Podcasts about master mantak chia

Is Your Relationship Lacking Intimacy? Discover the transformative power of touch with guest Lyuba Venable on today's episode. Welcome to a tantalising new episode of "The Love Machine," where your favourite cupid of conversation, James Preece, dives into the deep end of intimacy and vulnerability with the enchanting Lyuba Venable. In this heart-to-heart confessional, Lyuba reveals the intricate dance of opening oneself before tangling with others, sharing titillating tales from her own life where honesty with her husband unveiled new depths to their connection. Join us as we explore the transformative power of touch—beyond the bedroom—and unravel the art of building closeness through simple embraces, mindful massages, and the spirited exchange of affectionate affirmations. In a world craving genuine connection, Lyuba and James challenge you to redefine the traditional borders of intimacy and dare to be vulnerable. Whether you're seeking to reignite the spark in your relationship, or you're eager to understand how to cherish your own emotional landscape, this episode is an empowering guide to living with an open heart. Tune in to "The Love Machine," and let James and Lyuba take you on an emotional and enlightening journey that promises to touch you, quite literally, from head to toe. Don't forget to wear your heart on your sleeve; it's about to get deeply personal! About Lyuba Lyuba Venable is a coach, trainer and public speaker. Through her open and vulnerable speaking style, Lyuba leaves audiences inspired, open to honesty, and interested in new possibilities. Having learned from Master Mantak Chia, Charles Muir, Somatica and the Human Awareness Institute, Lyuba marries multiple disciplines together in her coaching and workshops. With topics ranging from sex communication to energetic orgasms, participants have a safe, confidential space to share, explore, and learn how to create a juicier sex life and a deeper connection with self. Website: lyubavenable.com

Vestlen selles episoodis taaskord Eesti tunnustatud ja austatud ärimehega, Urmas Sõõrumaaga. Urmas on tuntud tippettevõtja, tegutsedes ka Eesti Olümpiakommitee Presidendina. Aastal 1991 asutas ta turvateenuste ettevõtte Julgestusteenistuse AS ESS. Tegelenud on Urmas väga palju ka kinnisvaraäris ja teeb seda tänaseni, olles vastutav terve Rotermanni kvartali arendamise ja ehitamise ees. Täna vasutab ta selliste brändide ja ettevõtmiste eest nagu Rotermanni kvartali arendamine, Forus Eesti ja Forus Latvia, Patarei Merekindlus, Golden Club Spordikeskused, Forus Takso, Forus Taxi (äpp), Tao keskus ja Pühali Hea Elu Keskus. Aastal 2001 asutas Urmas ka heategevusfondi Dharma ning samuti on ta loonud Tartu Ülikooli sihtasutuse juurde omanimelise stipendiumi. Kuid Urmas ei ole ainult ärimees, vaid ka üsna sügava maailmavaatega ning vaimsete ja spirituaalsete valdkondade vastu huvi tundev isiksus, kellele kuulub sealjuures ka Pühali Hea Elu Keskus (endise nimega Adila Puhkekeskus) ning Rotermanni kvartalis elutsev Tao Keskus. Seekordses saates räägime Urmasega sellistel teemadel nagu taoistlik maailmavaade ja selle mõju inimestele, kes on Master Mantak Chia, kes peagi ka Eestis esinemas ja kõnelemas on, elujõust ehk qi energiast, stressist ja sellega paremini toime tulemisest, paremast tervisest ja kuidas sinna jõuda, emotsioonide kontrollimisest ja triggerite omavahelisest mõjutusest ja juttu tuleb ka eesolevast üritusest, mida Urmas korraldada aitab. Urmas korraldab ka üritust, kus Meister Mantak Chia tuleb sel kevadel esimest korda Eestisse! Mantak Chia retriit toimub 10-16. mail 2024, Pühali Hea Elu Keskuses. Õpitakse seal erilisi taoistlikke praktikaid, et osata tajuda energia liikumist, olla tasakaalus iseendaga ja olla täis eluenergiat. Sellele üritusele pääsed ka sina, ja selleks oleme loonud sulle sooduskoodi “chriskala”, mis annab piletitelt -10% soodustust. Ürituse kohta saad lugeda täpsemalt Fienta piletimüügi platvormilt: https://fienta.com/et/mantakchia --- 00:03:11 - Loomulikustlik maailmavaade ja mõju 00:06:03 - Elumuutused ja õppetunnid. 00:10:22 - Tänulikkuse harjutamine ja mõju 00:15:38 - Kohanemine muutustega 00:18:48 - Taoismi mõistmine. 00:24:21 - Pimedas ruumis tegevused. 00:27:48 - Vabaduse ja autentsuse taipamised. 00:38:11 - Eluenergia mõistmine ja kasutamine 00:42:10 - Energia jaotamise põhimõtted 00:47:04 - Mantaki elav olukord. 00:49:42 - Ettevõtja roll ja enese areng. 00:52:27 - Eluvaade nooremas eas. 00:57:06 - Ürituse käsitlusala teema. 00:57:13 - Südametasandile liikumise tähendus. 01:00:11 - Ürituse oodatav osalejate arv 01:01:17 - UHT põhitõdede selgitus 01:04:09 - Tervenev armastus 01:08:33 - Alternatiivsete stsenaariumite läbimängimine. 01:09:49 - Meditatsiooni või kohalolupraktika kasutamine 01:11:11 - Viie elemendi mõistmise kasutegur. 01:18:34 - Üritusele tuleku põhjendus

