. Nivel 1 en ISTA sexualidad sagradaSu trabajo se basa en la exploración humana, patrones de comportamiento, heridas, trabajo de niño interior, trabajo sistémico.La puedes encontrar en: @MarianaPeksHolistic (Facebook page)@Eldiariodeunencuentro (instagram blog)Suscríbete para apoyar al podcast y comparte tus episodios favoritoshttps://www.instagram.com/aha.mx/?hl=eshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv8U1AvWPzorcjRnTn0xB9ghttps://m.facebook.com/ahamomentsmx/postshttps://www.instagram.com/mindbodypau/?hl=eshttps://www.instagram.com/valeriabenavidesb/?hl=es

What are the parts of yourself that you avoid, judge, or even downright hate? These can be considered our shadows, and when we avoid them they seem large and overwhelming. In the latest episode we shine a light on this topic which makes it all more workable. My guest to explore this topic is Mariana Eguiarte. She's a bonding Counselor who works with water, emotions, the inner child, Chi Nei Tsang, sacred sexuality, and shadow work. She's been in the emotional healing path since 14 Years old, with experience using different tools for herself, for 20 years, and others for over 8 years. She's an expert at finding the deepest lies that we as humans can say to ourselves and working to heal those defenses. She's passionate to share the best tools with others, which are often both the simplest and the most effective. You can find her on both Instagram and Facebook to connect with her. https://www.instagram.com/marianapeks/https://www.facebook.com/MarianaPeksHolisticI'm now on TikTok and Twitter! Check out @justinwenckphd there for super quick ways to relax, energize, and connect.Remember to check out The Tuesday Twenty Minute free meditations I do every Tuesday at 12:05PM PST.justinwenckphd - You Tubejustinwenckphd - FacebookCatch the recordings if you can't make it live.Got a question or comment about the show? E-mail me at podcast@justinwenck.com. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode! Then connect with me at  JustinWenck.com, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn!  

Join Angela and guest Vaidya Sera Melini in this episode: What's the Deal with Intermittent Fasting? Sera Melini is an Ayurvedic educator working in a clinical setting and is an expert on digestion. In this conversation, Angela and Sera dive into a great conversation on the importance of timing for good digestion and the pitfalls of intermittent fasting. Learn more about: • Sera's journey to Ayurveda • The Western perspective of Intermittent Fasting • Using Intermittent Fasting in an Ayurvedic sattvic way • Implementing regular meal times as the first step • The importance of getting to know your own hunger • Daily and seasonal rhythms as helpful guidelines • and more! Sera Melini (500h E-RYT & Āyurvedic Physician) has been a lifetime student and accomplished teacher of Yoga and Āyurveda. She has been blessed with teachers who have searched classically for the patterns of the Universe and Spirit. Her studies and experiences in the realms of Yoga, Mantra, and Āyurveda all serve to assist in increasing her depth, sensitivity, and simplicity in ways she lives and practices. Her primary source training has allowed her to be a dynamic teacher and facilitator of the modern age. Her goal is to contextualize things often taught in broad strokes so you can go deep instead of only wide. Her intention is to allow the teachings coming through her so as to catalyze the potency and wisdom already within you. This is the meaning of Yogavāhi. It is a substance that brings out the inherent power of whatever it is paired with. She is passionate about providing you with the foundational teachings that all of these years of study and collecting, so that you can walk away feeling like you know how to make decisions, how to apply Yoga and Āyurveda to your specific life in a way that is truly supportive, nourishing, and effective. Some of her teachers include, Andrey Lappa of Universal Yoga, Kula Yoga Project, Sankalpah College of Yoga (Yoga), Parvathy Baul, Sadhvi Abha Saraswatiji and Raghunath Cappo (Mantra), Vaidya Kashyapa Fischer, Dr. Vasant Lad, Vaidya Ravi of Poonthottam Ayurvedasram, the California College of Ayurveda, Dr. Claudia Welsh, Dr. Cate Stillman (Ayurveda), Antonia Ruppel, Vladimir Yatsenko (Sanskrit). Her teachers of touch include those at Sunshine School (Chiang Mai, Thailand) and Ohm (Omsala Chiang Mai, Thailand) for the wisdom of Thai Massage and Chi Nei Tsang.   Connect with Sera Melini: Instagram: https://instagram.com/seramelini.ayurvedayoga Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@yogavahiayurveda Website: https://yogavahi.com/ Email: sera@yogavahi.com     Start learning Ayurveda today when you join the Simple Ayurveda Collective: a self-paced learning program and community that offers Ayurveda broken down into bite-sized pieces to fit your lifestyle. Access mudra tutorials, guided yin yoga and meditation practices, video lessons on the basics of Ayurveda, have an ongoing support group OFF Facebook, seasonal suggestions, and more! Learn more: www.simpleayurveda.com/membership

Leslie Allyn Finkel is an author in "Awakening Starseeds, Vol. 3: Dreaming into the Future with Radhaa Publishing House. Awakening Starseeds: Vol. 3, Dreaming into the Future Back cover description: As old paradigm structures are crumbling and millions of people are gripped by fear and despair, a wave of awakening Souls and Starseed spans the globe, spreading the message of freedom, renewal, and the promise of a great Neo-Renaissance for humanity. Chapter by chapter, readers find themselves inspired to think beyond their old, ingrained belief systems and reach into their hearts and minds to step into the future they've always dreamed of. Grab a copy HERE: https://amzn.to/3PzmAwO.on a mission to free people from their traumas, pains, and everyday stresses so they can thrive and enjoy life to their fullest. He is the Founder of Unstoppable Healing™, where he leads clients to profound life and health changes using an ancient Taoist healing science called Chi Nei Tsang. Leslie is passionate about helping people heal holistically from the inside out. His clients report astounding results, including relieving chronic pain from accidents and physical injuries, releasing emotional traumas and anxieties, or eliminating digestive and hormonal issues. Leslie enjoyed a 31-year career in Information Technology. He devoted 26 years to the City of Phoenix Police, where he proudly administered all mission-critical systems, including the 911 Emergency System. He has a Bachelor in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tulane University and 25 combined years studying Chi Nei Tsang, Tai Chi, and Martial Arts. He is a co-author of the Amazon-Bestseller book Energy Healing & Soul Medicine: Stories of Healing & Miracles. Join us at: UnstoppableHealing.com/StarseedWay. https://www.amazon.com/Leslie-Allyn-Finkel/e/B09ZVR8TMJ%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share _____________________ Hosted by Joan of Angels

Celeste Yacoboni is a Minister of Walking Prayer, ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, California. Her work focuses on guiding and supporting people through transitions by creating a space of awareness, presence and inspiration, which integrates body, mind, spirit and emotions. She maintains a thriving private practice in Santa Fe, NM in which she facilitates healing and wholeness through Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women's Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono, and the inquiry "How Do You Pray?"

"This is probably the first time we've talked about the San Jiao meridian- the invisible Yang Organ System. The San Jiao is responsible for the transportation of fluids through the body. It's responsible for the functional relationship between various Organs involved with fluid metabolism and metabolism in general. It's between the Lungs, Spleen, Kidneys, Small Intestine, and Bladder, and it's paired with the pericardium. It helps the body transport lymphatic fluid and prevents toxic build up". - Mason Taylor    Today on the podcast, we're taking a moment to observe and acknowledge the ancient healing tradition of Gua Sha. A healing technique that spans ages and cultures, bridging the gap between the practitioner's office and the home through direct engagement with the physicality of our bodies. Mason runs through the specific techniques and details of using the SuperFeast Bian stone Yin/Yang Gua Sha tools- how to engage, use them safely and feel connected to this ancient wisdom and ancient lore. Mason explains the function of eliminating internal heat and stagnation through the gentle scraping of the Gua Sha tool, supporting and assisting the movement of lymphatic fluids through the San Jiao meridian system. The Gua Sha tool offers profound benefits when incorporated into a daily facial-beauty routine, offering lasting radiance and buoyancy to the skin. But it is far more than just an elegant beauty tool for the face- it is a safe and gentle way of moving Qi around the body and preventing disease in our daily lives.   "The San Jiao meridian is the regulatory capacity for the body to move between the lower dantian, the middle dantian, the upper dantian, and the three burners-the three centres. And when they're in sync, you're connecting the Three Treasures, the Jing, the Qi, and the Shen. Everything's being regulated, harmonised, and connected, and the waters are moving on".  - Mason Taylor   Mason discusses: -Facial Gua Sha for detox. -Why Bian Stone for Gua Sha? -Chi Nei Tsang organ massage. -Immune function and Gua Sha. -How long do we use Gua sha for? -Gua Sha and the lymphatic sytem. -Gua Sha and the meridian systems. -San Jiao- the invisible Yang organ system. -How to use SuperFeasts Yin Yang Gua Sha tools. -The distinction between facial Gua Sha and body Gua Sha.  -Gua Sha and the distribution of Qi through the Gallbladder. -Why the San Jiao meridian system is essential for detoxification. -Stagnation-an indication of disease and disharmony within organ systems.   Resource guide Guest  Mason's Instagram SuperFeast Instagram    Mentioned in this episode  Movement Monk SuperFeast Gua Sha Bundle SuperFeast Yin Gua Sha Tool SuperFeast Yang Gua Sha Tool Chi Nei Tsang massage (Mantak Chia)    Beauty Tonics Tremella QI BLEND Schisandra BEAUTY BLEND I AM GAIA BLEND. Radiant Skin Bundle Relevant Articles:  Schisandra and Detox Go Hand in Hand Detoxification Guide -  A look At The Body's Detox channels Relevant Podcasts: Healing Heat: Infared Saunas with Sebastian Mierau (EP#84)   Check Out The Transcript Here:  

Today on the podcast, we're talking about Beauty-in particular, beauty as it is understood and pursued through the Taoist lens. The Taoist embodiment of beauty could simply be summed up through the understanding that internal harmony is the key to external radiant beauty, and the preservation of youth. As within, so without. Our radiance- the quality of our skin, hair, eyes, nails, and how we hold ourselves physically, is an insightful indicator of our internal organ health.  But what are the elements of this internal harmony that deliver sparkly eyes, healthy skin, glowing Shen, animated Qi, and well cultivated Jing? In conversation with Sophia, Mason discusses the ancient practices, tonic herbs, and Taoist wisdom available to us in our pursuit of beauty through the many seasons of life. Rather than forming an unhealthy, unrealistic, obsessive relationship with beauty- this ancient ark of knowledge passed down from the Taoist immortals will keep us in an embodied, balanced, holistic pursuit of beauty- one that supports the cultivation of us evolving into graceful, wise, Shen-filled elders. Mason also goes through the beauty-focused, single tonic herbs and tonic blends within the SuperFeast range- explaining why we love to use them and how they deliver external radiant beauty; from within. This conversation is a beautiful Yin/Yang dialogue between Sophia and Mason, with many pearls of beauty-wisdom, both practical and esoteric. Make sure you scroll down to see the many topics discussed in this episode.     "As we go along, we need this barometer to ensure the body is being preserved enough. Do we have enough juice, enough sexual juices- enough Yin essence to ensure we can go through these graduation cycles and evolve into truly beautiful elders"? - Mason Taylor   Mason and Sophia discuss:  - Ageless beauty. - Blood and beauty - Spleen and beauty. - Fertility and beauty. - Shen is radiant beauty. - Preservation of Yin Jing. - Schisandra for hair health.  - Beauty and Shen development. - Herbs that regulate the Liver system. - The preservation of health as beauty. - Signs that your youth/health is deteriorating. - Lung function, Qi cultivation and beautiful skin. - Chi Nei Tsang for healthy organs and radiant beauty. - SuperFeast herbs that support the embodiment of beauty.  - Why the Liver health is a critical key to embodying beauty.    Resource guide Guest: Mason's Instagram SuperFeast Instagram  Jost Sauer Organ Wheel poster Stephen Harrod Buhner Books Beauty Tonics: Tremella QI BLEND Schisandra BEAUTY BLEND I AM GAIA BLEND. Radiant Skin Bundle Relevant Articles:  Schisandra And Detox Go Hand In Hand BEAUTY BLEND: It's Amazing Health Benefits The Incredible Health Benefits Of Tremella Mushroom Relevant Podcasts: The Ancient Daoist Beauty Tonics with Mason Taylor (EP#29)  Deconstructing The Beauty Industry with Jessica DeFino (EP#152) Natural Beauty; Holistic Self Care and Dental Care with Nadine Artemis (EP#101)     Check Out The Transcript Here: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/beauty-taoism-mason-ep-173  

Celeste Yacoboni is a Minister of Walking Prayer, ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, California. Her work focuses on guiding and supporting people through transitions by creating a space of awareness, presence and inspiration, which integrates body, mind, spirit and emotions. She maintains a thriving private practice in Santa Fe, NM in which she facilitates healing and wholeness through Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women's Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono, and the inquiry "How Do You Pray?"

Jade's background is originally in law, which she studied at King's College. However, finding this career path unfulfilling, she went on to study Chinese Medicine and the College of Traditional Acupuncture. This lead her on a journey into Chinese Sexology and Tantra. Discovering the sexual wisdom of these ancient traditions, she was amazed by the poverty of the sex education she could access in Western Society. This took her on a journey to study and become an instructor with the famous Taoist Grand Master Mantak Chia. There, she discovered Tantric and Genital bodywork, and went on to study these modalities too. She developed her own system of Sexual Alchemy Bodywork, combining Tantric and Taoist Massage to elicit the same results as are achieved in years of meditation through a single bodywork session. Through her studies but more importantly experience with herself and her clients, she has become an expert on pleasure and orgasms. However, it is the potential of sexuality for personal development is what really fascinates Jade. She came to realize that sex is not about pleasure, it is about who we are. That our relationship with our sexual energy sets the tone for every relationship that we have. Jade is a certified acupuncturist and certified Tantric Journey Educator. She also has studied and holds qualifications in Bowen Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang and Karsai Nei Tsang as well as gynecological bodywork (with Martin Beaudoin), as well as being a Certified Universal Healing Tao Instructor.   More about Jade-https://linktr.ee/lotuslifeconsultancyhttps://linktr.ee/JadeLotusCoachingMore about Liz-Work- https://www.lizshealingtouch.com/Radio Show- https://www.voiceofvashon.org/raise-the-vibePodcast- https://www.buzzsprout.com/958816Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/raisethevibewithlizInstagram- https://www.instagram.com/raisethevibewithliz/Support the show

Tahnee Taylor joins us from Australia to chat about taking time away to process grief. She carries a tapestry of wisdom with an intersection of Daoist and Yogic practices. Currently pregnant with her second child, she shares how pregnancy, birth, grief, and death go hand-in-hand. We discuss:how Tahnee and Elena met in Peru in 2015why Elena chose Australia for her Griefcation™ after her father passedTahnee shares her personal experience of lossbringing in the confronting rituals of deathbirth practice as a preparation for dying awaketaking the first 40 days after birth & death to process/transitionhealing generational trauma 7 generations forward and backwardpractical tools, and techniques to support the organs and their meridiansthe body as an integrated being and all organs are affected by griefreceiving healing touch & being looked after by a therapeutic presenceAbout Tahnee Taylor:Tahnee is a Yin Yoga teacher, chi nei tsang practitioner and herbalist who is devoted to learning and listening to the language of the body. She offers online classes, teacher trainings and more.Visit her website at tahneetaylor.comFollow her on IG @tahneeyogaResources:The SuperFeast PodcastSuperFeast - Di Dao Medicinal Mushrooms and Tonic HerbsMantak Chia, Chi Nei Tsang, and Microcosmic Orbit PracticeSupport the showBuy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"Follow on IG @elenabox

Eva Williams is the founder of Golden Lotus; A divine online portal of meditations, movement practices, and sexual/spiritual energy education designed to cultivate spiritual awakening, sexual activation, and embodied sovereignty. This episode explores rebirth and the unfolding of the sacred feminine through preparation and activation rituals, with a deep dive into birth and pregnancy. Tahnee and Eva journey into the numinous layers of Eva's healing work, her Golden Lotus portal, her focus on cultivating and purifying the body through ancient techniques, sexual embodiment, self-pleasure practices, and the many dimensions of birth work. A healer and teacher with over a decade of experience in bodywork, energy work, and feminine sexual cultivation techniques, Eva carries a depth of knowledge that women need now more than ever. Currently, the way most women in society birth is within the structure of an over-medicalised patriarchal system. Sacred feminine lineages of natural birthing wisdom have been at large, replaced with time constraints, interventions, inductions, and regulations; The antithesis of a naturally unfolding feminine space. How did we end up here? With so much of her work focused on this space and where sexual embodiment falls into birth, Eva discusses the importance of birth preparation; From detoxing, orgasms, and opening the pelvis to the deep work of trusting the body and baby to do what they instinctively know how to do. This conversation is a deep weaving of energetic, sexual, and birth culture healing; For all women, past, present, and future.   "Many people come into tantra with a concept of a partner base in mind. But the way I was trained, particularly with my teachers in this more Sufi tradition, I never went into any of this work looking for my sexuality. I never thought I would only work with women; I never thought I would be working with birth. That was not my aim; My aim was to heal people. I worked on everyone. Ultimately, I wanted to find God. I wanted a very deep spiritual experience or a series of those. And over time, that guided me in that direction.  But there was a level of care and sobriety cultivated within me before I was put on that path. And this level of deep devotion and sobriety to my self-development was paramount".   - Eva Williams     Tahnee and Eva discuss: Doula work. Ultrasounds. Inducing labour. Foetal monitoring. Dolphin midwives. Birth preparation. Empowered birth. Tantric practices. Devine Female Orgasm. Self-pleasure practices. Feminine embodiment. Female sexuality and birth. The pelvis is a fluid body. Somatics and embodiment. Time constraints placed on pregnancy and birthing.   Who is Eva Louise Williams? Eva Louise Williams is a healer and teacher with over a decade of experience in bodywork, energy work, and feminine sexual cultivation techniques. She began her journey at 18 learning reiki and pranic healing, before becoming initiated into Kriya yoga (the lineage of Babaji) at 20, then went on to study Shiatsu, Japanese Acupuncture, and Taoist sexual cultivation techniques. She began teaching others at 26 and received the transmission for Golden Lotus at the age of 29. She currently has over 10,000 hours of experience as a bodyworker and teacher. Eva is also a doula, a birth educator, and an RYT 500 in tantric Hatha and kundalini lineages. Golden Lotus was founded to both serve and lead female seekers towards awakening and remembering Self-love & trust. It is a series of teachings that cultivate spiritual and sovereign embodiment; the focus lies in stabilising, purifying, and awakening through ancient techniques and spiritual secrets taught through a state of ritual and Holy full-body Prayer.     CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: goldenlotus.com Golden Lotus Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everybody, and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Eva Williams. I'm really excited to have her here. I've been following her work online and she's really aligned with what we do at SuperFeast. She's an explorer of this wide world of Daoist medicine through the Japanese lineage, but also, she waves in, from what I can tell, you seem to bring in all these beautiful, different traditions, Sufism, Kriya yoga, different types of feminine embodiment, Pranic healing, that kind of stuff. So I'm really excited to have you here today. I'm really excited to share with our community your work.   Tahnee: (00:37) And if you guys are interested, we'll talk about it through the podcast, but Eva has a whole lot of resources on her website, courses you can do related to different aspects of a lot of the stuff we teach at SuperFeast. So thank you for joining us here today, Eva, it's such a pleasure to have you here.   Eva Williams: (00:53) My pleasure. Thank you so much.   Tahnee: (00:57) Yeah, I'm so excited. I think I first came across you on Instagram and I've had a look through what you offer. I know you haven't studied with Mantak, but it really seems aligned with a lot of the work that I learned through studying with him, the feminine work around energy cultivation. Obviously, you've studied Shiatsu and Japanese acupuncture. So you speak to the meridians and all those kinds of things. Would you mind telling us a bit about your journey here? How did you get to be offering Golden Lotus to the world?   Eva Williams: (01:30) Yeah, sure. All right. My journey's been quite interesting in terms of length because my mom is really into alternative medicine. I remember when I was six years old and I just had this incredibly bad tonsillitis, it was to the point where I was being taken out of school for days and days every week. And my mom noticed that I responded really, really well to the osteopath that she would take us to because she used to take us all three to the osteopath regularly. And so the osteopath said, "Look, this kid is responsive as hell. You should just take her to a cranial osteopath because that will help."   Eva Williams: (02:12) So I started going to this professional cranial osteopath when I was six, and it was the only thing that assisted, it was the only thing my body would really respond to. So really, from an early age, my mom knew that, particularly me, I think my brother and sister definitely as well, but particularly me, if anything would happen, like when I was 13 and I had anxiety, my mom was like, "Oh, we could put her on anti-anxiety or we could do reflexology with Bach flower remedies." And also, I had psoriasis, I had developed psoriasis when I was 13. And psoriasis, for those of you who don't know, is a skin issue, and it's one of these just really stubborn, autoimmune things.   Eva Williams: (02:55) Anything that's autoimmune is basically, no offence to all of the fantastic doctors and the medical community, but anything that's autoimmune is basically in the realm of, "We don't really know what the fuck is happening, so here's some steroids. That's where we're at." And so I started trying out these different things and some of them are called like bowel neurotherapies, which are where you'd have a salt bath and then UV light therapy or something like that. And there's not a lot of sun in the Netherlands where I was living at the time. So I started getting into this world where every time I'd be going to this clinic, I'd be checking out the cards on the notice board.   Eva Williams: (03:34) And there'd always be like random things like Karma healing or like emotional Chakra clearing. And one day I found this card and I was like, "This is so good." I walked around with this card for like a week or two, and then I called the person. And I remember, as soon as I called her, she was like, "Yeah, how can I help you?" I'm like, "Look, I don't really know what you do. Do you speak English? I don't really know what you do, but I feel really like this is something that I need to try." And she was like, "Hmm, no, you need Dini." I was like, "I'm sorry, have we even met? I'm trying to book an appointment with you."   Eva Williams: (04:04) And she was like, "No, you need Dini." I was like, "Oh, okay. I need Dini." And then this woman was this like 75-year-old woman who looked so young. And she was like, "How old do you think I am?" I'm like, "We've been through this before." She was just amazing. And she barely spoke any English. And I remember I was 15 when I first went to see her, and she did Meridian massage. She did Meridian clearing and healing. She was just a healer, so she would tell me a bunch of different things, and then she would do this work on me. She would tell me things that I look back on now, I'm like, "Dude, she was so on point."   Eva Williams: (04:44) But at the time, I was like, "What the fuck is she talking about?" She's like, "You're taking on a lot from your father." I'm like, "Okay."   Tahnee: (04:51) What does that mean?   Eva Williams: (04:51) Exactly. And now, I'm like, "I'm that person." But it was quite a unique experience. And I remember when she first read my astrology chart, she just looked at me. And it was very Dutch. The Dutch are very dry, they don't beat around the bush, they're very pragmatic and straightforward. And she was like, "Wow, that's not good." I was like, "Why are you doing this to me?" So she started saying to me really early on when I was 15, 16, I didn't like high school, so I left high school when I was 15 to teach myself. She started saying to me really regularly, "You have to promise me that you will do this work." She's like, "Do you think what I do is amazing?" I'm like, "I think it's pretty out there."   Eva Williams: (05:36) And she's like, "Okay, but what you are going to do is this, but much, much more." And she's like, "You have to promise me." And my mom taught me from when I was really young that a promise is a really strong word and you don't use it if you can't keep it. So I was like, "Far out, man, this is my life ahead of me and you want me to..., " But she sent me to some other people, liquid crystal healers and all sorts of things, so I was getting into some really bizarro stuff. And I wasn't telling my parents that much about this because it no longer had this homoeopathic application anymore. Now, it was just like, "Fuck it, I'm going to go on a journey and meet the [inaudible 00:06:07]. See you later."   Eva Williams: (06:08) I was getting into some really out-there stuff at like 16, 17, but it was, it was really amazing. So I followed that thread and I taught myself, I homeschooled myself. And I got into a really great university. And so I went to university, everyone told me people are more free thinking in university, etc, etc. And I thought, "Okay, great." But actually I didn't find that, I actually found that the institutionalised information had just become denser. I didn't find that people were more free thinking, I found that there were more presumptions. And especially for someone who didn't go through the IB or the international baccalaureate programme, it was really difficult for me.   Eva Williams: (06:51) I had some really awakening moments, just some really jarring stuff happened where I was like, "I don't think I really belong here." And my dad moved to India that year, and so my brother and sister and I all went to see him in India. My dad's a geologist, so all around the house, ever since we were little, we'd had tumbled rocks, amethyst, turquoise, this or that. So he was always teaching us about all these crystals. So when my brother and I got to India, we saw the tumbled rocks, these beautiful amethyst, and we both took one. We were like, "Let's go to the Himalayas."   Eva Williams: (07:28) He's like, "Yeah, let's learn yoga from a really old yogi." I was like, "Yeah, let's go do that." So and I was like, "Dad, I'm taking this rock with me." He's like, "If you take that, you're bringing it back. That's my rock." So I took this amethyst in my pocket and I went into the Himalayas. And I met a woman and she... I wanted to study Reiki, that was my thing. She just looked at me and she was like, "Hey, look, I'm going to give you these codes for all the different levels of Reiki, and then I need you to come back and I want you to teach my level two students." I'm like, "Lady, I just walked in here. I don't know what Reiki is yet."   Tahnee: (08:01) I've got to learn.   Eva Williams: (08:06) "I've got a nab at this, I had a dream on the bus. There's a lot going on right now. I don't think I'm ready to teach people something I haven't learned." But what she was picking up on was that I could touch people and feel what they were experiencing. So I came back the next day, and I was just putting my hands on people and I just explained what I could see or feel. And she's like, "You need to promise me ... " I was like, "You know what, I've heard all of this before, my friend. I have heard all of this before." So I went back to the Netherlands to university, and I was doing my 30 days. You have to do this self Reiki thing after you do Reiki.   Eva Williams: (08:45) And during that period of time, I was like, "I'm not meant to be an architect, I'm not meant to be doing what I'm doing. And so I need to go." And so I gave away everything I owned and I said to my dad, "I'm free again." And he's like, "Yeah, great. You left high school twice and now you're leaving an international honours university. This is a great run you're having over here. I hope you put my amethyst back."   Tahnee: (09:07) Yeah. So proud.   Eva Williams: (09:10) He's like, "You'll face... " I'm joking. And he was like, "Okay, look, you've always been who you are, no one's stopping that. But what are you going to do? You should have a bit of a plan." And I was like, "Yeah, well, what do I have to my name?" He's laughing. He's like, "What do you have to your name? You're a broke student. You have nothing but a ticket home to New Zealand that I will give you until you're 22." So I was like, "All right, great. I'll take it." So I went to New Zealand for three weeks and I went for a Reiki session. And this woman, she did that same thing, she's like, "You don't need me, you need Barbara and you need Jan."   Eva Williams: (09:43) And I'm like, "Okay, send me the names." So I started exploring all these different modalities of incredible light work, just incredible, incredible things while I was there. I go down to the ocean and dolphins would come and visit me, and then I'd go see the healers, and they're like, "You called those dolphins." I'm like, "Okay. All right. Let's calm down." But now I'm like, "We all call the dolphins." Now, I'm like, "Of course, I called the dolphins."   Tahnee: (10:07) They're our people.   Eva Williams: (10:08) My allies. They came to me in my hour of need. It was just a beautiful time. And then one day, in my heart, I just heard... I was waiting for that moment where you hear it from within, because I have a very active mind, so I can make up whatever I want to hear. But I heard Melbourne from my heart. And I was like, "Okay, that's where it's going to be." So I called my parents, I'm like, "I'm going to Melbourne." They were like, "Oh, thank God, she's got a plan." And I went there and I thought I was going to stay doing something graphic design or something design oriented, because that's a big part of my passion in life.   Eva Williams: (10:42) And I found the Australian Shiatsu College, and I found my shakes. I found my Sufi shakes. And once I found these two things, everything else fell in line. Yes, I was initiated into Kriya yoga over when I was 21, which was amazing. When I was 20, still finding my feet, I hadn't found the college yet, I hadn't found my shakes yet. I used to lie in my bedroom listening to singing balls. And that was this one guy who I just loved, very camp, but amazing, but just incredible sound healer, just such an amazing heart and soul. And he would just put all this water in a bow and he'd be like, "These are the dolphin's ball, the dolphins are coming to sing us."   Eva Williams: (11:26) And he would hit it and he would play it. And it was like, oh my God, this man, I don't even know where he comes from, but he's amazing." So one day I fell asleep, listening to this and I woke up and how you know YouTube just plays. And I saw this image on my screen, and I looked at it and it was this blue light and this golden man. And it just said, "The golden body of the Yogi." And I knew in that moment this is why I'm on the planet. This is why I'm on the planet. And so then I found out who that was, and that was an image of Babaji. And so then I found out about Kriya yoga.   Eva Williams: (12:00) And it's interesting because when I had looked for yoga schools in India years before, the only ones that I had found that I wanted to go to were the Kriya yoga schools. And so I became initiated into the Kriya yoga lineage of the Babaji and then his disciple Lahiri Mahasaya, and then Sri Yukteswar, and Paramahamsa Yogananda. And that was the beginning of things unlocking for me. And then I found Shiatsu in oriental medicine, and I went on to study Japanese acupuncture. And then I also found a teacher, a female teacher, and she did a beautiful mixture of yoga and Daoist work with the Jade egg. And then through the studies that I was doing and her even teaching in the same building, I just made this place my home and we'd get all these amazing international practitioners.   Eva Williams: (12:50) I found myself picking up exactly what I needed from that, including doula training and all sorts of things like this that were going on in the space. And then I worked at a Japanese bath house after I graduated for five years or so, I think it was, or something around that. And I really was so lucky because even if you want to rack up hours as a practitioner, it's very hard to find a place to be doing flat out work as Shiatsu practitioner just right out of school. But I was able to rack up at 10,000 hours really quickly in my first, I would say, first six or seven years of work.   Eva Williams: (13:27) And then I went to Bali, I got married. I went to Bali for a honeymoon, and then I just decided I was going to move to Dubai because it was something I really wanted to do. And then about a year into being in Dubai, I was just lying in the bathtub and I just had this full download through my body. And these images came to me and all this stuff and I was just being told what to do like, "You need to write this down, you need to go and get these things." And I was told to build out a whole altar. So I had this massive altar. And I was just sitting in front of it like, "Okay, I now live in a church. What next?"   Eva Williams: (14:06) My husband, he was in Iraq at the time, so he wasn't home. So I was like, "Nobody's going to know about my weird little mat?" And then when he came home, he's like, "That's a lot of candles. Do you need to light all of them at once? Are we doing a séance? What's happening here?" But as I was doing this, the spirits of these different plants I've been told to buy exactly 13 were coming to me, people were sending me things. I was finding things that I'd had in my library for a long time, I'd just never seen them with that particular glow or from that angle, that a transmission was coming through.   Eva Williams: (14:41) And I basically just sat down and I wrote the 10 transmissions of level one of Golden Lotus, which is the eight extraordinary vessels and the 12 main meridians. Unless you do a practitioner training, I don't do Triple Warmer and Pericardium. So it's basically just the five elements. So water, wood, earth, metal as it were, and fire. And then the eight extraordinary. But we do the Chong Mai twice because it has the main vessel and then two other vessels. And for the purpose of female sexual cultivation, it's important actually to separate those two. And then from there, it just started unlocking, like level two became the three gates of orgasm and just the content was just pouring down.   Eva Williams: (15:28) And it was a mixture between a really pure transmission I was being guided to and led to, and then a really deep weaving of just years and years. I'm very, very autodidactic because I didn't go to high school even, so my ability to sit and research and work if I have the impetus is quite high. If not, guess what?   Tahnee: (15:54) Very low. I can relate to that.   Eva Williams: (16:00) I'm like, "Let's have a show of hands." I'm pretty sure everyone's like, "Yeah, that's a... '' So I was able to just channel this, and then it just was really natural that these two modalities, the way it's structured is that the level one is really about working with the Yoni egg, so the Jade egg. It's really about clearing your own body, detoxing and recentralizing through the pelvis. So clearing trauma in the pelvis, opening the sensitivity of the pelvis, and really weaving in the whole rest of the body to a pelvic alignment. So beginning to really understand all of these different reflex zones that we have in the body that all relate to the pelvis.   Eva Williams: (16:43) And I don't just mean the internal reflex zones of the different organ systems, I also mean really beginning to explore somatically the balance between the sacrum and the buttock and the stone and the breasts, or how there's different alignments of your pelvis and your jaw and your mouth. And there's multiple different ways that we can set up these reflexologies that allow us to have a sense that we're hinging from the pelvis. So it's very much about coming into that, and it's not supposed to be... It's supposed to basically teach you how to come into contact with your own energy, to disperse it through your whole body so that you can actually have proper tantra experiences and also to self-regulate.   Eva Williams: (17:23) Because the level two work, it's almost like we go from a pelvic central model out to the body. And then the next level is all more explicit. So it's like self-pleasure practises. Or if we do like a retreat, we'll do some touch exchange practises. If you come to my clinic, I will do internal work at times, things like this. And so that's very triggering work. And I've seen, because I have been in many of these schools with sexual energy, the lack of self-regulation that is taught before highly activating practises come into play. And I didn't like that.   Eva Williams: (18:02) And so while I didn't necessarily plan the way that Golden Lotus was channelled, it is a very deep reflection of the beliefs in the general that I've taken, which is that we need to prepare our body before we do all this highly sexual activating practise. Because otherwise, I think one of the big things in the tantra communities and things that's happened is, it's just become all about sex dressed up as something spiritual, you know?   Tahnee: (18:26) Oh, I know.   Eva Williams: (18:28) You're like, "Really? I've never come across this before."   Tahnee: (18:31) I'm just laughing because I spent some time at Agama Yoga in Thailand I have never laughed so hard. We did a 10 day silent meditation and we were asked to abstain from sex for 10 days. And every day, someone would ask, "I really feel like I need to have sex today. Could I possibly not have... " I was like, "So you guys can't go 10 days without touching yourself or someone else." I've never seen anything like it. So if you love Agama, I found it a really toxic culture. It was almost high school. I was really shocked.   Eva Williams: (19:10) It's infamous. It's infamous for this. My teacher went there, one of my teachers was there and she told me all about it. And then even recently, I was sitting with a friend and I was mentioning some of these things, and she was like, "Oh my gosh. One time, when I was at the very beginning of my path, I went to this place." And as soon as she said it, I knew. I was like, "I know where you were talking about. I've never been there myself, but it's infamous."   Tahnee: (19:37) It was an experience. Yes, I hear you.   Eva Williams: (19:37) I think that this thing is also, I think a lot of people come into tantra with a concept of partner base in mind, and the way that I was trained, particularly with my teachers in this more Sufi tradition and things like this, I never went into any of this work looking for my sexuality. I never thought I would only work with women, I never thought I would be working with birth. This was not my aim. My aim was just to heal people. I worked on everyone. And ultimately, my aim was just to find God, I just wanted to have a very deep spiritual experience or a series of those. And so that over time guided into that direction, I just saw the level of care and sobriety that was cultivated within me before putting me onto that path.   Eva Williams: (20:30) The level of deep devotion and sobriety to my own self-development was paramount. And so there wasn't a sense of like there was a real sense that I wasn't allowed to just mess around, I wasn't allowed to just go to whatever workshop I wanted or something. I was really guided very strongly as to what is an integrity and what is not an integrity as far as transmissions go. And I'm very grateful for that. At least it worked for me within my system of integrity. So then basically it brought the birth of this beautiful work and I think that people love it when they do it, and I think people do feel that they can regulate themselves through it.   Eva Williams: (21:12) And that work for me, very, very naturally falls into birth work. If you are learning how to move and you're learning all these different ways of detoxing and opening your body and then you're learning these three gates of orgasm, which is very specifically sent into the pelvis, so then we are really going into the semantics of the pelvis alone. If you're doing all of that work, that is the birth prep is just extraordinary. And so I developed that into a birthing programme as well, because we need more of that. I think that you're not really taught how much prep goes into birth until you're pregnant.   Tahnee: (21:48) And it's really not a great time then to be exploring.   Eva Williams: (21:52) No. Not at all because it's traumatic.   Tahnee: (21:53) Because of your trauma.   Eva Williams: (21:53) You can definitely do some work on it then, but you need some guidance and holding through that because unwinding trauma can take a really long time, the somatic body's not quick   Tahnee: (22:10) Not fast, very slow.   Eva Williams: (22:17) It really likes to take its time.   Tahnee: (22:17) Oh man, it's so true. And I think what is so interesting about what you're speaking to though with coming into birth work, I know for me, I did muntuk's work and I was having internal work there and working with eggs and clearing those, that whole period of time was big for me. It was unpleasant in some ways and really beautiful and powerful in other ways. But I came to birth and I remember thinking like, "If I hadn't done that work, I wouldn't be able to hold myself through pregnancy and birth the way I've been able to, through pregnancy and birth."   Tahnee: (22:56) And you are speaking to this sense of sobriety and this sense of strength and just the ability to hold your own energy and read your own energy and tune into it, I think that's the piece for women going in and it's like, you're going to have people try and tell you things that you have to filter through, your truth filters. You have to make decisions around your sovereignty and around your care that you probably... These are big decisions and you don't have much context for them usually. I know for me even being fairly educated, there's just stuff I was like, "Do I have to do this? What are the rules?"   Tahnee: (23:32) And I think if you don't have that strong foundation, I think that's stuff golden lotus, it sounds like it just provides that container for women to start to build that trust in themselves so they can go and then really be open to what is honestly the most incredible experience you can have as a woman. I know woman choose not to birth, but for me, profound, but a lot of preparation too, I think in my experience.   Eva Williams: (23:58) I think it's really underestimated how much prep it takes. And I think it's also, to understand that you've got so much content that you want to read about the spiritual, about the physiological, but also how much you've got to inform yourself around just-   Tahnee: (24:13) Practical.   Eva Williams: (24:14) Yeah. Just random medical stuff, because we are taught to just, if someone's wearing a white coat, they know. They wouldn't suggest it if it wasn't for your best.   Tahnee: (24:23) Is that true?   Eva Williams: (24:23) That's not true. And it's sad. It's so sad to acknowledge that, but that's unfortunately the truth. And so I'm in the process of putting together a programme now which really takes people, basically it's like a month-by-month programme. So you can buy the modules as a month or you can buy them as a whole. And it's got workbooks and meditations. It addresses the emotional, the spiritual, how far along your baby is and where they're growing.   Eva Williams: (24:57) And it really also, for me, there's like this very strong concept of, you have the mother, you have the child, and then you have the mother-child unit, this third that's being generated and they call it mama toto in Swahili, this concept of the mother-child. And to build a bridge between these things because one of the things that I've noticed in for example, certain modalities like APA, like the pre and perinatal psychology, people who do fantastic work is that one of the main... how do I explain this for people who don't maybe come from this context? Someone asked me recently, how can you tell if your doula is a good doula? How can you choose a good doula?   Eva Williams: (25:44) How many stars are there in the sky, my friend? And then immediately it came to me, I know it really... And I realised that the doula that I really, we don't even call ourselves doula's anymore because we consider ourselves more birth keepers or birth workers because the work gets so close to midwifery at a certain stage that the idea that you are not advocating for a client or all these sorts of things, it doesn't have a place when you get to a certain level of birth work. And these women, all of them speak to the baby individually to the mother. And immediately I realise, "Oh, if your doula will have an individual relationship to the baby, as they do to you, but they are there for you, to me, that's a good doula."   Eva Williams: (26:38) And I know that sounds strange, but I come very much from this concept that the baby is always the most conscious being in the room, born or unborn. And so if we can begin to actually... What I would love for more women to know is that a lot of women really get bogged down with this idea like, "It's me, it's my body. Yes, my partner's helping me, but I have to carry this. I feel heavy, this baby's relying on me." And so there becomes almost a scarcity of this really deep sense of drudgery or something related, or just a deep sense of lack of support that becomes related to birth.   Eva Williams: (27:10) And one of the things that I think is really important for women to understand is neither on a physiological level, not spiritual level are you alone? This baby is the one that will release the hormone that will tell your body and your stomach when to dilate. This child will send stem cells to heal your body into your blood. This child is there for you, and this child is leading this labour actually. So this child is bringing you energy and bringing you protection, and bringing you gifts of healing. And this moment is actually for you, it's not happening to you, it's happening for you.   Eva Williams: (27:49) So the moment that that child is born is your rebirth as well, it is your moment to also let go and let something new come through. And I think that interconnection, that interplay is what allows women to not just trust their body, which is one of the thing that I wish more people could establish prior to falling pregnant, we should call it rising pregnant, "I rose pregnant."   Tahnee: (28:14) It's beautiful.   Eva Williams: (28:16) But also that they begin to trust not just their body, but the baby. So they're like, "Yeah, my body knows how to do this and this, baby's got this, I've got it. Our relationship got it and my body's got it. So this is what's going to happen." And just really leading from that place. And for many people, that might sound fantastical, but the more that we're going to understand birth, the more that we look at what's happening with the stem cells, the more that we look at the neurology and the physiology of labour itself and the more that if you have done that previously, you'll know that this is real, this is actually what's happening, that there is this very deep exchange of support.   Eva Williams: (28:56) And that's what I think is the most powerful thing is when a woman trusts so innately in her body and in the child that has chosen her to take this journey, that bond is what's leading the labour. I just think that that's very powerful. So the course that I've developed is to try to assist with that, and then obviously is also bringing different movements for different trimesters because different parts of the body obviously get affected at different times, and hypnobirthing scripts and of dolphin and whale stuff going on there, because you know, our allies.   Tahnee: (29:31) It's so funny all the stuff you're speaking about. With my daughter, she's five now, nearly five, but I had a dolphin come to me while I was pregnant with her in the water. And she had me through the whole pregnancy, guiding everything. I was doing body work at the time and I had this really strong download that I had to stop. And I remember contacting my teacher, who's the female teacher of Chi Nei Tsang from Mantak Chia. She was like, "If the baby's telling you to stop your stuff," and I had this golden thread with her and she was this little golden being, so probably about, I think around two dissolved completely. It got weaker and weaker over time. But just all of that stuff...   Tahnee: (30:17) And I had a lot of stuff going on in my life when I was pregnant with her and she just held me like I was... I remember thinking, "I should be really stressed out right now, but I feel really safe and really held through this." And it took me a little while to realise that that was her contributing that to my experience. And I think that trust is something she gave me, which I think is a really beautiful thing. I'm halfway through my pregnancy now, I'm four months, but this pregnancies been really different for me. So it's interesting. I'm interested to see how they play out, because I haven't had that same sense of baby protection or strong baby messages.   Tahnee: (31:03) But I'm interested in that space because I think it's hard to talk about that stuff as a woman, the midwives I had were very practical, wonderful women, but they were very grounded and of the earth. And you had a textbook pregnancy and a textbook birth, well done? And I was like, "Yeah, but what about all this cool stuff that's happening to me?" And they were like, "We don't want to talk about that stuff." I was like, "Okay."   Eva Williams: (31:33) It's a shame actually because it's weird thing-   Tahnee: (31:35) I'm glad you're here.   Eva Williams: (31:35) What did you say?   Tahnee: (31:38) That I'm glad you're here in the world.   Eva Williams: (31:41) Dolphins are so important in birth. That's so important. People who are not getting this message, I'm like, "You guys have to... " I always tell my clients, I'm like, "Just Google." I'll be like, "Yeah, the dolphin midwives." And then everyone at the table laughed. I'm like, "Huh." Wait until you see it.   Tahnee: (31:57) It's true, Hawaii.   Eva Williams: (31:57) I know. And then I'm like, "Google it. You Google dolphin midwife." And people come back, "Whoa." I'm like, "Yeah, that's actually a"-   Tahnee: (32:01) And wasn't they doing it in Russia, the Google something?   Eva Williams: (32:05) They did, yes. Birthing to being, Alana's work was incredible.   Tahnee: (32:08) Because Jeannine Parvati Baker talks about it a lot in her work, and some other people have talked about studying.   Eva Williams: (32:16) I think the woman who found a birth into being, she had a centre in the Caspian sea where the dolphins would come in and people would just be freebirthing in the water, which is wild. And so we have over here, birth it's a very obstetric-run American imported system. It's pretty brutal. So we are looking at different birth centres talk of shifting some things around birth here because Dubai is like a playground in terms of, they're so open to new ideas. And people may not think of them like that from the outside, but they really are.   Eva Williams: (32:56) They're so innovative and there's some very special, very, very, very special energy to the Emiratis to the Bedouin people, just something very special. So we were looking at working with a very beautiful woman whose work I incorporate a lot into mine, her name's Dr. Gallery. And she has some beautiful, gentle birth clinics in London and things like this. And she said, "Oh yes, I'd love to come out and do something with you guys in Dubai, but I only want to work with the dolphins." And she's a full OB/GYN. And I was like, "You and me, this is going to work so well." I was like, "Scrap all the land we've found, we're going to the ocean."   Eva Williams: (33:43) I was like, "This is the future of it. This is the future of birth." And I think that there's a lot of beautiful places in Cairo and around Egypt as well like in Sharm El Sheikh and in the Red Sea that we might begin to also see really beautiful work with the dolphins popping up. And I know that a couple of people that I know have wanted to do things like this in the North of Ibiza, and South, but the problem is the water's very cold over there, so it's not really something that can work as well. But in these waters, when the dolphin comes to the baby, it is telling you that you are going to give birth soon. Maybe in this instance, I don't know where you were in your pregnancy.   Tahnee: (34:18) No. I was heavily pregnant. My husband I got engaged there, and we got married there. It's this very special spot for us. And I was standing probably naval deep in water and it came, honestly, I was terrified. I was not like, "Oh my God." I was like, "Ah, I think a dolphin is coming at me." And it whooshed so close to me. My husband was out deep and he turned around and saw the dolphin and was like, "Whoa." And then there was a whole pod behind him. But it broke off and came and checked me out. And they can sonar heartbeats and stuff so I was thinking it must have been checking me out and being like, "What are you doing?"   Eva Williams: (35:00) So what they do is when you're very heavily pregnant, if they come towards you and if they put the nose toward the belly or come very close to you, usually you're always going to give birth.   Tahnee: (35:08) I thought it was going to scare me.   Eva Williams: (35:08) Oh, what a lovely experience.   Tahnee: (35:14) I was not like, "Oh my God." Seriously, I was like, "Holy crap, is this safe?"   Eva Williams: (35:18) I know. Every time I was in New Zealand and dolphins came as well, I was swimming in the water and I just shot bowl upright and I was standing and I was like, "There's something in the water." And I'd hear these voices like, "It's okay." I'm like, "It's definitely not fucking okay." My instinct body was like, "This is not okay." And my spiritual body was like, "It's going to be okay." And every part of me was like, "That's fine, but I'm still going to stand because I can run, and those, they can swim. This is not my territory."   Tahnee: (35:45) It's true.   Eva Williams: (35:49) It's so true. But they can activate the labour. They can do this really strongly by communicating with the child as well. It's something very, very powerful.   Tahnee: (35:58) Super cool. And the indigenous people here where we are, they believe that they are their people. Every time I've been in any ceremony or anything they will speak to the whales and the dolphins here as being ancestors.   Eva Williams: (36:10) Yeah. They bring children.   Tahnee: (36:14) Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.   Eva Williams: (36:18) I believe they bring the children because they don't just turn up when a woman's very pregnant to assist in the physiological activation of the hormonal aspects of labour, many, many women will see dolphins on the night they conceive or at the time or just before conception. And whenever a woman's like, "Yeah, we're trying to get pregnant. Oh, I saw dolphins." I'm like, "You go have baby." I had a friend and she saw porpoises. They're not even dolphins, I was like, "You go have a baby." And they did the ultrasound and they tuned it back to that time.   Tahnee: (36:49) Perhaps they're related to a dolphin somehow.   Eva Williams: (36:51) I'm like, "It could be a manatees, I don't care, you're having a baby." I'm joking.   Tahnee: (36:59) An orca. Let's not get too crazy. But it's okay. Tell me about this primary thing. That's interesting, because I know if you're not aware of this, I don't know if we've spoken about this on the podcast yet, so the hormonal cascade that the baby triggers in the mother, this is all these beautiful juicy hormones like oxytocin and things that, A, make birth less painful, which is a good thing. And B, obviously also the whole cascade of uterine contractions, breast milk coming in, all of these things. So the baby actually triggers that. And one of the things that happens a lot in our culture is we induce, or if there's an obstetrician that my midwife shared with me who wants to induce everyone at 38 weeks in a hospital near us.   Tahnee: (37:40) And this kind of thing just terrifies me, and I have friends who've waited 43 weeks plus for their babies to come.   Eva Williams: (37:48) Especially plus babies.   Tahnee: (37:51) My daughter was 42 weeks on the day. And I just think, can you speak a little bit to women who might have fear around, "I'm getting pressure from my OB/GYN or my midwife to induce." I know it's a real slippery topic, but at least speak to that.   Eva Williams: (38:06) No, no. It's not. I don't think it's slippery at all, I think it's underdressed. And it's interesting, I remember, so here they've got DHA, the Dubai Health Authority, has a policy around a certain time. Even if your OB/GYN is more liberal, there's a certain red tape that they can't really cross. And so I remember the first hospital birth I did in Dubai, home birth is illegal here by the way. It's actually not illegal to give birth at home, it's illegal for anyone to assist, anyone who has a licence issued by the government could get it taken away if they assist you.   Eva Williams: (38:44) So if you bring in a midwife from overseas or for me, I'm not an OB/GYN or a midwife, so I'm also not really assisting people with home births here because I don't think that's necessarily a great thing to do. But if someone were in labour and it was progressing really quickly, rather than stress them out and shove them into a car, I think I know what I'd probably end up doing. But it's an interesting thing because I remember the very first one I attended, the OB/GYN was just pressuring my clients so hard and she was outside and afterwards she was crying.   Eva Williams: (39:20) She's like, "I don't know what to do." And so obviously, as a birth worker, I've got 117 different things to pull out of the cupboard because I'm acupuncture, Im like okay acupuncture, we've been doing Homoeopathy week, 36 or 38 at that point, let's try some different homoeopathy, maybe something that's addressing more of the fears and emotions. Let's do massage, let's do the dirty three, hot food, a glass of wine and have some sex, all of that. And then also internal work, massage the cervix, check how it phased someone is, just at that stage of pregnancy. So we did a really beautiful ceremony of her husband and her on the bed, and I did the internal work. It was very dark. We put on music.   Eva Williams: (40:10) And we just really checked out what was happening, what the engagement was. So not a vaginal exam, but just to actually see, and definitely not a sweep or something, none of that stuff I'm trained in, but just really actually to feel how the effacement was going, how the pelvis was feeling, what was actually getting caught up in the pelvic. Was there something caught up there or was she just not ready? And for me, it was really clear that she's just not ready. It's her first baby, it's 39 weeks and the baby is just not ready. It's not coming yet.   Eva Williams: (40:38) I think that what's difficult about getting pressure... I remember after this situation, I gave them all these techniques. I said, "We're going to make a plan. Don't worry." And they felt better, and I went to my car and I just fucking sat in my car and cried for 20 minutes. The sense of stress and pressure, and it's not even my baby, that happens in that room when a doctor strong arms you and tells you that what they know is right, when it may not feel right for you, is so intense. And I know that doctors don't fully understand that. I know that OB/GYNs, not all of them fully understand that. I have the great privilege of working with many who do.   Eva Williams: (41:17) And I remember during this labour, I was sitting out in the hallway and I was just crying. And the doctor came to me and she's like, "Why are you crying?" I'm like, "Dude, you're pushing so hard. This is ridiculous. This is going to end really not well." And then she started tearing up and sat down next to me. And she's like, "It's just a lot of pressure." And we were just having this full heart to heart, just weeping in the hallway. Like, "What the fuck?" But it managed to buy me another 48 hours for my clients, which is amazing.   Tahnee: (41:46) Good work.   Eva Williams: (41:52) It's so much pressure. It's so much pressure. The thing is that there's very little that actually requires induction. Things that do not require induction, your baby is too big for your pelvis, it's a big baby, your baby has passed 40 weeks, meconium has passed, the cord is around the neck. These are not reasons for induction and they're not reasons for C-sections either. It's just very intense. I think some something that people don't understand is that an OB/GYN or a medical professional on your birth is someone that you want there in an emergency situation, they have no requirement to witness physiological birth. They have none. They do not have to witness a single, natural, physiological birth as part of their training, they have to do surgery.   Eva Williams: (42:48) So their whole frame of reference is coming that birth as an emergency. They have never had to sit. If you ask an OB/GYN what's a normal to long labour, I had an OB/GYN tell me that 10 hours was a long labour. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, what are you guys having? Have you got a slip slide set up out here." I was on a midwife tour recently in Aspen, someone's like, "How does labour take?" And the midwife's like, "It can take up to two hours." I was like, "What?" If it's your fourth baby and you're at nine centimetres. It's just ridiculous.   Tahnee: (43:19) Wow.   Eva Williams: (43:19) Yeah, I know. I know. And I always think to myself like, "Wow, I think that 40 hours of fairly active labour is long." I think that labour from early labour onward can go on for a week. That's the sort of time I'm willing to just give a woman and her body to just dilate at its pace and do its thing, and it's just unheard of. So if people are getting pressure to induce and it's funny, because we've made this thing over here and we're not doing it yet, but it's a couple of doulas and I have this, it's kind of our joke, but I also want to do it. And it's going to be for women who for partners, 36 and 37 weeks onward, and it's going to be the induction group.   Eva Williams: (44:01) Basically, you all come together and we watch a funny movie or a beautiful movie about birth, and you get a glass of red wine. We're not getting hammered over here, but you get a glass of red wine. We have some food, whether it's Indian or Thai, something with a little bit of spice, a little bit Mexican or something, and you just share. And you can share if it's stressful, you can share if it's funny, we share content and information. And then if you want to stay for the second part, we teach something like certain techniques, maybe not actually internal, but certain techniques like clitoral stroking or labial massage or hip massage or things like that that your partner can do that will assist in your hips getting ready and things like that.   Eva Williams: (44:42) And just from 37 weeks on, everyone is welcome to just join, come, have that glass of wine, just get a move on. Do a bit of dancing, have a bit of laughter. Because the group, you share more pheromonal energy. Because that's something that isn't readily shared, adrenaline and cortisol inhibit oxytocin. So if you're stressed, you cannot go into natural labour, they inhibit one another. So if women are feeling stressed about being induced, the thing that they really need is they need to disconnect from the timeline of intensity, they really need the opportunity to disconnect from that.   Eva Williams: (45:17) So if the doctor's pressuring you and says, "Okay, well take your time, but I need to see you again in two or three days." Don't go, don't go in two or three days. If they need to see you again, they can see you in a week. All they're going to do is an ultrasound and whatever, maybe a sweep. Give yourself the space that your body needs. And also, really, really, really take your homoeopathy from 36 weeks, from 36 weeks, be taking your homoeopathy and be taking just this very gentle way of beginning to release the stress on the system. Take the aconite, take the arnica.   Eva Williams: (46:00) Another thing that's really important, and again, this all goes back to prep, because if you're doing everything at the last moment, you're going to be dealing with a lot. In the programme that I run, around third 30 to 34 weeks, in between this time before your GBS test, we explore different internal works. And not necessarily me doing that, but maybe it's related to sex with the husband, maybe it's related to self-pleasure, maybe it's just internal gaze and interception kind of meditation, but we start unblocking and unlocking anything that might be held in the pelvis.   Eva Williams: (46:37) And then also, if you have a chiro, there's the Webster technique, or if you have a Bowen therapist who can do the sacral... There's a series of sacral releases that they can do. Anything you can do to prepare your body, to feel really good and open, speak to your cervix, ripen your cervix, yourself, speak to it, see beautiful pink light moving through it. All of these things work, they really, really work. And what doesn't work is being pressured into having a baby, it just doesn't fucking work. There's no evidence to support that it's ever worked.   Eva Williams: (47:11) It's insane, even with the foetal monitoring, even that, there's the only proof that it actually has any benefit is it there's no proof. The only thing that it's actually done is increased C-section rates. And so, these sorts of things, we have to just be really mindful of what the outcome is. Is the outcome an alive baby or is the outcome an empowered woman who knows herself and knows her body and can recover in the postpartum process because she's actually connected to the child, because oxytocin is also a huge part of recovery. It's what's bringing the colostrum and the breast milk, it's what's actually involuting the uterus.   Eva Williams: (47:52) So if we don't have this connection from the outside, if we're having those issues, then we also face a much longer recovery period. And that's when you really begin to see from an emotional perspective, from a body work perspective. If I see diastasis, like a herniated diastasis or something like this, for me, that's always that the woman has been opened in the birth process, but she hasn't had the closing afterwards, so she has no centre. Can you imagine what it would be doing to your back, to not have your rectus abdominis working? Basically, your back would be as stiff as a board, and that's a woman who feels that she's not supported. She hasn't been supported through that process.   Eva Williams: (48:37) I don't know, this stuff is so intuitive and natural, it feels so natural to say, but we aren't there as a culture of medicine and we're not there as a culture of birth yet either, and it's difficult. And there's a way I just want to say to people, just protect kept yourself. But I actually love working with OB/GYNs and I do love working with the medical system when they get it right, and they very often, if you find the right people and places, they do get it right. I had a doula complain to me the other day about how, at this one hospital that's really great here, the midwife didn't even turn up and the baby just came out.   Eva Williams: (49:17) And I was like, "Is this a complaint? This is a complaint that the baby just naturally came out and the mother caught her home own baby?" I'm sorry, I don't feel the same level of stress around this that you feel. It's so beautiful to hear about less managed births. And this is for those people who are being pushed toward induction, this is called active management, basically, of expectations in relationship to doctors. And another thing to understand is that 40 weeks doesn't really mean much.   Tahnee: (49:52) So arbitrary.   Eva Williams: (49:54) It's insane. I'm not standardised by that. Some hospitals do it from the first day of your last period, some do it from the last day of your last period? It's just ridiculous and there's no evidence that proves that. I think of 10% of children come on their due day.   Tahnee: (50:11) Not good odds-   Eva Williams: (50:12) I know, right. Yes. And everyone wants to be fucking Natalie Portman or Kate Moss or something. And guess what, 1%. You know what I mean? It's one of these expectations that we set up. We are lying to women when we tell them that they should be fitting that mould, and we are taking away from them the opportunity for them to make their own mould of what it looks like. So contentious. It doesn't actually feel that contentious, it feels really straightforward, but whatever.   Tahnee: (50:39) Well, it's interesting because I think one thing for me with birth too, it felt like... I don't want to be in the feminine/masculine, for me, time when I'm in a feminine space, linear time is not a thing. It's not real, it doesn't exist and there's this just natural unfolding of things as they are. My feeling around birth was very much like we're trying to apply this very linear masculine dimension to it and it doesn't exist like that. I think this idea of 10 moons or being able to see it in this sense of it's with them and it's a flow, but it's not something that's going to happen on a day. I'm struggling with it right now, people are like, "What's your due date?"   Tahnee: (51:33) And I'm, "Well, I don't know, sometime in April." And they want a due date. Well, I do know it's April 1st, but I don't believe my baby's going to come on April 1st.   Eva Williams: (51:44) I can tell you what I do always is I just take the full moon of that month. And I was like, "She's not due, then she's due in the beginning of the month." I'm like, "I don't care."   Tahnee: (51:56) That's when they come.   Eva Williams: (51:57) The baby is now officially due on the full moon. Baby's like a full moon, that's what's happening. It doesn't mean we won't prepare and I don't necessarily calculate my weeks from that, I'll do it from that ultrasound or whatever. And the programme that we are doing is a 10-moon programme, it's 10 modules and they're 10 moons. Yeah, it's just recognising that children have a rhythm, it's not something that we can set or determine. That rhythm is related to obviously the tides of our own life. Some babies like a new moon. There's no set rules, you can't apply them one way or another, like you said.   Eva Williams: (52:33) And I love this idea that, look, birth is very much about learning about abundance, about our own abundance, that we can actually create a whole other being. It's this radiant space that we enter into. Adding scarcity of time to that means that a woman feels a scarcity of space. And if she's feeling a scarcity of time and space, as these two things do manifest together within her own body, you're taking away the whole dimension and realm that she needs to live inside of during her birth, like you said. It's this feminine space. And that doesn't mean that we can't have a plan during pregnancy, it doesn't mean that certain practises won't be better at different times.   Eva Williams: (53:12) It doesn't mean any of that, but it's the invasiveness of how we treat birth needs to stop. I'm working on a new project right now, and I'm very excited about it and I can't say much about it, but what I can say is that one of the main focuses of it is the removal of incredibly invasive techniques. And some of them aren't even necessarily invasive, they're just fucking disgusting like the gestational diabetes test.   Tahnee: (53:40) Oh, that was the only fucking thing I did last time. And I was like, "This is the most sugar I've had in my entire adult life." Maybe as a kid, I gorged on Lollies, but other than that." That's the only time I was sick in my pregnancy was after that.   Eva Williams: (53:54) Yes, so many women have said to me like, "Oh yeah, definitely, the most traumatic thing of my pregnancy was that time."   Tahnee: (54:01) I was like, "Fucking hell, guys." It's like nine Coca-Colas or something. I'm like, "Great."   Eva Williams: (54:07) And it's not necessary. It's not necessary because there's so many other ways to remediate or even to tell. And what was so funny is, I was with a client recently and she had to shift OB/GYNs because on her due date, the original OB/GYN is not going to be there. And so we had just gone to that OB/GYN and said, "Look, we're opting out of this." And she was ready to fight. She's like, "I don't want this person." I was like, "Just chill. I'm sure they'll be fine with it." Don't go in for a battle, that's one thing. All birth workers, everyone, just don't go in for a battle. If you have to put your armour on, do it, but don't go in for a battle. And the doctor was like, "Huh. I've been in birth for a long time and I've seen a lot of incredible advancements and devices and ultrasound and all sorts of things really. And yet they still haven't managed to make something less disgusting than that drink. That's okay. Don't worry about it."   Eva Williams: (55:01) Even an OB/GYN was like, "Yeah, you'd think we'd gotten to this level, but really it's just Lucozade, sugar." And then we had to go to this other one and really communicate once again like, "Hey, the preference is for this off the table." And she just was like, "That's the most disgusting drink in the world, I wouldn't push that test on anyone." I was like, "Wow."   Tahnee: (55:19) Amazing. That's a good change in culture. [crosstalk 00:55:22]. What's your rate on ultrasounds in general? I haven't spoken about this much on the podcast either, but I do get asked about it a lot, and there's the one side of it where people are like, "It's good to know and it gives you that reassurance." And then there's the other side, which is probably more of the side I'm on where it's like, "What would it tell me that actually... What benefit would that information actually give me?" So I'm curious as to your take on that as a birth keeper.   Eva Williams: (55:53) Well, it's a great topic. One thing I can definitely say is, you know your body, you've done a lot of work with your body. I have also clients who are just super on it, and yet sometimes, and I'm thinking of one person specific, that if a woman, for example, has a miscarriage or something like this, even if she isn't someone who would naturally or usually lean toward wanting ultrasound or something like that in that early part of the next pregnancy, it brings an enormous amount of relief to know that everything's going healthy.   Tahnee: (56:38) Reinsurance.   Eva Williams: (56:38) Exactly. If you have chromosomal issues in your life, those 12 week tests, in your family, for example, or even the 20-week morphology exams, they can bring a lot of knowledge. So from my perspective, what I usually say to women when they say, "What do you think is necessary, blah, blah." I said, "The first thing that's necessary is anything that will bring you comfort. If your level of comfort and certainty and anxiety will drop with each or any of those visits, then those are the ones that are necessary, because your emotional and mental wellbeing is more important to the baby's health and growth than anything that an ultrasound is going to do to your body. That's my perspective.   Eva Williams: (57:25) And then usually, they just say that the main tests that are important are your morphology, your 20, 21-week scan, and that's really just to see if there's any... For those of you who don't know, that's not really an ultrasound, it's a full building out of, they check all of the different organs.   Tahnee: (57:44) It's pretty cool. I was like, "Whoa. There's a kidney and there's a... "   Eva Williams: (57:53) They go in, they check all the tissues, they check the formation of the organs. This is technology that I'm grateful that we have because it can put a lot of decision making power into people's hands. And simultaneously, I know a lot of people who aren't down for it, they're like, "No way, that's even worse than an ultrasound. That's super intense for the baby, blah, blah, blah." For me, it's all about comfort. And I have had a couple birth workers recently and clients saying, they're like, "Well, I know you're very pro natural birth and this is not."   Eva Williams: (58:26) I'm like, "Hang on a minute. I'm not really for or against anything, I just don't really have a role to play. If you're planning a C-section... " I know what the body is capable of, and those are personal experiences that I've had. You can't take that away from me or I cannot pretend that I don't know what the physical body can do and what we may need to train for, but can actually get what this experience can be. So I can't take that out of my being that if you know that that's available, that you gravitate toward it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I am anti anything."   Eva Williams: (59:03) I've had my time being anti epidural, and then I saw a series of Pilates teachers and yoga teachers who had super tight pelvic floors get an epidural after like 36 hours of labour, and just one hour, boom, baby was out. Really incredible experiences. Legs were still working, everything. So I can't go through the level of experience that I've had, I can't afford to fight anyone. I hate it in the birth world, I hate this, the fight that happens when people are... I believe in advocating that there's a point where if you can change that inside of yourself, you stop attracting moments to have those conversations. That's what I have found in my personal experience.   Eva Williams: (59:45) And so I try to just be very, very open, and the reason is because I don't necessarily need to specify what I will and won't work with, because I really only attract people that I really will be the right person for. But I would say, if someone is just like, "I don't know what to get and when." I would just say, "Look, the most standard thing is that you have a 12-week ultrasound, you have your 21 week morphology. That puts a lot of power in your hands. Look it up, do a little bit of research." And then usually, there'll be something as a bare minimum right before your birth, like a 36-week thing, and then we'll do a GBS swab."   Eva Williams: (01:00:21) And you don't have to do your GBS swab, you don't have to get that scan. You can just wait and go into labour naturally as well. But those are some of the options. And I don't believe that you need anything more than that, but I've been with women who are going every third day in the end of their pregnancy just to sit in a room for 20 minutes just to hear if the baby's safe and good. If that's wh

