Podcasts about southern school

Joaquín Torres-García was Uruguayan-born artist who wanted to bring Constructivism and Modernism to Latin America, and worked for much of his life promoting the idea that Latin-American voices should be part of the Modernist art movement. Research: · Bollar, Gorki. “Primitive Paintings: Connections to Realism and Constructivism.” Leonardo, vol. 17, no. 1, 1984, pp. 17–19. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1574851 · Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Joaquín Torres-García". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Aug. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Torres-Garcia · Duncan, Barbara. “Exploring New Horizons in Latin American Contemporary Art.” Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America. Dec. 30, 2001. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/exploring-new-horizons-in-latin-american-contemporary-art/ · Grimson, Karen. “JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCÍA’S CREATIVE PARADOX.” INTI, no. 83/84, 2016, pp. 261–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26309985 · Jimenez, Maya, Dr. “Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Inverted America.” Smart History. Aug. 9, 2015. https://smarthistory.org/Torres-Garcia-inverted-america/ · “Joaquín Torres-García.” Art Collection. https://artcollection.io/artist/5ce4801004726600179036b4#:~:text=He%20worked%20on%20the%20first,la%20Sagrada%20Familia%20in%20Barcelona. · “Joaquín Torres García.” Centro Cultura Regoleta. http://cvaa.com.ar/04ingles/04biografias_en/torres_garcia_en.php · “Joaquín Torres-García.” Guggenheim. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/joaquin-Torres-Garcia · “Joaquin Torres Garcia (1874-1949).” National Museum of Visual Art. https://mnav.gub.uy/cms.php?a=4 · “Joaquín Torres-García.” National Gallery of Art. https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2518.html · “Joaquín Torres-García.” Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary. https://hutchinsonmodern.com/artists/40-joaquin-Torres-Garcia/biography/Medina, Alvaro. “Torres-García and the Southern School.” ArtNexus. https://www.artnexus.com/en/magazines/article-magazine-artnexus/5ebf04481ae60a0ea57baa18/3/Torres-Garcia-and-the-southern-school · Museo Torres Garcia. “bio.” https://www.torresgarcia.org.uy/bio.php · ROMMENS, AARNOUD. “Latin American Abstraction: Upending Joaquín Torres-García’s Inverted Map.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 51, no. 2, 2018, pp. 35–58. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/90021965 · Torres, Celia de. “Constructing Abstraction with Wood: Joaquín Torres-García.” Literal. Issue 18. April 18, 2012. https://literalmagazine.com/constructing-abstraction-with-wood-joaquin-Torres-Garcia/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you would like to support the Homeopathy Hangout Podcast, please consider making a donation by visiting www.EugenieKruger.com and click the DONATE button at the top of the site. Every donation about $10 will receive a shout-out on a future episode.   Ep 76: Homeopathic Support for Veterans with Gabby Arthur Gabby Arthur served in the British Army for eight years during which time she completed two operational tours (Kosovo and Iraq) before leaving in 2005. For the last nine years she has worked in military veteran mental health initially for Combat Stress, a charity providing mental health services for military veterans, and most recently for the NHS. Gabby is a fully qualified homeopath, having recently graduated from the Southern School of Homeopathy where she focused her studies on using homeopathy to support mental health and specifically trauma-related mental health and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). She is now continuing this work, bringing together her personal and professional experience as she grows her homeopathic practice. To find out more about Gabby's project or her practice, please feel free to email her at gabby.homeopathy@gmail.com. Gabby's homeopathic video link is at https://f.io/h9-OJoPT.   To donate to Homeopathy UK, visit their website https://homeopathy-uk.org/and click on ‘Donate', or call 0203 640 5903.

In today's episode Tatiana Dawn interviews Sue Evans: a respected herbalist, teacher and herbal historian on Wurrundjeri country in Melbourne. Sue has an incredible birds eye view on Australian herbalism over the past almost 50 years of her education and career, and when she did her PHD, she really dived into the herbal history of Australia since European settlement, and some of the challenges that herbalists have faced over this time. Sue herself has a rich history of herbal education, starting with training at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists in the UK. In Australia, Sue taught teaching at the Southern School of Natural Therapies. Later, she moved to Southern Cross University in Lismore, where she was part of the first university course in naturopathy in Australia. After nearly 20 years there, she returned to Melbourne and continued teaching online with the University of Tasmania. Throughout her career, Sue practiced herbal medicine for about 25 years, was part of the first integrative clinic in Melbourne, and was involved in the establishment of the Victorian Herbalists Association during a politically charged time when the Therapeutic Goods Act was introduced. Sue has been a huge advocate for herbalists rights, and also for the rights of the plants, promoting a more sustainable way of managing the industry that has emerged with the import of herbs for clinical practice. In this interview we explore the repeating patterns through history, of herbalists being oppressed by the government and allopathic medical industry. We discuss what history has been lost or misplaced, and Sue shares her wisdom that we need only to look to the landscape and the plants to find the history written. Sue also shares her story of being at the first ever meeting of the American Herbalist Guild, and how a previous conversation with Micheal Tierra catalyzed the AHG to form. We actually cover so much in this interview, and yet it feels like the tip of the iceberg. I really loved this chat with a herbal elder who I respect so much, and I hope that you enjoy. Find Sue Evans on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063522235865 Download Sue's thesis: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37358662_Challenge_Tension_and_Possibility_An_Exploration_into_Contemporary_Western_Herbal_Medicine_in_Australia The Jacka Foundation: https://jackafoundation.org.au/ A great intervew by American Botanical Council in 2019: https://sustainableherbsprogram.org/sue_evans/ **THE ELDER TREE TROVE PATREON COMMUNITY** You can join our Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and gain a deeper connection to our podcast. Pay only $2 per week to have access to bonus and often exclusive resources and opportunities- plus support the Elder tree at the same time!  To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.theeldertree.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and donate to the crowdfunding campaign ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also follow The Elder Tree on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sign up to the newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Find out more about this podcast and the presenters ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠asktheeldertree@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The intro and outro song is "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sing for the Earth⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins.  You can find Chad's music ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The Northern School Fires Shots At The Southern School by Ed Lane

Bock brings up how dominant the southern schools have been and says Nebraska has an uphill battle.

  Support the Homeopathy Hangout podcast at https://patron.podbean.com/homeopathyhangout or visit www.eugeniekruger.com   Ep 76: Homeopathic Support for Veterans with Gabby Arthur Gabby Arthur served in the British Army for eight years during which time she completed two operational tours (Kosovo and Iraq) before leaving in 2005. For the last nine years she has worked in military veteran mental health initially for Combat Stress, a charity providing mental health services for military veterans, and most recently for the NHS. Gabby is a fully qualified homeopath, having recently graduated from the Southern School of Homeopathy where she focused her studies on using homeopathy to support mental health and specifically trauma-related mental health and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). She is now continuing this work, bringing together her personal and professional experience as she grows her homeopathic practice. To find out more about Gabby's project or her practice, please feel free to email her at gabby.homeopathy@gmail.com. Gabby's homeopathic video link is at https://f.io/h9-OJoPT.   To donate to Homeopathy UK, visit their website https://homeopathy-uk.org/and click on ‘Donate', or call 0203 640 5903.

DPS Arts presents the 2021 All-County High School Chorus Concert. The event took place on November 19, 2021, at Southern School of Energy and Sustainability. Dr. Jose Rivera served as the clinician for the event. Enjoy the concert! | A video version of the event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nODuI9B-GAM --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wearedps/message

https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/22123547/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-16-November-All-Day-Sitting.mp3 Norman gives his sixteenth and final talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series on the Denkoroku to the November All Day Sitting.  In the Platform Sutra Hi-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen.  In this series Norman references Red Pine: "The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng."  