This episode talks about how Couples can spice things up in the bedroom Lyuba Venable is a coach, trainer and public speaker. Through her open and vulnerable speaking style, Lyuba leaves audiences inspired, open to honesty, and interested in new possibilities. Having learned from Master Mantak Chia, Charles Muir, Somatica and the Human Awareness Institute, Lyuba marries multiple disciplines together in her coaching and workshops. With topics ranging from sex communication to energetic orgasms, participants have a safe, confidential space to share, explore, and learn how to create a juicier sex life and a deeper connection with self. Website: lyubavenable.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/justdamie/message

Master Mantak Chia is a renowned Qigong Master who has been awarded the prestigious title of Qigong Master of the Year twice by the International Congress of Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong in 1990 and 2012. In addition, he has been listed as number 18 of the 100 most Spiritually Influential people in The Watkins Review 2012. Master Mantak Chia is the founder of the Universal Healing Tao System, which taught tens of thousands of students of the Tao around the world. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/unimpressedpodcast. https://plus.acast.com/s/unimpressedpodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on Sense of Soul we have, Lee Holden, he is a master of the ancient art of Qigong and CEO/founder at Holden QiGong, is a world-renowned leader who brought this Chinese practice to the modern world. Featured on 8 successful PBS shows with another 13 episodes under “Your Fountain Of Youth With Lee Holden (https://www.pbs.org/show/your-fountain-youth-lee-holden/)” shot at a variety of scenic locations including Yosemite, Redwood National Park and Croatia. Through online and in-person courses Lee teaches the transformative power of Qigong, a science that improves the energy life force of individuals and professional athletes by activating dormant energy through a series of breathing and meditative exercises.  Lee has helped over 10,000 students break through barriers to uncover healing from injury or disease as well as maximizing energy levels and decreasing signs of aging. Having received certification directly from Master Mantak Chia himself. Lee also ghost wrote 12 books including an international best seller about transforming stress into vitality.  It's no wonder why Qigong is one of the most popular exercises worldwide being practiced daily by 50 million people. Learn more by visiting his website at: https://www.holdenqigong.com Folllow Lee's Journey at @holdenqigongofficial Check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HoldenQiGong Learn more about Sense of Soul Podcast: https://www.senseofsoulpodcast.com Check out the NEW affiliate deals! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page Check out the Ethereal Network! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/ethereal-network Follow Sense of Soul on Patreon, and join to get ad free episodes, circles, mini series and more! https://www.patreon.com/

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Born in rural Eastern Europe, sex coach Lyuba Venable was raised with the understanding that women were to be married off and sex was only for men to enjoy. She lived by these rules... until a chance encounter with a stranger transformed her idea of what sex could be - and who it could be for. In this episode, sex coach Lyuba Venable shares her compelling journey from a subservient wife to a multidisciplinary sex coach - along with all of the orgies, orgasms, intimacy, and self-discovery in between!   Tune in to hear Lubya and I discuss: Lubya's intense journey of discovering her own sexuality the true nature of intimacy overcoming limiting sexual beliefs Tantra and the Chakra System the role masturbation should play in your relationships what you need to do for yourself first in order to have better sex self-discovery and healing sensual feasting Connect with Lyuba: Lyuba Venable is a coach, trainer and public speaker. Through her open and vulnerable speaking style, Lyuba leaves audiences inspired, open to honesty, and interested in new possibilities. Having learned from Master Mantak Chia, Charles Muir, Somatica and the Human Awareness Institute, Lyuba marries multiple disciplines together in her online workshops. With topics ranging from sex communication to energetic orgasms, participants have a safe, confidential space to share, explore, and learn how to create a juicier sex life and a deeper connection with self. TikTok: tiktok.com/@lyubabodylove Events: https://beacons.ai/lyubabodylove   Connect with Deborah: Website: https://www.deborahkat.com/ Email: deborahtantrakat@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deborah.tantrakat Twitter: https://twitter.com/TantraKat 