The words Di Dao (Di Tao) is a concept that most of our SuperFeast community would be familiar with, as it's the way we source our herbs. Di Dao herbs are of the highest quality and grown with integrity to ensure optimal, powerful healing properties. For a herb to be classified Di Dao, it must have been grown in its natural habitat; Which means the right region, soil, and microclimate for that specific species. The beauty of Di Dao herbs is they perform optimally, much like the human body when it is holistically cared for and nourished the way it needs to be. In this episode, Mason chats with Jansen Andre on The Awoken Athlete podcast about SuperFeast's commitment to Di Dao sourcing, herbs for optimal performance, and a holistic perspective of the nuances that affect performance within the body at all levels. Mason details the integrity behind Di Dao sourcing and how it ensures the livelihood of micro-farming stays alive; Continuing the wisdom and teachings of Di Dao within communities. Whether you're an athlete or not, we're all being physically, emotionally, and mentally pushed with our hectic, under-nourished lifestyles. This episode addresses the best herbs for lifestyle support and performance on all levels.      " Di Dao. Going to the spiritual homeland of the herbs and buying and growing them there. Far away from industry. You're getting the spore or the seed from that area and making sure it's a particular microclimate in which it grows. This is based on texts over 2,000 years old that tell you how to do this."   - MasonTaylor     Mason and Jansen discuss: Qi and performance. Cordyceps and performance. Adaptogens and performance. Jing, Qi, Shen; How they work. Comparing Di Dao and organic. Preventing injury and exhaustion. Jing; nourishing a solid foundation. How to take SuperFeast tonic herbs. Di Dao; growing, sourcing, and integrity. Disease, healing, and building the body back up. The colonisation and institutionalisation around healing ourselves. Performance in business and the freedoms of staying investor-free.   Who is Mason Taylor? Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason was first exposed to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Mason Instagram SuperFeast Instagram SuperFeast Apple Podcast The Awoken Athlete Podcast Mind and Body Peak Performance with James Newbury (EP#106)    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Jansen Andre: (00:00:00): All right, Mason from SuperFeast, thank you so much for coming on The Awoken Athlete podcast today. For those of you who don't know, Mason runs a beautiful company called, SuperFeast, which is based around tonic herbs. Do you want to give us a little introduction, Mason, about what you do and how did you even start?   Mason Taylor: (00:00:23): Yeah, thanks for having me on. As you said, SuperFeast is about to turn 10 years old. So I've been doing it for a while now. The majority of the time when I started out, what I wanted to end up doing was Taoist tonic herbalism. So it's that style of herbalism that springs from the classical texts of Chinese Medicine and gears more towards prevention, the cultivation of life, the cultivation of potential, having the ability to not fall into early degeneration and wasting away, which is what we see as the norm in the western world.   Mason Taylor: (00:01:01): And even though I was really interested in performance, I had that drive in my early twenties when I was exploring this to see what was possible for my body. I was really curious in that, from a business sense getting into herbs, I was really interested in the trajectory that I was on towards the 70 year old self and 80 year old self. And the only place, at the time, especially around herbalism, I could see conversation or I could see terminology around how to get into a lifestyle flow utilising things like herbs that in a western sense and even in a modern Chinese Medicine sense is used just for symptoms. If there's a problem, respond with medicines, with herbs.   Mason Taylor: (00:01:48): The Daoist approach, had a conversation of how to cultivate life so that you can put the odds in your favour more and more and more not to end up in practitioners' offices. Not that I'm averse to it. I like working with practitioners as well, but not end up institutionally dependent. I will go into terminology a bit later in describing what these, so the three foundational treasures are, in the body. So the elements that make up what either keep you functioning and stop you from degenerating, keep you large over your life and then ensure that your best self is coming through, is Jing, Qi and Shen.   Mason Taylor: (00:02:28): And I just had conversations and practises in herbal usage around how to ensure that we really guard these treasures. That just really translates to hopefully, if it's maybe a little bit more or a lot more when we enter into our elder stages. Which of course then is going to mean that throughout our entire life we're a bit more robust and healthy. When we get to those later stages, you've got a relatively strong body. Your bones aren't wasting away. That's the Jing.   Mason Taylor: (00:02:56): You're hormones in a foundational level, are able to stay adaptive and if you don't have Jing, it's what people waste away with hectic lifestyles, no sleep and all that kind of stuff. You've got lots of Jing when you're a kid and that's why you burn it at both ends, but then people keep that up and they don't adjust and they don't get wiser as they get older, therefore their bones start wasting, their hips, their body has no strength. They lose that foundational energy. That's Jing energy.   Mason Taylor: (00:03:24): And so we want to make sure that that's safeguarded as well as our Qi. That's what enables us to stay mobile and regulate our heat, regulate our fluids, move us. Basically put the spark in the machine. Living Jing is just like, just say your body is just this machine of potential and flesh and if it's not animated, it's just sitting there, you need that thing to be rock solid. You need it to be really strong and have a lot of genetic potential. That's your Jing. And then you put a spark in and it comes to life and you can move through the world and animate through the world and regulate all the functions of the body. That's the Qi.   Mason Taylor: (00:03:59): That's the other thing we want to be nice and strong in our body throughout our entire lives and then the point of that is the Shen. Which is essentially if the heart's really healthy, the heart fire, which is not just the physical heart. If all the organs are really working well and showing that the emperor that is the heart, is really flowing, then throughout our lifetime, our consciousness, our virtuous nature, are part of us that's determined to be less of an asshole and more of an awesome person that isn't projecting all over everyone and actually has the capacity to learn from experiences, go through psychological developments, let go of ideologies, step more into our own truth, so on and so forth.   Mason Taylor: (00:04:43): That comes forth and what you see then is if the Shen's really allowed to express as you get to 70 and 80 and 90, what you see in people who are just, you know, they are these people that have evolved themselves, they're not vomiting their opinion all over everybody, they're not resigned, they're not resentful, they're not fearful, they're not unable to forgive, stuck in their ways. They can be fun, they can take the piss out of themselves and they're someone who's not a burden on the family. Not that I'm not judging these things, but it's like, that's the whole conversation.   Mason Taylor: (00:05:20): That's a very diluted one around this concept of Taoism and then get rid of the word, Taoism, ancient Chinese philosophy kind of stuff. It's just humans that were just like, how can we can just make this... Just keep us healthy for as long as possible and it's not deity based. You don't have to buy into a religion or anything like that. It's just around your own potential and your own discovery path. And that's what I started to discover before I started SuperFeast and I was like, that's... I wanted to get into herbs and then I discovered there were these herbs that were in that longterm focus and intention, so I just jumped in then and I didn't focus on the herbs back then, because I didn't think there was a market for it.   Mason Taylor: (00:06:00): And then I did actual markets for years and then people were coming to me with bigger and bigger intentions around their health and I was like, well, the only thing that's really going to help from what I can offer, at least, medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, tonic herbs like Astragalus and the Lion's Manes and Ho Shou Wus and all these really, the precious herbs, the Taoists call them. The superior herbs. They call them the messengers from heaven.   Mason Taylor: (00:06:25): And so over the years I just kept on adding them in and I've started doing a few formulas and educating people about this style of herbs that is more folky and it's not about, a lot of the time, practitioners and especially modern Chinese practitioners are like, "No. Herbal practise is for us. We dish out the herbs." Like this and you can't meddle with that. And you go back to the classics and there are these herbs that are like, these are really safe. And really beautiful. And can be used with a little bit of education, as long as you're determined to keep on listening to whether you can use these in everyday life.   Mason Taylor: (00:06:59): And that's the point of it. Take out the colonisation and the institutionalisation around healing ourselves and keeping ourselves healthy. And so I educated more and more about that. And then at some point my wife, now wife, joined me in the business about five years ago. We started taking it a bit seriously, because I have a bit of Peter Pan syndrome and I run off doing whatever I bloody want all the time. And then we took it seriously and it started really taking off and now we're a decent enough company, still family owned in Mullumbimby here now. I started off in Sydney.   Mason Taylor: (00:07:28): And yeah, we have a bunch of formulas and really, a bunch of crew here, working and helping us manifest the mission to help people just take that little bit extra control of their body. Feel that sovereignty and their capacity to not just cross their fingers about not getting sick. And then also as well, having longterm intentions and just having relationships with these herbs. They're really beautiful. I mentioned a few there. It's like the Schizandras. I don't have Ginseng, but the Ginsengs, these herbs that everyone would have like... We started the Cordyceps. These herbs are, yes, they're adaptogens and people are using them in a really cool way to help their body become more adaptive and to get greater output.   Mason Taylor: (00:08:18): That's when you look at them as an adaptogen herb, a Westerner. This is an adaptogen that's going to help you adapt and get better output. And that's sick. But that's an agenda based kind of in, output, what benefit to me. And that's cool as well. I don't mind that, but an adaptogen herb, like Schizandra or Ginseng is a herb that's going to help you. It has a non-specific effect in the body. So you don't know where the markers in the body are going to go or where the energy is going to go. You just know that it's going to harmonise more. And so it's not just going to take the immune system up and stimulate it, for example.   Mason Taylor: (00:08:54): It might lower it in some situations, like autoimmune conditions. And then it has an accumulative effect on the body. So the longer you take it, the greater effect you see. And this is how the Russians describe adaptogens. And then also, it has a non-toxic, non-harmful effect on the body, which is basically what 2,000 years ago, the first medic, Shennong, was like, hey, these are the herbs you take that are non-toxic. But then, yeah, so adaptogens good, people are using them.   Mason Taylor: (00:09:22): But then tonic herbalism and Taoist philosophy and then you take away the Taoism, it's just the philosophy of having a relationship longterm with this herb to help a dream of your own or a vision of your own health stay present throughout your life. And you're an athlete and you can see a lot of athletes all of a sudden go, I really want that potential now, and it's a strong intent, but I also, I'm starting to realise that I don't want to come out the backend of my professional athletic career and be flogged.   Mason Taylor: (00:09:49): And they start thinking about their 50 and 60 year old self and so, the terminology around tonic herbalism starts helping to align your outer actions and your lifestyle to that longterm intention as well as taking a shit load of Cordyceps or whatever now, to in order to get a really good workout and recovery in this instance. So yeah, that's kind of a long way of answering your question.   Jansen Andre: (00:10:15): So, yeah. Overwhelming, but you mentioned and I know on your website that these herbs and plants you source are ancestral to China. But I read you kept it that way except for Cordyceps. Is there a reason for this?   Mason Taylor: (00:10:33): Cordyceps is in China. It's just the wild Cordyceps is really rare and expensive and unsustainable to meet the demand. And so there's a technology there to ferment it in a broth and so, still then, it's the only one, so it's our only mushroom that's not grown on wood, grown outdoors, that kind of thing. We've got a very specific sourcing philosophy that we take very serious and Cordyceps is the only one that isn't strictly Di Dao. For that reason, but we just do our best. We've got a really unique broth recipe.   Mason Taylor: (00:11:05): It's why our Cordyceps is unique and isn't just like all the other CS spores in the market. And we've got a team of herbalists who tend to it and we don't grow on grain which is a big for me. A big no no. And I definitely don't have hardcore judgement of everyone that grows mushrooms on grain, but I don't personally agree with it, because it's not the native food of a mushroom. The native food of a medicinal mushroom is wood. And there's an alchemical process that occurs when that mushroom is growing through the wood. It has an enzymatic reaction with the wood. Is eating the carbohydrates within that wild wood, right.   Mason Taylor: (00:11:45): Quite often, people are like, it doesn't really matter. You can grow on grains and oats and coffee and some people even grow on paper. And it's cheap. What we do is expensive. And having integrity a lot of the time and upholding in the sense of wanting to uphold a tradition is really expensive and a lot of people are like, look, it doesn't matter. There's similar biomarkers in the one grown on whatever, even like a [inaudible 00:12:10]. And that's what the scientific community goes, you can just pick out, that's what scientism does. You go, I'm going to pick out one variable to justify that ours is just as good as the others.   Mason Taylor: (00:12:22): But then if you go back into true science, which is thousands of years of usage and subtle understandings through thousands and thousands of practitioners and people that have laid down the foundations for science to then jump in and create variables on this kind of herbal system, there are certain things that aren't measured yet, that they are aware of. Like you need to do a complete, full extraction of that herb so that it's not just that one beta glucan or chemical that you're justifying the awesomeness of your product with. There's undiscovered chemicals which are symbiotic to the entire reason that this herb is being revered for 5,000 years knowingly. And probably further back than that.   Mason Taylor: (00:13:16): And that's why we just kind of let them speak for themselves. People often find a really science data, we're data driven, but a real, pick a variable and market it kind of product and then people are like, that's good. And then they'll kind of want more, because they don't want to just trust that it's good and good stuff's happening. A lot of people will find our stuff and then they'll take it and there's a little "je nais se quois," a little special something that's present in the herb that they'll go, oh, it just feels a bit different. And yeah, when you get longterm, you feel more safe and comfortable taking something that is complete and it's been grown in the way as close to possible that our ancestors and our immune system have evolved taking it.   Mason Taylor: (00:13:58): And so there's a special little softness and trust that you can ease in and as well, then placebos start getting activated which just means you're not anxious and tense and just you're not trusting the mind's data and believing in marketing. You can feel that there's something with substance and essence going into your body. And that's why, and I'm definitely not the only one doing it, this is a very ancient tradition, growing herbs Di Dao. Going to the spiritual homeland of the herbs and buying and growing them there. Far away from industry. You're getting the spore or the seed from that area and making sure it's a particular micro climate in which you're growing in. This is based on texts over 2,000 years old that tell you how to do this.   Mason Taylor: (00:14:47): And people are like, oh, but it's not organic. And it's like, yeah, you can buy organic certifications very easy and I like organic certification, but the way I... I could go organic really quickly. Or I could drop, I'd have to pay through the nose. It's exorbitant what these people expect me to send out there. It's a big business which is I'm like, well, I don't need to get you out, just pay you thousands and thousands to go to every single little micro farm. And these are micro farmers. These are villagers who we're growing from and that's why organic farms are these huge growing operations, which are really good and can do high output.   Mason Taylor: (00:15:30): And they're doing it really well, a lot of the time, but they're doing it in a way that's not, you can't go right up into the mountains and grow in that capacity. And you can't do it with wild wood in that capacity in order to cheaply be able to just get that person out to certify organic, that big farm, indoor lab that you're doing. As good as it is. And I really, like a lot of my friends who are competitors who do that, because they're then able to do actually do mass market stuff. But for me to go organic, I'd have to dramatically take a back step in effectiveness. Because I'm a little, first of all, I'm a small company and we also support people in the village, say where we're growing Reishi.   Mason Taylor: (00:16:13): Like one of our farmers, Mr. Li, is training other people in the village so that there's actually jobs locally. That's localising the industry. It's keeping it traditional. It's keeping it family owned. It's not this huge herb, these overarching companies that own all the farmers and tell them, like me having investors telling me you can't do it that way. You need to work this way. And I'm like, no, no, no, but we're going to lose the integrity and they're like, look, it doesn't really matter. If people don't know about that standard that you set and then majority of people won't really give a shit. And we're like, no, but I give a shit and that's the same with the farmers. They give a shit upholding this tradition and they know if they produce the best Di Dao herbs and we have people who know how to test that, try it.   Mason Taylor: (00:17:00): I know how to test it, try it and go, hey, the quality is, this never happened, but I've done it before when I was doing my testing of right in the beginning of knowing that they say that's Di Dao, but that's not true. And you grill them. They go, oh yeah, that's actually a commercial spore that we're growing with. It's not a wild spore, Reishi, from the area in which we're growing, because that's hard to do. And so, yeah, it's a very difficult thing to do, growing in this way. But it connects you to something. It connects you, you're going back to the source of these, why these herbs were revered and so those farmers that are growing this way know that there is an impact, a viability of their product, if they make it the absolute best possible and don't compromise.   Mason Taylor: (00:17:53): They know that there are companies like mine that will buy that top notch Di Dao product. And so we get a little, we get Mr. Li teaching a young woman locally, how to grow Reishi and the first few years she might not be doing the absolute best, but there might be a little bit of crème de la crème that we will be able to buy off her in the beginning. And we've got people going out there and making sure the area is clean. We test in TGA labs for pesticides, metals, aflatoxins, all and beyond, and then all these things that actually aren't needed to be tested for, but we do, in China and in Australia.   Mason Taylor: (00:18:32): And so what I would need to do for organic is send out this guy who charges thousands of dollars in order for me to maintain this little thing that they think is a marketing hole in one, is having an organic symbol. And pay him a thousand dollars to go this woman's farm, check it out, pay them, whatever, three thousand dollars a night for them to stay over the night and then go back and do some other little testing in order for them to go, yeah, I'm going to tell you what you knew already. It's good. There's no pesticides in the area. And is that worth it in order to support the localization? It's good, I want to support this woman, but I'm not getting enough Reishi, but I want to support her.   Mason Taylor: (00:19:17): And so these are the nuances of behind the scenes of how our company works. And I know you started talking about Cordyceps and we just went into discussing why it's a good question, why isn't Cordyceps at that same level as the other herbs. And it's just because we can't leave the crop in abundance. It's like Reishi. We don't do Reishi wild anymore. We did when we started. And now it just got too popular. Before it became an issue, we opted out and went to the best possible farming practise. And we've done that with Schizandra as well. In the beginning it was just like, there's just no way we're going to be able to ever get through this much wild Schizandra that's in Changbai Mountain and sure enough, yeah, actually when this probably doesn't seem too healthy.   Mason Taylor: (00:20:03): And we work with good local governments. We move provinces in China if they're irresponsible with the land management which I know people who like China, that's not true, actually no, it is true. There are local governments, some that are like ours, that are really harshly regulating the population of pine trees or the amount of pine nuts that are up in the Changbai forest and soon to be the only amount of Chaga that's been harvested in order to maintain and preserve. So we work with that, but then go beyond that just to make sure we don't strip the environment. You've got to leave it better than you found it.   Mason Taylor: (00:20:44): So yeah, we've gone now to, I think, the majority farming of... You know, it's still incredible Schizandra. It's still in the wild. It's still the most amazing Schizandra being pumped out, but it just makes it a little bit better for everyone. But yeah, I can't do that with Cordyceps. So do that in a broth.   Jansen Andre: (00:21:03): So you're adjusting, from what I gather from that, determining, depending on how popular or how much of a certain thing you're selling, you have to go back and look, is it possible to keep getting it from the same source?   Mason Taylor: (00:21:21): It's a never ending analysis. So the biggest at the moment is Chaga. So the last time I was in China, we were going up to Chagang to harvest Chaga up in, near the North Korean border, it's a mountain called, Changbai Mountain, a national park there. And they were just moving in the direction of, it sounded like there were some, the way it worked is the guys that would go in, they'd go on week expeditions to go and harvest Chaga, because it's quite deep where you go and they've been doing it for 20 years, at least.   Mason Taylor: (00:21:56): So they know how to ensure that they're not stripping so much that they're not going to have a crop for the next year or in five years and 10 years. A lot of them are getting their kids ready to do this as well. But now it was getting popular, so we're like, okay, it was getting a few two minute noodle harvesters, as I call them. As always. Going like, I can do this. But the barrier to entry seems to be holding. It's a skillset that can't just be, people just can't all of a sudden know how to go and find the Chaga. There's snakes and shit and people are scared of going there and doing these expeditions. So the barrier to entry seems like enough, but I've already talked to my team over there and been like, let's just watch it.   Mason Taylor: (00:22:47): Because North American Chaga is not being managed really well. Now it's starting to, but it's not a sustainable harvesting of Chaga that's going on in North America and people think it's the same happening in China. And it's not at that point yet and the government's also about to start regulating and licencing the people that can go in to this particular area to harvest Chaga. They've already done it with pine nuts and it's really, they're not just a little slap on the wrist. You get really scorned if you go and break those rules.   Mason Taylor: (00:23:17): And so yeah, we haven't had to do that yet for Chaga, but I've got a back up source that's my second favourite place to get Chaga from, if need be. But yeah, that's an example of keeping our finger on the pulse. And with Poria, for example. Poria, really not well known in this kind of, in my community. Maybe my community a little bit more, but a really popular Chinese herb. Not so much in the adaptogen community, Poria mushroom isn't really well known. And it requires pine to grow and so wild pine is what you want. And the primary place to grow Di Dao in the centre of China, the government wasn't regulating the harvesting of pine.   Mason Taylor: (00:24:05): And so, even though the people we would work with, we're pretty sure, especially because they ended up moving with the operation, but they were adhering to harvesting methods that weren't going to be stripping the whole ecosystem. The government wasn't regulating it and so there were people around taking advantage and it leaves a bad vibe on it and so you don't want that vibe. And you can't do Di Dao if you're involved in something that isn't going to sustainably leave the environment as it is. So we went to our second ideal place to grow Di Dao down in Jinlun province.   Mason Taylor: (00:24:41): And there, the government harshly regulates for each person how much pine you're going to be able to go and harvest. Where you can harvest. Ensuring that you're planting and contributing back to the replanting to the extent where it's like we'll go and trek up and ask you to show where you've harvested yours and then if they find anything else in the vicinity, they'll investigate it and have it be marked as being a particular farmer's quota. And so those are the things that go in behind the scenes that people don't realise to actually grow a Di Dao herb and that's why it's hard.   Mason Taylor: (00:25:15): You can imagine, it's like oh, screw this. Well, let's just get pine from a domestic pine farm. But that's, of course, it's so easy and that needs to be happening to an extent, because you can't give the world how much Poria it needs of all wild pine. But there is a way and maybe it stops at some point. I don't know. Maybe at some point I need to just have, all right, here's the Di Dao range and then here's the other range. Here's the one that's maybe a little more for widespread consumption. But yeah, at the moment we don't have to do that. But yeah, that's everything that kind of, the other stuff that goes in behind the scenes.   Jansen Andre: (00:25:56): Very interesting. It seems like a very intense and long process as well as people putting their lives on the line in terms of wild animals and nature and stuff to go and forage and harvest these herbs. I just want to strip it back, right back for people that are unaware of adaptogens and herbs. What would be a reason that somebody would consider taking medicinal mushrooms or tonic herbs and what are the main few that you focus on at SuperFeast that you would include in say, your average person's daily consumption that you would consider the most important. Considering we live in such a Yang, fast lifestyle.   Mason Taylor: (00:26:51): Good question, man, good question. There's many directions I could take why people take tonic herbs. I'll start seeing if I can rattle them off and not distract myself. So clinically, the tonic herbs in general, a lot of them are used in formulas in order to overcome particular disease states. But I leave that to a practitioner. The intention of tonic herbalism isn't, and my formulas, for instance, isn't to treat disease states.   Mason Taylor: (00:27:27): But when you're in that instance where you're working with a practitioner, say how they would use it is perhaps they would get you onto medicinal mushrooms alongside a treatment... A really good example is chemo. There's a lot of people who have identified that you can take medicinal mushrooms alongside the chemo. So a lot of people are out there going to medicinal mushrooms, specifically for the treatment of cancer. And there are institutions researching that and there are countries that utilise that in their actual conventional medical system. But that's something that we're not at that place yet.   Mason Taylor: (00:28:11): But there are a lot of practitioners that have realised that having medicinal mushrooms going into conjunction to cancer treatments like chemo and radiotherapy, the intent there being to ensure that the body isn't destroyed by the treatment itself. So keeping the immune system adept, strong, activated. So that's one area where people might use tonic herbs or a practitioner might use tonic herbs.   Mason Taylor: (00:28:38): In the convalescence stage of a disease, so the healing and the building back. So after you've undergone... Someone with, I'm just trying to think of an example, if someone's gone through two years of hyperthyroidism and they've been undergoing lots of little micro herbal treatments and hormone therapies and they get to a point where they're feeling, okay, I don't feel like I'm sick anymore, but those years absolutely wasted me. And took it out of me mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. And so at that point tonic herbs are going to have a lot to do with the rebuilding of the body, right? That's when they're really beautiful and tonifying. They can tonify functions of the body.   Mason Taylor: (00:29:28): There's also, we could say the same for preparing for big surgeries. Preparing the body for huge medical treatments and that doesn't just have to be things like chemo. There are a lot of herbal treatments or even someone who's sick and flies over to Mexico and is getting that hypothermia treatment and they're doing the oxygenation of the blood and they're doing lots of colonics and whatever it is. Those take a lot out of the body. You need a lot of strength and so people would use tonic herbs to strengthen the body and prepare it in those instances.   Mason Taylor: (00:30:06): Then there are people who are looking to, they're looking to prevent injury, prevent acute illness, thinking about just preventing illness in the future, preventing exhaustion creeping in the future. They watch their parents' minds kind of waste away, their brains kind of waste away or the bones waste away. And so there's an intent around prevention. And a lot of people are starting to realise that there is this class of herbs that are basically herbal foods that can assist you and might not be perfect and there's no guarantees, but it's like, why are we going and upgrading the quality of our water from tap to filtered to maybe the best spring water we can find and adding in some hydrogen.   Mason Taylor: (00:30:58): Why are we going from yeah, cool, I'm getting organic veggies from the health food store to try and include some wild foods in your diet. It's because you're upgrading and potentiating and trying to get these habits to norms that will mineralize the body and potentiate the body. Tone the water of your body into this beautiful crystaline substance that can help you maintain a high quality of life for longterm. And that's the same with tonic herb intention. And so there's that instance.   Mason Taylor: (00:31:31): There are people who will take it further from the Taoist intention who want to cultivate longevity. And that can be the longevity of your ability to undergo big psychological evolutions and initiations. So a lot of people have the strength to really get past maybe that leap from 50 years old. It's going to take, all of a sudden everything that you'd identified as important and what makes you up, becomes less important internally to you. But you don't have the ability to let go of that identity, shed the skin and go into that next phase of your life. Because it's scary and I don't have judgement of that.   Mason Taylor: (00:32:17): I've had to learn. It's been tough for me, even just going, feeling from 30 and becoming a new dad and identifying with being one particular way and then all of a sudden having a business and needing to land, basically. And not just be flying off with the fairies and so on and so forth. All these different little changes and shifts that happen throughout our lives. To be able to move through them with a skip and a step. That takes a lot. And just in order to ensure that our bones stay healthy. People want longevity for the sake of making sure the kidneys are healthy. The kidneys regulate the bone marrow, the brain, the dewy substances.   Mason Taylor: (00:32:54): The brain in Taoism is considered marrow. So ensuring that that aspect of the body is supported by its core organ so that we have greater capacity to think in really complex ways and feel in really complex ways when we're older. Basically, all that comes down to in Daoism as an intention, is cultivation of life. Cultivation of the treasures. Our Jing, our Qi, our Chen. And cultivation can literally be as we burn through it. Because you only have a certain amount of Jing, say, like the wax of the candle. As you burn through it, you add a little bit more on.   Mason Taylor: (00:33:30): Well, that's actually adding a little bit more, it's more so keep living off Qi. Keeping living off breath, diet, the herbs and that's the energy you use to get through the day and you don't have to take the wax off the candle and put like a coal burning oven. And get your energy in a non-sustainable way. If you burn through your Jing too early, you're going to not have the foundations the thrive. And you might live a long time, but people are really dying a long time.   Mason Taylor: (00:34:02): So that whole intention around longevity in that sense, which our culture does not value as much as, really supporting people to become elders, in a sense that they're healthy and that they're in this capacity to share their wisdom lovingly and willingly with younger generations. That doesn't exist that much. You need to take that into your own sovereign intention. And so in that sense, that all comes down to there are transformation of energy going on through your organs at all times as it continues to circulate. And that transformation is Yin Yang, Yin Yang, Yin Yang, Yin Yang.   Mason Taylor: (00:34:47): And that's just your capacity for your Qi to transform smoothly and constantly, which means you're going to constantly have emotions and they can constantly transform and lead you in places where you can get a little bit of a virtue going. And then the fear comes back and boom, boom. So that's all that. And then when you go in on that, that's the five organ system, the Wuxing, five elements. Even though the elements is a rough translation. So the whole point is to ensure that the energy is moving through the heart and the spleen and the lung and the kidneys and the liver and it's able to just transform.   Mason Taylor: (00:35:28): Yin Yang, Yin Yang. And that's like that fire Qi. It's just a Yin Yang transformation of Qi going from substance, from something of Yin and consolidation to the Yang through expression and movement in unique ways. And in the heart, it kind of like, ah, that reminds me of fire. It feels like fire and in the spleen, it goes to the spleen. That's really earthy and soil kind of phase transforming through the kidneys. It's like, ah, it's got that water quality. It's just a feeling of what's out there is also in here. But it's really simple. Just, your lifestyle just keeps it going. Just keeps it transforming.   Mason Taylor: (00:36:10): And if you're transforming smoothly, you're not wasting your Jing, Qi and Shen. And at some point you can cultivate your Jing, Qi and Shen. The idea, so you're less of an asshole and more of an awesome person when you get older and you're quite healthy. So that's another intention there. And that's probably the reasons why people would get attracted to it and then now it's as well. People are just, I need my brain to be on this morning, so I'm drinking Neural Nectar. This incredible herbs supporting that marrow of the brain and other areas that I know translate to me feeling sharp and there's blood flow through the marrow. I can feel wit and cloudy and supplementing of the kidney energy that's supporting that what we see as mental capacity.   Mason Taylor: (00:36:54): So in a Western sense, the Nootropics. They're just helping me nourish the brain, getting some L-dopa in from the Mucuna. Helping me to regulate my moods, so on and so forth. So I also have very micro, not a lot of the time, probably an 80/20 macro intention to micro intention. But there's a micro intention today, because I've got this podcast and I'm having someone on mind, I want to make sure that I can talk and think in really lateral ways without using what's actually not there to be used. You know what I mean?   Mason Taylor: (00:37:31): And so there's that as well. And that's kind of where it falls, you know, take Cordyceps before you work out so that your lung is nourished in full Qi flow, so it can function in its Western pulmonary capacity, blood oxygenating capacity, in a better way. While it nourishes the kidney energy and balances out the Yin Yang in the kidneys which is where strength and endurance and power emerges from, if that Qi is flowing. And so do a little short term. Yeah, have that Cordy before an event so that I'm feeling really incredible and that little bit of extra capacity. But then eventually, that becomes, huh, I can embody that at all times and not have reliance on the herb to do it in an immediate manner. Yeah.   Jansen Andre: (00:38:19): So back on what you were originally just talking about with Cordyceps and different types of adaptogens, what about an athlete? What would be the most useful kind of tonic herb or adaptogen to use to increase performance, prevent injury and be mentally sharp and clear for everyone listening. Say, for instance, someone was about to go and compete, about to go and do an endurance event, in the lead up to the event, would you say use it for four weeks to gain, I know you were saying before it's accumulative as well on the body. What's kind of your thoughts on that and timeframe with consuming something like that to get the best benefit of it so that when it comes to race day, you're ready?   Mason Taylor: (00:39:18): It's sooner the better. Day before is awesome as well. The intention is, maybe people can relate with say, their breath work. Maybe they're like, oh cool, I'm going to start doing some breath work for this event and wow, that really helped me get prepared and I feel like I had greater output and recovery during the event. I'm going to do that again for the next event and then the one afterwards, they just never stop the breath work, because it's like, ah, this helps me feel good all the time. And all of a sudden it becomes like drinking water or having a smoothie or whatever.   Mason Taylor: (00:39:56): That's generally where tonic herbalism is going to land you and you'll realise it's got three intentions, they say. A really direct one in order that you might pick up the usage of particular herbs, which I'll get into soon, before an event in order to ensure that specifically your lungs are really potentiated and your kidneys as well are really potentiated during the event. So you have a high athletic performance while you're actually in there.   Mason Taylor: (00:40:23): So that's the first and then you might pick up some of those herbs at the beginning, in the weeks leading up. Then you're going to have herbs for your recovery to ensure that you haven't, you want to ensure that you in flogging yourself, you're not "flugging" the substance of your body. And I'll get into those as well. And then there's going to be just your everyday regular intention, like taking your medicinal mushrooms, like a Mason Taylor:'s Mushrooms blend that we've got.   Mason Taylor: (00:40:50): It's got a lot of herbs that will help potentiate you for the event, but you might not have that association. In the lead up, you might want to go focus on things like Cordyceps and Astragalus and the Qi herbs and the Yang herbs to help you get ready for that. So that might just lock into a... And then when I'm just between events and I'm just wanting to keep myself healthy and going, then I'll take my Mason Taylor:'s Mushrooms or there might be something else that you're interested in, like Schizandra.   Mason Taylor: (00:41:16): Ironically, all the tonic herbs are going to help. But some of them just have the brand and the proclivity to help an athlete perform much more. So let's have a look at where you're going to be at in the build up and I've mentioned them already. There's going to be a combination of, a lot of the time it's the Jing herbs and the Qi herbs which people are going to be more attracted to when wanting output. And that is also going to depend on how sustainable your recovery is in training and your lifestyle is in training.   Mason Taylor: (00:41:54): If you are really good at sleeping and really good at taking days off and really good at getting into your parasympathetic nervous system regularly, and not feeling fearful. You're not an athlete, you're not looking for performance out of fear constantly, because you're not an enough, you know. There's an actual, really soulful intent that isn't, your identity isn't dependent on the outcome. That shift's going to mean that your athletic intentions aren't going to leak your Jing as much as someone that is doing those things.   Mason Taylor: (00:42:30): So not to put, that's all of us. We're all learning through this process of getting into the dojo and a lot of the time, while we're younger we're not going to be very good at it, so a lot of athletes really like the Jing herbs. So the Jing formula, Cordyceps is another amazing one. I'll even throw Schizandra and the Beauty Blend that we've got over at SuperFeast into that one. It's going to really ensure that you actually have the substance in your kidneys to feed the power and the strength and the adrenaline.   Mason Taylor: (00:43:04): When you're leading up into that, Cordyceps kind of takes the reins. I know, I don't like, I'm pretty a lot of people fall into the tonic herb space who do like Yang herbs, like Deer Antler Velvet, there's a tonic by ant that people will get into or it might be Tongkat Ali and other beautiful tonic herbs. Siberian Ginseng, Rhodiola, these are those going over towards these Yang tonic herbs that will take the substance of your body.   Mason Taylor: (00:43:34): So it will take, say, the water of your body that holds all your power and strength in the Yin of the kidneys and the Yang will start heating it up and turning it into vapour in your body. And so that you become really lubricated and that power and that potential in the water is spread through the entirety of your body and germinating the Jing so that you can really express. That's what the Yang is about and why you're going to be attracted to those Yang herbs.   Mason Taylor: (00:43:59): A lot of the time, a primary example is the Cordyceps. And that's why Jing herbs are really popular going in, but if you are feeling really good with your lifestyle and your recovery and everything, at some point you'll see a switch go over the main herbs that you're going to use to prepare for are the Qi herbs, like Astragalus, Ginseng, White Atractylodes, Codonopsis, even Poise. And they are like, so I've got a Qi formula which people will, all of the athletes will go, yeah, Jing. Oh my God, the Jing and the Cordyceps, that's like, I need these and I can feel them feeding me.   Mason Taylor: (00:44:39): But at some point they click over into, they feel like they've got a good flow that they're always ready to perform and then they go, uh huh, now I just need to bring a refinement by the way that I animate myself and I move myself and they start tonifying. And this is an interesting one, because the Cordyceps is a Jing and Qi tonic. And this is why it's the perfect intro for people. But then they start adding in Astragalus and the Qi formula and all of a sudden their lungs' ability to bring in vitality and energy to the body, so it can animate itself and not get fatigued, that's what becomes more important and you've always got the foundation of your Jing through your lifestyle and maybe taking of Jing herbs in your recovery stage. Does that make sense?   Jansen Andre: (00:45:28): Yeah. Yeah, wow. I was literally just about to ask you about the Qi blend. As you describe on your website, the Energy Blend, but it is a slower building effect on the body in terms of stimulant and hit as per se.   Mason Taylor: (00:45:43): Yeah, it's a slower build, because most people don't have the foundations within the kidneys in order to really get the most out of their diet and their spleen to produce Qi and the Qi that you're extracting from the air. But that is the true, they combine the Gong Qi that you get from your food, from cooking your food and the Gong Qi that you get from breathing. Your body harvests that and combines that and then there's Yin Yang expressions of that.   Mason Taylor: (00:46:20): One goes to the surface of the body and it's known as your Wei Qi and the other goes through the organs and the meridians and charges the organs so that you've got daily function. That's constantly happening. And so it's a more direct Qi, but in the beginning, people need to experience their own Jing, because everyone's trying to just have heaps of Qi energy immediately without having the foundation. So they need to take the Jing herbs, they need to learn how to sleep and recover and being Yin, because otherwise see what happens. People are constant heating up all their waters and creating vapour. What happens if you don't replenish the water?   Mason Taylor: (00:46:56): Boom, you become deficient. And so once you do have that good flow, so I like talking like James Newbury, the crossfit guy in my podcast, because our first podcast, he was just like, it was all recovery. And I was like, yeah, good message. And so for a lot of people listening, Jing's going to give them those, holy shit, I feel so good on the Jing. And they think it's giving them this energy. But no, it's all of a sudden you're plugging holes and you're not used to the holes being plugged and you're not used to holding onto the water. You're used to constantly needing to replenish the water.   Mason Taylor: (00:47:31): I don't know what that is in the athletic community, but it's like energy drinks, coffee. Doing all hardcore Yang breath practises so that you've got some oxygen coursing through your veins and so you start becoming less dependent on these extreme ways to get energy into yourself. But once you've done that, to an extent, not that I don't like these things. They can just be done sustainably. Once you've done those, then you start doing the Qi tonics and then it starts, you really start feeling the quick vitality come back.   Mason Taylor: (00:48:04): But it's just a really good way for people to know if you're not feeling like there's a... If you can't feel with the Qi herbs that you've got a really good, slow build of energy occurring, it's like, okay, maybe I don't have the foundation. You can do your Qi herbs, your Qi blend, alongside Jing herbs, Jing formula. There's no rules. You make your own way. I need to make rules so people feel like they have a framework to enter, but really, you can just go slow and steady.   Mason Taylor: (00:48:32): There are no rules in tonic herbalism. It's your herbal practise, but then that's why we're here to help you as you go. Change the framework to make it more unique, but I also have to give a general one when you're entering. And yeah, so then at that point the Qi herbs is what you find eventually, it's the bridge. The Shen is what connects you to the heaven. Your virtuous nature, your kindness, your generosity. Which is also really at some point in your athletic career, you realise it's really important to cultivate as well, right?   Mason Taylor: (00:49:10): Your ability to accept. Your natural ability, so on and so forth. Staying humble if you're like an absolute maniac and naturally the best ever. That Shen, heavenly, virtuous nature is really a beautiful thing that you're going to need to cultivate as well, so maybe your Shen herbs is something as well that you take in the aftermath in order to process. How did I feel when that person that I used to be better than has started beating me? How am I feeling about that? And processing that. That can be the Shen blend in herbs like Albizzia Flower, Asparagus Root, Reishi, Pearl or Oyster Shell. Again, not plant based, but these are those herbs and they've got a Chen formula there.   Mason Taylor: (00:50:00): And it can be part of the Shen formula, because it's not vegan, then just Reishi on its own and even again, like Schizandra is also a really beautiful shen tonic in itself, but you can sit and contemplate, how did I feel about that win? What does that win mean to me? And how can I, what is now my, did it feel vacant? Did it feel amazing? Chen is really that processing stage as well, so that can be really useful and that, but that's the heavenly. The earth based, just being a physical body is the Jing. And so a lot of the time you will see Taoists and people who get really just clicking to auto mode with the herbs, will just constantly be on the Qi tonics.   Mason Taylor: (00:50:43): And that's the mushrooms as well, mostly. Munda mushrooms, like the Chaga, Lion's Mane, Poria, Reishi to an extent, Maitake, Shiitake, Turkey Tail, Tremella, they all have a proclivity for regulating water in the body through a spleen function and heavily a lung function, heavily a regulation of Qi through the liver function, so they're seen as those middle to good Shen, Qi, Jing. Qi is really helping you translate and be that bridge between heaven and earth, which is what the Taoists see that we are, bringing virtuous nature. Generosity, kindness, love, infinite love, to the absolute physical realm. And where we've got the capacity through Qi to bridge those two dimensions.   Mason Taylor: (00:51:34): And so you'll find people in automatic mode. You'll click into just taking medicinal mushrooms and Qi herbs. And that will just be keeping you, because that just keeps the spark in the machine. Your lifestyle's keeping the machine healthy and not flogging it and recovering. You know you've got a Gong to put in practise and maybe spending time in nature so you're naturally cultivating that Shen a lot of the time, because you have a desire to be as good a person as you possibly could be. Not that good, bad has anything to do with it.   Mason Taylor: (00:52:03): And so you just take the Qi to kind of, so that you're getting the most out of your breath, the most out of your food. You have a good diet. You're not too stressed out all the time, so you can actually breathe. You don't have to do crazy where I'm half breathing all the time in order to get that breath. Although they're really cool as well, all of a sudden your whole lifestyle's geared towards keeping the spark in the machine moving and keep everything regulating so you're evolving and just living as harmoniously as possible.   Mason Taylor: (00:52:32): And then at times you might spill over and go, cool, I'm in winter now. I'm getting off coffee for 30 days and taking Jing. We've got a 30 days of Jing challenge. And you go, cool, I'm going sit and really consider my kidneys and my fear and look into the deep waters of my body and cultivate that Jing. That kidney water energy where the Jing is kept. You have to look at your mortality at that point, what that means and see what arises from that fear. Feel like, oh, what was useful fear? Just actually keeping you alive. And then where's it irrelevant or irrational fear? So there might be times when you go really deep into the kidney Jing herbs for that emotional intention as well.   Mason Taylor: (00:53:17): And then you're kind of like, cool, now I just need to not think about my tonic herbal practise and just click in a order with the mushrooms and the Qi herbs. Or whatever. For a long time, people are going to just be clicking into just, oh cool, I'm just taking Jing herbs. And that's fine as well. Again, there's no rule, but you just got to listen and check in every now and then to adjust.   Jansen Andre: (00:53:39): So let's talk about a framework. It's obviously an intuitive kind of practise of taking these herbs, but say for instance someone is constantly jacked and hyped all the time. They're not focusing on their breathing. They're not doing meditation and they're constantly tired. But they want to find that inner Qi and they want to get back to ground zero and get grounded. What would you say, how would they all start to include these to channel that?   Mason Taylor: (00:54:11): I mean, okay, so let's look at your really, if you're really looking at longterm, that that's your identity and you don't really know your body and you don't really know the path back to harmony, because you've gone too far off into power lifting or the triathlons or whatever it is. And a lot of the time, and I've been there heavily with my identification of being this perfect, healthy specimen. I've had a long time as a raw foodist, pretty much a vegan vegan, it was kind of where I was coming from. And it was really great for me, but at some point I went way too far off centre into my own ideological dogma.   Mason Taylor: (00:54:53): And then I just in tracking back took a long time. And I enjoyed that process. So it's like, if you're willing and wanting to do it on your own, then very good. But it's going to be a slow process and it's going to be a matter of you slowly getting the terminology that can help explain where you're at. Maybe that's a Western terminology, maybe that's a classical Chinese Medicine terminology of whether it's a Yang deficiency, primarily, or a Yin deficiency or maybe it's just like in a hyper way, your inner sympathetic nervous system creates excess cortisol, maybe.   Mason Taylor: (00:55:31): It doesn't matter what. You need a terminology and a framework to take you back to centre. And if you're too far off it's just, cut the time and go find a classical acupuncturist or maybe a really good naturopath who can do your markers. And so that way, just to start with, I'll say that, because if you're feeling a bit lost and anxious about it, that's a way, in a grounded way, to do it with tonic herbalism is really good, but it's a big stab in the dark that might not actually hit the specifics for your treatment.   Mason Taylor: (00:56:06): Because that's potentially, you're on a trajectory towards early degeneration or not. And so although it might be like a lot of lifestyle factors, like adding in some tonic herbs, starting to getting some Jing yoga in or some Qi Gong into your practise, like all these kinds of things, they're going to be lifestyle things that you're going to want to work on. At the same time, your proclivity and need to go that extreme, is something that you'll need to address. And you need to get really in touch with your body. So although it's not seen as a real symptomatic illness or anything at that point, you want a practitioner. Because you don't get too many opportunities in your life where you clock onto that intent to come back into harmony and live in harmony for longterm, and you want to take advantage of that opportunity really quick and really work with someone to get an understanding of exactly who you are and what your body is and how it relates.   Mason Taylor: (00:57:01): And a classical acupuncturist can really help you go like, look, you're... You know, for me, me and a friend, we both are entrepreneurs. One of us is more geared towards a Yang deficiency, the other more towards a Yin deficiency. For me it's a Yin deficiency, for him it's a Yang deficiency. And so, just little things for him are really specific. For Yang it's sitting on the surface of the body and you go and do extreme saunas. You're wasting, you're releasing all of your Yang. And so it's not really a useful thing to do and so maybe getting in the sauna without having that excess sweating.   Mason Taylor: (00:57:35): So those are little things that where it's going... And for me it's otherwise. For me it's the end action of the substance and the Yin of the body, is what I'm constantly needing to adjust my lifestyle to cultivating. I'm not someone as well who does run on Yang. I'm a very Yang type person, but then I'm able to see over the last four years, at some point I hit this, I had an identity about being this outspoken, I'm this huge personality and I'm Yang and I'm achieving, but at some point what clicked in, which is something that's on all of my charts, if you look at my human design and my astrology and all those kind of things, at some point I need to come back and do a cave and reflect over the last few years. It's far out.   Mason Taylor: (00:58:24): I've been constantly drawn back to just being in darkness and in a hovel and I've kind of judged myself for doing that. And going like, why am I doing this? Why my like is, why am I not out achieving? So on and so forth. But when I start actually working with, I can actually, whether it's through a bit of therapy, a practitioner or majority is just getting my own reflection back into forgiveness of myself and love of myself constantly. I know when it's like, now I need a little click on the ear to stop whinging and get up and do something which you know is right for yourself. Or when it's like, hey, you've got to listen to yourself right now.   Mason Taylor: (00:59:04): And in that instance it's because I've gone really towards Yin depletion and so for me then I just kind of, then I need to find my way and to live sustainably so that I don't chronically do that to myself and then have to have these episodes where I just can't see anyone. That's not a healthy way to be. And so you've got to listen. But, and then coming back to the fact that someone's being extreme in the athletic world. Just generally, you're going to want to start getting onto some Jing herbs, because generally, you would have depleted yourself.   Mason Taylor: (00:59:40): The Jing formula I've just got there is a neutral balanced Yin Yang. It doesn't throw you through fire in any direction. Generally really good for the population to start, giving you the experience of your kidney water Qi flowing so that you can feel that you're not wasting anymore. You're not leaking it. And then with that you maybe notice a distinction around ah, maybe I should drop some coffee and maybe you can just do some good sleep and then so that's a good entry.   Mason Taylor: (01:00:06): And then the mushrooms. Because they're just so all over the place regulating of the body and protecting of the body. It's like a formula, like the Mason Taylor:'s Mushrooms formula, if you want capsules, like the Mushroom M8. And other brands as well. If anyone ever has any questions about other brands, I'm not precious. I just do SuperFeast, because I learned, I had a problem for years and years about talking about my own company. I don't know why, this is my thing.   Mason Taylor: (01:00:34): I didn't like having products and felt uncomfortable with it, but I can see people listening to me, listening to this podcast, SuperFeast is there as a place for them to access these really precious herbs so I do just talk about it in the SuperFeast context, but feel free to send me others if you just want me to give you a heads up on different things.   Mason Taylor: (01:00:54): The mushrooms are just, they're in every organ. Like a formula like that, they're in every organ. They're immunologically getting yourself potentiated and modulated and so a lot can just start going right when you get onto the mushrooms. And you just start there. And you do two months and you start with a quarter teaspoon of the extract powder and then you maybe get up to a teaspoon. Some people are more sensitive, they like just a half a teaspoon. Some people, whether it's the Mason Taylor:'s or the Jing formula, some people are like, my body wants two heaped teaspoons a day. Is that okay?   Mason Taylor: (01:01:28): So, yes. Listen to your body. And that might happen for a week. Sometimes people do that for two months. I took mushrooms, two tablespoons of mushrooms of Chaga and Reishi for two years, basically, straight. Every day. Pretty much. But that was because I'm very extreme. Always very excess too. I found a pendulum, my pendulum doesn't swing so far anymore, but that's my personality and what I needed to do in order to initiate myself into the world that I'm in right now and really understand the mushrooms. But what's important, is as much to listen to that part of you that wants to up the dose, is to listen to that part of you that knows when it's time to down the dose.   Mason Taylor: (01:02:10): And not, because the tonic herbs are beautiful and you don't form

We're bringing you a special edition on the podcast today, as Mason steps out of the interviewer seat and is interviewed by Tommy Moore on the Mind Body Plants Podcast. If you've ever wanted to listen to Mason go through the entire SuperFeast apothecary in both poetic and articulate detail; What's in the mindfully curated blends, the Organ systems they nourish, how the herbs are sourced, the seasons they best connect to, and the stories behind the formulations, this episode covers it all.   Tommy asks some great questions, and Mason dives deep into the world of Daoist tonic herbalism, discussing the lineage and how these heavenly messengers oscillate through Mind/Body/Spirit to bring healing and longevity. Mason opens up about his decade-long journey with SuperFeast, from grassroots beginnings to the epic company it is has grown into; Still maintaining the same core intentions of supporting people in maintaining wellness and longevity through tonic herbs and medicinal mushrooms. In comparing the western medical system with classical Chinese medicine, this conversation goes many places. Mason lays down what you need to know about Jing herbs, cultivating Qi, Nootropics, Brain health, Di Dao sourcing, and living in harmony with yourself and nature. This episode is the reminder we all need to stand empowered in our sovereign health.   "In classical Chinese medicine what you're looking at is the capacity for Qi to transform through a particular Organ system. And so you're looking at supporting that baseline regulatory capacity for inner transformation at all times; The ability for your body to accept and enable change to constantly occur. And you can see how different that clinical approach is going to be. You can see why Western medicine likes to just go, 'Yep, do that, bang. And now we're fixed'. Whereas if you take responsibility for helping someone move through changes in their body and in their life, that's a massive responsibility, and it's harder to be effective. It takes more keeping your finger literally on the pulse. Our medical and wellness system doesn't focus on or value that right now. It seems boring to focus on that constant capacity of 'this too will change'... Why? Because then you can't be right, and you can't dominate".   -Mason Taylor     Tommy and Mase discuss: Mycology.  Tonic herbalism.  The Daoist lineage.  Yin/Yang cultivation.  The culture of SuperFeast. The nature of Adaptogens. The SuperFeast apothecary. Di Dao sourcing and preserving tradition. Superior herbs (lifestyle herbs) and dosage. Autoimmune conditions and medicinal mushrooms. Brain health and nootropic herbs for neuro-plasticity.  The journey of SuperFeast; 10 years on from grassroots.  Psychedelic mushrooms, micro-dosing and mental health.  Cultivating organ health, longevity, and wisdom through herbs. Western medical system and classical Chinese medical system. Mason's personal journey from a uni student starting SuperFeast.     MasonTaylor Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason was first exposed to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Mason Instagram SuperFeast Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tommy Moore: (00:00) Mason, first and foremost, welcome and thank you for joining me on this podcast. Been following your work for a little while now, and I'm certainly thrilled to be able to welcome you here and to have a chance to speak to you and get a bit of a deep dive into some adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms that I personally take on almost a daily basis. So, before we get into all of that, how do you describe what you do?   Mason: (00:28) Yeah, it's been definitely a mixed bag of what I've done in the wellness space. My company, SuperFeast is at this point, I guess what I'm most well-known for nearly, it's going to be 10 years in May that I've had that company and it has evolved somehow despite my flippancy and desire to not be shackled down by the responsibility of business, it's grown to be a very... Yeah, it's a really beautiful, healthy business. I still feel I'd still own completely. So, it's still very grassroots and just ensconced in what my original intentions back in the day were. Before I started the company, I was just in my last year at uni and just trying to find ways to just to have my body be a little less lethargic, and I was a little bit worried the way I saw it.   Mason: (01:22) It's like I worried about my trajectory and what I saw, how I was going to be at 80 years old or 90 years old, or even 60 years old. And that kind of spurred me on to, even though I was gung ho and I was jumping into the deep end of extremism of diet and detoxification and just becoming basically an extremist and a purist in the health space. Ultimately, my intention was a real long term sustainable one. And so, I had the juice to kind of go extreme back then, but because my intention is what, where SuperFeast is at still and what kind of the mission or the intent is behind it at the same, what I have for myself, which is to just find whether it's practises or capacity to continually change and evolve with at different times of life, psychologically and physically, and just to find the herb, so on and so forth, that's going to facilitate and support my deepest health intentions to come true.   Mason: (02:17) And so, that, for me, when I was in uni studying herbalism, I wanted to potentiate the body. And so, that meant I didn't go for things that were problem-solution kind of herbs. Western herbalism didn't really interest me back then because it was more clinical. You take it for this, take it for that. But Daoist herbalism, the ancient Chinese philosophy and path of the Dao, their herbs were... They had this whole dialogue about cultivating organ health and cultivating the body. And that just really made sense to me because I didn't want to have a problem solution and initial problem-solution approach to my health and life. And that's where SuperFeast is basically at. It's just this gentle, this we source medicinal mushrooms. And when a lot of people know adaptogens in a way that's based on the Daoist tradition.   Mason: (03:06) So, it's just make getting them as close to nature as possible and having them be as robust as possible, so that with the same intention that they've had for thousands of years all over the world using herbs for health, it's just to keep you that little bit healthy, go get you on the front foot that little bit more. When you get a little bit more juice in your body, and you're not having to worry about symptoms and degeneration, or even fatigue. Even though these things can still be there in variants, if it's just like a little bit less of that, if you're a little less immune compromised, you don't have to waste your energy or your Qi on surviving. Those symptoms, you can get on the front foot and develop yourself and ultimately, when you get a little bit older, you're not degenerating and hopefully, you've had the power to overcome developmental issues, psychological issues.   Mason: (03:51) So, you're a little bit less of an asshole and you're actually someone who's got some wisdom and someone who... It doesn't have to be so reliant on external stuff in order to stay healthy, and that's basically what SuperFeast is. Back in the day, I was like, "No, I just don't want to see any more degenerative disease in the world." And that's still a nice, lofty mission that probably won't ever come true because it's beautiful, it's relating to decay has been bad, but I really was mourning at the, seeing so much unnecessary degeneration and wasting away of the body and not living in harmony with yourself in nature. And so, I'm a really at a point at that SuperFeast, it's just like people have intentions around their health.   Mason: (04:38) I don't have an agenda about where that leads them, but through our education, because we have educational courses as well, and about living in harmony with nature and yourself, but then especially the herbs and the medicinal mushrooms that we saw. So specifically, they can really just help the organs flow, cultivate the organs, get the immune system nice and healthy so that there's a little bit less for people to worry about and they can go on, making their health intentions come true and becoming less of an asshole and more of their awesome selves.   Tommy Moore: (05:07) I love how you speak to the Daoist tradition because thousands and thousands of years ago, when we didn't have science, we didn't have all of this empirical evidence or clinical evidence about any of these herbal medicines or medicinal mushrooms, but that had practised this for so, so long, and they didn't necessarily need to know what a biochemical was because I guess back then, what they would call a spirit, we would now possibly call a biochemical. And so, I really, really loved this link between science and spirituality, especially when we're talking about mushrooms and herbs, that they can change how we feel. They can change how we act and our behaviour. They can make us feel more connected to each other. Now, this will be the first time that I've spoken about medicinal mushrooms and herbs. So, before we get deeper into science and philosophy, let's start with some basic definitions. What is meant by a herbal tonic? What is meant by a medicinal mushroom, and also what is meant by an adaptogen?   Mason: (06:19) Yeah, good order that you've put them in. So, tonic herbs is, that term is a rough translation over from about 2000 years ago, we get the first herbal materia medica, cataloguing herbs and their uses and categorising them. And, this is why I study a Daoist path because it's the ancient Chinese, the ancient health nuts, as I kind of refer to them. At times, they're the ones that documented it and came up with terminology, whereas right now, you don't see a [flowering 00:06:54] just yet of the Australian herbal tradition, because it was verbal. It was a bit more, I guess you'd say more spirit-based versus 3D-based, and that's in a lovely way. The Daoists documented specific, very physical practise-based health practises.   Mason: (07:15) And so, since it was written, it's like it's there on offer and able to be utilised, which is a little bit different to a verbal tradition, especially one that's been consciously wiped out and hopefully not forever. And there's beautiful people preserving that and slowly, we own the right to be able to partake in that once we get, how to do that with respect and not just to be treating it as a commodity, which is the worst thing that happens in the wellness scene, in the herbal scene as the things that are based in basically, as you said, spirit, so it shows and the science can be there, but that's doing something following a path in a way that it's complete. I guess holistic is the word that's a bit bastardised, but nonetheless, it's like, we partake in tonic herbalism and we reflect on it based on the entire system of Daoism and reflecting on where the civilization was at, not just take a scalpel, which is what Western herbalism and Western medicine does a lot of time.   Mason: (08:11) Just we'll just get a scalpel and just like... We'll take that and we'll leave the rest. And we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to adaptogens, because that's not a bad thing, taking something out and going, this is an adaptogen used in these scenarios. As long as you leave a thread back to the complete system and where it came from. But, over 2000 years ago, we got the first materia medica by the emperor, Shennong, and it's basically an accumulation of knowledge, thousands of years of knowledge. Many, many people contribute to say, "This is what we know so far." There's three categories of herbs, as far as we kind of practise, which is the inferior herbs or lower herbs. They're the ones that are used for disease states. There's a lot of long-term symptoms. We can damage the body. They're basically using poisons, very good in emergency situations and acute illnesses.   Mason: (08:59) And then, middle herbs, regular herbs. They're long-term management of symptoms says still a little bit more... They can go in organs placing those herbs. And then, there's the superior herbs. And the superior herbs can also be used clinically. They are the ones that you can get on the front foot and utilise in the body. The Daoists would say, ``We'd use this to lighten the body or to ward off ageing, ward off premature ageing, to bring the spirit through." So, what is the spirit through is, just imagine, yes, you can develop yourself and use like, say a disease state to gain more perspective and wisdom in life.   Mason: (09:36) But if you don't have to have these disease states to be the catalyst for your growth, if you are already on a path of growth, you don't have to spend all this time going and dealing with disease or symptoms, or whatever, like mental health issues, so on and so forth. If you can do that, then you're going to be able to develop yourself psychologically, you're going to be able to work on your perspective in life, you're going to be able to transition through the initiations of life where you kind of get a little bit less about you at some point, more about the community. And that's what the Daoists were interested in. The superior herbs could be used in that instance. There were some of the grandmas for thousands of years had been, grandpas had been putting in the soup to keep everyone healthy without them knowing.   Mason: (10:17) So, they're the tonic herbs. So, tonic herbs are those that preserve life, and it doesn't mean a lot of people... I've been doing this a long time now and I've been kind of talking. It's been interesting how do I talk about these and get people engaged with these herbs while respecting them, because it's not just the herbs that you can take as much as you want of. They are like herbal foods, but they're still medicinally active. And the whole point of them is, yes, you can take them and it's not like you're going to... It's hard to do damage with these tonic herbs. And that's why they're the lifestyle herbs. But still, people need to be aware that you're going, you need to go slow with these herbs, and sometimes if you're feeling that you need, then you do trust your instinct to start taking big doses of say an extract powder and do two big teaspoons a day.   Mason: (11:05) But then, you need to be able to listen to yourself and that's time to lower that back once again. So, although these are the superior herbs, they're also very active. They're like any food. You're going to want to rotate and keep your instincts alive, but they're the herbs to preserve life. They're the anti-ageing herbs. These are the ones that they use to keep their bones healthy, mind sharp, keep their organs flowing. It's about preserving your life and the Daoist talk about you being made up and everything they made up that your body may be made up of three treasures, especially the three treasures.   Mason: (11:40) Your Jing lives in your kidneys. You're given that when you're born. It's how much wax you have to burn through the candle of your life, right? And so, if you burn the candle at both ends, bang, you're going to get rid of that wax. Yes, Western medicine can keep that flame alive, but keeping a flame alive on just a wick and having no substance there for it to burn through, it's not much of a life to live. And that's why a lot of people die for a long time once they get to 50, 60, 70, they're kept alive, but they're dying for ages. We want to avoid that if possible and that's what the Jing herb's about, not bringing that premature ageing strong bones. They're the foundational essence.   Mason: (12:16) Qi is the second treasure. Qi is like, you take fuel in, you cultivate Qi, keeps the engine going. Keeps your thoughts moving, keeps your fluids moving. This is what keeps you going through every day of life. It's your breath, it's the food that you're taking in, and you can maintain a lot of vitality and a lot of energy by keeping that Qi cultivated. And then, the final treasure is Shen, which is your spirit and your consciousness that comes through. And as you develop more wisdom, that equates to being able to develop more Shen and so more virtuous nature. So, you genuinely cultivate kindness and forgiveness and loving. And then, note that there's other aspects in from consciousness that come from the heart, especially, but there are other organs that you cultivate. Say, for instance, that are going to bring about the wisdom of having really strong boundaries by your really beautiful boundaries, so on and so forth.   Mason: (13:14) So, it's not just all pie-in-the-sky, lovey-dovey shit, quite completely. And that's the theory of Daoism in the organ system, and each organ has its own consciousness. But then, as you keep the Qi going through the organs, the idea is you are not burning through your three treasures. Your Jing, your Qi, your Shen. You cultivate life. That's what tonic herbs are, the superior herbs are. And it contains mushrooms and berries and barks and deer antler velvet, and minerals like pearl. There's some animal ones like a particular type of ant, so on and so forth. And so, in our day and age, they're the ones for like, then nootropics fall into that kind of category a lot of the time. Energy herbs, like ginseng, fall into that category. And a lot of adaptogens fall into that category.   Mason: (14:01) So, clinically, an adaptogen in the west was really identified in the 1970s by the Russians. And they classified, let me see if I've still got this, classify the adaptogen herbs as ones that are going to have an accumulative effect on the body. So, the longer you take them, you're going to accumulate benefits and it's good for everyone to be mindful that that's just not linear, the more your take, gets better. At some point, you hit a glass ceiling of how much energy you can have, and the adaptogens then kind of flesh out and can maybe help you modulate the immune system a little bit more, modulate your nervous system a little bit more. So, it's not just getting better in one direction.   Mason: (14:41) Once you restore homeostasis within your adrenal, that bottom, I'll talk about the HPA axis in a second, but say your adrenals get back into sync all of a sudden, then you might not keep experiencing more and more benefits from that ginseng or ashwagandha in that same direction. You might start opening up to being able to experience benefits in other directions, if you're not attached to just external gains coming from the adaptogen. So, I just need to flesh that one out there. Second classification of adaptogens is it can create any additional harm or stress to the body. The general rules, taking things like ashwagandha, ginsengs, schizandras, reishis, chagas, these kinds of herbs. For the majority of the population who are symptomatic and are dealing with disease states, they're not going to move you into harm or stress place. They're going to help your body adapt to stress, right?   Mason: (15:38) And so, they're regulators. And especially the mushrooms, they're immunological regulators. As well, if you're very sick, you don't just go charging into taking adaptogens. You want to still be... That's a very general kind of classification, as well, and no more harm or stress. And then, the third one I kind of touched on is their regulatory. They have a non-specific action in the body. And so, we generally know that it's going to take cortisol down and the majority of the population's say for ashwagandha cycle, a lot of these herbs, because [everyone's 00:16:11] high. But what about instances where cortisol is low? There are instances where it's actually helping the body get back and increasing that cortisol to a healthy level at appropriate times during the day.   Mason: (16:20) So, that's non-specific. That's like the medicinal mushrooms are used in auto-immune conditions. When people look at them like a reishi and cordyceps, they want to be working with a practitioner. This is you with autoimmunity. But you're looking at those herbs and you're like, "Wow, they're really incredible for lifting the immune system, helping us adapt to pathogenic influx, and fight these things off." But then, there's really solid instances and data coming through around people who are really excessive in their immune activity to the extent where the immune system attacking itself in autoimmune conditions and mushrooms are used to regulate that immune function down. Too very handy having such sophisticated medicine doing that, rather than just using a drug to suppress the immune system. You're going one step further and going where's the trigger site for this unhealthy flurry of pro-inflammatory immune activity and let's go and start regulating the immune system down on that level in an inappropriate way.   Mason: (17:18) So, you're not taking the whole immune system down. You might just be taking a certain part of the immune system down and maintaining surface immunity, right? When you take complete immune suppressants, you're going to see... And then, you're going to be more likely to get sick. That's what an adaptogen is, those three things. No additional harm or stress to the body, accumulates benefits over the time, non-specific activity in the body. And the medicinal mushrooms kind of fall under that banner of a tonic herb, right? And then, some of these herbs in the tropics, adaptogens and nerve veins, and that they're kind of have the Western herbalism, we'll kind of comment on what some of them are, but they're not all adaptogens because some of them are just pure nourishes, right? Some of them like a tremella mushroom, truly beautiful for lubricating the lungs, therefore lubricating the skin. If you've got dry skin, it's just such a nutritive, gentle herb.   Mason: (18:11) And they use a lot in post-surgery or disease states just to get a lot of juice back into the body, and fluid back in the body, and yin essence back into the body, as well as people that just value beauty and vibrance in their skin. It's not really an adaptive fact. They will discover it has slightly adaptogenic elements because it's a medicinal mushroom and feeds the immune system. But right now, it's just seen as a nutritive. So, it's not clinically adaptogenic, but it is a tonic herb. It is a herb that can be used to cultivate Jing, Qi, Shen, which is that's what a tonic herb is. So, the mushrooms come into their medicinal mushrooms, not the culinary portobello kind of brown mushroom ones that you get on your pizza.   Mason: (18:49) I'm not talking about psychedelic mushrooms. We are talking about generally tree-born mushrooms. Those mushrooms like shiitake, maitake, agaricus, poria, Reishi, lion's mane, cordyceps, is grows off caterpillars. We can't do that in terms of a product. It's generally going to be a... For us, it's a fermented cordyceps in a VAT, so that's a vegan one, but that's a kind of an example of a nontree-born medicinal mushroom. But, that's generally going to find medicinal mushrooms. The mycelia is going to grow up through the tree and utilise the carbohydrates and basically, eat those carbohydrates. And then, essentially, don't want to personify it and humanise it too much, but essentially, the genitals come out and then we pick those genitals where the spores come out of and utilise those.   Mason: (19:45) And they're so amazing for the body. They're just so regulatory, whether it's immunity, nervous system, endocrine system. And clinically, what the possibility of using these in real specific instances is just endless, but getting onto them preemptively, I mean, it's at this point, it's just too good not to be taking medicinal mushrooms. I think that's a long form answer to your question.   Tommy Moore: (20:13) That's perfect. You've answered that brilliantly. Yeah, and you're so right. There's so much about Western science and medicine that is almost exclusively looking at symptomatology. And of course, this can be effective in short term treatment or acute treatment of particular diseases and getting back to somewhat of a baseline. But what do you do from there? There's so many people who get unwell, say with cancer or a degenerative illness, and all they're doing is managing their symptoms and to me, that doesn't make any sense at all. It makes sense to the point of not causing further damage, but it isn't encouraging people to get healthier and healthier over time. And so, I appreciate how these medicinal herbs and mushrooms are working on our body as they do have that accumulative effect. They're helping us over time to get better and optimise our organ function and our circulatory system over time so that we can firstly, get to baseline and then go beyond that, because science can be quite slow in these fields.   Tommy Moore: (21:26) Often when we're trying to raise money or get funding for research, it has to treat something. And the way you described it earlier with the inferior herbs that you're looking more at disease states and getting someone to baseline level seems to be how our working science and clinical research at the moment. It has to be for someone who's already ill. And so, the Western way of looking at things is almost waiting for that clinical research to prove its efficacy. But as we mentioned earlier, there's probably thousands upon thousands of documented evidence through the Daoist traditions that prove that efficacy without having to go through the Western clinical path.   Tommy Moore: (22:10) But there's so much merit in these medicinal herbs and mushrooms because they can have such a huge impact on our health and our longevity and optimising the way our body works and improving our brain function and our performance. And it really is multidimensional how they do exert their effects in our body. And you began to allude to the anatomy of the mushroom being the mycelium and the fruiting body, because I find it incredibly interesting how both plants and animals evolved from fungus. To understand their anatomy and understand the constituents is really helping us to understand ourselves and how our body functions. So, can you speak to the anatomy of a mushroom and what are some different types of mushrooms and the different parts of the mushrooms that are working to help us?   Mason: (23:05) Yeah, I mean, this is a huge conversation. I got to the point in studying mushrooms, that I was like, there's a reason that the school of, the discipline of mycology exists because it is its own profession and I'm not going to be able to do it justice. I kind of, at one point I was like, cool, I am going to stick to my lane of tonic herbalism because once again, we've got a little bit further down the track and everyone's like, "Can you identify this mushroom and this mushroom?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I definitely do not want to and cannot do that." But in terms of, it's a good question because mushrooms still have an overall stigma and people relate to the word mushrooms as in that's an appropriate blanket term.   Mason: (23:57) Whereas mushrooms are, you think of the plant kingdom and you go, "Yeah," and you know immediately you understand that there's diversity in the plant kingdom. You think in the mushroom kingdom and people are slowly starting to open up and realising that there's more, if not for people's perception of just as much diversity within the mushroom kingdom, different types of mushrooms, different evolutionary parts, styles of reproducing, so on and so forth, vastly different environments, way more so than plant matter with living within the mushroom kingdom. And so, the biggest organisms on the earth, besides the earth itself, have been mushrooms, all of a sudden you can see what our mushrooms are like. We don't even really know. There's all debate about whether they came from the spores, or came from space.   Mason: (24:51) And I know there's definitely been evidence to show that up, right up as far as you can get in the atmosphere, pretty much their spores and sitting up there. And I think that the work, the studies have been done on saying that seeds and spores can survive the vacuum of space. And so, there's all these weird and wonderful theories about them being aliens coming in and helping to... And we know that fungus basically, kind of up there, just after maybe water had such a pivotal role on helping literally everything evolve and everything is, [bay 00:25:28] is reliant on land and is reliant on that fungal system. They're helping whether it's the procreation, whether it's the sprouting of a seed, you see the mycelium within this particular spore, billions of spores, trillions of spores, just sitting dormant within the soil. And you see these symbiotic relationships as that's perf as the seed and the spore, as well as other conditions align that the seed will start to sprout. And then, you'll see a collaborative effort from that spore starting to sprout, all the mycelia coming up and finding. So, the actual body of the...   Mason: (26:03) ... its sprout or the mycelia coming up and finding, so the actual body of the mushroom coming up and helping basically encase and, again, not my area of expertise, but the way I romantically talk about it, create a womb for that seed, and go down and extract minerals from deeper down, and feed that up into the tree, and then be involved within basically that interconnectedness of a forest and interconnectedness of many elements of the world running up in through the trees. And you can see, once the symbiotic relationship evolves through helping to procreate and create a nursery, basically. And then once that tree is an existence, you see a [mycorrhizal 00:26:42] relationship where you'll see the little spindly bits coming off of the mushroom cells. They can drill essentially into the wood, and then they release enzymes so that they can then basically digest externally and then get access to those carbohydrates because there's underground darkness. There's no access to light, so the mushrooms need to get access to their energy source, the carbohydrates, in another way, and that's how they do that.   Mason: (27:09) And then from there, continues to be a collaborative effort in terms of, for many trees, the mycelium growing in through, and then sometimes sprouting out, and then as well as those mushrooms and the mycelia that just sprout their own mushrooms, coming straight up from the soil. So in terms of what they are, I mean very genetically close to humans, mushrooms. We've definitely co-evolved. That's where you can see the immune system seems literally hardwired. So a lot of people know that now we can see we have the endocannabinoid system, it seems like we're actually hardwired some way to have cannabis in our diet, whether it's regularly or not regularly, or just having a top up, or just being around the plant. It's the same way with the way particular [immunopaths 00:27:55] work, where you're taking in compounds from mushrooms. And because we've co-evolved, you can see that the immune system is there waiting to have particular receptors so it can identify fungal invasion and then take it to places where it can invade it off.   Mason: (28:14) Whereas in the medicinal mushrooms, the tree mushrooms, you take that in and, because it's got a high molecular weight, it'll bypass digestion, get into the gut, and then hit immune cells within the lymph tissue in the gut. And it's like a mystery shopper vibe, or it's like playing war games, where we're going to war ... the immune system's like I'm going to war with this, but it's not an actual threat that's coming in. And so what happens is you take on that beta-glucan within the mushroom, and then that macrophage cell will pass through particular pathways and go deeper into the immune system, metabolise that compound, and then spit it out, but it happens to be what it spits out is in perfect formation to hit deeper immune receptors within the innate immune system, which is a bit deeper to get into a constitutional level like that. And then what you see happening is rather than an activation or stimulation of the immune system, you actually see ... Stimulation was the word I meant to use there first, you actually just see an activation of the immune system.   Mason: (29:18) Whereas the lights start turning on, the intelligence starts turning on, an irregulatory capacity can start to occur. And it's just too perfect, those pathways. And it can happen with other substances, but it doesn't seem to happen with such efficacy. And it's not to say that there's definitely indigenous tribes who hadn't identified this and weren't reliant on tree mushrooms, but it's just too perfect. And so we're utilising that, but I mean I've just danced around what I do know about mushrooms, and then obviously taken it back to their implications around herbal medicine and human consumption, which is what I'm comfortable with. But it's a big, wonderful world and I think there's a lot of nostalgia there. At the moment, you can see mushrooms are going off, whether it's culinary, lots of people are back-buying shiitakes and even lion's manes, and it's really getting into mycology pages on Instagram and just going off, the weird and wonderful world of mushrooms. And so it's definitely the wave's broken on everyone.   Mason: (30:21) And huge Facebook pages, amateur identification groups, people going out and wanting to harvest their own mushrooms. It's a huge little underground thing now, and just even around here, in Byron, there's a few specialists mushroom harvesters that deliver those to some of the more fancy or progressive cafes or restaurants, and just chefs doing really cool things. Yeah, it's just nostalgic and for me, offering medicinal mushrooms to people, that's what basically I see happening is they're like, "Oh man, that feels good. It feels really good being on those mushrooms." They just feel it's very protective, it's a very safe place to be. And it just feels like we just had such a deficiency of connection to that world, that mushroom world, so it's nice to see people waking back up to it.   Tommy Moore: (31:10) Yeah, definitely. And just to continue that topic of this wonderful, intricate interconnectedness or this symbiotic relationship that we have with everything else and that everything else has with us, because it's something like 92% of trees depend on the mycelial network to exchange nutrients and to have conversations with each other. So the trees almost represent our organs and the exchange of nutrients that happens at each of those organs, and the mycelial network is, I guess, like our neural network, and our central nervous system, and peripheral nervous system that's all working together in this beautiful harmony, and creating this wonderful symphony that is our human body. I suppose, for some people, this might sound a little bit woo-woo or spiritual, but I guess it is a little bit like that.   Mason: (32:04) It is a bit, and look, there's a lot you got to ... As I said earlier, I'm quite romantic sometimes when I talk about these things and I'll just shoot past what's been shown within the data. I'm in a good place with our herbal tradition because I walk a very traditional path and chose not to become a practitioner, but rather I work with a lot of practitioners. I have a lot of practitioners coming onto my podcast. We always advise people once we get past a certain lifestyle. It's like if someone is sick and all of a sudden it's no longer just getting good sleep, and getting hydrated, and making some food changes, if that's not an appropriate thing at the moment because their symptoms have gone beyond just having that advice, that's when it also goes beyond tonic herbalism in terms of going, "Just take this and this will help." So because I've created that for myself, yes, the scientific literature is slowly catching up to what's known, and that's fine because you just get realistic about how the Western mentality works, and it's going to require that legitimization, and it's going to be scrutinised.   Mason: (33:20) And sometimes it is rightfully scrutinising because the wellness scene, and I'm guilty of this back when I first started out, you get a little bit over excited, you get a little bit counter-culture, and you start just saying these extreme things, which perhaps are rooted in truth, but you start saying them with no nuance, with such conviction, when maybe you're saying it with conviction maybe because you were in a group that believes it or because your person that you idolise says it, and you haven't actually gone back to the source of why that's been said, and so you don't know where someone might be taking a little bit of liberty to say something that's whatever. You're not at the source of it. So it's a good balancing measure, I find, but nonetheless, I mean, for me, it's just like the grandma's not scientifically adding Poria mushroom and reishi mushroom into a broth. You don't need that scientifically validated. Maybe toxicology reports are really good. People can make sure that there's no significant interactions with drugs that people are on in the family.   Mason: (34:25) But at some point, why I like the herbs is it gets you perceptive of your body. And I like sourcing in a particular way that's [Di Dao 00:34:34], where the herbs are grown as closely as possible, if not wild, in consortium with the elements around them. Living on wild spring water or completely rural areas. And people can go to superfeast.com.au and see photos and get videos of me up there, high mountains or low valleys. It's just in such a shit to get to these places in China. And why do we go to China? Because no-one's growing these tonic herbs. And you can't grow Di Dao these herbs wild on wild wood, say for the mushroom instance. And the other thing about Di Dao is the spore or the seed needs to come from the microclimate. So in that textbook I told you about earlier, the Materia Medica, [Shennong Ben Cao Jing 00:35:19]. And he says you need to go to this province and in this microclimate, that's where you get the best reishi. That's where you get the best [Schisandra 00:35:27].   Mason: (35:27) And so that's what I do. That's what we do. We can look at doing it elsewhere and in other ways, but you're not going to get the best. And I want to preserve that tradition. That's just what I'm doing. And there's other options out there. And then we test for metals, and aflatoxins, and pesticides, and all those things at TGA Labs, and so it's an extremely clean product you're going to be getting every single time. I mean when you start connecting, you're talking about there's that crossing over of spirit and science, at some point, it's rather than even crossing them over, if you have the capacity to hold your awareness of each at the same time is when you start getting this beautiful integration, you have respect, real deep ... that's not right, reverence of both of those spaces, rather in the beginning, it's nice to try and watch where they splice over. We were talking about this. Science is explaining that that's the spirit, that must be what spirit is, you watch the mind again take over. Whereas if you can just hold this spaciousness within yourself and respect both paths, and you hold them in your mind, and in your heart, and then in your gut together without trying to layer them over each other, all of a sudden you become this bridge of awareness of where the crossover is, and you don't need to try and do it too consciously. Some people are specialising in that, and it's really fascinating, but for your own benefit, because the science and the way our culture's bent, we'll generally take all the spirit and the romance out of that style of herbalism. And if you're constantly looking for gains and outputs, you go back and you check in with those things to associate yourself every now and then. It's good to document what actually happened and how they hit that goal. Maybe the herbs contributed or you can definitely see an increase, or you start taking it and you've got an aura ring on, or something like that, and you immediately see you're able to sleep longer and deeper because you're taking a herb. That shit is epic. I absolutely love it.   Mason: (37:27) But nothing beats saying when you get onto Jing Herbs, talking about Jing being the kidney foundations, you've been exhausted. You might be doing panels of cortisol levels because you might have a practitioner who lucky enough is into adaptogens, because they like measuring the HPA access, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, you know that if you've got that healthy, that axis in your body, that you are able to handle stress with much more efficacy, and therefore they get you on adaptogens, and they test your panels, and they go, "Wow, you're actually getting better." Now, that's all well and good, but they might get a new one, we've got a formula called Jing, it's just replenishing when people are exhausted. We get them replenishing back those foundations. Now yes, getting those inputs and going wow, your mind can go, "This thing is effective. We like doing that," but nothing beats your capacity to observe you building back and cultivating the functions of your organs and the flow of your chi yourself. That can never be forgotten within your body. You develop a very deep memory, and part of that memory is wow, I can do this.   Mason: (38:38) This isn't me going to a practitioner or me just taking a herb, and that practitioner or herb doing something for me. Those are good, but we don't want to do that our whole lives because that can excessively form a dependence externally. And we don't want to become too prudish in rejecting those kinds of things either because that will lead to extremism, going, "No, I never need to go and see a doctor. I never need to go. I can do it all myself," and that's when people can get into shit in the extreme wellness community, or conspiracy theory community, just that excessive world. If you can start though just to watch the fact that you are partaking in a practise, which is say herbalism or whatever, slow, gentle movement, energetic practise, you're meditating, and you watch yourself cultivate that energy and get a little bit more space from when you react to a situation, you're able to, with more ease, get yourself up out of bed in the morning, and go move, and get that yang energy moving.   Mason: (39:38) And then you're able to consciously come down and descend with the yin energy at night, and really participate in making your sleep practise better. That's all you, and even though you'd made to be taking a herbal, this Jing formula, you feel yourself building back that kidney function, which then correlates to adrenals, HPA axis, not feeling as exhausted, but it installs a sense of sovereignty and not dependence. And that's why it's nice for you to be able to go into a tradition that's grassroots and folksy, because it doesn't excessively separate you from your capacity to self-regulate, which is what the full excessive Western model does. It just creates divides and cuts things. It's a scalpel. It's just a scalpel. It's what they do in anatomy, they just cut things apart, and they can't relate then to a part of the body, like the knee relating to the neck, or the liver relating to the nervous system. They just don't get it because they've already got a scalpel and they've cut through all the fascia that connects the whole body.   Mason: (40:46) And they haven't attempted to understand the body as a whole, which is super useful at times, and super not at other times, which is why there's epidemics of degenerative disease, and metabolic disease, and people wasting away, and people just not having any capacity to look after themselves in their older age, which is bullshit, and it's extremist, and it's a dangerous perspective. It doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. That's why we need more mature people, people that aren't married to an institutionalised way of thinking, they're not dying on the hill just because they've been educated in a certain way. It's just such a boring, immature, way of looking at the world. And I don't know who these people think they are. The amount of all-knowing people on the internet, I think, is such a crock of shit. And I think it's the benefit for everyone, why I like using these herbs, I talk about becoming less of an asshole and more of an awesome, genuine self. I talk about myself specifically a lot. I definitely don't feel any ...   Mason: (41:53) Just the next trap is feeling the superiority because you're someone that can hold that middle place. It's like no, that's another little trap there. But generally, why I like the philosophy of tonic herbalism is because it can make people not only malleable, it can keep you agile. Doesn't mean as you get more into yourself and go along this path, which so many people are doing, millions, you become more principled in your perspective but you become agile within that principle. You're not projecting. As the organs get into flow and you develop, in general, through life, which is the whole point of these herbs is to help you develop through life, through different stages. And some stages, you just need to go into fully in order to get that perspective of wow, now I can integrate that and go down another path, or go into another stage. But the whole point of these herbs is to support that development so we have people who have wisdom and we don't have these people who get so externally identified with a label, or with a profession, or with an institution that becomes their identity for life.   Mason: (43:12) And therefore, I find that person to be really boring and I find it boring when I do it. And what you want, I think, is just to go on a malleable path and just find what self agency means to you. And that's all we're doing through the herbs. That's all I can hope for. I don't necessarily have an agenda anymore because I just don't assume to know what's right for anyone out there. So that's why I'm also, I feel really open and welcoming whenever anyone here is like, "This is what I want to work on in myself," and I'm like, "Yeah, amazing." Just having a health intention, and if you trust yourself, and go in that direction of an intent, and develop yourself, and stay malleable, the whole idea of the herbs is just to uncrack that stuckness as much as possible, lighten you up so that you can further develop, and same with exercise and hydration, sunlight, and all those good things. But yeah, it's good. There've been people getting perception, which can't ever be taken away.   Tommy Moore: (44:20) Yeah, there are too many people who are very much self identified and there is a huge place for certain herbs and mushrooms to, I guess, dissolve this sense of self identity and really move away from this man made self, and be more perceptual and sensitive to bodily sensations, and be more connected to yourself. I actually want to divert this conversation-   Mason: (44:49) [crosstalk 00:44:49] psychedelic mushrooms as well, go into that conversation as well.   Tommy Moore: (44:51) Well absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring that up because I do volunteer for a charity called Mind Medicine Australia, and they're actually looking at psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for mental illness.   Mason: (45:04) How far along are they? Mind Medicine Australia, are they doing the certifications? Is that right?   Tommy Moore: (45:11) Yeah, so we're in discussion with the TGA at the moment, so we're in the rescheduling process. There's an interim decision that's been made. So I know CBD has been accepted in that interim decision, [crosstalk 00:45:23]-   Mason: (45:24) You can put me in touch. Who's heading it? Because I'd love to chat with them a little bit [crosstalk 00:45:30].   Tommy Moore: (45:30) Yeah, totally. So it's Tania de Jong and Peter Hunt. So they're the two co-founders, but we've got a huge advisory board, from researchers, and philosophers, and people all over the world who are looking at this pretty closely. I know a lot of people in the States are, people like Rick Doblin, or Dennis McKenna, or people like that.   Mason: (45:50) Oh man, I'm so keen because this area is massive. I mean this is where people ask me all the time, "And what about psychedelic mushrooms?" and it's the same. And psychedelic mushrooms, brought it up on my podcast recently, I had someone who really explored psychedelic mushrooms, and I'm like, "Oh man, everyone always thinks just by osmosis, I'm going to be taking a lot of psilocybin-containing mushrooms," and the guy who was there, he's like, "I would never think that. I can tell straight away." And I'm not saying, "Yeah, because you're not conscious, man. You can tell that for sure." But I do get that, people like, "Oh yeah, well where can I get the psilocybin psychedelic mushrooms? You must be into them. Let's talk about them." I'm like I've got good things to say, but like mycology, I do stick to my lane now.   Mason: (46:41) And then you're working in the ... And the benefit of having that angle is it opens me up to going, "Yeah, cool." And then I'll talk to people like Tanya and yourself, who have actually got the insight of what's what's going on. I like just sitting on the sidelines, to an extent, and just be an observer of that, and just chat about it, because I mean we've been talking a lot about suicide just behind the scenes here, and on the podcast, it's been coming up. Anyway, I won't go into it right now, but just even for that preventative, I'm pretty sure ... Do you guys have that as a focus around [crosstalk 00:47:22]?   Tommy Moore: (47:22) Yeah, I mean the whole spectrum of mental health really within Australia, we look at the stats, we look at the lack of treatment options, and then we look at the statistics based on what we're seeing with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in trials that are happening all over the world. And the neuroimaging side of things, like Robin Carhart-Harris and David Nutt are doing over in Imperial College London.   Mason: (47:43) Who are they? The neuroimaging?   Tommy Moore: (47:46) Yeah, absolutely. So David Nutt and Robin Carhart-Harris are leading a lot of the trials over in Imperial College London. So they're, I guess, head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research as far as I'm aware. So their centre focuses on the action and clinical use of psychedelics with a particular focus on researching the treatment of depression. And they've done some really, really interesting studies there, obviously looking at the psychedelic state and what's happening at the level of the mind, or sorry, I should say the level of the brain in terms of neuroimaging, and also doing very interesting comparisons between the psychedelic state and the meditative state. They've done some comparisons of neuroimaging between Buddhist monks who have had 10,000 hours or more practise of meditation, and then comparing that to what the brain looks like during psychedelics, and some very, very awesome comparisons that they're finding and the similarities in terms of ego dissolution, and moving away from this mind-made self. But I'm certainly more than happy to chat about this.   Mason: (48:56) I was saying before, when you were talking about the mushrooms somewhat acting ... They act like an immune system. You can see tree-based immunological compounds moving between the mycelia between certain trees and sick trees, and also acting like a nervous system. My download, when I was on a medicine journey years and years ago, was that the mushrooms more relate to the fascial system. And the fact that within the Chinese herbal tradition, the mushrooms are seen as fluid regulators, and regulators of decay as well, they help move decay from the body, and allow it to be just metabolised and transformed. And I just started realising if you look at fascia in the body, just the biggest organ in the body, it's not skin, it's the fascia, and it's now I think technically classified as an organ, and it's such a regulating organ. And if you can maintain, as well as everything else, fascial health, you have a really good chance at staying really ... you have a high ability to stay more adaptable within your physicality. And I see that there's this energetic element to it, that it helps you just integrate experiences.   Mason: (50:17) And if you can stay connected in different parts of your body, which is likely you can see there almost being this photon transfer through the fascia in the body, and therefore how much light there is based on ... information there is based on light. And you can see that you can have information transfers to your body, therefore your body's going to be able to stay, basically what I can see, up to speed on what's going on elsewhere, and you can stay more unified as a whole. And then when I started bringing in mushrooms to the say the plant medicine community, and started seeing just how many of my friends, whether they were serving or whether they were regularly going into ceremonies, just felt a significant impact of taking medicinal mushrooms pre and post, pre especially, just to prepare your body and also ensure that you're not going to destroy your nervous system, that you've got this robustness to get through sometimes just how hardcore these journeys can be, but as well, the medicinal mushrooms afterwards to support the process of integration, huge, man.   Mason: (51:19) It was massive and it was this huge missing link. And I think as well, for anyone, it just goes to show it's not just plant medicines, when you're doing anything that's deep cathartic, and you're doing deep work with a therapist, whether it's plant medicine, you're deep diving in your yogic meditative practices, and so on and so forth, you can't just stay deep in these huge mind-exploding experiences. You can't get reliant, I think, long term on that being what's going to fix you or heal you. You go deep, you release the pressure valve, hopefully reduce some acute symptomatology, and then you will need to be able to catch yourself back up on ... If you've blown yourself out into the sky and you've gone deep into your psyche, you need to be able to hit that middle-   Mason: (52:03) Blind yourself out into the sky and you've gone deep into your psyche. You need to be able to hit that middle ground and come back to your lifestyle and your personal everyday practises, your own meditative practise, your own gentle movement practise and your own herbal practise in order to ensure that you're staying level and not becoming, again, externally reliant. Can happen on Western medicine, can happen on these plant medicines. It can happen with whatever, deep dive therapy, deep dive meditations. And, that's, where's the self agency. And that's where I really find the mushrooms to be super useful. And generally the tonic herbs, they're massive, and they are now that you see practitioners of all lights utilising them and getting their clients on these tonic herbs, as well as ensuring that they've just got their lifestyle factors rock solid. And you've got this constitutional discipline and the way you live your life to give yourself these basics, so as well as sleep and diet and all these things, because it's necessary, if you want to evolve in these areas, it's just paramount. Otherwise you can just keep on. You see all the good research in the beginning, because it's under watchful eyes and experts, whether it's a Shaman or whether it's a practitioner, they're a psychologist utilising psychedelic mushrooms or MDMA in all these other places. And there's a facilitation process, but if you aren't moving along on your own accord, if you keep on relying externally, you can start and you don't do so under a real watchful eye and someone that isn't just thinking, yeah, the more, the better, you come back and we'll keep you moving ahead using this thing, you start to loop in these subconscious kind of states rather than actually having the capacity to move slowly beyond them.   Mason: (53:43) And that's just important for everyone to remember that it always, from my perspective it's why I like the tonic herbals. It's like at some point, don't be relying on the external practise or the substance. Come back to your lifestyle. It's like the Buddhists and they're like chop wood carry water, that's where the magic happens when you've been chopping wood carrying water for 20 years and 30 years. And then you get a little insight, then you move past it and you just keep on doing your chop wood, carry water. Everyone needs to remember that it is in this scene because everyone's suckling at the teat of someone who does it for me. To get the research out there that discovers the therapy, that's going to help fix me inside. And I relate to it a lot in my early days as a big seeker.   Mason: (54:24) And it's just a really important reminder, I think for everyone to just constantly and now, if you can, as soon as you can, land with two feet on the ground and just keep your feet on the ground in that disciplined state. And I think then you can really start unlocking the magic. And if you're feeling dependent, unless you're in a dependent state where you find it's a really useful collaboration that you are working with it to get your head above the ground so you can work. But if you're feeling quite stable and you're still ambiguously, keep going back to look for some, there's got to be something more there for me, it helped me so much before. And now there must be other stuff. It's probably that seeking energy without acute symptomatology is there. It's probably time to just put all that aside for probably a few years. And so, anyway, just want to throw that out there.   Tommy Moore: (55:17) Yeah, absolutely. And just while we are on the topic of psychedelic mushrooms, I do think it's important that I bring across what is the therapeutic mechanism of something like psilocybin and psilocybin being the active constituent in psilocybe mushrooms. Now, I don't want to lose anyone in the chemistry of psilocybin because as we know, scientists and researchers are always using complex names. So stay with me as much as you can. I'll do my best to simplify some of the complex words that I'm going to discuss.   Tommy Moore: (55:51) But when we are studying the mind and studying the brain through material science, we do need to understand our limitations. We know that changes in brain activity or changes in blood redistribution within different areas of the brain can cause alterations in our state of consciousness, but we can't necessarily say, or don't necessarily know for sure where or how they exist. That is to say how we consciously perceive them.   Tommy Moore: (56:18) So firstly, let's just recognise the distinction or disassociate brain and mind. Do thoughts simply appear as electrical signals? Can we see thoughts through observing the brain? So I guess the three therapeutic mechanisms of something like a psychedelic mushroom, or all classic psychedelics being things DMT or LSD, neuroplasticity, functional connectivity, and modulation of the default mode network, and they're all correlating positive therapeutic outcomes of being more connected. I alluded to earlier, this feeling of connection to other people, to the greater good, to the universe, to ourselves, to everything. Feeling boundless, wonder, ineffability and a sense of gratitude for this human experience. And I did speak to the sense of ego disillusion, which is often referring to a psychedelic experience. And that is an experience that is beyond this level of mind, that we so often associate with our default state. Now, of course, people are going to have their own connotations and associated perceptions of the word ego, but let's start with that first therapeutic mechanism that I mentioned, which is neuroplasticity. And I know neuroplasticity can be linked with other herbs and medicines like lion's mane.   Mason: (57:46) There's another one. I completely mind blanking ironically when talking about herb's for neuro-plasticity. There was another one the other day and someone was using it. Maybe we're talking about niacin, we're talking about maybe the use of Ginkgo biloba rather than niacin. So more for that diluting factor using herbals rather than B3. So yeah, lion's mane, I think that's quite well established and there's a bajillion people now, thankfully doing lion's mane and microdosing in their own little settings. And I'm sure they're all legal. I was talking about neuroplasticity the other day in terms of a woman doing a masters on adaptogens and mental health. And she's a naturopath. And just going through the mechanisms in which neuro-plasticity is maintained. And it was nice because people use lion's mane and these nootropics. These other nootropics, herbal nootropics like ashwagandha and Rhodiola and Macuna and to an extent Ginkgo biloba. They use them in a way that's either healing.   Mason: (58:59) I use them on my mum on a traumatic brain injury, an acquired brain injury aneurysm. Or for study and mental output and mental acuity. And so they're good, not saying [inaudible 00:59:13] but then there's no grounding factor of just, if you can maintain your neuro-plasticity, you are less likely to find yourself in roadblocks that stop your psychological development or stop you from hopefully, we'll have to look at the data, but stop you from getting a neuro degenerative disease state later in life. And so that is exciting because I had this really calm relationship to neuro-plasticity, which is what I think it needs. I think the nootropic and the neuroplastic seen as far as herb's needs, needs to calm chop wood carry water association as well. So yeah, I'm excited about that side as well. Sorry for cutting you off.   Tommy Moore: (59:56) No, that's all good. Yeah. Just on neuroplasticity, I guess it is quite adaptogenic in a way, because the way most people think of neuroplasticity is just getting smarter or, very linked with the nootropic side of things like alertness and stimulation, but neuroplasticity in much the same way adaptogens work, is that it's progressive over time, you don't grow these neural pathways in a day or even a couple of days, it happens over weeks or months. And so if we're talking about neural pathways in the sense of a thought pattern and these neural pathways that are built up over time, it may be a negative bias that we have that is then becoming subconscious because we're using that pathway so often becomes easier to access. And it becomes part of our subconscious state or our default state when we're not necessarily doin