Norman gives his fifteenth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series on the Denkoroku to the Dharma Seminar. In the Platform Sutra Hi-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen.  In this series Norman references Red Pine: "The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng." https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/19145737/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-15-Denkoroku.mp3

In this episode of the Fine Art Photography Podcast, we discuss photographer W.S. Lively, who started the second photography school ever in the United States -- and he did it in a small Tennessee town -- and it was successful! But he gained notoriety for making three 60-inch prints from glass-plate negatives - the first time it had ever been done. Sources and Links Facebook: W.S.Lively & The Southern School of Photography https://www.facebook.com/southernschoolofphotography/photos Florence Rice at Southern School of Photography https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/image/I0000kbRBCOAaDSo Florence Rice, Photo of Watkins Glen, NY https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Florence-Harry-Rice-Photos-Galeton-Ulysses-PA-Nyack-NY/G0000aNQd8rnSXSU/I0000fRbG_E9pN2w Florence Rice, Photographs https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/gallery/Florence-Harry-Rice-Photos-Galeton-Ulysses-PA-Nyack-NY/G0000aNQd8rnSXSU Historical Marker Database https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=60404 Photo-Era: The American Journal of Photography, page 93, January 1913 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Photo_Era_Magazine_the_American_Journal/IcM6AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=did+african+american+students+attend+the+southern+school+of+photography+in+McMinnville%3F&pg=PA94&printsec=frontcover Tennessee Crossroads feature of the Southern Museum and Galleries https://youtu.be/1unPgFLV2cU --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/keith-dotson/support

In this episode of the Fine Art Photography Podcast, we discuss photographer W.S. Lively, who started the second photography school ever in the United States -- and he did it in a small Tennessee town -- and it was successful! But he gained notoriety for making three 60-inch prints from glass-plate negatives - the first time it had ever been done. Sources and Links Facebook: W.S.Lively & The Southern School of Photography https://www.facebook.com/southernschoolofphotography/photos Florence Rice at Southern School of Photography https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/image/I0000kbRBCOAaDSo Florence Rice, Photo of Watkins Glen, NY https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Florence-Harry-Rice-Photos-Galeton-Ulysses-PA-Nyack-NY/G0000aNQd8rnSXSU/I0000fRbG_E9pN2w Florence Rice, Photographs https://bobgathany.photoshelter.com/gallery/Florence-Harry-Rice-Photos-Galeton-Ulysses-PA-Nyack-NY/G0000aNQd8rnSXSU Historical Marker Database https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=60404 Photo-Era: The American Journal of Photography, page 93, January 1913 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Photo_Era_Magazine_the_American_Journal/IcM6AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=did+african+american+students+attend+the+southern+school+of+photography+in+McMinnville%3F&pg=PA94&printsec=frontcover Tennessee Crossroads feature of the Southern Museum and Galleries https://youtu.be/1unPgFLV2cU --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/keith-dotson/support

Norman gives his fourteenth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar.  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/11111002/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-14.mp3

Shuso Eva Bovenzi gives the thirteenth talk (Shuso talk 3) of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar.  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng.   https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/04211746/PLatform-Sutra-2021-Talk-13-Shuso-Talk-3.mp3

Norman gives his eleventh talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to EDZ 2021 Sesshin (Talk 3).  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/30125204/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-11-Sesshin-Talk-4.mp3

Norman gives his twelfth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to EDZ 2021 Sesshin (Talk 3).  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/30125805/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-12-Sesshin-Talk-5.mp3

Norman gives his tenth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to EDZ 2021 Sesshin (Talk 3).  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/29052630/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-10-Sesshin-talk-3.mp3

Norman gives his ninth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the EDZ 2021 Sesshin (talk 2 ).  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/27171043/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-9-Sesshin-talk-2.mp3

Norman gives his eighth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the EDZ 2021 Sesshin (talk 1).  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/27170256/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-8-Sesshin-Talk-1.mp3  