“A ‘Portal to Presence’ is exactly what it says,” writes Gunther Weil, “a simple doorway that points to the realm of Consciousness or Presence. It would be stretching the meaning of the word 'technique' or 'method' to apply it to this idea. One just walks through the portal as one becomes aware of its existence…. The portal opens, and Presence arises spontaneously.” Weil is a Harvard-trained psychologist, executive coach, and lifelong student of consciousness. His diverse and colorful life includes working as a music business executive and being instrumental in the production of Aerosmith’s first album; teaching at Brandeis University, recruited and mentored by psychologist Abraham Maslow; coaching international executives in leadership, wellness, organizational development, and conflict resolution in the private and public sectors; studying and teaching Tai Chi and becoming a recognized master teacher of Qigong; and perhaps most famously, pioneering the mass consciousness movement that began in the 1960s with Dr. Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (a.k.a., Ram Dass), Ralph Metzner and others that popularized the field of psychedelic therapies.  As a young child, Weil and his parents fled the Holocaust “on one of the last boats leaving for America.” They settled in Nebraska, then Milwaukee, with psychology, philosophy, and classical music infusing their family culture. His father was an internationally regarded psychologist and pioneering researcher in Europe on synesthesia, the phenomenon of crossed senses, like smelling colors or seeing music. Education was of paramount importance; it was his father’s academic work that was their ticket to the US. Weil went on to study psychology and philosophy at Kenyon College, receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study in Norway. While there, he often visited Paris in his free time, inspired by the expat beatniks, literati, and jazz musicians who preceded the hippie generation. Upon returning to the States, he earned his doctorate in psychology at Harvard University. His assigned faculty advisor was a prominent researcher in the field of personality — Dr. Timothy Leary. Among their research studies was the Concord Prison Experiment, a randomized, controlled study designed to evaluate whether psilocybin mushrooms, combined with psychotherapy, could have a healing effect on young adults convicted of felonies in a maximum-security prison. In addition to improved recidivism rates (the degree of which has been debated), personality tests before and after these interventions showed positive changes.  In the 1970s, Weil worked in the music industry, as CEO at Intermedia Recording Corporation and senior vice president of Intermedia Systems Corporation, a publicly held multi-media production firm. Two of his numerous music projects were the 1973 debut album, “Aerosmith,” and the 1978 recording of the song “Jet Airliner,” by the Steve Miller Band, which hit both gold and platinum for sales exceeding two million. The bulk of Weil’s life work sits at the intersection of his formative influences of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, bringing others to what he calls a Portal to Presence — a simple doorway that effortlessly opens to an expansive awareness. He has conducted personal growth seminars in leadership, creativity, emotional intelligence and wellness for executives and their organizations throughout the world. He is certified in the HeartMath Inner Quality Management Program, Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT), and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and is a Master Values Mentor of the Minessence Group. In 2001, he was personally invited by Eckhart Tolle, bestselling author of The Power of Now, to teach and facilitate the Practice of Presence. An important Portal to Presence for Weil has been the internal arts of Tai Chi and Qigong. Fifty years ago, Weil began his studies in New York City in the Yang Style Cheng Man-Ching lineage, followed by the Dong Family Yang style and Chen Beijing style lineages. He deepened his experience of Qigong by traveling the world co-teaching with Master Mantak Chia, a renowned teacher of Taoist Inner Alchemy who, Weil recounts, “would scribble down Qigong practices like the microcosmic orbit onto scraps of paper,” with Weil scrambling to pick them up and study them. In 1996, Weil became the founding chairman of the National Qigong Association and has studied or taught with direct lineage holders in the wisdom traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita, and The Gurdjieff Work.  Please join David Bonbright and Cynthia Li in conversation with this quintessential student of life and consciousness. 

“A ‘Portal to Presence’ is exactly what it says,” writes Gunther Weil, “a simple doorway that points to the realm of Consciousness or Presence. It would be stretching the meaning of the word 'technique' or 'method' to apply it to this idea. One just walks through the portal as one becomes aware of its existence…. The portal opens, and Presence arises spontaneously.” Weil is a Harvard-trained psychologist, executive coach, and lifelong student of consciousness. His diverse and colorful life includes working as a music business executive and being instrumental in the production of Aerosmith’s first album; teaching at Brandeis University, recruited and mentored by psychologist Abraham Maslow; coaching international executives in leadership, wellness, organizational development, and conflict resolution in the private and public sectors; studying and teaching Tai Chi and becoming a recognized master teacher of Qigong; and perhaps most famously, pioneering the mass consciousness movement that began in the 1960s with Dr. Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (a.k.a., Ram Dass), Ralph Metzner and others that popularized the field of psychedelic therapies.  As a young child, Weil and his parents fled the Holocaust “on one of the last boats leaving for America.” They settled in Nebraska, then Milwaukee, with psychology, philosophy, and classical music infusing their family culture. His father was an internationally regarded psychologist and pioneering researcher in Europe on synesthesia, the phenomenon of crossed senses, like smelling colors or seeing music. Education was of paramount importance; it was his father’s academic work that was their ticket to the US. Weil went on to study psychology and philosophy at Kenyon College, receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study in Norway. While there, he often visited Paris in his free time, inspired by the expat beatniks, literati, and jazz musicians who preceded the hippie generation. Upon returning to the States, he earned his doctorate in psychology at Harvard University. His assigned faculty advisor was a prominent researcher in the field of personality — Dr. Timothy Leary. Among their research studies was the Concord Prison Experiment, a randomized, controlled study designed to evaluate whether psilocybin mushrooms, combined with psychotherapy, could have a healing effect on young adults convicted of felonies in a maximum-security prison. In addition to improved recidivism rates (the degree of which has been debated), personality tests before and after these interventions showed positive changes.  In the 1970s, Weil worked in the music industry, as CEO at Intermedia Recording Corporation and senior vice president of Intermedia Systems Corporation, a publicly held multi-media production firm. Two of his numerous music projects were the 1973 debut album, “Aerosmith,” and the 1978 recording of the song “Jet Airliner,” by the Steve Miller Band, which hit both gold and platinum for sales exceeding two million. The bulk of Weil’s life work sits at the intersection of his formative influences of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, bringing others to what he calls a Portal to Presence — a simple doorway that effortlessly opens to an expansive awareness. He has conducted personal growth seminars in leadership, creativity, emotional intelligence and wellness for executives and their organizations throughout the world. He is certified in the HeartMath Inner Quality Management Program, Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT), and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and is a Master Values Mentor of the Minessence Group. In 2001, he was personally invited by Eckhart Tolle, bestselling author of The Power of Now, to teach and facilitate the Practice of Presence. An important Portal to Presence for Weil has been the internal arts of Tai Chi and Qigong. Fifty years ago, Weil began his studies in New York City in the Yang Style Cheng Man-Ching lineage, followed by the Dong Family Yang style and Chen Beijing style lineages. He deepened his experience of Qigong by traveling the world co-teaching with Master Mantak Chia, a renowned teacher of Taoist Inner Alchemy who, Weil recounts, “would scribble down Qigong practices like the microcosmic orbit onto scraps of paper,” with Weil scrambling to pick them up and study them. In 1996, Weil became the founding chairman of the National Qigong Association and has studied or taught with direct lineage holders in the wisdom traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita, and The Gurdjieff Work.  Please join David Bonbright and Cynthia Li in conversation with this quintessential student of life and consciousness. 