Today we speak with Jannica Klingborg. Jannica is a certified Chi Nei Tsang practitioner, Reiki healer and yoga instructor. Jannica speaks to us about her journey from her empty partying days to walking into her first yoga class which changed her life. She speaks to us about the parts of ourselves that coordinate with the elements and how that directs our healing. She explains the who, what, where and when of Chi Nei Tsang. She explains simple and easy ways we can start supporting our life force energy, aka "chi at home today". She speaks to the six conditions of healing and what we should all be aware about. She tells us that thinking is not the compass, it's the feeling that is. It is a very informative, comforting and engaging conversation. Enjoy!https://www.instagram.com/yogannicahttps://www.chiflowhealing.com/https://www.yogalastudios.com/jannica-yoga

It's time again for our guiding seasonal podcast with Tahnee and Mason, where they tune into the energetics, undertones, and wisdom of the season within Daoism. With 30 days of Jing in full swing, and people easing back off stimulants, this episode couldn't have landed at a better time. In Daoism, the season of Winter is associated with the element of water and the wonderful Kidneys. The Kidneys are the bedrock of our yin/yang energy, a storehouse for our Jing, and govern the regulation of fluids in our body. Of all the seasons, Winter is the most Yin. The beauty to be found in this season comes from allowing space for introspection, reflection, restoration, and the inner alchemy of the kidneys, transforming fear into wisdom. As with all the seasons we move through, Tahnee and Mason translate a fluent foundation of what embodying this season looks like; The warming foods to eat, herbs to have on hand, and practices that best support us, both in this season and in this point in time collectively. Dress for the elements, protect your Qi with layers and woolies, observe Mother Nature; And as the sun sets early and rises late, so should we flow with her motion and allow our bodies to rest, and consolidate our essence into Jing. Tune in~     "I can feel the depth of that Kidney energy and the untapped potential within it. That's where the Jing lives, in the Kidneys. But when it comes down to fear, it's the wisest organ because it's the most practical".  -Mason Taylor   Mase and Tahnee discuss:   The energetics of Winter. Why rest is crucial in Winter. Herbs and foods for Winter. Observing fear-kidney related. Transforming fear into wisdom. Balancing Yin and Yang energy. The esoteric nature of the Kidneys. The Water element and the Kidneys. What menstruation blood says about our Jing essence. Practices and meditations to support us through Winter.   Tahnee and Mason Taylor Tahnee and Mason Taylor are the CEO and founder of SuperFeast (respectively). Their mission with SuperFeast is to improve the health, healing, and happiness of people and the planet, through sharing carefully curated offerings and practices that honour ancient wisdom and elevate the human spirit. Together Tahnee and Mason run their company and host the SuperFeast podcast, weaving their combined experience in herbs, yoga, wellness, Taoist healing arts, and personal development with lucid and compelling interviews from all around the world. They are the proud parents of Aiya and Goji, the dog, and are grateful to call the Byron Shire home.   Tahnee Taylor Tahnee Taylor is the CEO of SuperFeast and has been exploring health and human consciousness since her late teens. From Yoga, which she first practiced at school in 2000, to reiki, herbs, meditation, Taoist and Tantric practices, and human physiology, her journey has taken her all over. This journey continues to expand her understanding and insight into the majesty (that is) the human body and the human experience. Tahnee graduated with a Journalism major and did a stint in non-fiction publishing (working with health and wellness authors and other inspiring creatives), advertising, many jobs in cafes, and eventually found herself as a Yoga teacher. Her first studio, Yoga for All, opened in 2013, and Tahnee continues to study Yoga with her teachers Paul + Suzee Grilley and Rod Stryker. She learned Chi Nei Tsang and Taoist healing practices from Master Mantak Chia. Tahnee continues to study herbalism and Taoist practices, the human body, women's wisdom, ancient healing systems, and is currently enrolled in an acupuncture degree and year-long program with The Shamanic School of Womancraft. Tahnee is the mother of one, a 4-year old named Aiya.   MasonTaylor Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason was first exposed to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Jing Tonic Chaga Deer Antler 30 days of Jing Sleep-Our Top 10 Tips Yoga Nidra    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hello, everybody.   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi, everyone.   Mason: (00:02) It's wintertime.   Tahnee: (00:03) Brr.   Mason: (00:03) Ready to jam about the water season.   Tahnee: (00:07) So excited.   Mason: (00:08) Are you?   Tahnee: (00:09) Always.   Mason: (00:11) Excited about winter? That's a transformation now.   Tahnee: (00:13) I like winter. I know it is. I'm from far North Queensland so I don't like winter historically but I have grown to love winter and I think the kidneys are my favourite organ system to talk about if one can have a favourite.   Mason: (00:29) Yeah. My favourite child's Aiya.   Tahnee: (00:31) You only have one child.   Mason: (00:32) Yeah. That's true. You only have five organ systems. Yeah. I definitely feel you. Do you just want to jump straight in and let us know why you love talking about it so much?   Tahnee: (00:43) Sure. Being interviewed on my own podcast. Our podcast.   Mason: (00:48) Yeah. It's still just my picture on the ... No, we're rebranding because that was from a long time ago.   Tahnee: (00:55) I hijacked it. Yeah. Why do I like the kidneys? So I think I like it on an esoteric level because it's all about the karmic blueprint of the organism as it comes in. But on a more practical level, I think the kidney's governed regulation of the fluids in our body and our on a Western lens that hormonal axis of relationship and I've just come to really appreciate how important it is to nurture that system. One thing I'm really conscious of is how esoteric we go on this podcast so I want to try and keep it practical for a little bit at least. I think when we talk about kidneys we're really talking about the ability of the body to be in integrity and to have integrity through the joint systems, through the organ structures as well. So the spleen's really responsible for the meatiness and the integrity of the muscles and their ability to be harmonious and responsive and full of blood and all those things.   Tahnee: (02:02) But the kidneys provide this consolidation and lifting and holding energy so when we talk about things like prolapse or joint issues we really see that as a kidney problem. I'm someone who has had a lot of bad stuff a couple of times in my life and I've really come to appreciate how much working with the kidney meridian has benefited that. On a psycho-emotional level, I really like how it speaks to transforming fear into wisdom which I think it's really difficult but I think it's a really worthwhile thing. When you look at the things in your life that really scare you whether it's death or financial like lack of finances or all of those primal... Yeah. Even your sexuality a lot of people have a lot of fear of sexuality. These are all really deeply connected to the kidney story.   Tahnee: (02:55) If you look at the chakra system as well it's connected to that second chakra and also to the base chakra with the adrenal glands so it's really around all of those foundations of our human existence which is somewhere to live, someone to love us, enough money in the bank to survive, purpose and meaning in our lives. Using the journey of life to become wise. So a running joke in our house that I'm going to be really cool when I'm 60 but I think about instead of being I'll have to achieve something about when I'm 20 or 30 or whatever it's like take the long view and look at life as this opportunity to grow and develop and become wise, become... I guess let life shape you a little bit and that really aligns for me with the kidney essence because you think about what water does, it corrodes through rock to form these beautiful gorges and rivers.   Tahnee: (03:48) If you've ever been in a plane flying over the earth and you see a river meandering through a desert or through a forest it's such a beautiful metaphor I think for life. Because it's not like a straight line to the sea. It twists and turns and bends and that's literally what kidney energy points to. Remember that water finds a way no matter what. There's always a path to the sea and we're meandering through life following the flow of life. So it points very much the Dao to me and I guess especially as I get older I'm really feeling into that new way, effortless effort, that sort of grace that comes through trusting in life. I think the kidney really invites that in. That was a long answer to your question.   Mason: (04:37) Yeah. I'm just interested. I'm always interested to see what you bring up in the beginning because that sets me off. The fee one sets me off. We've talked about journaling as a practise in autumn-   Tahnee: (04:49) It's good for all seasons.   Mason: (04:51) It's good for all seasons. I find at the moment I like the confrontation around fear. I like the awareness and the appreciation and gratitude for fear as a feeling because naturally if everyone just goes in you can feel how much that fear has kept you alive. It's kept you safe. It's kept you... Maybe at times, you've gone to a Tony Robbins conference and he's told you to explode beyond your fear and you've gone out and done something exceptional. It's really great to have that heart energy all the time but if anyone who owns a business or who has their own whatever, just has a job if you constantly explode outside of what your body is telling you is reasonable like 100% of the time eventually you burn out. There's a little bit of reasonableness around some of the fears that you have.   Tahnee: (05:41) Yeah. Well, I just want to jump in because you said courage which is really one of those values of the heart and the lungs. The upper dantian organ systems and again to get a little bit esoteric but if you're constantly draining the kidney essence before its really cultivated and naturally bubbling up-   Mason: (06:02) What's that process?   Tahnee: (06:04) Well, this is inner alchemy so this would be Neigong practise which is probably a little bit out there for the podcast but it's the cultivation practises. So if you're working with the water wheels in the body which are basically like energy currents in the body you're starting to consolidate your essence into jing. You're using chi drawn from the earth so that on the very base of the foot you can't see me I'm touching my hand as if it were afoot but if you go from your middle toes to the little divot underneath the pad of your foot just before the arch of your foot there's a kidney point called the bubbling spring. In QiGong when you place your feet on the earth after a certain amount of practise in the Wu Chi stance a way of leaning forward into the balls of the feet really resting them on the earth and connecting to the earth.   Tahnee: (06:55) You start to feel almost as if bubbles or water bubbles are pressing up against the sole of the foot and it's called the bubbling spring point literally because you can feel the chi of the earth drawing up into the body through this point. A lot of the practises that I've learned through the Daoist arts are really around drawing earth chi up and into the body because that grounds us and it balances and it harmonises us and it reminds us of where we come from which is the earth so we're safe. We're safe here. We're not not here for a reason kind of thing. It gives us that grounding and connection. It's also very healing because earth chi is really healing for us especially those of us in device land all the time getting back to the earth is really important.   Tahnee: (07:41) Then that chi we can draw that into the body and we can use that in the initial stages it's to clear tension and a lot of the stuff Benny does, Benny Fergusson the Movement Monk. His work is around this. It's releasing the superficial stages of tension which is built up through emotional suppression and life. Then as we clear that we start to get into cultivation so that's when we're storing energy instead of spending energy so most of us the moment we get an inch we take a mile and I'm talking about myself as well here. I always start to get enough rest we start to get a good diet. We start to get on the herbs, we start to do the practises, we start to feel really good so then we go and push ourselves really hard and do something crazy. So we haven't reached the stable place where we're actually really grounded and that's what you're talking to. You've got one course and suddenly you're inspired to take on the world but you don't have any foundations to actually tackle it.   Mason: (08:40) Yeah. I think it's all done without a real appreciation and gratitude of that fear. Everyone's like feel the fear and do it anyway. I like to feel the fear and now I do. I think I've burnt myself out quite a lot with that personal development. Hardcore hostile entrepreneurial scene and now talking about the journaling I do it sometimes, I journal. I'll even counterintuitively do it on my phone if it strikes me but the whole reason I like winter as well. I like this kidney energy at all times of life as well as I start to get hopefully a little bit wiser and I'm not just going go, go, go at all times of the day. I'm appreciating that once you get to three to five o'clock in the organ wheel you can move into bladder time. Then five to seven you're moving into the kidney time and you can gauge how well you're able to adjust to a convalescence accumulating yin energy.   Mason: (09:35) I bring this up just because it's a really nice gauge for everyone going forth to know well, am I enjoying this wintertime? What does it actually mean? It's like that time of day when you're winding down how successfully can you do it? How successfully can you go into the blackness of night and the blackness of sleep? It's definitely been a big struggle for me over the years and that's why I'm really with you. I can feel just the depth of that kidney energy, just the untapped potential and that's what the jing lives in the kidneys and that's our potential. But when it comes down to fear it's the wisest organ because it's the most practical. It's like if you're going for that walk, I went for a walk with Benny actually the other day and we were walking pretty close to a cliff and there was a big drop-off. I felt the fear and I felt that part of me judged that fear just being like come on then. Just get closer, you're fine. You can trust yourself. Then I was like all of a sudden that wisdom. It's wisdom. I'm-   Tahnee: (10:35) Don't be stupid.   Mason: (10:36) Yeah, don't be stupid. I was like, okay. I caught just how much my body was like it seized up even though I was in a safe position and I trusted my body and I was like okay, I can ease up here. Then in terms of going that little bit closer like my mind was telling me, no, go closer. Dance right on the edge. I was like I got really grateful for that fear right now probably I don't need to go closer to the edge now. Then from there, I get a cascade of different thoughts and different feelings. That's a very simple example but that sparked a lot of-   Tahnee: (11:07) No, it's a great example. It's ego and all these things playing off in your mind and you're able now to take... This is literally the point of spiritual practise is to step out of the bullshit on that lower level of mind. I'm going to lean into the Ayurvedic text because I think they explain this very beautifully where it's like yeah, you've got ahamkara. You've got the ego itself who's saying I want to look a certain way and be a certain way in the world and that means I can handle this challenge. Then you've got Buddhi the wise mind going, really? Watch the emotions, watch what's playing out right now. Watch... We could get into these are scars which are habits of conditioning that you've got from what does it means to be a man. It means that I challenge myself. I push myself to go to the edge and this is literally the gift of the kidney is to go all of that stuff playing out. How do I rise above that? Be still, notice what's happening and make a wise decision which is important. I think it's a really useful life skill.   Mason: (12:11) Lots of big decisions come about. There's a lot of fear right now. There's fear of people who aren't vaccinated, who are vaccinated. There's fear of never being able to travel again.   Tahnee: (12:20) Governments. I think literally we're in a time of collective base chakra blasting because the systems that people have relied on forever are coming apart and this is where it helps to have a practise that grounds you back to the earth and says we're right here right now in this moment I'm okay. Does that mean I don't take action? Of course, not. But it means that I have a touchpoint or a reminder or a place to come to that's safe within me that's not provided by something external. So when the government collapses or when the economic system falls down or when you can't travel again you're not going to freak out because you know that you're okay right here where you are. You don't need to travel to validate your existence. I think these are the things that lack in our culture at this time.   Mason: (13:09) Well, it's nice when you look down into the pools of water within you. That's why it's nice to rest because if you don't rest you don't accumulate water. If you don't have downtime you don't-   Tahnee: (13:20) You don't accumulate chi. The whole point of this stuff is if we keep going 100% all the time you're never going to a yin state which is what kidney is, it's ultimate yin. Then we age, we lose our chi, we start to degenerate and that's not of service anyway to ourselves, our families, the planet.   Mason: (13:40) We are back on the journal once more. It's just a useful thing if you've got these crippling fears about your children or what's going to happen to your parents or so on and so forth. I sit there sometimes and I go through all the hypotheticals which I don't know if anyone... It's not a common practise in our-   Tahnee: (13:59) Scenario planning.   Mason: (14:00) ...culture. Oh, exactly in business it's scenario planning and it's really scary to go through what are the absolute worst scenarios that could play out in the business. It's like it's better just to keep them there but it's not wise to. So I've been doing that just whether it's in the shower or that's why it's really nice to have that downtime again on the earth and go for a walk. I go for a walk with a mate every week and I talk about them openly all these... You can get trapped in the doomsday ness of it.   Mason: (14:29) But if the intention of the practise is to, I just want to see what's real. I want to feel into that. You're feeling into the water within yourself and that's chi within yourself. So it's got a particular formation. You want to go about perceiving and exploring that chi as it's expressing within you and you'll find the wisdom within okay, that fear, where does that go to? What's the intention? It becomes 3D, 4D, 5D. It's not just I'm scared because I want to stay alive. You can start feeling the story and the metaphor playing out around that if you play that fear out to the end. Okay. At that point, that's good fear. Really like it. Gosh grateful that we have that fear of whatever it is, social anxiety, being judged, losing all your money, never being able to travel, having forced medical stuff upon you, having people not doing medical things.   Mason: (15:14) Whatever it is, whatever your fear is it's all valid. So your experience and you just go. That's really reasonable. Ah, at this point there's a grey zone and murkiness and then you sit in that murky zone because it's not just a fear. You don't allow that fear to give... Don't have an aversion to that area and go and sink into that area. Okay. That's when you rest, you accumulate all this chi, you accumulate those deep waters and those reservoirs of water. If you don't have those you have nothing to explore and you become a shallow person. You can't get that action. You become shallow, you become externally driven, you need identities, you need dogma. Don't think because we're talking about kidneys that people need to be sick or completely tapped out on their kidneys or of their adrenals. It could be a slight dysfunction but people these days, even young people they're not honouring this process and therefore you see there's an extreme amount of people acting in shallow ways and having shallow belief systems.   Mason: (16:16) Therefore they're outside of themselves. There's no wisdom in what they're saying. They're just given a rough document of the ideology that they're following and then they go and just regurgitate that and repeat that and go and gather evidence. So that's all kidney water systems. So it's nicer to be in flow with nature and create those deep reservoirs of water and if you feel the fear then feel that murky zone and then you move towards that experience and wisdom engagement. Then what you'll see is there's a real constant opportunity for transformation and change to occur there.   Tahnee: (16:51) Yeah. I think what you spoke to there I mean it's not even on an individual level. I don't think it's an individual problem, I think it's a collective problem that we aren't... The Neijing which is where a lot of our philosophy comes from really. Which is one of the oldest pre-TCM text classical medicine texts to basically sleep until the sun rises high in the sky basically. You're supposed to sleep a lot in wintertime. I know for me we're both feeling sleepy around seven or eight o'clock at the moment and we're in bed really early at the moment.   Tahnee: (17:54) I'm sleeping until seven most mornings and I'm really feeling this deep nourishment from sleep at the moment. Obviously, we have a business and children so we still end up burning the candle but how many of us push through winter not getting that hibernation time, that deep rest of restoration in the chi and the organs. Then oh, we get sick, and then oh, we're suddenly like I'm crook all the time. It's like it's not because as a culture we keep the momentum going all year round. We don't have this time of acknowledging and even making sacred the rest and the sleep that we require. I think the Neijing they had this foundational text that was an understood part of the culture. I guess I'm making a broad assumption so maybe I'm wrong but we don't grow up with that. I grew up in the tropics where you have wet and dry seasons basically. If it's cold you wear a light jumper and that's it-   Mason: (18:48) Aussies are on. The mittens are on. The [inaudible 00:18:49] are on.   Tahnee: (18:50) But we never had any real... I remember my mum saying keep your kidneys covered but that was about as far as it went. I really was shocked when I moved to a cold climate. I had no idea. I think I'm 35. I've just learned how to layer and how to stay warm, like wearing UGG boots in my house and all these kinds of things. It's really taken me a long time to understand cold and cold invasion. These ideas in Chinese medicine that seem really foreign to us as Westerners because cold isn't something that can invade you but in Chinese medicine, it's literally it can. It's a pathogen and it enters your body. If you think about homeostatic processes, your body is trying to maintain its temperature. If it's constantly being punished by cold air and it's having to push back and try and stay warm enough that's going to drain your resources. It's going to drain your reserves. It's going to drain your chi.   Tahnee: (19:38) You're going to be more susceptible to getting sick. Now is the cold a pathogen or are you now more susceptible to viruses and bacteria? I don't know the answer to that but I would assume that it makes a lot of sense to stay rugged up against the cold to prevent your body from having to be stressed out by this thing. We live in an area where barefoot is common. You see kids running around barefoot all the time. I really make my kid wear shoes and socks with warm things on her feet in winter even though I believe that barefoot is best. It's like at some point we also have to maintain the health of the body. I think it's a really interesting... I'm not saying I have the answers but it's something I find really interesting how little respect our culture has for the elements and respecting the elements and being really conscious and mindful of cold and its effect on us as an organism. Yeah.   Tahnee: (20:34) I think also when we think about the Neijing saying we need this inner time it's very transpersonal in that collectively if we all slow down and we all turn our attention in and we spend this time in reflection and restoration and then we come back collectively. That's a really powerful shift in our culture that we've spent time in this yin state that isn't outward and isn't... I guess that's probably never going to happen but I think it's really interesting because what you're talking about with the depth of water we've all seen the movies, we've all seen Jaws and [inaudible 00:21:13] and deep water is scary. Deepwater brings up our deepest most primal fears around what's lurking underneath the surface. That's why meditation is hard for so many people. That's why being still is hard for so many people because when you stop moving you start to feel all of the things that are hidden beneath the surface that you've been moving to stay away from. So meditation to me is one of the ultimate kidney practises in terms of connecting to that inner world and connecting to the subconscious under the surface narrative that goes in all of us. I feel like the season is a really big invitation to slow down and meditate more and be less active but maybe more internal.   Mason: (21:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative). I've got a little bit of an idea I just want to explore. Hopefully, it lands but you're just triggered by the fact you were saying it's such an introspective time. So we go in and we view what is ourselves and we get really intimate with self-agency, feeling ourselves on more I would say of an infinite nature. I'm feeling our spiritual nature and closing off from the world a little bit. We close off a little bit socially. We're not as socially engaged, we're not taking input outside but it's something I just realised for myself running in spiritual circles so much. It's probably a lot around here in what we do wave as the superior is staying within. Staying yin and not going out and interacting heavily with other people and allowing your personality to form and develop. This is something that happens in the yang. It happens in springtime, it happens in summer. It happens in high activity times in business.   Mason: (23:09) I'm thinking about it because I'm thinking a lot about feedback and it's something I don't... I don't enjoy feedback. I like being a part of a team but I've got this... This is no, I'm in touch with who I am on the inside and the way that I am. I'm introspective and I don't often then go and take that and then run out into my community and allow for there to be feedback that I really take on about the way that I'm interacting with the world. The way my mannerisms, my temperament. I sit in that yin introspective place a lot of the time. I'm just realising, by the way, this is very conceptual everybody but remembering that kidneys are the source of yin and yang. So if you are excessively yin in your life. If you're excessively in that space of I'm just staying inside of myself.   Mason: (24:09) I'm not accepting input. I'm not going out and allowing the daggers to be thrown that occur within an interaction especially in those high summer times. Then what happens is you don't actually allow that yang energy to cultivate within the kidneys as well. So the yin becomes a little bit more shallow as you go along. I'm really in my internal world and being selfish and talking about my own process here but I hope that just talks a little bit to the experience of remembering that this time a lot of people really love the yin when you get to shut off from people and you don't have to be forced to interact and take feedback and really be an interactive force. But remember you're going to be able to go deeper the more you go out and allow the judgement in, the people refining who you are, all that be socially engaged. I bring that up because if you can do that if you can stay within that wheel of cultivating yin and yang within the kidneys and you do that by staying within the circulation of the seasons and the days so you're going between yin and yang, yang and yin.   Mason: (25:13) You're going to have very significantly differently expressed parts of yourself coming out all the time. Then the kidney water can cultivate because kidney water is potential. What happens if you have water? You have life, you have lots of water in an arid land you're always going to be able to have potential to create food and survive. Eventually, you want aquifers. You want aquifers that are pure and able to give you a real solid store of water. Then what happens is the yang comes in, that fire comes in and heats up that water so the water can move around your body. So this is just bringing the significance of why it's so important to go into this cultivation time but also be in and respect the difference between yin and yang and those parts of yourself.   Mason: (25:57) If the yang can really be expressed within yourself as well then you heat up all that potential, you heat up that water. It becomes a vapour, goes up, and allows the germination within the liver to happen and you're basically keeping the body nice and supple. You're circulating the water in. The part of that is if you're constantly introducing water to an ecosystem you never know what's going to germinate at different times as you go along. I think there's a subconscious fear there even of going really I understand myself and I want to stay right here. If you keep going along the wheel of the year between yin and yang as you go along different aspects of your personality, different parts are going to germinate and take seed.   Mason: (26:42) You're going to have to have the wisdom to go cool, this is an identity. I know that there's a part of myself that's really beautifully expressed in that but I'm actually going to go and explore a different part of myself. So kidneys are always so tied in with who am I? If you can look into the deep dark waters you can realise it's a little bit more fluid than you think it is.   Tahnee: (27:05) Well, the deep connection to I am universal really. It's the [inaudible 00:27:12] fire and this whole concept of where we even come from that's kidney essence. It's kind of like Shakti and yogic texts but it's literally how each cell knows on this higher consciousness level what to become. If you're the sperm and the egg uniting you know how to make a human. Well, how does that even happen? How is that information, that data transferred and interpreted? Where does this blueprint come from and this is kidney energy, this is jing, this is that primordial essence? So there's this really deep connection to ancestry to all of creation really through the kidney essence. I think if you think about the archetype of the kidney it's the magician or the wise sage. So it's this person who's connected to more than just... It's the shaman really.   Tahnee: (28:13) It's the person who can bridge worlds. So I think that sense in the kidney what you're speaking to with going up that kind of happens naturally. The Daoist practise is the whole point is you cultivate enough jing that the expression coming up through the shen is pure. You're consistent and you're authentic because it's what you radiate is aligned and so it's not this inner process that happens through. Meditation is the start of that process but at a certain point in meditation, you're not going through your shit anymore. You're accessing that stillness and then in that stillness, you're starting to feel the prana. In the prana, you're starting to understand that you can use your awareness to bring prana into the body or chi into the body.   Tahnee: (29:11) Then you're starting to cultivate that and then you're using your practises to integrate this kind of experience into... It's getting kind of esoteric. sorry. But that's when shen radiates and there's this very strong relationship between the depth of winter and the peak of summer and there has to be to have your full expression out into the world. You have to have the opposite. That's the polarity I suppose of the yin and yang expression of those organ systems and in Daoism, we do meditations where we unite the heart and the kidneys and we bring the cold energy from the kidneys up to the heart and cool the heart because you're always expressing your heart gets hot, it gets overheated. If you're never bringing your shen and your authenticity and your expression and yourself down back to the kidneys to warm them up the kidneys get cold and they start to get exhausted.   Tahnee: (30:05) So that's this unifying function of the heart and the kidney meridians and the meditation's really beautiful. You're imagining the heart is the lotus and the kidneys is the lotus bulbs and then the legs are the roots down to the earth. Then the lotus is opening up to the universal energy above. That's a really nice metaphor I think for how we've got the energy provided for the flowering of our life from the kidneys. Then the heart provides that flowering expression. I think when we think about what happens in wintertime if you're flowing with the seasons you feel you want to cultivate quiet. You want to reflect. You want to be still. You want to stay warm, all of these things. The moment some of us your energy's different. You're up, you're out and by the time peak summer's coming you're on your own fire. So you want to have the reserves that you've cultivated in winter available to you in summer.   Tahnee: (31:01) It's like having resources to draw from so I think that's where we don't take that opportunity to slow down and winter's really about that. It's about closing off and storing and I don't see that as a negative thing. I've come to really enjoy that about winter, that I'm less social and I'm less concerned with the outside world at this time. I just want to be with my family and in my home and we're making soup and we're slowing down and my daughter's taking a thermos to school. It's all very cute. I think that's really what I have learned is to yield to the changes the season brings and that trust that the full expression will come. That's my take on all of that. I don't know if we wanted to talk to herbs and how we would work with them at this time of year.   Mason: (31:57) Yeah. I might just quickly talk about what the kidney's associated with. If you think about its water. If you think about the story within your body of water, bringing the germination its fertility. If you want to stay fertile if you want to maintain potential you need to have that water. Just imagine that water chi. Yes, there's all these hormones and it's like there's a huge association of the sex hormones with the kidney water energy. So if your mind needs that, really go with that and really make that association. Then sometimes it's nice to just fall into the metaphor of the elements as well. So think if you've got water sitting there with reservoirs and you're doing a really good job at sustainably releasing that water up so that it can make the tissue nice and moist and nice and lubricated then you're going to have fertility all over your body.   Mason: (32:47) That means regeneration of cells and that's why quickly touching on herbs like the yang herbs especially which increase the yang within the body which mobilises the water and allows germination that happen. That's why when that happens what do you have when you're fertile when you have fertility? Obviously, you have new life. Obviously, you have regeneration going on. From that yang there's stamina and potential that comes about so therefore it's the deer antlers and eucommia barks and Cordyceps that are associated with that. But just for your own fertility look at the water management and look at sustainability in your own lifestyle. Look at how if you're unsustainable with your energy if you're unsustainable with your money. I really hope that everyone knows that when I say these things I don't have them all sorted out in my life. I'm definitely-   Tahnee: (33:47) Does anyone?   Mason: (33:48) No. Some of these things I talk about like I'm really struggling with myself and just hope everyone's able to just take this as theory basically or something that we can all work within. Work not necessarily towards. But it's really nice to look at even again and go back to that journal. What aspects of your life are really sustainable? Look back on how you partied. Look back on how you didn't party and express that summer because that's another thing for those of you who want to get the most out of this season. Maybe it's knowing harmony. Maybe you didn't go full fire which we always assume it's the other. We always assume that people aren't resisting the winter months but of course, it's going to be the other way around. Look at sustainability within your life. That's going to be that you're actually going to be able to maintain fertility.   Mason: (34:39) That means libido, sexual vigour, sexual capacity, sexual fluids, and the capacity to regenerate sexual fluids. These are all things. So how sustainable have you been with sex? Too much? Not enough? There's no answer here and that's something I think if you see an aversion towards sometimes with Daoism because they're like it seems very rule-heavy. You're allowed to have this much sex. Not this much sex, you can't ejaculate so on and so forth. These are all just really loose suggestions especially from a civilization that really liked things to be really defined. But you just take them and you just work them into your own.   Tahnee: (35:14) Well, the distinction too is Confucian versus Daoistan. The Confucians were quite rigid and the Daoists had a lot of the rules were based on chi so it's about chi cultivation. So I think that's what I've always found really interesting is if you look at what the Confucians contributed which was they were society structure. Then you look at what the Daoists contributed. So I have found in my experience with the teachers of Qi Gong that I've studied with and I've learned from some who are very loose. It's like going with the flow, finding your own form, feel your body's fluid. Others are really strict and really regimented and really rule-based. Master Chia who I have learned the most from when he speaks to sexual cultivation for men especially. He's like younger men go for it, you've got heaps more to spare but as you get older you need to be more mindful.   Tahnee: (36:10) He has some structures and guidance around that but I think it's a really personal thing and one of our big guiding principles at SuperFeast is sovereignty. I think the whole point of this information is not for us to be like we know the best and you guys should do these things it's really about reflecting on our own journeys to this point and hopefully providing some context for what you might want to look at through your own life and then filter that into what's relevant for you. I think this is really important when it comes to any kind of teacher or any kind of education. Especially when it's ancient stuff because we've lost so much. We only got the classics in English in the 80s and that's not very long ago and we don't know what other texts there were that were destroyed.   Tahnee: (36:56) Mao Zedong's team destroyed a whole lot of beautiful literature and writings from earlier times in China and I'm sure other things that were lost. It was oral traditions so I'm sure many things were lost in that way. So we're lucky to have what we have but we're making assumptions from a limited number of sources really at the end of the day. I don't speak Mandarin or read Chinese characters unfortunately so I'm learning through people that have translated it for me and they can make assumptions. If you go and read the [inaudible 00:37:27] I've read five or six different translations and they're all so different. Some are poetic and beautiful, some are really modern, some are really traditional and follow the translations really literally but then they're a little harder to interpret in a modern context.   Tahnee: (37:43) I don't think you can say there's an unequivocal right or wrong way. I think nature is there as a great teacher and she's been there through all of the traditions and kidney time is probably one of those times where we really remember how powerful nature is and especially if you're somewhere... We're in Byron it doesn't even get that cold here but if you're somewhere where it snows like I've been Scandinavia that it shuts down. You're snowed in. Nature is so powerful that she can shut down civilization for a period of time and it's dark and it's a different experience to be in those places and I don't know what it's like to live there through winters.   Tahnee: (38:22) But I can imagine you wouldn't be going out and doing things all the time. You'd want to be staying home and staying warm and staying in bed. I know people get a lot of seasonal effectiveness disorder and these kinds of things but I think part of that's got to be that we're culturally pushing ourselves to not just stay home and rest during these times. We've separated from the family unit so people are alone in apartments when they should be with their families. Again not everyone wants to be with their families all the time. I get all of that but you can see how as we've moved away from collective living and these nature-based cultures you can see how these health problems arise. I'm using inverted commas that you can't see which really come a lot from our social and cultural context. So I think one of the things we love about this is it gives us a language and a story and an explanation for how we have noticed our own lives adapt and change as we've gotten older and smarter and wiser. Yeah. I think hopefully you guys can take some of that and find what works for you and then move on.   Mason: (39:28) Yeah. You definitely hit it and that's how institutionalised do we want these healing systems to be? Where it's like uh-uh-uh this is the system, that's the text that we have to go by therefore follow this rule. It's like hmm, I don't think that's how Daoism works and that's why there's such a split between traditional Chinese medicine which is institutionalised, and classical Chinese medicine which is based on well, what's your experience? What are you perceiving because it's reality versus road learning? So I think you're going to see more and more of that split occurring. I think you're going see more and more that split genetically towards people going on that path of not saying good or bad that's a very murky thing to say but there is a path towards cultivating greater potential, self-cultivated potential versus reliance in order to ensure that potential now I'm using inverted commas is present within the body. So one is reliant, one is self-cultivation. A little bit of both is probably good as well.   Tahnee: (40:36) If we're going to be Daoist... Well, yeah. I think you have to remember that we're a species that thrives in smallish groups so I think that's something we have to take into account is human nature. But then I also think self-cultivation and self-responsibility is really the essence of the Daoist way. I think any time we're getting to guru worship or giving away power to an ideology or some kind of text or anything then we're starting to understand that maybe we've moved away from really our own selves. I guess that's what that reflection time and that kidney... If you're exhausted... I'm a mum. I have a business. I know what it feels like to be really tired sometimes and I don't want to take care of myself. I don't want to take care of anybody else.   Tahnee: (41:25) I just want to get away from the world when I feel like that. That's not a great place to be contributing your best from. So if your kidneys are tapped out then you're not going to be even beginning to radiate shen. You're not going to have the motivation to transform into liver vision and planning and getting things done. Yeah. If you're someone like Master Seng he's on the opposite side of things who can never seem to get out of that yin state then maybe there's this stagnation in your water and you need to clear that out. You might need a different kind of treatment to the people who are like Mase and myself who are go, go, go.   Tahnee: (42:03) So I think it's important to have a look at your own pathology and your own habits. This is a personal observation in my body but if I've had a really kidney deficient month and that would look like for me not getting enough sleep, doing too much work, being a bit too busy outside of my good solid, retainer structure then my menstruation will usually have a brownish tinge which means I've really dried out my water. I'm sort of burning my blood a little bit. I'm dry and it's not good. On the flip side of that if I've had a really stressful and that would typically be more of a livery kind of month where I've been really fast-moving and anxious and stressed and in my head and thinking a lot and maybe even into spleen deficiency my blood's going to be bright red and it's going to be really thin.   Tahnee: (43:04) So that's the structure and the substance of my blood is missing. So I'm looking at my menstruation and I'm using it as this guide to say okay, well, that's moving and kidney deficiency. This is me being in liver or spleen deficiency. Then I will adjust my lifestyle and my diet depending on how that works, what I'm seeing, and what I'm observing. So there are self-reflections that I've been able to develop over the last few years thanks to support from acupuncturists and people who've helped me understand that. But now I can see what I'm doing to myself and I can have more self-awareness and self-reflection on what to adjust in my life. So those are for me things that I'm really conscious of and have to be aware of because that's this idea of your menstruation being a report card.   Tahnee: (43:50) The kidney provides the water for the blood so it's a really important part for women. Important for men too but the spleen provides the nutrition for the blood, it provides from the food the substance that makes the blood healthy. The liver cleans and transports and transforms the blood and the water from the kidneys is provided to help keep the blood fluid and flowing. So that's why I would get that brown more congested blood toward the end of my menstruation if I'm in kidney deficiency. So those are things that you can think about if you're someone who wants to learn more about that. I'd recommend going and getting a close relationship with an acupuncturist and being really open and sharing about your body and about the things you observe and getting that kind of self-awareness because it's going to help you.   Tahnee: (44:33) A lot of other people were shocked with big bags under their eyes with kidney deficiency and things like that. You can look at what your tendencies are: weak lower back, weak knees. I know if my back's going that's when I'm in kidney deficiency. Whereas for other people that could mean liver deficiency. It could mean different things so you need to learn your body signs and what it does. But if you're getting older and your knees are starting to go and your hips are starting to go those things are a pretty good sign that you're burning out your jing and you want to look at slowing down a little bit. Getting into some more restoration and maybe working with some herbs may be working with a practitioner starting to cultivate. Very important I think.   Mason: (45:10) Stillness practise, contemplation time, coming down in that afternoon period and so just remember very quickly the kidney's a regulating bone integrity, bone marrow integrity. So imagine just that life being born from that marrow pure potential for the human body. So you're tapping out your jing, you're tapping out your marrow. You're going to see faster degeneration as you age, you're going to see faster ageing come about. That's why you see, some people grey hair is inevitable but there's been countless people who are in superficial jing deficiency and kidney deficiency and have started developing greys and they go hey, I got into beauty blend and my greys have stopped coming through, what the hell's with that? I mean yeah that's not going to happen for most people who have got greys but for those of you that are really superficial, it's like yeah blood. Blood getting up there. Nourishment getting up into the hair and pigmenting.   Tahnee: (46:13) I miss [inaudible 00:46:14] because it was really good for that too. That is kidney and jing that's what you're talking about. We talked a bit about the yang of kidney but the yin of kidney is more of that substance of the blood, the marrow, the brains. The kidneys are in Daoism when Chinese medicine the brain is called the sea of marrow. So really the integrity and quality of the brain is supported by the kidney energy. So we look at using kidney hubs to support brain function and again if you think about these degenerative diseases that are now showing up especially in Western culture with the brain you can point to a lot of our habits through our society as also being implicated in that degeneration.   Mason: (47:03) Non-sustainable practises. Non-sustainable habits. Really simple. It's so boring hearing myself say it over and over again and talking to myself as well. It's really comforting as well feeling the freedom come through that discipline around okay, it's not going to stop. Sleep, consistent diet. I would love the extremes I don't think we'll get to it today. But cold plunging it's another extreme. Tahnee was talking about how nice it is just to live within the elements and respect them and be like cool I'm just going to flow with you and see what you can tell me and just yield. But we're so addicted to dominating. No, I'm not going to go with the flow. I'm not going to be conventional. I'm going to fly in the face of winter and I'm going to go further into cold plunging. We'll see if we can get to that but it's just that's all well and good in particular times of life and I'm not saying what we're doing is better than anyone else is doing but as a thought maybe we can start looking at sustainability in our lifestyle based on what's happening in the elements around us as a way to go...   Mason: (48:26) It's not a competition to not age as fast either. It's about us personally feeling our own potential and our own cultivation and our own what's possible for ourselves and then that really does come back to gosh, I don't know, I'm just looking behind you at the Daoist in Alchemy chat and I just said intergalactic journey. But it is true. It is your own intergalactic journey. Maybe that for you means there is a degenerative thing coming a little bit earlier than some other people that they didn't live sustainably. I'm not saying get caught up into that competitive way of living and I know that. I've said that because I'm bringing up the cold plunging and I know that's a relative conversation. Some people really do find benefit. At the moment I'm not saying don't do it but anyway. I've gone off task. I think I'm going to bring up the cold plunging conversation in another one because there's lots of little distinctions-   Tahnee: (49:24) Yeah. I want to be really clear that someone like Wimhauf who we've met he's devoted to his practises. He 100% is a young body type, yang like Y-A-N-G-. He's strong, lots of muscle mass. He has done lots of chi cultivation and he's an extreme example of what's possible and I'm 100% for that stuff. I'm really into it. If I didn't have all the shit going on in my life that I had I would totally be experimenting with all of that and I think what I see a lot is people go from their normal Western life to just into these practises which again in Daoism they're really common. In Tibetan Buddhism, in yoga, my teacher tells stories of the monks being buried in snow and having to melt their way out to show how strong their chi is. These are QiGong practises that you are supposed to show as a level of mastery and that's cool just learning a breathing practise and jumping in the cold all the time.   Tahnee: (50:29) It's a start of that but you don't have the context of chi or prana and you don't have that immersion in the system I guess. I don't know if Wim does that if you go on his retreats and things he takes you deeper and I'm sure there are people that are close to him who learn the real deep techniques. I'm 100% for people exploring that stuff. But we hear a lot from people who are like, oh, I got sick after cold plunging again.   Mason: (50:55) I don't have a menstrual cycle anymore.   Tahnee: (50:58) Yeah. Because cold has entered the uterus and you haven't cultivated your dantian enough your lower dantian that it's projecting heat so it's able to prevent you from getting cold penetrating into that space. So there's no talking about that it's just like oh, it's a part of cold plunging or something like that. Well, it's not. It's not a physiologically healthy thing to have happen to a woman in that time of her life. So I guess that's the kind of disclaimer and container to all that stuff. I think there's lots of really interesting conversations to be had about it because I definitely believe in it as a practise. It's really incredible but I think it's in the vortex, out of the vortex we always used to say. You have to have the container in the context and the explanation and the understanding.   Mason: (51:43) Sorry, I'm going to go because there's one little last bit of it. Can you have a yang and a yin approach atmosphere around the way that you're looking at it? I think again it's reliance. In the yang season in summer, it's great to have reliance on things to get heat because you're out there, you're experiencing, and then when you go into yin time it's like maybe I want to be able to cultivate something on my own. Maybe I want that to be a little side dish to what I can do myself.   Tahnee: (52:08) I think quickly with diet. So warming foods. So animal foods are really warming and taste yum so they can be really useful especially if you ask someone who feels the cold and who isn't particularly strong in winter. If you're not into those you can look at things like seaweeds and all of the traditional winter vegetables, your roots, your gourds, those kinds of things, pumpkins. Garlic and onions are really warming if you can tolerate them. Squash, zucchini, all those things you'll see them. I'm going to the farmer's market got all the winter vegetables coming through. Caulis all that kind of stuff. A lot of traditional things for winter weather there's herbal wines and stuff as well because alcohol is warming. Yeah, which is obviously something to do with moderation. With pepper or your Ayurvedic spices anything that warms your digestion. Ginger. Ginger tea is my number one go-to. Boil it up just slice it into fine little chunks, boil it for at least 10 minutes because you want to get it really strong. Then I put a little bit of panela sugar in that and then just drink it.   Mason: (53:17) Get the cinnamon in.   Tahnee: (53:17) It heats you up from the inside out. You just want to avoid the tropical stuff. You want to avoid too much dairy all of those things that are cooling and cold are not super helpful this time of year. Again if you look at Ayurvedic diets and things they always warm up the milk and add spices and ginger something like a chai. That's a better way to consume dairy than having a cold flavoured yoghourt or anything like that. Same with coconut and those kinds of things and a lot of people love coconut but it wouldn't be probably that ideal to have in winter.   Tahnee: (53:50) Winter it's actually one of the reasons you have spicy coconut soup things in Thailand and stuff is because coconut by nature is cold and then you add all the spice to it which helps to make you sweat and cool you down in those hot climates. So if you're looking at more of those broth kinds of things, more of those nourishing homely style meals at this time of year.   Mason: (54:11) You got to mention black foods. Kidney beans. Black sesame seed, black beans-   Tahnee: (54:21) Seaweeds. Yeah. All of those kinds of things. Molasses is really good-   Mason: (54:23) Molasses. Dark leafy greens thrown in there too... We're loving our slow-cooked meals. Soups.   Tahnee: (54:32) I don't have any affiliation with them but I bought an Instant Pot. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me, especially as a mum. It's so good. Okay. Mase is sick of hearing about my Instant Pot.   Mason: (54:45) No, I'm not.   Tahnee: (54:46) You love it too don't you?   Mason: (54:47) Yeah. I've been using it quite a bit. You will absolutely love us and your spleen will love you if you have a glass of warm to hot water first thing in the morning. That's my favourite at this time of year. Some days I forget but in winter I'm five days a week since I was in China and was told by my Daoist, my tonic herb friends that that was their favourite tonic ever. Just guys beanies, socks, long walks in nature.   Tahnee: (55:21) Yeah because cold gets into ears which are related to the kidneys, the back of the head, the neck, the back of the neck around C7, the lower back, and then down really through all the joints in the lower body and the soles of the feet. Also through the arms and the hands so you really want to cover as much as you can but you'll have an area where you have a tendency to be weak so you want to be extra mindful of that. So for me, it's the feet and the back of the neck. I have to keep those areas warm otherwise I can feel the cold getting in. So you'll just have to play around with that and see what you really feel you need to stay warm but that's important.   Mason: (56:00) Having a break from stimulants. Don't have to be strict if you like them you like them. It is like throwing pebbles into the pond so you can't look down into your depths. That's why we do 30 days of jing in Australian winter. Sorry Northern hemisphere folks but it's even in the middle of summer it's a great experience for you guys to all have. Just getting off stimulants for 30 days and you can do it anytime. We've got all the resources there. We've got a Facebook group there for you to go and join and just give you the down low but it's basically adding in the jing herbs or the jing formula which are the kidney, that's the kidney formula. Really great herbs to be having during the winter. You might feel in the beginning there might be three weeks or four weeks in the beginning of the winter season where you're craving the kidney herbs, jing herbs, and then maybe you don't feel like them as much. Don't worry about that. It's like there's no rule that you have to have only kidney herbs when you're in winter but it's maybe just a little bit of a guide. That's what I'm like in spring. At the start I'll go two or three weeks hard on the beauty blend and then it just breaks out and I'm off doing intuitively whatever I want.   Tahnee: (57:14) Well, yeah because as the seasons change and this is in the Neijing as well I'm pretty sure. I think it's the first 18 days of every season as you're transitioning in it when the chi is the most unstable. So you're really wanting to smooth the transition as much as you can. So I often think about that as what can I do to stabilise as much as possible during this time? Yeah, I always feel the same at the first few weeks of the season coming in and I'm really hyper-aware of it, and then it settles in and it's just part of life those next couple of months. But, yeah, I think it's important to remember that's usually when people get sick because they're clinging to old habits or they're not really listening to what their body's asking for as the season changes and that's where the herbs can help to cultivate the organ systems and support them because the seasons demand a lot of the organ systems that they're correlated to. So that's why we can support them with herbs. I'm really lacking Chaga at the moment which is common for me. In winter I'll start to use Chaga again. I don't usually use it through the rest of the year.   Mason: (58:26) Pregnancy in winter for you.   Tahnee: (58:28) Yeah. Funny.   Mason: (58:33) Yeah. Big shout out to Chaga, Chaga has been my go-to winter herb. I forgot to message you yesterday and ask to bring a big bag home but go and do that right now. Thanks, guys. I was just going to give a shout out to the yoga Nidra as a winter practise as well-   Tahnee: (58:53) I love yoga Nidra.   Mason: (58:54) ...and yin yoga if you get on our newsletter list and jump on Instagram as well. Tiny has got some yin yoga sequences coming up.   Tahnee: (59:06) Yeah. I forgot about that but we have shot the photos and what I was thinking is for each season I'd give you a sequence or a couple of sequences to practise during the three or four months of the season just to help cultivate the chi. We've been sharing some Daoist practises. We've been sharing like in autumn we have lung tapping and all of those kind of things. We've got some stuff filmed for kidneys which is coming up and we're just going to keep trying to give you guys some lifestyle stuff as well to support because I think for both of us that's really been a big part of our journeys is not just taking the herbs but also using them with the practises that support the function of the herbs and the health of the chi in the body.   Tahnee: (59:53) So yin is something that I love and I think it's really easy to do at home. You don't need to be good at yoga. You don't need to be flexible. You don't need to be really... I often do it in my UGG boots and my tracksuit on the floor. It's not very attractive but it does the job and it's really quite easy just to be still and feel into your body. It's a very yin kind of kidney practise. So I think hopefully you guys will love that and you can send through any requests if you want sequences for any type of thing. But yeah. I don't think there's much else to say there at this point.   Mason: (01:00:30) No, thanks, everybody. I hope you join us on the 30 days of jing. You can find that over on Facebook. You can look up the group, 30 days of jing and you'll find it there and request to join.   Tahnee: (01:00:43) We'll all be doing it, not all of us at the office, most of us at the office will be doing it and I'm really excit

Elena Vans Evers, is a  Licensed Massage Therapist, yoga instructor, and owner of Urban Zen Bodywork in Tampa, Florida. She is a graduate of Florida Career College with a diploma in Massage Therapy and has been practicing since 2007.Elena specializes in deep-tissue massage, sports massage, prenatal massage, Reiki/energy work, Thai-Yoga massage, Ashiatsu- Fusion massage, Reflexology, and Chi Nei Tsang.  Elena's clients include professional athletes,  physicians,  and those with chronic pain.In this episode, Elena shares her experiences with treating physicians and gives us three things that can help populations live long.Elena is a firm believer in the inseparable connection between body, mind, and spirit.  Her mission and passion are to support each individual to enhance their overall health and well-being. Show Notes

In this episode, Andrew and I discuss Hoshindo Bee Venom Therapy, health, agriculture, and so much more! Andrew Crawford is an experienced gardener and beekeeper, dedicated to cultivating Mother Earth and locally adapted bees, indispensable beings supporting our planetary web of life. Andrew is a dedicated, loving soul and radiant spirit facilitating members creative dynamic balance, sharing wisdom from a health journey originating as an organic grower in 2011. In 2012, Andrew began sustainable backyard beekeeping, developing a co-creative relationship (union) with honey bee and habitat. From 2015 to 2017 Andrew studied apiculture with Les Crowder and Voyce Durling-Jones Sensei, while training in Japanese Meridian Apitherapy, Usui Reiki bio-energetic touch, intuitive Zokushindo (foot massage) and Southern Fanning at Hoshindo Healing Arts Institute (HHAI). Trained by Cherokee Grandmother and Hoshindo Sensei (master) Voyce Durling-Jones at HHAI in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Andrew became a Certified Hoshindo Practitioner in the West (Ryoho in Japan). Upon returning to Sedona in 2017 Andrew founded Ancient Way of Health, integrating teachings from East Asian and Native American Healing Arts. AWOH offers members innovative wellness technologies and energy modalities. Appointments are reverential rituals of pastoral counseling and sharing of natural gifts. Andrew is a legally ordained minister serving members with natural abilities in a variety of modalities, actively maintaining a certificate in Physio/Spiritual Massage, ministering touch free (Electromagnetic, Scalar Light, Sound, Prayer, etc.) and touch based ministry (Japanese Reiki, Hoshindo, Chi Nei Tsang bodywork, etc.) depending on members requests. A deep, soulful  conversation that YOU WILL LOVE! Enjoy Beautiful People! XOXO Connect with Andrew: https://www.beebodywork.comIG: https://www.instagram.com/ancientwayofhealth/ 