Extensive recordof Master Dogen's Zen mindand still not enough* * *In the introduction to Dogen's Extensive Record, Eihei Koroku, my copy a gift from Shohaku Okurmura, who collaborated in translating with the American Zen Priest Taigen Dan Leighton, Leighton reminds us that “…Dogen's intent is not to present doctrines of philosophical positions, but to encourage deepening religious practice.” By which, of course Master Dogen means primarily zazen, but also to study these teachings from Buddhism thoroughly in practice, reflecting upon the more obscure or arcane lessons from Buddha on down through the Chinese masters in light of our own experience on the cushion. With the caveat that we are not to assume that a cursory or superficial examination of that experience is dependable. We have to sit still enough, for long enough, for any insight to transpire. How still is still enough? And how long is long enough? Only you can know for sure. If there is any doubt about this in your mind, it is not enough. Doubt itself has to sharpen into Great Doubt, it is said.Shortly afterwards, in the same section, “Using Eihei Koroku as a Practice Tool,” after pointing out that practically 100% of Dogen's teachings are oriented to the practice of zazen, he quotes Bob Dylan as reflecting the same spirit of inquiry in song: “A question in your nerves is lit, yet you know that there is no answer fit to satisfy, ensure you not to quit, to keep it in your mind and not forget, that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to.” Quintessentially American, the creativity in Dylan is more than matched by that of Dogen, in inspiring this essentially scientific, and yet poetic, approach to Zen.Owing to the exhaustive and extensive, encyclopedic nature of this collection of Dogen's teachings, 645 pages not including appendices, with most of the recorded live teachings being brief enough to fit more than one to a page, it is not possible to deal with in any comprehensive fashion here. Instead, I will offer the tiniest tip of the iceberg, quoting Dharma Hall Discourse number 431. This is not exactly an arbitrary choice on my part, as it is about where I am in the full re-reading of the text, cover-to-cover. This one is fairly typical in its length, as well as Master Dogen's spontaneous approach to expounding upon well-known (at that time) historical events and classical teachings from Chinese Buddhism. It also touches on what I feel is one of the most compelling events in the history of Zen Buddhism, the first meeting and exchange of the Sixth Ancestor in China, commonly referred to as Huineng, with his teacher, the Fifth Ancestor Daman Hongren. It also resonates, in my opinion, with a contemporary issue of considerable concern, friction and frustration, that of immigration. [Brackets are by the translators.] Southern Buddha Nature431. Dharma Hall DiscourseI can remember, lay practitioner Lu [later the sixth ancestor, Dajian Huineng] visited the fifth ancestor [Daman Hongren].The [fifth] ancestor asked, “Where are you from?”Lu replied, “I am from Lingnan in the south.”The ancestor asked, “What is it you are seeking?”Lu said, “I seek to become a buddha.”The ancestor said, “People from the south have no Buddha nature.”Lu said, “People have south or north; the Buddha nature does not have south or north.”The ancestor realized that this person was a vessel [of Dharma], and allowed him to enter the hall for lay postulants.Although the fifth ancestor and sixth ancestor spoke like this, I, their descendant Eiheiji, have a bit more to say. Great assembly, would you like to understand this clearly? Although [Lu] picked up a single blade of grass, he had not yet offered five flowers.The footnotes, which are another asset of this volume, are quite extensive in themselves, filling in the blanks for those readers who are not especially scholarly, such as myself. Here they explain that “Lingnan is a large section of Canton, in south China. People from Lingnan were considered provincial and ignorant.” This is where I find the resonance with the contemporary contempt, expressed in certain circles, for our neighbors to the south, in Mexico and beyond. But buddha-nature, much like human nature, cannot be consigned to only those who are like us. It's either all or nothing, no exceptions.Note that he starts by saying “I can remember,” which he does frequently. I think this may be equivalent to the traditional “Thus have I heard” introducing teachings attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha, as a way of authenticating them. Here, Dogen's memory must be of an anecdote he has studied in writing, or one that his teachers had quoted. Nowadays of course we have the more labor-intensive requirement to thoroughly and accurately attribute any quote to its proximate source, usually in print format, but more and more from online search engines and live or recorded audio-video sources, such as this podcast. The Internet has at one and the same time made this infinitely more doable, and infinitely more complex. We literally have whole libraries at our fingertips, as opposed to scrolls of rice paper.Also in Fukanzazengi, Master Dogen urges us to “…give up even the idea of becoming a buddha” when we begin zazen, after “stopping the function of your mind” to engage in judgmental discourse. Huineng's declaration that this is indeed his purpose would thus normally be taken as the unenlightened view of the novice, but he had had some definitively profound experience leading up to this meeting, when overhearing a monk reciting the Diamond Cutter Sutra, a line defining the true nature of Mind had hit him like a ton of bricks. He had made his way to Hongren's monastery to clarify the Great Matter, without having had any training in, or study of, buddha-dharma. He was said to be illiterate, at least in the context of his times, and was a relatively young man, somewhere in his mid-twenties. This also happens to be the age that our founder, Matsuoka Roshi, came to America, and my age when I met him in the 1960s in Chicago.Hongren's teasing statement that southerners have no buddha-nature is similar to what my fellow Zen students in Chicago said, when I announced that I was moving to Atlanta, in part to bring Zen to the South. They retorted, “Southerners do not do Zen!” I responded, “That's the point!” So now we are the Southern School of Sudden enlightenment, as Huineng's sect was later known. Actually, of course, the binary of sudden and gradual cannot be separated anymore than hot and cold, light and dark. We are suddenly awakened in the moment, or moment-after-moment, but it took the whole of history of the universe to get here. Lung-ya's “Those who in the past were not enlightened will now be enlightened.”Note that Hongren allowed Huineng to “enter the hall for lay postulants.” This tells us that by that time, lay practice was recognized, and perhaps “separate but equal” to that for monastics. Just as Master Dogen had respected the hierarchy in the Chinese monastery of his teacher Rujing, with himself as an outlander at the bottom of the totem pole, apparently the distinction between bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, versus lay men and women, had survived from Buddha's India down to the 600s of the common era.The “five flowers,” as another footnote informs us, “…may refer to the five houses of Ch'an that derived from Huineng's influence. But Dogen's statement implies the need to see multiplicity as well as the oneness of Buddha nature.” Again, contemporary perspectives on ideology reflected in ancient wisdom. The current term of art would be “diversity” rather than multiplicity, perhaps, but the implication is the same. The oneness is seen in the “single blade of grass,” an image that is frequently used in Zen literature to indicate the wholeness in the particular, the many reflected in the one. As Dogen says in Fukanzazengi, “The buddha-way is leaping clear of the many and the one…” The reality is that both things are true at the same time. Simultaneity takes precedence over linearity.Dogen closes with his boilerplate signoff, including a claim to be descended from the old guys whom he remembers having this run-in, and follows with a clarification that is only clarifying if you already have a clue as to what he is talking about. This amounts to the tip of the tip of the iceberg — that part that may be brushed off by the wing of an eagle flying by once a year — to steal from an old metaphor for immeasurability. I hope it has been enough to dig deeper into this early genius of Zen, the founder of our Soto practice, in Japan's medieval time. You could do worse than to at least read the Shobogenzo if you want more than cursory glimpse of Japan's greatest thinker — one who taught the art of nonthinking.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

Norman gives his seventh talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar at the October All Day Sitting.  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng.” https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/23082227/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-7.mp3  

Shuso Eva Bovenzi gives the sixth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar. In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng.” https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/14094509/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-6-Shuso-Eva-Bovenzi.mp3

Norman gives his fifth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar at the October All Day Sitting.  In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng.” https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/13082413/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-5.mp3

Norman gives his fourth talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar. In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: “The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng.” https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/08154428/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-4.mp3  

https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/30210925/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-3.mp3 Norman gives his third talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar. In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: "The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng."

Norman gives his second talk of the Platform Sutra 2021 series to the Dharma Seminar. In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen. In this series Norman references Red Pine: "The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng." https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/24205952/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-2.mp3

Norman opens the 2021 Everyday Zen Practice Period and gives his first talk of the Platform Sutra 2021. In the Platform Sutra Hui-neng (sixth patriarch) confers the formless precepts of the Southern School of Zen.  Norman will be referencing Red Pines's "The Platform Sutra:The Zen teaching of Hui-neng" throughout the series. https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/edz.assets/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/19112824/Platform-Sutra-2021-Talk-1-September-All-Day-Sitting.mp3

Mohammed Ladan popularly known as Dr. Ladan, is a Nigerian-American pharmacist who left Nigeria forty years ago to pursue his educational goals, and he is a graduate of Clark College, Atlanta (1981), Southern School of Pharmacy, and Mercer University (1983 and 1987). Upon completing his educational pursuits with doctorate degree, he worked as a registered chief pharmacist at CVS Pharmacy. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/usmankabarashow/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/usmankabarashow/support