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

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.

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

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.

 Sure, it helps a lot to make big money.  Such miracle cures for reversing aging have existed for 1000 years and never have worked out…When we age then our cells will get replaced more and more by cells that are not identical and so not functioning so well… That causes a damage in our organs… The stem cells from different organs are the most important cells that can produce far more cells than other cells… If we reduce the number of stem cells, we reduce the cell growing and we increase the damage of cells…If we grow older, our stem cells are reduced…Honestly, do you think that this can be the major reason to get ill or to die? For sure not!All the life-threatening diseases can have also a young person, without a problem in his number of his stem cells. A hospital doctor told me, that even very old people can have healthier and better functioning organs than a young person…  Certainly, reduced populations of our existing stem cells are not likely to be helpful to our tissues as we live over the years and decades.We can increase naturally the number of stem cells… This I will explain later!The fact that our stem cell numbers tend to decrease with age does not necessarily mean that stem cell treatments for aging make any sense. In fact, there are a lot of problems with the idea of infusions of stem cells to fight aging. First, most clinics selling this idea simply infuse fat (or amniotic) stem cells into the bloodstream, collect their thousands of dollars from customers, and then wave a magic wand or something.There’s good evidence that those fat stem cells injected into the bloodstream mostly are gone with hours or days, certainly within weeks. They are filtered out in the lungs (one reason for worrying about pulmonary emboli or blood clots in the lungs as a side effect) or elsewhere. Many probably die from the shock of entering the bloodstream or are killed by immune cells. In short, there’s a very limited window of time that such cells could do anything helpful and the idea that during that window they could permanently help counteract aging seems like a snowball’s chance in hell. Maybe bone marrow cells would have a relatively better chance. And the bone marrow cells, we can increase with Iron Shirt III Qigong.When we eat fermented vegetables every day, we increase our stem cells up to 4 times it depends on the organ. I love my self-made Kimchi (Korean fermented vegetables), it is so healthy and taste so well. I don’t care for the Stem cells. With Qigong we increase the stem cells… That is the reason why these Qigong masters are living so long!Now, Master Mantak Chia is offering Stem cell Qigong… This Qigong was called before Iron Shirt II and III… Iron Shirt II and III and are very good, but Stem Cell Qigong sounds much better?  I make my Iron Shirt II combined with Iron Shirt III (I call it different in my book, because the name Iron Shirt sounds so bad) even before I knew that it produces more Stem Cells… My Video: Does a Stem cell cure help? https://youtu.be/VgtLq_al-F0My Audio: https://rudizimmerer.s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/Does+a+Stem+cell+cure+help.mp3Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection or reload the browserDisable in this text fieldEditEdit in GingerEdit in Ginger×

BUILD YOUR DREAM BUSINESS IN 8 WEEKS: https://londonreal.tv/biz/ 2021 SUMMIT TICKETS: https://londonreal.tv/summit/ NEW MASTERCLASS EACH WEEK: http://londonreal.tv/masterclass-yt LATEST EPISODE: https://londonreal.link/latest The Multi Orgasmic Man Mantak Chia is a Taoist Master. He is best known for his teaching Taoist practices under the names of Healing Tao, Tao Yoga, Universal Healing Tao System and Chi Kung. Throughout decades of teaching, he has run numerous workshops, written a series of books, and published a number of training videos. Mantak Chia is a Taoist Master. He is best known for his teaching Taoist practices under the names of Healing Tao, Tao Yoga, Universal Healing Tao System and Chi Kung. Throughout decades of teaching, he has run numerous workshops, written a series of books, and published a number of training videos. For this reason, some people call him an author, a teacher or a healer. He views himself primarily as a teacher, who helps his students empower themselves through cultivation of their chi.