We have Tahnee and Mason jumping on the podcast today, delving into the season of Autumn - Lung Metal time with all the essentials on the best practices and herbs to support our Lungs, digestion, Qi, and protective Wei Qi as we descend into these cosier months. In the tradition of Chinese medicine the Lung is paired with the Large Intestine, so not only is this a season to focus on breath, letting go, and cutting away what is no longer needed, it's also a time to direct energy towards digestion. Tahnee and Mason dive into the foods for this season to best nourish digestion and the cathartic process of digesting, assimilating and, releasing experiences in this last cycle of seasons.    As the air cools down and we observe Mother Nature contracting into her next rhythm, we find ourselves in a macro/micro reflection, naturally being pulled to go within. With wisdom and nurturing truth, Tahnee and Mason encourage us to fall into this space of transformation, exhale the high energy of warmer months, condense our Yin energy and support ourselves through daily practices that allow what is no longer needed to fall away. Tune in for soul nourishing knowledge.    Tahnee and Mason discuss: Specific protective herbs to cultivate and maintain Qi & Wei Qi. Supporting and regulating Qi in the body. Supporting Yin energy. The qualities of Metal energy. The importance of seasonal living. Herbs to support the Lungs and Kidneys. Herbs and practices to prepare the body for Winter. The 'medicine' that comes through evolving with the seasons. Physical exercises to support Lung Metal energy. Breathwork, meditation, and practices for introspection. Foods, herbs, and tips for hydration and fluid regulation in this Yin cultivating season.   Tahnee and Mason Taylor Tahnee and Mason Taylor are the CEO and founder of SuperFeast (respectively). Their mission with SuperFeast is to improve the health, healing, and happiness of people and the planet, through sharing carefully curated offerings and practices that honour ancient wisdom and elevate the human spirit. Together Tahnee and Mason run their company and host the SuperFeast podcast, weaving their combined experience in herbs, yoga, wellness, Taoist healing arts, and personal development with lucid and compelling interviews from all around the world. They are the proud parents of Aiya and Goji, the dog, and are grateful to call the Byron Shire home.   Tahnee Taylor Tahnee Taylor is the CEO of SuperFeast and has been exploring health and human consciousness since her late teens. From Yoga, which she first practiced at school in 2000, to reiki, herbs, meditation, Taoist and Tantric practices, and human physiology, her journey has taken her all over. This journey continues to expand her understanding and insight into the majesty (that is) the human body and the human experience. Tahnee graduated with a Journalism major and did a stint in non-fiction publishing (working with health and wellness authors and other inspiring creatives), advertising, many jobs in cafes, and eventually found herself as a Yoga teacher. Her first studio, Yoga for All, opened in 2013, and Tahnee continues to study Yoga with her teachers Paul + Suzee Grilley and Rod Stryker. She learned Chi Nei Tsang and Taoist healing practices from Master Mantak Chia. Tahnee continues to study herbalism and Taoist practices, the human body, women's wisdom, ancient healing systems, and is currently enrolled in an acupuncture degree and year-long program with The Shamanic School of Womancraft. Tahnee is the mother of one, a 4-year old named Aiya.   Mason Taylor Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason was first exposed to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism.   Resources: TremellaAstragalus Qi Blend Reishi Cordyceps Mason's Mushrooms    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, everybody, Mason and Tahnee here, we're here to talk with you about the autumn herbs that we love. We wanted to share with you some of the tonics that we would use in this season, helping to sort of regulate the qi of the season, which relates to the lung organ in the body, which is also paired with the large intestine in Chinese medicine. And this is the metal element. So it's really a lot to do with letting go. It's a lot to do with our breath and our digestion. It's a lot to do with being able to assimilate all of the beauty and the gifts and the accomplishments that we've made over the last cycle of life. And then to sort of let go of anything we don't need as we move into the winter months. Tahnee: (00:44) So it's a time unlike summer were we're all out there and excited and active. It's a time more of coming in, the cooling and condensing yin energy. So we really want to support that, we want to support our yin as best we can at this time. And so a lot of the herbs that we'll work with in this season will kind of support not just the lung, but also the kidney energy as well, as we transition toward the winter months. Do you want to chat a little bit about what we have here? Mason: (01:12) Yeah, it's just such a, bringing up, moving into winter, I just think it's always, for me, the value of autumn when I put it in context of the entire year, but especially the fact that we're going into winter and preparing for that time. Always being aware of the season that you're in is going to end and lead into another period and they all weave in and work in together. And if the lungs can be nice and vibrant and healthy, metal attracts water, that's going to descend down, become the yin of the body. I mean, if you're tired and exhausted and need more foundational essence, it's a really good thing to just tune into what Tans were saying then about letting go and supporting that lung tube. But yeah, what are you diving in to? I know you can't see them, but I think we brought astragalus, chi, reishi, cordyceps, Mason's mushrooms. Tahnee: (02:02) Yeah. Well, I mean, qi was the one that you put together, but we sort of chatted about the intention behind that. And when we look at what we are working on, when we're talking about chi, the lungs are really this capacity of the body to bring in qi from the air. Yes, there's also oxygen and CO2 and nitrogen, all these things coming in, but really when we look at the ancient traditions, breath is all about chill or prana. So we're trying to capacitate the body to store and condense as much energy into the body as possible. So yeah, like Mason was saying, when it's this time of year, you want to be resting more and you really probably want to amp up those self-care practises. There's a saying, and I think it's in the Suwen where it's like, "In summer you can get away with a lot more than you can in autumn and winter." Tahnee: (02:47) You just have to be a bit more careful and a bit more mindful. So that's why we would start to use those more protective herbs at this time. So chi, if you think about what qi is, qi is that life force that moves through the body, but it's also exists in different forms within the body. And we don't want to get too technical here, but there's a type of qi called wei chi, which is your surface immunity. Or I think of it more as your defence field. If you can imagine that you have a protective shell of energy around you and we've all felt what it feels like when that gets infiltrated, usually by things that travel, or lots of people, those kinds of things. Or when we just burn ourselves out. qi is sort of when we work on the wei chi, we're aiming to expand that barrier, I guess. An energetic barrier that we have, which protects us against energetic invasion and also physical, which can also correlate that to energetic viruses, bacteria, these kinds of things that try and get into the body. Tahnee: (03:45) And they're only getting if there's a pathway in. So one of the things that we do with preventative medicine is try to prevent that pathway from existing. And so most people do find that if they aren't taking care of themselves, they will get sick when the seasons change. And that's because the qi becomes really unsteady and our bodies are unable to handle that, and so we get unwell. Similarly through autumn and into winter, if we aren't maintaining that self-care practise and that ability to sort of maintain our healthy chi, then we are going to get weaker and more prone to infections and those kinds of things. So you don't have to get sick in winter. In fact in an ideal world, you wouldn't, so that's what these things are fun. So I love qi at this time of year, it has astragalus in it. It has a bunch of other herbs that support the spleen as well. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about your intention with putting together chi? Mason: (04:38) It's been a really appropriate blend for the previous season, being that of the earth, but even more so now in autumn. Even though these herbs are supporting that transformation of qi through to explain and what you eat, and then through what you breathe to become your nutritive qi that gets into your organs. But as Tanie is saying, if you can think lungs being the metal, I kind of also... It's energetic. Sometimes I feel like when my qi is getting strong, that regulatory qi that runs just underneath the surface of the skin and then can energetically push out. It creates this big metal shield. And that is what comes about through having strong lung qi and a capacity to transform the wei qi through what you breathe in. So through having astragalus as the one of the top herbs in there with the other beautiful lung herbs, white atractylodes, codonopsis, bringing in the Turkey Tail as well. Mason: (05:34) The intention was to support through fluid regulation, as well as a number of other functions, is to just simply cultivate qi within the lung through supporting that lung system in transforming between the yin and yang energy. And that is all you need to be doing is capacitating the lung organ through herbs, through living appropriately with the seasons, so everything's, as Tans was saying, it's starting to descend now a little bit. So you start getting a little less intense with the way that you're living. It's not so much fiery summer vibes. And if you do that, you cultivate that qi in through the lung, you create that shield, life feels all a little bit better. And so the qi herbs are funnily the ones that the Taoists will take constantly. They'll never stop them. And so you can see a reishi's in there as well. But astragalus' one of those top ones that they will say, "I just never stop." Because you never stopped wanting that strong, qi cultivation in through your organs and that shield, but this is the season. Mason: (06:42) And it's amazing how everyone, when the amount of hundreds, it must be thousands at this point, people who kind of clock on to taking qi herbs now. It's probably the one that's the easiest one for people to relate to because people really want to prepare for winter and fortify themselves. And so the biggest transformation of realising, "Ah, sometimes if I take herbs appropriately for the season, I see this huge change months down." That's probably, taking qi herbs in autumn is probably the one that will create the biggest perception, and people will see how you can transform your life if you get onto the herbs at the right time. Tahnee: (07:23) Yeah. And I mean, that's similar to why the mushrooms work so well as well though. A lot of them have, we were talking about the treasures in Taoism, so you're looking at Jin, Qi & Shen, and a lot of the mushrooms are triple treasure herbs. So they work on all three at the same time, or they will have sort of one or two really strong correlations or functions. So something like Mason's mushrooms is going to have things like reishi and cordyceps in there, which support lung function. And when we're supporting also the flow of the qi in the body, so Mason was talking about the spleen before, the lung and the spleen work really closely together. Tahnee: (07:59) So they're basically producing the qi that powers our body, and that's called true human qi in Daoism, in the translation obviously, and that relationship between healthy digestion and healthy assimilation and then healthy breathing. And then the ability for our bodies to be powered by that, that stops us from drawing from our reserves, stops us draining our Jing. So you'll see a lot of the time in the West, people breathe very shallow, there's not a diaphragmatic breath. You can hear Aria in the background. And so what we're aiming for in this season is to really prioritise a nice deep, expensive breath and supporting the body with this lung herbs. So Mason's is another one that we would recommend all the time, but we would also really specially look at it in these kinds of seasons where we want to build immunity and we want to start thinking about storing chi. So just like a squirrel is going to bury his acorns in autumn so he has something old for winter time. We're kind of looking to do the same thing in ourselves. Tahnee: (09:03) So it's something that I think is a really important thing to consider when we're thinking about seasonal living is, "All right, yes. So maybe you have been able to express and dream and vision in spring time, I've done that sort of party expression, joy thing in summer, and spent my late summer harvesting and assimilating and digesting everything. And now we're coming down into autumn." It's like, "Let go of what we don't need, focus on rest and prioritising our self-care and turning into these techniques and traditions that have this support for us." So this is where our herbal practise, for me, would really ramp up. In somewhere, I might be a bit loose with my herbs every day, in autumn, no looseness. Like, I'm on. And we'll be doing breathing practises, and you are supposed to sleep more so you maybe won't be waking up as early, but you'll maybe try and use those early morning hours to do breathing practises. And so Mason's got some other videos that we can share them, we can share some Pranayama and things like that, but that's something you want to bring in. And you'll notice it, if you're taking qi herbs, doing the breathing practises, working the upper body, you'll really noticed a shift shifted this time of year. We've also got cordyceps there, I think? Mason: (10:26) Yeah, it's just here. Tahnee: (10:26) So, do you want to talk about cordy? Mason: (10:26) Yeah, I was just, everything you said then has given me a bunch of insights. The preparation time you put in now, like the squirrel getting the acorns, means that if you let go of the summer energy, because there's also mourning going on within the grief within the lungs, and if you can successfully let go of the summer, you don't waste your grieving energy on grieving for summer. You can actually go and grieve the things that you're appropriately ready to let go off and have that beautiful experience of letting go and then the potential for new life to come through. The herbs support us with doing that. But with cordyceps, I was just thinking, what a lot of people do is hold onto that summer. And so you might feel the association that you have to cordyceps still being one of fire and wanting to feel your endurance and the capacity and the yang elements of your workout being potentiated. Mason: (11:18) Now we still work out in autumn, but you'll find that what will come forth as a quality is one that's less of complete activation. We're starting to actually just to descend, and so we're going for quality, not quantity. And so with the cordyceps, you will see the taking of cordyceps maybe the focus won't therefore be on you getting maximum output, but you'll take cordyceps and and have like a deepening of the quality of your breath practise. You might want to go a little bit more inside rather than looking at what you're outputting externally. You want to see what you can perceive and what capacity you're increasing internally through taking cordyceps during this time. And that could be really transformational. Doesn't mean that it doesn't actually help with endurance and your power and all those kinds of things. Mason: (12:09) It still absolutely does. And I've got a couple of friends actually, who are working on going for the CrossFit Games right now. And for them, it can still bring forward the qualities, but they're definitely focused on output. So it's make your own adventure, but just dip into that methodical metal energy that's there right now. That's just a bit more like I just said, standing solid and going a little bit more inside. And so if you can apply that intention to when you're taking your cordyceps, I think you might find you get even more output when you get around to those points like spring and summer next year, you'll find you've actually gone next level. Tahnee: (12:54) I think that's interesting. Because I often used to talk to shift workers when I taught yoga and they'd be like, "Oh, I can't live with the circadian rhythm because I work at night." And it's like, "Okay, but that's fine, you still need to have rhythm." So what humans thrive on, we're really animals at the end of the day, we are attached to this cyclical nature of the earth and how we're rotating around the sun and you know, this galaxy and the universe and all of these things. There's this kind of cycle that exists within everything on this planet, from the cells and the atoms in the body all the way up to the macrocosm. So if you're training for CrossFit games right now, and it's not a time for you to rest, you're still going to emphasise your kidney energy because that's sort of the foundation and the place where the metal is going to pour itself into. Tahnee: (13:47) And you're also going to at some point have time where you slow down and accumulate qi and allow everything to gather back in and the way in which the sort of concept of metal is expressed in the Daoist tradition is this sort of bowl that they used to have on the top of the mountains that all the dew would condense onto and they would capture the precious water from that. And this idea that the lungs being the sort of roof of the organs in the body, right up high, let's forget about the brain for a second, and they allow the qi to condense down into the kidneys and we can store that for our sort of next phase of development and growth and evolution. Tahnee: (14:25) This idea that we're kind of constantly on a spiral of evolution. This is really what we need to remember to have in our lives. So if you're someone who travels a lot, air hostesses that would always be in different time zones and it's like, "Fine, but you still need to have these phases of life where you slow down, condense, assimilate, use a kind of discernment." Like when Mason's saying that methodical nature of metal, metal is like the sword, right? It can cut and it can be incredibly discerning, and it can say, "No, enough's enough. That's too much, whatever, grief." Again, what Mason's talking about, you might start working with qi and kind of long herbs and suddenly have repressed memories come up. And that's not a bad thing, that's stored in your body as an energetic imprint and if it's moving, well that's something that we would typically say is good, right? Tahnee: (15:18) As long as you have the space in the container to feel that, and that's why there's this invitation to slow down and start turning within, which is what yin is all about. It's about the slow kind of feminine dark aspect, the inner aspect, that interiority. As opposed to yang being all of the expression and the outward, and it's about everybody else, it's not about me. So that's the invitation of this energy. So you might be watching this in springtime and feel a calling to that, and that's fine. You're leaning into an intuitive sort of sense of needing to be held in that way. And one thing our acupuncturist used to always say is, if you haven't been living with the seasons, and let's face it, even those of us that are aware of this, aren't perfect, it takes a while. Tahnee: (16:03) It takes a while for your system and your lifestyle to adapt to these ideas. It's not something that happens overnight. And he used to always say, "To even say that you're living with the seasons you have to live perfectly through at least one cycle. At least one year of full living to really even understand what you're starting to talk about." So I think it's a really interesting thing to start to feel into and explore. And as you start to learn about the stuff, you work with the herbs, they sort of bring out these experiences in here. And it's for me, such a powerful medicine, and I think like Mason's saying in another video, I think we were talking about our culture's just disassociated from nature, we've lost that. And this is a way to sort of regain some sovereignty and some deep connection to the source of life, which is the sun, the earth, the stars, the [inaudible 00:17:00], and all the other plants and animals around us. Mason: (17:02) Hmm, beautiful. Tahnee: (17:04) Anything else you want to say? Mason: (17:07) I might just finish off. I didn't bring any tremella, but tremella mushroom is just the final very- Tahnee: (17:13) Ah, it's tremella. Mason: (17:13) I mean, yeah, tremella just sits on a mantle in our kitchen. Tahnee: (17:21) We just have like a kilo of it, so it's not very attractive. Mason: (17:21) At all times. Just a beautiful nutritive, these are all food grade herbs, but tremella's like very much a food. So you can have more of it than most herbs. Very lubricating for the stomach, but very lubricating for the lungs, so if you do find yourself, it's a very dry season. And so this is why a lot of, there's Poria and white atractylodes helping to regulate fluids in the body through this spleen, and the lung does a lot of regulation of the fluid. And so ideally if you're healthy and not being an air hostess, that's different. If you're up in a dry environment like that all the time, ideally you can get through without getting any dryness coming up in your skin, which isn't bad if it does come up. If so, just focus on your hydration, but then that's where those qi herbs and then tremella can come in at another layer to bring some really beautiful hydration to your lungs and therefore your skin. Tahnee: (18:20) Yeah. Normally the lung correlates to the skin, to the sort of nose region as well. So we're kind of going to be seeing things expressing through there if there's imbalances, so like Mason's saying, if you're starting to notice that skin's drying out it is a good chance to look at how much you're burning through your energy and your chi. Could be that you need to rest more, hydrate more, take herbs like tremella. Be a good chance to see a practitioner and have a chat about what's going on for you. So yeah, if you're interested in more of this stuff, we're going to have more content coming. Mason: (18:54) Yeah, just subscribe, like, share, do all the things. The more you guys do that and the more you guys comment and let us know how you're finding this information, the deeper we will go, and I think everyone will benefit from that. But you know, if you want us to just shut up and say, "Take adaptogens!" You can let us know that as well, but we'll probably delete it. Joking! We're all laughing. Mason: (19:23) Hi everybody, let's go through some basic tips and ways to get in the flow with this season, with the autumn energy. The reason we are doing this is because when we are being exactly considerate, this is what the Daoist said, you got to be considerate of where the earth is in relation to the sun and the moon. And the way that we can get direct perception of such a macro concept is what's going on in the seasons. And we can emulate, and it's not even emulating, it's just going to where our body wants to go. And so by doing these little simple things, there's definitely ways that we can unpack each of these and go deep and personalise them as well, they're quite general. But by doing this, we are ensuring we're supporting the lung metal qi to cultivate and transform through that entire lung organ system. Mason: (20:14) When that happens, life gets a lot easier. Now, yes, but stop thinking about your 80, 90 year old self. The seasons allow us to go and enjoy the seasonality of ourselves, so there might be qualities here of this lung season, where you might just be a lung person. You might be methodical and tend towards being melancholy and all these kinds of things. You're rigid, it's hard for you to change, you're a perfectionist. We've all got an element of that there within ourselves, it might not be what's dominant for me, it's not completely dominant, but I really relate to this season. It's like absolute medicine for me as I'm such a creative open person. And sometimes it's hard for me to come back down to earth. For me it's definite medicine, but for everyone, we get to enjoy the seasonality of our emotions and ourselves and the process that it takes to evolve ourselves, so that when we get to 80, 90 years old, hopefully we've become elders who have earned the right to pass on our wisdom to those who are younger. Mason: (21:16) But it starts here and now, so the first one is really just getting into the general energy, you want to make sure that you're not really attached and holding onto that summer energy. And that's quite often, I know here in Australia, everyone's just, we think we've got a two second little winter and it's just like, "All right, this is just a space holder until we get back to the warmer months." But you know, really stepping into it and embracing of the fact that things are starting to cool down, days are a little bit shorter and just letting go. Summer is done. It's gone, let's accept that. And that's what this season is all about. We start very quickly there, then we can get actually into the reality that we are in autumn and we're in a yin descending energy. Mason: (22:04) Accepting that, embracing that. Then you're going to be able to get into the beautiful cleaning and dirty work that... I say dirty work because we are letting go here in this season. And it's not just a letting go. This is our first tip, getting into this energy, allowing this to come into presence in the way that you're designing your lifestyle, the way your practise looks, is getting into this letting go energy. But it's not always just an ambiguous, "Oh, I'm just going to let go of whatever there is that I don't need." That's an element, and we're constantly doing that with the breath, and as we do that, we're kind of chopping away some and taking on a big rug of perfectionism or unrealistic expectation or excessive judgement of ourselves that isn't really being useful for our capacity to perceive our own intrinsic value, and that's what we're looking for here. Mason: (22:59) But remember this metal, it's precise and it's not ambiguous. And so you'll consciously take that chef's knife or that samurai sword and contemplate and consider what you want to carve away and drop and let fall to the earth. So that in that trust of this process of letting go of that which you feel like, "I might practise not having that with me, I'll keep on cutting away that way of judging or that style of perfectionism or whatever it is, cut it away. Cut it away and drop it." It's in permaculture, that's chop and drop. That is what then goes in and puts nitrogen into the soil. That's what goes in and nourishes the soil so that it can become mineralized and lush and rich. And you can get that beautiful decomposing and decaying going on. Mason: (23:50) And then when you get around, you've had an appropriate winter. You get around to spring time, you're going to start getting a real reaping of new beautiful energy being breathed into your life. And that's the opportunity here, so if you can get in a presence that that is, you don't have to think about this all the time, but there's a particular energy of you drop in and feel that metal energy. You feel the qualities that we're talking about in how it personally feels to you and allow that to come to the surface during this season, then you're going to have a much smoother ride letting go. Mason: (24:24) Now, number two, very simple one. I know a lot of people, this is something I never thought I'd say when I was in my twenties, I was like... All those basic grandma little tips that come from Chinese medicine or even from my grandparents, it's like, "Cover up when you go out and it's cold. If it's windy, put a scarf on." That in autumn, and winter, but especially in autumn, when it kicks up and gets a little bit windy, putting that scarf on and protecting your neck from the cold and the wind, such a top tip. Mason: (24:56) And it's really relevant for me, when I was like I was saying in my twenties, because in my twenties, I just had so much time to do my personal practise and cultivate my energy and spend so much time in the sun. I was just able to do whatever I wanted to stay vibrantly healthy and I had a nice strong metabolism. And so I didn't feel the relevance of doing those extra little things like putting a scuff on making sure I've got socks on and shoes on, covering up when it's getting a little bit cold. And so I'm not letting that cold energy into my body. It's not a smart thing to be doing when you're yin. But as I've, I'm working a little bit more and I've got a child and I don't have all that crazy time to stay cultivated, these little tips, like putting a scaffold and stopping that wind from penetrating your body. Mason: (25:43) And what it does that wind is especially cutting in through the neck and it beats down at that surface protective wei chi, that protective energy that's like a shield. Can beat away at it, beat away, beat away, and that it penetrates. And then it's allowing a doorway for all those other pathogens, viruses and things to be able to get in during that season. So you might as well just cover up your neck. The benefits of staying exposed to the elements are in short little snippets, like that cold exposure. Go and do your cold exposure, but do it in short snippets, don't always be exposed to the cold. And if you're doing extremes, make sure your body's got the juice, the Jing, and the hates to be able to bring itself back to centre without too much fuss. Shoes and socks on, scarf on. Very important. Mason: (26:31) It's a dry season. Hydration is super important and it's a really wonderful time for you to be really focused on you're cultivating waters. Now, if you get into of the energy of the season, the metal will accumulate and attract water. And then that allows distil that down and send that down to the kidney. So you will have a very successful winter. You won't be spending winter healing from all the burnout from the yang months. If you can transition now into a yin time energy, you will start accumulating all this beautiful, these waters and this yin, this descending energy, this quietening down energy, and then you'll get to winter and you'll actually be cultivating, not healing. And if you want to be a really vibrant, healthy 80, 90 year, old, hundred year old and beyond, where you're not relying on drugs and surgery. I'm not saying that's bad or a failure if that's what happens, but if you want to have that intention, this is a really important season. Really, really important season. Mason: (27:29) And bringing up failure, this is a methodical time in terms of bringing the energy of the lung season. It's very objective, just very matter of fact, this metal energy. And so you can look at objectively there's things that you might've failed in doing. And don't avoid feeling that failure and mourning, say the loss of something, there are a lot of people in this season will go like, "Oh, if only I'd made this choice of doing this degree, or if I hadn't burned the bridge with that person." A lot of melancholy a lot of really consistently mourning or going over your failures because it's a perfectionist season. But if we can presence all those failures and accept what we've done, and then ease into them, we can start to see the value that was there in that failure and then integrate the lessons and move on very objectively. Mason: (28:22) This isn't a la-di-da like, "Oh, just slap some positivity pie on it." Put flowers on a piece of poo, the poo's still there. No, we want to look at the poo and see, and feel the intrinsic value of that experience. And you can bring that into your meditative practise and into your cognitive practise. That would be very useful. But back on hydration, lots of water. Water first thing in the morning. Start making maybe a little bit of warm water if your body has a hard time getting warm. Little pinch of sea salt can be a beautiful way to charge your water and then spinning your water and vortexing it. Get that electrical charge going. We love water with electrical charge. Shake it up. Don't just drink stagnant still water. Where do you see stagnant, still water in nature that's acceptable for drinking? You don't. Mason: (29:09) Animals and humans, we always go for the moving water because it's alive and it's vibrant. And that's the same I want you to be doing with the water that you drink and get the quality of water up. I'm just going to continue to be drinking wild spring water. It's the only way to go for me, but if I am drinking something that's not wild spring water, I'll be putting molecular hydrogen in it. And that's a tip and something that I think is really important for this day and age to make your water better. And it's just a little, little thing that you can add in. I get mine from supercells. Mason: (29:37) Next, we're going onto the food. Eating appropriately. We can go so deep on this, but the colour of the autumn is white and so you start moving into some like white foods, congee is just like the absolute, should be on the flag of autumn. We've got a beautiful congee recipe over at SuperFeast. You can go type congee into SuperFeast, and you'll be able to find that. But then obviously it's going to be seasonality, it's going to be know pumpkins and squash and pears and apples are going to start to come in. And the beautiful thing is you cook and poach those kinds of foods, they are really fluid forming. They deliver a lot of fluids to the body. And so you're going to find that with like persimmons and all these beautiful autumn foods, that they help to cultivate water within the body. Mason: (30:23) It's great to add tremella if you are particularly dry as well to your recipes as well, sweet and savoury, it's a really beautiful food. And then just little additional like hemp seeds, walnuts also deliver a lot of, particularly to the lungs and the large intestine, deliver and help cultivate some fluids. So it might be nice to start sprinkling them on some on top of some of your soups, crushing them up on some of your soups, a really great way to go about it. Exercise, exercise is going to start, the priority and the focus of your exercise and practise is no longer going to be, say the fiery gains of summer, but the energy of which we've talked about today. It's going to start to going a little bit less on the prioritisation of flogging yourself, getting gains, mass sweating sessions, and you want to stop bringing that methodical energy, that almost an analytical kind of energy to getting the value. You want to first of all, start with finding intrinsic value in yourself rather than flying out into ambiguity of getting gains in your body. Mason: (31:28) You also want to start looking at, when you're practising , you want to start watching for where you're judging yourself heavily, you've failed, you haven't hit this, at this age I thought you'd be here. So on and so forth, and then really get the value of your experience and then go forth with, and it's a really good season to have solid plans. Start tracking your physical practise, tracking for the year ahead where you'd realistically, because it's very grounded, realistic season, what you would like to achieve in your body. What's actually valuable to you and what's not valuable to you and has been projected onto you based on a past ideology you were or marketing messages, whatever it is, you can start really feeling what's valuable to you for your physical and energetic output through your meditation and your practise and these kinds of things. Mason: (32:19) But mainly to start relaxing, don't go too hard. If you're doing saunas, same thing. You don't want to be releasing heaps of fluid right now. So if you're having a sauna, or your infrared sauna, just open the door maybe a little bit, you're still getting blasted with those infrared, far, near, mid infrared rays, and they're still doing beautiful stuff at mobilising your body, maybe just don't sweat so much. And if you are, have a mineral complex or sea salt that you having and really focus on that rehydrating. What else have we got to talk about? Smell, right? So we want lots of time as we start descending, it's a lot of yin. Hopefully in a family flow, you can start doing a little bit of less, we're in a family flow, right now you can hear Aria in the background, not wanting to go to daycare today. But what you're going to see is like, hopefully you can start having less of the crazy obligations and social interactions that come with the summer months. Mason: (33:16) It's so beautiful when they're there, but you really need a reprieve and so hopefully you can start dedicating more time say with your family or with yourself just being in nature, at the beach, going for walks and particularly just spending time and then a little bit of contemplation, right? And then focus on the smell, engage the lungs through the sense. And so really focused this season on the smells that are in the forest or at the beach or wherever you are, even if it is in the beautiful suburb that you're able to go to nearby and walk through. That's what you want to be really focusing on. Same in your cooking. You're using more spices and engaging your senses and that'll get your lungs really salivating, and what happens when you salivate? You start secreting fluids, and that's what we want. We want lots of fluids coming out through getting engaged through our sense of smell. Mason: (34:10) Finally, we, no, no 'finally', that's it. Guys, just remember it's a very practical, it's a beautifully practical season and it's one that is absolute medicine for us in our Western worlds. And you don't have to do it all right now, you're going to have lots of these, hopefully. Lots of these autumns to do this. So start slow, be really intentional. Let go. Really start letting go, and then allowing yourself to perceive your own uniqueness, the uniqueness around you, the value you have intrinsically, the value around you. That happens when you can start letting go.

— “Unconditional love really in each of us. It's part of our deep inner being.” Valeria Teles interviews Tj Bartel — the author of “Soldier of Love: An Evolutionary Blueprint for Thriving in Times of Chaos.” Tj Bartel is a relationship expert, life coach and couples coach with a very unique approach to Conscious Sexuality that integrates modern neuroscience, cutting edge personal growth techniques, and ancient Tantric and Taoist wisdom. After earning a Bachelor's Degree in psychology at San Diego State University, Tj graduated at the top of his class at Tony Robbins Mastery University. He trained with Charles Muir, the grandfather of the modern tantra movement, becoming an Advanced Certified Tantric Educator and taught with him at Source School of Tantra Yoga for 15 years. He also studied Tantra with Margot Anand, Taoism with Mantak Chia and Chi Nei Tsang with Gilles Marine.  Tj is dedicated to bringing about a change in our communities and culture by offering seven steps to guide love-based teachers and entrepreneurs who want to make a great living while making a real difference in the world.  To learn more about Tj Bartel and his work please visit: https://www.tjbartel.com   — This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well. 

My story and studies began as a “wounded healer” whosetraining and experience also included the necessity of self-love and self-healing which I teach to others. My original vision in 1997 was to offer dance as a healing art and bodywork to support women to heal themselves and their centers in the divine feminine way. My commitment as a practitioner, conscious performer, and choreographer, is to model and embody this healing with the intention to support and encourage others. My personal healing journey began in earnest at 23-years old, in 1991. I sought help from holistic practitioners and then a spiritual guide to heal personal trauma (spiritually and physically), a dysfunctional relationship, and serious spiritual, emotional, and low back pain. At 27, I began professional healing studies. At 28-years-old, I started performing belly dance and teaching it as a healing art for women.I was studying and practicing Chi Nei Tsang (aka CNT or Integrated Internal Organ Massage), a Chinese Taoist healing art, and “Unwinding the Belly” with Allison Post. This included belly massage, breath, and energy work. I worked with family and friends helping them heal trauma and abuse, scar tissue, and digestive issues. I then went on to continue my recovery and professional journey/studies/practice for the next 25+ years in dance, functional & corrective exercise, bodywork, and overcoming mental illness. I have come full circle with a complimentary, interdisciplinary approach to support my original vision in 2021 and beyond.Show notes;What does the Divine Feminine have to do with healing someone from trauma?How dance, music and percussion are healing arts?What self-love, self-care and trauma recovery look like.How nature has the power to heal.What are mental health lifestyle and holistic recovery?

It's that time of year again, where we descend from the peak of summer months, from the highs of long days and energised bodies, into a coming back to earth and ourselves. This fulcrum between seasons, coming out of summer but not quite in the preparations of Autumn/metal time, corresponds with the earth element. It's a time to anchor yourself in a place of equilibrium and nurture where you are out of balance through solitude, grounding practices, and nourishing foods. From this place of harmony and groundedness allows the bridging of heaven and earth, where dreams and aspirations come into reality. On the podcast today, we have our favourite duo exploring the earth element and how we can support ourselves, our families, and all of humanity in this axis point between seasons. In their natural ebb and flow, Tahnee and Mason discuss the earth element in all its dimensions, foods and practices for grounding energy, and nourishment of the digestive system with a specific focus on the pivotal role of the spleen in this time.   "There's something to me, with coming back to the earth element, that you can nurture, support, and nourish your family through this kind of devotion to feeding and nourishing them in the best possible way. I think there's something so beautiful about that". -Tahnee Taylor     Tahnee and Mason discuss: Late summer, entering into the earth element. Exploring the harmony and groundedness that the earth element brings. Grounding practices for the mind/intellect and body Getting grounded to take specific action and manifest dreams. The spleen/earth relationship The role of the spleen. Signs of spleen and digestive imbalance. Spleen consciousness; The reasoning mind and our ability to make clear judgments. Foods to eat in the late summer/earth season to nourish the spleen and pancreas. Nourishing the digestive system to support clear vision and thinking. Supporting digestion through warming foods. Qi blend to support the spleen and earth element. Mother Earth, the ultimate source of nourishment; how this translates to our relationship with our bodies is this season.   Tahnee and Mason Taylor Tahnee and Mason Taylor are the CEO and founder of SuperFeast (respectively). Their mission with SuperFeast is to improve the health, healing, and happiness of people and the planet, through sharing carefully curated offerings and practices that honour ancient wisdom and elevate the human spirit. Together Tahnee and Mason run their company and host the SuperFeast podcast, weaving their combined experience in herbs, yoga, wellness, Taoist healing arts, and personal development with lucid and compelling interviews from all around the world. They are the proud parents of Aiya and Goji, the dog, and are grateful to call the Byron Shire home.   MasonTaylor Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason was first exposed to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism.   Tahnee Taylor Tahnee Taylor is the CEO of SuperFeast and has been exploring health and human consciousness since her late teens. From Yoga, which she first practiced at school in 2000, to reiki, herbs, meditation, Taoist and Tantric practices, and human physiology, her journey has taken her all over. This journey continues to expand her understanding and insight into the majesty (that is) the human body and the human experience. Tahnee graduated with a Journalism major and did a stint in non-fiction publishing (working with health and wellness authors and other inspiring creatives), advertising, many jobs in cafes, and eventually found herself as a Yoga teacher. Her first studio, Yoga for All, opened in 2013, and Tahnee continues to study Yoga with her teachers Paul + Suzee Grilley and Rod Stryker. She learned Chi Nei Tsang and Taoist healing practices from Master Mantak Chia. Tahnee continues to study herbalism and Taoist practices, the human body, women's wisdom, ancient healing systems, and is currently enrolled in an acupuncture degree and year-long program with The Shamanic School of Womancraft. Tahnee is the mother of one, a 4-year old named Aiya.   Resources: SuperFeast Qi Blend  YingYang Wuxing For Inner Harmony with Rhonda Chang EP#89     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hey everybody.   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi, everybody.   Mason: (00:02) Happy late summer.   Tahnee: (00:04) Yeah, that's what we're here to talk about.   Mason: (00:08) So talking about the earth element today, I also like the way Rhonda Chang has been on the podcast. She says, not earth element, soil element. I like that as well. I go both ways though.   Tahnee: (00:23) Swinging around.   Mason: (00:25) It's a bit more tangible for me, because when I'm ... Every time I do one of these podcasts, it's a really good anchor for me, actually, practise. Everyone at each season, go going into a podcast about that season, and it helps you drop in and really ... And I'm walking around and I'm, "Oh, I'm feeling the wood element. And I'm feeling the quality of wood internally." And that's very obvious because that's wood, it's sprouts, it's growth. And fire's very obvious. Earth though, I'm, "Am I feeling the whole earth? Am I feeling Gaia consciousness?" Whereas if I go soil, this is spleen soil season. It's easy for me to get in and meditate on and feel about ... Feel that quality, that energetics of soil internally. And that's why I bring it up.   Tahnee: (01:10) Interesting. Yeah. Because see, for me it's more like a weightedness and I really relate to that centrality and the gravity of earth, as in it's holding us to it, and it's kind of drawing us back down. And so you think about the energy of fire, which is so high and I can feel there's kind of a neutral grounding at this time of year, which I've noticed in my energy that I've gone from being really busy and really social in summer and feeling quite active, to sort of ... I can feel the change. I can feel this kind of almost consolidation that kind of feels like it happens around this time of year. And earth is present in all of those transitions between seasons, so we feel that energy at least four times a year. But especially this one where it's kind of that drop from the peak of summer, but we haven't quite hit the depth of winter, or even the sort of descent of the sort of metal time of autumn time.   Tahnee: (02:25) So yeah, I can feel this sort of equilibrium, I guess, in this time. And I think it really shows you where you're out of balance. I've just been noticing that in me there's this invitation at this time of year to examine where I'm out of balance and out of harmony. And I think earth, of all the elements, invites harmony the most. The others can feel like they slide easily in one direction or another for me, but this one sort of always feels really grounded and then lands. So I hope that made sense.   Mason: (02:58) Yeah, I mean it touches on a bunch of things I was feeling might come up later, but we might as well dive into it. See, I think that's an important one for me, because I know there's a little bit of back and forth about ... This isn't actually ... This isn't a season, this is just another fulcrum between seasons. Which is true, it's important for me to kind of really ... That's been good practise for me to remember there's those few weeks, or however long it's present for me between every season where I come into the transition period. And I come into that ... Well, everything consolidates. I can fall on hard, solid ground and move between a water energy and a wood energy, which are really different.   Mason: (03:40) But here, in the late summer, always feels relevant because it's always ... It's a time when, A, we've had the summer. So we've never needed grounding more in the year than after summer. And I feel like the way the consciousness of each organ system kind of plays out, the G. Here we're going into the E, the YI, I'm not sure what the pronunciations, "Yee," or, "E," of this spleen consciousness. Being the intellect, the reasoning mind, being able to make judgments and have acceptance. And it's the intellect, the capacity to think and have good quality thoughts, or maybe have bad quality thoughts. After summer, we've just been flying on such a high, it's probably the time when we've been the most active. And potentially we've kind of moved away from say, in winter, you're going to see a real coming forth of our meditation and mindfulness, and really going in practise being the real ... Even though we might do it all year, it's really the focus during winter.   Mason: (04:49) Summer, maybe it's not the whole ... It's not coming to the forefront. And so we need to really ground down after that fire time and really check in with the quality of our thoughts, the quality of our intellect, and really ... And I was reading about someone's ... An interpretation, which really ... Because I love the dreaming aspect of the whole Daoist system. And because it's a big bridge between ... It's a major bridge between heaven and earth, that spleen energy, although there's many organs that play a role in that. This is where we get to really consciously wield the sword of how we are bridging between heaven and earth, or mainly our dreaming. What do we aspire for in our life? What do we feel our destiny is? And that's something that people might relate to in kind of visioning and visioning in that spring season, and having the vision kind of just being acted upon and come to life in the summer.   Mason: (05:48) But that spleen system, that spleen consciousness comes forth at this time of year, in those fulcrums between the season to really sit down, ground our thoughts and our mind, and have a look at basically how we're doing in bringing our dreams into manifest and grounding it from the heavens into this world. And I really like that, because it's probably ... I relate to it because it's probably something I skipped past, and that's where one of the biggest pieces are in this season. It's a really beautiful time to go in and have a look at that inner critic, and that ... Whether it's been ... Are we still remaining constructive? Are we still remaining acknowledging of everything that we actually have done? Are we sticking to the plan? Are we executing the plan effectively?   Mason: (06:34) All these things that our intellect can be like. Because the mind and the intellect, I feel sometimes it gets forgotten in the ... I don't know, in the health world that I've run in. Whereas that's something ... It's just so important for us to make sure that ... Not just have mindfulness and go into space, and not just quiet the mind, which obviously is another one that's really beneficial. But to really hone the mind and sharpen the mind so we can come better at bringing our dreams into reality. And we need to ground, and I think that will be really coming to the forefront for me this season.   Tahnee: (07:11) Yeah. I mean, the word that keeps popping into my head is substance. And I think when you think about what the spleen represents in the body, it's the substance, it's the muscles, and the kind of meat or the flesh of your body. And I think when you are kind of, I guess what I'm sort of ... The tangent I'm going on, having heard you just speak then was, yeah, there's this kind of substance that comes from acknowledging this transition and this element that kind of provides this real foundation and kind of bedrock on which the more lofty ideals can kind of manifest, and the spiritual ... I come back to Master Chia's work, we can't go off into the astro realms unless we have a really strong connection to the earth, and we remember her as mother and as the ultimate source of nourishment, and that we've chosen this reality to have this substantial experience so that our soul can ... Or our spirit can feel what it's like to be in this tangible form.   Tahnee: (08:15) And I think that invitation of earth and that kind of association with the mother, and nurturing, and the sweet flavour and all of these things that it has, it's really a lot to do with substance and with building us and who we become. And yeah, I think that idea of the intellect and the mind, I think clear thinking and clear seeing comes through a healthy digestive function, right? And we've got western medicine kind of correlating this idea of enteric brain, which is a very old concept that's kind of been revived recently, and-   Mason: (08:53) Can you go into that?   Tahnee: (08:54) Yeah, yeah. So basically we all kind of know that we have the spinal cord, and the brain, and all of this kind of stuff. And I think it was in the '40s, or it might've been even earlier, a man proposed that there was a gut brain, which was kind of poo-pooed a little bit at the time, there's no neural cells in the gut, it's all happening in the brain and in the nerves, and all that kind of stuff. And anyway, I think recently in the last couple of years, if not decades, there's probably someone who knows more about this than I do.   Tahnee: (09:26) But just from my research, there's basically been now evidence that yeah, the gut is heavily involved in producing neurotransmitters and in actually ... Stress response and all of these kinds of things. And that actually, yes, it's acting as a brain and it's signalling to the body to do certain things and certain functions at certain times. And so I, obviously coming from the Daoist perspective, think each of the organs is a brain, and believe based on my experience and what I've studied that that's what's happening, is they're all controlling our function through their lens, and our job is to harmonise that function and to harmonise their relationship with one another. And you can think of the brain as a mission control or something, but everything is kind of making things happen.   Tahnee: (10:16) But yeah, to take it back to the spleen, if you think about ... It's sort of this organ that in western medicine has again only recently been kind of recognised as being necessary as a part of the immune system, as a part of our defences. And one of our acupuncturist's favourite words is, "Bonds and boundaries," when it comes to the spleen. But if you think about the mother/child relationship, the boundary or the bond, the bond is very strong and the boundary is very small. A mother will do almost anything for her child. And you tend to see that in people who are ... I'm using air quotes here, "Spleeny." People who have a sort of tendency to bring balance in the earth element is ... They have a tendency to have really poor boundaries, to overstate their bonds, and also to have this kind of mind that runs wild on them. And that creates a lot of anxious thoughts and ... Mas and I are both put your hands up. Creates a lot of anxious thoughts and a lot of repetitive thoughts, and can really-   Mason: (11:14) Well the repetitive thoughts, you always use the word just ruminating-   Tahnee: (11:17) Yeah, digesting, right? And that's the thing that the spleen opens to the tongue, to the mouth. So we receive not only nourishment through our mouth, but also emotional nourishment. And if you have a tendency to over-crave sweet foods, or to need to lean on sweet foods emotionally, there's a very good chance that that's a sign of a spleen imbalance in your body. Similarly, anyone who's holding too much weight will probably also have some dysfunction going on with the spleen, because by its very nature, the spleen's not transforming the food into Qi, it's transforming it into mass, right? Into substance.   Tahnee: (11:53) And so this is not to say there's anything wrong with being a bit chubby or whatever, that's totally fine, but it really comes down to, if you're looking at this system as one of personal evolution, and personal understanding, and personal sovereignty, well then you're using all of this stuff as feedback for your own growth and understanding. And I think when you look at what the spleen represents, it's so beautiful and it can also be so detrimental. Because we all need more nourishment, and more love, and more care, and we need to direct that to the earth and we need to be able to receive that from the earth. And it's that giving and receiving, I think that can be a problem in our culture as well.   Mason: (12:34) Yeah. I mean that nourishment, everyone can put their hands just over there, the bottom of their left rib cage now and just send some good Juju into your spleen, which is the in organ. When we talk about the soil earth element, includes the pancreas, and the stomach being the yang organ there. Someone who was saying it's like the Goldilocks organ. It's not too hot, not too cold, not too soft, not too hard. It's fine, we were just playing Goldilocks at the beach yesterday with Aiya. It's very appropriate. It's subconscious. Subconsciously manifesting the organs into our playtime. But that's something when it comes to ... It's kind of like this ... When you get into your 30s, everyone's all of a sudden ... Me partying when I was 25, Friday night out just flogging yourself, and then you get to 30s and your idea of a perfect Friday night is pyjamas a little-   Tahnee: (13:36) Bed.   Mason: (13:36) Yeah, bed basically. I think there's just a time when your intellect does kind of get honed into one that we'd call adult or mature, or where you become ... Hopefully some responsible thoughts and intellect can start coming forth and you start making more responsible nourishing choices about which form within your lifestyle flow you're going to see consistency, maybe some discipline. But basically that's when you say nourishment-   Tahnee: (14:08) It's stabilising.   Mason: (14:09) Stabilising, exactly. And the other way it's put, that spleen, that the earth is the adhesive between all the other organs. It's what gives them ... It's the earth it's-   Tahnee: (14:20) The hub in the wheel. If you visualise that central axis on which everything spins, if you don't have good digestion, if you don't have good thoughts, if you don't have good boundaries and good bonds, relationships and things that nourish and support you, well then really those are sort of the foundations of a healthy life. You know... One quick tangent I wanted to jump on was Mas was just talking about the stages of life. And in, again, the sort of Chinese worldview, or the Eastern Asian worldview, the early ... I can't remember, I think it's the first fourteen years or it might be seven years and eight years ... Yeah, it's seven years for women and eight years for men, I think. So the first seven years are wood, so you're very yang, you're growing really fast-   Mason: (15:03) [inaudible 00:15:03]   Tahnee: (15:03) So you're very young, you're growing really fast.   Mason: (15:03) Like a sprout.   Tahnee: (15:03) No, it must be 14. Because anyway, you might have to Google this. For the first chunk of life you're wood. Yeah, you're this little sprout, you're growing, if you've ever been around a child, we have a four-year-old, never stop moving. Heal really quickly, run really hot, don't need to wear clothes all summer. You've got a picture in your head of that.   Tahnee: (15:23) Then we go into the fire stage, which is our twenties when we're really burning bright, we're really social and really trying to get ourselves out there in the world. Again, we can all probably relate to that, where there's this real drive and real fire and real burning purpose and passion.   Tahnee: (15:40) Thirties is when we hit that earth time. Yeah. And so we've landed and we've learned a few things along the way. We've learned what doesn't work. We've been burned. We've also worked out maybe where we fit in the world a little bit and we've worked out what we need and what we don't need and so we're starting to... The spleen's job is to... or the stomach and the spleen, their job's to separate that what we want to digest and eliminate the rest.   Mason: (16:06) Sorting.   Tahnee: (16:08) Yes. And that's... I can't remember the words right now, but it's sort and something. Anyway. But yeah, they're going through and determining what's necessary. And so that's really what this stage of life is that we're in, is this more grounded stage of life. And then you move through into the metal years where hopefully you've accumulated some wisdom, but you also give less shit. You're starting to cut some stuff out of your life, you might start to think about retiring, you might start to not deal with people that you would have put up with in your thirties or whatever. And then you're into a more spiritual age later on, where you're in those wisdom years, where hopefully you're contributing back your wisdom to the people around you, your society, your culture.   Tahnee: (16:50) So, that's in loose allegory for the human experience and the soul growth over those years. So, I think those of you listening in your thirties, yeah, you may feel like there's a stabilising and a slowing down and a consolidating, but I would invite you to see that as a very natural process, and something that doesn't need to be fought. Despite what I hear from friends who are like, "Oh my God, when I was in my twenties." It's like, no, now we get to reap the harvest of all of that work that we did understanding ourselves, all the things we tried, all the experiments.   Mason: (17:22) And that's, I think, important. We talk about the anxiety that's out there and we're not going to go into diagnosing anxiety or anything like that, but quite often it's related to the heart. But Tahns said it one day, she's like, "A lot of anxiety comes from that spleen earth energy as well, because you're just constantly chewing, chewing, ruminating, ruminating, ruminating." And when you just said, "Oh my God, when I was in my twenties, I was doing everything right", whatever, whether it's health, profession, there's a little bit of comparison. And another thing that comes into this spleen... Emerging from this spleen energy, is accepting. A real grounded accepting. Cool, this is where I'm at in my life, or getting to a physical practise. Cool. This is where my body is at today without going into all that comparison, because when you go into that comparison, you're going to start looking at your intellect, and your inner critic giving you a flogging.   Mason: (18:19) And so it's really important, I think it's really important for us to really accept this stage of life that we're at and with what's naturally and energetically coming with it during this time of life, or even if you're not in this time of life, during at the fulcrums of the season. And just remember the soil is at the centre of that elemental medicine wheel. And so we base a good chunk of your lifestyle around ensuring that this spleen, earth, soil element is going to be healthy because it is the glue that brings everything together.   Mason: (18:54) All the other elements, the reason there's able to be Yin yang adjustment through the body is because all the elements can pass through the soil and basically interchange and connect with these other elements. It's a transporter and a transformer. And so the spleen is able to... So those let's say the kidneys are able to get water received by them to the liver so it can become more pliable through the spleen. So same as like the fire is able to send heat down to the kidneys through the spleen, water is able to go between lung and kidney through the soil of the body as well.   Mason: (19:37) So when Tahn says it's a nourishing energy, it's a grounding energy. It's why all over blogs and Instagram and people's conversations around health when they've been going to these extreme diets, for instance, or you've been searching for what's wrong with you. At some point, if you will go with the process, you get a little bit accepting of the chop wood, carry water, we're in the Year of the Ox. And there's a little bit of Oxen energy to that soil. It's like, "Okay, cool. I accept where I'm at in life. And I accept I'm maybe not going to be able to find, keep on finding answers, it might be unsustainable if I keep on going extreme. I'm going to have to go a little Goldilocks here and get a little bit more consistent with my diet, maybe with when I'm eating with what I'm eating with, what my schedule looks like." So on and so forth.   Mason: (20:27) So that's always... I feel like we've given a good amount of context to what I find myself, which is, in my twenties, I wouldn't be such a spleen-y person, because I was... I remember really rolling my eyes when I was a raw foodist. I was doing all kinds of extremes. I was fasting a lot, so on and so forth. Because that really worked for me back then.   Mason: (20:51) But I remember just rolling my eyes whenever I heard anyone talking Chinese medicine principles around having breakfast, a nice nourishing breakfast, three square meals, and especially a really good breakfast at the start of the day. Ensure you do physical exercise and the same meditation, the same sequences, get really familiar with the way that you move your body, and you cultivate your energy, talking about like, hey, let's not drown the spleen in cold raw foods. And that is something I feel like there needs to be a real bridging, which funnily enough, that's what the spleen is making this connection between those worlds that are nut salads and smoothies.   Mason: (21:37) I get it, especially during these seasons, it's just so easy versus everything always needs to be cooked. Bringing a connection between those two segments of our own psyche, our own health practises, the health scene, the practitioners, like there's bacterial experts, gut bacteria experts that are just like, cool, whatever. You don't worry about... Just get different pigments and different fibres in. Don't worry about the temperature and so on and so forth. And then likewise, you've got the Chinese medicine, which is just as long as it's all really well cooked and energetically and check with the seasons. But there's going to have to be a little bit of crossing paths and conversation between those two worlds to get a little bit more wisdom there.   Mason: (22:23) But I think it's a good one for everyone to be really meditating on and remembering we're out of balance when it comes to the seasons. Most people have some small spleen deficiency, not most people, but a lot of people. And if you're trying to get back in flow with the seasons, you're going to need to be standing on solid ground. And the place to do that is to have a spleen friendly diet and a spleen friendly lifestyle. So yes, we will probably start talking about a few dietary principles during this season, a little bit of sense and why certain sweet... because it is a sweet flavour.   Tahnee: (23:10) Sadly doesn't mean sugar, though. I think there's a few things in there, just to backtrack a little bit. I think if you think of this concept of alchemy, which is really at the heart of these Daoist and the Vedic's other aspect of the tradition that I study, is the Vedic side of things. And at the heart of that is really fire as the element that really transformed humanity. And I think what I've really come to understand and to have a lot of reverence for is the... We just tried to light a fire yesterday with wet wood and it was a shit fight. Our neighbours probably hate us now. There was smoke everywhere. It was a really unpleasant situation for us and for them.   Mason: (24:00) We brought this [inaudible 00:24:01] all over Argentina.   Tahnee: (24:03) We did. I think that's a really nice allegory really for the digestive system because it's not like every meal is not going to digest well, we can light a fire 99% of the time. But I think over time, if you just keep adding damp wood and trying to light that fire, you're going to run out of chi, and you're going to create a lot of soot in the body, right? You're going to end up with a lot of inflammation and all of this stuff because the body is just not coping. And it doesn't necessarily... We've had rain solid for a week to get to the point where the fire won't light, right? So it's I think the conditions have to be against you or you've created an imbalance. And again, this can take time. A lot of people we speak to are like, "Oh, it was fine", and Mason was fine, when you were raw for a while.   Mason: (24:57) Yeah. Four years was good. And then I instinctively went, I'm going to move before something shitty happens.   Tahnee: (25:03) Yeah. And I think I can refer back to my very complicated relationship with food and see how much damage I've done to my spleen and my digestive function, through everything from disordered eating to controlling too much cold and damp and wet foods, to forgetting to eat because I get so in my head. There's lots of different ways in which I've created any sensitivity really that I have in my digestion.   Tahnee: (25:34) So I think there's this really interesting dance there that each person has to dance for themselves around how sensitive they are. I do believe you can rebuild digestive fire, absolutely have seen it, and I know that it's possible, and I've felt it in my own body where I can digest things I couldn't digest 10 years ago, but I do think there's this really interesting personal dialogue we have to learn to have with our body where we drop all of the bullshit from everyone who's throwing ideas at us, and we just come back into, well, what really works for me?   Tahnee: (26:05) And again, if you think as the stomach as a receiver and a warm environment in which food lands, it takes no knowledge of science to know that you're going to have to use energy to warm up cold food. That's just obvious. So if you're tired and weak, and you're using energy to digest, that's not going to be ideal. And so it starts to look at... It depends. If you feel really vital and you have a lot of energy, a lot of space, it's probably fine to eat a lot of cold wet food. If you don't, then maybe it's time to make a change. And it goes all the way through.   Tahnee: (26:41) And again, if you look at the spleen, if you look at it's role as really providing the nourishment for the blood, again, it comes down to, well, what is blood made of? And so again, we're looking at are we providing the foundations for healthy blood? Are we providing enough fluid? Are we providing enough nutrition? And how is that being alchemised by the body? Which is really the important part, because you can eat the best food and you can eat organic, and you can eat this and that. And if your body's just not doing anything with it, it's a waste of time. So really the invitation of this spleen and earth energy is to transform and alchemise everything that we consume, which does include emotions and even the words that we speak.   Tahnee: (27:20) And I think that's a piece that's often missed when we talk about health is it's what... I've got some stuff going on in my family right now. My digestion has been awful basically since it happened, because, and you think about, again, the archetype of family and what all of that means, there's this lack of stability and foundation for me that I'm now having to rebuild on my own. And so I'm seeing that mirrored in my body and I think there's this real need to remember that we don't just digest food, but we digest energy, and we digest emotion.   Mason: (27:54) Thoughts. Beliefs.   Tahnee: (27:54) Yeah, exactly. And so part of what you digest when you eat a certain way is the ideology of that system of eating. And so I think that's something we all have to just really slow down and take stock of and see where we want to align ourselves, but-   Mason: (28:11) Well, because it becomes your flesh.   Tahnee: (28:13) Yeah. It literally becomes what you're made of and it's that you are what you eat cliche, but it's true, right? If you're unable to digest your emotions, they're going to go somewhere in your body and you're going to hold them. And the muscles are really the overflow for what our organs can't digest. So if you've ever had a recurring muscle pain that comes about when you have an emotional experience, you can start to think, okay, well, let's say it's something to do with stress and the liver, and you might get a sore neck and shoulder. It's yeah, my liver is overburdened. It's created this excessive heat or this reaction, which is now being manifested in my muscle. My muscle's taking that energy away from that organ, and yes, doing the organ a favour, but now, I have a sore shoulder, or a sore neck.   Tahnee: (29:04) And so you can start to look back at, okay, well, what do I do now to nourish my liver chi? How do I support myself? How do I avoid recreating this situation? So you start to use yourself as a little science experiment. As a curious little exploration of what I can do. And I think that's one of the big invitations of this earth energy is to start to nourish yourself as you would want to be nourished. To look at yourself as deserving of that level of care and effortless, thankless care that a mother gives to a child, that the earth gives to us.   Tahnee: (29:43) And then in exchange, we're then able maybe to give that to others and it starts to build out this altruism. And the best expression of earth is this altruistic caring non-martyred, loving expression of unity and sharing...   Tahnee: (30:00) ... kind of unity and sharing and sympathy and understanding amongst everyone. And obviously we don't have that in the world, but that's a really great expression of it. And the other side of it, is this kind of narcissistic, controlling, needy, anxious, overthinking, kind of analysing that stuff. So, we're kind of trying to lean a little bit more on the former and a little less on the latter.   Mason: (30:29) Good. Rant.   Tahnee: (30:29) I've been talking for like 20 minutes.   Mason: (30:32) No, so good. I just went to lots of places just in terms of accepting that nourishment coming our way, because I was just thinking about... I'm going to talk a little bit about fasting and intermittent fasting, but I'm not going to go too deep and I'm definitely not poo-pooing you guys. I'm just talking about like, I think it's really clinically used or used with a very specific intention. I think it's great, but I came to my own conclusion that I don't think it's a healthy thing to have like a permanent inclusion in a lifestyle for me anyway.   Mason: (31:03) And definitely from what I can see, and we were talking about quality of flesh and quality of muscle. And I remember feeling really strong and being in a community of people that seemed really strong and had good looking muscles, but I could never shake that using something like that intermittent fasting, again, not poo-pooing, not saying this is fact, just going on a thought, just going up on a bandwagon, the quality wasn't there. I didn't like the quality of the flesh and the quality of muscle that I was seeing in my peers and I was seeing in myself.   Mason: (31:34) And I don't know why that was. I think because, one, I had a fanatical ideology and that's something I don't... I've learned what it feels like to create flesh from more fanatical ideology. And two, I really got caught in the logic and I think this is where the spleen can get the most damage in raw food diets, ancestral kind of intermittent fasting kind of style diets. All these things that kind of disconnect us from being grounded and allowing our pure logic and intellect to just... And accept the nourishment that's coming for us.   Mason: (32:10) In that spleen season, we can go into like, you know what, intellectually, it makes sense that as hunter and gatherers, we wouldn't be going out and we wouldn't have that abundance. And therefore for me, what I'm realising there is, is I felt guilty about the level of abundance that I have access to here, in this day and age and that this civilization for all the awful things and amazing things that it's done, I have a genuine mistrust of it. I don't accept any of the nourishment because there's other people that maybe aren't getting nourishment based on other political... This is me, my spleen mind running off and going.   Mason: (32:51) I don't actually deserve it. And therefore I try and logic my way or reason my way, intellect my way to a place, where I am replicating some kind of other diet under the guise of getting health outcomes or logic verse just getting grounded and not having to fly off and go for some crazy ideology, but just continuously grounding and starting with that point of nourishment, which is like why I was thinking of intermittent fasting. And then for me, it was huge coming to having a three-square meal thing. I felt like a failure going to that. That's like eating way too much, even though then the principal becomes only eat till you're like 80% full.   Mason: (33:33) But I was like, why am I doing this? Why do I have to eat? Because you're hungry and I've been there. I've done lots of fasting. I love that point when you kind of stop getting hungry. But when I became really grounded and I grounded my intellect in my mind, and I started accepting and looking and thinking about nourishment, accepting nourishment coming my forth, I don't think it's an absurd statement. to think the natural tendency that everyone is going to accept from their mother is to eat when you're hungry.   Mason: (34:04) So I think as well, if people don't agree with what I eat at this time because it's breakfast and lunch and dinner, and they're synthetic things. Breakfast time is something that was created by Kellogg's and blah, blah, blah. I get all that. You go through all that programming bullshit. And then you do get to a point in the morning though, when you're just hungry. And that's what the spleen is. It's very grounded. Well, should I eat or should I not? Should I fast, should I not? Are you hungry? Yes. Okay. Is there something like diseased in you that clinically you've seen that intermittent fasting is going to help you get through that and get back into a metabolic balance or perhaps get your pancreas working in alignment? You've got whatever it is.   Mason: (34:43) I could do it and heal, but then you always come back to the centre of the wheel of the earth and accept that nourishment. And yeah, I just really, I guess I just went off and did a little bit of healing then when you were talking about that. The stomach, sitting in there, I think they say it likes to sit at about like a 38 degrees.   Tahnee: (35:09) Yeah. It's slightly warmer than body temperature. I can't remember the exact temperature, but I think that's... I mean, it's interesting, you're talking about even receiving nourishment because that's kind of the archetype of the stomach, is it receives, right? It literally controls the receiving. It's like a compost bin. So if you've ever composted and you know that if you put too much wet stuff in there, it gets stinky. If you don't add enough dry stuff... So this is-   Mason: (35:32) Great analogy.   Tahnee: (35:33) Yeah. And I think people forget like it's soil, right? So to make healthy soil, you need carbon, you need all sorts of various things. I think the older I get, the more I think we should eat most things in a lot of variety all of the time, as in way more diversity than is probably promoted in a lot of the mainstream diet fads. But I really noticed for myself, if I don't eat a lot of high fibre food and well-cooked vegetables and stuff, if I eat too many starchy things, like spelt pancakes or whatever, I don't feel like my digestion flourishes as well. So I can feel that there's this kind of desire for the body to sort of compost these really natural foods, right? And you think about what we would have had access to. They are things like your fruits, your vegetables, your nuts, your meats, your grains and legumes and things that are prepared.   Tahnee: (36:32) And again, I watch YouTube videos of indigenous cultures preparing food. They spent all freaking day doing it. Like they're not ever eating a Twinkie or anything that's in a packet, like to prepare a legume or a grain that's soaking and that's sprouting and they're mashing and they're grinding. It's a process. And I think we've really lost touch with how much labour it takes to get food to a place where it's digestible. We just kind of plonk some stuff in a pan and eat it. And it's like, yeah, there's actually a lot of effort and time and energy. And that's one of the things that the industrial revolution did for us was it took us away from having to prepare our foods possibly to the detriment of our bodies. And I think we would all agree that hasn't been the best for human health.   Mason: (37:20) To an extent. I mean, there's definitely-   Tahnee: (37:20) Well, yes. Sorry. That's not true. Yeah. There's more longevity and stuff. But I guess in terms of those markets of like wellness, like that's-   Mason: (37:25) Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I was just thinking about exactly that, like it's another part where I draw back. I was just thinking about apples and thinking how... You were talking about indigenous preparation. I was thinking, oh yeah, they couldn't just go grab an apple. And I was like, but there's this amazing thing of like seeds going all across the world and us developing crops and biodynamic gardens bringing us these amazing produce, so we can use all this produce. Most of what we're getting locally and seasonally, pretty much none of it is going to be, for most people listening to this, like indigenous foods coming from this land or indigenous meat's. Nonetheless, that's like that can... But then you start bringing in preparation. We've had such a speed up of convenience, which to the extent has kept people fed, which is essentially a good thing, people to be able to be fed. Then you get excess, you get excess of crap, excess of corn, excess of wheat, and you get GMOs, all that kind of stuff coming in.   Tahnee: (38:22) Yeah. Cheap stuff. Yeah.   Mason: (38:22) But if you come back and you accept the nourishment and the abundance, but then, as you said, the spleen is going to like you putting a lot of time and preparation into... And if you can weave that back into your kitchen, if you can have...   Tahnee: (38:36) Well, I think it comes back to nature. I remember, I lived with a Japanese family. I lived with two. One was very modern and one was very traditional. And in the traditional one, the grandma got up every morning at 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning and she would start cooking breakfast and we would have a proper meal with like a soup and rice and sausage and an egg thing and sushi.   Mason: (39:00) Yum.   Tahnee: (39:00) Yeah. A proper meal for breakfast. And then we'd have the same thing for lunch if we were there and we'd have something else for dinner. And that's literally her gig was they grew the green stuff right next to the house. They bought some other stuff from the market. And I remember thinking, at the time being 16, eff that, I'm a feminist and I'm never going to do that. But there's just something to me, coming back to the earth element, that you can nurture and support and nourish your family through this kind of devotion to feeding them and to making sure that they're fed in the best possible way. I think there's something really beautiful about that. And it's taken me a good 20 years to see the beauty in that.   Tahnee: (39:41) But I think there's something in that, around the connection to nature as well. And if we're talking foods for the spleen, they are really a lot to do with those sort of naturally sweet kind of harvest foods, your grains, your nuts... Not so much your nuts, sorry, your grains, your legumes. You have root vegetables, that kind of thing.   Mason: (40:02) Yellowy foods. Yeah.   Tahnee: (40:03) Yeah. Like your pumpkin or squash.   Mason: (40:05) Squash, sweet potato.   Tahnee: (40:06) Yeah. And I think that if you think about how you feel-   Mason: (40:09) White rice is really a good neutral spleen tone applying food alone.   Tahnee: (40:13) Yeah. If you think about how you feel after you eat a big warm bowl of pumpkin soup or soup potato curry or something, you feel really like hugged in this... I interviewed Andrew Sterman recently, if you haven't heard that one go back and listen to it, but he talks about you want to feel like your belly's purring after you've eaten a meal. And I think just that sense that the foundation of your wellbeing is going to come through having that kind of happy feeling of food cooked with love, chosen carefully for what you need to balance your body and to really nourish and support [crosstalk 00:40:49].   Mason: (40:48) Massive diversity of what you're eating and different types of fibres. I think that interview was amazing. I think that combination of his and I interviewed Jason Jason Hawrelak on that. Increasing, he's just studying the microbiome in getting a diversity of bacteria there. And that's a beautiful kind of like... If you can listen to those and not try and put those two philosophies, because one's like naturopathic and the other one's Chinese medicine, don't try and lay them over each other, but just like the soil earth element, just feel that space between them and feel them communicating.   Mason: (41:21) And then from the other side of those two things that you could be interested in for better health outcomes, you can find what could come the other side is more nourishing and tailored. You've got the evidence on your side and tradition on your side of a capacity to make a family culture and have a food culture, which is going to get you through the other end with your spleen chief flowing, therefore, hopefully your other elemental organs flowing with greater ease, yin-yang transformation happening with greater ease. It doesn't mean everything's perfect in the body, but you're in flow. You're in communion. You're grounded enough to be able to take very specific action as well to manifest your dreams.   Mason: (42:08) And that's something I think, I feel it's probably like there's another little bit of a tangent, but it's something that you do see a lot as people go, like lots of dreams when you're in your teens or 20s, and then you kind of grow up. It's like in Hook, I always talk about Hook. Peter Pan, lost boy, and then goes, "I want to get married. I love someone." And so he goes over and he just forgets all his... Forgets Never Never, basically forgets how to dream and Crow and fight and fly, and how to have happy thoughts.   Mason: (42:48) But then the spleen season, if you're alive enough in spring and you have enough trust and confidence in yourself to start dreaming up and thinking, what would I like? What's going to really light me up and make me feel like I've really been able to do what I'm here to do, which is bridge heaven and earth, and bring some magic to me in this world? And that doesn't need to look extravagant or anything, just allow yourself to be in that dreaming.   Mason: (43:14) When it gets to these earth seasons, it's a really good time to... You're mature and start making your decisions and really quiet your mind. And really ensure that you're being critical and judgmental in a way that's really going to take you further towards living your best life, for a better word, and an expressed life verse being judgmental to others and yourself and critical of yourself, because that does eventually turn your flesh into kind of that energy. And you can feel it.   Mason: (43:54) I remember, after I got out of my raw kind of food worlds, I became quite critical of, and people probably hear the hangover of it, I talk about it all the time, critical of myself kind of falling into those ideologies for just how much I externally started to identify, became a bit resentful towards the health scene. I became resentful to the kinds of information that people would put out there with conviction, not knowing the whole of the system, just doing things willy-nilly, which I saw could put people in danger, which is probably because that's what I felt like I was doing, to be honest.   Tahnee: (44:37) Well, it's interesting about the spleen and the intellect aspect of it. If you are in ideology, that's a sign of spleen imbalance, right? If you think about what a lot of these diets do is they disturb the healthy flow of spleen qi in the body. And that affects the ability, the capacity to think. So people get myopic, they get stuck on, this is the only way. They can't digest that there might be two or three or four or five or six or a thousand different ways to eat.   Tahnee: (45:03) .... That there might be two or three or four or five or six or 1000 different ways to eat or to behave. And so it sort of becomes this my way or the highway kind of a thing. And again, it comes down to bonds and boundaries, right? Like a strong boundary against everybody else, and only my tribe is right. And that tribalism is really not what we need. Like our whole world is incredibly tribal right now. And it's not really in service to the growth of humanity, it's not in service to like our collective growth as people of a country or a state. Whatever your thoughts are on what's going on globally, there's a lot of stuff that isn't really that helpful. So I think when we think about this sense of like what the gifts of the spleen are, it's empathy, it's understanding that you may not agree with someone, but you can empathise with their perspective.   Tahnee: (45:48) Well, if your spleen is out of balance, you're not going to have that. You're going to think that they're wrong. You're going to be black and white. You're going to be divisive. Similarly, it's about altruism and about supporting the whole of humanity. Well again, if you're out of balance, you're not going to be feeling like that. It's about stability. If you're not stable, is it really working? And I think that's the, I mean, that's one of the things I believe very strongly with yoga is, if your practise isn't making you more stable, you're doing the wrong practise for you. And I think-   Mason: (46:17) That kind of links into like looking at what's your relationship like? What's your house like? How is your work life? Before you go out and try and save the world, making sure your own house is ... at least you're in the middle of ... at least you've got to practise consistently and you're getting your house in order.   Tahnee: (46:34) Yeah, and I think-   Mason: (46:35) I don't [crosstalk 00:46:35] like lofty ... I don't [inaudible 00:46:38] get it perfect. And then you can go out-   Tahnee: (46:39) No, well that's liver.   Mason: (46:41) Yeah.   Tahnee: (46:41) Perfectionist liver friend. But yeah, I really do think ... like I think that something we talk about a lot is I look to people who are our peers, or even really well known in the scene and they aren't stable. They aren't people that are steady and consistent. And I find there's something about that that I'm a little bit wary of, because I think, "Well, I'm more interested in learning from someone who's been around for a while and who's really spent time diving into their understanding and their experience." And that leads you to teachers that are older and that have been around a while. And they very rarely teach black and white. They very rarely say there's one way. I mean, "It depends," is pretty much the mantra of my life because it's like there is no right way.   Tahnee: (47:33) And all of this stuff is really just someone wrote this down because someone downloaded it probably from wherever you want to believe. I believe from some kind of source, consciousness. And they've been able to put it down in a language that we don't speak anymore, that's been translated through time. There's lots of arguments about what things mean. And then we're here having this conversation on a podcast, this is our understanding and interpretation of someone else's insight. And we all have the capacity to have these insights and these understandings. And I think it just becomes, again, about how we assimilate and digest these ideas. And so just to keep bringing it back to that spleen element, you're creating the soil of your life through composting everything you come across and turning it into your foundation, your stability. And that's, I think, the piece that is really important, is it's not about, "Oh, it's spleen time and I have to eat pumpkin," it's about what do you notice and observe when you lean in to what's abundant in your ...   Tahnee: (48:37) Like in my neighbourhood right now, there are lots of sweet potatoes around. They're at all the farmer's markets and they're everywhere. It's like, well, that would make sense to me to eat them because they're there, they're growing. And hey, oh, by the way, they also worked for spleen. Isn't that interesting? And I think this is this really kind of interesting thing that you start to notice these things, like you were saying, you start to kind of, year on year, develop and cultivate this deeper level of understanding and relationship with these things just through living, not through trying to put on some, "I'm a Daoist and I believe it's spleen time, and I'm going to do this."   Tahnee: (49:10) And I think that's the same with the herbs. Like if you're working with ... Some people might need spleen herbs a lot, all the time. They might just have a tendency to really go out of balance in that area, and they really need that support. I can sort of be like that sometimes. Other people might feel like they want to work with them around the change in season. Other people might just want to work with them when they feel called to. You can work with your practitioner and find out what's going to be appropriate for you at this stage of life. So I think there's so much diversity in how we approach these things, but-   Mason: (49:44) That's probably worth mentioning. Like when we're talking about spleen deficiencies, we're talking in a very general sense, allowing the soil, the earth Chi to flow smoothly through the spleen stomach meridian, which can mean many things for everybody listening to this, but it's just feeling generally in harmony. And especially at this point, your intellect, the good quality thoughts, beliefs, and then your digestion. And so it's like you look at are you getting bloating? Are you holding weight? Is there IBS? Is there a bit of leaky gut going on? Is there a runny stool? Is there, to a lesser extent, constipation, but still there? And remember, where there's spleen, there's dampness in the spleen, you imagine the soil's just sopping wet, soggy, but then there's damp heat and damp cold. And then when we look at the stomach, we're going to see generally it's going to be heat, stomach heat. And so you're going to look at things like indigestion and reflux and those kinds of things.   Mason: (50:52) But we're not trying to diagnose all these things. Make sure you're with ... If there's something in those areas and really digestively something really going wrong, or especially if psychologically, something you can not, you haven't been able to get on top of it, don't try and do the lifestyle changes. Don't try and shoulder the burden. Remember to accept nourishment, and there's going to be people out there, practitioners, they're going to be able to help you kind of hone in on that as well. But in general, yeah. I mean, when you look at the Qi herbs, they're all about supporting the spleen function and quite often the lung function, because that's what delivers us our vitality and our daily Qi, so all the organs can run and thoughts can move and all that kind of good thing.   Mason: (51:34) So yeah, at this time of year, for sure, especially when here it's so muggy and damp, I like having the herbs in the Qi blend. I felt really comfortable when it came out with the Qi blend, because there's so many ... Poria, is the mushroom in there leading the charge, able to transform that water. If there's too much water. And likewise, guys, all the mushrooms are basically known in Chinese medicine as the regulators, water regulators, like the Warren G of the water in your ...   Mason: (52:08) And then the roots, like Astragalus. So like your Homie Nate   Tahnee: (52:16) Stop.   Mason: (52:19) So it's a really good time to get those moving in, especially the mushrooms, moving that water. Because remember, if that water's ... what's going to be able to travel through soggy, sopping water? You can't ... I can't remember what the word is. Friable.   Tahnee: (52:38) Yeah.   Mason: (52:39) Yeah. Like to be able-   Tahnee: (52:40) Soil.   Mason: (52:40) Yeah, soil. So you think you-   Tahnee: (52:41) Can move through it.   Mason: (52:42) Yeah, you think water can move through it, or especially that's what you want to be able to do ... moving in there.   Tahnee: (52:47) [crosstalk 00:52:47] can push through easily.   Mason: (52:49) Yeah. Cheese can move through there. Worms are going to be able to be present there in the soil. Maybe not. Let's stay in the analogy with that one. But yeah, very general. But mushrooms are always ... I mean, the good thing about Qi herbs is they're all so general and you can't really go wrong. But as Tahn's said, some people will notice really big differences. You make all these lifestyle kind of changes that we've spoke about. Remember that it's a time to get grounded and have a look at your inner critic and your beliefs and all these things. Remember, it's a transitional time. So you do have the opportunity at the fulcrums of the season, as you do all the time, you can tune into that earth energy. But really, if you sit down, stop distracting yourself. That's why people go on social media breaks and like little holidays, because when you stop having all that information coming in, you don't have to digest as much and chew on as much. And therefore you can chew on what's present in your body and make little adjustments, transitions.   Mason: (53:45) Remember, to transport you over to another ... You can transport yourself back over into connecting with those dreams you had when we’re 20, and just with this maturity you've got, and start making really intellectually aligned, good quality decisions. And you have a look, "What's my beliefs that I have? Cool. All right, I'm going to have to ... I might actually start working on that belief." And then you go at it like an ox, like a chop wood, carry water. You just plough ahead and plough ahead at it. So really important for you to do that. But yeah, if you get into the Qi herbs, the mushrooms, you might see that you'll physically may notice a little bit more vitality. Your digestion might get a little bit more honed. It's very correlated with immunity. So it's actually the time of year anyway you want to start ... You always want to be taking the mushrooms as far as I'm concerned. There's a black and white statement for you to [crosstalk 00:54:38] say, that's the exception.   Tahnee: (54:39) Yeah. There's an exception to every rule.   Mason: (54:40) Generally, but Qi, I mean at this point Qi kind of starts really making an appearance, and then I go ... And then I start going real hard as I get into March. And then all of autumn it's like the focus, because they had the spleen herbs and the lung herbs, and then they start really fortifying your surface protective Qi, your [inaudible 00:55:03] Chi, going into winter. And it's important, especially with everything that's going on in the world. There's always immunological stuff going on in the world. Everyone would be in such a better position if we took herbs appropriately, lived a little bit more appropriately for the seasons. But people want the easy way out. And so this is the way that is going to bear fruits, and allows ... Ultimately we want the consciousness, from a Daoist perspective, the consciousness of each of our organs to be flourishing and freely expressed. As we are in alignment with the yin and the yang, we're able to go down in the night, up in the morning, go down in winter, come up in summer. Right now we're going to be ... You prepare. You get grounded.   Mason: (55:46) Prepare, we're going to be leaving these warmer months. Really get grounded and sit into that and allow yourself to feel all that, everything there is to feel, still enjoy it. And then you'll be ready to mourn the loss of the warmer months when we get into the lung season. But yeah, just make sure you don't miss these opportunities. Or even just like start touching them a little bit, and start getting into flow a little bit.   Tahnee: (56:11) Yeah. I think that's a nice segue into ... we'll be back for metal soon. And we hope you all are thriving out there. And-   Mason: (56:22) Well this is a nice one because this is relevant for Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, since it's the Earth season. It may not be to the full extent of late summer.   Tahnee: (56:31) Yeah. You guys are sliding the other way, but yeah.   Mason: (56:34) Yeah. You're sliding the other way, and it's good to get practise in embracing this energy and feeling that these intentions come forth in the kitchen, or in your practise, in your meditation, when we go between the seasons, and especially when we go between summer and autumn. Any other little thing? No, I think I was just going to talk about saliva being the substance.   Tahnee: (56:57) I have so many other things. But I think, I mean, we have a daycare run to get to.   Mason: (57:03) Yeah, I do.   Tahnee: (57:04) Real life.   Mason: (57:06) Just embrace your saliva during these times, guys. That's the substance of the spleen. I was thinking about [Tani's 00:57:15] teacher, [inaudible 00:57:16] practise in the morning. Chew, chew, chew, chew for a few minutes, and collect all that saliva and then swallow it down and send a little hello to the spleen, with its own essence.   Tahnee: (57:27) Well, and I was thinking if any of you with students out there, it's a really disruptive time to the spleen. So any study, any constant reading, any intellectual work over the top, so too much of it. So it doesn't have to be any, but just like anything that's in excess, then you will feel out of balance. So just remember that's a good time of life to work with the chi herbs and to get supported with the kind of spleen aspect of your life. So try and stay grounded and steady in other ways. And if you are really out of whack because of what's going on around the world, again, probably a time to really work on your stability and your groundedness and your connection to the Earth, and remembering that you've got that ability to just sit and feel and connect. And don't let your mind get away with you. Practise whatever you need to practise to stay sane at this point. But yeah, just these are all pretty spleen disturbing times that we're in. So yeah, lo