Dr. Simon Feeney's journey along the virtuous path of classical Chinese medicine and healing has been far from ordinary. His integrity and purist approach to everything he does, has successfully set a new standard for wholesale Chinese Herbs in Australia, with the establishment of his company/clinic Empirical Health six years ago. Purity, Quality, and Potency are the principle values of Empirical Health; The first and only Australian certified organic Chinese herb wholesaler dedicated to Dao Di principles. A Physician in Classical Chinese Medicine, Acupuncturist, extensively knowledgable herbalist, and ongoing devoted scholar (20 years) of ancient medical Burmese scriptures, Simon's passion for upholding essential ancient knowledge is evident in everything he does. Like all journeys of the heart, Simon's is full of incredible stories; Stories of ancient manuscripts with cures for Leprosy, herbal preparations to treat malaria, being held at gunpoint in the name of preserving ancient teachings, and quests of translating bygone measurements for 2000-year-old formulas used in the Han Dynasty. In this potent conversation, Simon and Mason discuss the preservation of Classical Chinese medicine through lineage, the institutionalisation of TCM (where it's lacking), concocting ancient formulas, species identification when it comes to Dao Di, and the reverence for classical Chinese medicine as a complete system. Tune in for ancient knowledge and so much more.   "If that herb's not available, what are we going to do? How are we going to adapt? Chinese medicine's beautiful like that, all of a sudden new things evolve, and that's the nature of Chinese medicine. It's still evolving. But it's not evolving as the western mind thinks about evolving, in the sense of, "Right, all that stuff's behind me, I need to forge forward into the darkness. No, it's evolving based on history".   - Dr. Simon Feeney     Host and Guest discuss: Pulse diagnosis. The Han Dynasty. Chinese herbalism. Energetics of herbs. Availability of herbs. Plant identification. Administration techniques. Therapeutic alkaloid testing. Quality discernment of herbs. Dao Di (original growing region) principles The evolving nature of Chinese Medicine. Genetic testing and proper identification of herbs. The current Chinese medicine renaissance in the west. Dosage; The right dose, for the right person at the right time.   Who is Simon Feeney? Empirical Health's Director, Simon Feeney continues to pursue his lifelong passion for the study of Traditional Medicine under a Theravadin Buddhist Monk, who has been guiding his learning for the past 20 years. Simon's commitment to fusing ancient knowledge with contemporary insight inspired his formal studies in Melbourne, Australia at the Southern School of Natural Therapies, where he completed his Bachelor's Degree of Chinese Herbal Medicine and Traditional Chinese Acupuncture. Along with his studies in the classical Chinese Medicine works of the Han Dynasty (200BC) and the refined art of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture, Simon is also a trained Bowen Therapist. Having studied intensively under one of Melbourne's leading Chinese Medicine gynaecologists. He has a special interest in chronic conditions, internal medicine, sub-clinical health, and other ‘hard to treat' conditions.   For the last 20 years, Simon has been working closely with his teacher to understand a number of scriptures from Burma (now called Myanmar). These writings, dating as far back as 500 AD, largely pertain to monastic order as well as ancient medical knowledge and further underpin Simon's dedication to preserving the integrity of the ancient ways for modern application and translation. Simon has travelled extensively through Thailand and Myanmar in documenting these texts and assisting in the preservation of this essential ancient knowledge to understand, use, and appreciate in the modern world. Simon has completed an extensive post-graduate education including a specialist course in Canonical Chinese Medicine under the internationally acclaimed educator and physician Dr. Arnaud Versluys Ph.D. director of Institute of Classical East Asian Medicine (ICEAM). He is a member of the Australian Traditional Medicine Society and a registered member of the Australian Health Practitioners Registration Agency (AHPRA). His extensive knowledge as a herbalist came from him spending endless hours working through ancient texts identifying doses of various herbs, deciphering and translating those that were successfully used centuries ago into modern applications, yet have been largely lost in modern times. His growing prominence has now extended from Chinese Medicine physicians to also include a number of veterinarians who have sought out formulas for use in their animal clinics. Simon's life journey and his long-standing passion for helping people has also involved him working with a non-profit organisation and temple, that will help build a library to hold rare and ancient manuscripts.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Facebook Instagram Empirical Health Empirical Health Shop empiricalhealth.com   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: (00:01) Simon, thanks so much for joining me.   Simon Feeney: (00:03) You got it. Thanks for the invitation.   Mason: (00:04) Absolute pleasure. In the flesh no less.   Simon Feeney: (00:06) I know. First time, hey.   Mason: (00:08) Yeah.   Simon Feeney: (00:08) I don't know. Yeah.   Mason: (00:09) You're coming down from Brisbane?   Simon Feeney: (00:11) Yeah, just been up at a conference, so coming back down through here and thought I'd stop in and take up the invitation, and it all worked out beautifully.   Mason: (00:18) Yeah, getting the practitioner gang back together.   Simon Feeney: (00:20) Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's always good to be amongst some colleagues and shoot the breeze and connect after such a long time of separation, and so it's been very nice, very rewarding for everyone, I think.   Mason: (00:32) So I love your company.   Simon Feeney: (00:35) Thank you.   Mason: (00:37) Yeah, I know-   Simon Feeney: (00:38) Ditto.   Mason: (00:38) Thank you. I don't know if it's an unusual friendship or not the... I was very curious about your company when it came up, and you've established it with such authority, and I have so many friends who are acupuncturists, and they were telling me when you first came on the scene, and just how relieved they were that you were bringing Chinese herbs of this quality to Australia because you go to Chinatown, you go and pick up your cistanche, whatever, anything you kind of like, or your formulas, and you're like, "I assume they're clean and pure."   Simon Feeney: (01:21) Well, sometimes you have to pick out cigarette butts or a piece of plastic or something. That used to be what it was like, literally it was like that. I mean, when I trained with my first herbalist, he had his big display, and he was a real traditionalist so he said, "If you can't identify anything, you shouldn't be using it." So he had no names. It wasn't in alphabetical order. It was just depending on how much he used it. But it used to be that he had a bottle of, like a little container, that used to put all the bits that he found into the thing that was just rubbish.   Mason: (01:53) That's amazing.   Simon Feeney: (01:53) Yeah, because it was much less regulated back... There still is no regulation for the quality of Chinese herbs in Australia still to this day.   Mason: (02:02) This is loose.   Simon Feeney: (02:03) So we have to set our own standards.   Mason: (02:06) I mean, I guess there are... Again, it sits in a grey area. Technically, it is regulated, but because it's such an underground world and operation in business, it's not really enforced.   Simon Feeney: (02:22) No, it's not. That's right. I mean, the practise of it is, but the quality is not regulated. You've got these companies in Taiwan and in China now, but there is no official regulation for the quality, but once you start treating patients and you start wanting these herbs for, your kids are born and your wife is pregnant, then you want to have some sort of assurity that they are good quality, and that you're not doing any damage. Do no harm is the foundation of all clinical practise. That's what started the journey for me, so looking for that kind of quality.   Mason: (03:06) And I guess the most obvious one that comes up is pesticides-   Simon Feeney: (03:10) Huge [crosstalk 00:03:10].   Mason: (03:10) ... and I think everyone can relate to that in their immediate consciousness [crosstalk 00:03:15]-   Simon Feeney: (03:15) Yes.   Mason: (03:18) When I started the company I was obsessed, and so that's why I went and sourced herbs that I wanted, but then started to talk to people who, like this woman, she's pregnant. I want to give this to my mom who just had an aneurysm.   Simon Feeney: (03:32) That's right.   Mason: (03:33) All of a sudden, your level of...   Simon Feeney: (03:34) That's serious stuff.   Mason: (03:35) It's serious shit.   Simon Feeney: (03:36) Yeah, it's really... Yeah.   Mason: (03:36) Don't muck around.   Simon Feeney: (03:37) Yeah. No, you're talking about young foetuses. You're talking about the beginning of life, so you don't want to be doing any damage whatsoever, and you want to be assured, assured 100% with no doubt, that what you're doing is safe and not only effective, but primarily safe.   Mason: (03:56) One thing I'm liking though is the self-regulation that does come up because I know you've started out a couple of years ago, a few years ago, officially distributing?   