In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, Dave Asprey talked with Master Mantak Chia about sexual energy. Dave has tested out the Taoist teachings of male ejaculation versus orgasm and discovered that they work. During this interview, he gets answers to serious questions about why.Master Chia is the director of the Tao Garden Health Spa and the Universal Healing Tao training center in northern Thailand and a world-renowned expert on Sexual Tao. Master Chia has authored more than 60 books, including Taoist Foreplay, Sexual Reflexology: Activating the Taoist Points of Love, and the bestselling The Multi-Orgasmic Man. A student of several Taoist masters, Master Chia founded the Healing Tao System in North America more than 40 years ago and developed it worldwide as European Tao Yoga and Universal Healing Tao. He tours the globe giving workshops and lectures and has taught tens of thousands of students and instructors.Taoism considers sex to be a sacred act. “Sacred because sexual energy is the reunion of two major forces, love and sex,” says Master Chia. In this how-to episode, you’ll learn how to lengthen a penis and strengthen a vagina. You’ll also learn how to harness sexual energy to increase your creative power and even extend your lifespan.“If you can control ejaculation, you can control so many things,” Master Chia says. “Fewer ejaculations mean more energy for your body and brain. And sexual energy makes you smarter.”Master Chia and Dave also get further into Taoist practices like food, movement, breathing and mindfulness – and how they affect your life force. The ultimate key to all of this? “The primordial light, because light is everything,” says Master Chia. Listen on to find out more.Enjoy the show! And get more resources at https://blog.daveasprey.com/category/podcasts/

In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, Dave Asprey talked with Master Mantak Chia about sexual energy. Dave has tested out the Taoist teachings of male ejaculation versus orgasm and discovered that they work. During this interview, he gets answers to serious questions about why.Master Chia is the director of the Tao Garden Health Spa and the Universal Healing Tao training center in northern Thailand and a world-renowned expert on Sexual Tao. Master Chia has authored more than 60 books, including Taoist Foreplay, Sexual Reflexology: Activating the Taoist Points of Love, and the bestselling The Multi-Orgasmic Man. A student of several Taoist masters, Master Chia founded the Healing Tao System in North America more than 40 years ago and developed it worldwide as European Tao Yoga and Universal Healing Tao. He tours the globe giving workshops and lectures and has taught tens of thousands of students and instructors.Taoism considers sex to be a sacred act. “Sacred because sexual energy is the reunion of two major forces, love and sex,” says Master Chia. In this how-to episode, you’ll learn how to lengthen a penis and strengthen a vagina. You’ll also learn how to harness sexual energy to increase your creative power and even extend your lifespan.“If you can control ejaculation, you can control so many things,” Master Chia says. “Fewer ejaculations mean more energy for your body and brain. And sexual energy makes you smarter.”Master Chia and Dave also get further into Taoist practices like food, movement, breathing and mindfulness – and how they affect your life force. The ultimate key to all of this? “The primordial light, because light is everything,” says Master Chia. Listen on to find out more.Enjoy the show! And get more resources at https://blog.daveasprey.com/category/podcasts/

“When your mind can calm, you have more energy, and you have more creating power.” Episode Summary: Often this modern life leaves us depleted of energy and feeling very tired. Listen to this episode as Master Mantak Chia, author of “The Multi-Orgasmic Man” and creator of the Healing Tao, reveals the secrets to having more vitality, transforming the sexual energy into life force and cultivating a calmness of the spirit. Some Questions I Ask: How did your teaching path begin? Were you always spiritual? What is the secret to capturing the light? Do you have to be celibate to transform sexual energy? How does one begin to cultivate sexual energy? In This Episode You Will Learn: Steps to transforming sexual energy into spiritual energy. The key reason some people don’t feel the chi energy inside of them  How you can unblock and cultivate your ability to increase your chi energy. How to activate your third eye. How to separate orgasm from ejaculation.  The formula to transform sexual energy.

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

Master Mantak Chia is nothing short of Legendary Status. Master chia is a world famous author, teacher he is the creator of a number of different yoga systems and centers. He is the only person in the world to be named qigong teacher of the year twice. He is listed as one of the 100 most influential spiritual leaders in the world today. He has over 45 years of teaching experience and in that time he has published over 75 books on daoist practices which have sold millions of copies worldwide.

In this Episode of Qi With Eli I speak with Grand Master Mantak Chia about his favorite practices. This was recorded during a Five-Day workshop I attended in Foster City, CA where Mantak taught a plethora of practices. He has an amazing wealth of knowledge and is a powerful teacher that understands how to bring Qi Gong to life and fill your life with energy and healing! Enjoy this very special episode!

In this Episode of Qi With Eli I speak with Grand Master Mantak Chia about his favorite practices. This was recorded during a Five-Day workshop I attended in Foster City, CA where Mantak taught a plethora of practices. He has an amazing wealth of knowledge and is a powerful teacher that understands how to bring Qi Gong to life and fill your life with energy and healing! Enjoy this very special episode!