My story and studies began as a “wounded healer” whose training and experience have also included the necessity of self-love and self-healing which I teach to others. * My original vision in 1997 was to offer dance as a healing art and bodywork to support women to heal themselves and their centers in the divine feminine way. My commitment as a practitioner, conscious performer, and choreographer, is to model and embody this healing with the intention to support and encourage others. * My personal healing journey began in earnest at 23-years- old, in the 1991. I sought help from holistic practitioners and then a spiritual guide to heal personal trauma (spiritually and physically), a dysfunctional relationship, and serious spiritual, emotional, and low back pain. At 27, I began professional healing studies. At 28-years-old, I started performing bellydance and teaching it as a healing art for women. * I was studying and practicing Chi Nei Tsang (aka CNT or Integrated Internal Organ Massage), a Chinese Taoist healing art and “Unwinding the Belly” with Allison Post. This included belly massage, breath and energy work. I worked with family and friends helping them heal trauma and abuse, scar tissue, and digestive issues. * I then went on to continue my recovery and professional journey/studies/practice for the next 25+ years in dance, functional & corrective exercise as a core specialist, bodywork, and overcoming mental illness with spiritual practice and lifestyle. * I have come full circle with a complementary, interdisciplinary approach to support my original vision in 2021 and beyond. * * You can find Morgyn Danae here: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morgyndanaewellness/ * https://www.instagram.com/morgyngaiadancer/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=morgyn%20danae%20wellness * https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004352375691 * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgyn-danae/ * * Dancing Meditations With Morgyn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDOVEXD_S78&feature=emb_logo * * If you like the streaming platform that I am using called StreamYard use the link below to sign up with and receive a $10 credit for signing up. I will get a credit as well and that of course will help the show. * StreamYard Affiliate Link: https://streamyard.com?pal=5045291231739904 * * Live-Stream Links: * https://www.facebook.com/nowheretogo.butupnow.9/videos/766859170899198 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea52kYYSRyo * * Here is where you can find Sean Dustin: * Linktree: * https://linktr.ee/Nowheretogobutup * To support the show through Patreon: * https://www.patreon.com/user?u=19859993 * You can also tip me through PayPal: * www.paypal.com * recipient: nowheretogobutupnow@gmail.com * The Cash App: * https://cash.app/ * Recipient: $nwtgbupod * Show Notes Writer: Sean Dustin * *

Today on the SuperFeast podcast, Tahnee is joined by Chinese dietary coach/practitioner, herbalist, Qigong teacher, author, and man of wisdom Andrew Sterman for a multifaceted conversation around the energetics of food and their power to heal. With his depth of knowledge and spirited ease, Andrew takes us on a journey back to the basics of where good food meets good health. In a world of endless niche diets that leave us cynical and confused, Andrew assures us the power to heal ourselves lies in the accessible space of our kitchen where cooking is kept alive and through inherently knowing our health. Andrew brings the modern context of food to life while keeping the wisdom of how and why we do things intact. A brilliant conversation with something for everyone.    ''The most important player here is the home cook because the home cook is the director of family health''.  - Andrew Sterman   Tahnee and Andrew discuss: The fusion of age-old food wisdom with a contemporary context. Understanding the basic energetics of food and how to apply them. Cooling and Heating effects of different foods on the digestive system. Tongue diagnosis; What your tongue says about your health. SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth). Slow-cooked food and the benefits for the stomach. Preparing food for better digestion. The home cook is the key player in good health. Foods and spices to warm the stomach for better digestion. Eating according to where you live and the climate.  Carbohydrates; why we don't need to be terrified of them. Keto and Paleo diets for short term therapy but not long term health. Sugar and how it affects digestion. Food Stagnation.   Who is Andrew Sterman? Andrew Sterman is the author of Welcoming Food, Diet as Medicine for the Home Cook and Other Healers. The two volumes of Welcoming Food offer a unique entry into understanding the energetics of food, explain how foods work in common sense language, and provide easy-to-follow recipes for everyday eating. Andrew teaches courses in food energetics internationally and online and sees private clients for dietary therapy and medical qigong. He has studied broadly in holistic cooking, meditation, qigong, and tai chi. Andrew has also been a student of Daoist Master- Jeffrey Yuen for 20 years in herbal medicine, qigong, and of course, dietary therapy from the classical Chinese medicine tradition. Visit Andrew at andrewsterman.com/food .   Resources: Andrews Website Welcoming Food, Book 1 : Energetics of Food and Healing Welcoming Food, Book 2 : Recipes and Kitchen Practice Andrew's Instagram Facebook-Understanding Food: An Energetics Approach Food and Healing Course Riding The Wave: A free weekly group meditation Food Chat with Andrew Sterman (twice a month via zoom) Qigong Classes with Andrew Sterman Corona Virus Help-Live Offerings   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi everybody. And welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm doing the intro this week. I had a chat with Andrew Sterman, who is this awesome Chinese dietary coach and practitioner based out of the United States. He works with Jeffrey Yuen, who is a Taoist master, who I have been following for about, I would say around seven or eight years now. He was first recommended to me by one of my acupuncturists in Newcastle. And I just love Jeffrey, his philosophy, he's really rooted in the Taoist tradition and obviously Mason and I are big fans of that. And when I first read Andrew's work, it was just an online PDF about Chinese dietary theory. I just thought, "Oh, finally, someone who really explains this stuff in a modern way that makes it really digestible." Good pun.   Tahnee: (00:57) And also he just seems like a really interesting person. He works as a clinician so he has a lot of experience dealing with all of the various types of things that people present with when they're trying to dial in their nutrition. So we do go on a wide adventure in this podcast. Andrew is just such a great, interesting orator. He just holds this really beautiful space when he speaks. So I really just let him talk. And he covers everything from some of the basics of the energetics of food, tongue diagnosis, SIBO, which is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, which is something we hear about a lot in our work at SuperFeast. Just a lot of stuff I think that will really help those of you who are a bit newer to the energetic idea of food, start to get your head around things.   Tahnee: (01:49) And that's the big distinction, I guess, between a Western biomedical nutrition approach and the Taoist approach. Also comes through Ayurveda and other Eastern traditions where they're really looking at the impact the food has on the energetics of the body, not just the chemical constituents of food. So a carrot is in a carrot. If you cook a carrot, if you eat it raw or grated, if you steam it, if you fry it, there's all sorts of different ways in which we would affect the energetics of that finished product that we eat. So I have been diving into this stuff for probably really seriously, for about five or six years. And especially since having [Aya 00:02:35], I have become more interested in, I guess deconditioning myself away from the Western nutrition model and looking at this more Eastern energetic approach.   Tahnee: (02:48) I have just finished reading Andrew's books and I highly recommend them. We're going to be giving away a copy of each. They're basically a partner pair. So the first one's more theory and the second one's more practical recipes. And I love that he, being a foodie, he brings in food from all different types of cultures. So it's not just Asian... Mason actually doesn't love Asian food, I do. But so in our family, I'm often cooking with more Western flavours, more European flavours, because they are really the ones that we enjoy to eat.   Tahnee: (03:20) And I really like how Andrew bridges those worlds. He offers some beautiful Asian dishes, but also a lot of really yummy, more Western or European style flavours. He brings in a lot of beautiful traditional wisdom. He overlays it with stories of his travels. He's own experience raising kids. He's got teenagers. So I just, I really enjoy reading his books. I think he makes what can be a quite dense, complicated theory, really accessible.   Tahnee: (03:47) And even if you're really new to Chinese medicine and Taoism, I think you'll find his books really accessible and fun. So check out our social media. We'll have the giveaway live when this podcast goes live. And if you aren't a lucky winner, then jump on and order his books. I, again, highly recommend them. I'm going to hand over to Andrew now. He is, like I said, just a great guy to listen to. He's a classical musical performer as well as a really amazing practitioner. So he's got this artistic flair that I think comes through in his writing and his talking. And I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed chatting to him, have a beautiful one, enjoy Andrew. My partner and I, we're both through the Taoist lineage. He works with herbs. I work mostly with yoga and I practise Chi Nei Tsang, which is an abdominal massage. I've mostly studied with people like Mantak Chia and then also herbal traditions and stuff. But I guess- [crosstalk 00:04:51].   Andrew: (04:51) Fantastic.   Tahnee: (04:52) ... the yoga side of things. So our work is really about trying to educate people away from these quite myopic and like you're saying, narrower views of what health means and really trying to expand people into this sense that it's an individual journey and what's right for you at one stage of life might not be forever and there's ways in which we can potentiate our health through lifestyle and these practises and little tweaks that mean that we can live in a really full and wonderful way that isn't just...And we've both come out of... We're both in our mid 30s now, but we've both come through those early twenties.   Tahnee: (05:35) I was a vegan and vegetarian and very into yoga and very one lined about a lot of things, make sure that younger people were coming through with a bit more of a broader sense of not just this social media fads and all these things that happened so...   Andrew: (05:51) Exactly.   Tahnee: (05:52) Yeah, we also have a little girl who's four. So we've both developed a lot of interest in, I guess... I mean, I've been studying Acupuncture. I did put it on hold during COVID because they weren't doing any contact. So I just thought I'd wait, because I didn't want to do it all online. And Jeffrey Yuen came across my desk about probably 2014 and my acupuncturist at the time was mentoring me and he was a five elements acupuncturist, but he was really into Jeffrey Yuen's work and really was passionate about trying to get to New York and study with him and all these things.   Tahnee: (06:29) And anyway, long story short, I did some of his online courses and then stumbled across your work and just found your writing so engaging. And I thought, "Well, he writes so beautifully, I'm sure he speaks beautifully." So I thought I'd reach out. And as I said, I've really struggled to find people to discuss nutrition and food energetic side of things. Because as you were saying, it can be quite narrow. And there's also the sense of it has to be very Chinese.   Andrew: (07:00) Exactly. Right, that's a really big point. A lot of what I do, part of my passion or my niche or whatever we want to say, is to bring their food energetics into... It doesn't need to be modernised. The wisdom is intact, but the foods are different. We have access to modern foods and modern tastes and things that we grew up with. We can expand that of course. I think all of us who were on this journey have expanded from our childhood foods, but it doesn't... We definitely don't need to move to Asian or Chinese foods in order to do food energetics work.   Andrew: (07:45) The important thing is to use the basic principles and to apply them to the food in your local market. Whether it's a commercial supermarket or farmer's markets or your garden, or wherever you get food, you should be able to look at anything that you're buying or cooking and understand the food energetics.   Tahnee: (08:06) That's such a... Yeah, that's such an integrative part of it. I think, because I guess what I... One of the things we see so often is that people are coming in with this, like they're eating... I mean, I guess we get a lot of people with pathological stuff starting to go on because they've been maybe in a really cold raw vegan diet for a long time.   Andrew: (08:30) Yes.   Tahnee: (08:31) And then they're all understanding you're [inaudible 00:08:35] your system effectively and it's slowing everything down.   Andrew: (08:37) Yeah that's a huge-   Tahnee: (08:40) Yeah. If you could speak to that, that'd be, yeah.   Andrew: (08:45) You're absolutely right. Many people who care a lot and they care deeply and are interested in changing their dietary habits for better health become overly enamoured with raw foods, with foods that are seen as energetically cold in the Chinese medicine system. So the idea there is not that someone says the foods are cold it's to understand that vegetables high in water, high in minerals, that with a complex array of tastes, including some bitterness. Say, for example, those who really, they have a taste of wheatgrass juice or something along that line, it's very, very bitter. And bitter has a descending cooling quality, clears heat, it clears excess fire from the stomach and can have a lot of benefits because of that.   Andrew: (09:41) However, it tends to cool the stomach as it does so. So it can clear excess heat and then eventually bring cold into the stomach or digestion or the lower belly. And since cold tends to settle. Now we're immediately getting into more detailed Chinese medical theory, but cold tends to settle downward. Heat tends to rise. There are times when you could have inflammation on your feet, for example, where heat is somehow descending. But typically heat rises to the head and cold settles into the lower abdomen. And this is something that I see every week in my clinic or zoom clinic, now online clinic. The people trying so hard to do what's best and ending up hurting themselves, or at least not being optimal. And one of the signs here is, I mean, how do you know? You have to have a way to know your own health status. We can't just wait for blood tests or for what a book might say, a certain food might do.   Andrew: (10:51) We need to actually know about our own health, which is where in the practise of Chinese medicine, we use pulses and we use tongue diagnosis, as well as the stories people tell, "I'm having these symptoms. This didn't used to happen and it happens now." Things like that. Very important to listen to people with a lot of depth and insight, to really listen to what they say and the tone they say it, the body that they're saying it with, to listen to their Qi as they're speaking. There's so much we can do with our ears, which is all called listening in Chinese medicine. I mean, and it does include listening to their actual words, but so much more. But we need a real way to look inside. And so in our tradition, that's pulse reading and tongue diagnosis.   Andrew: (11:42) Now during the COVID isolation period, we're not taking pulses, but I'm looking at tongues all day long. So the way I conduct a session and we'll get back to the cold foods in a second. So the way I conduct a session is that I'm asking for people to send tongue photos a day or two in advance. And like a phone selfie, tongue photo is fine if it's focused well enough. And we use that as a basis of diagnosis, not only for me to look at, but I'll put it up on the screen to share, and we'll go over points so that they can see that this is thin there. This is swollen there. This colour is a little bit redder than we might think. Don't you agree? Says, "Yes, it is so red." This seems pale here, look at the coat or these bumps or the scalloping here. And then we decode all these things and pair them with food habits and ways to get through.   Andrew: (12:39) So with that in mind, as we're looking at the idea of cold in the diet is a very common or disagreement, if you like. I wouldn't say it's a misconception because maybe they're all right. I love the difference of opinion. But in a laboratory, a raw piece of asparagus has more nutrients than a cooked piece. And that holds most of the time, not entirely, but most of the time cooking does release some nutrients, but it also tends to degrade more. We understand this, however, the benefit for the stomach as we cook food outweighs the percentages of lost vegetables, of lost nutrients in the vegetables or other foods.   Andrew: (13:34) So we're very interested in this idea of cold. So when we eat food, none of it digests until the stomach warms it up to body temperature. The stomach works best. And you could even say works only when it's warm and moist. So if there's a lack of moisture, a lack of hydration, if the food is too dry, maybe we drink water sufficiently, but the food itself is too dry. It's a lot of sandwiches, a lot of breads, a lot of-   Tahnee: (14:05) Baked goods and things.   Andrew: (14:07) ... baked goods in the morning, in particular. Particularly dangerous actually or grilled and sauteed things that may not be very moist. This is difficult for the stomach. The stomach will need to draw hydration from its resources from the rest of the body. And that's not what we want. So Chinese medicine is always recommending warm and often enough, wet cooked foods as the easiest to digest. So that's the first place I often go, not always, but it's one of the first places I go recommending to people.   Tahnee: (14:47) Oh, sorry. Just to be really clear, like a wet, cooked food is like a porridge, a congee, a soup, I mean, a stew, like how far into wet are we going?   Andrew: (14:58) I definitely include stews in the wet category. And because they're... Not only are they moist, but they're cooked for a long time. And the idea of adding heat underneath the cooking pot. I mean, like that's just mechanical. We're just cooking food-   Tahnee: (15:16) The Qi's [inaudible 00:15:16] as well, right?   Andrew: (15:18) We're imbuing the food with heat, with warmth, which would be part of yang Qi and the moving Qi, the energised Qi that we call yang, as in yin and yang. And adding yang Qi can happen quickly as in a quick hot saute or wok frying, or if it's French or European style, just a quick pan saute. And so the heat's very high and we're moving things around, literally moving the pan, the food in the pan with a spoon or with your cook's wrist, flicking the pan, around adding yang Qi in this way. Or with a stew, it's cooking at a lower heat for a very long time. It could be an hour, it could be a day. And we all know the stews taste better the second or third day as well.   Andrew: (16:11) .   Tahnee: (16:46) [crosstalk 00:16:46]   Andrew: (16:47) Yeah, it doesn't have the same [inaudible 00:16:48] but that's the concept is to open the stomach, to receive food. And as I was thinking that over, the idea is to open the stomach to welcome food. And that really... What that really is... What that would mean, and in more clinical terms is appetite, so that you have an appetite to bring in more food or I'm comfortable, I don't have urgent hunger, but I'm really looking forward to... Well for you it's breakfast, but here, the dinners, the next meal and making a little bit of a plan from what we've shopped and organising that. And then this idea of looking forward to it and appetite is not just appetite for food. Appetite, and this is in very real terms, seen in Chinese medicine, but all across the world, is appetite for life.   Andrew: (17:44) When the appetite is good, life is good. I'm just saying, if you had some challenges, things are a little tricky right now, but I can't wait to eat. And this wouldn't be emotional binge eating, but I'm just saying, it'll be beautiful to get going with cooking and those first beautiful bites of food. This is appetite for life itself. So it's not a coincidence that those words overlap.   Andrew: (18:10) So opening the stomach or what I'm calling, welcoming food, or to put them together, open the stomach to welcome food, is the first step in digestion. And then the stomach begins to sort and separate the foods, begins to secrete stomach acids, if proteins are present. If it's a vegan diet and in particular, if it doesn't include something like soy protein or... I don't advocate soy protein except as soybeans or tofu miso, these traditional products, I don't... For me personally, [crosstalk 00:18:48] I don't... I worry a little bit. I do worry a little bit about those foods.   Andrew: (18:55) Will our bodies, in their wisdom, be prepared to recognise them in order to digest them properly? We need to recognise these foods. And so if they're highly processed, I'm very concerned about extracted proteins including soy proteins. You say, "Oh, this is beautiful. This is like tofu." But it's not, it's a new process relying on methods that render food, somewhat confusing to the body. And we could get into more detail the idea of protein isolates.   Tahnee: (19:32) Yeah. I was going to quickly touch on because smoothies and wet foods, I would argue personally that they're not a wholesome, wet food in general, as a sometimes food in summer and maybe if you have good digestion, but a lot of people then load them up with isolates and proteins. Can you speak this quickly while we're here, a little bit to that as well?   Andrew: (19:52) Yeah. I mean, I love a good smoothie once in a while, but it's not very often. And it would be in hot weather, exactly like you saying. Now, if your weather is always hot, you can still overdo it quite easily. Remember the basic motto is this, it's not a motto. It's just the truth. The stomach works when it's warm. When the stomach is cool, digestion slows down, when digestion slows down problems accrue. So we get food stagnation, we get slow transport, it's peristalsis slows down, eventually elimination slows down and there could be chronic constipation. And then we need to turn to Chinese medicine to understand what happens next is that the body will throw heat, yang Qi in the form of wei Qi, which is this moving, a subset of yang Qi, moving Qi, which is always present in the belly and in the gut, will increase this warming Qi in the belly.   Andrew: (20:53) In other words, send heat, raise heat into digestion to move what's become sluggish. Now that might have its effect. And in which case, you might have diarrhoea for a day or something like that. And you think, "Oh, that's interesting. I don't know why that happened." It happened because of the cold food which tends to fall quickly through digestion, the spleen pancreas Qi's not strong enough to uphold. I mean, it can be for a long time, but eventually if cold settles in, the uplifting Qi that we put under the category of spleen and pancreas, won't be strong enough to uphold.   Andrew: (21:31) And then you have something... I have a new patient or client, perhaps better to say. Just last week, a longtime vegan appearing in excellent health, but then she says, "Whenever I eat a salad..." And then she apologised, "I'm sorry to talk about this kind of thing, but I have to run to the bathroom. I have urgent watery diarrhoea." Said, "Okay, we can fix this very, very easily." I mean, of course, we look at her tongue and have to make sure what the reasons are. Have you travelled? No one's travelled. So we don't have parasites. It's not that kind of thing.   Andrew: (22:07) We're looking at the first things first, if it doesn't help them, we can reach deeper or refer into hospital care. That's always on the table, but that's the legal metrics we work in. But in fact, she's already better. The second day she was better. So instead of the raw salads, which has given you the symptom reliably or the smoothies, which are also raw. Have cooked vegetables, add some warming spices, things like cinnamon, fresh ginger. So that would be raw ginger root, but it's so warming it doesn't affect you as a raw thing. Turmeric would be beautiful, nutmeg even clove, which is considered very warm. Maybe cumin, which is considered the seed spices I'm looking at now, which are warming, cumin, cardamom, coriander seed, and then the leafy spices, which are warm, would be rosemary, which just grows in these tall stocks. It's very uplifting.   Andrew: (23:06) And we're using these things to warm the stomach. It's even possible to use a bit of black pepper in a pointed way, therapeutically here. And she said she felt better after the second meal cooking this way. And then she said, "But what about these smoothies? There's so much nutrition in them and it's really, really good." I said, "It's really, really good unless you have a cold, that's beginning to gather in your stomach and in your gut, in which case they're not really, really good. They test well in the lab, but they're no longer good for you. Maybe on occasion, once you get you back on track. But instead have a soup a vegetable soup, the broth, this is the hot version of a smoothie, is a soup." It sounds like you certainly don't want to cook a smoothie. There might be banana or mango in there, something like that. That would be quite disgusting if it was cooked, at least not cooked skillfully well, but that's what we need. So you would go to a vegetable soup with maybe some warming spices. It could even have a little bit of cinnamon, especially at first, that would really help warm the system. It's desperate for that. And just this particular person felt better by the second meal. The urgent diarrhoea absolutely vanished. And then she's still vulnerable probably for another while, depending on how she follows the plan. So you have to remember for vegans and vegetarians, that meat is very warming. And I say this as a ex- vegetarian, and that might be the bad news of [inaudible 00:24:50] but I do understand this very well. And I eat vegetarian meals every day, but just not every meal.   Andrew: (24:56) So, I mean, I advocate that everyone should be good at vegetarian cooking. It's inconceivable not to be good, to find it difficult to cook a well balanced, nourishing and delicious meal that doesn't include animal products. But animal products, if we eat them, are warming in particular, of course, the land animals, fish, and seafood less so. And each one's a little bit different. They've all been classified in the medical system. But land animals are very warming, beef, lamb, which I suppose, and pork a little bit less so, but still somewhat warming. Here in America I have clients out in the Western part of America. They eat a lot of venison. They're eating elk and bison. These are all warming. But generally speaking, it's beef and lamb and pork that we're talking about. And chicken. Chicken is very warming, chicken and turkey, very warming.   Andrew: (26:06) People often think that the chicken is like a nothing. It's just like, "Oh, I don't know what to eat. I'm not that hungry. I'll just have chicken." But chicken is very, very uplifting, warming, almost instigating food. As we say in Chinese medicine, the way it's taught is that the chickens aren't very good flying birds. They don't really fly very well, but they aspire to fly. And where I live, there's some wild turkeys and they're beautiful when they come through. There's, I guess we call them a gaggle. I'm not sure. I've forgotten what the group name-   Tahnee: (26:44) [crosstalk 00:26:44].   Andrew: (26:44) Yeah, I think there's a special name for the group, but in any case, they come through. It's a group of six and they're large. They're large birds and surprisingly tall in the wild and they fly and they roost in low branches. They, I mean, they can't fly distances, but they fly to get away from danger and they fly to get up to branches, to roosting. They're quite big things but chickens are... Domestic chickens of course, they're highly domesticated, but with certain Chinese medicine dietetics, is that they aspire to flight. They're trying to rise up and then of course they're warming. And if we're looking for a scientific, from a modern or Western scientific way to justify that, to make some sense out of it or to feel more confident in it really is what it is so that our brains don't short circuit. The interesting thing about poultry is that birds don't get fevers.   Andrew: (27:53) They are very hot. Their healthy temperature is very hot. We use Fahrenheit over here, but it's about eight degrees, six to eight degrees warmer Fahrenheit. So that might be just, to easily say about three. So significantly warmer than humans. And so they are significantly hotter in a healthy resting state than people are. So to eat them as food, the body's thinking, "Well, these proteins were made at a certain temperature. These fats were put into the flesh at a certain temperature. And the easiest way to digest this food would be to raise closer to that temperature, where the chemical breakdown patterns that that digestion is conducting will happen much more easily." And that's exactly what happens.   Andrew: (28:45) So this is why, if people are very cold, now I know where you live you might feel that it's not cold very often. But if you're thinking about where I live in the temperate zone, where the summers are very hot and the winters are very cold. And this goes from all across the United States in the upper half, as well as most of Europe and the upper half of Asia, where people have to eat wheat to be warm, rye, warming, barley, somewhat warming and potatoes and animal food, things like this, a lot of butter and all. People were cold and the farmers were cold and they're working out there. And so if someone were to get sick, you will think maybe they're catching a cold, they're catching a flu or they were catching COVID. What is it that is making them vulnerable? And it's the cold, the fatigue and the dehydration. And this-   Tahnee: (29:50) But chicken soup works so well, right?   Andrew: (29:53) That's why chicken soup works. But it doesn't work if you're living indoors, well heated and you already have a fever. So this is where...   Andrew: (30:03) ... and you already have a fever. So this is where food energetics really makes a difference in life. And so it's a sensible difference. Chicken soup is helpful if you're too tired to make a fever, if you're too tired, too depleted would be the word we would use in Chinese medicine. If you're depleted enough so that you're not mounting a good, strong, robust, natural defence. If you are, you're fine. But if you're not, then chicken soup, it's hot. It's full of fluids, there's some degree of fat in it, I hope, at least if people are cooking well, it won't be too lean. The glistening fat on the top, let's say that. And the chicken itself is very warming. So this will help the body kick up a fever, but, and that's most useful for the first stage of infection, by the way, you're beginning to catch the cold, you're beginning to catch an infectious respiratory illness.   Andrew: (30:58) But if it has settled into the chest, and the next stage of the belly, and now you have a stomach bug and there's fever. So you use chicken soup, when there's chills, and then stop using it when there's a fever, that's the rule of thumb. But that's-   Tahnee: (31:24) That's true of all of those, I remember when I first started working with an acupuncturist and he was like, "Don't take garlic and ginger when you've got this chesty cough, because it's already hot." He's like, "That's only when it's at the very start you take those things, hot bath, hot soup, the heating spices, and then you should flush it out. And if it keeps going, then you need to stop those things." And this is grandma wisdom, really.   Andrew: (31:50) It is, and it's grandma wisdom, which is being passed on less and less, our modern culture doesn't respect the elders, and in a very righteous fashion, and we're losing a lot of good information. So you're right there. And it also goes back to the beginning of Chinese medicine, in the incredible, genius text called, The Shanghan Lun, which is translated usually as, "On cold damage," or, to say it another way, "The damage cold does," it's a treatise on cold damage, is one way to translate it. And that book was published in about the year 220. So, a very old book where the author talks about the initial stage, when we're trying to push out a pathogen, they didn't say the word germ, but they did say pathogen, and trying to push it out, and we would use chicken soup. We would use garlic. His first recipe relies heavily on cinnamon.   Tahnee: (32:56) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. When that's the formula you take at that stage as well, they're full of-   Andrew: (33:01) That's the formulas you take at that stage. So that's the way we can eat, as well, at that stage. So you could actually put some cinnamon into your soup, or of course, cinnamon tea. We would put some other things in with it, to make that work. In fact, someone phoned from London a few months ago, and he was in quite a panic and I don't blame him, well, panic is never the best way to make decisions, but what I'm saying is that it was understandable. And this is someone I did know because we don't really treat people that we haven't seen, we can meet online and we take a look at your tongue photo and begin to work, but, and he called and he said, "I'm coming down with COVID. I can feel it. I've lost my smell and taste. And I, I feel really, really awful. And it's only been a day, at least with symptoms, and I'm freaking out, what do I do?"   Andrew: (34:07) So I said to him, "Ah, well, don't freak out. And nearly everyone gets through this very well, and let's look around your kitchen. What do you have?" So we started walking around his kitchen. I'm in New York, he's in London. And I said, "Do you have cinnamon?" And he says, "Yeah, I have some cinnamon. I have sticks." Okay, good. And I said, "So, do you have an orange?" He said, "No, I don't have any oranges or tangerines or anything like that." "And how about lemon?" He goes, "Yeah, I have lemon." "Okay, good. And is it organically grown?" He said, "Probably not." So, "It's okay. Wash it off with some soap and then wash off the soap really well, we'll do our best."   Andrew: (34:53) And then, there was something else we put in as well. And we made a tea, a kitchen remedy for him. Oh, I think it was just fresh ginger, probably, every kitchen should have fresh ginger at all times. If we keep it too long, it can dry up. I do know people that freeze ginger, you can freeze it, just put it in a plastic food storage bag, Ziploc, or whatever type you use, try to get the air out. And ginger freezes fairly well for emergency use, but still, fresh is best. And every time you go to the store, you ask yourself the question, "Do we have fresh ginger? Do we have fresh spring onions?" And just always have those at the ready and, okay, so by spring onions, we mean scallions here. So they're not the bulb onions-   Tahnee: (35:48) The green, long, skinny guys.   Andrew: (35:50) The green, long, skinny guys. They're in the onion allium family, that includes garlic, by the way, and chives. So do you have chives or the skinny, in Australia, it's spring onion, isn't that right?   Tahnee: (36:03) We call them spring onion. Some people called them shallots as well, which is confusing, because then there's eschalots. But yeah, I basically would call them a spring onion in my-   Andrew: (36:12) Okay. Yeah, good. So here, it gets into foodie talk a little bit, but a spring onion is an onion that you can't store. And I think most Americans might not follow this, or even be concerned about this discussion, but the scallion would be the skinny onions that they store in the refrigerator, but they don't store in a root cellar, but the bulk onions, you can put away for months through the winter, so you would always have them, but there are other, fresh, bulb onions that don't store well, and they're sold with their green stems in the springtime, and those I call spring onions. But in any case, what we mean here are the very mild, skinny ones that don't have a distinct bulb so-   Tahnee: (37:01) White on the bottom, green on the top. Long.   Andrew: (37:03) Right. Right. And this has been used in Chinese herbal medicine, as well as dietary medicine, since before anyone was writing anything down. That was very important, because they grow wild. And so you should always have these at the ready.   Andrew: (37:16) So we made a home, kitchen remedy for him, that he just drank five to 10 times a day. He was just making it and making it. And he got through so quickly, and you could say, "Well, he would have anyhow, it's not laboratory tested, that strategy." But what are you going to do? You use what you have with the knowledge of food energetics, you look around the kitchen and you implement a strategy. And the strategy there was, it was a new infection, let's push it back out the way it came, through the exterior.   Tahnee: (37:51) Mm-hmm (affirmative). And would you use the citrus peel in that case? Just out of curiosity? Or use?   Andrew: (37:55) The citrus, I was using the citrus peel to relax his breathing, because we know in this case, you're putting together everything. COVID is a new illness. It wasn't written about in the Chinese medical classics, but so you extrapolate and you say, "Well, this is something where a lot of people get into breathing problems." A lot of people get into circulatory problems. So the citrus peel was in there to relax the diaphragm and open breathing. We say, "Open the chest," is the term, to open breathing so that he wouldn't get caught in respiratory problems. And that his lungs would continue to function well to clear whatever phlegm might be arising. So we could have put in the whites of spring onion, in which case, it becomes a little bit more like a soup, where you're beginning to put in these savoury notes. So you use what you have, but I didn't want to make it confusing. Three elements. That was all.   Andrew: (38:57) And so that's the same idea that you were talking about before. And all we're doing is implementing the first strategy from this book, written in 220. And then if it progresses further, we would implement the second or third strategy, whichever one was presenting. And it goes through six stages. In fact, that's its nickname, The Six Stages.   Tahnee: (39:16) Six Stages, yeah. And I think this is something with, like you said, we've lost the elders, we've lost the cranky grandmas who bundle you up in a scarf and a beanie-   Andrew: (39:29) Not entirely.   Tahnee: (39:31) I think in Australia. I know people, and I guess it's an interesting thing because I think when you're young as well, and you do have a lot of young chi naturally, you can be out in the cold with less on and you don't feel it as much. And I'm only 35, but I've noticed a change in the last 10 years, with my sensitivity to elemental forces. That's probably also, my awareness has built up a lot over time.   Andrew: (39:57) Right. And that's a big question that people ask in the food context. Often they say, "Well, Andrew, if I eat the way that you're describing, then if I ever have to eat some junk food or fast food, it's going to kill me. I won't have my chops for it. So I'll get weak doing this." But-   Tahnee: (40:19) Well, that's not true. It makes you stronger.   Andrew: (40:23) It makes you much, much more resilient, but like you said, more sensitive. So it's not that we're getting weaker, it's that we're more sensitive. So we have two teenagers, and I watch them sometimes when they eat with their friends after school, now they're in a remote school, and take a look at how they're feeling. And they're eating this stuff like vacuum cleaners, partly as rebellion, because they were raised on the kind of diet that was there. Their tremendous misfortune was to be raised by an acupuncturist mother and dietary and herbalist dad. And we cook every day, constantly.   Andrew: (41:08) And so they'll eat junk food on the outside, but it's not true that the teenagers just plough through this, and feel completely fine. They plough through it, feel very satisfied that they're being rebellious and having fun with their friends. And then they feel like they are a brick. They do have food stagnation, and all of a sudden what had been a really great digestion and elimination gets more complicated, and then their skin might break out a little bit. And then they come to me and they say, "Dad, do you have any herbs? Do you have some herbs?"   Tahnee: (41:50) I'm curious as to whether you, because I have a four-year-old, and one of the things that I found incredibly challenging the other day, and it was a proud moment as a mother was, I was driving her with a friend. So she's four, and her friend was seven, and they were in the back talking to each other. And my daughter said, "Oh, I'm not allowed to eat ice cream when I have a white coating on my tongue. So before I ask my mom, I check my tongue and just see if I'm allowed ice cream today."   Andrew: (42:15) Right, exactly.   Tahnee: (42:16) I just giggled to myself that she, at four, was already-   Andrew: (42:20) Fully indoctrinated.   Tahnee: (42:22) I was [inaudible 00:42:24] but it's been something that I don't even have to say, "No," anymore. I'm like, "What's your tongue like?" And she goes and checks and she comes back and she goes, "Oh, it's pink." And I'm like, "Okay, cool. We have a little bit of ice cream," or. "No, it's got a white coating." "Well, no, we're not having any today." She's just like, so are there any little tips you've taught your kids or any, if someone's wanting to look at their own tongue? One of my first yoga teachers, he's like, "You look at your tongue twice a day, every time you brush your teeth," he's like, "It's such an important way to measure what's going on in your body." And it's been something that I've been doing for, I think, 20 years now. But people look at me like I'm whack when I say it, so I wonder if there any tips you can give that are easy for people to get a gauge on how they might want to be adjusting their day, or their diet, based on what they're seeing.   Andrew: (43:12) Right. I think it's great to look at your tongue in the mirror often like that. It shouldn't be obsessive, but it doesn't sound, so I can hear in your voice that you're not being obsessive about it, it's just part of your health habit. There are people we have to be careful with our clients, that some of them do feel [crosstalk 00:43:33], and so your good eating isn't is not a jail sentence. It's actually just incredibly beautiful to eat according to your personal health status.   Andrew: (43:44) So, looking at your tongue is very important. And so the first thing, and we do this a lot, and in our, by our, I mean and my wife and I, in our food teaching, we often put up a picture of various people's tongues, and decode them, and talk about the dietary adjustments. And my wife, Anne, is proofreading right now, a major new book on tongue diagnosis with a lot of amazing photographs. It's really, really exciting. So we've been having a lot of fun working, it's her authorship, but we like to work together.   Andrew: (44:26) So what can we do at home? The first thing you can do when you look at your tongue from a dietary perspective. So we're not using acupuncture needles at home. We're not playing games with medicinal herbs without training, but everyone's eating. So we really are doing medicine every day, whether we like it or not. The way we're eating is holding our pathology, to use that word, in place. It's holding our health status in place, or it's changing it. It's not neutral. So, when you look at your tongue, and the first thing to look at would be the overall shape and size, does your tongue feel very small? Like it's barely sticking out of your mouth, or does it like really, really reach out? So, overly expressive might be a description, which would be a lot of yang chi, and a relative deficiency of yin, or vice versa, if the tongue barely peeks out of the mouth. There could be cold, there could be a lot of emotional constraint. If the tongue barely sticks out of the mouth, there's often a lot of emotional, internal pressure. That's always a part of it. We can't separate it out. It is incorrect to separate the emotional arena from a health status, as is usually done in the world of specialties, where we go to a digestive specialist and you go to your therapist, and it's all supposed to be neat and separate, but it's not.   Andrew: (45:59) So, okay. Then you look at, is the tongue narrow in the back? The tongue should be almost a little bit, not pointed at the tip, but it should narrow to a tip, to a rounded tip, and it should be full in the back. But for many of us, the back is very narrow, indicating that we've worn out the wax in our candle a little bit too much for our age. And so that's what we call yin deficiency. It could accompany hormone deficiency, for example. In fact, that's a big point when people come from fertility work, and they're eating salads and juices, and you can see that there's a narrowing of their tongue in the back, and they're having trouble getting pregnant. And we need to warm the belly, scatter the cold, warm the belly, and nourish yin. And there's many, many successful families based on that strategy with that presentation.   Andrew: (47:10) Or, you look at your tongue and we would look at the basic colour. Now this would be the colour of the coat, like what you're talking about your daughter, if there's a white coat, that means that's not the body of the tongue, that's the coat of the tongue. So that would be some kind of coating, might be an easier way to say it to those for whom this is new. So there's a coating on the tongue. And that really tells us how we're doing with fats, with lipids. Are we digesting fats well, or are we over consuming fats for our capacity to digest them? Which means it could be sugars as well. So in that case, yes, you don't want more dairy coming in, which is high in fat, and ice cream, of course, is high in sugar, high in dairy, and cold.   Tahnee: (47:59) Is that called the triple yin death?   Andrew: (48:03) Well, we don't have to be too judgmental, but [crosstalk 00:48:09] ice cream is delicious. There's no question. Ice cream is really beautiful. It should be high quality, and it should be only on rare occasions. So, and then really enjoy the times when you have it. And then take a look, you say, "Well, you know what? I still feel it in my throat, even six hours later," it's just a little thickness, a little bit of, as the body pushes some phlegm to the surface, a little bit of mucus to the surface of the throat, in an active self protection from the cold. That's what's happening, and difficulty digesting the dairy. So it's always the body's response. It's not that the dairy is phlegm and just gets painted, on the phlegm is the body's response to something it finds somewhat challenging. It's similar with too much spicy peppers or spicy chilies. I know we don't use the pepper word, spicy capsicum. I'm not sure what the right term is. And my wife is Australian, by the way.   Tahnee: (49:11) Oh, is she? Oh, yeah, like the chilli pepper. Yeah. Okay. [crosstalk 00:49:13]   Andrew: (49:14) The pepper word. Very, very long history of why that word, "Pepper," is misused applied to the spicy capsicum, or even the bell, what we call bell peppers in America. They're [crosstalk 00:49:27]-   Tahnee: (49:27) Yeah, the capsicum, we call that. Yeah.   Andrew: (49:29) Right. Capsicum, right. Which is their botanical name, but we're stuck with the word, "Pepper," because of Columbus. He was looking for pepper and he'd never seen a pepper tree growing.   Tahnee: (49:40) Oh, it's a spice thing.   Andrew: (49:42) It's a spice coming from incredibly far away and through, and they'd never seen a pepper tree. And they were looking for spices, and in a complex, very, very complex historical moment, 1492, in Spain, and basically the expulsion of the spice merchants. So they were without spices. So this was part of it. That part of the story is not told, surprisingly, in American education, but in any case, Columbus found these things that he found somewhat spicy and he called them peppers. And we've been stuck with that ever since, there's the confusion. So we can call them capsicum, but Americans don't know what that means. For the most part-   Tahnee: (50:24) That's a nice capsicum.   Andrew: (50:26) Exactly, exactly. So then you can look at the colour of the coat. If the coat on the tongue is white, then something's building up. I call this housekeeping. We're not keeping up with internal housekeeping. And this is not just on the tongue, it's through the internal body. That's why it's so significant. And then the clinician, with more training would look, at where is the white? Is it all over? Which, usually it's not all over. It usually starts in an area, and then it would spread to all over. So then, if we can see through the coding, you would look at the colour of the body of the tongue. And this is very, very easy to do. This is important. If the body of the tongue seems very, very red, then we're looking at heat in the blood, probably from too much meat, too much protein. It could be too much spicy food, too much alcohol, too much coffee, too much chocolate, too much garlic and onion. These are the usual suspects-   Tahnee: (51:36) Very hot, energy foods.   Andrew: (51:38) Really hot energy foods. These are the foods that are implicated in reflux, or GERD, acid reflux. It's the same list of usual suspects. That would be the thing we cut out first. That may not solve it, but that's what we have to do in order to solve it, in order to get to the actual therapeutic. So that would be if your tongue body looks too red, and you think, "Well, what's too red?" Well, if it looks really, noticeably red, you look at it and you say, "Wow, that's red." And you look at other people's tongues. And we have this saying, never stick your tongue out at someone with this training, because they'll know exactly what your status is, and-   Tahnee: (52:19) The report card.   Andrew: (52:23) We won't say anything, but just as a general rule, don't stick your tongue out. And then, if the tongue is too pale, this could indicate borderline anaemia, what we call in Chinese medicine, blood deficiency, where your body's not transforming your diet into rich enough blood. And so basically that paleness goes through all your muscles, somewhat pale. So the tongue is the muscle we can see. And so it's a look into the surface, and not into your blood, but towards the blood, we're seeing signs. So the pale tongue could be that the stomach has gotten too cold. I put that example, the opposite of the person who's eating too much meat. Now we're talking about that vegan, as mentioned before, where her digestion wasn't upholding, wasn't warm enough to do the transformation that was necessary for her diet.   Andrew: (53:21) So by adding all cooked food and warming spices, her body didn't need to present as much heat of its own. We were bringing that heat in, and it was so much more successful, until her body will take over. Which it will. And, but with someone where the tongue is pale, it could be cold, as in that case, it could be a blood deficiency, in which case we would want to eat, if red meat would be helpful, it's the easiest way to build blood. But if not, and along with that, we always want vegetables. We eat dark leafy greens, beetroot is actually really important for building blood. It includes what we call in Chinese medicine, the law of signature, but Western science has verified it. There're beautiful chemicals in beetroot for building blood, and in fact, two of them were actually named after beets. So, betanin is one of them, and other colourful root vegetables, but the dark leafy greens are very, very important. Berries are very important for blood. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and goji berries. Very, very helpful for blood. We can use beans, like adzuki beans, red lentils, even perhaps black beans, for building blood, and anything that helps build fluid will help build blood. So that could be steamed rice, steamed millet, [inaudible 00:54:54], again, like you mentioned. So the system works very, very well and you match it to your tongue presentation.   Andrew: (55:04) I'm trying to think what else would be. If there's scalloping-   Tahnee: (55:06) What about, scalloped? Yeah. Because I think we always talked about in with yoga, [crosstalk 00:55:13]-   Andrew: (55:15) The scallop tongue is very common. So here you're seeing the imprints of the teeth, usually on the sides, occasionally on the front as well, that are imprinted on the tongue because the tongue has swollen. So I've even had people say, "Oh Andrew, my tongue is just too big for my mouth. It's always been like that." And so I love that, because it's so charming, it's so earnest, but it's not right. And the tongue has swollen. It's been like that for years, for someone who says that, they're so used to it, that they simply say it's how they are. But actually it's all that time that they haven't been digesting well.   Andrew: (55:57) And that's a sign, basically, that they haven't been digesting carbs very well. So I know that some branches of holistic medicine like to interpret that sign differently, but when the tongue swells like that, it may look swollen. It may just, you see the imprints. It definitely is swollen, it's as if we're eating carbohydrates, not transforming them into our personal nourishment fully. And so they're sticking around and there's food stagnation, and the inner body begins to swell, which is reflected with a swelling of the tongue in that area. Usually it's the middle of the tongue and the molars that we're seeing.   Andrew: (56:42) So the thing to do there. Well, here's the short take on carbs. There's so many people who are anti carb and they're terrified of carbs, or they vilify carbs. And I've been looking into this for years and years, and I just don't find that validity, unless someone has developed so much difficulty with metabolising sugars and carbohydrates that even healthy carbs are implicated. So, that happens further down. And we can come back from that, but there are such cases, sometimes with SIBO, with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and intense, intense bloating. We do see people like this relatively often, because they come to us for dietary help. They've been all over the place, and it takes some discipline, but it's absolutely-   Tahnee: (57:40) Are you putting them on a... Oh, sorry to interrupt you. Are you putting them on a paleo style diet then, in that case, a low carb? I'm curious because I had SIBO when I was overseas. In Thailand, I got really sick, really sick with some bug. I never went to a doctor, but I just spent five days really sick. Anyway, I came back to Australia and I put myself on, after doing some research on it, I put myself on a keto, almost, style diet for a while with a healing protocol, and it actually sorted it out. I can eat everything again now, but I'm curious if that's what you would do clinically or there's a nuance there.   Andrew: (58:20) Yeah. That's a part of it. We definitely do that. So you'd put someone on a keto diet, looking for ketosis. I really don't like that diet, because of the strain it puts on the liver and the kidneys. The same with paleo diet. I don't consider it a healthy long-term diet, and it's definitely not sustainable by a large population of the world. The world can not support this. So the question is, if it's necessary for a healing period for a few months, okay. That's an important point. But in terms of using it full time, saying, "This is the diet I'm," I wonder, well, I hate to say this, but it has an elitist problem, that we can eat like this because of, I don't at all, but if someone does, because they have the affluence to do so.   Andrew: (59:20) But they're absorbing resources at a frightening rate, and someone might say, "Well, that's simply not my concern, survival of the fittest, financially." But I don't agree with that. That's not something I subscribe to. I think we do need to eat within the matrix of the world, and in a healthy fashion. And that we need to spend our money, to vote with our wallets for good farming practises, and sustainable practises. Nothing else makes any sense at all.   Tahnee: (59:50) I absolutely agree. Yeah.   Andrew: (59:52) So nonetheless, if someone presents with SIBO and it's extreme, first, I check to see how extreme it is. The protocol I use goes something like this.   Andrew: (01:00:03) ... extremely just... The protocol I use goes something like this. It depends on the person and their presentation, their tongues, their pulses, if I'm able to take them and what I'm hearing from them about their specific symptoms but basically speaking the protocol goes like this.   Andrew: (01:00:17) First, let's cut out sugar because anything else is just not sincere. So we do all these things. We're cutting out grains, we're cutting out any processed food, we're cutting out all kinds of things and then the person's still having dessert or they're still sneaking this, or they're still saying, "Well, honey in my tea." I mean, just for an example, when I was writing Welcoming Food, which took quite a few years to make it shorter, to try not to make it long actually is what took a long time because the original drought was quite a bit longer. Anyone can write a great thing, but to write something meaningful that's short is quite... Is another matter.   Tahnee: (01:01:09) I agree, it's an art form and you've really done an amazing job. Actually, it's a-   Andrew: (01:01:12) Oh, thank you so much, thank you.   Tahnee: (01:01:14) [crosstalk 01:01:14] the first night I started reading it, I was like, "I've read so much on just Taoism Chinese medicine." And you've put it in words that first of all makes sense to anybody, which makes it so accessible, but it's also really succinct. Every sentence carries meaning, but it's... Yeah, there's not a lot of waffle and I really appreciate it.   Andrew: (01:01:33) Oh, good.   Tahnee: (01:01:33) It's a great-   Andrew: (01:01:33) Okay. I'm so glad to hear. Thank you. So during the writing process, I would sometimes pick up the laptop and my notebooks and go to a cafe, and actually in... I'm in Connecticut now, in the woods, but in Manhattan, we live in an apartment where the bottom floor of the apartment has a cafe run by a couple of Australians. So what what we call in New York-   Tahnee: (01:02:01) Hey, [crosstalk 01:02:02].   Andrew: (01:02:02) ... an Australian cafe has become a term. So it's great. So sometimes I go down there or down the street or something like that and I was in a cafe setting up and I was just doing some more edits and all that, and one of my clients came in and I'm sitting there with a green tea or something, whatever it was, and one of my clients came in and he waved to me and I waved to him and he came over and we caught up and we chatted for a bit, and this is someone who can't digest carbs. He's on a zero carb diet and he put three packs of sugar into his coffee without even knowing he was doing it.   Andrew: (01:02:42) So this is the state of affairs and so when we're working with someone... And I didn't call him on it, because it was a cafe, right?   Tahnee: (01:02:50) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Andrew: (01:02:50) So that's the stage he's at and so... Which reminds me then of just a story that you might enjoy that I was... We have a store in... A food market in America called whole Foods that sells a lot of organic things and relatively-   Tahnee: (01:03:11) A lot of things.   Andrew: (01:03:13) Well, food and food products and they're really relatively reliable for basically very good quality and it's not flawless, but it's very reliable, I'm glad they're there. So I was in there one day and I ran into Jeffrey Yuen there, master teacher in so many ways and I've been a student at Jeffrey's for 20 years and so... And he knows that at that time was just about to release the food books and so we had a chat and he had his basket and I had my basket, and we had a very, very nice chat and neither of us looked in each other's food baskets. This was a very, very important point of discipline, that just to really focus on... It's like, "I'm not checking out, well, what kind of food does this great Taoist master buy? I still have no idea. And that was my way of giving him space, and he didn't look in mine either. So where's the ice cream? So I'm sure neither of us were buying ice cream but so-   Tahnee: (01:04:27) That's really beautiful, though. I really... Just as a philosophical discipline to give that person their space in their private time I think.   Andrew: (01:04:37) Right. Because that's not how... What a teacher... And he has been my master teacher in so many ways for so long. What a teacher wants is not students that are following in their every move, they want students that light up on their own and go their own way. That's what the whole thing is about and that's what all the food practise is about. It's so that everyone can live their own life more effectively, more freely, with more enjoyment, and freedom means freedom from illness, freedom from pain, freedom from lethargy. That's very, very important. That's the point of it. It's not to be righteous with food.   Tahnee: (01:05:14) [inaudible 01:05:14].   Andrew: (01:05:14) Okay, so anyhow, back to this idea of SIBO, cut out sugar and so many people think they have, and they haven't, and it's important not to criticise them, but to work with them with their own readiness to actually do so.   Andrew: (01:05:33) So to find the hidden sugars, maybe it's like, "Well, I've cut out sugar. We never buy sugar, we don't buy honey or maple syrup or anything like that anymore." But then there's still some packaged things. I like to snack that comes in a wrapper that I unwrap, and you actually look at it, it's full of carbs and there's a lot of sneaking going on.   Andrew: (01:05:50) So, okay. So we're working with that. The first thing is cutting out sugar. The second thing is cutting out the glutinous grains causing inflammation and dysbiosis, poor digestion for so many people. So I personally digest wheat quite well and I limit it to, or I try to, mostly organic wheat because of the way non-organic wheat has been over hybridised and the way it's farmed. So I reach for organic wheat. I consider it very important and I know that's saying something, because wheat is the staple of Western diet, and that would include Australia, of course. And there's so much wheat being eaten in baked goods and so forth that it's hard to keep track of how it's grown, but it is very important for best health to... Not everything, you could say, "Well, it's too expensive to eat organic." But there are some foods where it's most important, and those would be wheat, corn, soy are the three secret ones that are in everything, so to speak and are grown...   Tahnee: (01:07:02) Yeah, the growing was awful. And the hybridization and GMOs, and yeah.   Andrew: (01:07:07) Right. Exactly. Exactly right, and the GMOs need to be... They're designed to be grown with massive-   Tahnee: (01:07:16) [crosstalk 01:07:16].   Andrew: (01:07:17) ... glyphosate and things like this. So this is an enormous problem. So it's a really active, big problem for people's health. It's not just an aside thing, this is huge. So we cut out the glutinous grains, which would be wheat, rye and barley, and it's mostly wheat, overwhelmingly wheat. So you cut that out and then we take a look, are they still good with the non-glutenous grains? Rice, millet, oats, quinoa, teff, amaranth, fonio, which is an interesting grain that's coming to market now, beautiful, and things like that.   Andrew: (01:07:54) So maybe they're not okay with rice, with white rice because it's so... It converts to sugar so quickly that this still feeds the SIBO bacteria. It's not just bacteria, of course. It says SIBO with a B, but it's really microbes, a whole slew of microbes. Yeasts, funguses, all kinds of things that are growing out of control in someone's belly who has SIBO. So with bloating right after eating and this fizzy feeling. Like one of my clients says, "It feels like there's a beer factory in my belly."   Tahnee: (01:08:29) Oh my gosh, Andrew. I used to do burps that smelled like eggs if I ate anything with a carbohydrate in it.   Andrew: (01:08:35) Right, exactly.   Tahnee: (01:08:37) [crosstalk 01:08:37] the time.   Andrew: (01:08:37) So it might be-   Tahnee: (01:08:37) The fermentation [inaudible 01:08:37] was wild, yeah.   Andrew: (01:08:41) Right, the internal fermentation, it's wild. So it's not clean because you could say, "Well, what's wrong with fermentation?" So if someone really likes beer or they like vodka or whatever, that's fermented. Or they like kombucha or miso, these are fermented, but these are fermented under very controlled circumstances where you're picking your microbes, you're picking your yeast and then with something like beer, to some degree, it's filtered afterwards. And with something like vodka, the dirty alcohols are separated, the methanols and things.   Andrew: (01:09:15) So with internal fermentation, we get all that. It's like a really dirty mash, and the microbes that are doing the fermentation are not the ones you would want so they would make awful beer as well. So, okay, good. So sometimes you have to cut out all the carbs, and that would include things like millet and brown rice, and maybe some of those people can continue with quinoa, which is not a grain or buckwheat. These are called pseudo grains and they digest more like seeds. If so, that's useful and you can have them as porridges, you can have them steamed or in grain salads, things like that.   Andrew: (01:09:53) And then we add root vegetables if possible, and you have to think then, "What are we getting full on? Where are we getting our nourishment without grains and how we handling the organs of digestion that thrive when we eat grain?" So a healthy body eating grains in a healthy fashion has food for the stomach, spleen, pancreas, and small intestine that they absolutely thrive on. So without grains that provide bulk, they provide healthy carbs, it's difficult to run metabolism and it's difficult to run peris