Simon Feeney: (04:06) We've been distributing for about six years or so now. Yeah, yeah.   Mason: (04:11) Wow, and so what's been the uptake? Where have you guys... I guess it's because I've been tuned in to what you're doing. I've seen you grow exponentially, but was there a constant exponential growth in the beginning, or was it a mad slog going up against the big Chinese herb companies in Australia?   Simon Feeney: (04:28) Well, like you said earlier, just coming in it with authority and that sort of certainty. I was never happy with... Basically, I started because it was just in my clinic and wanted to make formulas, so I wanted to make these old ancient formulas from the Han Dynasty, so 2000 year old formulas, figuring out how to make them is a whole 'nother level. I had to work out what a liang was, what a [zhu 00:04:52], what a [fen 00:04:53], what a [zhang 00:04:53], what are all these measurements that absolutely made no sense to what I learnt at university and was completely impractical in terms of figuring out. So I had to figure all that out, but then I had to look at the herbs and figure out all that. So then we're realising that you have all these adulterations in Chinese medicine, so incorrect species identifications, quality discernment, and then safety and purity of the herbs.   Simon Feeney: (05:20) So that led me to kind of trying to find the better, better, better, better quality, and then looking for the paperwork that supported that. Some of it was there, it was kind of falsified. I found all these little things that you didn't want to find as a herbalist, you didn't want to know about, and it was like, "Well, I think I have to try to find the best I can possibly find in the world," and I asked my community internationally, the Chinese medicine community internationally, "Where's the best?" And they all pointed to this one guy in the US, Andrew Ellis. And so I contacted him and I was like, "I want to talk to you." About a year and a half later, he responded back to me on Facebook.   Mason: (06:00) Whoa!   Simon Feeney: (06:01) And then said... Yeah, and then literally I was on the phone with him that afternoon because he said, "What are you doing now?" And I was like, "Oh, man." I had a cancellation from a patient, and so I'm sitting there and all of a sudden it comes up. And then about an hour later on the phone, we started talking about all these ancient formulas, and then he said, "I'm going to Hangzhou in two weeks. Want to come?"   Mason: (06:23) Holy shit.   Simon Feeney: (06:23) And two weeks later, I was in Hangzhou meeting these, I mentioned to you earlier, these big Chinese companies and going out to farms and understanding all the testing, and the rest is history. And then I was like, "I want to bring that back to Australia," and I brought it back to Australia, and I told some of the suppliers and they got so upset with me. They were so upset with me. Some of them are not even talking to me still because I did that. So it was almost like a calling out, it's kind of like losing face for some of those people, which is a shame.   Mason: (06:51) I mean, okay, so there's a couple of things. You've gone over, and you've started going to these meetings with these herb companies that based on the demand of you going, "Hey, I want to know that there's no pesticides. I'd like this testing to be done. I want genetic testing, or proper identification."   Simon Feeney: (07:12) Yeah, yeah. The alkaloid testing and everything, that's what we want.   Mason: (07:16) I can't remember where I've read these stories, but in regards to where this is unregulated... There's an element of upregulation on what is the highest quality herb, and I remember hearing the initial stories of when [Dedao 00:07:31] became relevant, or [Daode 00:07:34], been when all the trading routes became, those roads became really tended to, and all of a sudden you're getting Schisandra berry where Schisandra berry doesn't really grow and then people going, "Hang on. This isn't the excellent Schisandra that I'm used to. Where's it come from? Oh, it's actually coming from over here now because we can grow it more," and then that person that knew what they were talking about going, "No, I want that Schisandra berry from this region and grown this way," and all of a sudden, there's this born this invisible unregulated at just the highest quality. And it's been completely driven by people like yourself, like... was it Andrew?   Simon Feeney: (08:13) Andrew Ellis, yeah. Andy Ellis, yeah.   Mason: (08:16) But it's hard to communicate to people and then you've gone over there-   Simon Feeney: (08:21) It's very complicated.   Mason: (08:22) ... and met with these huge businesses that you've gone, and then driven by Andrew's demands, then furthered by your demands are going, "No. I need the herbs at this level."   Simon Feeney: (08:31) The correct... I mean, the concept of this adulteration concept is very, very complicated, and as you mentioned, it comes all the way back to trade routes and all sorts of things. The principles of Daode are so complicated. You've got everything from completely incorrect species, like just one example is just Sheng Ma. So Sheng Ma's a herb that they use. I think in English it's like a Black Cohosh, and I think that's the English name for it. Anyway, we think about Sheng Ma and different kinds of Sheng Ma, but if you look at Sheng Ma, the actual herb, you can have something in the north called Sheng Ma and the south called Sheng Ma, but the north call that one [Ma Hua Toe 00:09:13], but in the south, they call it Sheng Ma. So, that can be one issue.   Simon Feeney: (09:19) So when I went to Thailand, for example, I went into a wholesaler, I was looking for [Her Hung Hua 00:09:25], and they're like, "Here it is," and I'm like, "No, no, no. You've got it wrong," because what I was saying was [Her Hung Wa 00:09:29]."   Simon Feeney: (09:30) It's like a special, like a flower. And then all of a sudden you realise, "No, no, no. You're using the wrong species." "No, you're not. You're using the wrong species." "But I've been using it in clinics for 10 years." "Well, I don't know, me too." "You've been using it for what purpose?" "I've been using it for this purpose." "Okay." So in some cases there's just incorrect species, so you just get a completely wrong species. In other instances you can have a different... And one thing does what it does therapeutically and the other one doesn't, and it's just been used for whatever reason, maybe it's got a mild action, but sometimes it just doesn't. It doesn't even have the marker, the therapeutic alkaloid in it, because you can measure these things now. That's the first example.   Simon Feeney: (10:11) Second examples are where you have two different species of, same gene, it's different species with exactly the same function. An example of that's suan zao ren, so suan zao ren has two different kinds of suan zao ren, [foreign language 00:10:31] and spinose. So the spinose species is a little bit more effective, but this is for insomnia and that sort of stuff. But the [foreign language 00:10:40] is being used long enough in the history of Chinese medicine therapeutically and effectively in the clinic to say, "Yeah, it's kind of suan zao ren."   Mason: (10:49) Far out.   Simon Feeney: (10:49) Right?   Mason: (10:51) Yeah.   Simon Feeney: (10:52) And then you've got others. You got like a, and don't even get me started on chai hu bupleurum sinensis. I mean, bupleurum species. There's like 50 that are in use. But in the north the bei chai hu is different from the nan chai, so the bei chai hu is very good at venting shaoyang, so getting out pathologies in the system. This kind of lingering, they call it like a lingering pathogenic factor, but it's just kind of a TCM way of seeing this. It's basically stuck, like the shaoyang imbalance, we need to regulate shaoyang. Doesn't stop the flaring from it, but that's a different herb, [wan chin 00:11:29], but the chai hu doesn't... in the sinensis species does that.   Simon Feeney: (11:35) But then the nan chai hu which is the southern chai hu, that vents and courses the liver. So if you're using those the opposite way around because they were written... It's complicated, sorry, if I get distracted.   Mason: (11:49) Go for it.   Simon Feeney: (11:50) The sinensis is used in all Shang Han Lun formulas, so the classical formulas to vent shaoyang. And in the modern one, the nan chai hu is used in Xiao Chai Hu Tang, which is a very common formula in Chinese medicine... Sorry, Xiao Yao San, to course liver chi and get rid of the stasis. When you swap those around and use them in the context of that formula, they can really cause problems. They can cause the adverse effects that you want. And people think, "Oh, it's me or it's something else." No, it's the species. And the complications of species identification is intense and when it comes to Daode the... I was talking to an indigenous guy, indigenous elder in South Australia, and I was asking about this concept. I was talking about this with him because I was talking about, oh, the way you decoct something.   Simon Feeney: (12:41) And he said, "Oh, Simon, I'm going to bring you something." And he brought me this herb and he's like, "Try it, and see what you think," and he wanted to watch me taste it. I'm tasting it and I'm like "Oh, wow. This does this." And he's like, "Oh, good. Good." And I said, "We should get more of this, and teach me how to use it in clinic and I can apply it." And he said, "Oh... " I said, "Can you grow it?" And he said, "No, no, no. You totally missed the point. You totally don't understand. This is only therapeutically effective if it is on the north side of the river on a south-facing slope. If it's on the other side of the river, it doesn't have any function." So that's a whole 'nother level. So now we're talking about, this can actually be the correct species in the correct area, but it comes back to these really deep principles of Daode.   