Hva er den andre hjernen? Hvordan kan du få mer energi i hverdagen? I denne episoden snakker jeg med den verdenskjente Taoist masteren Mantak Chia! Han er 75 år, forfatter av 57 bøker og reiser fortsatt verden rundt med sine kurs og seminarer. Vi er innom: Hva er Chi (energi) og hvordan kan vi få mer av den Den andre hjernen og hvordan kan du aktivere og regulere den Smile til indre organer Negativ energi Hjerne orgasme? Seksuell energi Hvordan vi påvirkes av havet Alle organer har sin egen lyd Teknikk for å bli kvitt angst/uro og negative følelser Workshop i Danmark 5 april

Natalie is a Tantra & Embodiment Teacher who has been studying for over 20 years. She has travelled all over the world, working with major Tantra influencers, who include Michaela Boehm, Layla Martin & Master Mantak Chia. She is able to weave into her a work a combination of traditional and neo Tantra along with an embodiment practice as a Teacher of Transpersonal Counselling, sacred sexuality & ritual. Natalie has a deep desire to support women to come home deeply to themselves. To remember who we are in their true nature and connect deeply back to their innate magic.Today Natalie shares why women should invest in a jade egg, the healing benefits from a sexual, physical, emotional and energetic perspective. This comes from an ancient Taoist practice for women, helping them to connect to their body through the jade egg, allowing you to access your temple so you can have a deeper relationship with your anatomy and unlock the mystery and wisdom YOU hold in the vagina. Jade Egg has been known to heal sexual or emotional trauma if guided by a qualified Jade Egg Teacher. We talk about sexual boundaries, holding our own as women, not holding back from using our voice, knowing when is a hell YES or f#ck NO! The little girl in us who wasn’t taught to access our voice & how this plays out in relationships. How we can lose our power by not speaking our truth and being in our full expression. This is such a powerful conversation - especially for mothers who want to educate their daughter/s around sacred sexuality.Ohhhh so much great nuggets in this interview with my gifted and wise friend. We cover so much that I need to do a part 2. You can contact or follow Natalie:www.theritualwoman.comwww.instagram.com/the_ritual_woman

Master Mantak Chia is Taoist Master, author, and healer who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. Watch the FULL EPISODE here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia/

Master Mantak Chia is Taoist Master, author, and healer who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. Watch the FULL EPISODE here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia/

Taoism? The Way? All sorts of esoteric references exist that do a bad job of describing the origin and justification for this system of self mastery, medicine and universal understanding. In this amazing deep dive with Master Mantak Chia we delve into the beautifully simple yet profound philosophy of Taoism. The great man has taught over 500,000 people about Taoism since he first went to New York over 40 years ago, espousing the principles of the 5 element system, and helping countless people engage with their physiology, their health and the world around them through this profound healing modality. This was such an amazing opportunity, and Master Chia was really on fire, describing colossal and mind bending concepts such as Qi/Chi, the life force and universal energy systems with such simple and effective metaphors that we were allowed to gain superb insight into this ancient eastern philosophy, and glean practical advice from this Taoist Master on many aspects of wellness including the inner smile to support organ health and qi flow, and some great insight into capturing and enhancing sexual energy for men and women alike. This one was a real treat for us, we sincerely hope you enjoy the journey :)    

Today’s podcast – Dr. Angela Longo goes deeper in to using the principals of quantum theory to help patients find and reprogram negative self sabotaging beliefs and behaviors. Sarina LOVES this wacky, brilliant doctor and enjoys a chat with her in a village near Master Mantak Chia’s Tao Garden. http://angelalongo.com, https://www.sarinastone.com PRODUCT PAGE: https://sarinastone.com/science-of-getting-rich.html

Today’s podcast – Dr. Angela Longo explains the world of quantum physics and it’s relationship to Taoist Medical QiGong. Sarina LOVES this wacky, brilliant doctor and enjoys a chat with her in a village near Master Mantak Chia’s Tao Garden. http://angelalongo.com, https://www.sarinastone.com Learn More:  Books about QiGong and the Quantum Universe

Today’s podcast – Grandmaster Mantak Chia shares where he spent 2017 and what he taught students from around the world.  So many countries, so much QiGong to share.  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, https://www.sarinastone.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the human brain and its ability to utilize extra sensory perceptions. Nothing mystical here, just good old Medical QiGong and ESP. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about Medical QiGong Pulsing. Everything has a pulse, listen as Tevia explains what these pulses tell us about our health and how to use them for diagnosis. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the need for relaxation. Taoists and Medical QiGong practitioners consider relaxation key to longevity. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about using Medical QiGong to improve spinal health, the aging process and mental health. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the dangers of worry, anxiety and rumination-the negative emotions associated with the Spleen and Pancreas in Chinese Medicine and Medical QiGong. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the power of the human heart and the Qi of love. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s and learn how your heart is truly the Master Organ. Would you like to learn how to practice Medical QiGong? Start with the Inner Smile Practice taught by Sarina.  https://sarinastone.com/inner-smile.html For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the emotions Depression and Grief and how Medical QiGong identifies and balances its debilitating effects. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. Would you like to learn how to practice Medical QiGong? Start with the Inner Smile Practice taught by Sarina.  https://sarinastone.com/inner-smile.html For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the emotion Fear and how Medical QiGong identifies and neutralizes irrational Fear.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the emotion Anger and how Medical QiGong identifies and balances the negative effects.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://SarinaStone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com/

Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about discipline and how to grow healthy habits in a modern, western world.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://MantakChia.com For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://SarinaStone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com/

Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about Martial Arts and it’s relationship to Medical QiGong. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: White Tiger QiGong  For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com/

Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the history of Medical QiGong.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. Tevia discussed Mao Zedong, Tao Yin, Falun Gong, Baduanjin, Demystifying QiGong in relation to Medical QiGong. Download Transcript Here For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://MantakChia.com For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://SarinaStone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com/

Mantak Chia is a Taoist Master. He is best known for his teaching Taoist practices under the names of Healing Tao, Tao Yoga, Universal Healing Tao System and Chi Kung. Throughout decades of teaching, he has run numerous workshops, written a series of books, and published a number of training videos. For this reason, some people call him an author, a teacher or a healer. He views himself primarily as a teacher, who helps his students empower themselves through cultivation of their chi.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Trailer. 02:00 Brian’s thoughts on the episode. 04:50 Brian’s introduction. 05:28 World-wide teaching. 07:14 Growing up in Thailand and starting to teach in New York. 10:09 What Chi is and why you need Qigong. 12:59 The abdominal area is where you can store energy. 14.56 How our second brain affects the brain in our head. 21:02 Scientists increasingly believe in the concept of energy. 22:09 Taking care of the five major organs. 23:38 When you’ve put the organ in the right place then there are the five elements. 25:31 Simple exercises for creating fluid and energy flow. 44:23 Using your inner smile to arrive at arousal. 59:53 Whole key around sexual energy is arousal. 1:04:37 To be a great lover you have to practice on your penis and ladies practice for gate one. 1:18:36 Learn how to work with the lady, through gates one to three. 1:25:51 Lady’s exercise for gate three. 1:31:46 Love and compassion has to go together with arousal and orgasm. 1:33:01 Length of time it takes to learn these techniques. 1:36:49 Mantak’s new book EMDR and the Universal Healing Tao. 1:37:33 Where Mantak discovered all these techniques. 1:38:14 You have to put the work in to feel the benefits. 1:40:23 A non-stop world-wide teaching lifestyle. 1:42:31 Success secrets. 1:43:22 How technological progress is affecting people. 1:45:27 Progressing from the popular practice of meditation. 1:48:24 What keeps Master Chia awake at night? 1:51:17 Phone call to the 20 year Mantak Chia. 1:52:44 Best advice Mantak ever received. 1:57:01 Advice to the 20 year old watching who wants to grow up doing great things. 1:58:13 Brian’s summing up.   NOTES Master Mantak Chia website http://mantakchia.com/ Master Mantak Chia on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Master-Mantak-Chia-68129403912/ Master Mantak Chia on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantak_Chia   BOOKS: The Multi Orgasm Man https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-orgasmic-Man-Sexual-Secrets-Should/dp/072253325X The Multi Orgasm Woman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-Orgasmic-Woman-Sexual-Secrets-Should/dp/0061898074 Awakening Healing Light https://www.amazon.co.uk/Awaken-Healing-Light-Mantak-Chia/dp/0935621466 EMDR and the Universal Healing Tao https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/EMDR-Universal-Healing-Tao-Psychology-Overcoming-Emotional/1620555514 Other books by Mantak Chia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mantak-Chia/e/B000APK3LG   TOPICS DISCUSSED Qi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi Tao or Dao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao Mesentery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesentery The second brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system Yin and Yang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang Parasympathetic nervous system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasympathetic_nervous_system Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing EMDR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

Master Mantak Chia is nothing short of Legendary Status. Born in 1944 in Bangkok, Thailand, to Chinese parents, Taoist Master Mantak Chia, 73, began his life's mission in 1950 at the ripe age of 6, when Buddhist monks began teaching him how to sit “and still the mind.” He was mesmerized by the intrigue of meeting Taoist Master One Cloud Hermit, “who demonstrated extraordinary powers.” One Cloud fully initiated Chia into the ancient and for century's secretly guarded practices. This episode covers SO MUCH. The energy body, balance, how to maintain and support a healthy energetic system. We get into karma, soul destiny, love. It took us 2 years to book Master Chia and it was worth every email we sent him. You will not hear this anywhere else. GAME-CHANGING LISTEN.