Today marks a special 100 episodes of the SuperFeast podcast, that's 100 episodes of inspiring conversations with brilliant humans progressing the world through health and wellness! Over the past 100 episodes, the SuperFeast podcast has had hundreds of thousands of downloads and connected with people from Nigeria to Greenland. This evolving journey wouldn't be what it is without you, the listeners, your interaction, and the energy you bring to this space. On Today's podcast our favourite dynamic duo, Tahnee and Mason sit down for a reflective conversation on the journey thus far; the most listened to episodes, the guests that filled them up, and exciting prospects for the future of SuperFeast podcasts. It's always magic when Tahnee and Mason share the mic, and with the 100th episode and a new year ahead of us, it's a perfectly aligned reason to have them back on the podcast connecting with the SuperFeast community.   Tahnee and Mason discuss: Reflections of the SuperFeast podcast, looking back six years from the Mason Taylor Show to now.   The evolution of the podcast landscape over this space in time. The most popular episodes/guests and the topics that consistently resonate with listeners (we've linked them all in the resources below). Health protocols in our ever-changing contemporary landscape; intentionally creating a healthy space to continue questioning beliefs, integrate opposing ideas, and move into a place of harmony, which is in alignment with every traditional system.  The guests that influenced and cultivated Tahnee and Mason's introspective journeys. Navigating the newly emerging health scape where holistic traditions are being meshed with more reductionist methods. The Women's Series; Tahnee's journey through the many dimensions of experience her guests have brought and the gift of sharing space with women who have so much wisdom to offer. Future directions and Visions. Sex; a popular topic that always gets ratings.  Gratitude and the value of reviews.    Tahnee and Mason Taylor Tahnee and Mason Taylor (recently married!) are the founder and CEO of SuperFeast (respectively). Their mission with SuperFeast is to improve the health, healing, and happiness of people and the planet, through sharing carefully curated offerings and practices that honour ancient wisdom and elevate the human spirit. Together Tahnee and Mason run their company and host the SuperFeast podcast, weaving their combined experience in herbs, yoga, wellness, Taoist healing arts, and personal development with lucid and compelling interviews from all around the world. They are the proud parents of Aiya and Goji, the dog, and are grateful to call the Byron Shire home. MasonTaylor Mason Taylor is the founder of SuperFeast. Mason d to the ideas of potentiating the human experience through his mum Janesse (who was a big inspiration for founding SuperFeast and is still an inspiration to Mason and his team due to her ongoing resilience in the face of disability). After traveling South America for a year, Mason found himself struggling with his health - he was worn out, carried fungal infections, and was only 22. He realised that he had the power to take control of his health. Mason redirected his attention from his business degree and night work in a bar to begin what was to become more than a decade of health research, courses, education, and mentorship from some of the leaders in personal development, wellness, and tonic herbalism. Inspired by the own changes to his health and wellbeing through his journey (which also included Yoga teacher training and raw foodism!), he started SuperFeast in 2010. Initially offering a selection of superfoods, herbs, and supplements to support detox, immune function, and general wellbeing. Mason offered education programs around Australia, and it was on one of these trips that he met Tahnee, who is now his wife and CEO of SuperFeast. Mason also offered detox and health transformation retreats in the Byron hinterland (some of which Tahnee also worked on, teaching Yoga and workshops on Taoist healing practices, as well as offering Chi Nei Tsang treatments to participants). After falling in love with the Byron Shire, Mason moved SuperFeast from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Byron Bay in 2015. He lived on a majestic permaculture farm in the Byron hinterland, and after not too long, Tahnee joined him (and their daughter, Aiya was conceived). The rest is history - from a friend's rented garage to a warehouse in the Byron Industrial Estate to SuperFeast's current home in Mullumbimby's beautiful Food Hub, SuperFeast (and Mason) has thrived in the conscious community of the Northern Rivers. Mason continues to evolve his role at SuperFeast, in education, sourcing, training, and creating the formulas based on Taoist principles of tonic herbalism. Tahnee Taylor Tahnee Taylor is the CEO of SuperFeast and has been exploring health and human consciousness since her late teens. From Yoga, which she first practiced at school in 2000, to reiki, herbs, meditation, Taoist and Tantric practices, and human physiology, her journey has taken her all over. This journey continues to expand her understanding and insight into the majesty (that is) the human body and the human experience. Tahnee graduated with a Journalism major and did a stint in non-fiction publishing (working with health and wellness authors and other inspiring creatives), advertising, many jobs in cafes, and eventually found herself as a Yoga teacher. Her first studio, Yoga for All, opened in 2013, and Tahnee continues to study Yoga with her teachers Paul + Suzee Grilley and Rod Stryker. She learned Chi Nei Tsang and Taoist healing practices from Master Mantak Chia. Tahnee continues to study herbalism and Taoist practices, the human body, women's wisdom, ancient healing systems, and is currently enrolled in an acupuncture degree and year-long program with The Shamanic School of Womancraft. Tahnee is the mother of one, a 4-year old named Aiya.   Resources: The Power of Menopause with Jane Hardwicke Collings (EP#77) Life-Changing Sex Makes Anything Possible with Kim Anami (EP#28) Yin Yoga with Anatomist and Yogi Paul Grilley (EP#59) Why Chinese Medicine is Failing Us with Rhonda Chang (EP#80) Ayurveda and Yoga-The Healing Arts with Myra Lewin From Hale Pule (EP#55) Reclaiming Pureness and Sovereign Living with Jessika Le Corre (EP#96) Tools For Healthy Living with Dr. Claudia Welch (EP#32) Authentic Sex with Juliet Allen (EP#31) Embodied Movement with The Movement Monk Benny Fergusson (EP#56) Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi everyone. I'm here with Mason.   Mason: (00:04) Hi guys. How are you?   Tahnee: (00:05) Yay. And it's episode 100, which means we've made it through 100 interviews and chats with each other and others. And we just wanted to check in with you guys today because I was laughing to myself thinking about when Mason first tried to get me on the podcast and I was moy resistant as they say in Spanish. And I have really enjoyed it, actually, coming full circle and have had some amazing chats and have really enjoyed the opportunity to get clear on my voice and my interview style and how we connect with people and sharing it with you guys.   Mason: (00:49) Yeah, it's been great watching you step into that side of yourself because you asked great questions.   Tahnee: (00:54) So do you.   Mason: (00:55) Thank you.   Tahnee: (00:56) And it's really cool. I remember when I first met Mase about six years ago, he was doing a podcasting course, I think, or kind of interested in starting his own podcast or maybe you were in a mastermind group or something.   Mason: (01:10) I didn't go that far. I just signed up for the free seven steps-   Tahnee: (01:15) Trial.   Mason: (01:16) No, just a little guide, seven steps to set up your podcast. Went and did that with... Can't remember who it was through, but it was just one of those ones. It just popped up in a-   Tahnee: (01:25) An ad or something.   Mason: (01:26) Yeah, it was an ad and I was like, hmm, not bad.   Tahnee: (01:29) Yeah and I remember you had the Mason Taylor Show and if you're listening and you haven't checked out that stuff that was from probably five or six years ago now. And I remember having listened to podcasts, but I think it was not what they are now where they're just abundant in all spheres. It's been really cool to be involved peripherally and then more closely lately as SuperFeast podcast has evolved. And we're really excited about the next 100 episodes.   Mason: (02:02) Doing the podcast five years ago, it's interesting. It's a similar feeling to when I started SuperFeast and I was like, ah, it's probably not appropriate to sell medicinal mushrooms because the market seems saturated already. And then you fast forward five years and you're like, ah, no, that was like-   Tahnee: (02:20) [crosstalk 00:02:20]-   Mason: (02:20) Yeah. And like five years ago I was like, oh my gosh, there's a bajillion podcasts out there, but it wasn't at the point now where it felt something where it's accessible for absolutely everyone, to do it. It didn't feel natural. It didn't feel as much stepping out on a ledge.   Tahnee: (02:39) And I think, obviously, as a medium, it's just ballooned and it's been such an interesting thing to observe and we're talking the SuperFeast podcast, hundreds of thousands of downloads. People listening, I was looking at the country map before we jumped on, from all over the world from Nigeria to Greenland. I don't even know if people live in Greenland, but all over the place. It's quite wild to me to see how diverse and vast our listenership is. And even the topics that have really resonated with you guys because I guess we would not have picked them, but then looking at the statistics, we've got the semen retention and some of the episodes on sex, especially Kim Anami and Juliet Allen are really popular with you guys. And then female hormones, obviously a massive topic and one that are really of interest to the people listening to us. That's been, I think, a really interesting thing to reflect on as-   Mason: (03:38) Well, the interesting thing with the SuperFeast podcast is we didn't really have a strategy, which is something. It's like, all right, we'll take 100 episode kinda settler. And in terms of, strategically, it being like a marketing tool for the business, you would've thought that we would have sat down and gone, right, we're going to do these kinds of interviews with these kinds of people, these kinds of topics, but we didn't do that at all.   Tahnee: (04:07) People we're fans of or that we think would be interesting guests-   Mason: (04:09) Which I think that's a huge reason. For some people, I don't know, maybe for some of you, you wanted to hear about herbs and that's something that I've strayed from, but you can see we're in some of the top podcasts. It's the Reishi one, the Chaga one, ashwagandha-   Tahnee: (04:31) Cannabis-   Mason: (04:32) Yeah and then then like, cannabis is a little bit different, but yeah, nonetheless, it's something that I'd love to hear from you guys if those, even if it's just like a rapid fire, me talking about a particular herbal, Tahnee talking about a particular herb, if you want to hear a little bit more about that, I'd be super stoked to jump in there and do that. But it's been part of the beauty and I think part of the reason we've been... I think we've got so much structure in many areas of life. It's been it's in the business getting more structure in place in the business.   Mason: (05:07) It's nice having this open book, chaotic world and even though what I was saying is I think maybe there's a few of you listening, it'd be great to hear if you feel like more consistency is something that keeps you there, but I think it's been a huge reason why the podcast resonates with so many people is just this like open field of possible ideas and bringing the guys in and talking about Ayurveda and then classical Chinese medicine and then bringing naturopaths in. And we don't try and layer all these things on top of each other and make it fit a particular idea around health. It's just going out and exploring what's out there, which I feel like I've needed that in the podcast and it's helped me keep me motivated and [inaudible 00:05:54].   Tahnee: (05:54) Well, I think that's the bit you probably don't appreciate from the listener's perspective, but for us, running a company and being parents and life, it's a great way for us to stay really connected and to learn and to be inspired by people who are really on mission, I guess, for want of a better way of saying it and who have really devoted themselves to a particular topic or area of research. And I was thinking about the podcast that really moved me and I remember listening to Jane Hardwicke Collings, who I interviewed earlier this year, she did a piece on menopause with us and I was moved to tears by that interview. I just was so touched by her strength and her power and her capacity to capture what it is to be a woman in these transitory phases of life and-   Mason: (06:44) That was number 77, The Power of Menopause.   Tahnee: (06:47) Yeah. And then the other one, I was trying to think of the ones that really, really resonated. I was really excited to speak to Kim Anami and that's one that you guys have all voted is very, very popular. That was number 28. But coming back to Jane, that was one of the ones where people would stop me on the street and just say, oh my God, that podcast moved me. And everyone from young women who just birthed their first child to women in their 50s and 60s who were touched that someone had discussed those topics so openly. That was really special. And I remember being really moved by speaking with Paul, my yoga teacher, Paul Grilley, which I think he's number... We'll look that up. But yeah, that was a really special one for me because-   Mason: (07:36) That's number 59.   Tahnee: (07:37) He's been such a huge influence to me in my teaching and my life. And I know for you Mace, Rhonda's been a big influence.   Mason: (07:47) The Rhonda Chang interview's number 80. I think it's called, Why Chinese Medicine is Failing Us. It's been interesting. It's creeping up there more and more, becoming one of those cult conversations. You can see like this month it's got way more downloads than anything else [inaudible 00:08:10] actually-   Tahnee: (08:10) Still-   Mason: (08:10) Jane's there still like charging away and I assume that'll get up there. I like that because I think for a lot of you who are listening, I heard some people listen to one of mine and Dan Sipple's conversations, which if you want to just hear me and my mate, who's a naturopath, me coming from Taoist perspective, him naturopath perspective, and just seeing just how those conversations run side by side, but someone shared it on Instagram recently and was like they come for the talk on gut health, the conversations and the protocols on gut health and they stay for Mason's rants about ideology.   Mason: (08:50) And I don't know if you guys are still enjoying it or not whether I'm flogging a dead horse, but naturally, that's been something probably because I've been really going through some reconciliations within myself and some integrations with myself and also just really pausing to consider where in the health landscape there is room and tools being provided to people so that we're safe to go into a big rule set approach to health or a protocol, a healing protocol, and then where the skill set is in going beyond to well, what do you go to beyond that, beyond the labels and coming further into yourself and then realising that we're not going to land in a place of being sure and it's such a weird world, where we're in a completely new world when it comes to the accessibility that we have to health protocols and technologies and traditional technologies and traditional systems that it's all just experimental as anything right now. What is a healthy, ongoing space to keep on questioning our beliefs and questioning how we've integrated opposing ideas and then move into a place of it's in further and further harmony, which is in alignment with every traditional system. It's never ending and it doesn't ever stop evolving, but there is a way to surf it in harmony and stay healthy.   Mason: (10:13) That's been a huge one for me this year, which a lot of you would have heard and Rhonda's conversation is probably the biggest one in number 80, Why Chinese medicine is Failing Us just because it represents something I'm close to as a hobbyist with Chinese medicine and enjoying Taoists medicine, especially, and she's someone sometimes you're like, am I crazy here? Is there actually any difference? Is there an institution when it comes to health or the Chinese medicine that's different to how it was done previously? Is this just the natural evolution? Is it in fact unnatural? Is it bad or is it good? Is it great to have options? Where's the [inaudible 00:10:57]... But it was just all meshed in. It was just Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine. It represents the wider conversation around when something that was holistic gets layered on something that's reductionist. And so that's another one, that number 80 conversation was one I had seen people writing to me and stopping me on the street going far out, Ronda's is just a firecracker, but she's just nailed it.   Mason: (11:27) Am I crazy here? Is something that blurred here? We should be making the distinction that this is a new medicine and a new technology and not just pretending that we're practising the traditional style and with that, why isn't it working? And I feel that about a lot of things. I see a lot of people going down a health ideology that's got all this modern biohacking layered over it and we're like, yes, I'm doing the traditional thing and then I've watched it fail so many times and then going, okay... I'm going a little bit of a rant, guys, but this is just wrapping up my approach to the podcast. Going like, well, where does our faith actually lie? Does it lie in a system or in an ideology and a set of rules that we can identify with and that are external or is there something else that we can learn to have faith and trust in, which is self-regulating and never moving?   Mason: (12:27) And that's something that that conversation and reading Rhonda's book and talking with her really helped me go, no, I'm not crazy here, there's just a little bit more of a distinction that's needed, especially when there's so much coming. There's so many new systems coming out as Western medicine goes charging forth, thankfully, in other areas, as long as it's not getting layered over and bastardising everything that we've had there. If we're able to preserve that, then that's beautiful as well. A lot of this year in the podcast has been me wiping out a lot of that confusion and learning how to navigate this new emerging health scape.   Tahnee: (13:12) That's a way more complex than my year. My year was like emotions and amazing women, which I feel like that's such an interesting... I've felt that my personal journey was around this wider acceptance of the vast, many layered dimensions of experience that women have and also that everyone has and then also the themes around that. I think I've really learned to be less judgmental and to not always project my experience onto other people and not to try and always use myself as the reference. And I think it's been interesting talking to people who they're just so strong and grounded in themselves.   Tahnee: (14:04) I'm thinking about Jessica Le Corre right now. I spoke to her on my birthday, on my 35th birthday, and I feel she was a bit of a gift. That was episode 96. She just epitomises to me the place I would like to step into or the place I see myself stepping into as I get older. And she really, really moved me. And also I'm thinking of Myra Lewin, the Ayurvedic teacher. I think her episode was... Looking at one up, number 55. Ayurveda and yoga and she was another one I think that really moved me. Claudia Welch, I've spoken to a lot of women who are just proper powerhouses and I think that's something that I've really... Number 32's Claudia Welch as well. Something I've really kind of-   Mason: (14:58) It's one of the favourites as well.   Tahnee: (15:00) Yeah. I've always said to Mase, I'm going to be a really cool old lady when I'm 60. And I think speaking to these women that are elders and even if they're only 10 years older than me, but they've settled into themselves in a way that I think young women often haven't and it's really special to share the space with them. And just so many interesting and inspiring women and men, I think have graced our microphone this year.   Mason: (15:31) And that's an interesting reflection because I've definitely noticed that in you stepping into a part of yourself. I'm not sure what you mean by using yourself as a reference, not doing that as much. Is that-   Tahnee: (15:46) I think just sometimes because I've had a pretty interesting, vast life experience in some ways. And I think sometimes I can try and empathise through my experience instead of just allowing that person's experience to be separate from me a little bit. And I think it's just something that as you grow up, you realise you haven't seen it all. And I'm may be not clear [crosstalk 00:16:12]-   Mason: (16:12) No, no that's clear.   Tahnee: (16:12) Just coming to me at this moment, but that's what I'm feeling into that I've noticed, like assumptions I've made or going into interviews with a certain assumption or certain sense of where it's going to go and then just being completely stunned in a positive way where it's just been so much richer and deeper and more powerful and more educational for me on a really personal intimate level than I would have imagined. A chat about, say, I just did one, it hasn't come out yet, about PCOS and I've not experienced that personally. And I went in with some assumptions around what PCOS is just based on my experience in dealing with it with people who we speak to and then just having this whole more vast conversation around it, I suppose, than I would have been able to have with Amanda, this TCM doctor. I think it's great. It's humbling and it's inspiring and it just constantly reminds me to stay in that beginner's mind and that Zen mind of not knowing, which was a conversation we're having last night about acting rather.   Mason: (17:20) Oh, yes.   Tahnee: (17:20) [crosstalk 00:17:19]-   Mason: (17:20) Not losing yourself in the character.   Tahnee: (17:22) Yeah, and I think you can easily get your ego really wrapped up in knowing-   Mason: (17:26) Oh, in a narrative?   Tahnee: (17:27) Yeah.   Mason: (17:27) That's something at times I was like, all right, we've got to have a very specific SuperFeast narrative. And now the idea, for example, I remember the week after I had that conversation with Rhonda and we were really heavily exploring that area, which is something I feel like I've popped. It's like just because I'm exploring an area and really enjoying it and going in and getting good realisations doesn't mean that that's my narrative, doesn't mean that's the truth, doesn't mean that we can't explore other areas. It seems obvious, but for me, I'm such a purist sometimes. And I had that conversation with Rhonda and watching, looking at what's happened when we've used, say, Western diagnosis and Western diseases in with Chinese medicine and yet, the week after or even like you were saying, this podcast that came out before this one, is a Chinese medicine doctor exploring PCOS and that's fine and that's beautiful and I'm interested to hear about that because it's like...   Mason: (18:30) I think I've [inaudible 00:18:33] what I mean there, but I feel we are really opening up and exploring on the SuperFeast podcast more and more. And that's something I did notice this year, it was just how many elders you had. You'd come away feeling really solid, just really reflected, I think, where you've been moving. And for me this year, when I've had guys on the podcast, I've been chatting to young guys. It's been Sage Dammers and Dan Sipple and Taylor Johnson and another big one was Nick Perry. But I feel that's just where I've been at. I've been trying to explore. I didn't want to be led. I wanted to be in the dark and be talking to other guys who were potentially going through that same stage of life because I needed to work it out for myself. But I can see now I'm ready to have some conversations with those guys that have just really landed in themselves as well.   Tahnee: (19:34) Basically guys, this is our therapy and you're just along for the ride because I often think about that. I'm like, I'm not promoting SuperFeast, I don't have anything to sell, I just want to have a conversation.   Mason: (19:46) I've started to be good and in the intros sometimes promo products and things.   Tahnee: (19:50) But I'm like, it's funny because to me it feels almost separate from SuperFeast except that it informs my growth and my evolution and I know the team listens and gets value out of it and support us in the production of it. They're all engaged and [inaudible 00:20:08]. It obviously informs the SuperFeast philosophy and how we do things and often conversations are sparked from listening to the podcast on how we do things and what we can do better or how we can navigate our roles better and all these things. It's just an interesting thing to me that it feels so much less a marketing part of the business. It feels a personal exploration/soul nourishment/education piece. That's an interesting thing that I've been observing is like it's not really something I think of in a sales and marketing capacity. Even though I started thinking about it because one of our consultants placed the podcast within a marketing flow and I went, oh, I didn't even think of it that way. That's been an interesting little distinction for me this year as well.   Mason: (21:04) As the business mushrooms and I'm not out doing-   Tahnee: (21:11) Is that a pun?   Mason: (21:13) Mushrooms and it's growing in its own way and I'm not in front of people at markets anymore and you're not helping at events talking to people. And so the podcast continues to be a way to associate all those conversations because normally people come up to the markets back in the day when I was growing SuperFeast-   Tahnee: (21:35) You're having the chance.   Mason: (21:36) Or when people come to you. Well, yeah, someone was like, I have an autoimmune condition. I wouldn't be sitting there just promoting SuperFeast. I'd have this huge other exploring conversation that would always need to come back to the way that we're living in general, the way the diets looking in general.   Tahnee: (21:53) Totally. It's a part of a piece of a puzzle, not a silver bullet solution. And I think that's something we wanted to convey in this ramble was that we're really interested in the direction that you guys want to hear us go with this thing. We don't have a plan. We are just reaching out and when people can, we're interviewing them and we're recording stuff that we think is interesting or that people on our team find interesting, but we haven't heard a whole lot from you guys beyond the feedback. I've quit social media, so I'm not hearing from anyone, yay, but we'd love to hear from you guys about people you think we'd froth on interviewing, people you want to hear interviewed. I think as I look at the podcast circuit and there's so many of the same names popping up across all these different podcasts and sometimes I just think, it's like people just do the circuit and they do all the podcasts. And then I'm like, I want to offer something a bit more diverse and interesting, like voices-   Mason: (23:00) I think Matthew McConaughey just finished doing that.   Tahnee: (23:02) Doing the podcast circuit?   Mason: (23:02) Yeah.   Tahnee: (23:03) Well, why didn't we get him?   Mason: (23:03) Good question. We got to consider ourselves being more like the ballers and go for the big fish.   Tahnee: (23:08) I don't know if we're quite there yet.   Mason: (23:10) No, we're definitely not there yet.   Tahnee: (23:14) Matthew lived with my friend as an exchange student actually when he was 18. We have a contact. Anyway, but my preference is not to do the famous... Look, if they're famous and they kick ass and it's something I feel we could really contribute to your earbuds, but I think in general, you can find those interviews already. I want to do people that are maybe not getting a lot of publicity or that are doing the work quietly in their little corner and don't have that kind of capacity to generate fame for themselves or-   Mason: (23:51) And it'd be interesting to hear, just for you guys, if you like, if you're [inaudible 00:23:54] on SuperFeast podcast and you're just really enjoying it, what you'd like to hear. This year hasn't been a lot about us because I know a lot of people want to hear from me and Tahns about what's your diet like and what's your lifestyle? and I don't know if we've been exploring, just trying to land somewhere-   Tahnee: (24:19) I feel like we don't spend any time together at work. That's the biggest thing. We work together, but we both hold really different roles in the business, whereas I'm usually more in an administrative role and Mason's more in a marketing role. Our days at work don't overlap that much and I think we haven't prioritised taking this time to chat to each other in this capacity, which I think is more realistic in the new year as things have settled down a bit. COVID has been, for everyone I'm sure, disruptive to the flow and we've just landed back on our feet, I think, after that period of time. And so I feel I do podcasts at seven in the morning or late at night or around... A lot of people I speak to are in the States, so I'm often working with really bad time zones where I'm getting up really early or you're looking after Aiya It's not like we can go duck off together and record one.   Mason: (25:13) I think that'd be a nice intention for us to just set or just have the intention anyway to start lapping here and there.   Tahnee: (25:22) And I'm also not the kind of person who really likes sharing those things because I think it's odd, but I'm also happy to have people want to. For example, the pregnancy podcasts, which are just-   Mason: (25:34) That's what I was just thinking of.   Tahnee: (25:34) So popular and the prenatal preparation one and-   Mason: (25:39) And the nourishing her yin, the live event, that's like, I mean that's-   Tahnee: (25:43) See, those to me though require a lot of push for me to share myself and if I'm really honest, I feel uncomfortable. And I often think about what I've shared on this podcast and I feel really uncomfortable, but it's already done so... But I think it's for me, it's my own, I don't want to ever feel like people think they need to... Yeah, I just think it's one of those things where so much of it's a personal journey for me and not something I share publicly, but if that's something you guys really want to hear and Mase does get those requests a lot through his-   Mason: (26:20) I think every time there's a request, it's like, look, I know you guys aren't going to have an exact diet or rule. We'll see if we can lap over because every time we do tune in, it's just a little... I think it's weird because Tahnee and I don't get a lot, a lot, a lot of time to just sit down with each other and flesh these things out outside of a podcast. And it's like, let's not have a mic between us every time we get that chance to just do that-   Tahnee: (26:48) [crosstalk 00:26:48] together.   Mason: (26:48) We just have enjoy be together. But there's definitely room for us to jump on and just be like, this is what the diet has done in the last year and this is where the fluctuations and this is where we're trying to land. I've definitely started sharing a little because we get asked a lot about diet and everyone knows we're not experts on that topic, but we've had a lot of interactions with thinking about the diet and so we'll see. That's not a black and white conversation, so we'll see if we can colour it in and do some sharing around that one. Definitely, I can get the feeling if there's anyone that wants to learn about any particular topics in Taoist herbalism that I can share about.   Tahnee: (27:37) I've got a couple of things lined up just from my background, like yoga nidra. I've got a chat coming up with Rod Stryker next year. I have-   Mason: (27:46) [crosstalk 00:27:46] he's the one that Tahnee's been learning from him, but our yoga nidra that Sophia runs on a Wednesday, so everyone's been doing it.   Tahnee: (27:55) And with Nicole's teacher, whose name I don't remember, but she's amazing, too. And we have definitely got some podcasts on [inaudible 00:28:03] planned. I'm trying to get my Taois teacher Master Mantak Chia on the podcast, I'm working on it. I just think there's lots of people out there that we're connected to that would be great to feature because we know their work and we love their work. And I know Mase has Benny on regularly and Benny's a close friend of ours as well as an excellent genius of movement. What numbers are Benny if we're looking for them-   Mason: (28:32) We've had Benny twice. Benny, the embodied movement one is really most popular, me and him just riffing a lot. That's why I talk in that one because we're riffing. So number 56, if you want to hear me talking with my friend, or 87, if you want to hear Benny talking a little bit less interrupted.   Tahnee: (28:53) How could you not interrupt someone? Anyway, I'm sure there'll be more of that stuff. I think you and [Tanya 00:28:59] should re-record-   Mason: (28:59) Oh yeah, that's a good.   Tahnee: (29:00) Because Tanya's a close friend of ours, who's a permaculture lifestyle guru.   Mason: (29:06) The Mason Taylor Show, we've had a really good conversation with Tanya [inaudible 00:29:11], it's called, Dancing the Patterns of Permaculture. If you can go find number eight on the Mason Taylor Show, you can tune in with us talking about permaculture and then when we get her on the SuperFeast podcast, you can see the difference and the evolution of where that conversation goes. But yeah, that's a good call. There's a lot of people on the horizon. For some reason, I don't know, I thought you guys were all sexually liberated and maybe that's why you like the sexy conversations-   Tahnee: (29:42) Sex is very popular.   Mason: (29:43) It's by far the top one-   Tahnee: (29:46) Four or five?   Mason: (29:46) That's downloaded is Semen retention. Is that because, did that get shared around in a bunch of like guys circles? Or is it women going like, hold the phone, it is possible? Authentic Sex with Juliet Allen is way up there as is Tahnee's conversation with Kim Anami. They're seriously popular. If there's any aspects around sexuality and any experts that you'd recommend us listening to, we definitely don't like... I think it's nice. We like people on the edge, but sometimes... It's interesting to know what you guys are enjoying about that. We don't particularly feel we're being naughty or taboo talking about these kinds of things, but I think, for some of you, maybe you're enjoying the fact that it feels really edgy, us talking about this kind of thing. I'm not sure why that's so popular. Sex is great. And so it's an obvious reason, but yeah, if you guys want to send us an email or anything and just let us know, you're reflecting over the last 100 episodes why you've been drawn towards particular topics and others not so much, in particular, personalities more so. It'd be really great to hear and you'd all probably notice and appreciate Tahnee's audio is way better these days.   Tahnee: (31:14) That was our number one comment was fix Tahnee's audio and guys, I'm a quiet person anyway. So I'm learning to be more articulate in the microphone and I'm learning how to use microphones. Mason didn't teach me anything. He just gave me one. I'm working on it and that kind of feedback is really useful, too, because I'm new to this and we are often just making it up as we go along.   Mason: (31:43) Thanks gang. Hey, reviews. I know a lot of you, a lot of you listening have left reviews, but it's the classic, it's like-   Tahnee: (31:49) They always help.   Mason: (31:51) Well, they're fun to read. I really like reading them when they come through.   Tahnee: (31:56) We share them with the whole team, too, so that we have a Slack channel. If you don't know what Slack is, it's kind of like inter business communication system. Our whole team uses it and we have a channel called Awesome Feedback, and we put feedback from all different areas of the business. People who love receiving a love letter from the warehouse all the way up to podcast reviews or customer service feedback on how much someone's health has changed from using SuperFeast. And it's just a way for us to celebrate the success and the joy that SuperFeast brings in people's lives. We also have channels for complaints, so don't worry, we're not just totally sunshine and focusing on the positive, but we really enjoy sharing that with everyone and everyone really enjoys reading those and they always get lots of positive comments and emojis and love.   Mason: (32:44) It can be specific. Sorry, it can be specific as well. You can say like, oh my gosh, this episode was great and I really loved this about Tahnee or it doesn't have to be a big, wide, general review. You can get really nice and specific there.   Tahnee: (32:58) Just anything, if you want to share with us, we love it. And same if you want to email us or contact us, it's just both of our first names at SuperFeast.com.au. That's an easy way to get in touch or through the team email, which is on our website or the contact forms. You can just reach out to us and let us know your feedback and just stay in touch. Sometimes it's like talking to space. It's nice to know there are humans out there listening. And so apart from seeing that in the numbers yeah, it's a great way for us to get feedback. I think that's about all we wanted to say.   Mason: (33:34) Thanks everyone. Thanks for coming along for the journey.   Tahnee: (33:36) We'd be interested to hear your favourite episodes, too. Those are just some of my favourites, but if you have any that really resonated, let us know.   Mason: (33:45) Always appreciate you guys sharing them. I'm still there on Instagram. When you tag favourite conversations and tag me in it, it always makes me really smile. Just thanks for making sure that the word's getting out there. Hopefully we're a nice little sanctuary of very deep diving ideas without it being a place where anyone needs to subscribe to anything in particular. I'm hoping that everyone feels very non-judged and able to just really explore interesting ideas in this and through this podcast.   Tahnee: (34:25) Aho.   Mason: (34:25) See you guys.   Tahnee: (34:28) Bye.

Warren Buttery is a teacher of yoga and the healing practice “Chi Nei Tsang”. His journey started as a volunteer of humanitarian services in crisis areas such as Afghanistan or African countries. It was his own declining health that helped him understand the connection about emotional and physical pain. Emotions are stored in our organs, which can be released by the Chi Nei Tsang massage and other methods.  Now, he committed his life to Chi Nei Tsang and yoga on the island Koh Phangan in Thailand. He gives Chi Nei Tsang massages to people but also teaches them how to feel the energies again and understand what's going on in their bodies. You’ll learn: what emotions can cause lower spine pain (despite from sitting to much) why connecting to your past can relieve stored pain the thousands-year-old history of yoga, chinese medicine and Chi Nei Tsang which organs hold the most common energies such as sadness, happiness, anger, fear, courage etc. and how to relieve them how to break out of the feeling of stress and find peace and feel alive again Shownotes  Connect to Warren and learn more about Chi Nei Tsang: https://web.facebook.com/HealingAnywherehttps://www.instagram.com/healingwithwarrenanywhere/ _________________________________ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Hier geht es zur FB-Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturalbiohacking Mein Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robin.stolberg/   

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We know that gut health is trending, it's pretty hot right now, right?! Well, tune in to today's episode as Mase explores SIBO with a bonafide SIBO doctor. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it's a deep dive today, exploring what the heck is this actually?! Mason and Dr Nirala cover the nuanced approach required to treating SIBO, exploring why it may be overdiagnosed and other gut symptoms (constipation, food sensitivities and more).   If you've ever traveled to a third world country, got some sort of bug, 'fixed it' and then realised you never truly recovered, then today's episode is for you! (Also, if gut health and immunity are important to you, you are going to love today's episode.) Dive in, here are some of the stuff discussed in today's episode: The nuanced nature of SIBO when compared to irritable bowel syndrome To heal from SIBO, a strategic approach is required, not just a one-size-fits-all What role chronic stress plays in suffering from SIBO How hypothyroidism, mould exposure and other autoimmune diseases are connected to SIBO The misunderstanding around 'reseeding' the gut How the 'breath' test works in diagnosing SIBO Which foods to avoid during SIBO Dr Nirala's dietary treatment plan Dr Nirala covers the three possible treatment plans (herbs, antibiotics, diet) A brief touch on the Blood Type diets   Who is Nirala Jacobi? Dr. Nirala Jacobi, BHSc, ND (USA) graduated from Bastyr University in 1998 with a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. Dr Nirala practiced as a primary care physician in Montana for 7 years before arriving in Australia and is considered one of Australia’s leading experts in the treatment of small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), a common cause of IBS. Dr Nirala is the medical director for SIBOtest, an online testing service for practitioners. Dr Nirala is so passionate about educating practitioners that she founded “The SIBO Doctor”, an online professional education platform. Dr Nirala lectures nationally and internationally about the assessment and treatment of SIBO and is the host of the popular podcast The SIBO Doctor podcast for practitioners. Dr Nirala is the medical director and senior naturopathic physician at The Biome Clinic, center for functional digestive disorders in Mullumbimby, New South Wales. Dr Nirala is the co-founder of the Australian Naturopathic Summit. When she is not actively researching, seeing patients or lecturing, Dr Nirala can be found enjoying the beauty of nature   Resources: Dr Nirala's Instagram The Human Microbiome Project Dr Nirala's  FREE SIBO Questionnaire The SIBO Success Plan 8 Hour Course SIBO Mastery Program (for practitioners) Visceral Manipulation Barral Institute Feeding Your Microbiome (Dr Nirala Podcast with Dr B) The Blue Zones book Healthy to 100 book Blood Type Diet   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hi, Nirala.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:02) Hi, Mason.   Mason: (00:03) Did I pronounce your name correctly?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:04) You did.   Mason: (00:06) Okay. Nirala Jacobi?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:07) Very good.   Mason: (00:08) Yeah, yay.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:12) Yes.   Mason: (00:13) Okay. Guys, got to do it in person today, which is-   Nirala Jacobi: (00:17) What were the chances of that?   Mason: (00:19) Considering you live in Wilson's Creek, I think they're pretty good. But in terms of the chances of doing it, two people, that's a party but I think that's a legal party at these times, isn't it?   Nirala Jacobi: (00:29) These days, it is.   Mason: (00:31) Oh, pretty legal. Goji is sitting in the room if you hear Goj wrestling around, but dogs don't count. Guys, we're talking about SIBO. We got the SIBO Doctor here. I'm following you on Instagram for, I think, like three years.   Nirala Jacobi: (00:51) Wow. Okay.   Mason: (00:51) Yeah. I've been aware of your work. SIBO has been one of those things I used to say, facetiously, that it got trendy about three years ago in terms of I don't know where you see the mass awareness come about in the naturopathic and medical circles or whether it's even really accepted in the medical circles but, obviously, you would have watched the trend occur and then the mass misdiagnosis and then realisation that we're actually able to test and find out that it is this SIBO, which we'll find out from you what it is. Why did it, all of a sudden, hit mass consciousness? What I see a few years ago anyway.   Nirala Jacobi: (01:42) I'm going to go back nine years. I've been a naturopathic doctor for about 22 years now. I have practised in Montana and saw everything from heart disease to urinary tract infections to actual IBS or irritable bowel syndrome. We had really good result rates, but there was always a subset of patients that just did not improve. Then fast forward nine years ago, I sat in a lecture at one of our conferences and heard about SIBO. It was like a light bulb went on because it explained those cases that just didn't improve with conventional naturopathic approaches even to irritable bowel syndrome.   Nirala Jacobi: (02:27) Then, I started to become an expert in SIBO. I moved here about 15 years ago, Australia, but I became an expert and started lecturing for other supplement companies and to practitioners and started a breath testing company because there was just nothing here at all about SIBO. I think one of the reasons why it has really exponentially grown the interest is if you think that about 11% of the world's industrialised nation has IBS. IBS, according to conventional medical texts and the conventional medical approach, has no real cure.   Nirala Jacobi: (03:18) To find something that actually is the cause of IBS that is so profoundly responsive to treatment, I think, really gave hope to a lot of people. Now, of course, with that comes the fact that SIBO is often, as you mentioned, I do think there is an element of overdiagnosis. Everybody just basically treats according to the symptoms, which is not what I recommend at all. Because in that case, you can use antimicrobials and things like that for far too long.   Nirala Jacobi: (03:53) I think it has to do with the fact that there really wasn't other options for people. They really improved when they began to treat SIBO, or I saw a dramatic improvement in my patients when we finally treated the cause rather than just giving probiotics and giving fibre and giving all of the stuff that we know how to do, and people were actually getting worse, not better with those approaches. That was really my journey into this.   Mason: (04:22) That was probably about a time when I think naturopathic medicine got a little bit more integrated even. There were all these different pockets. All of a sudden, naturopaths, even though they were specialising in particular areas, became aware of just all these different specialisations, became I did say trendy for that reason, because it was about the end of that era where people were really trusting health coaches who would read up about the symptoms of SIBO and, therefore, put their clients onto an antimicrobial or whatever it was and just flying blind. You've got the breath test of your business where I see it's like if you're in Chinese medicine, you are doing pulse and tongue and the questions diagnosis. If you're in naturopathic medicine, you need that testing most of the time, I'd imagine.   Nirala Jacobi: (05:25) Yeah. I'm a gastrointestinal specialist. I don't just do SIBO. I specialise in functional gastrointestinal disorders, so I do a number of tests. This, I think, is a big shortcoming of practitioners where they consider the finances of ordering a test for a patient. I always tell practitioners that I teach, "You're not their accountant. You don't know if they want to test or not want to test, but it's your job to give them the best options and the diagnosis," because if you're just reading, you're not going to get better because SIBO is a really distinct condition that requires a really strategic approach. There's different kinds of SIBO.   Mason: (06:10) That's always what happens. Yeah. It's the same with PCOS or whatever it is. There's different arms. Obviously, there's different sources. There's mainly four major causes, is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (06:25) There's four major groups of causes.   Mason: (06:27) Okay, okay.   Nirala Jacobi: (06:29) But maybe what we should do is backtrack and really define what SIBO is, right?   Mason: (06:33) Yeah, good idea. Well leading, you can tell you have a podcast.   Nirala Jacobi: (06:35) Yeah. All right. Let's talk about ... so that people can really understand that it's not just bacterial overgrowth, and as soon as you kill the bacteria, boom, that's it, you're cured. In some instances, that's the case, but it's actually the exception rather than the norm. But SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It's a condition where bacteria that are typically usually found in the large intestine are, for some reason, found in the small intestine.   Nirala Jacobi: (07:03) Now, the surface area of your small intestine is about the surface area of a double tennis court. Imagine having a massive bacterial overgrowth right where you absorb your nutrients, where you release your enzymes, where you do all of these different important digestive functions and, all of a sudden, that surface area is just chock-a-block with bacteria. These bacteria ferment the food that you're eating into hydrogen gas. There's a group of bacteria or a phylum called proteobacteria. The main gram-negative bacteria in that group are Klebsiella, Proteus, E. coli, those types of bacteria that are the biggest culprit for causing SIBO.   Nirala Jacobi: (07:47) Why is this happening? This is how we get into the underlying causes. I think one of the main driving cause of SIBO is, imagine you've gone to Bali, you had a case of food poisoning, or if your listener is in America, you've gone somewhere else and you had food poisoning. You came home, it resolved, but then you still have ongoing digestive symptoms. Actually, over time, they become worse, you go to the doctor, they diagnose you with IBS. That is the classic scenario.   Nirala Jacobi: (08:19) What happens there is the bacteria that caused the food poisoning are not the bacteria that are causing SIBO, but they're the bacteria that are damaging to the enteric nervous system, which is really the motility, the brain of your gut. You are meant to have this innate ability to clear bacteria from the upper gut, because the body doesn't want them there. You're supposed to sweep them all towards the small intestine. When you've had a case of food poisoning that results in this damage, you actually cannot effectively clear these bacteria from your upper gut.   Mason: (08:55) What is it that's affected in the small intestine and it stops you from having the motility to move it out?   Nirala Jacobi: (09:03) This part of the nervous system is called the migrating motor complex. It's a part of the enteric nervous system. Enteric just means digestive or your gut. It's basically the brain in the gut. This particular section of the small intestine is meant to clear these bacteria out every 90 minutes on an empty stomach. Imagine that you've had this food poisoning and it damaged that section or that particular part of what clears the gut out in the upper gut.   Nirala Jacobi: (09:32) That actually can be tested with a blood test. We're trying to get it to Australia. Because of COVID, we've had some issues. But we do want to offer this test for people to test for these antibodies, because if you know that's the cause, the proper treatment for SIBO for you would be to have antimicrobials, whether that's the conventional antibiotics that are indicated for this or herbs. Then you must follow it up with something called a prokinetic, which is a medicine that aims to reset this migrating motor complex. That's probably the biggest group of people that have this as an underlying cause.   Nirala Jacobi: (10:10) But then you also have people that just were totally stressed out for a long time. Chronic stress, as you probably have discussed this before, causes you to be in this chronic fight or flight. If you're in chronic fight or flight, you're not in rest and digest, it turns off your digestion. These natural antibiotic fluids, like hydrochloric acid, bile, digestive enzymes that are meant to kill bacteria are very poorly produced and, therefore, you suffer not just from maldigestion, but then also bacterial overgrowth. That's a different kind of cause of SIBO that then wouldn't necessarily require the prokinetics.   Mason: (10:50) Like a stealthy, slow-grown...   Nirala Jacobi: (10:54) Yeah, yeah.   Mason: (10:54) I like that you're just actually bringing up those antibacterial fluids. I was going to ask you, and you did it straight away.   Nirala Jacobi: (11:04) Yeah. Then the other one, there's more, the fourth group ... The first one would be a matter of a problem with motility. That is not just this, what we call, post-infectious IBS. It can also be hypothyroidism, other autoimmune diseases, mould exposure. All kinds of things can cause this problem with motility. Then you have these digestive factors, and not a big one because a lot of people don't think about this, but previous abdominal surgery that causes scar tissue known as adhesions that actually attach to the small intestine in the abdominal cavity and cause like a kink in the garden hose. That prevents bacteria from leaving the small intestine. Also for that, you would need prokinetics. You can see how it's so much more intricate than just, "Here are some antibiotics," or "Here's berberine and here's Allimax."   Nirala Jacobi: (11:59) One last thing I'll say about SIBO before the next question is that there are two groups. I've mentioned the proteobacteria that produce hydrogen. There's another group of ancient organisms. They probably live on Mars, too. Honestly, they're like extremophiles. They live on the bottom of the ocean. There are these ancient archaea. They're not even bacteria. They produce methane. Methane, we know, causes constipation. If you're somebody that's been diagnosed with SIBO methane or SIBO-C or SIBO constipation, it's likely that your methane is high. That's a different kind of treatment. That's starting to be thought of as actually a separate condition. That's advanced SIBO discussion.   Mason: (12:46) I like that. We always got this travelling of these bacteria up through the ... Is it the ileocecal valve?   Nirala Jacobi: (12:55) Ileocecal valve.   Mason: (12:57) Ileocecal valve. Is that a constant occurrence of reality?   Nirala Jacobi: (13:00) No.   Mason: (13:00) No?   Nirala Jacobi: (13:01) No, that is not how it happens. These bacteria, they are normal in very, very small amounts. Nothing in your body is really sterile. Nothing really, even though we think it is, but it's not really.   Mason: (13:17) But we've been told it is.   Nirala Jacobi: (13:17) Yes, exactly.   Mason: (13:17) Programmed.   Nirala Jacobi: (13:18) Yeah. It's like modern medicine at the time thought that's what it was, but it turns out that one of the most famous bacteria that survives the stomach is H. pylori. We know it can survive very well there. But you have maybe 1,000 bacteria or colony-forming unit per mil in the upper gut, just below the stomach, the duodenum. Then as you progress towards the large intestine, actually, the diversity and the sheer number of bacteria increases. That's normal.   Nirala Jacobi: (14:00) These bacteria, even though gram-negatives that cause SIBO, are actually not pathogens. They're called pathobionts. Pathobionts are organisms that you normally find in low amounts. But when they get overgrown, they become pathogenic. I often tell people, my patients, I say, "Your gut is like a white supremacists neighbourhood. It's just one kind of bacteria, and you need diversity and you need low numbers of those organisms." That's what we're aiming for.   Mason: (14:36) There's, I guess, an as above, so below, we've sterilised everything in our environment, in our house, and we have low bacterial biodiversity there, we're going to see low bacterial biodiversity internally. Is there a particular macro or even micronutrient cycles that that gram-negative bacteria ... What did you say? What was the group?   Nirala Jacobi: (15:02) The group is called proteobacteria.   Mason: (15:03) Proteobacteria. Is there anything that would feed them excessively?   Nirala Jacobi: (15:08) No, it's basically food. Those bacteria are usually found in higher amounts in the large intestine. They're normal there. A pathobiont becomes problematic when it outgrows its environment or the other bacteria in that location. They've actually just did a microbiome assessment study on the small intestine. I think the other reason, just to briefly sidetrack to get back to your first question, why is this such a big deal now, is because we know so much more.   Nirala Jacobi: (15:44) The Human Microbiome Project that's undergoing, it's like discovering the universe, because what happened before we were able to actually understand what was happening in the small intestine, we couldn't culture out these organisms because they would die. They were anaerobes. They couldn't be cultured out. Now that we have this different technology that uses RNA and DNA, we can understand far more. Now we actually understand the normal microbiome of the small intestine a lot more. It's totally fascinating to be in this field of microbiome research.   Mason: (16:26) Of the large intestine bacterial testing and analysis of the biome, testing has got a little bit more efficacy with that, is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (16:33) Oh, way more.   Mason: (16:34) Way more?   Nirala Jacobi: (16:36) Way more, because it used to be culture-based, it turns out it's like fairy dust of what actually is in the large intestine as a representation of the ... We know about Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. That is literally just 2% to 5% of your entire microbiome. There are so many more species that do fascinating things.   Mason: (16:59) We've had the chat on the podcast a couple of times of why just throwing a probiotic in the gut is ... Quite often, you can get a little bit more sophisticated.   Nirala Jacobi: (17:09) I think we're at that place now where ... I'm somebody who used to just do a probiotic. "Yeah, just a couple of Bifido, couple of Lacto, you're good." But now, I'm way more strain-specific. I would use Bifidobacterium lactis HN019 if you're constipated. I'm not going to necessarily give a whole combination of products, or I give you Lactobacillus rhamnosus if you have leaky gut and eczema, for example. It's a lot more fun now than it used to be.   Mason: (17:46) Yeah, I can imagine. It's like rather than just having your shotgun, you got the Men in Black chamber. You walk and there's all different types of guns and grenades all over the wall, but in a more life-giving kind of ... Like a seed gun.   Nirala Jacobi: (18:01) I like that. Actually, this brings up a really important point, is that even when I went to naturopathic medical school, it was taught to us that we could reseed the gut. Remember that?   Mason: (18:15) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nirala Jacobi: (18:15) We cannot do that. These Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, they are response modifiers. They actually do something that is not involving reseeding. If you've lost a lot of your native species because you were on chronic antibiotics for acne, or Lyme disease, or whatever that may be, if you've lost a lot of your species or have really reduced them, probiotics will not reseed what you've lost. You can't do that. It's a really important point because some practitioners still preach this method, but I had to really switch my thinking. I tell my patients, "I'm going to give you this probiotic for this symptom. I'm not going to give it to you because you're reseeding." You can't do that. Not if it's 5% or 2% of the gut.   Mason: (19:01) In terms of it being for the symptoms specifically, is that because the probiotic is able to do it like having a short-term effect within the gut and then it's on its way?   Nirala Jacobi: (19:11) Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's what probiotic research is really good at, is seeing what symptoms a particular strain can alleviate.   Mason: (19:24) Obviously, we've touched that medication and antibiotics can be another reason why we could lead to SIBO and IBS.   Nirala Jacobi: (19:33) Medications like proton pump inhibitors that stop stomach acid, there's some debate whether or not, but I have seen people definitely have a problem with SIBO after using chronically proton pump inhibitors, and others that are more slowing the gut down. Medications like opiates and things like that, morphine will really slow it down. But then that's pretty temporary, you're not going to see chronic SIBO with that.   Mason: (20:05) Yeah. The stress factor, you're looking at a combination, mould exposure, stress, and antibiotic here and there, it's kind of a cocktail of reasons, I imagine.   Nirala Jacobi: (20:18) This is always the overwhelming part for people. It's like, "Oh, my God, where do I even begin?" But this is where a really skilled practitioner can ... I actually have a questionnaire that you can get on thesibodoctor.com. That is a questionnaire about finding the cause for SIBO. You can download it, it's free, as is the diet that I've devised for SIBO. You can take that to your practitioner and it can whittle it down to what the possible causes are. It goes through these four groups of causes.   Mason: (20:52) That's cool. Something that I really like about your approach is I'm hearing just on your website right here, you've got the patient course, practitioner course. Obviously, you're a practitioner and you've got a focus on the patient being able to understand it and get to the source themselves, getting, for lack of a better word, empowered around it, getting informed, and then bridging the way that they can then take that questionnaire and they can create a dialogue between them and their practitioner.   Mason: (21:25) It's something we always ... You go there automatically. It's why I like your work. It's something we always try to do and talk about on the podcast when we're chatting with practitioners as well, because it diffuses it. You've even got great resources there of like once you've treated yourself, how are you going to stay out of that practitioner office, which it's overlooked quite heavily. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.   Nirala Jacobi: (21:49) The SIBO Success Plan, which is the patient course, it's an eight-hour course that goes through everything from leaky gut to all these different things, it really was born out of a necessity. In a perfect world, everybody would have a practitioner that is SIBO savvy that can nail this thing for you. But I got calls from people or emails from people in Finland and from all over the world that just said, "There's no one here. No one can help me." This is the course that really had to be made for people like that. They don't have a practitioner.   Mason: (22:26) You go straight to sibodoctor.com/sibo-success-plan/. So good. Eight hours?   Nirala Jacobi: (22:35) It's eight hours because it's eight modules. One of the reasons I shouldn't say I love SIBO, because SIBO is a medical condition, but if a practitioner is listening to this, if you can master SIBO, you got the gut down. You understand practically most of the things that can go wrong with the gut, bearing in mind that there are other issues that are more anatomical problems and stuff.   Nirala Jacobi: (23:06) But everything from, like I mentioned, leaky gut, the effects of stress on the gut, what to do when you're constipated, how to help yourself with different home treatments, I have an online dispensary guide that guides you through all the major products that are out there that are for SIBO, and pros and cons and stuff like that, and food sensitivities, histamine intolerance, salicylates, oxalates, SIFO. SIFO is small intestine fungal overgrowth, which often accompanies SIBO. There's a lot there that I had to cover to really make it comprehensive for people.   Mason: (23:46) Do you do a leaky gut analysis on a patient as well? Is there always going to be a presence of SIBO and therefore-   Nirala Jacobi: (23:55) Not always. No.   Mason: (23:57) No?   Nirala Jacobi: (23:57) The thing is SIBO can cause leaky gut.   Mason: (24:00) Can cause... Right.   Nirala Jacobi: (24:00) But just because you have leaky gut doesn't mean you have SIBO. But it is a major cause of it. They've even done research on, all right, well, one month after clearing SIBO, the intestinal permeability was also resolved. If you have the wherewithal and the fortitude to get rid of SIBO, then you can also get rid of leaky gut.   Mason: (24:24) I think it's important that you said you do love SIBO because it's, as I mentioned before in the podcast, we're at that point where my mum, she's nine years post-aneurysm, 24-hour care, in a wheelchair all the time. We've done well to keep her off medications and keep her going well, but it's just this bloating that's been there and it finally got to the point where we're like, "Right, we got to test for SIBO," and so we've got there. We're doing the breath test thing. Is it five days?   Nirala Jacobi: (24:52) No, it depends on if you're constipated.   Mason: (24:55) All right.   Nirala Jacobi: (24:55) If you're constipated, it's a 48-hour prep for this test because what we want to do is have bacterial fermentation really down, really reduced before you then start the test, which is a three-hour test where, first, you get up in the morning, you drink this very sugary drink. That's a prebiotic substance that promotes the growth of those bacteria that you've starved over the past two days, one or two days. Then you're measuring your breath every 20 minutes. If we see a rise of hydrogen or methane before 90 minutes, that's the window of SIBO.   Mason: (25:36) Yeah. If you get the methane, then we're going into that real nerdy, new sector of SIBO. Is that right?   Nirala Jacobi: (25:46) Yeah. [Laughing].   Mason: (25:47) For that instance, my stepdad, he's managing that and he's just looking at like, "All right, test, okay, we can handle it," and trying to get a bunch of carers to all unite and align on that and then looking at having the management of the diet. I think the SIBO diet is the thing. That's why I say I appreciate you saying that you love SIBO because ... But I am curious when you're approaching, how do you keep the excitement up with your patients when you're-   Nirala Jacobi: (26:21) That's a really good question. I think that even just this morning, I spoke with somebody who has been ill for so long, and I'm not saying that just curing her SIBO is going to be the be-all, end-all. People are complicated. There's no one approach to it. You can have somebody who has childhood trauma. We know from studies that even childhood trauma can cause what they call adverse childhood events. It can cause a major shift in the microbiome, for example.   Nirala Jacobi: (26:53) You can have somebody like that that you work with in finding a good practitioner around trauma and regulating their own nervous system. Then you have somebody who just discovered that their house was full of mould, or you have somebody who has an autoimmune disorder or chronic viral infection. It always is different presentations. It forced me to really become really good at all these different conditions, and that's why I think if you can really not just look at SIBO, but the underlying causes for me is where it's really at where I continue to learn also.   Mason: (27:32) Yeah. I guess that's the exciting part, is knowing that you're not just going to have another random go at figuring out what's wrong with you, but you're actually ticking things off to be like, "Look, if it's not this, great. We know it's not this. We know it's not this. We know it's not moulds. That means you're getting closer." I think just the trouble is finding a good practitioner.   Nirala Jacobi: (27:56) We have an answer for that. On thesibodoctor.com, we have also the SIBO Mastery Program for practitioners. After they've completed all three levels, they're eligible to be listed free as a SIBO doctor approved practitioner, so all the people that are listed in there. We had to purge a whole bunch. We had to start fresh from scratch this January. As we go along, this list will get bigger and bigger, but they all have taken these very extensive training courses that covers all of these topics. I think you're pretty safe. A lot of them do Zoom calls. I will say that. Nowadays, we're forced to do more and more virtually.   Mason: (28:37) Which is amazing.   Nirala Jacobi: (28:39) It's amazing. It has its drawbacks. I do, as a practitioner, a hands-on practitioner that does physical assessment and certain manoeuvres, I miss that part but-   Mason: (28:50) Can you explain what the physical assessment and manoeuvres are?   Nirala Jacobi: (28:54) In America, we're trained like physicians. We're actually like naturopathic GPs, if you will. We're trained in physical exams. I always enjoyed that part of my practise, too. Some people have things like the ileocecal valve problem, which is the valve between the small and the large intestine and it can be stuck open, and then you have this backflow problem with bacteria. You can easily manipulate that with using different manoeuvres, or the hiatal hernia manoeuvre, which is part of the stomach moving into the thorax. It's those kinds of things, as well as physical exam and stuff like that. You get a lot of information from looking at somebody's body, for sure.   Mason: (29:39) Yeah, 100%. I can get the drawback, if we can get back to getting in-person as much as possible, great. Otherwise, if you're in Finland and you don't have a practitioner, "Oh, well, that's wonderful."   Nirala Jacobi: (29:49) Honestly, well, 90% of my practise is virtual, and then sometimes I'm like, "Okay, stand up, lift your shirt, press there." That will have the work.   Mason: (29:58) Yeah, you do what you have to do.   Nirala Jacobi: (29:59) Yeah.   Mason: (29:59) Do you ever recommend for people to be physically manipulating their own gut with massage as treatment?   Nirala Jacobi: (30:07) That's a great question because let's hypothetically say ... Well, let me rephrase it. Yes, if it's for just the ileocecal valve. I do have a little video on my Facebook page, The SIBO Doctor, where I go through how to do it, how to actually release the ileocecal valve yourself. It's not going to be as great as when a trained practitioner does it, but it's good. The massaging of the gut, let's hypothetically say that you're a patient that's listening to this and you're like, "Oh yeah, I may have SIBO."   Nirala Jacobi: (30:45) You may have had abdominal surgery for things like you may have had caesarian or you may have had your appendix out or you may have your gallbladder out or the myriad of other things that would be considered routine surgeries, and you have adhesions. That is not a good thing to massage your own belly because it can trigger more scar tissue formation, but light touch, we're just talking light touch. For that scenario, I usually refer to a visceral manipulation practitioner.   Mason: (31:17) What's that?   Nirala Jacobi: (31:19) Visceral manipulation, so the viscera are the organ up in the abdomen. It's extremely light touch but they are trained to actually feel the rhythms of these organs. Don't ask me what that is.   Mason: (31:31) Actually, Tahnee, my fiancée, she's a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner. Do you know that? It's Daoist abdominal massage.   Nirala Jacobi: (31:37) Oh, okay. Yeah.   Mason: (31:38) We've talked a little bit about it. I was wondering whether that's what you were talking about.   Nirala Jacobi: (31:41) Right. No. Visceral manipulation, as far as I know, there's a group from The Barral Institute and they have a very specific technique to very gently break down scar tissue or break up scar tissue.   Mason: (31:58) Okay. That's good to get that resource because there's people listening to the podcast, like Tahnee's not practising and she gets asked a lot about doing abdominal massage, so to be able to tune in with another group of practitioners that are doing this I think will help a lot of people. All right. Well, that's going to be in the show notes, gang. When we do get to treatment and, obviously, the dietary charts, there's different phases of healing of SIBO?   Nirala Jacobi: (32:27) No, so what happened is, okay, so in a nutshell, the food that promotes or that feeds the bacteria are foods that are high in fibre. That makes sense. Those are healthy foods that feed our own microbiome. That's why we want to eat them. In a case of SIBO, the bacteria are like miles further up so they're fermenting in the wrong place, and so you want to minimise those foods. Those foods are known as from FODMAPs, so Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols. Did I miss it all? Did we miss one? Anyways, so these are fermentable fibres.   Mason: (33:06) Forgot the A?   Nirala Jacobi: (33:09) And.   Mason: (33:09) Oh, okay.   Nirala Jacobi: (33:13) I know, right? Those are the foods that typically are to be avoided when you suffer from SIBO. What I did is I took that diet from Monash. Fantastic work that they did over there to really pinpoint this. Before then, we didn't really know. I took that and put my own spin on it because I found even with that, people were reacting. I made it more restrictive, also added in SCD stuff and that type of thing, because I'm a very structured person and I don't like wishy-washy, vague treatment plans, and so I needed to structure it for myself.   Nirala Jacobi: (33:49) What I found is that I got very good results by having a diet that was in two phases. Then I called it the bi-phasic diet. Phase one was the most restrictive part where you have almost no grains and no fruit and really the high-fermenting foods, and you are basically getting tested for SIBO and you're waiting for your test result. I was already seeing dramatic improvement by the time they came back and yes, indeed, the test says it's SIBO, so then we initiated antimicrobials. That then prevented a massive die-off reaction of just throwing in antimicrobials in a system that was still really activated.   Mason: (34:33) Okay. You've got them going for, what, a couple of weeks now?   Nirala Jacobi: (34:35) A couple weeks, yeah. Yeah. I really did it for practitioners so that they could also tailor it. It still has different food ... Some people are very sensitive to histamines when they have SIBO, and that means no fermented foods, so no sauerkraut, those kinds of-   Mason: (34:55) That was very confusing for people, I think, about 10 years ago when capers and sauerkraut and body ecology diet and all that were going off real big time, and then some people will just get these intense levels of bloating every time they'd eat sauerkraut and kimchis and they wouldn't get it. They're like, "What's going on? This is a healthy food."   Nirala Jacobi: (35:14) "Persist. Persist. Keep it up. It's just your body detoxing." No, it's your body reacting.   Mason: (35:18) Yeah. Herxing became the ultimate. Just, "Oh, it's just a Herx."   Nirala Jacobi: (35:20) Yeah, yeah. Exactly.   Mason: (35:24) Is that normally enough to reduce the die-off from being too hard for someone just recently getting on the diet for a couple of weeks?   Nirala Jacobi: (35:32) It depends. The other thing is if somebody's really constipated, I don't start antimicrobials until at least even with the aid of magnesium oxide or something, I get their bowels moving, because if you add in antimicrobials in a really constipated system, you really are begging for a Herxheimer reaction because the river is not flowing, there's algae growing, it's muddy, it's not moving, it cannot clear out these toxins. I get the system ready before I add in antimicrobials.   Mason: (36:06) That's the most important part, is getting the river flowing.   Nirala Jacobi: (36:11) If you're constipated.   Mason: (36:11) If you're constipated.   Nirala Jacobi: (36:12) Yeah, I would say that that's often when people feel really horrible, when they start something like that and it's just not working. It's ironic because with these archaea or these methanogens as we call them, these organisms that produce methane, once it's actually reduced by the help of antimicrobials, you can expect that the bowel returns to normal, but you can't expect it if you're using some form of garlic extract to combat your methanogens. It will take you a couple of months, or if not longer, to really reduce that level to such an extent that you can have spontaneous bowel movements.   Mason: (36:53) What antimicrobials are you normally using?   Nirala Jacobi: (36:57) When we talk about treatment, there's three kinds. You have your herbs. You have your conventional antibiotics, and these are very specific antibiotics that are not for ear infections or sinusitis. Then you have a third treatment called the elemental diet. Herbs are usually berberine-containing plants, some essential oils like oregano, clove, those kinds of things. There's a bunch of herbs that I use and an extract or a low-fructans kind of garlic. Garlic typically is a FODMAP food, but if we use it with a high-allicine content, we can use quite a lot of it without a problem for these archaea, and we know that they're really effective for that. Then when you look at antibiotics, you're looking at rifaximin, which is a type of antibiotic that stays in the small intestine, doesn't get absorbed, and it's bile-soluble so it works in that perfect environment.   Mason: (37:57) Like the way doxycycline works, I think.   Nirala Jacobi: (38:00) No, doxy is way more broader and you will absorb some of that. Rifaximin is not absorbed. It stays in the upper gut. Then you have neomycin for the methanogens. Some people use metronidazole or Flagyl, and I shy away from that because I think as practitioners, we're the custodians of our patient's microbiome and we have to really respect that. Some people, I have seen some shocking microbiomes, let me tell you, by just looking at stool tests and things like that. Stool tests will not give you any information about the small intestine but, very often, it's not like it's only in the small intestine. Problems continue on with the large intestine.   Mason: (38:44) You're going to have an overgrowth most likely in the large intestine?   Nirala Jacobi: (38:45) Yeah. I've seen microbiomes that are completely denuded, like a clear-cut rainforest, and you're trying to regrow it and no wonder they're so reactive. You had actually mentioned my last podcast guest on my show was the guy who wrote Fibre Fueled, Dr. B., Dr. Will B.   Mason: (39:10) Dr. Will B. Yeah, that's what I call him instead of [mumbling].   Nirala Jacobi: (39:11) Bulsiewicz. I think it's Bulsiewicz.   Mason: (39:15) Yeah, I can never... We were in Arizona.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:19) Oh, right.   Mason: (39:20) I met him at the mindbodygreen weekend. We had a we called it dads gone wild night...   Nirala Jacobi: (39:28) Oh, do tell. Do tell.   Mason: (39:29) Yeah, it wasn't that exciting. It was just me, the DJ, and Dr. B just having chats about the gut and veganism and getting on the gluten-free beers.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:44) All right. That sounds like a hell of a party.   Mason: (39:49) Yeah, it actually was. I think tequila made its way at some point, which is wonderful.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:54) You were in Arizona after all.   Mason: (39:55) Exactly.   Nirala Jacobi: (39:56) Anyway, I really appreciated having him on the show because here he was, a gastroenterologist, epidemiologist, highly, highly trained specialist, and he had a sort of "Come to Jesus" moment when he really started to study the microbiome and started to work on it for himself. Now, he's like a complete convert about protecting the microbiome and regrowing it. I just think he's done a really good job with that book.   Mason: (40:25) Is that where his book is coming from? From that angle or-   Nirala Jacobi: (40:28) Fibre Fueled, yeah. I'm not his publicist, but I have the book and I read it and it's pretty good. Half the book is recipes, so vegan recipes, and how to regrow it. One word of caution, don't start with SIBO with that. We had this conversation. You can listen in on The SIBO Doctor podcast if you want to listen to the Feeding Your Microbiome. That shift is slowly happening. There's a lot more respect for the microbiome. I know of a lot of physicians who look back on medicine, on what it's done with antibiotics with real regret of like this was the wrong thing to do to just prescribe amoxicillin for every child's ear infection, or to prescribe for sinusitis, for these types of things. Still, to this day, it's happening day in, day out not just here but across the world where it's just way over prescribed, and it will catch up with you.   Mason: (41:33) It's an important part of any practitioner's arsenal to be able to reflect on what they're doing and not be too concrete and make sure you don't have too much morality and judgement of yourself if you did just follow the doctrine at the time, but make sure you've got the capacity to... motility to actually move on to what's important, because I know I wasn't really up on the conversation on testing the microbiome and I think we were chatting about that.   Mason: (42:01) Since then, I've got a naturopathic friend who he's basically moved a huge amount of his practise over to testing the microbiome and talking about how it takes out a lot of the guesswork, not only is it the antibiotics and seeing exactly the effect that they're having, which is great as well because you know what you've wiped out, but just dietarily as well, if it's vegan, high-carb, if it's carnivore or just high ... Whatever it is.   Nirala Jacobi: (42:32) Yeah, carnivore, I would never promote. Never because it is so hard on the microbiome. It just is. That's basically just meat, and unless you live in countries where, for centuries, that's what you did and I just ... Anyways, that's digressing but they are, and we agreed on that. We totally agreed that most diets, really if it already has a diet, then it's a fad mostly. What we know is where people live the longest and, to me, that's evidence and that's the Blue Zones.   Nirala Jacobi: (43:14) That's Dan Buettner's work. He wrote a book called the Blue Zones where people lived to be the oldest in the world, fully functional, still doing their daily work, very cognitively attentive, and very happy. There were seven hotspots in the world. They all had different things, but what they all had in common was 80% plant-based diet. For me, I'd go by that. I'd go by that. If people do well on veganism, then do that because the more plants you can eat, the more diverse your bacterial blueprint will be.   Mason: (43:56) That's always with the Blue Zones. Yeah, I first heard about it ... The book I got was Healthy Till 100, I believe it was. That book included a couple of other places. I'll put it in the show notes, guys, the scientifically proven secrets of, I think, the world's longest living people. Vilcabamba was in there in Ecuador, which I think isn't in there with Dan's work but, otherwise, it's like Okinawa, Sardinia.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:26) Yeah, and Loma Linda which is like eating processed vegetarian food.   Mason: (44:33) I think that their faith gets involved.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:33) Yeah, I don't know, but they got there in there, Sardinia.   Mason: (44:37) Maybe they're just right.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:38) Maybe. Well, who knows?   Mason: (44:40) Maybe their prayers are just better than health.   Nirala Jacobi: (44:41) Yeah, respect Loma Linda, California.   Mason: (44:44) Oh, that's right, John Robbins was the author of that book I was talking about. I like him. He balances out, because I think the thing with Dan's work which always I'm like, "So good," then he's like ... because I'm only talking about his behalf and it's like because it's 80% to 90% plant food and then 100% is the obvious conclusion, which I don't find to be the obvious conclusion.   Nirala Jacobi: (45:09) No, because I think and I will say if you look at the standard bi-phasic diet just to keep it in the SIBO spectrum, the standard bi-phasic diet is very animal protein heavy. Then I created a vegetarian bi-phasic diet, which is very amenable to vegans, and it's not just about taking the meat. That was a lot of work that I co-authored that with our clinical nutritionist, Anne Criner, here at our clinic. Then we have a third one which is the histamine bi-phasic. But there is something.   Nirala Jacobi: (45:41) A lot of people have tried veganism and it's just like, constitutionally, they just couldn't do it. I don't know what the answer is for those people because there are some people that just they get weak. Dr. B would probably argue that he thinks that everybody can live like ... I think, I shouldn't speak for him, but I don't know. I find that everybody is a bit different.   Mason: (46:09) Yeah, I'm with you as well. I find if you take one part of the body and solely focus on it, same if you're only focusing on the large intestine and the microbiome and not cellular, in particular cellular markers, then I can see how it would be really easy to justify a vegan diet. I was vegan and raw foodist for quite a while and then moved away from that direction and just was really questioning my need to eat a certain amount of domesticated vegetable and fruit matter.   Mason: (46:46) Then once I got back into the microbiome, I've really come to peace and to terms with the fact that, "No, you know what, that's ..." I was really rocking. I was rocking with that majority of my well-being, and even moving back into lentils and legumes and beans, which had a huge chip on my shoulder about. But then just staying open to ensuring there's potentially ... Like in the Blue Zones, meats are normally a side dish, and I like that.   Nirala Jacobi: (47:15) Yeah. I do, too. I know myself, I haven't eaten red meat in 40 years probably but I eat chicken occasionally. That's my one and only animal that I eat because also the carbon footprint. It's whole 'nother conversation, Mason. Nothing to do with SIBO. But in a nutshell, the diet is a therapeutic diet. It's not a stay-on-it forever diet.   Mason: (47:40) Greaaaaat distinction. I'm going to have to get excited about the diet. I'm going to have to get my mum, because I'll let you all know how. Maybe if I can have a chat again, get you back on here after, I'm going to use all your resources, all the listeners are going to ... I'll keep you in the loop of where mum's at, especially.   Nirala Jacobi: (48:02) Sure.   Mason: (48:03) Yeah, I'll let you know on an intro at some point where she comes back with in the test. If it's positive, then we'll go on that journey together. With meat and impact. Have you tried a wild, invasive deer or anything from around here. It's like-   Nirala Jacobi: (48:21) No, but I'm not opposed to it. I trust my body and I just have no affinity towards those things. Red meat, just no.   Mason: (48:35) Yeah, that's fair enough.   Nirala Jacobi: (48:38) We're really covering a lot of ground, but there's something about the whole blood type thing that I can tell you as a practitioner, that's been nearly a quarter of a century in practise that there's something about that. Blood type As tend to have a little bit harder time with digesting animal protein.   Mason: (48:58) Is that just going back to the classic book, The Blood Type Diet?   Nirala Jacobi: (49:02) Dr. D'Adamo.   Mason: (49:03) Yeah, D'Adamo. That's right.   Nirala Jacobi: (49:06) Yeah. Look, it's still got work to do, but I think there's elements that I certainly have seen be proved in practise. For me, I don't just need theories, I actually need evidence. For me, evidentially, I have seen that in practise, that people that are blood type O, they fade sometimes on a vegan diet because I don't know. I never got so fully into it that I can rattle off the science right now, but it has to do with rhesus factor and different ... Well, the theory was really that when we originated ... See, an evolution story.   Nirala Jacobi: (49:47) When we originated in Africa, everybody was blood type O because you needed to be able to eat dead animals and stuff. You had a very forgiving type of blood type that was not very reactive. Then as we moved north and into Europe, it wasn't really economical to eat your animals, and so you became more farmers and started to grow things, and that was blood type A. Then as you move further north, you had natural refrigeration, and that was the AB type or the B type, which can handle dairy really well. That's the theory anyways. I can tell you that much.   Mason: (50:22) It's a good theory.   Nirala Jacobi: (50:23) It's a good theory.   Mason: (50:23) That was always the thing with The Blood Type Diet.   Nirala Jacobi: (50:26) It checks out.   Mason: (50:27) It checks out. I remember The Blood Type Diet was a funny one because every practitioner I've talked to has said there is something to this-   Nirala Jacobi: (50:35) Yeah, there's something to it.   Mason: (50:36) But the science was never rock solid so it was open for criticism, yet anecdotally, it was on point. I love it. It's good to know. It's good to go into that world because as soon as you get into, as you said, you made that decision, it's why it's hard sometimes to listen to a practitioner talk about diet long-term because you know that the mindset is based on healing. Then as you said, this is a healing-   Nirala Jacobi: (51:03) Therapeutic.   Mason: (51:03) Therapeutic diet. Huge distinction because, otherwise, you stay in a "I'm sick" mentality long-term.   Nirala Jacobi: (51:11) Right. Look, I always tell my patients when you travel ... Well, it's a different world now, but if you were going to see Paris, I don't want you on this diet. I want you to eat baguette and dip it in the cafe au lait. I want you to eat things that you enjoy. Most of the time, when people travelling and they suffer from food sensitivity, it actually miraculously goes away. Of course, celiac disease is a different story, but there is this element of you just having just more endorphins and your secretory IgA goes up and all of that, and people can tolerate a lot of foods that they would not normally tolerate in a happy setting and a happy live-your-life, I want you to drink wine if you're in Italy. Why restrict ourselves to this myopic thinking, it has to look this way?   Mason: (52:03) It's refreshing. I like the way that you're bridging over there. It's something that I've always liked about your accessible approach because it's like bridge into what's actually going on and then I'm going to see your bridge out over there to live your life because, obviously, people do get addicted to being sick and something being wrong and then the fear of if I do something outside of the therapeutic-   Nirala Jacobi: (52:23) There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of food fear and there's this whole new term of orthorexia.   Mason: (52:29) Yeah, exactly.   Nirala Jacobi: (52:30) That's a real thing. A lot of people are so concerned about having made some small error on the bi-phasic diet. I'm like, "You've made no error. It's fine." Not just the bi-phasic diet but also anything, really. They get very, very hooked on that they did something wrong, and there's a lot of food fear and that. Imagine, you're sitting down to eat your meal and you're already worried about the food. Sometimes, I tell people sit for two minutes and just appreciate the food, just take a moment and get into a rest and digest before you eat.   Mason: (53:13) That's where the prayer comes in, the grace.   Nirala Jacobi: (53:16) It used to be prayer, it used to be grace, all of that. That's all. It's a thing.   Mason: (53:21) I feel like we go down this rabbit hole, that's probably another podcast talking about the orthorexia. I know it very well. I've had to go. I was so down the rabbit hole of raw foodism. I had to go and start eating things that I swore I would never eat again to start cracking myself out of just like that scrubbing myself clean with my diet. It's hardcore, and it isn't orthorexia, and it isn't eating disorder in varying degrees. But thanks for bringing it up, because especially when you're promoting a therapeutic diet, I always think the duty of care comes with making sure that people and patients are aware not to get stuck in it. Thank you for that.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:00) My pleasure.   Mason: (54:02) I had really a lot of fun chatting with you.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:03) I did, too. We've covered a lot of ground.   Mason: (54:06) We've covered a lot of ground. We run really fast on this podcast. Look, let's just repeat it again. The SIBO Doctor podcast, and it was episode 64 and 65 that we just talked about with Dr Will B. Worth probably checking out.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:26) It's on iTunes. It's on everywhere. You can go to The SIBO Doctor and just look around. There's resources. All the guides are free downloads, the handout on bringing that to your practitioner in terms of what caused you SIBO. It's a free download. There's a lot of videos, lots of stuff. I'm on Instagram, Dr. Nirala Jacobi, the SIBO Doctor.   Mason: (54:46) Perfecto. Thank you so much.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:48) Boom.   Mason: (54:49) Boom.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:50) Mic drop.   Mason: (54:52) All right. All right. That didn't work. That was a terrible mic drop.   Nirala Jacobi: (54:55) No, that's a very sensitive, very fancy road microphone.

Bonjour,Cette semaine, j'ai reçu Céline Casagrande, qui allie dans sa pratique énergétique, massage Chi Nei Tsang et lithothérapie !Un bel échange avec une très belle personne et une belle praticienne à découvrir :)Bonne écoute !le site de Céline : https://www.celinecasagrande.fr/Son instagram : https://www.instagram.com/celinecasagrande_lyon/Le Lien est un podcast créé et réalisé par Anne Plantier, naturopathe à Lyon.https://www.ap-naturopathealyon.fr/Support the show

Celeste Yacoboni is a Minister of Walking Prayer, ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, California. Her work focuses on guiding and supporting people through transitions by creating a space of awareness, presence and inspiration, which integrates body, mind, spirit and emotions. She maintains a thriving private practice in Santa Fe, NM in which she facilitates healing and wholeness through Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women's Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono, and the inquiry "How Do You Pray?"

For Jai Jot, a healing path and balanced body, mind, spirit focus has been a lifelong passion. Her interest in healing emerged through her innate curiosity of her own body, mind and soul and her unique healing journey. Naturally her curiosity evolved outward and she wanted to offer her knowledge and experience in healing to others. Jai Jot is deeply rooted in her Massage Therapy background with more than 27 years of licensed practice and expertise. From this strong foundation and understanding of the physical body she continues to build new skills and services offering clients a myriad of healing modalities to choose from including Reflexology, Chi Nei Tsang, Thai Massage, Reiki Healing, Sound Healing as well as deeply relaxing and therapeutic massage. When Jai discovered Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan and began to practice regularly she began to experience healing and clarity at an entirely new level. She discovered an understanding of her genuine truth and purpose. Once again, she was inspired to share this practice with others and enrolled in teacher training to become a Kundalini Yoga teacher. There she was given the spiritual name Jai Jot -- the Lioness with the victory of God’s light. Jai regularly teaches locally in Ventura, California and offers donation-based classes, removing obstacles for others to practice Kundalini. Throughout this body-mind-spirit journey, her practices and studies stimulated her creativity and lead Jai Jot to intentional jewelry making -- starting with mantra malas and expanding into unique and inspiring necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Most recently she has created a comfort-centered line of all white clothing that is perfect for Kundalini practice and body-mind-spirit-based lifestyles. ​Jai Jot is always learning and listening, collecting an array of knowledge and experience to further heal and nurture herself and her clients. She’s thrilled to say that her offerings have become a culmination of everything she loves to do. She is endlessly grateful to be able to do this work that feeds her soul daily. 

Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin; the King and Queen of SuperFeast, join forces on the pod today to bring us a beautiful conversation around the healing art of Chi Nei Tsang. Chi Nei Tsang is the ancient form of massage practiced in the Taoist healing system. Chi Nei Tsang is used to detoxify and energise the body's organ systems via the release of stagnant Qi. Chi Nei Tsang is performed primarily on the abdominal region however the technique is a full body practice. Tahnee shares her personal healing journey with the practice both as a student and Chi  Nei Tsang practitioner, outlining the methods you can use at home to encourage the smooth flow of Qi throughout the body as a whole.    Tahnee and Mason discuss: Tahnee's healing journey with Chi Nei Tsang. Chi Nei Tsang as a healing art. The core philosophy of Chi Nei Tsang. Integration and congruency as an integral part of personal evolution. Tonic herbs as vessels for change. Health sovereignty and home based health care. The energetic personality of the body's organs. The value of rest and listening to your body's wisdom.   Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin Yoga teacher and Chi Ne Tsang practitioner, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is the General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).   Resources: Nourishing Her Yin Event Video (The Chi Nei Tsang portion of the chat starts around the 38:45min mark) Mantak Chia Website Mantak Chia Self Massage Book Mantak Chia Chi Nei Tsang Book Dan Keown   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here: Mason:   (00:01) Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm sitting here with my lovely Tahnee.   Tahnee:   (00:07) Hi.   Mason:  (00:08) So Tahnee, as many of you know, is SuperFeast mumma, my baby mumma. And well, one thing we haven't been doing as much as we'd like because Tahnee is running SuperFeast and teaching yoga and getting ready for yoga teacher trainings and doing all kinds of things while we raise our little human, and our dog as well that we have now.   Mason:  (00:34) One of the things we haven't done as much is sit down and jam on the podcast, but we've really worked hard to be able to carve time for that as we focus more and more and more on the educational piece. Now, as you guys know, when it comes to SuperFeast, we're really rock and hard on these Daoist Tahnee herbs and in talking about them and educating and taking them in that frame of sovereign health and taking responsibility for our own health.   Mason:  (01:04) And that is why also we educate about many, many other things, not just herbs. And today, we're going to be kind of revolving around organ health and that companion to herbalism, which is massage and self-massage, and we're going to say where it goes. Tahnee studied Chi Nei Tsang Daoist abdominal massage. As we were just saying, it's designed to be a self administered healing art. Right?   Mason:  (01:35) Again, something we work with herbalism. Everyone knows our herbs. You need to go to a practitioner to get herbs. I can't possibly figure out what herbs to take, especially when you see really institutionalized Chinese medicine, it's very like this paranoia around herbs. You might as well not eat any food because every bit of food that you eat is going to have an energetic impact on your body. That's like extreme institutionalization.   Mason:  (01:58) But massage can be like that as well, just a subconscious, “Hey, I got to go and see a masseuse in order to get my healing.” But one thing we're going to dive in today with Tahns is how we can bring that into our own lives. So why don't you … I know roughly, but why did you choose to go and do Chi Nei Tsang massage out of everything you could have been doing?   Tahnee:   (02:23) You remember me having a crisis of faith before I went in to that?   Mason:  (02:26) Yeah.   Tahnee:   (02:28) I had an eating disorder growing up was why, and I kind of hated my tummy, not even just physically, but I just always felt like all of my health problems came from there. It was always bloating or gurgling or not digesting something or there was pain or there was just weird sensations. And I just felt like it was this kind of mysterious land in the middle of my body.   Tahnee:  (02:59) And so much of my practice, up until that point, had been on the anatomy of the muscles and the tendons and the bones. And yoga is very physical, but we don't talk a whole lot about the organs per se. It sort of gets mentioned. You've done yoga training as well. You know it's like, “Yeah, this is good for your organ health,” but doesn't … in terms of really the unique characteristics of the organs, their personalities, their functions.   Tahnee:  (03:27) I'd studied Chinese medicine a little bit at that point, so I kind of knew that there was some interesting stuff there, but I hadn't really gone deep into it. So I don't even remember how I heard about Chi Nei Tsang. I think it was on the internet somewhere and I just had this weird feeling like, “Oh my God, I have to study that.” And it made absolutely no sense. I'd never received one. I'd never seen it done.   Tahnee:  (03:51) It was literally like … I believe in writing maybe in a blog post or something. And it kind of coincided with me being about to travel and a few things kind of happened. I think I was traveling like the next year or something. Anyway, I looked up who invented this thing and where it came from and I found Master Mantak Chia, who was kind of teaching it in Thailand and that he'd revived this lineage, which got lost in China after Chairman Mao kicked out all the healers and philosophers and artists and intelligent folks.   Tahnee:  (04:24) That's a bit of a broad stroke, but a lot of people had to leave China around that time. And so in Thailand, one of the remaining masters of this art survived and my teacher met him. This man saved his uncle's life and so he was curious about studying it, so he basically apprenticed himself to this guy for a few years.   Mason:  (04:44) That guy was Mantak's uncle, you said? That was insane. It was like three days with the deepest kidney disease, was that right?   Tahnee:  (04:51) Yeah. So apparently in Thailand, if you get unwell, they don't want your death on their records because it reflects poorly on their funding and stuff. It's like the more people that die in the hospital, the worst funding they get, sort of thing, or they get investigated or something. So basically, the doctors apparently told this guy he had to go home and die because they couldn't do anything for him.   Tahnee:  (05:12) He had kidney disease and it was so far along that it was just done. And Master Chia's family had heard of this guy and they contacted him. He was in Bangkok. So they traveled to Bangkok and took the uncle there. And apparently, he had three days of excruciating treatment, which from what I understand, and hopefully if anyone knows better than me, they can let me know, but I'm pretty sure it was like 12 hour days of massage and this man was screaming in pain.   Tahnee:  (05:40) It was apparently incredibly painful, but the healer was able to free whatever was causing the problem probably on a multidimensional level. And yeah, he walked out of there three days later, fine and lived a long, happy life as far as I'm aware. So Master Chia was so impressed. And this is a guy that traveled back to Hong Kong as a teenager to start studying Daoist healing.   Tahnee:  (06:06) He had a master who … he used to work to preserve his life and he was very much au fait with the whole canon of healing tradition that came out of the Daoist philosophy and he was just so impressed with this. He was like, “I have to keep this alive.” So yes, he basically studied with this guy. I think he was an apprentice for a couple of years and then kind of his peer.   Tahnee:  (06:29) He worked alongside him for a while and then he basically systemized what is now Chi Nei Tsang. So there's a few places you can study it around the world. Thailand tends to have a bit of a hotspot of it. And then in The States as well, it's more common. It's not really well known in Australia and certainly when I first google at … I don't even know if I spelled it properly and I couldn't really work out.   Tahnee:  (06:51) There was nobody I could find to give me Chi Nei Tsang. Anyway, I ended up going traveling and in Guatemala, I received one from a woman at a little town off San Marcos, La Laguna. That's where I was. Lago de Atitlan was the lake and she gave me one and I remember going home and I felt like shit and I cried. I think I was very resistant to it. I was like, “Yuk.”   Mason:  (07:19) It's like when you discovered … whenever you find something that ultimately becomes a love … I don't think it with me, but you hide it. That was the same with doing, yin yoga, right? You absolutely hated it.   Tahnee:  (07:31) I think I have a really strong resistance to what's good for me probably. I think I'm really confronted sometimes by the depth of my own suffering like how shitty I can feel through my own self and Chi Nei Tsang really highlighted for me how much stuff was stored in my body that I was just ignoring. So I think there's this part of me, this maybe more intelligent part of me that knows it's good for me and then there's this other part of me that has a toddler tantrum about the situation.   Tahnee:  (08:02) So I had my toddler tantrum, decided I was never going to do that again. Then I ended up somewhere else in Thailand at the sanctuary, which is this like a resort. And there was a guy there doing Chi Nei Tsang as well, and it was a completely different experience with him. And I wouldn't really say I enjoyed that either, but it was more just … I didn't enjoy the therapeutic relationship.   Tahnee:  (08:24) I felt it just wasn't something that I enjoyed. It didn't really do anything for me compared to the first one, which obviously moved a lot of stuff. I found it to be quite kind of superficial and I was like, “Oh, okaymaybe I'm wrong about this whole thing.” So that, I was in traveling through Thailand on my way to this training. So I was kind of having a lot of doubts.   Tahnee:  (08:54) And then I obviously spoke to you, I think you were back in Australia and I was in Chiang Mai and I was going, “Oh my God, what am I doing? I'm about to spend $4,000 on this training with this guy I've never met, with this thing I'm not even sure I like.” And like I guess my gut, funnily enough, drew me to it and … yeah, I decided to go and I was very, very ill when I arrived. I'd very stupidly eaten some fruit off of the ground in Thailand.   Tahnee:  (09:24) And would you believe I got sick? And it was probably the worst gastro I've ever had ever or could even imagine, lying in a toilet … Oh sorry, lying in the shower with the shower, running just pooing because I couldn't get to the toilet. It was so bad. And that went on for three or four days. I was supposed to get there early and enjoy the grounds and do some practice and spend the whole time pooping.   Tahnee:  (09:47) And the cute little staff were bringing me soup and trying to look after me and I just couldn't handle life. And I met Mantak Chia the night before we were supposed to star and he said to me, “Tahnee, you need to go to the hospital.” I said, “No, Master Chia, I want to do your training.” And he was like, “Well, my advice would be you need to go to hospital. You're very sick.” And I said, “Yeah, I know, but I want to stay.”   Tahnee:  (10:05) And he said, “Okay, well. Then we'll take care of you.” And yeah, within three days, I felt amazing having like … I was being practiced on every day. It was a really great group. They all looked after me for the first week while I was healing and the second week, I just felt amazing. So yeah, it just was really proof in the pudding, I guess, of how effective it was. And just … yeah, it's such a beautiful thing.   Tahnee:  (10:29) I think so many of us are so vulnerable with our tummies and we don't like being touched there. And even within our love making, a lot of us are sensitive to having our tummies touched and played with and I think it's something now as we evolve as a culture, it's really useful to start to think about, “Well, what's going on there?” And that's what's so interesting about the Daoist perception. It's that it's not the brain that thinks and creates thought and emotion.   Tahnee:  (10:57) It's the organs. The Heart receives everything that comes through and then it filters it out to the different organs of the body. And so anything that's stressful, the Liver is going to deal with. So that can manifest into anger and irritability, but just any kind of a stress. Any fear is going to come through the Kidneys, any thought, analyzing, thinking and that can turn into anxiety and worry that comes through the Spleen.   Tahnee:  (11:23) The Heart receives joy, but too much joy, excess joy can injure the Heart. I think I've missed one. The Lungs. The Lungs kind of perceive our grief, but also that bittersweet beauty of life. So there's this really … working with those as archetypes, I think it's a really powerful way of starting to live because you're out of your head and you're down in your belly.   Tahnee:  (11:47) You're not just perceiving with … even like in spiritual traditions, it's like, “just feel with the heart,” and it's like, “well, no. That's not enough.” There's different seats of consciousness in the body and when we look at it through this lens, it really aligns a lot with yogic thought as well. And when we look at where the energy of the organs manifest from, it manifests from the chakra, from the multidimensional body, but that's kind of a more complicated story.   Tahnee:  (12:13) But we're looking at this really kind of … we're looking at the organism being a powerful receiver and transmitter of thought energy and emotion as well as an alchemizer of physical compounds. You can put something into the digestive system and it can be alchemized into Blood and bone and transport it out to the Liver and the Kidneys and moved around. We can breathe through the Lungs and that becomes this fuel that fires our entire body, our metabolism.   Tahnee:  (12:44) That's just, to me, some real mystical shit right there. Science can talk about these things, but it can't really explain them. And when you look at what Daoist practice is all about, it's about alchemy. It's about how do I take these kind of gross material things and transform them into something more? How do I be a physical body and at the same time be a spiritual being?   Tahnee:  (13:06) And how do I have enough strength and enough capacity in my energy that I can hold that spirit in me? And it'll not just be this idea or this concept, but actually an embodied experience. So, yeah. So Chi Nei Tsang opened up that a lot more for me, I think. I think yoga had started that process and I think I just … Obviously, having had an eating disorder and having had digestive stuff through my life, it made me realize you literally digest your entire life.   Tahnee:  (13:36) It's not just food, it's thoughts and feelings. And so I started to realize, yeah, I wasn't digesting my life fully. There was some work around that for sure. It wasn't an easy process, but worthwhile.   Mason:  (13:51) So the Chi Nei Tsang is speeding up the emotional or energetic processes around that?   Tahnee:  (13:57) You've heard it. Like you touch someone's organ and suddenly, they're in tears and it's like, “ well what happened?" You know? And it's like acupuncture, it's like herbalism. It's like therapy or any of these things. Part of it it's the practitioner's Qi, so the ability of the practitioner to facilitate and transmit energy so that the person's body can respond. And it's partly the person, it's the individual. And I think what I love about Chi Nei Tsang and Master Chia is it's all about self healing.   Tahnee:  (14:32) It's not about someone else doing that healing for you. So I don't heal anybody when they come on my table, but I can facilitate what maybe needs to move for them to release the blockage to healing. So yeah, I might touch someone and they might cry, and to me, that's a positive thing because their energy that was blocked is now moving and all that energy wants to do is move.   Tahnee:  (14:54) That's... Health is movement, is flow. Anytime we have a blockage to movement of Qi, of energy, we're in trouble. That's what all bad things in the body are, tumors, injuries, any kind of inflammation, anything like that, it creates a blockage to flow. So when we start to move that, then we get a chance to get fresh blood into that space, fresh energy into that space, nutrients that are required for healing.   Tahnee:  (15:23) So the touch part of it is therapeutic in that there's a transmission of Qi and a mechanical movement of tissue which creates space for healing. But then I think a lot of people just to be touched in a non-sexual way with intention is really powerful too. So I think there's that side of it. And then a lot of the techniques are based on Qi Gong, so we have to visualize color and sound and use different positions and hand positions.   Mason:  (15:51) Do you find yourself doing that?   Tahnee:  (15:53) Yeah. So the idea is that as a practitioner, you're the bridge between the heaven and earth. So you're releasing toxic Qi down to the earth because the earth … Like how a tree loves our carbon dioxide and we love its oxygen, the earth is really happy to receive what's negative for humans. It's like compost for it. It turns it back into positive good stuff. And the heavenly Qi is what we can use for healing.   Tahnee:  (16:20) It's like universal violet light Qi which comes down and again, you learn to feel and transmit these things. And I'm certainly not a master at this like Master Chia is a master at this, but as you get more sensitive to it, it becomes more perceptible definitely. And yeah, these things are all really powerful.   Tahnee:  (16:38) So as a practitioner, your job is to be open to that flow and to be able to channel it, and as the receiver, you're obviously starting to build your perception of these things. So one of the reasons a therapeutic relationship is useful at the beginning is many of us can't feel our energy. We don't know what Qi feels like. We don't know what our organs feel like. It's just tense and tight and painful.   Mason:  (16:58) Well, it's almost like we're scared to actually go in there and touch it. Like, “Am I allowed to do this? Can I just touch my liver like this? Is that bad? Is it going to explode?”   Tahnee:  (17:08) Yeah. Well, you've seen people at workshops that I do. They're like, “Aah.” And I'm like, “Just press into your tummy.” And they're like, “What?” And people freak out of it and I get that. Again, I was like that when I first started exploring this stuff.   Tahnee:  (17:22) And I think I still like … Massage may tell me sometimes, because my mom used to tell me to do it when I needed to poo and stuff, but I never really liked … I had an idea of where the organs were from studying anatomy, but I didn't … I would never have gone and, like you said, and tried to poke my own liver because like you say, it's like, “Well what happens if you do that? Is it a balloon that'll just pop or?”   Mason:  (17:45) Yeah, I think the extent of what everyone has, I think it comes up sometimes in yoga teacher trainings and anatomy trainings of just following the line of the colon. That's what it would be like. And even in geriatrics and that kind of thing, it says, “That's what I'll do. I'll just follow that line,” and that's probably the extent of it.   Tahnee:  (17:59) Yeah. I think for a lot of people, even to touch their colon is to not appreciate that this is an organ that is working against gravity for a solid portion of the transit of your feces. So it's going up the right side of your body underneath the liver. The liver is meant to deposit toxins down through its tissue into the large intestine to be transported out.   Tahnee:  (18:18) Often, a lot of people have congestion there, so the liver remains toxic and that goes back into the blood then that has to go across the body again. Not exactly the most mechanically simple process given that we all sit all day in a half rounded shape, and then it goes down the descending colon and to exit the body. So there's a lot of potential just in the colon for things to go wrong.   Tahnee:  (18:47) But then you've got the Liver, you've got the Stomach, Spleen kind of system. You've got the gallbladder's there, which can often get blocked in a lot of people. The bile gets very thick and sticky especially if people are in a really low fat diets and stuff. The fat actually triggers a release of bile. Anyone who's done a liver flush will know all about that.   Tahnee:  (19:06) And the kidneys, which are harder to massage, like I usually have to work with someone for at least … best case scenario, probably three or four sessions to get there because just for most people, they're too tense and they can't relax enough to let me go into there.   Mason:  (19:20) Yeah, I think you've got that one-   Tahnee:  (19:21) Abdominal cavity. Yeah.   Mason:  (19:22) … maybe once with me.   Tahnee:  (19:23) Yeah. I think once. But, yeah. And then obviously they can, especially if someone has a diet or has the sense of proclivity toward calcium build up and stuff, they can get quite painful if people have that. So I suspect that it was what happened to Mantak Chia's uncle. It was that they had to work on the kidneys to break up all the calcification in order that the kidneys could start to filter again.   Mason:  (19:50) Well, it's the same … It's same plaque build up. It's just one of those things that make us susceptible to gravity. And it's always that. When you were talking about that story again, that's actually what I was thinking. I was like … It makes sense that this guy's … Like what gets the turtles, the great turtles. They're hundreds of years old and it's just this bad calcium arthritic buildup that eventually just makes it, “Nope, can't swim anymore. I'm tightening up.”   Tahnee:  (20:13) Freeze.   Mason:  (20:13) It's what happens to organs naturally. It's like plaquey build up in the heart, plaquey build up in through the brain for stroke and so on and so forth. Arthritis has a lot to do with age, has a lot to do with the fact that we've got inflammation, blockages of Qi, low immunity, all these kinds of things. But then, it's always … It seems like this big leap in perception of self healing.   Mason:  (20:41) It's like to be like we've got our exercise and that moves our lymph … Yet we've got such a hectic world that it would … Superficial massage and superficial movement isn't a lot of the time.   Mason:  (20:55) It'll do a lot, but as soon as he started getting into really spending an hour or spending two hours, or even spending 20 minutes of yourself really getting on verse, just doing a rub in a clockwise direction on your belly, all of a sudden, it just opened up this whole layer of deeper intention, which I was just like, “Oh man, if we had this in hospitals, you would just completely and utterly avoid so much shit.” I mean, I think it's like one of the-   Tahnee:  (21:28) We're very scared of pain though and it hurts. This is a thing. I was actually talking to our acupuncturist about this the other day because he does the traditional Chinese massage, which is painful, right?   Mason:  (21:39) It can be.   Tahnee:  (21:42) And Master Chia teaches us to massage. We get in between each rib and we rub really hard and it's like to break up all that gristle and that fascia in there. It's painful. And I remember like cry laughing when I first had it done. I was like, “This is outrageous.”   Mason:  (21:57) Especially in the ribs because … I think a lot of guys relate. You said the cry laughing like that. You see all this … What you're seeing when you've really overly ticklish and skittish, you can see it's like a compensation that you have with your [crosstalk 00:22:12].   Tahnee:  (22:11) Yeah. Well, and Master Chia said they're people that avoid pain through laughter. So there'll be people that make a joke when they're feeling uncomfortable or so he said, “You can tell a lot about a person's personality when you're massaging that part of their body because there'll be people that avoid discomfort with humor.”   Mason:  (22:31) Yeah. That's me.   Tahnee:  (22:32) Yeah, me too, to some degree. And he said, “As they get more comfortable with …” And I think all of us … I certainly know over my … I think I've been practicing yoga now since I was 15. I'm 34 and that's a long time. And meditating not anywhere near that long, probably like 10 years at the most, maybe eight. I feel like my personality has changed a lot.   Tahnee:  (22:58) Not that I don't find humor in things, but just that I don't need to avoid discomfort as much as I used to, so I don't have as many compensation patterns. And if you think about avoiding an emotion, that energy has to go somewhere. This is one of those … I think it's Einstein's laws or... “Energy doesn't leave. It just gets transformed.” So if we don't express our emotions, then the energy has to be stored.   Tahnee:  (23:24) And so it will be stored as tension, usually in the body. And so what you'll find is people will have chronic patterns of tension, which are related to emotional patterns. A really common one is neck tension. A lot of people have that and they find if they get stressed, they get neck tension, which is the Yang channel of the Liver, the Gallbladder channels.   Tahnee:  (23:42) It's all around the neck and the trapezius muscles there and the back of their heads. If you ever get those kind of back of the neck headaches, they're often related to Gallbladder, which means your Liver is stressed and which means you're stressed. That's kind of the pattern. And this is an emotional thing. You're not capacitated to deal with the level of input you're experiencing and it's manifesting as stress.   Tahnee:  (24:07) So that's an emotional response to an external stimulus that manifests as a physical symptom. So people would go take a painkiller, but that's done nothing to deal with what's actually going on. So a better thing to do would be to learn to manage stress or reduce the input so that there's less external stress.   Mason:  (24:26) Look, another thing there is when you're getting rubbed and you're hitting a point, it's possibly like a trigger point. What's it called? The ouchy points.   Tahnee:  (24:40) Well, all trigger points, acupuncture points.   Mason:  (24:42) Acupuncture points. That's what I am thinking… I forget the name, but it just means it was like an ouchy point. It's like a barefoot name for the, those running around barefoot acupuncturists, but you can't stop the perception that you're going to be able to get it out of your body. You're in Meridian at that point.   Mason:  (25:00) That's always one of the things I was like … I really think about the fact that feeling emotions, feeling your Qi and then feeling your physicality, that's all intertwined in that. That's all related, right? So it's constantly getting these headaches in the back of the head and you're getting this tension in the back of your neck. One of the things we're trying to do is go like, “All right. Well, let's feel you know and what's the path of least resistance?   Mason:  (25:26) Is it feeling where physically, that tension pattern is coming from?” You're feeling the emotion that's associated to it and I think I can relate to the fact that we're also not embodied that. You can quite often try and intellectualize that idea and it's hard to slow down to get that perception of whether it's the emotion or the physicality.   Mason:  (25:48) I was feeling it this morning when I was running with Goji. I was like, “Oh, for the first time I can feel why sometimes when I run, that tension emerges into my neck,” and all I did is it took me having less agenda with my running and slowing down.   Tahnee:  (26:05) Yeah. It's adrenaline which creates stress as well because running is a stimulus to the body that you're in danger. You have to work … In my opinion, you have to work very hard to maintain equanimity while running that you don't have a negative effect on your adrenals. That's another story.   Mason:  (26:19) Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why I like barefoot running as a philosophy.   Tahnee:  (26:23) Yeah. And I think if you are stressing the Kidneys, it'll affect the Liver. That's where your manifest that tension from, because the sinews will tighten because the Liver gets stressed. But again, if you can manage it, I think it can be very healthy as well. But, yeah-   Mason:  (26:37) It's healthy because then the dog's worn out.   Tahnee:  (26:42) We have a Kelpie. She needs running. Yeah, I think it's healthy that there's … I think from … This is where herbs certainly are useful because I look at … Let's say there's someone with a chronic liver pattern. Herbs that support the liver are going to really support their capacity. So I would look at yoga practice. I would look at … This is why with Tai Chi Yin especially, but you can do this in a Yang practice too.   Tahnee:  (27:09) It's just a bit easier to communicate these ideas to students because it's slower, but you can work on the Liver channels when you're about to bleed for example, because your blood is moving and your body's kind of creating new blood and there's all this good stuff happening on account of your menstrual cycle about to occur. So if you work on the Liver channel in that time, you take your liver herbs, you nourish and support yourself with enough rest and minimal stress.   Mason:  (27:36) Which Liver herbs are you talking about?   Tahnee:  (27:38) Well, I'd look at things like He Shou Wu, I'd look at … It depends on the person and the constitution, but typically, you're going to look at … From our end, we're working with tonics. If you wanted to be more kind of medicinal about it, you could certainly work with other ones. But I'd be looking at things like Dong Quai, things like He Shou Wu, things like maybe Schizandra if you're constitutionally appropriate for you, Reishi.   Tahnee:  (28:01) There's all going to manage the symptoms. Again, it would depend on the woman and what is going to work best, but they're the ones I'd be looking at. And for me, I'm a Livery constitutiony person, so liver herbs in general just work well for me and they keep me balanced. Whereas someone who's more of a Speeny constitution person would be better with Qi herbs and so on it goes.   Tahnee:  (28:25) So I think the thing with herbs as we work with them, with the tonic kind of side of things, it's like I'd stick to stuff that works really well for your body and generally, we're going to find that most of the herbs we sell work on the Liver, Kidney, Spleen areas, which are the most important in terms of general metabolic health. For sure, if you're asthmatic, work on your Lung channel. That's super important.   Tahnee:  (28:53) If you're going through a lot of emotional stress with grief, work on the Lung channel. This is where these ideas of emotions become really powerful because it's like, “If I know I'm going to …” say someone dies, it's like that would be a time to really ramp up my Lung herb regime because it's really common. And some of you may even know people that someone dies and then that person grieving gets a really bad respiratory infection or pneumonia.   Tahnee:  (29:20) Actually, I've read some studies that correlate a lot of the secondary deaths after married couples, like say the husband dies and the woman will die of pneumonia or some kind of respiratory failure. And that makes a lot of sense. If you look at what Chinese medicine says, that level of grief is going to injure the Lung literally on a physical level and then it's going to be susceptible to pathogens which are bacterial infections or whatever.   Mason:  (29:42) And then you're looking at physical manipulation as well.   Tahnee:  (29:47) In terms of massage?   Mason:  (29:48) Yeah.   Tahnee:  (29:49) Yeah. Well, so that's why Chi Nei Tsang is just another tool in your tool kit. So it's like, “Okay. Well, I know I'm going through something really potent and powerful. I'm going to massage my ribs. I'm going to take my herbs. I'm going to talk about my feelings. I'm going to meditate or do some kind of a practice that connects me to my body and myself.”   Tahnee:  (30:05) That isn't a mental thing, like you were saying. This idea of being able to think through your emotions is kind of futile because they're not a thinking process. The brain in Chinese medicine is from the Kidney's and has little to do with feeling, if anything really. It's more of like the feelings tell the brain what to do. The feelings dictate the response.   Tahnee:  (30:26) So if I have to go on stage and I'm afraid of speaking in public, then my Kidney's are going to tell my brain to initiate my panic response and I'm going to go into, like, my bowels might empty. I might start hyperventilating. I might … Whatever people-   Mason:  (30:43) That's an extreme.   Tahnee:  (30:45) Well, that used to happen to me when I had to public speak. I used to get the poos. This is what I mean. My belly was so sensitive to things. As a kid, I used to say to my mum, “I feel sick.” And she'd be like, “You have to poo.” And I'd be like, “Oh.” I was so disconnected from that part of my body and I would respond to everything through it.   Tahnee:  (31:05) If I was heartbroken, it would show up in my belly and I was like … I feel everything through my tummy and I was terrified of having it touched because I guess subconsciously knew that that's where it was all going to be. And I actually managed to get through the training without any massive emotional dramas.   Tahnee:  (31:27) A few people I worked on that fully broke down and had some pretty big crises on the training. And I think probably because I'd been meditating and doing a lot of other stuff in the lead up to being there, I was probably in a better position than if I'd gone-   Mason:  (31:42) It can just crack you wide open.   Tahnee:  (31:43) Yeah. I think, if anything, meditation did that more for me than Chi Nei Tsang. But Chi Nei Tsang really for me, gave me a practical tool and a piece of biofeedback where I could … I know that if I'm touching my tummy, it's really sensitive and inflamed that I need to probably, first of all, check in with my diet, maybe drink a bit more water and then look at what's going on emotionally in my life and what I might need to balance out.   Tahnee:  (32:08) And similarly with clients and anyone I work on, it's just like there's so much information there. You look at the navel area, it's where we were connected to our mothers for 10 months of our lives. So there's all of this idea of nurturance and what we did or didn't receive in the womb that remains with us after we are born. Again, this is energy that doesn't disappear or just get consumed. It just changes form.   Tahnee:  (32:36) So it still exists. Our ancestral line, the navel is associated with the ancestry of our entire lineage. So I've had people that are very open, energetically have big visions of their past lives and various things through that center because they've been able to connect to it through that. And again, there's a transmission that occurs when two people who are energetically open work together.   Tahnee:  (33:02) So that's something that can happen if I'm working with someone who's on that level, I suppose. I've had people obviously with trauma stored around their uterus and different parts of their body where we've worked through that kind of stuff. It's always really interesting what the body holds that the person isn't willing to share.   Tahnee:  (33:25) And I mean I would never … It's something as a practitioner obviously you're really mindful of, but I never try and force anything out of anybody. Often, I'll see or hear something that I try not to … And I mean that more on an energetic level. I don't literally hear anything but I can sometimes have visions of things or whatever and I'll just wait and see if the person wants to share that with me or not.   Tahnee:  (33:50) Sometimes I might offer it if they ask, but that's probably the trickiest part to navigate, I guess because often, like I said, it's stuff that we've blocked away for a reason.   Mason:  (34:03) Well, it's interesting. I think what you're talking about there when you didn't get blown out of the water and have a huge peak experience that was hard to integrate, which I think is an interesting. It's like anything. It's like whether you go to meditation, silent retreats, plant medicine or you do like huge doses of the mushrooms when you begin to like in a lot of the time and sometimes it's because we're desensitized and sometimes, it's because when we need it.   Mason:  (34:27) We have this huge peak experience that's super transformational a lot of the time. And then it's, “Okay. And now it's a time to integrate.” And what is integration? Well, integration is you know, you've got a lifestyle that consistently is supporting you to stay healthy. So your physical tissue and your Qi can work through anything that you're bringing up as well that you've got the foundation so that psychologically, you can handle these changes that are occurring. And it's quite simple, but-   Tahnee:  (34:59) Jing, Qi, Shen, right?   Mason:  (35:00) It's very simple, Jing, Qi, Shen. But what I like … Again, what comes up constantly with Chi Nei Tsang, it's like, “Oh great.” Well, we like a peak experience and they're fun. However, generally … Especially if you're going to be doing the chop wood, carry water and integrating a little bit into your own lifestyle, you are consistently working psychologically and emotionally on something.   Mason:  (35:25) And hopefully, you can keep that in a point where you don't consider yourself that you're someone that … You've got something wrong with you or you're bad or broken because you always have to be working on something. That's the development of our Shen. It's the whole point of taking life experiences and taking it through the peculator and hopefully, bringing out some wisdom so that our virtuous nature can come forth.   Mason:  (35:48) So I mean, important to not expect all these knock-it-out-of-the-park experiences. I like to, I think, when it comes to Chi Nei Tsang. I know that's definitely-   Tahnee:  (35:58) I mean, I don't think that's common. I mean, I think for whatever reason … My yoga teacher talks about this a lot. He's like, “The karma has to be right for these things to happen. You can meditate for 40 years and never have a peak experience. It doesn't mean you shouldn't meditate.” I think he says that he's meditated for 40 years and never had a peak experience.   Tahnee:  (36:19) And I've meditated for less than 10 years and had a bajillion peak experiences. And why, I don't know. For whatever reason, I'm predisposed to them and he isn't. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't teach me or that he shouldn't teach or … He is, as far as I'm aware, a very advanced meditator, far more advanced than me and able to maintain his focus for much longer. And I think it's just like anything.   Tahnee:  (36:48) It's like for some reason, sometimes certain stars align and stuff happens and other times it doesn't. And I think that's my experience with Chi Nei Tsang. I've had clients where we just have a beautiful healing, connection. I just massage their bellies and we spend time together and that's all it is. And then there's people that are puddles on the floor and I have to spend three hours talking to them to get them calm down again. So I think it's just-   Mason:  (37:15) And all in all, if we're trying to sustainably create this ongoing system in our lifestyle to help us consistently transform right, I think that's kind of fair to say whether it's on a micro or macro level as we're moving along, we'd love relationships to become richer, to work more towards passions or get more onto the path of our destiny. I think this has been a really, really nice practice for me.   Mason:  (37:42) It's not something I'd sit there and do in 20 minutes of every afternoon, but every now and then, I can really … I feel it and I get in there. And it's a nice one having a tool and the arsenal because you're moving along and you get to these crescendos when you're possibly going to really get some distinction on an emotional set that you have or something that's going to allow you to create distance between your noticing and your reaction, something most of us are working on and especially working on at the moment.   Mason:  (38:10) And then just having … And then you've got your herbs to support that. You've got your personal practice, your time in nature, your relationships and having … You've got your physical practice and you've got your fascia stretching, whether it's Yin or whether it's the work I'm doing with Benny, Movement Monk Benny. We got all those things.   Mason:  (38:25) But then having this … I think this in the arsenal, quite often for me, it's enough to just bolster all my efforts to make sure that I bring it up to cresendo that point and then I don't just … it doesn't just slide back down and actually I can't get the boulder over the mountain. It's just one of those things I can use to just really bring it along that physical touch, that physical manipulation.   Mason:  (38:47) And it's the same with any deep healing, as you were saying, when you've got menstrual issues that are hardcore congestion in through the female sex organs or a tumor sitting within an organ. Why would we not touch these things? It's so difficult for the body to overcome these huge blockages.   Tahnee:  (39:08) Well, it's painful, is reason one … Usually when there's stagnation, which is what you're talking about in those two examples, then there's pain because things congest around there, the toxins build up and it's usually a got an emotional component. And pain science is one of the most fascinating areas of science because it's purely subjective. I could have cut my arm off and you could cut your arm off and we can both describe completely different levels of pain.   Tahnee:  (39:32) It's not like there's one pain scale that everyone, like they go, “Oh, happy pain or sad pain at the hospital,” but they're completely subjective experiences. You tell the doctor how you're feeling and that's where to digress a little bit. Like lower back fusion, it's proven to be completely pointless. It doesn't stop lower back pain whether it's fuse the discs of the lumbar spine, usually, it's all completely, the surgery is a waste of time.   Tahnee:  (40:01) And I feel very confident in saying that, what was actually proven to be best is psychotherapy and movement. And the combination of those two are going to relieve stress. They're going to manage emotions. They're going to support the Kidney and Liver channels, which low back pain typically is correlated to. So we're looking at this system, I suppose, with the body as opposed to individual symptoms.   Tahnee:  (40:26) So if I was looking at menstrual symptoms or a tumor in my sessions, it's like tumors are typically cold stagnation, so you want to warm that up. And again, cancer's a tough one for us to talk about. As everybody knows, it's the big thing you can't talk about. And if I have someone come with cancer, I obviously don't work directly on their tumor usually because it's not appropriate, but I'll do energy work on it.   Tahnee:  (40:52) So I've only worked with one person with bowel cancer and that felt to me like a black sticky tar-like energy, so I just spent time countering that with healthy Qi. And she was going through different courses of treatment anyway, so it wasn't really appropriate for me to do anything beyond that. I was just there to support.   Tahnee:  (41:18) But from my experience working with a lot of types of infections and things as well, anytime I felt anything really chronic and bad, its felt like black tar. I can, in really heightened states, which is not frequent for me, unfortunately. I can feel like I can pull that out. But that's only been like twice that I've felt that. And I've spoken to some acupuncturists and healers about it that I know and they have said, “Yeah, that's when you're a really strong Qi Gong practitioner.   Tahnee:  (41:48) You're able to actually pull that out on an energetic level,” which I'm sure there are healers out there that can do that. I'm not at that point. But yeah, I think normally, it's like, well, if you're warming it up, you're increasing blood flow and circulation. In general, these are going to be really helpful things to get going. Like menstrual disorders work really well with Chi Nei Tsang. If anyone out there has any kind of menstrual stuff going on, start massaging your uterus every day.   Tahnee:  (42:13) You don't have to do anything fancy, just scoop around your pubic bone and your inner pelvis and just get in there. And if it feels painful, spend some time rubbing it until it stops feeling painful. It's that simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. In Chi Nei Tsang we have lots of complicated techniques and I've certainly used a lot of them, but I also have found when teaching people, it's best to just … simple, simple, simple.   Tahnee:  (42:38) So just if it hurts, spend some time on it, breathe into it, send some love to it, give it a good massage and generally, you'll find that these things dissolve. That's what I've found really interesting in my body. It was like you feel something that feels like a huge knot or a lump that it's really painful and it's like, “I can't possibly deal with this.” And 10 minutes later, it's gone. And it's like, “Wow.”   Mason:  (43:02) And sometimes, it's not.   Tahnee:  (43:02) Yeah. Well, sometimes it's 20 or 30 or 40 minutes later. And like I said, I've had clients that come back three or four times and I finally get to a point where I'm able to soften them up enough. So there's lots of things that can happen...   Tahnee:  (43:15) But yeah, I think in general, anytime we're looking at pain when there's touch and those kinds of things, it's generally coming from some kind of Qi stagnation and it's usually helpful to massage it. Again, within reason. Don't go hard on yourself.   Mason:  (43:34) Well, that's kind of the real … we mentioned barefoot running. It's like that's something that's very obvious for people to say, “You start running barefoot, not in shoes. If you put that little bit of new stress on your ankles and your arch and your knee, the whole rule is if you feel little tweaks or if you feel anything becoming, feeling really vulnerable, you open yourself up to something.   Mason:  (43:54) That's it. Your session's done for the day. And I feel like it can be the same like this. And in terms of techniques, I mean, I really started like going deep when I let go of the techniques. When I was rubbing my organs and I let go a little bit more of going like, “All right, now here I'm in the duodenum. Okay. Now, in the pyloric valves and …” again, I was intellectualising a lot rather than just getting to know myself through feeling and through touch.   Mason:  (44:28) Because my mind quite often works like if I can't explain what I'm doing externally, how do I justify doing this in the first place? And through that, my techniques got more advanced in relationship to my unique little organ system rather than trying to use a particular technique. That was really nice, getting that little insight.   Mason:  (44:48) But I think that's just something … This is … Everyone's on practice here. Even though it's called Chi Nei Tsang, it's literally just you sticking fingers and-   Tahnee:  (44:58) Yeah. Well, look, I've only received Chi Nei Tsang from probably let's say 20 or 30 people in total in my life and let's say 30 of them were on training. Oh, sorry. 20 of them were on a training. And then I've had Master Chia, Utah, the lady in Guatemala, the guy in Thailand, probably … I'm trying to think of any other professionals who've massage me … oh, Sola.   Tahnee:  (45:26) I've had a few professionals messaged me and they've all been very different in how they approach Chi Nei Tsang. And even friends of mine who having received them from me were like, “Oh my God, I have to go study this.” They called me up and were like, “It's so different to what you do and I wanted to learn what you do.”   Tahnee:  (45:42) And I was like, “Well, I think like anything … Anyone who's learned to teach yoga or done anything, it's like you put your own spin on things.” So I certainly think while I respect Master Chia's work and his techniques … And he's very much a stickler for the techniques. I'll often start much further along than he recommends in the flows that he teaches and stuff.   Tahnee:  (46:07) I think I've just found intuitively there's different techniques I'm really comfortable with and ones I'm not comfortable with. There's ones that I've found effective in general for people that I wouldn't … I had … Utah did one on me one time where she just pulled my spleen for like an hour and went, “Oooh,” and that was it.   Tahnee:  (46:27) And I was like, “Well,” and it was amazing, but on paper, that sounded like there was no flow to that. It wasn't a massage per se. It was kind of a shamanic style of healing. So I think there's probably a lot more of my influences from her and on that side of things where it's just-   Mason:  (46:47) She's Mantak's student-   Tahnee:  (46:49) Yeah, yeah. She's in her 60s and has been living with him in Thailand with her husband for, I would guess, 20 or 30 years. I remember speaking to her about it, but I can't remember exactly. And she's European, so she travels all through Europe teaching this and she's a master in her own right. And just like … we've spoken a few times about that she has a different style to Master Chia and teachers differently to him.   Tahnee:  (47:11) And I know there's people in The States that have developed their own versions of Chi Nei Tsang now and this woman in Thailand who has her own version. So I don't think there's a right or a wrong way. I think it's anything that just each practitioner will have their truth and the best way of expressing it. But I think if you're just curious about touching your own belly, you've got permission.   Tahnee:  (47:32) Go do it. And it's interesting. The history of it, I find really interesting because it correlates a lot to what happens in our culture now. I think is, it became unfashionable to touch. The healers weren't allowed to touch the higher cast of person they want … Especially not allowed to touch women. It went from being like a village-based medicinal practice to like a more systemised medicinal practice.   Tahnee:  (48:02) And Chinese medicine has evolved a lot over the centuries and the millennia. So Chi Nei Tsang came about from a much older time when hands-on healing was considered appropriate and then that lost favor especially as Western styles of healing penetrated into China. And I'm studying acupuncture at the moment. So I just learned that that was around the late 1800s, early 1900s.   Tahnee:  (48:29) But yeah, I think when we look at that, we see that we lost a lot of the touch based healing arts from China. And massage, in the West, is very different to Tui Na, the Chinese style of massage, which is more similar to what I have learned. And you've had massages with John, our acupuncturist. He gets into all the gristle and runs up and down the bones and gets right into all the fascia.   Tahnee:  (48:55) Most Swedish style massages, they're nice for moving Chi at a superficial level like you're talking about, but in terms of getting Chi into the joints, which is where it really matters and that's why Yin Yoga, Qi Gong, that type of massage is so important because the joints are where the Qi … This is when you talk about calcification and stuff before. It's where the Chi will stagnate the most easier because the joints are dense.   Tahnee:  (49:17) There's no blood. Blood andi are really close, but when you're looking at an elbow or a knee, there's very little blood in there. And so these are really prone to deterioration really quickly, especially if our Liver is struggling, which again, like we said, everyone is stressed. So that's really common in our culture. So it makes a lot of sense to do these painful joint based massages like we do in Chi Nei Tsang.   Tahnee:  (49:41) Chi Nei Tsang isn't just the belly, just to be clear. It covers the entire body, so we'll do anything that needs doing, really. I've done Chi Nei Tsang on a friend of ours who's in his 70s … Nearly in the 70s and it was all around his knees and his pelvis because that was what was required. And it's really about where are the blockages of Qi, how do we break it up so that these blockages are removed.   Tahnee:  (50:06) Again, it was a very painful session for him, but he felt incredible and could walk differently afterwards. So it's these kinds of ideas of maybe the session won't be that fun, but the benefits are going to be huge because you're breaking up adhesions and … Yeah. Anyone who's had a frozen shoulder and had manual therapy done on that, I've heard it's very, very, very painful. And it's the same idea. It's like to get that fascia to dissolve-   Mason:  (50:31) Adhesions on the fascia, yeah.   Tahnee:  (50:32) … Yeah, you need to heat it up and it needs to be broken up in a lot of cases. And there's some really interesting work around how sensitive fascia is and that breaking it up isn't always that helpful if there's a really strong emotional component because it just creates more trauma. And I think there's something to that, so I think you want to work with a good practitioner who understands the nuance of when it's appropriate and when it isn't.   Mason:  (50:54) Or have your own ability to actually process emotions and just look historically how you've done it that it's very accessible.   Tahnee:  (51:00) Yeah, I've worked with this really inspiring woman when I taught yoga in Newcastle. I think she came to my classes for … I'd want to say like 18 months to two years of Yin Yoga and she had a frozen shoulder and she'd just sit there. She'd sit next to the wall and she'd do half versions of everything because she couldn't really do a lot. And I remember speaking to her and she's like,” I can like lift my arm up over my head now.”   Tahnee:  (51:24) She was just … And it took a really long time, but she just kept showing up. And that was a really inspiring to me and that's really indicative of how long it takes to change fascia. We're literally talking about reshaping ourselves and the shape we are is because of our thoughts and how we respond to the world and how we respond to life and what we were conditioned to postulate ourselves toward or against.   Tahnee:  (51:45) You'll see people in families have same posture and those kinds of things and it's because we learned so much of this and we're conditioned as children to pick up on our parents physiology and their responses to things and how they … We've both done therapy, all about that. So our bodies hold that just as much as our minds and our personalities and our thoughts and emotions do.   Tahnee:  (52:07) So it's a lot quicker to change a thought than it is to change the body. I think that patterns are very slow to change, but again, I would say the pattern is more closely correlated to the body. The yogic tradition talks about samskara's and vasana's, so these character traits and conditioned ways of behaving. So a samskara is like a conditioned pattern of behavior and vasana is like when that becomes who I am.   Tahnee:  (52:37) So I might say I'm Tahnee and I am a yoga teacher and I've been doing the thing, teaching yoga so long that I identify with that as me. And if you take that away from me, I'm going to suffer because it's who I am. And that's just a silly example, but it's a good one to demonstrate it.   Tahnee:  (52:55) So when we look at the body, the body will often mirror these same ideas because your yoga teacher will walk a certain way and they will hold themselves a certain way and they will think certain things and they will speak a certain way, and so as a result, you start to embody this idea of something instead of actually just maybe being more authentically like you.   Tahnee:  (53:14) And so yoga is all around how do we remove these hats that we wear, all these masks that we wear to the world and find out what's really underneath. And I think Chi Nei Tsang is one of the tools that we can use to start to dissolve some of those attachments and conditioned patterns I suppose. So I think it all fits into me to the same framework.   Tahnee:  (53:35) I separate yoga and Taoism when I teach because it's easier that way, but I see them as being very similar, if not the same, at the risk of offending some people. I think that the ideas fundamentally are very, very similar.   Mason:  (53:48) When you get bare bones about it, everything is, unless there's a very, very unique spiritual intention that someone would have.   Tahnee:  (53:59) Yeah. Well you could look at maybe Tantra as deviating because it starts with the assumption that there's oneness, whereas … I mean, I think … Oneness to me is a whole another podcast, so I don't think we'll go there. But if anyone's interested, let us know and we can go there because I love talking about this philosophy stuff.   Tahnee:  (54:18) But coming back to Chi NeI Tsang, I think when we can embody ourselves fully and unify with ourselves, that's the first step. It's the absolute foundation. It's the fundamental step to any personal growth and transformation and evolution, which is what this path is about. You can't take tonic herbs without changing and evolving and this is why we do this. It's certainly what motivates me to get out of bed every day.   Tahnee:  (54:45) And it's not this idea of becoming someone better or … It's just like I can feel that there's so much that I look through when I look at the world that isn't me. And it's like … And I've felt me, and these two things aren't completely congruent yet and that's okay. I'm still really young and I think that there's time, but I think that the more I practice and the more I explore these really ancient healing traditions, that I can feel this congruency coming.   Tahnee:  (55:17) And that's what yoga talks about. It's like we start to abide in our true selves. It's not this split where we think we're one thing and we do something else. And we're all hypocrites, every single one of us, and yoga doesn't say hypocrisy is bad. So much as it says, well, it's a sign that your inner and outer worlds aren't aligned. You say one thing, you do something else. You think one thing, you do something else.   Tahnee:  (55:36) There's no congruency there. It's because you haven't fully integrated. And that's what I think all of these healing tools point us toward. It's this idea of being able to be congruent and cohesive and consistent and all of the good things.   Mason:  (55:55) So we'll put the video from the Nourish Her Yin event where you're on stage taking everyone through a little massage sequence.   Tahnee:  (56:05) Can we do a better video than that?   Mason:  (56:05) Yeah. That's what I was going to say. It would also... Goji's (dog) getting in there. It'd be really good to just have a couple of different series like YouTube videos.   Tahnee:  (56:16) Well, what I've got in mind is doing a self massage one and then showing a simple partner massage or something, just a little flow.   Mason:  (56:27) Well, especially it's a good for mums and dads in the household to just have a little bit under your belt in terms of a little digestive flow.   Tahnee:  (56:35) Yeah, well, if you have a bubba, I wouldn't do Chi Nei Tsang so much as just rub their tummies really gently in a circular … So you want to go, I'm never good at this way, but clockwise, I think. Is that the right way? Yeah. So you want to go-   Mason:  (56:48) Looking at the belly clockwise.   Tahnee:  (56:49) So if you're looking at your baby's tummy, you want to go clockwise around. So basically, from their right to their left, an arc like a rainbow, that's going to help, especially if they get colic or any kind of constipation or anything. It's going to help to move what is stuck. And babies, like us, they process a lot through the digestion.   Tahnee:  (57:12) They're very open energetically, so it's always interesting to have a look at what else is going on in the family life if that sort of stuff is happening, what they might need to be buffered from or what they might be experiencing. I mean, these amazing little perceptive beings they are, so pretty cool. But yeah, Aiya doesn't love being massaged, unfortunately.   Tahnee:  (57:35) I always had dreams of, “I'll massage my baby.” And Aiya is, “Oi, get off.” So maybe when she's a bit older, she'll appreciate having a massage therapist mum.   Mason:  (57:44) That's all I was thinking. It's like when you get a little bit older, it's like having your little herbal remedies around and you have your Gua Sha stone around-   Tahnee:  (57:49) She does like Gua Sha.   Mason:  (57:54) … she does like Gua sha. You have your little Chi Nei Tsang technique. I mean, all we're talking about is a very practical focus even like putting too much on it and it's just very simple skill sets that hopefully, are going to keep you out of a doctor's office.   Tahnee:  (58:08) Yeah. I kind of always think-   Mason:  (58:10) Or a naturopath's office.   Tahnee:  (58:11) Well, I've said this to you before, like about being a cool old grandma, and I think it's such a shame in our culture. We've lost … I know … even when I was in Japan, when I was 16, the grandma and grandpa and the aunty and uncle all lived in the same compound and they were old, the grandma and grandpa and they did all the prayers.   Tahnee:  (58:30) They'd light all the incense, set up the alters every morning, facilitate that. If I saw the kid had a cold or something, grandma was boiling up stuff. I was too young to really comprehend exactly what it was, but now I'm thinking she was probably doing some herbal treatments or something. It's like they were holding that wisdom and that role in the family of just providing the health care. And you'd use a doctor only in a really extreme situation.   Tahnee:  (58:55) And I think there's really something … I know you saw me, I started reading nursing books and how to look after sick people because I was thinking, “Well, if I Aiya's unwell, how do I manage that?” And I think there's this lack of skill in our culture that us younger people have especially, that we don't know basic home remedies for things that aren't silly.   Tahnee:  (59:20) Like, “Oh, garlic if you have a cough or whatever,” I'm thinking more like, “How do I actually know when a fever is okay and not okay?” Because fevers, in my opinion, are an incredibly powerful healing tool and it should be left alone in general, but I know there's a point when they can get dangerous too. So it's like we've got to … h

 Je vous expose ici à la fois des informations générales sur notre ventre, mais aussi quelques astuces. Je vous parle en détails du plexus solaire, du rôle important du microbiote sur nos émotions, des effets bénéfiques du massage du ventre Chi Nei Tsang. Puis zoom sur le SIBO dont on parle de plus en plus.  Enfin le podcast se finit par une liste de quelques remèdes généraux. Bonne écoute :) 

Taylor Johnson joins Mason on the podcast today. Taylor is a sex educator and relationship coach who is deeply passionate about helping people to supercharge their sex lives and build powerful intimate relationships. Taylor believes that sexuality is at the core of what it means to be human, and when you supercharge your sex life, you supercharge your entire life. Taylor takes a grounded, practical and real approach to his work and we're thrilled to have him chatting to us today.    Taylor and Mason discuss: Premature ejaculation and self love. Taoist sexual practice and Tantra. Tension as a global epidemic and as a major factor in sexual dysfunction. Semen retention. Sexual practice as part of a holistic lifestyle. Re-channelling sexual energy into work and creativity. Multiple orgasm and edging.   Who is Taylor Johnson? Taylor Johnson is a sex educator and coach. Taylor helps men master their sexual energy and use it to supercharge their entire life. Taylor's programs and coaching synthesise elements of Tantra and Taoist sexuality with western practicality - in a grounded, accessible and powerful way.    Resources:  Taylor's Website Taylor's Instagram Taylor's YouTube Orgasmic Mastery Course   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:04) Taylor, welcome to the podcast man.   Taylor: (00:06) Thanks for having me, happy to be here.   Mason: (00:09) So, can you just say a quick g'day to everyone, let them know what you're up to with your life and in the world?   Taylor: (00:16) Yeah, absolutely. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. My name is Taylor. I am a sex educator and a consultant for men primarily, and I help men do things like overcome premature ejaculation and master their sexual energy and be able to put it into whatever they want in their life.   Mason: (00:34) Yes, sweet.   Taylor: (00:35) [crosstalk 00:00:35] version.   Mason: (00:36) Man, I really like that. That's nice and succinct, and that's something that normally doesn't happen on this podcast. But you know what, you're refined and you're refining sexual energy. So no wonder you're able to actually refine your vocabulary into something potent. It's all macrocosm, microcosm stuff.   Taylor: (00:53) Working on it. It's a practice, you know, it's a practice.   Mason: (00:56) So I really wanted to have you on this conversation. Being Brovember we're talking about men's health. SuperFeast, the people listening to community here, are aware that we're looking at a very ancient system when it comes to the herbalism being the Taoist common herbs. We're looking at how we can very sustainably with respect and with, responsibly take something that's got such an ancient lineage and make that relevant to modern times, and that's why I put that respect there. So we're actually respecting the roots, and we kind of stay within that frame, but then how do we actually bring that relevance where these things like these sexual practices or even the fact that you take Taoist tonic herbs or do Taoist sexual practices or tantric practices. How do we not bring it over so it doesn't just get caught up into an egoic identity, which I think happens a lot? Sometimes you get into these communities. I remember when I got into the yogic community, it was like out of the frying pan into the fire.   Taylor: (01:55) Right? Yeah. How do you make it practical so you don't have to spend months and months and years, [inaudible 00:02:00], these techniques that you may or might not use. This talk about in conversation to like prove your worth or something, like grounded and practical and real, that's what I'm all about.   Mason: (02:11) Ground and practical and real, absolutely. And that relevance. I mean, I was talking to you about it because like we're going to go into multiple orgasms for men. We want to go into the retention of ejaculate, and how these conversations are actually going to be relevant to a modern man and in a modern relationship, and I was chatting to you about it. I'm kind of arriving at this point where I'm feeling really nice about approaching this practice in my own life. It's kind of feeling like, I'm not chasing anything, I'm not kind of not really coming to these practices anymore from that seeking or looking to mend a pattern that I picked up when I was a kid or in my teenage years, around where my own sexuality.   Mason: (03:01) I've kind of done a lot of inner work, a lot of psychological work, psychos, just getting into it, just trying to be, whether that's around stories I had around my own cock from porn. The shame I had around my cock from stories I'd made up by being, getting changed with other boys, couple of experiences when I was a teenager, and then again, probably watching porn and being like, "Hang on. I'm coming way too quick so I should probably go to Taoist sexual practices and be able to hold my come, so I don't feel embarrassed or self-conscious when I'm in the bedroom."   Mason: (03:38) I felt like that's been quite insidious for me coming out. I've gotten to that point where I've been on the precipice of being able to really do these retention practices and then gone, years ago and gone, "You know what, I'm not coming at this from the right reasons. I'm really trying to mend something that should come from a little bit more internal psychological, alchemical, spiritual place." But now I'm really feeling like I'm arriving with a clean slate. So I'd just like to hear your take and your experience on how you personally arrived in these practices, these sexual practices, if you've got any little caveats or advice for guys who are approaching it.   Taylor: (04:24) Yeah. Thank you. I'm curious to hear more about what you're experiencing right now too maybe in a little bit. But for me, This has been, I guess ,this has been a curiosity for me, sex, since I was a teenager, right? Sex and also those deeper energetic realms of spirituality and yoga and meditation, Qi Gong and that sort of stuff. From a young age I was interested in those things and I pursued yogic practice, I did yoga teacher trainings, I did the silent meditation retreats, I studied different religions. At the same time in this different compartment of my life, there was sex, and I was fascinated by it.   Taylor: (05:00) I was super attracted to women, super curious about sex, and at the same time, all these practices that I was studying around spirituality and energy, none of them ever mentioned sex. In fact, there was almost like an anti-sex attitude in a lot of those things. And it felt like this really strange disconnect in my body and in my mind, and heart and spirit. At a certain point, I had discovered a book, I believe it's called Sexual Energy Ecstasy. It's a blue book, I don't remember exactly. It was like 12 years ago, and it gave me this idea that you could actually mix yoga and intention and presence with sex. It was this like, the beginning of a process of merging those two worlds for me that has been a sort of lifelong journey since then. But that was a really catalyzing moment, like a huge lightbulb went off in my head because there was so much programming around sex not being spiritual and sex not being good, and sex pushing it to the side, that it was beautiful to experience that coming together.   Taylor: (06:08) And so fast forward a little bit. I started to try those practices and I regularly struggled with premature ejaculation during that time. So it was a little extra motivation to dive more deeply into that. I tried it a bunch, I tried it a bunch, I had some successes and then I noticed that it started to make me feel like, "Oh, yeah. I'm a sex master." I got this all figured out and it got to my ego and got to my head, I guess sort of similar to what you were saying. There was a certain point where I had to take a step back, because at the same time, I was struggling with porn addiction, yada, yada, yada. Fast forward to now, I feel like I've come into a much more balanced place with things too. I just skipped a bunch of stuff in the story, but I'll pause there to see. You looked like you had a little hand motion.   Mason: (06:57) Yeah. I mean, if we quickly go over the practices because I'm sure we've got men and women listening who haven't read like the Sexual Mastery for Men book by Mantak Chia, haven't been in that world of looking in Taoist multiple orgasms. However, if we can just have a quick little look at what those classic exercises are. You're kind of like talking about the squeezing the PC muscle.. I remember when I, like Mantak's just like, his books are just written the way he talks. Mantak is a Taoist practitioner and teacher everybody. You might have heard Tahnee talk about him. Tahnee's gone and learned at his Tao Garden in Chiang Mai.   Taylor: (07:45) Chiang Mai.   Mason: (07:46) So she wrote the Chi Nei Tsang, the Daoist's abdominal massage and it's an absolute weapon. But his books are just like, "Okay, you're squeezing the PC muscle 500 times a day. Just when you're in the car, you just sit there and you're just squeezing them. Like that feeling when you're holding, and you need to wee really bad and you need to squeeze that muscle. Do that 500 times a day, and that's the first step." And you decide, "Okay, it's a bit ambiguous."   Taylor: (08:09) Yeah, very mechanical and very dry honestly. I didn't make it through his book in entirety. I've experienced great success without reading that entire book. So just for anyone out there, there are other ways to get there that might feel a little more heart centered or warm, or at least less mechanical and engineering like. [crosstalk 00:08:27]. Just speak to that one piece you said, the PC muscle thing. I think this is a really important thing to talk about. Because all over the internet right now if you look for how to last longer in bed, or how to overcome premature ejaculation, pretty much the majority of what's out there immediately is PC muscle exercises, "Squeeze this. Squeeze this. Strengthen that. Strengthen that."   Taylor: (08:48) But a big problem with that is, when's the last time you or anybody went to the gym for 40 days in a row and did 200 squats every day for 40 days without stretching or without taking a break, right? That would create a problem in your body, that would create a problem in my body. I wouldn't be able to walk well after that, maybe not even after day four. I need a rest day. I need to stretch and I would need to counterbalance that. So a problem a lot of guys run into when they start doing PC muscle exercises all the time is they actually put their pelvic floor into a state of tension. Tension often is what causes premature ejaculation. Relaxing that area and being able to relax that is huge. So instead of doing 100 PC muscles exercises every day, like there's some other things you can do like different yoga poses and different stretches and different breathing exercises to bring more spaciousness down there.   Mason: (09:45) Would you mind if we go into that a bit later.   Taylor: (09:48) Yeah, happy to. One other little anecdote. I went to a Tantra workshop in Thailand two years ago, and the instructor asked this room probably full of 100 people, I would say, asked the room to close their eyes and tune into their pelvic floor. For everybody listening, I'm going to invite you to do that too. As long as you're not driving, just close your eyes and notice your pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor is the area around your genitals, in between your genitals and your anus. This is your perineum. And see if there is any amount that you can relax that area of your body at all just even a little bit. Are you holding any little micro tension there, tension at all?   Taylor: (10:38) It was really interesting in this workshop. You can open your eyes now. Because the instructor asked us that question and 90 plus percent of the people raised their hand. I did too. We all had tension there and we could all consciously relax that area of our body. Then the instructor asked us again five minutes later, and still 90 plus percent of the people raised their hand. And so it was this really interesting learning process of "Oh, wow. We're all walking around with a lot of tension in that area of our body. So maybe doing kegel exercises all the time, isn't the only answer.   Mason: (11:10) That comes up in like, I feel like that's what the world's really wanting is in that releasing of tension, that relaxation. Everyone in the West is obviously so Yang. We talked about shiny things we need to strengthen. Even with eye exercises, no one's even getting the sense of like, hang on, there's musculature around there that is super tense and you need to relax. And then you look at the West, everyone's so uptight, especially around the anus, and so that muscle, that PC muscle coming from the pubic bone right around to the coccyx, is like literally tight.   Mason: (11:45) As you're saying, that constant squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, if you got a tight neck, you're going to go and get like ... I'll just be like, "You know what, I'm going to really strengthen my with that muscle right now. This is how ..." You get one of those iron neck things that put a [crosstalk 00:11:58] on your head, "This is going to fix me." It's super obvious, but we've been so ... we've gone down that route of programming ourselves. And of course we're impressionable, and so we take-   Taylor: (12:09) Totally.   Mason: (12:10) Yeah. So like then, what are we doing in ... Let's just go into it now. What is your recommendations rather than just squeezing, and then how do we get a little bit more colour to that conversation and bringing blood flow and Qi down to that pelvic floor?   Taylor: (12:28) Yeah. One of my favorite and most simple exercises to do is deep belly breathing. And you can breathe into your pelvic floor too, and it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be this great, mysterious mystical thing. You can just take a deep breath down into your belly, into your lower belly, and it literally expands that region of your body. One of my favorite ways to have people do this for their first time, if they're not used to deep belly breathing, is to lay on their back on the ground. And then you can put one hand on your chest and one hand on your lower belly, and try to breathe into that hand that's on your lower belly.   Taylor: (13:11) You'll notice that when you really focus your breath there, and you focus on expanding that part of your body, you can feel expansion in your sacrum, in your lower spine, in your abdomen, in your pelvic floor, and that whole area of your body. If you just slowly breathe into there, it's not a forceful, like get it done sort of thing, but it's a slow, easeful deep breath. That is an amazing, amazing, simple practice.   Mason: (13:38) One thing that when I was first getting into these practices, with good intentions and in some direction just seeking and chasing something, one thing that kind of threw me off was, I was all about the deep breathing. I've grown up around martial arts, and so had that ability to breathe into my belly. And then once I was in the bedroom, once I was having sex and really releasing tension, not realizing how much tension I was actually holding within my PC muscle, in that area around my sexual organs. And naturally physiologically, you release tension, your breath and your fascia is going to be able to bring subtle movement, you're going to get a flow of Qi there.   Mason: (14:25) In the beginning, I became more sensitive. Because despite the fact that I'd had evidence that I didn't really have to worry so much around premature ejaculation, that was still my sexual baggage and story I had about myself. So I actually got a little bit thrown off around how additionally sensitive I was, in the beginning. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there, because that sensitivity is something you want, but then working through that, that kind of somewhat disassociating that just because you get that pleasurable feeling, doesn't mean you're just going to get out of control and come real quick.   Taylor: (15:07) Right.   Mason: (15:09) That was a huge insight for me. Then opening up from you, you were talking about particular stretches, poses. Are you particularly looking at the hip flexor muscle when you're stretching out in through that area? What would you be looking at?   Taylor: (15:31) Well, yes, so they are the more active things, active poses you could do to do active stretching, but one of the ones that I really like is bridge pose, and with your hips up in the air, and your shoulders back on the ground and your feet on the ground. It would be cool if we could flash a diagram of that onto the screen right now. But basically, in that pose, somehow ... I haven't fully studied anatomy and physiology, but somehow the musculature in that pose allows you to relax your pelvic floor, in a way that is really incredible. I haven't experienced that in pretty much any other yoga pose or position. It's like a deep just dropping, deep connection with gravity of your pelvic floor and to feel that ease, it's really remarkable there. That's one for sure.   Taylor: (16:20) And then, yeah, there are generally just stretching your muscles, and your legs, and your hips is also helpful. I'd say, this thing of premature ejaculation, it's more than just learning one technique, or one stretch, or three stretches. Sometimes you have to approach it from 15 different angles, because for a lot of people it's a lifestyle thing. And it's learning to switch over your entire sexual response system from what we've grown up with, and maybe what sort of habits we've built, to a new type of sexual response system. And that takes some time for a lot of people and that's normal.   Taylor: (16:53) I think it's really awesome that you spoke to the piece in the beginning, where you had increased sensitivity at first, because I did too. And I thought, Oh shit. What am I doing? No, no, no, go backwards, go backwards. And then I couldn't go back. But in retrospect, it totally makes sense. I had to deprogram myself from years of watching porn, years of habitual masturbation, years of habitual objectifying of women, and to open myself to those deeper realms of sensitivity. At first it was overwhelming, and eventually that overwhelm can turn into this greater realms of orgasm and pleasure, that don't end in ejaculation.   Mason: (17:38) Before we go into the benefits of that, and why someone would be wanting to bring that into your lives, I'm curious to hear your grounded take, is what's the piece around like, what would you say is something to be ... As you're working on this at the same time or a precursor, in terms of the sexual relationship that you have with yourself, you are cock around self love, all those kinds of things. I just like to hear your take on that.   Taylor: (18:09) Specifically you're asking me what is ... Can you say that again?   Mason: (18:14) Yeah. I'm sorry. Sometimes I do just like dance around a concept, and don't ask a very direct question. Going forth, because I kind of personally feel a huge part has been this like okay, genuine loving relationship with myself, genuine non-shame based sexual relationship with myself is necessary, and feeling this innate forgiveness, and very deep love and appreciation that I do have for myself. I get that that could become a little bit cliche when you're running around these circles. So for you who you're teaching these arts, you're teaching the retention of ejaculate and multiple orgasms, that's the shiny thing. I'm assuming that there is a substance of this, what I'm talking about of like of this self love and healthy relationship. I know, because I've seen it in your videos and you talk to it, but just I wanted to hear directly the fabric of that, of what's surrounding the shiny thing of these multiple orgasms in and around what I was just referring to.   Taylor: (19:20) Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. That makes total sense. Yeah, nobody's going to do a Google search for, "How to self love better." Very few people. But hundreds of thousands of people will search for, "How to overcome premature ejaculation." So it's like, what are people looking for? And how to have them find me or find whoever is going to help them with this issue. Yes, so I run this course called Orgasmic Mastery. It's for men, and a lot of the stuff we've already talked about is in there, and so is this piece of self love and it's really important. For me ... What would I want to say about this?   Taylor: (20:02) I have people approach self pleasuring from like as a practice, incorporating breath, incorporating some exercises, but really trying to be fully present with themselves, not fantasizing about porn, not fantasizing about any partner, but tuning into this sensations that are in their body, the feeling of sheets on their skin, the feeling of warmth or coldness of the air, everything in that present moment, just tuning into those sensations, because that's going to orient you to this deeper presence that's available to you at any given moment. When you start exploring that realm, it's possible that all sorts of stuff come up. You might realize like, Oh my God, when's the last time I took 20 minutes for myself just to give myself pleasure? That can be overwhelming and sad, or beautiful, or happy for some people. It's really sort of like opening Pandora's box of potential for energy there.   Taylor: (21:01) It translates to the rest of your life. It has translated to the rest of my life. The more time I spend in a self pleasure session, versus just like wanking it or trying to get off, the more I walk in the world with my shoulders back, the more I walk in the world with confidence and love, and I exude this deeper presence, and it's because I've been cultivating that. I don't want to come across as I have all this shit figured out and I'm a master of it. Certainly, I'm very much a work in progress still, but I do notice that the more I approach this from a grounded place of self love, the better every area of my life becomes.   Mason: (21:41) That's evident, man, and I like that you've added those caveats. However, the cultivation is evident and it comes from consistency, and the grounded place in which no one was watching all your videos and reading your articles. That's why I was super stoked to have you on the podcast, and there's not many people I'd really want to talk about this with. But I had to talk about, so I was really happy that Elena, ... So everyone like Elena, who is a mate of ours runs Instagram, who has been a family friend for many years, put us on to Taylor's work, and I was like, "Boom. Yeah." That was three days ago and here we are, just awesome, because we needed to get this in for Brovember ASAP. Get it. Yeah. Now, let's go to why we would want to retain come, sperm. Let's look at some of the nuts and bolts of it.   Taylor: (22:34) The nuts and bolts. Great. So why would you want to retain your semen? Why would you want to retain your ejaculate? The first example I'll give is just of long term relationship. Say you're in a long term relationship, and we'll just go ahead and say monogamous for this particular example. For everybody listening, imagine that you're an year and a half into this relationship, maybe two years. Now imagine that you have sex with your partner every day for six days straight and you ejaculate every day of those six days. Chances are you're not going to want to be intimate with them on the seventh day, maybe even the six or the fifth or the fourth day, depending on how old you are, depending on your lifestyle and all this stuff.   Taylor: (23:25) One of the most practical reasons you might want to retain your semen is because when you ejaculate, generally speaking, you are losing polarity. You're losing that charge in your life, but also with your partner. And if you do it over and over and over again, it can lead to a depolarization in your relationship. And then all of a sudden, you might be more reactive and you might get into a little tiff or argument about somebody who left a little bit extra on the dishes, or it opens up the possibility for discontent.   Mason: (23:55) Mm-hmm (affirmative). The hangover.   Taylor: (23:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Example number one. Yeah, the orgasm hangover or the ejaculation hangover is real, and it affects not only your physiology, but your neuro chemicals as well. And that's something I want to do more research on to understand what exactly it is I'm talking about, but it has an effect on your brain for I think it's up to seven to ten days or something like that, I just read recently.   Mason: (24:22) Yeah. I think that's kind of confronting when you start reading about this, it definitely was for me when I was in a position where it wasn't necessarily something, like the mastery of that skill wasn't something that I saw was really on the horizon, and I had to do some other work first. And so then what comes up is, figuratively speaking is the morality around the fact that you're leaking your Jing essence and getting into like, "Is it bad for me to be coming?" I think that's when I was just ... I remember doing this years ago that I was interested again, of going and reading the reviews and seeing the reactions to this kind of, and I imagine you get it a lot as well, about to both the book Sexual Mastery for Men and The Tao of Sex, Health and Longevity by Daniel Reid.   Mason: (25:16) I don't know if you know his work. He's just another ... He's American, I think he's in his 70s now. Lived in Byron Bay for a while so he has a bit of a name of himself around here for being the local Taoist but he teaches a lot of these sexual practices. And you read the reviews of people really reacting. They're like, "This isn't natural. This isn't something that I want to do." But from a charged place and .... What I'm liking is what's coming out now I feel in the health scene is a very non-charged, "Hey, let's just lay out some of the realities of it. Don't get into right or wrong." Even if you're not going to be retaining ejaculate and having multiple orgasms, you can still be very aware of the physiological and neuro chemical nature of what happens when you do come, and then manage your energy and yourself, and your lifestyle, and your nutrition, and hydration in order to prevent you going, exactly what you're saying, start getting to that point where you do react towards yourself and your partner when you lose your essence.   Mason: (26:27) If you're already tired, and you lose that much mineral Jing essence, that little ... Actually I've got a quote here that I think kind of like in terms of what it is. Do you know Nicolas Venette, a 17th century sexologist?   Taylor: (26:43) I don't.   Mason: (26:45) "Semen is the most refined and noblest part of the whole human frame, containing in itself the whole nature and complexion of every part of the body, or in other words being the very essence of man." And if you're losing that essence, naturally, it's just going to be like, "Well guys, like of course. That takes a lot to make it and you releasing it, maybe you're going to be a bit tired afterwards." Have you just got like, I don't know if there's anything else you want to say to that hangover?   Taylor: (27:11) Yeah. Well, something came up that I have not really thought about before, but I'm just going to go off the cuff here. You've talked about some of those people on the reviews saying, "Oh, this isn't natural. We're meant to come regularly." And it makes me think like, if we take an evolutionary perspective on how we came to be here today, like if you look back tens of thousands of years ago at our ancestors, it was a much different scenario then. Survival was top on the list. It was survival, survive, procreate, eat, fuck, sleep, repeat. The death rate was probably much higher than it is now. There were predators around, there were different people who might want to kill you everywhere, and so it was probably advantageous to be ejaculating regularly in people to help the species continue, as much as possible, right?   Taylor: (28:03) And yes, we're factories for that. We could do that as men, and some of the research points to that. They've done studies on, there's one rat study in particular, where they looked at rats in captivity. They tried to have this one rat, mate with one mate over and over and over again, and the more times it ejaculated with this partner, the less it was interested and the less energy it had. But if you put in a bunch of new female rats, then this one male rat could have sex, sex, sex, sex, and would basically have sex until it died or got sick, with the introduction of new partners.   Taylor: (28:39) So if we fast forward today, we don't have to deal, we're not in that survival mindset in the same way that we were tens of thousands of years ago, yet our biology is generally the same by all intensive research purposes. So instead of being this factory for the production of more humans, like we could harness that energy and put it into our business, put it into our entrepreneurial pursuits, put it into our art, put it into our creativity. It's an option. That's just cool. It just occurred to me like, maybe it's not natural if we're trying to create as many humans as possible so we can survive, but we're not in that scenario anymore.   Mason: (29:19) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I think the other nice thing is we're in a scenario where this doesn't have to be a super taboo or some hippy bullshit or something only for Taoists. This seems to be coming a little bit more of a grounded and logical conversation, which I'm really appreciating. And in that, what are you looking at in terms of primary benefits to someone's physiology, and long term health, if you start delving into this area. You've already mentioned the rechanneling, maybe you can talk a little bit more about that.   Taylor: (29:56) Yeah. Well, I'll speak to my own just personal practice of semen retention for a moment. I have discovered that my ideal ejaculation frequency is somewhere between 10 and 14 days. I can have as much sex as I want during that period or as much self-pleasure. But if I ejaculate at that frequency, I noticed that I don't suffer any of the effects of repeat ejaculation hangover. And so for me, an ejaculation hangover would manifest in my body and in my mind, with brain fog, with lack of clarity, with lack of feeling of direction and on purpose, less confidence, less zest, and just less creative energy.   Taylor: (30:37) I've noticed that I can do manual labor over and over and over again in that space, but what's more challenging for me is using my mind in creative ways to solve problems in that period of ejaculation hangover. I'm less sociable, I'm less able to hold up conversation, all that stuff. Whereas if I retain my semen, a benefit of that is more clarity, more direction of my life purpose, more feelings of vitality inside, more feelings of power. I'm convinced that people in public look at me differently if I'm 14 days in. I've done experiments with that and I think there's an energetic radiance that can sort of happen with that, and that getting into woo-woo territory. But there's something very real about that, and maybe it's just body language, maybe it's just how your eyes operate. But you know what I mean?   Mason: (31:30) Well, I mean, absolutely. I feel like in terms of being woo-woo, I mean, everybody listening to this podcast would have heard us talk about the three treasures regularly.   Taylor: (31:41) Okay, cool. Great. Awesome.   Mason: (31:41) Jing, Qi, Shen is probably like a foundation. The foundation of why we practice tonic herbalism isn't to remedy what's wrong, it is to tonify and cultivate the three energies which are the source of our life, which is the Jing, the Qi, and the Shen. So they very much understand the nature of Jing been associated with our sexual fluids, with semen and without genetic potential being the wax of the candle, in the analogy. If we can build up that wax of the candle, because whether we like it or not, we're not saying it's not like a very moral or extreme statement, what I'm saying and coming from someone who is coming.   Mason: (32:24) I'm not saying that you if you come, you're just going to keep on depleting that wax and you're going to leak your Jing and that's it for you, you're not going to be able to do this. We're just talking about almost another tool or another practice, to possibly continue to very successfully manage the wax of your candle, your Jing and your physiology. I think what you're talking about is when you're retaining that essence, and you're using it consciously or conscientiously, and you're conscientiously coming, you are building up that wax so that the flame can be nice and bright. So your Qi is cultivating and flowing so that your Shen, your wisdom, your essence is shining bright. The light coming off your candle can be brighter.   Mason: (33:06) We know that when you've got that skip in your step and that twinkle in your eye, you can notice it in people. If you've felt it in yourself when you're exhausted and tapped out, like I feel invisible when I'm like that. Naturally, I can take on a bit of a gray demeanor, verse when I'm really pumping and hydrated and I'm feeling great, I'm expressing my emotions, and I'm being responsible sexually, and cultivating energy and really connecting, fuck, you feel incredible. Of course, not that it's about that, but people notice it. So yeah, man. I think I appreciate you saying that.   Taylor: (33:43) Yeah, and thank you for saying that too. It's just meeting you now for the first time and just learning about everything you're doing two days ago, I haven't had a chance to really dive in and understand what you're sharing, but I've made it a personal mission of mine to try to take how I talk about this and make it as accessible and approachable to the mainstream as I can, because I believe in these practices and the power there. I've been sort of training myself to say less things that could be construed as the derogatory word woo-woo, just because I want CEOs to find us. I want big business people to find this. I want people who work in banks to find this because I do believe that these practices really will change the way that, how you see the world, how you see life, how you walk in the world, and I want more people to be doing this. So thanks for saying that.   Mason: (34:33) Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that as well. I mean, there is a reality and it's a confronting reality around what it means, where we build something like semen and then we release it constantly, but there's no reason why this can be decharged around being considered woo-woo, and almost this is something that was talked about in men. You can almost see that the pub, I was like, "Oh gosh, you're a bit grouchy, are you? You're in the ejaculation hangover, are you Terry? Just something that's like, it is somewhat of a reality, which doesn't mean it needs to be moralized. So I've got another quote here if you don't mind. I've never had-   Taylor: (35:13) Yeah, please.   Mason: (35:14) I got a couple from Kim Anami, just like she was talking about semen. Especially, if people who have gone down that route of the Taoists, even in Tantra, it can be very colorful and poetic, this whole thing, which is amazing. I personally love that. I'm kind of like, I've become somewhat of a tragic ... Did I just say come what of a ...? I'm somewhat of a romantic, just like a tragic in that area when it comes to talking about these things, which if that's the only way you talk about these things, it can become a little bit difficult to approach these and land them in your life. However, that's the nature of it, and especially if you look at the nature of the White Tigress in Jade Dragon traditions when it comes to Taoism.   Mason: (36:05) I don't know if you've read a lot of those books. It's really beautiful and poetic in terms of talking about these lineages of Taoism where they really were focusing on that cultivation of sexual energy. When you look at the Jade Dragon, the men's sexual, the semen retention practices, multiple orgasms, as well as the Qigong and the consumption of Jing herbs, and all these kinds of things. All they are is they're seen as spiritual practices, cultivating energy that can be then funneled into your meditation, into the work that you're doing out there into the world, and very much youthening practices as well, which can ...   Mason: (36:47) You can just think about it. If it takes fluid and minerals, and stem cells, and power, like an ATP and mitochondrial energy in order to create semen, and if you continuously release it and you need to direct all that energy to go and then constantly build it up and create it again, it's just simple science. It's simple logic, you're not going to have the essence and the enzymatic power, and the energy, and the organ power to redirect into other places, which are going to be seen as like, youthening, vitality, cultivation of Qi in other areas. So, in saying that, here is that quote from Mantak Chia, I think it was the Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, 1984. What year were you born, man?   Taylor: (37:37) '85.   Mason: (37:38) Yeah. Me is about maybe six, so this is before our time. Look at us. A couple of experts on sexual practices and meanwhile these quotes. "When hormonal secretions of the sexual glands are regularly leached out, the body is sapped at its root without a period of time, that will range from months to decades depending on the endowment of the individual, creative and sexual abilities are halved, and the ability to withstand disease and the frailties of old age is diminished". Don't know if you want to elaborate on that in any way, I'll put your two cents in.   Taylor: (38:19) I don't know what else there is to say.   Mason: (38:22) It nails it, right?   Taylor: (38:24) It does. I guess the one other piece I want to say is, semen retention, it's not like the magic bullet. I do want to say it's amazing but, and if you're not also ensuring that you get a good night's sleep, if you're not also staying hydrated. If you're not taking care of all these other areas of your life, it doesn't matter how much semen retention you do, you're still going to lose energy in all these other ways. It's like one piece of the whole picture of being a holistically minded individual. That's really important, that doesn't get talked about enough, but it isn't the only thing.   Mason: (39:01) Awesome. Yeah. And that's something, try and talk about that a lot. If you have very, very, very realistic expectations on these practices, on the tonic herbs, on medicinal mushrooms, whatever it is, if you just get it off a pedestal and just sit in it's very real relevant place, that means because you're not going to have expectations shattered, because you had something on a fucking pedestal for so long, it means you're going to have the stamina to consistently do the practice. In saying that, we were talking about having particular teachers, Taoist teachers, whether it's Mantak up on these pedestals. It's something that I think we both wanted to talk about, in terms of when approaching these things. You just want to have a jam out about that now?   Taylor: (39:53) Yeah, let's go for it. Let's go for it. I've never personally studied with Mantak, but I studied a fair amount with Michael Winn, who co-wrote the Cultivating Male Sexual Energy. He's actually based a few miles from where I live right now in Asheville. And so, that's been really convenient. Another big teacher in my life has been this guy named David Deida. I'm sure you've probably heard of him, have you?   Mason: (40:15) I do.   Taylor: (40:15) Yeah. So I've read most of his books. I did a workshop with him. Earlier this year, I actually had an opportunity to sit down with him and have a beer at a table with some other people, because I worked security at an event of his and we went out afterwards, and we just hung out. It was this really interesting process for me to, A, I had never done security at an event before. That was a trip. But, B, the most fascinating thing was, I had sort of deified him. After reading his books, after going through his workshop, I put him up on this pedestal and thought, just like all the things associated with that, like, "He can do no wrong," or "He has all the answers," or "Oh he has something that I don't," or "I need him for this, X, Y and Z."   Taylor: (40:58) It took a good half hour of being at that table with him and a handful of other people, to just whittle those away and remember like, "Oh you're just a guy, who has invested a lot of time and energy in studying this stuff, but you're still very much a human, you still struggle with things. You still don't want to be in big crowds of people. You have your own quirks just like everybody else." And it was a very humbling experience for me and a useful experience to realise, all these teachers that I have deified, even Mantak, I don't necessarily have to study with them to get the value from their material, and I don't necessarily even have to read all the material. They're not gods. I'm not a god. I don't know what else to say about that. I think it's just important to realise, you know what I mean? We're all humans.   Mason: (41:52) I think what's ... Because I think we've all gone through that, maybe, maybe not. But I'll speak definitely speak for myself, and I've had those people I'd put on pedestals, and then I've had to come crashing down. For me, it was a pattern of looking for that place that I think is right or the authority, and then attaching myself to that authority, so that I can feel ... For me, it was dietarily and health wise, that I can feel like I'm in a superior place, and I'm actually in a safe place, where I'm actually doing everything right now. That's just the case when you go ... And I can see it, you read The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida, and you're doing the Taoist sexual practice, and you look at the rest of the society, what I see, what happens is we oppose ourselves.   Mason: (42:33) A lot of the time in the beginning, we need opposition. So we oppose ourselves against society, which has taught us that pornography is the standard, that your own sexuality is taboo. So we need to kick back against that, and when we kick back against that, we look at who's on the other side of that thing we're opposing. We're trying, and so we find the leaders that we then go and deify, because in order to stay opposed to the energy of what we're moving away from, we need a deity or we need a different pole in order to go towards. And of course, it's all our own identity building. And in the beginning that can be useful, but also being aware of that charge. Because quite often what people look for then, is when they realize, hang on, I've identified with this person and making this person the deity, or just putting them on a pedestal.   Mason: (43:27) If the person you're following is in a good position, I assume like David Deida, it's good to hear he was just someone that was down to earth and just via following him or just being in his presence, you came to that realization for yourself. I feel like that's what happens with Mantak, from hearing about Tahnee being the Tao Garden and talking to him. He just sits down and eats with everyone, has chats with everyone, and talks his shit and all his students are likewise they're just like you know what? He's got his own stuff going on, and he deals with it, but we've just got a like a healthy relationship. We just go to him for the teachings and we know where the line is.   Mason: (44:06) But then there's those times when your teacher doesn't have that groundedness to defuse it in themselves, and so they parasitically ... Like they live off that energy of people deifying them, and that suck it up. And so, what we get used to is needing to find something wrong with that deity, with that person, in order to escape from their claws. Again, it's external, and then the pendulum swings and people need to get into this resentment around people who are representing this health, and teaching these ancient lineages, where it's not about them. Some people are fucking awful, and they are preying on people and they're abusing their position. But that's their shit. You need to just like de-charge and come to that position, where you just realise everyone's a human. We're all bloody equal here and it's your shit that you deify that person, right?   Taylor: (45:02) Yeah. Wow. Very well said. I'm going to go back and listen to you say that whole thing again. Thanks.   Mason: (45:07) Well, just hearing your ... This is what always happens on the podcast. I mean, and I learn personally through talking things out, and I always appreciate this podcast. Hear you talking about all these things and then it brings up some shit in myself, and I go on my rants and that's how I kind of work out these concepts internally.   Taylor: (45:32) It's great.   Mason: (45:33) First of all, that's great to hear that about David Deida, because he's such a legend. I found that book exceptionally transformational, and again, everyone ... And he's got several, but The Way of the Superior Man is just ... Imagine just having a term studying that in year nine and ten of like middle school for you guys. And parents can just go that. Parents, that's what the beauty of it, we don't have to rely on the schooling system to do it.   Taylor: (46:03) Now that's a fantasy, is bringing all this stuff, bringing everything we're talking about right now into kids, into the teenagers. Wow. How different would our society be if we did that? That's a fantasy of mine, passion somehow, maybe hopefully one day.   Mason: (46:22) Well, it's happening, for sure. Like there's parents who are exposing their kids, just and they're very grounded people. Again, we don't need to make this trippy or woo-woo, when kids can still be heavily integrated into the community, and not be ostracized by knowing about these things which go against very traditional society, if we teach them how to not grab on to these ideas, and try and become superior in themselves because they know them. Parents, you just have these conversations each and every day, appropriately based on the age, but you can just have these very responsibly. Anyway, we're all here doing it together. I think it's happening man.   Mason: (47:02) So then going into some of the practicalities again, in terms of what steps that men can be taking along this journey, and I think I'm definitely going to jump onto your course as well, and just go a little bit deeper down that route as well, because having a structure really works for me. But, what are the steps? And then can you also talk about some of the fallacies that occur, just in case everyone's heard it before. Some of the examples I'm talking about are like edging in an incorrect way, coming, edging towards orgasm, and then what are some of the fallacies there, and some of the correct ways to do it. Also, that false ejaculate retention by pushing up into the peritoneum there, or if you learned your physiology from Jackass, the Gooch, and pushing the semen and back up into the bladder. I just like to get the world of these steps that you're taking over months for men to start retaining semen.   Taylor: (48:12) Yeah. Wow. How to condense all these into some useful ... Well, I'd say the first thing to start with, sounds like a lot of people listening to this already are kind of on board, but it's just the realisation that there is something else that's possible. There is another paradigm of sex, there's another paradigm of energy and relating, and consciousness that's available, that society doesn't talk about in the grand scheme of things. So that's step one, is just to know that there's something else out there that's possible, and I'm here to say and it sounds like you're here to say, that it can be way more pleasurable and connective than the typical sex that I grew up with, and that I learned from porn.   Taylor: (48:52) And then seeking out resources. Books are a great way to start. Mantak Chia's book can be a great way to start. That book, The Way of the Superior Man, it has some awesome insights into sex. I posted about that book on my Instagram yesterday, and immediately. I think it was like less than a minute later, somebody responded with a DM that said, "That book saved my marriage. It literally saved my marriage." And then it was one of the most responded to stories I've posted in a while, with all these people saying how much it's impacted them. So books, start with books, and then YouTube. There's a lot of free information out there. Just start researching.   Taylor: (49:28) And then I'd say, another huge thing that's really important for us as men specifically, is to talk to another brother about this stuff. Talk to another man about this stuff. Find a friend who's interested, find some sort of community who's also interested in this. We're programmed often as men to do everything by ourselves, to be the sort of like lone wolf. We have to be self sufficient, self empowered, do everything ourselves. That's a problem and it's a fallacy. Having community around this, is so amazing. That was one of my favorite things about the course that we just did, was seeing and hearing about all the experiences from the guys in the Facebook group, and talking about on the live calls, and seeing different people's wins, and having them ask questions and have each other answer their questions.   Taylor: (50:19) I say that community piece is really, really important. And I think it's something as men in general, we need to step more into men's groups, men's gatherings, men's workshops, spaces for us to reevaluate how we walk in the world and that sort of thing. And then I know this is a fair amount of a tangent, but I think it's really important that we do that. And then you could take a course. You could take my course, you could take somebody else's course, if you want to go have a deeper dive into it. Not everybody wants to. I think everybody should, of course. Yeah, I'll pause there.   Mason: (50:54) Well, at least arriving at a point where it's a choice. I've heard a lot of people go like, "I've kind of learned it and then played around with it, and then I just chose that I didn't really want to have that as a practice in my life," which is kind of a nice non-charged way to go about it. Can you talk about, around anything in terms of practices for strengthening the PC muscle just very quickly, that might just shine some light on it for guys that are already taking on this practice. Maybe they've read the 500 a day kind of squeeze thing.   Taylor: (51:25) Yeah. I will hit that, and then want to speak to the retrograde ejaculation thing that you talked about, just because you mentioned it earlier. So there is this whole other thing that can happen, where some guys think that they're having a non-ejaculatory orgasm. And often that happens by using the million dollar point technique right before an ejaculatory orgasm where-   Mason: (51:48) That was the gooch was talking about everybody, to put it as they say in Grey's Anatomy.   Taylor: (51:53) Yes, putting the fingers forcefully into the perennial, and what you're actually doing there, you're still having an ejaculatory orgasm, you're just diverting your ejaculate into your bladder, instead of out through your penis. So you still lose everything that you lose during your orgasm, you still go through that refractory period. It might seem like you're having a non-ejaculatory orgasm, but if you pee in a glass cup immediately afterwards, you will see ejaculate in that.   Mason: (52:22) Do you see this happening even if they're not hitting that point, which, everyone is between the anus and the testes? That's the point we're talking about.   Taylor: (52:29) Yeah. Technically, you can strengthen your PC muscles to be able to squeeze hard enough there, that you can squeeze and divert that flow without touching your fingers. You can do it with crossing your legs. Some people supposedly can do that with intention. I don't know them. I've just heard about that. I prefer to not do that practice. If I'm going to have an ejaculation, I would rather it leave my penis and go through the natural flow, than get diverted up into my bladder. I would either rather have a non-ejaculatory, energetic full body orgasm, or a full on ejaculatory orgasm and not this sort of weird false, non-ejaculatory orgasm.   Mason: (53:10) I'm just going to ask another question here. I just want everyone to know, I'm still aware we're going to talk about edging and we're still going to talk about PC, but now I feel like somewhat of a seminal elephant in the room is, what happens to the ejaculate when you don't come?   Taylor: (53:31) Just gets reabsorbed by your body. It doesn't build up. You don't get giant testicles. It just cycles naturally internally. That's my understanding.   Mason: (53:45) Yeah. When you're going through these practices, I've heard you talk about blue balls quite a bit. I mean, can you quickly share whether it's blue balls and you feel that concentration of sexual energy? A lot of guys might be familiar, we have a deer antler velvet product and sometimes guys will take it consistently, and build up a lot of Yang Jing. I mean, a lot of sexual energy and feel charged. A lot of, you can associate that with that like, "I've got too testosterone. I'm feeling that slight frustration and aggression." What are some practices we can do to re-divert that energy?   Taylor: (54:32) Yes, I will hit on that. And I just wanted to add one other piece of clarity about what I just said, is I'm remembering that there is some evidence to show that if you do retain your semen for months, like four, or five, six plus months, then your sperm count might drop. It might go lower, so then if you're wanting to have a child ... And I'm not an expert on this, but I remember hearing this at the tantric school where I studied, I think they recommended having an ejaculation or two, before you actually try to conceive, but that's ... Do more research on that for sure. But I just wanted to add that one piece in, to [crosstalk 00:55:09] mouthful. Yeah. Can you say the last thing you just did again?   Mason: (55:14) Yeah. How are we taking that build up of sexual energy, and taking it into different places in the body? Just very simple practice.   Taylor: (55:21) Yeah. Well, there's so many different ways to do that. One of them is the microcosmic orbit, which I'm sure a lot of you listening are familiar with. Another, which I learned earlier this year on a different podcast, Sean Wes. It's a different business podcast, but they did a whole review of this book. What was it? Think and Grow Rich, and on the chapter about sublimating your sexual energy, one of the guys on there said he tried this technique. He was really attracted to this woman and feeling sexually charged, and thinking about her all the time while he was at the office, and he got out a sheet of paper and wrote down, "I am transmuting my sexual energy from this woman, and from being aroused by her, and I'm putting into my work right now." And the act of writing it down for him, it changed something in his physiology, and the solidifying of his intention on paper just shifted something internally for him. That's a very practical way to do that, and I thought that was fascinating. I've tried it a few times since then in a variety of contexts, and it works surprisingly well.   Mason: (56:25) Yeah, where your attention goes, your energy flows, right?   Taylor: (56:28) Totally.   Mason: (56:31) Completely with that, I feel like that's something that's often ... It's a pretty obvious caveat. Over the next, say like decade, it's going to be a really great endeavor for everyone to really get in touch with their sexual energy, and get an understanding, come into a deeper relationship with the nature of your creation of come, and how you're releasing it, and just watching the patterns that arise afterwards, and when you're retaining, that might just come from celibacy. It might not just be the fact that you're doing multiple orgasms. Just watch yourself because it's a reality, and give yourself time. Don't be too harsh on yourself.   Mason: (57:10) But inside of that, you're going to have to take that sexual energy at some point, and realise that it's a part of you. It's not isolated into a box, and around your dick. As you were saying, like just say, "I'm going to go put that into my work." I know that can be something very different for men. Well, how can I take something that's just used for like attraction or fucking, and put that into two hours sitting at my desk? I think most people have heard it, but it's worth reiterating again, that sexual energy, it's just energy and it's your energy, and it's just you and it is your creativity.   Taylor: (57:52) Totally. Yeah. And if you want it, a simple, practical way to try this, if you have a partner right now that you're having sex with, and you've never tried this before, I recommend having sex with your partner before you go to work and don't ejaculate. And at the end of that, to make sure you don't get blue balls or to make sure you don't get stagnation, massage your testicles, massage your perineum, do some jumping jacks, do some push ups, just to move your energy throughout your whole body, maybe some Qigong if you know, some Qigong exercises, and then go to work. And just notice what happens. Notice your levels of attention, notice your levels of motivation, and your ability to focus and concentrate. I would imagine and I would bet, that it will be different.   Mason: (58:36) Yeah. I love it. Now, I've read a couple of your blogs, and with the just talking about the difference in the type of orgasm, and what you'd be expecting from a multiple orgasm. So we're getting to this point where we we're in website, we're consistent, we're months in, we begin to procure this ability to retain our semen. What kind of orgasm are you going to be looking at? What's occurring there?   Taylor: (59:05) Yes, very good question. And if you look on the back of Mantak Chia's book it says ... I actually have this book right here. It says specifically, "Learn to separate orgasm and ejaculation." The very top line on the back of this book. And I think that there's truth to that, but it can be misleading for a lot of people. Because the types of orgasms that are the more full body, you could call it tantric, you could call it energetic orgasms. You could call it cosmic orgasms, whatever you want to call it, they're different than the typical ejaculatory orgasm. They don't have the involuntary genital contractions. They're not focused all in your penis and your general region. They could flow through your body like heat waves.   Taylor: (59:50) They can happen in your fingertips, in your heart, in your face and your nipples. You could experience energy moving everywhere and you could feel more pleasure. You could feel like your arm is ejaculating, minus the actual loss of semen and energy. And so, it's a different thing. So instead of saying, "Learn how to separate your orgasm from ejaculation," I would say, "Learn how to experience a new kind of orgasm, that's different probably from what you've experienced growing up. And this other kind of orgasm can do wonders for your health, for your relationship, for basically every area of your life and it can actually feel more pleasurable too."   Mason: (01:00:32) I mean, basically what I'm thinking there, especially if you look at those, the Taoist sexual schools, if you look at the Jade Dragon Schools, it's about cultivating this energy and to refine, and bring forth the elixir of immortality. That can be very poetic, kind of well, what is that? Are we talking about real immortality? Are we're talking about a nice long life, a rich life? What is it? However, what you were just saying in terms of that whole body orgasm, I think a lot of ... especially people who have had, whether it's psychedelics or drugs in their past, and there's been times where you can almost sit there in that peak experience of having a whole body orgasm.   Mason: (01:01:19) During these times, and we might be doing plant medicine or whatever it is, but remembering that those peak experiences are something that is innate, we do have all the ingredients of that, for lack of a better unpoetic word, the elixir of immortality, to be able to have those kinds of experiences. I'm sure whether a lot of people listening have had those, you can have a sexual experience where it's just cut and dry, and you're in and out, all those times when you might not be retaining, though you're really connected with your heart and you can feel a differentiation in the type of orgasm, where it does become a little bit more whole body and you can almost start tripping out. Not almost, you do start tripping.   Taylor: (01:02:03) You do.   Mason: (01:02:04) For sure. And there's something nice and endogenous us in that. Sorry, man.   Taylor: (01:02:10) Sorry, I interrupted you.   Mason: (01:02:12) Go for it.   Taylor: (01:02:13) Yeah. Also, I just want to be clear and transparent, that I'm not having these full transcendental, psychedelic full body orgasms every time I have sex. Sometimes when I have sex, it's just a very pleasure filled experience, and I can have orgasmic type experiences, but I'm not having like the full on psychedelic thing happen every time I have sex. My directive or my goal in sex has shifted from when I was younger. It used to be ejaculation only. Now, its pleasure, and connection, and energy.   Taylor: (01:02:52) And so, if I happen to have one of these cosmic orgasms, that's beautiful, and that's awesome, and it's not necessarily my end goal. Like I'm not going into sex thinking, "I'm going to have the cosmic orgasm." I'm going into sex thinking like, wow, A, either, "I'm so horny and turned on by you. I want to make love." And, B, like, "And I want this experience to be really connective, and awesome, and beautiful, and without going to this goal." Because with that goal oriented mindset, it sort of shapes the way sex progresses. Without that, there's a lot more openness for ebb and flow, and creativity that I have experienced.   Mason: (01:03:33) Right on man, and that's why you're on the pod, because that creation of just an open, grounded, realistic expectation on the practice is something that's necessary to make this sustainable. Let's touch back. Just there are two things I want to do. I'm just a hit, so we don't want to leave everyone hanging. Can you just explain what edging is? And could you just give a very brief touching a base of the way edging can be done? Just like whether it's ineffective versus effective.   Taylor: (01:04:06) Yeah. So real quick, edging is this practice of, if you think of sexual arousal and ejaculation on a scale of one, or zero to 100, and 95 is the point of no return, and in between 95 and 100 is your ejaculatory orgasm. Edging is the process of getting your sexual response system up to 92, 93, 94. Like that point just before ejaculation, and then pressing pause, and then doing some breathing and coming back down to maybe like 50% 70% somewhere on that scale. And the idea is to practice reaching that point, and to build your capacity to get to this higher states of pleasure and come back down. For that, it can be very useful. A big pitfall though, and a big problem with this whole edging practice that's not often talked about is, rushing to edge and seeing that area of 90% to 94% as pleasure, versus seeing that, everywhere else on that scale is pleasurable to.   Taylor: (01:05:08) And so, one problem that I ran into a bit ago, when I was doing a lot of this edging practice, I would notice that when I would self pleasure, when I would masturbate, I would rush right up to my edge, because that's where I experience "the most sexual pleasure." I would get to that edge in like a minute and a half, usually or less, because that's what I was going for. What that was doing, was training my sexual response system to go from non-erection to almost ejaculation in a minute and a half, and that translates into every sexual experience you could have from there.   Taylor: (01:05:45) Sure enough, after doing a lot of the edging practice, I thought, "I'm getting really good at going up and coming back down." When I got into the sexual experience, it was like, "A minute in, holy shit, back off." That's a danger area, and I would say be very a