Mason: (13:27) So I always try to get to the crux of why this comes about. Why we get all these problems and I can see, first of all, blaring the obvious is commercialization, extreme commercialization, taking away from the nature based element of this philosophy.   Simon Feeney: (13:41) Yeah.   Mason: (13:42) Then the other one, you're saying, you got all these people in clinic using a herb because it's in a textbook and you told that you can get this in a pulse, and that in tongue, that in a complexion, this is the formula you're going to be using. "Oh, it's not working." Well, something wrong with-   Simon Feeney: (13:55) Something is wrong with me.   Mason: (13:57) ... this person or the herb. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, me or...   Simon Feeney: (13:58) Yeah, or Chinese medicine doesn't work. I've given up, I'm going to go and... Yeah.   Mason: (14:01) Well, that's the most, I guess for me it's a funny frustrating thing because Chinese medicine is such a complete and ancient system-   Simon Feeney: (14:10) It is.   Mason: (14:10) ... that we know works.   Simon Feeney: (14:11) It is.   Mason: (14:12) Yet, the way it's been, I can see in Australia the frustration and of course when you see it get kind of very westernised. You see this belittling of Chinese medicine. If anyone comes in with cancer you need to send them to a big boy doctor, that's a western doctor because your system can't do it.   Simon Feeney: (14:29) No, we can do a lot of stuff and it's definitely the bane of my existence. I mean, it comes back to the principles of... And it goes further. You talk about, first thing is, is basically plant identification. That's step one. So we can see already how complicated that is and we haven't really even gone into the... There's a reason that it happens in the first place, like it's not necessarily... It can be because of innocence. It could just be just not only misidentification but just availability, and availability, what's the... necessity is the mother of all creations. People just need that herb, it's just not available. What are we going to do? How are we going to adapt?   Simon Feeney: (15:14) And so, Chinese medicine's beautiful like that and then all of a sudden new things evolve, and that is the nature of Chinese medicine. It is still evolving, but is evolving based on history. It's not evolving in the sense, like the western mind thinks about evolving in the sense of, "Right, all that stuff's behind me and I need to forge forward into the darkness." I learnt this from my teacher, Arnaud Versluys. Obviously, everyone says everything because they're "Who taught them before?" So I've got to acknowledge that this idea came from my teacher.   Simon Feeney: (15:49) So in the west you forge forward into the darkness with your mind like, "Right, we're going to create new things." And the eastern way of thinking is the absolute opposite. It spins around, you're looking at the foundations of what you have and how they manifest into the future, and the future's often behind you and you're sitting in this present moment. That's a completely different way of looking into the future. And so, trying to get these foundations are very, very important so you've got this... Anyway, back to the [inaudible 00:16:18] process. So plant identification is one thing and then you get to the quality discernment of something, and then you're looking at, right, it's this, this grown this time of the year, it's got pungency, it's got this, it's got that, it's got all its nature, it's got its chi, it's got its signature, it's got its flavour.   Simon Feeney: (16:33) And then you look at dosage, it's a whole 'nother thing and it's underpinning your point which is watering down and diluting the efficacy of the medicine. If you're not using the right dose for the right person at the right time, you can't blame the medicine. And then administration techniques, so different administration techniques are being completely ignored during the course of Chinese medicine. It's very interesting to look at.   Simon Feeney: (17:04) An example like qinghao, so Artemisia annua. What was the name? The lady's name? She got a nobel prize for a science in which she went back to the history of where she started testing qinghao for malaria. So she tested it as an extract or as a granule, and she tested it as a powder, she tested it as a decoction, she tested the level in which she was able to break down these malaria strains. And eventually, she kept following her way back, back, back into the history of Chinese medicine.   Simon Feeney: (17:41) She eventually went and came back to this guy called Ge Hong who was the first person to talk about qinghao, and what did he say? "Read the subtext," he says. "Do a cold water extraction." So take the thing and actually take it, wring it out in cold water and beat it 100 times, all right? And then they tested it and it just... just demolished, just demolished. I get goosebumps thinking about it, the malarial strains, and I've seen it effective on the Thai-Burmese border when we're working there, like it's just so effective. But if you don't do it, the correct administration, you don't use the correct administration technique, you're not going to get that purpose. So every step of the way, identification, quality, dosage, administration, all these steps are very... any of those that are lacking. you're going to get an inferior clinical result.   Mason: (18:33) Okay, because I love to jump in because it frustrates me when people are going and getting acupuncture. We talk about, a lot here about finding someone practising a classical Chinese medicine verse just straight out of the western taught model and it's a distinction I think is quite, I think it's quite stark. Someone like yourself is going, "Okay. I'm going to now have to go and study by myself after I've gotten trained." Tahnee, my wife, knew your name because I think podcasts you've been on talking about dose, so I really want to hear about that. But you just bring up a couple of things I think are just super significant in terms of when you're working with a practitioner.   Mason: (19:21) One, we've brought up the fact that someone could be using a herb and that's any... Of course, we can do that, but it also speaks to the quality of practitioner that we're producing that you not able to get into the mindset and question and understand and see, "Okay, I'm going to be able to chop and change and find what is that energetic of that herb that's not working in this situation, and being able to feel, and be present and be tactile." And you encapsulated that in being able to look, by looking behind you to why the history of this medicine and knowing that the answer's going to be there somewhere if you can not just forge into the darkness.   Simon Feeney: (20:03) No, we shouldn't be making... We're not making this stuff up. We are using the history of that medicine. It's the foundation of what we're doing, and I think it's very hard for, because we have huge egos in the west, like we want to be seen as this guru or we want to be seen as these things and I see it every day in Chinese medicine. You see, "Oh, he was wrong and she's wrong," like, man, we're all part of this. We're all part of this medicine and the only way we can make it better is if we work together, we unify and we basically...   Mason: (20:40) Everyone needs to listen to a little bit of Vanilla Ice, "Stop. Collaborate and listen."   Simon Feeney: (20:44) I wasn't expecting that.   Mason: (20:50) It comes up in my head so much because I can't think of the word collaborate without-   Simon Feeney: (20:54) Oh, without, oh, that's your relationship.   Mason: (20:54) ... singing that to myself.   Simon Feeney: (20:54) Yeah, yeah. Nice.   Mason: (20:57) And I mean it's the same for me in business. I'm a very reluctant businessman and watching other people come up in the medicinal mushroom space and the tonic herb space, and watching myself that perhaps at times kind of, like I just observe what my reaction to that is, especially when you see such a lack of collaboration going on. And every time I dip into the Chinese doctor world, the herbalist world, acupuncturist world, and I can see there's a lot of passion without collaboration a lot of the time. Everyone's just bickering at each other and bickering about like, "Well, this text says this and my lineage says this," and it's like, I mean...   Simon Feeney: (21:41) I mean, we do have that division. I mean, it's just human nature I guess. Politics is in everything. There's politics in an elevator. So that is an issue. It's very much like the martial arts world. This technique doesn't work better, but guess what happens, eventually you kind of get better and better and better. That's the nature of I guess competition in a sense. It was very much like that. They're all, "This guy's next to this guy." If you look at the way it was, like they had booze outside hospitals, just a guy waiting to take your pulse and write your script and get a little bit of money to feed his family. So he had to be good, or he or she had to be good.   