Today’s show is part two with Doctor George Yu, the expert on hormones and their effect on aging, your body, brain function and longevity. Doctor Yu gives advice on what to do if you have developed man-boobs and chicken legs or, for ladies, seen your waistline disappear. For more information on Doctor George Yu, please visit:TotallyYu.com   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

On today's show, Master Mantak Chia explains why he travels the world looking for the best water to drink and the magic formula that tells each of us how much we need each day. Even Sarina was shocked at what happens if we stay dehydrated too long.   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

On today’s episode we look at hormones and their role in health and wellness. In America, more and more men are receiving testosterone therapy and an even more women are on Estrogen, progesterone, or both. Dr. George Yu tells us what to look for to see if our hormones are unbalanced and how hormones affect energy and fitness. For more information on Doctor George Yu, please visit:TotallyYu.com   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com  

On today’s episode, Master Mantak Chia talks about stress. Some people say it has no effect on our health and wellness. Others say it has devastating effects on the immune, hormone and glandular systems, energy, and relationships. Master Chia is an expert on the subject and will explain why stress is a nasty killer.   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

Today’s episode is part two of White Tiger QiGong School founder, Tevia Feng’s interview. Tevia takes the woo-woo out of QiGong and tells us how western medicine explains how correct the ancient masters were about health, wellness, meditation and energy. Furthermore, he shows us that anyone can do simple QiGong and reap immediate anti-aging and fitness benefits. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: WhiteTigerQiGong.com   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! On today’s episode we talk about love… not from a purely romantic perspective, but from a more scientific point of view.  Meditation expert, Tao Master Mantak Chia explains how the energy of love can literally improve your level of health and wellness.  Your relationship with your sweetheart could be one of the most powerful fitness and anti-aging tools available!   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

On today’s episode, White Tiger QiGong School founder, Tevia Feng demystifies meditation, energy, fitness, martial arts and medical QiGong. The White Tiger QiGong School works with professional athletes, CEO’s, professional dancers, bankers, and people with illnesses. Every type of person, young and old, can use ancient anti-aging secrets to feel great and stay sharp. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit:WhiteTigerQiGong.com   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

On today’s episode, an amazing man and the star of our podcast, Tao Master Mantak Chia, begins to demystify ancient Chinese secrets of health and longevity. An award winning Health and Wellness, QiGong and Meditation expert, he is the founder of the Universal Healing Tao QiGong school and has certified over 3000 QiGong Meditation instructors world wide. Get to know this unusual man in this uncensored series of podcasts.   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: www.MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com    

On today’s episode, we hear from a regular guy in Australia who used Master Mantak Chia’s principals to improve his health, wellness, business and relationships through meditation. Now, Adam Gokman is the Universal Healing Tao coordinator for the country of Australia and a very happy man.   For more info about QiGong instruction in Australia, please visit:UniversalHealingTaoAustralia.com   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

On today’s episode, Master Mantak Chia goes deep into the body with advice about simple movements required to maintain health and wellness. Iron Shirt QiGong, Tai Chi and a bit of yoga are the ultimate anti-aging tonics.   For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: MantakChia.com   For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: SarinaStone.com   For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: Universal-Tao.com

This episode is our sexiest yet! We learn some professional techniques to deliver a world class vaginal massage. Dive deep into our discussion about squirting G-spot orgasms and erotic hypnosis. Our guest Dr Leonard McGill approaches these hot topics and more in a direct and educational manner. Dr. Leonard McGill (referred to as "Dr. Leonard" by his students and clients) is Founder and Director of EnergySexuality.com and the Energy Sexuality Insider YouTube Channel. A former Contributing Editor to GQ magazine, reviews of his books have appeared in People Magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Dr. Leonard is a resident Orgasmic Pulse practitioner at Master Mantak Chia’s world-famous Tao Garden Health Spa and Resort in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Connect with Dr. Leonard McGill: energysexuality.com drleonardmcgill@gmail.com Connect with Rachel Alcyone: http://www.rachelalcyone.com/ http://rachelalcyone.com/a/vip-application/ https://www.facebook.com/RachelAlcyone/?fref=ts Connect with Daniel Alcyone: email = ecstaticexistence@gmail.com http://ecstaticexistence.com/ http://ecstaticexistence.com/self-discovery/ https://www.facebook.com/EcstaticExistence/ Contribute to our Patreon campaign and show support for the conscious content we deliver: https://www.patreon.com/ecstaticexistence Be well beautiful souls!

Exclusive Interview with Taoist Master Mantak Chia Taoist Master, Mantak Chia, is an inspiring teacher, founder of The Healing Tao system, and author of over twenty books including such best-sellers as Healing Love, Taoist Secrets of Love, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, Inner Structure of tai Chi, Awaken healing Light, Multi-Orgasmic Man, Multi-Orgasmic Couple, Sexual reflexology, Taoist Ways to transform Stress into Vitality, Chi Nei Tsang: organs Energy Massage and COSMIC HEALING. A Google search under his name yields more than 82,000 results! During his visit to London, which focused on Chinese Astrology; Master Mantak Chia found time away from his busy schedule to share his wit and wisdom in this exclusive (if not first podcast interview) interview; to which I am very grateful. In this podcast Mantak Chia candidly discusses various aspects of his work, experiences, and insights into Taoist practices, also explaining how Chinese Astrological offer insight into the direct relationship between our body organs and the universe. secrets of longevity and immortality, how the abdomen has a brain, as well as the heart; visits to sacred sites among other topics were also discussed. This interview is about Mantak Chia the man, as well as the Taoist master.