Celeste Yacoboni is a Minister of Walking Prayer, ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, California. Her work focuses on guiding and supporting people through transitions by creating a space of awareness, presence and inspiration, which integrates body, mind, spirit and emotions. She maintains a thriving private practice in Santa Fe, NM in which she facilitates healing and wholeness through Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women's Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono, and the inquiry "How Do You Pray?"

You're in for a real treat SuperFeast fam! Today's podcast is a live recording taken at our special women's event: Nourishing Her Yin, earlier this year. Today we bare witness to the epic conversation that unfolded between our SuperFeast founder, Mason Taylor and the exquisite Tahnee McCrossin (GM of SuperFeast), covering all things women's health, with a deep emphasis on what that means from a Taoist perspective. Mason and Tahnee host a Q & A with the audience at the end of their chat, so stay tuned until the end, this is an episode not to be missed!      Mason and Tahnee explore: Health sovereignty.  Discerning collective ideology from innate individual insight. Honouring the seasonal elements of life and human nature. The Yin and Yang of nutrition. The role of the organ systems in regards to women's health. Chi Ne Tsang abdominal massage. The spleen as the mother of blood. Self massage. Honouring your needs as a woman. The herbs, foods and practices that can support feminine health. Anatomy and female reproductive health. The new SuperFeast blend. Audience Q & A. Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin teacher and Chi Ne Tsang healer, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is also General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).   Resources: Pregnancy Preparation Podcast with Tahnee Pregnancy Health Podcast with Tahnee The Golden Month Book    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify! We got you covered on all bases ;P   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason Taylor:  Thank you, you nerds for coming on a beautiful Saturday to learn about women's health and hear us ramble about tonic herbalism. Basically you are here to be a part of the Super Feast podcast. Some of you might not even know that we have a podcast, but we do and it's pretty rad and we've been going for quite a few months now. In this podcast, we've been able to dive deep into tonic herbalism, other aspects of herbalism. We're basically trying to bridge a lot of these, whether it's an ancient tradition or whether it's a system, we're trying to figure out how we're going to adapt it into everyday life. And a big part of that is Tahnee, Tahnee McCrossin everybody.   Tahnee:  Hello.   Mason Taylor:  Tahnee's been doing what we've called the women's series. Tahnee's been talking to a lot of beautiful women and diving down the rabbit hole of women's health, whether it's been talking to sexologists and women's hormone specialists, naturopaths, doctors, herbalists. It's been really beautiful. I mean, I've been learning a lot. Has anyone been listening to the women's series on the Super Feast podcast? Yeah. Okay, we got a few hands up.   Mason Taylor:  But what hasn't happened yet is Tahnee's going to continue with that because I'm basically co-hosting with Tahnee now on the podcast. However, I didn't have a chance, because we're running the business and have a toddler and then just having a relationship when we're not talking about work and all those kinds of things, Tahnee and I didn't actually have a an opportunity to sit down and tune in because Tahnee in her own right is an absolute force for diving down into women's health just by your own curiosity. Tahnee has got a really beautiful, curious nature. A couple of our friends, they've learned how to kind of take everything with a little grain of salt and not swallow official stories and actually go down and do some investigation to find what's true for you and standing in your own sovereignty, to kind of put it a little bit more poetically.   Mason Taylor:  But practically going down the rabbit hole of a particular issue, whether it's herbalism or whether it's looking at hormone health and making sure that you find some real good, decent, valid information that you can run through your own filter and find an outcome that's going to be actually really relevant to your health.   Mason Taylor:  We have several friends that whenever something comes up and they're like, "Oh, I just want to see how this fits in for me." Or whether that's actually true or what the best way that I can relate to that information, they call going down that rabbit hole, [inaudible 00:02:20] of Tahnee, she's really good at it. And it's great because it's not about Tahnee's bullshit radar really being on. And it's like one thing I've learned about Tahns, it's not being skeptical or anything like that. It's just a natural curiosity that bubbles up. And so that natural curiosity has led to Tahns having what I find a very impressive amount of insight into women's health and her own health in general. And after all those conversations you've had with these women, I thought it'd be really amazing for us to touch base. So I know it's kind of awkward because we work together and live together and do everything together, but welcome Tahns. Hey.   Tahnee:  Hi babe. Yeah. And also, I'm super nervous because I'm not used to crowds so please bear with me. I'll warm up a little bit. But yeah, Mase and I, we've been planning to do something like this for so long where we'd get together and just mutually kind of jam out about all the stuff we've both learned over the last, for me it's been probably since I was about 16 starting to really work out what the hell is going on with this body and how it all works. And yeah and Mase as well, having worked one on one with lots of women over the years, he's got a really incredible amount of information and wisdom to share. So when we sort of together conceived of this idea of a blend for women that is nourishing and kind of helps to just support and kind of care for the kind of internal space of the woman and also the spiritual mental space.   Tahnee:  This kind of seemed like a really natural fit and evolution to get together and and kind of, we'll talk more broad strokes today than specifics of the herbs. We will talk a little bit about the blend and why it is what it is. But we wanted to give you guys kind of some context, I suppose, for how we view women's health and how SuperFeast sees nurturing that feminine aspect. And I do want to just be really politically correct and say we're going to talk about women and women's bodies and I know some people don't identify with their bodies and I really appreciate that, but the perspective I'm coming from is that you've got boobs and a uterus and all this stuff and it's really important to know how that stuff works. So irrespective of how you identify, I think it's pretty cool to start to connect with that power and the kind of incredible stuff that goes on in the body and let the rest of that stuff go how it will.   Mason Taylor:  Yeah, thanks for bringing up the blend. I mean, it's interesting having a herbal company and just when you're putting out something like we would loosely call, I'm not going to release the name to you guys yet. It's just called Women's Blend. But I was in California and my naming my blend block kind of cracked one night and I was like, "Tahns, Tahns." She said, "What are you doing?" She's like, "I'm in the middle of making dinner and the toddler's a bit of a mess." I was like, "Yeah, cool. Now do you want to know what just happened to me?" And it was the same with all the blends. I've woken her up at three in the morning when we had a three month old, I'd be like, "Hey, Tahns, I've got the name for for the brain blend."   Mason Taylor:  Anyway, it always happens like that. But it's an interesting thing because we're going to be offering a women's blend and we're going to be continuing to offer real nice juicy information about how to relate to tonic herbalism rather than just having this ambiguous women's blend that ambiguously helps women sort out women's issues, that's a really irresponsible way to go about herbalism. But tonic herbalism fits into this personal culture and this personal practice about ensuring that our organs, our endocrine system stays really nice and healthy and so in order to feel responsible in offering blends which have nice general intents, we feel we need to continue to have events like this where we talk about the broader nature on where herbalism sits in. You dig? Cool.   Mason Taylor:  So I'm Mason Taylor for those of you that don't know, so I founded SuperFeast back in 2011. Got really into tonic herbs, got really into medicinal mushrooms, detox practices, all that kind of stuff. We moved up about four years ago, four and a half years ago to the Shire. I brought the business up here and everyone was like, "Oh, it's such a genius move Mason, SuperFeast, the brand, having Byron Bay behind it, is so smart." And I was like, "Yes, branding. That's why I did it."   Tahnee:  You guys have no idea. He literally drove his car up with a bunch of shit in it and went to live out the back of Cooper's Creek, 45 minutes from Byron with no WiFi and no phone reception. And I was like, "How are you going to run a business from there babe?" And he was like, "I don't know. Don't ask me those kinds of questions." I was like, "Okay, cool." Anyway, it didn't go very well.   Mason Taylor:  No it didn't. And then since then Tahnee came into the business and I kind of wised up a little bit. I'm getting there. I'm the CEO and Tahnee is, well let me introduce Tahnee is the boss and the GM of the company. But Tahnee, you've studied a shit tonne of yoga, basically. So I know you've really ... part of what's, not what defines you, but I guess, what's one of the areas that's really paved the path I see you going in your life, these are studies of yoga. You've had two yoga studios in Newcastle that were donation yoga studios, like pay what you can. And Yoga For All is still going. I really enjoyed going to that, that was your little baby and that was really nice. I really loved going there. And you left that to come up to Byron Bay, I'm always very grateful for that.   Mason Taylor:  But you've studied heavily with a number of yoga teachers, but especially [inaudible 00:07:46] studying Yin yoga and going into the throws of anatomy. Then moving on to start studying Taoist arts and Taoist abdominal massage, which we're going to make sure that we ... were going to do a nice chunk here. I'm going to be interviewing Tahns and then we'll have a break and then we're going to go into some Q and A. So at some point during that chunk we'll get every question answered but also Tahnee is going to go through and show you how to give your organs in your belly a little bit of a rub because it's a really beautiful, important aspect of all of this.   Mason Taylor:  Now you were practicing for some time, then you kind of like checked out a little bit from that when you fell pregnant with [Aiya 00:08:26]. But look, all of these things, now you're, running SuperFeast and then preparing next year to get back into your yoga training and your yoga teaching in May. I think you're going to start having a retreat going or something like that. Now, besides the obvious, what has been this, in the last couple of years, something's really projected you into the area of women's health. And I know there's the obvious thing, you've always had an interest in your own body and keeping it really healthy, but what's projected you that's just taken it up to that next level, made you dive down that rabbit hole?   Tahnee:  That was a long intro. Yeah. I guess as a young woman I started seeing naturopaths really early when I was about 15 or 16. And it was really funny because I was just talking to my acupuncturist yesterday about this. So I was having a lot of dizzy spells and I'd find when I menstruated, I would pass out at work. I was working as a waitress doing split shifts from 7:00 AM to midnight and crazy stuff. And I would obviously faint because I was flogging myself. But the naturopath said, "Oh you should drink more juice and you should eat lots more fruit and have lots of sugar in your system so that you can kind of keep going." And so I totally swallowed all that, hook, line and sinker. And anyway I was laughing with my acupuncturist because he's working to kind of reverse that.   Tahnee:  The last probably five years of my life have been all around to trying to undo the damage that I did at those very early ages of my life. And so what I've sort of come to as I've been on this kind of adventure, from when I first came off the pill in my late 20s to the three years of amenorrhea I had after that, which means I didn't bleed and my doctor, my GP telling me that was totally fine while my gut and my instincts were like, no way, that's not fine. All the way through to conceiving my daughter and now having a girl child in my care, I've become quite passionate about just making sure that we understand our bodies and that we're able to educate our daughters and our children and our men folk about what-   Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Can I just say thanks to all the guys that came along today. It's an obvious place for guys to be. I think that's ... I think so. I don't really see there being any logical reason why a guy wouldn't want to come along and understand the woman's body and understand issues that women are going through. Whether it's just so that they can understand the women in their life. But just in general, I think that's just something very natural.   Tahnee:  Well, even if you don't date women, you've got a mom or you've got a sister or you've got a cousin or a niece or whatever. And I think what we're starting to really see happen culturally as well is that women are starting to reclaim their power and I won't get too political on all of this, but I do think one of the big opportunities now is for us to get very clear in what we need and how we communicate that in a way that isn't pushing away the opposite sex. And also that allows us to really feel like we're being heard and nourished and looked after. And all of those things by our culture. So for me, this is partly a philosophical exploration as well as a kind of practical one. Because I think, what I've really seen is that we can kind of talk the talk and push back and rage against the machine.   Tahnee:  But the best thing we can do is just fucking live like how we want to live. And I think what we have the power to do in this area, especially with such a supportive community, is start to really be a place where change is actually enacted and lived. And we don't even have to necessarily talk about it, we can just be the example, you don't want to be too gone, do you? But that's kind of what I really tend to sit in is like, there's no point complaining. I just have to do the things. So when the doctor didn't give me the care that I needed, I went to a naturopath. And when she couldn't give me the care I needed, I went to an acupuncturist and as I learned more about Chinese medicine, I started to see a Chinese doctor who did herbs.   Tahnee:  And then as I was taking those herbs, I was feeling that there was still something missing. And I met Mace. And so there's this kind of responsibility I suppose, which is really one of the foundational, I guess, kind of concepts that we built Super Feast upon, is this idea of sovereignty. That you are responsible for your own health and your own wellbeing and that you can take advice from lots of different people and take lots of ideas and you have to weave them together into the fabric of your kind of daily culture, as Mace likes to call it, your health culture, your family culture. So that's something that, that's a big thing to start with I suppose. But to me it's foundational. You have to start there. And my journey through that, it was through being put on the pill by my mom when I was 16 because I left home to live in a Combi with a boy and she didn't want me to get pregnant, and I didn't know any better.   Tahnee:  I was young and the doctor told me I wouldn't ever get another pimple. And I was like, "Well, this is amazing." And so I just took it and I took it and took it and took it and I had vaginal dryness and I lost my libido at 17 and all this stuff. I was depressed. I was miserable. And I had no idea that it was this medication I was taking until actually my boyfriend at the time, about eight years down the track was like, "Maybe you should get off the pill. That might fix all of this shit that you're constantly trying to solve." And what I learned in studying Chinese medicine now is what had happened is that it had caused all the blood in my body to sort of move into stasis. It no longer flowed because the bleeds that we have on the pill aren't real.   Tahnee:  They're just created by a chemical kind of obstruction, so you take the chemical out, the body releases some blood, but it's not this natural kind of process of bleeding that happens. So I'm actually about to bleed and my body, my acupuncturist could feel it yesterday, my blood was starting to move down and move into stasis in my womb as it prepares to shed. So this is this natural downward flow of energy that occurs at this time in my cycle. And every woman has that and we don't get taught it and we don't talk about it. We don't talk to our men people about it. We don't talk to our girlfriends about it so much, it's getting better. So these are things. So I had three years of amenorrhea because my body had to relearn.   Tahnee:  Because I went on the pill so young. I only got my period at 14 so I'd only been bleeding for two years. And you have to learn how to bleed. So lots of young girls have really shitty periods at the beginning. Most people maybe remember that they were sort of a bit abnormal. They might've had some period pain or whatever. And from a Chinese medicine perspective, you would want to look at nourishing that young girl through that process because that's an opportunity, these changes in our lives. When we first get menarche, when we have babies, when we go through menopause, you can either take them as these curses, which is a very biblical interpretation. Or you could look at it as an opportunity to actually improve your health. Because if you start shedding blood, that's an opportunity to shed and let go. So you could work on some gentle cleansing, you could work on taking some herbs and that would help to move any toxicity that had built up out with this new blood, start to train the body, teach the chi to move.   Tahnee:  This is all beautiful stuff that our culture just doesn't even ... who's doctor ever talked to them about that? Nobody's. So unless you're really lucky to have a mom or a alternative kind of care provider who can sort of give you this insight, I think so much of this wisdom isn't being brought forward. And even if you look culturally sort of all around the world, even if this was ancient wisdom, it got lost as we kind of industrialized because a lot of people started to see menstruation as dirty and bad and as kind of these women needed to be locked away, all that kind of stuff. And there's definitely a place for coming away to retreat and to kind of internalize and to process emotion and all of these things, for sure.   Tahnee:  But that needs to be the choice the woman makes not a cultural thing, in my opinion. So anyway, back to the question. I think once I had my daughter, I just really, I saw that my health ... I had an amazing birth, Mace was there, I had this beautiful child and I had all of these amazing gifts that I'd sort of been given through my research. And I just thought, it sort of seems unfair that other people don't get this information. And yes, I had to go find it, but it was from lots of different places and so I thought, if we can start to bring that stuff into one place, I think that's a really powerful kind of offering I suppose.   Mason Taylor:  There's a couple of things you kind of hit on there. One of that, be the change. There's something there that you, I know that's a real broad statement, but as someone, I'm kind of someone, I don't know if you've got anyone out there that's like real low hanging fruit and I drink the Koolaid really quickly and going like, "That's the way." In the beginning, I've kind of built up a little bit of a resilience to it nowadays, but it's something that I like about your approach and it's something that you aren't, I think that's why I'm enjoying learning from you and a lot of people, in talking to a lot of women and commenting why they love talking to you so much, when I sift through it, you're not seeking some resolution or complete ultimate understanding.   Mason Taylor:  It fair to say you've just got like a, not an insatiable curiosity because it's not curiosity for the sake of curiosity, but you've got like, is a curiosity something that drives you to just continue to learn, stay humble, embody the information. And therefore, I don't know if this happens to many women, but in my instance I would get exasperated about just the magnitude of things that there are to learn and just how much information there is. And so it would stop me being patient to just slowly embody what I'm learning, embody it and embody it, work with it, play with it at a nice sustainable rate, get your own personal culture going and then approach sovereignty that way without a need to actually find the official story of women's health or find the exact system of women's health. Is that fair?   Tahnee:  I'm kind of the opposite when there's like quantum physics and the cosmos, that shit excites me because I'm like, "We don't know anything. The more we know, the less we know." MIT has all their quantum physics lectures online for free, I understand about this much of it. But it's just like, "Whoa." And I think my experience is the moment I've thought I've known anything, I've been completely wrong. And I get slapped in the face with humble pie and I have to swallow my words and start again. And so I've learned not to know anything really. And I think what I've really, I guess emphasized is if someone's telling me something, I want to know where they learned it from and I want to know the source.   Tahnee:  So I always try and find the origin of the information. So if a doctor tells me something or I got told that I was, I'm nearly 34 and I got told by a GP when I went to get some blood work done after Aiyah was born that I was getting a bit old and I should probably have another baby. I was like, "Where did you get that information from?" And she was like, "Oh, it's just your eggs are aging." And I'm like, "But I don't think that's the way I feel in my body and whatever." And so her and I kind of had this back and forth and didn't really go anywhere, but I didn't take that information on. It's not something that I'm concerned about because I just feel like what I've done in my life and where I'm at, 35 does not feel like a milestone. I need to concern myself with.   Tahnee:  But whereas, if I go back and read the [inaudible 00:20:15] or some of these like the Vedas, these really ancient texts. If you start to look at all this stuff that your yoga teacher spouts, where did they get that from? Is it from Tony Robbins or is it from the Vedas? Because I'd prefer the Vedas version then the Tony Robins version. And I just kind of constantly try and look for where the root of that came from. Because a lot of it's ideology, a lot of it's belief. It's not actually information. And I think one thing that's really easy to fall into is to get stuck in a belief system, which kind traps you, it doesn't really allow you to be free for new information to come in and change your course.   Tahnee:  So maybe one day I won't think any of this stuff, I don't know. But for now, this to me is replicable. When I apply it to my life, my life improves. So that's like a scientific inquiry. If you keep doing it and it gets better, that's good. And if you keep doing it and you're not getting the results you're looking for, try something else. And that's something I get a lot with women, where they're like, especially with diet stuff, "I've been doing keto, I've been doing the vegan thing, and I felt really good for a period of time and now I don't feel great." It's like, well that to me is a sign that it's time to change because it's not working for you anymore. And they kind of can't. It takes a little while for people to get that, to get that something can work for a little while, but not necessarily forever. And that's okay.   Tahnee:  And so I think we have to remember that at different phases of our lives, we're different. We've all got cycles. If you start to pay attention to how you feel at different stages of your cycle, you'll feel different. It's a kind of a running joke at Super Feast, whenever the full moon kicks or mercury kicks into retrograde, we all go nuts. But these are acknowledged kind of things. You watch animals, there's always more energy around ... like the cockies the other day when the rain was coming, all the black cockies, around all around our house. It's like, it's going to rain, let's clear the deck because everything's going to get wet. And sure enough that afternoon it rains.   Tahnee:  So when we start to tune in, like our friend Tanya, she sits on her deck and she goes, "Oh, feel that? The rains coming." And she literally will start-   Mason Taylor:  Or, "Hear that? Sun just breathed out. Sun's gone." And it's all cloudy.   Tahnee:  And we'd be like, "No, can't hear that." But I think because I was raised on a 10 acre property with no, oh my parents built a house. We lived in a caravan for four years and blah blah blah. Didn't have a TV. I didn't really have much to do. So we really spent a lot of time in the bush getting weird fungal things and leeches and ticks and you name it. I was in hospital for a tick when I was 10 for five days. Stuff like that. So I think for me that's definitely been some kind of training and being comfortable with nature's rhythms because of that. But I don't know, I just think we need to as a culture sort of start to be a bit more respectful that, again, we could talk patriarchy, we could talk all sorts of things. But this linear idea of things always being the same to me, especially for women, needs to shift pretty drastically.   Mason Taylor:  I mean that's something, I love one of your teachers, you're not giving me the middle finger on purpose are you? No, I'm joking. One thing I absolutely love about one of your teachers, Paul Greeley, Tahnee is like, one of the things you don't realize is the core things of what Tahnee is. She's an anatomy nerd and one of the, I think Paul Greeley's your major teacher, would you say, he is so against ambiguity in any way. I think that's like something-   Tahnee:  No opposite.   Mason Taylor:  He wants ambiguity?   Tahnee:  His line is, every philosophy is incomplete and every idea is wrong in some context. So you can disprove ... yeah, it's kind of like now with science. "This is a law." And it's like, it's only a law until it's not a law. And a lot of the time ... gravity, so far we haven't disproven. But there's lots of ... gravity's still a theory. A lot of these things are kind of accepted ideas, ontological ideas that we've had to accept to kind of stay alive day to day. It's like, "Okay, yep. If I take a step, the floor is going to be there." And if you go to Mars, that's a different experience, gravity's not the same there. So Paul's whole thing is like, if I tell you how to do something, you can't then go and tell someone else how to do that thing because that won't be the same for that person.   Tahnee:  So as a yoga teacher, I don't want to get to much into yoga because not all of you are interested in that. But when I work with a student, what I would tell Mason to do, would be completely different to what I would tell Sophia to do or someone else that I know because they're just completely different organisms and it makes no sense to give them the same thing. So you see a lot of systems of yoga promote that, "Oh you have to do this every day or that every day or the same, dah, dah, dah everyday." And my personal opinion is that's detrimental over time because that's not what bodies are designed to do. Bodies are designed to do different things everyday. And similarly with breathing practices, with meditation practices, we all need different things at different times.   Tahnee:  So if your mind is very busy, a mantra or something can help you to kind of focus and then maybe you can let go of that and you can just sit or whatever. There's lots of different paths obviously. But yeah, so Paul's thing is very much around, ambiguity is great. We need to embrace ambiguity. We need to accept that we don't know anything. It's one of the reasons I was so attracted to him, I think, was because I came into that first training I did with him probably like, what are we, seven years ago I think it would have been. And I just was like, "Oh finally, someone who isn't trying to sell me their belief system." Which was kind of very common in yoga. And someone who's interested in training me to think because that's what he does. He trains you to see the body and he trains you to think.   Mason Taylor:  Well I feel like that's what I mean, someone tells you to do something and you go, "Right because you told me to do it. I'm going to do it for ambiguous reasons rather than doing that, just cutting through it." But we're looking at hearing about the skeletal variation work that you do, which we'll get into a couple of podcasts about like exactly what that means and when you start realizing just how differently we're put together, you can see it's ridiculous to have a certain set of us and our physical movement for you to do. And you can actually start getting a little bit more in contact and connected to yourself because you get to understand actually how you're built anatomically. But then bridging on from that you realize there's going to be a differentiation in the way that women are bleeding or the way our endocrine system or our immune system is put together.   Mason Taylor:  And so bursting the bubble. Especially a lot of you guys have a high IQ in the health world because you've been in it for quite some time and you've kind of like your bullshit radar is going to be on, right? True. But I'm still kind of, if you get me in like a business sense, I always try and go into a business world and try and learn, I'm like a low hanging fruit. And a lot of people come into the health world and we've all been there, we've been low hanging fruit and we're susceptible because we don't have the understanding of the terrain quite yet. And that's one of the primary things I like to see taught in the health world is this variation. Variation in diet variation in times of life and what's going to work in terms of times when you're doing a cleansing or a blood cleanse and then moving onto a deep nourishing and we see that happening increasingly. We're going to get to talk about diet and get a real example.   Mason Taylor:  The amount of people who are getting onto a ketogenic diet and they're looking at their friend absolutely rocking it and going, "Why aren't I rocking it?" Or into the medical medium kind of thing. That's how we've had a lot of people come to us and going, "My gosh, why am I getting" ... some people absolutely rocking it for a short amount of time with medical medium and then a huge amount of people going, "Why am I deteriorating and getting so much worse?" Whatever it is, getting that kind of like that wit about you. I mean it seems to be one of the absolute pillars.   Tahnee:  Could I talk to that, because I think this is why for me, Taoism in particular is so powerful because it's yin and yang. If you take away all the other stuff, that's the basic kind of idea. And so if you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and things, you get very yin, which is really good for cleansing, it's that kind of the anabolic, catabolic breaking down phase. So everything starts to dissolve and all of the kind of toxic buildup and whatever, this is awesome. This is great for a while. But if you do that for too long, it's not good because there's nothing there for your body to rebuild with. So the anabolic phase, which if you ever hear gym guys talk, they're really into anabolic. So bulking and I don't even know the words, loading, what do they say?   Tahnee:  Proteins and stuff. Obviously not my scene, but that idea of mass, mass, mass, mass, mass, that's not great either. And you can use just even if you imagine a yogic vegan guy, he's all skinny and fun and a beefcake muscle man. And if you look at again how they're eating ones eating a very young diet, a very building, heating kind of putting stuff on diet and one's eating a kind of catabolic breakdown, dissolve kind of. Pardon?   Mason Taylor:  Cold.   Tahnee:  Cold. Yeah. And so this is this dance and we can dance between these states. Before Aiyah I wanted to prepare my body, I'd had years on the birth control pill. I had done a lot of party drugs when I was younger, all that kind of stuff. And so I was really conscious that I wanted to go through a bit of a catabolic phase in order to prepare my body to have a baby.   Tahnee:  But the yang to that was to then before I conceived was to rebuild as much as I could so that that tissue that I built after breaking down the stuff that I didn't want in my body anymore was really kind of good quality. So I was probably, I conceived a little bit before I was really content with that process. I probably would've liked to have gone another six months or so. But to me, that ideal situation preconception, is a period, I would say two years if you really want to have a conscious conception, a year of cleansing, very slowly and not stressing your body out too much and then a year of rebuilding and putting on a really good amount of meat, getting really healthy and fit so that you're prepared for what is basically a marathon of carrying.   Tahnee:  I had a massive belly and birth which is huge. Anyone who's given birth knows it's a huge process and you need a lot of resources for that. So that's my personal take on that as well is that you need both sides of it and I don't necessarily mean that you need to eat meat if you don't want to, any of those things. But I do see a lot of people who are kind of really committed to that vegan path getting really unwell over time. Certainly not straightaway. A lot of people do really well at the beginning, and I think it's a great cleansing diet. But after 10 years, it's like mineral deficiencies, they start to put on a lot of weight, which is the spleen just packing up because the spleen can't handle a lot of sugar. And so when we ate a lot of fruit, a lot of grains, all of these things, we start to destroy our main digestive organ.   Tahnee:  And in Chinese medicine, the spleen is responsible for taking what's called nutritive chi which is basically the goodness from the food that you eat and putting it into the blood. And so what will happen is the liver will start to get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive chi that it needs.   Tahnee:  To get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive Chi that it needs and it will start to rebel. And so, you'll get sometimes menstrual disorders, you'll get headaches, or tension, or that kind of thing. And it's effectively a blood deficiency. It's just, it's one side of it. The other side of it is if we don't have enough fluids, which would be more to do with kidneys and stress. So, and these are really common patterns that I get asked about all the time. And again, it would be, this is where someone might go on a paleo diet and they'd be like, "Oh my God, I feel amazing." It's like, "Yeah, it's because you've cut out all the sweet stuff and it's actually really nourishing your spleen." And so, but if you do that for too long, it's not going to work.   Tahnee:  So again, and this is why this is middle path. You study any ancient tradition and it always comes back to the middle road. And we don't like to hear that because it's not sexy, you can't gram that you can't kind of build a ideology around it. It's like, "Ah, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not." Nobody wants to hear that. But that's a really, as I've gotten older, kind of wiser, I've really learnt that that's the truth. It's got to be a bit of both. It's got to be the yin and the yang, it's got to be those rest periods and those go periods. But if you don't have both, you're going to end up in trouble health wise at some point.   Mason Taylor:  Yeah, I think it's one of the reasons we can get along is because, I mean, I, again, I went pretty far down the raw food route. I mean, I was not a vegan, I never identified with being a vegan necessarily, but I was vego for many years. You were vego since you were 14? Up until just before we conceived. And one of the things I'm not, never will be, yet can still have this discussion, is that person. Especially when I went vegetarian and looking at that person that was like... There were particular people that veganism wasn't working for and then they added meat and then all of a sudden, they've got the answer. And, "You know what? You just need meat and meat is the new super food."   Mason Taylor:  It's as much as sometimes that might be an appropriate conversation to have, it's an annoying and boring official story. And it's one of those things that just because if you're someone who has been super over identified with eating a traditional Western diet, or a ketogenic diet and you want to slip into a little bit of a vegan flow for some time. Or if you've been in a down that vegan thread and you all of a sudden you realize and notice that you were over identifying. Anyone had this one when you were over identifying with that label? And then you're in the shower and you're having a discussion with yourself. And you're arguing with yourself about why it's still appropriate for you to have whatever diet it is that you're sitting on, or whatever particular philosophy it is.   Mason Taylor:  And then you go and your research your books to make sure that you can counter argument next time, that place that you actually got yourself. That's for me, that's not an alarm that maybe I'm moving towards being unhealthy. That's an alarm that I'm getting boring. That's so boring. You're getting over identified that way. And I think it's one of the things that... The reason I bring up that, we're not, and I know [Tarnie 00:35:08] as well isn't, just one of these people that's just like, "I used to be vego and I've seen the light." And it's dripping red.   Tahnee:  There are some people that it's an excellent diet for if you run really hot, for example, if you have a lot of heat in your body naturally, a cooling diet. This is the thing, I'm a naturally cold person, so for me, it's not great. And again this is different constitutions. I, for example, my spleen gets cold straight away, so raw food has never worked for me. So, I've never really even been interested in that because literally the first thing that happens is I get bloated, and I feel shit, and I just walk around with this pregnant belly and I'm like, "Ugh."   Tahnee:  So for me, it just doesn't work. Juicing, I kind of went down the rabbit hole of, and I still believe in juicing, I guess if you want to say that. But in terms of using it a lot, for my body, it doesn't work particularly well unless it's the middle of summer and and it's naturally hot outside, then it's fine. So, that's for me, my journey with it. But it had to come through me understanding my own constitution, and my own kind of weaknesses, and my own strengths.   Tahnee:  So, I have a lot of jing, a lot of resilience in that regard. I'm really lucky. I know people that don't. So, I think these are things we need to be really aware of is that if someone's trying to tell you that there's one way, I'd probably run away because they're lying. And if someone's trying to tell you that they channeled something and it's right for you, again, that to me is the ultimate in giving your power away to somebody else or something else. And I personally find that really repulsive. I think it's a really dangerous kind of way to go because it starts to get into... You see it a lot in the spiritual communities.   Tahnee:  People go and give their power, and their money, and their worldly possessions away to some guru. And if you've got Netflix, you know how that turns out. So, it's not great. And this isn't to say that we don't share and we don't have a collective consciousness, or a collective sharing. I really believe in that. And it's not to say that we don't learn off people, but we reserve the right to kind of hold our own kind of compass inside that's able to say, "Yeah, that's really great. I want to try that." Or, "No, that's not for me today." And there's nothing against that person. I just don't want to do that. So, it might be that today, you guys might hear me say stuff and be like, "Ugh. Bitch, please." and that's cool. And you might also be like, "Oh yeah, that's really resonating. I'm going to go and dive down that rabbit hole."   Tahnee:  And I think one of the things that, I guess I'm grateful for that we have this kind of a platform is that we can expose people to ideas that they might not have heard before and then they're able to explore. And it kind of just widens the lens because I had to work really hard to find things. Like Chi Nei Tsang, abdominal massage. I was like, "I had an eating disorder, my belly bloats really easily. I'm always feeling really sensitive in my tummy, I hate people touching my tummy. I'm going to go study Taoist belly massage." Which I'd never received one, I didn't know what it was. I just knew that there was something that I had to do there.   Tahnee:  And I went to Guatemala actually on the way to Thailand, which is not on the way, if you ever think that's on the way, bad idea. But anyway, fuck, it's expensive and long flight home. But anyway, I went to Guatemala and I had a Chi Nei Tsang there and I hated it probably because it moved a lot of emotions. But anyway, I really just was like, "Ugh, what am I doing?" And I think I remember standing in a paddock or no, a fountain in Chiang Mai. Anyway, I was in Chiang Mai freaking out saying, "I've spent all this money on this course. I'm going to come home." And Mase is like, "No." I think you might've been like, "Come home." And he was like, "No."   Tahnee:  But yeah, I just, I think there was this calling for me to do that. And honestly, those weeks were just the most healing experience for me, having my stomach massaged everyday, I ended up having the vaginal massage as well, which is Karsai. And I think one of the reasons I had such an easy birth was probably because of that. When someone's therapeutically messaging you, in places that really not many people get to touch and that you just have no idea how much emotion, and kind of tension. Even if it's not emotion, but every time something happens to us, we have a physical reaction even if we don't realize.   Tahnee:  And so, we clench our butt, or we... And you guys might even if you just pay attention right now to your bodys, you might be like, "Oh, why do I always lift a little to the side though? Why can't I relax into that shoulder? Or why do I cross my legs? what am I trying to protect? Because I'm terrified." But these are all things that we do and they have this memory in our body and our body holds it. And until we bring some conscious awareness to it and we release it, it's there.   Tahnee:  And massage for me is such a beautiful way of transmission. It's the transmission of the practitioner's Chi, or energy, and it's the transmission of our own awareness into those places. And once we've been touched there, it's a lot easier to come back to it. So, this is a massive part of when I teach, I'm very touchy, but I don't assist so much as I touch people, and I breathe with them, and I try and encourage them to start to move their awareness into the parts of themselves that are not receiving the breath. You'll see it if you ever watch someone, parts of them won't breathe.   Tahnee:  And if you imagine we're like a balloon we should really like, when we breathe. And a lot of people don't and so you can start to feel that. And same with the body, when you touch someone's organs and they're rigid, it's like, "Okay, there's something there that they're not processing." And again, it's not about you being like, "Oh, you've got a blocked emotion there you just better work on that." It's just about this ability to be present for someone and hold space for them, and use your touch to kind of move that.   Tahnee:  So, we can do that for ourselves. And that's a really big part of Chi Nei Tsang, so we'll talk about that at the end, how to do that. It's a bit hard to understand on a podcast, but I'll show you guys. And this daily connection with our physiology is so important. And again, these aren't things we're encouraged to do, right?We're not really encouraged to touch ourselves, we're not encouraged to explore our bodys. And a lot of people get shamed around even, obviously around touching their genitals and stuff. But just a lot of the time we're just not encouraged to be physical, we get pushed away if we try and hug too much. It's something I really am trying to be really aware of with my daughter is not discouraging touch because I just think it's such an important way for us to learn to self regulate and to become self aware.   Mason Taylor:  Well, since we're on Chi Nei Tsang , let's-   Tahnee:  Stay here?   Mason Taylor:  ... Let's just stay here. So...   Mason Taylor:  (silence).   Tahnee:  I've worked with lots of different women. I mostly had women come. I did have a few guys when I was practicing a lot, so I used to practice four or five days a week, with four or five people a day. It was pretty intense. And yeah, I had a lot of women come especially because they were really craving therapeutic touch that wasn't sexual. And I think that's a really big thing for women sometimes is just explored in a way that isn't someone's trying to take something from you, or wants an outcome out of this.   Tahnee:  So, I would work a lot with women that had had abortions, miscarriages, sexual trauma as well was a pretty common theme. As well as just general kind of health stuff, digestive issues. And yeah, so the we can have different things happen in our body that are energetic as opposed to... And I personally believe that we're multidimensional beings, physical, energetic and idea based, and this is from the yogic teachings.   Tahnee:  But if you consider what we can perceive on the physical plane is great. That's there, that's our kind of tangible 3D reality. But then there's this idea of energy kind of and this experience of us being in the astral plane, right? So, this is kind of where a lot of the healing work that I do and where the tonics work on as well. They work a lot on our energy and yoga does as well. And then the ideas is what we were talking about earlier about who we think we are. And this is a really fundamental one because this idea of who we think we are really informs how we show up in our lives. And day to day, this kind of subconscious will drive us and it's something that I see a lot with people I work with, that they have an idea of, "I had a miscarriage, I can't carry a healthy baby."   Tahnee:  This is an idea or a belief that they've chosen to internalize. And so, what my job is, is to on a physical level obviously move blood, and Chi into the uterus center, and to cleanse out anything that's not working well. And all those kinds of things. But on an emotional level is to provide some nourishment and support, and to maybe offer a different perspective that for example, miscarriage can be a preparation if the uterus has kind of not felt like it's been utilized much.   Tahnee:  So, a lot of women that come off the pill will miscarry sometimes and I often think well there is so much blood stasis in there. Why wouldn't the body prepare a couple of times by bleeding heavily and really pushing out anything? Because if you push out all that blood, you have to make new blood. And the fetus is especially... Oh sorry, the embryo.   Tahnee:  So, at the very earliest stages of conception, it's a completely oxygen free environment. There's no blood going there. The embryo is actually fed by serum through the uterine walls and this kind of blood thing comes in later. And if the blood isn't good quality, it doesn't nourish the developing baby. And that to me, makes a lot of sense because that kicks in around 11 or 12 weeks, and a lot of people miscarry around that time. So obviously, a lot of people also miscarry later and I haven't quite understood the mechanisms of that. But I think that that early stage miscarriage to me, makes a lot of sense from what I understand from the actual physiology of conception.   Tahnee:  So it's like, "Okay, well this is an opportunity now to get really well and to really nourish your body and prepare." And it's that idea of the anabolic stage again. So Chi Nei Tsang, we work a lot on the emotions and the psychological kind of aspect of being, because it's integral, you can't take it away. And in Chinese medicine, every organ has an emotion, has a kind of correlation to a particular kind of type of thinking or behavior. And so, when we were talking a lot about the spleen before and digestion, and things, it's this ability to assimilate and transport nutrients. But that's also a lot to do with the mothering energy and people that give too much, and people that care too much. So, you'll tend to see a lot of vegetarians are people that are also really passionate about social justice, and the environment, and politics, and all these things because they care.   Tahnee:  And so that's really awesome. But the flip side of that is they tend to have a really bad boundaries and a really bad sense of self. I am one of these people, so I do understand. And then a liver person is like a go, go, go, go, go, go, go doesn't give a shit about anybody else kind of a thing. They're really intense high power, full energy. But the flip side of that is they'll be very ragey and a little bit difficult to be around sometimes, and very opinionated. And so, a very good friend of ours is like that. And when I'm around her, sometimes I have to be really strong because I have poor boundaries and she's very pushy. So I have to remember to center myself.   Tahnee:  So, there's lots of different ways in which this organ kind of pathology can show up. So, it can show up as a physical problem in the organ. But it can also show up in our behavior and how we relate to life. And blood is such a fundamental part, obviously, of the uterus and this. So that's really a lot to do with the kidneys, the liver and the spleen. So, that's why digestion and food is so important to having a healthy menstrual period. And so, if you've ever go and work with a naturopath, they'll look at your gut health and stuff, and it's obviously hugely important. But then, it's also understanding for me, the energetics of that.   Tahnee:  So, the whole point of the spleen is that it cooks everything. Susan Wade is really adamant about this. When I was talking to her outside of the interview and she was like, "Oh, raw food." Because the body actually cooks everything, even if you eat it raw. So, the Chinese way is that you should eat it cooked because then your body doesn't have to work as hard. And they're very much around, "Yeah. Once upon a time we would have all eaten raw bamboo shoots or whatever." But we've been so far removed from that time, that we haven't evolved to do that anymore. We've evolved to eat cooked food. And there's some really interesting books on how we've evolved with fire and what that's meant for our brains and all of these things.   Tahnee:  And so, I don't know for sure, but I've definitely experienced in my body, with my daughter, with Mase, when we eat more cooked food, we all do tend to do better. Which is not to say you don't have any raw food, but it's just being really mindful that if you dump cold constantly on a fire, it's going to go out. And this is a Ayurvedic idea as well, of agni. So if anyone's studied Ayurveda, they'd know that that's a really important one.   Tahnee:  So, a lot of the time if you're having digestive issues, it's heating things up. So using ginger, using spices. And so, that's why a lot of the the Indian cuisine has so many spices because they're eating so much yin food, they're eating beans and rice and stuff. And that's very cooling on the body. Like mung beans are one of the most cooling foods you can have. So, you'll warm that up.   Tahnee:  So, this is the real wisdom of these cultures. It's kind of, we don't necessarily think about it, we just enjoy Curry, but that's what's happening on the background. when you do Chi Nei Tsang, you can feel that people's spleens will be really painful to touch. They'll have a lot of pain along here, which can also be related to the liver and the liver's obviously over here. We'll do a little organ adventure soon. But yeah-   Mason Taylor:  Well, let's just do that now. And you can you explain it and I'll hold-   Tahnee:  I can try. I'm just not sure the people at home will get it.   Mason Taylor:  That's okay. We'll describe it as we go along for the people at home. And I can hold your microphone for you if you want to stand up. Yeah. You massage and describe at the same time and then I'll point out for anyone listening at home where they need to be looking.   Tahnee:  Orientated?   Mason Taylor:  Yeah.   Tahnee:  Okay. If you're sitting on your chair, come forward a little bit just so that you can kind of roll your pelvis around.   Mason Taylor:  Do you want me to hold your mic? Or are you fine?   Tahnee:  I think I need two hands.   Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Yeah.   Tahnee:  My mic stand. So, we'll start with our spleens seeing as we've been talking about it. So the spleen is actually kind of behind your back ribs. It's pretty hard to get to from the front, but if you make-   Mason Taylor:  The left rib?   Tahnee:  The left rubs. Yep. If you make a little scoop with your fingers, stick your fingers as far under your bottom ribs as you can, you might not be able to get very far, and then try and push back. Some of you might be able to feel it. It takes a little while to learn to feel the spleen, but that's the spleen.   Mason Taylor:  This is quite often where I joke sometimes for those of you that haven't touched your spleen in awhile, your spleen will be like, "Be gentle with me." And you really should be.   Tahnee:  Be gentle with your spleen. So, spleen in Western medicine as well as the part of the immune system and in Chinese medicine too. But it used to be that if you got rid of your spleen, everyone was like, "You'll be fine." But now they're a bit more like, "Oh, maybe you need that." So in Chinese medicine it's like the mother of blood, it's where the idea of blood comes from and the nutrition for blood. And then that goes down to the kidneys, which again you can't really feel without going through you gut switch. We won't be able to do, because none of you will be relaxed enough. But your kidneys are kind of back here ish underneath your ribs. They're outside of the main fascial sack.   Tahnee:  So, this is really cool because in Chinese medicine there's this thing called the triple burner and they were always like, "There's no such thing as the triple burner. Those crazy Chinese people." And then in the '90s everyone started being like, "Oh, fascia's really cool. Look at fascia. Wow, wow, wow." And they discovered that there was actually these three bags in the abdominal cavity that actually directly correlate to the triple burner. Aren't the Chinese people amazing? They're so clever. They discovered this thousands of years ago before we had anatomy.   Tahnee:  So, they've got in the upper part of it, the pleural cavity, they got the heart, the lungs, then they've got the digestive one, then they've got the kidneys. And the kidneys are actually outside of the digestive one, they are hanging out with the bladder, and the uterus, and everything. And so, in Chinese medicine, jing, this idea of kidney essence, is integral to our ability to conceive, to have healthy menstruation, to have healthy sperm, all of this stuff. So, this was all mapped out by the Chinese, at least 2000 years ago, possibly 5,000 years ago, possibly before that, if you believe some of the anthropologists and stuff.   Tahnee:  So, that's a pretty cool thing. So, the kidneys are actually surrounded by fat and they're kept quite cool, you're not really meant to get hot kidneys, that's not great. And so, they're kind of hanging outside of the digestive system. Over on this side, on the right side, so if you could be my mic stand. Again, make a scoop, maybe two handed scoop and the liver is always a bit tough for people. But try and go right onto there and push up. You should feel something really firm and kind of meaty. Can you feel that? Yeah. That's your liver. Your liver is actually really up here, underneath your breasts. So, the top of the liver's around your nipple line-ish.   Mason Taylor:  On the right side?   Tahnee:  On your right side. Yep. And then kind of all the way down here, massive organ, really cool. Go have a Google if you've never seen a liver. And then the gallbladder is kind of, if you find your sternal notch and go down a little bit, your gallbladder is kind of in there. Again, pretty hard to feel because it's a sack. And if you don't know what your gallbladder does, the liver produces bile, the gallbladder holds the bile, the bile gets released to digest.   Tahnee:  So, you'll often see people say, "Oh, I had to get my gallbladder out." And this is again, in Chinese medicine, would be a lot to do with emotional stuff with energy blockages to this part of the body. We all sit like this all day. So again, in Chinese medicine this is not great because we're compressing our transverse colon, we're compressing our liver and our digestive system. So, as much as you can just obviously remember to move. We will go back this way and do the stomach.   Tahnee:  So, the stomach is again, if you kind of start at the sternal notch and come down and push right in on the left side, you'll feel the stomach under there. Again, depending on how recently you ate will be, how comfortable that is. And if you could hold that. The colon. So this is also, what else do people call it? The bowel. The bowel. So, it starts if you find your hip bone, sorry this dress isn't very helpful, on your left and walk in a little bit and push down. That's about where your appendix is-   Mason Taylor:  On your right?   Tahnee:  On your right. Yes. Sorry. And then if you come up all the way along that right side there and then underneath. So, the liver rests on the colon, this is really important for detoxification. If your bowel is not functioning well, you'll not be pushing bloodborne toxins out. They're going to go back in because the liver just cleans and moves blood around. So, the toxins ideally seep down and get pushed out. Otherwise, back into the bloodstream. So coming across here, so if that's really tender and tight it means again, peridialysis, which is this idea of pushing the poo along. Talk about poo. That's got to happen.   Tahnee:  And my Taoist teacher always says evolutionarily standing upright was kind of a bad idea because now we've got to go up against gravity, and then across, and then down, which has a bit of a hassle. And then the colon kind of comes in here and in a lot of people it goes up kind of behind the stomach. So, you can always feel that bit. But then down here and down into, if you sort of go really deep there, you'll start to feel the rectum and everything. So, these two gates here, are really important in Chinese medicine, so we'll work a lot on...   Mason Taylor:  So, where are they?   Tahnee:  So, Basically if you just think inside each of your hip creases just to be... So, your hip bones.   Mason Taylor:  Two valves, doorways?   Tahnee:  Two valves. Yeah, spirit gates they're called. So, we'll work a lot on those in Chi Nei Tsang. And then I guess while I'm upright, if you're a guy your bladder is kind of... If you find your pubic bone and just hook up your bladders there. Girls, your bladder's there, but then your uterus is a little bit on top of that. So, that's why if you've ever been pregnant your bladder is getting smooshed the whole time. So, depending on where you're at in your cycle, your uterus will either be very large and you can feel it when you're about to bleed, or bleeding. After that, it can be quite small and difficult to find.   Tahnee:  And if you want to find your ovaries and stuff, again, I'll usually use the woman's hand and I'll place, it's hard to do on yourself, but I'll place her hand that and spread her fingers. So, at my pubic bone for those playing along at home, and usually where the two fingers hit is where the uterus is.   Mason Taylor:  So, you put the base of the hand at the pubic bone and then you'll open the fingers up?   Tahnee:  I'll just kind of rest the hand. I just can't... Mason's a lady today. So, just kind of like that-   Mason Taylor:  Mace Sailor Moon returns.   Tahnee:  That's where Mason's ovaries would be if he had them. So, then the small intestine is this moodgey bit around your belly. So, we usually just spend a lot of time kind of just smooshing that and making it really soft, and-   Mason Taylor:  So, in and around the belly button there?   Tahnee:  Well, no. In and around the belly button is another special spiritual spot. So, that's a lot to do with the nutrition we received from our mothers in utero. So, a lot of people will cry when you touch their belly buttons and if you go really deep into that, you can feel these nerve plexuses that are from around the spine. So, again this is advanced. You probably won't do that at home, but if you are ever massaging yourself with a really empty tummy and you can feel into your spine and stuff, that's fine.   Tahnee:  Just feeling for any... You might feel little nerve tangles which feel like a little lump, a little kind of tough lump and as you rub it they'll start to dissolve, and you might feel that nervey kind of tingle. So, that's really common as well around the navel. I get a lot of oil and go really deep into the belly button. Usually when I work on people, so you can do that on yourself if you're brave. You'll never massage as hard as anyone else will massage you too. It's usually quite safe just to have an explore. And then to do the heart and lungs, we usually just rub it in between the ribs. So, you can do that on yourself as well with some oil and just get right into that, and it will hurt.   Tahnee:  And I guess while we're here, that's a really good opportunity to do breast massage if you're a woman. So again, this is a really ancient Taoist technique for conserving jing. Have you guys all heard about semen retention for guys and it preserves their life force? So, this is the same for women. So, the two main ways we lose our essence is through bleeding with our menstruation and bleeding when we give birth. If anybody's given birth, there's a lot of blood. So, basically what we want to do is, you can do both clockwise and counterclockwise. It really depends on there's energetic variations that, but I just go with whatever feels appropriate for you at the time.   Tahnee:  I usually just go clockwise and you want to do that around 50 times, so you can kind of do that in the shower with some oil, or in the bath, or wherever you're hanging out. It's nice to do in the sun if you have a yard where you can be nude. And I think it's really important not to use a cold oil, like coconut oil. I always use a warm or a more neutral oil. So, I'll often use sweet almond or sesame. I use a lot of Ayurvedic oils because they're very warming. So, you ca

Celeste Yacoboni is a Minister of Walking Prayer, ordained by the Center for Sacred Studies in Sonora, California. Her work focuses on guiding and supporting people through transitions by creating a space of awareness, presence and inspiration, which integrates body, mind, spirit and emotions. She maintains a thriving private practice in Santa Fe, NM in which she facilitates healing and wholeness through Massage Therapy, Chi Nei Tsang, Qigong, Women's Breast Health, Plant Essences, the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono, and the inquiry "How Do You Pray?"

Have you ever heard of Thai Massage? The answer is likely yes. But have you heard of Chi Nei Tsang? Well maybe you have but it was new for us! Listen to us hang out with Andre, a RMT who has been practicing about 15 years. He had interest in learning Thai Massage and decided- what better way to learn than by learning straight from the source?! He tells us about his trips to Thailand to study Thai Massage, and how he came to have interest in Chi Nei Tsang which is an ancient detoxifying and energizing abdominal massage. He has been to study with a few Masters in Thailand and has been incorporating these forms of Massage into his treatments. He has some interesting perspectives, isn't afraid to say what he's thinking and since he's trying to make his way into Continuing Education, the 3 of us had a lot to rap about! ConEdInstitute.com 2massagetherapists.com

Grandmaster Mantak Chia shares how abdominal massage helps digestion, absorption and elimination and why this could prevent disease. Sarina Stone is in Master Chia’s beautiful home in Thailand for this amazing series of conversations. https://www.mantakchia.com https://www.universal-tao.com/ Featured Product: http://sarinastone.com/chi-nei-tsang.html