Simon Feeney: (22:22) And they're always, "Oh... " And I guess the difference is badmouthing other people as opposed to just being good. So you can spend a lot of time, that's what Andy taught me. I said to him, "Oh, I'm so frustrated. Everyone's saying they've got this pesticide test, and said they got this and they got that. They're saying they got the same stuff as us, but I know they don't." And he's like, "Simon. Simon, just let your herbs speak for themselves."   Mason: (22:45) Great advice.   Simon Feeney: (22:45) I was like, oh, awesome advice. Awesome advice. And that's what it comes down to.   Mason: (22:51) And that's walking the path.   Simon Feeney: (22:52) It is walking... Yeah, it is. It's tough-   Mason: (22:54) I love coming across people like that.   Simon Feeney: (22:56) Yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (22:57) Because it's tough when you're getting triggered by your shadows. You get up and there's all these mirrors for yourself when you get into business, and if you can rise above, let your herbs speak for themselves, go, "There's more than enough for anyone. I'm championing the lineage. I'm championing people being well." All of a sudden-   Simon Feeney: (23:15) Yeah. You're bringing awareness to these issues and it's great. It's what we need. It's what everyone needs.   Mason: (23:21) I'm really-   Simon Feeney: (23:21) We're trying to get people well.   Mason: (23:23) I mean, that's ultimately-   Simon Feeney: (23:26) It's for our community, yeah.   Mason: (23:26) That's where I slap my palm on my head when everyone starts like, when people reporting each other, going after each other, stealing from each other, getting sneaky covert calls, and then we figure out what's going on and we're like, "Dude, just call us." We help so many young businesses and I talk to people who are bigger than me. I ask them advice all the time, and it's so nice when you can get out of that, there's that combative nature because we're trying to get everyone well.   Simon Feeney: (23:59) Yes, absolutely we are. And I think, as you must experience it, it's difficult when you're coming from your perspective, and I think you were mentioning before people are saying, "But you're not this, and you're not that."   Mason: (24:12) Not a herbalist.   Simon Feeney: (24:13) "You're not this and you're not that." It's tough. People spend a lot of time training and they get protective. Same things happening in our acupuncture industry at the moment. There's people spending five years studying their butts off, taking time away from their families. They're living really meagerly to get their degree in acupuncture and they come out, and then a dry needler opens up nextdoor to them and says, "Oh, acupuncture's not safe," or something, and then they give someone a pneumothorax, and then it's, what happens? An acupuncture needle did this. Yeah, but who was holding the acupuncture needle? Some person who's...   Mason: (24:58) What you're talking to there is when there's someone, like there's someone with herbs saying they got the same thing. It's hard if you know someone's potentially going to do damage, like that's if you get out and you know you're in a system and it's one thing to ignore if someone's just doing something measly, but if you know that's going to do damage, how do you not get combative and triggered?   Simon Feeney: (25:20) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So...   Mason: (25:21) Because I know dry needle, it's always funny... Well, for me, verse the ultimate institutional herbal practise. This is why I enjoy going out and seeking these conversations with practitioners, with people like yourself that are such experts in the system of healing. And I've learnt how to not justify my existence but yet acknowledge that there's this part of me that is so... I've always been called to just stay away from becoming a practitioner and be... I love being folky. Okay, cool, we've identified, there's like a rise of, [inaudible 00:26:07] identified that this works in a very lifestyle kind of space potentially to keep us out of the practitioner office and then cultivate an ability to respect when something goes beyond your expertise, and then go and interact with a practitioner. I mean, I don't know if you [inaudible 00:26:22]-   Simon Feeney: (26:21) Yeah, definitely. I mean, it reminds me of when I... In my 20s, we used to hang out with this Buddhist monk. For years and years, we travelled Southeast Asia unearthing these old manuscripts, and I would spend years... He's one of only two people in the world who can read this stuff, and we would... The stuff that we saw, and I sometimes would bring the script to him and say, "Oh, [Bunty 00:26:48], this one looks really old, is this good?" He's like, "Oh, yeah. That's a thousand years old." And all this stuff was just getting eaten by insects and some of it is just, pertains to really interesting information. This is what started my whole journey.   Simon Feeney: (27:01) So one day I gave him... Normally the texts are about two foot long and they're all on palm leaf or etched by hand. This one was only about 20cm long, and I opened it up and it had all these graphs on it and pictures of the body and all these sort of astrological symbols and stuff. And I said, "Bunty, what is this?" And he's like, "Oh, it's a medical text. The reason it's so small is that the monks used to pop it in their robes and then travel with them, " and they couldn't take the big ones because they would stay at the monastery and they would study them. They would study monastic culture... Oh, sorry, the monastic order and things like that. Anyway, spend a lot of time with him and that, and then I said, "What's on it?" And he said, "Oh, this is for, what's that herb? What's the condition where your skin's falling off?" I'm like "Leprosy?" "Yeah, yeah. This formula's for leprosy." "What?! There's a formula here for leprosy in this stuff?" "Oh, there's a lot of stuff in that, Simon. You have no idea, there's a lot of stuff in that." "This has to be known."   Simon Feeney: (27:54) So I spent a lot of time hanging with him and learning about all the individual herbs and all the formulations and did all this stuff at a very grassroots level. It came to the point where he said to me, and I tried to raise all this capital through this big project to get all this funding to help him get this medicine protected, get these manuscripts into museums, all this stuff. We digitalized. I spent many, many days and nights getting smashed by mosquitoes digitizing these things, smuggled them out of Burma, all sorts of stuff, and arrested at gunpoint, it was hectic. And it got to a point where no one would take me seriously. No one would take me seriously.   Mason: (28:34) Why?   Simon Feeney: (28:35) Because I didn't have any credentials. I said, "Bunty, I'm so frustrated that this project would say, Alan, this person wants to know, our investors want to know this or our project coordinator, to get the funding from this we need to have some sort of legitimacy to you."   Mason: (28:53) This is when you're going into the healing of disease state.   Simon Feeney: (28:56) So I'm working into that. Yes.   Mason: (28:56) That kind of thing with these formulas.   Simon Feeney: (28:59) Yes. Yeah, and also sort of building projects to support them as a culture as well in terms of books and just... I mean, legitimization basicallY. And so, my teacher said, "Ah, Simon, you go and get paper." And I was like, "What do you mean, Bunty?" "You, I teach you enough for here. You go get paper" So I was like, "Okay." Everything he's ever said to me I've just listened to, and it's good to have someone like that in life. And then I left and I got my... I spent five years getting a piece of paper.   Mason: (29:34) Here?   Simon Feeney: (29:36) Yeah, in Australia. Yeah. And that's kind of what that was my path, and it depends on which path you're going and I certainly think that there is room for everybody and there's room for being... I think that's... It's just a different path.   Mason: (29:52) Yeah, I definitely did... That story's insane. [inaudible 00:29:57].   Simon Feeney: (29:58) Oh, there's lots more. Yeah.   Mason: (30:00) Well, let's go, like I'd love to go lots more. I mean, there's a crossroad and I can definitely relate to that crossroad. When you're looking at leprosy and you're looking at these, this is a formula classically done and doses classically done. This information needs to get out there. If you want to go out and start talking about that, you need a piece of paper behind you for sure.   Simon Feeney: (30:25) Yes, you do. Yeah, yeah. And it's not for everyone, and I respect people who don't do that just as much. Like Chinese medicine is built on all kinds of people. Actually, the foundations of it come from aesthetics, come from people like [Shen Nung 00:30:40]. Anyway, this guy didn't have a piece of paper, so I'm not saying it's important-   Mason: (30:45) You just had a translucent [crosstalk 00:30:46].   Simon Feeney: (30:46) I did have a translucent [inaudible 00:30:48]. And just lots and lots of meditation and lots of time in a cave.   Mason: (30:53) Yeah. I mean, I feel like-   Simon Feeney: (30:55) There's room for everything.   Mason: (30:57) Yeah. I mean, for me, I, at one point, like I'm walking that line where you've got, like I'm going I want to step out of practitioner, and so there's a level of what grandma and grandpa says like, "Oh, no. Take that. It makes you strong." I'm at that point where I'm like for the least this little bit of my path I'm happy just going, "Yeah, makes you strong. Yeah, that'll get you thinking a bit sharper." I don't want to say anything more than that. I'm going to have to know if we've got TGA products where we can only say immunity and those kinds of things, or actually we're able to say like cultivate Jing and things like that.   Mason: (31:38) But nonetheless, I'm really enjoying, for me, being at that point where I just sit literally within the kitchen household, and then I had all these, for me, then all of a sudden that opens me up to getting really curious and inviting folks like yourself onto the podcast. And then going, I feel like I can go on an adventure with you. I know my place, and I think that's something that I've liked in going forward with tonic herbalism, non-institutionalised kind of like style of herbal, like it's shoot from the hip, it's grassroots and it's chaotic and archaic, and I kind of like that. But the collaboration at some point needs to happen and they need to get humbled, and I think the tonic or herbal world needs to realise where its edges are.   Simon Feeney: (32:33) Yeah, and same with everything. Same with Chinese medicine. I know that I share this with a lot of practitioners whatever they come from, I mean everything from western surgeons to Chinese medicine practitioners is that you have to know the limitations of that. When you come out you're like, "I can treat everything with Chinese medicine." I'm thinking this, right, as a new graduate. There is nothing this medicine can't do, and then you treat it once and it works, and you treat it twice and it works, and you treat it the third time, I've totally got this, and then it doesn't work.   Simon Feeney: (33:12) Right, okay. Well, go back to my training, go back to my [inaudible 00:33:16] again. Try this, try that, try this, try that, do more training, you're upset with yourself. You're like, "Why doesn't this work?" Okay, factor all these things in. Yeah, all this, got the best quality herbs, got the best... You can do all this and be the best you possibly did 100%, got this pulse right, I've nailed it. Still can't get a result, why? Don't know. The person might need surgery. So to come to that realisation that... It's a really good realisation, a very humbling experience because you say, "Right, just there is a time and place for everything."   Simon Feeney: (33:47) I had a patient with terminal cancer, and I had to say goodbye. That was really tough for the first time it happens. It's so sad when your first patient dies. It's really, really difficult because you think that... I mean, coming from the [Daoist 00:34:11] point of view, you're trying to create everlasting life.   Mason: (34:16) Immortality.   Simon Feeney: (34:16) Immortality, maybe. And then all of a sudden that happens and it's devastating. It's devastating, but it's very humbling and it just makes you do what you can do.   Mason: (34:31) Let's go, I want to hear more about these gooey adventures that you go on where you've gone out of like... You've kind of gone from the diagnostic Chinese... Are you all right?   Simon Feeney: (34:42) Yes, yes, yes.   Mason: (34:42) Yeah? Chinese medicine too... and there's times when you have limitations and then obviously there's... But you've looked and gone, yeah, but we're not being as effective as we can be because we're not dosing say correctly or there's this... There's not this, like bricks and mortar, it's not just bricks and mortar style Chinese medicine. There's obviously something else back in the classics that you're wanting to bring to the forefront, particular formulas, dosage, or maybe there's something like a tactile, like being more agile within your clinic where you actually face backwards to the past, and therefore you've actually got your finger on the pulse in a sense where you can move rather than just following the textbook and have that kind of skill.   Mason: (35:29) I'm curious about that, like I don't know if that's even appropriate what I'm bringing up there, but I get the sense of you... There's this movement and you're part of it going back to these classics which makes you more of a personal... brings more of a humanness and this greater agile skillset to yourself in clinic with that patient. I don't know if that makes sense in that statement.   Simon Feeney: (35:50) Sort of, yeah. So I think there is a renaissance in Chinese medicine currently. It's from the west. The west is guiding this because I mean, I could just think of literally like two days ago I got lectured. I'm not sure if I want to bring this up, but look, this is the truth of what happened. I got a lecture. I consider myself a very, not a specialist by any means, but certainly an obsessive, I'm obsessed with the classics. I'm obsessed with this kind of administration, I'm obsessed with understanding these texts, and I was lectured by this lady... Actually, no, I'm not going to talk about that. So, I'm going to change the topic.   Mason: (36:40) I don't know even if it helps in that context not talking about that specific situation, but let's see on not with you but in a broader sense maybe bring up where's the clashing of the heads between the renaissance and what's maybe been really institutionalised in Australia in the west and China.   Simon Feeney: (36:59) Yeah, definitely. So the way that the TCM model is being taught currently, it's lacking. It's lacking the clinical application. It wasn't until I met my teacher, Arnaud Versluys that I really realised, "Wow. This is really, really good medicine," and I talked to people about his level of pulse diagnosis that he has taught us in Australia to other people who are super experienced and they're like, "That's impossible. You can't have two people feeling the same pulse and coming up with the same conclusion." I'm like, "No, no, no." I've seen it time and time again. I can give you an example, if you like?   Mason: (37:35) Yeah, please.   Simon Feeney: (37:36) First time I met Arnaud, we had 50 students on either side feeling each pulse. So 50 students feeling the right pulse, and 50 students feeling the left pulse, and he felt both-   Mason: (37:47) I can just imagine.   Simon Feeney: (37:47) It was awesome. It was awesome. And so, he's just in the centre figure feeling these people's pulses. He's feeling the pulse, writing the script, giving it to them, to the patient. The patient's going over sitting there, and then everyone's trying to feel what he felt, and this is part of the training and part of his training, it's called pulse calibration. So what we're trying to calibrate our fingers to feel exactly what he's feeling.   Simon Feeney: (38:06) One of his top students was there and anyway, so there's a patient sitting down and she comes over to the patient and says to the student that's feeling her pulse, "Would you mind if I just quickly feel the pulse? Just wanted to jump in." "Course, no worries. You're the... " So she feels the pulse, and he's like, "Would you like to see the formula?" And she goes "Oh, no, no. It's fine. I just want to check." And then she said the formula name [foreign language 00:38:28]. And he said "Oh, wow. That was pretty good." The student said to her, "Wow, I bet you don't know the dosages," which is kind of being a bit condescending to her. And she's like, "Well... " blah-blah-blah. And she said about one of the doses, she said the [Che Bai 00:38:45] was at 48g. And he goes "No, 24". He thought she got one thing wrong and that was enough to say that she wasn't legitimate, like that was already just super, super... I was just going, "Wow, whatever. I want to learn this." But then she goes, "Oh... " And she didn't take offence to it.   Simon Feeney: (39:08) She in fact just went and took the opportunity to feel the pulse to figure out what she'd done wrong, and then she feels the pulse and she's like, "Really? I thought he would have done 48." And he's like... And she said, "Can I see the paper?" "Yeah" The student had written 24. She said "Excuse me, Arnaud. This patient, did you do Che Bai at 24 or 48g?" And he goes through his notes and he goes, "48," and she looked down at the student. She said, "Maybe you need to check your notes." And I was just blown away. I've never seen anything like that in pulse diagnosis, to be able to replicate that, and that's what Chinese medicine is, is replication. But that information and trying to replicate it without diluting it, it takes a lot of effort to say the least. It's hard. It's hard to keep that level of quality going. Anyway, off tangent but...   Mason: (40:07) Well, I mean, it's on tangent because I think we are... I mean, especially on the podcast and the people that tune in, we're such, for me, I'm such a fan of Chinese medicine and I'm such a fan of clinical acupuncture, and to see it flail sometimes is really heartbreaking.   Simon Feeney: (40:29) Yes, yes.   Mason: (40:30) And to hear something like that, it's such a transformation. Immediately, it transforms me into a way of seeing the world that I always, I move towards. I feel like there's a sense, when you look at the classics and you look at the metaphor and the story there's a sense of animism that emerges in me and I can feel the world view and the skillset that a practitioner's going to need in order to be able to come up with the same pulse diagnosis every single time, and I think, what happened? We took out the story, the love, the animism and everyone goes, "Yeah, but that's going to be good because it's going to be [inaudible 00:41:14], we cut out all the shit that's not... " Cut the spirit out basically, and we're going to get more consistency.   Simon Feeney: (41:20) Yeah. That's what happened.   Mason: (41:20) And the opposite happened.   Simon Feeney: (41:20) Yeah. Well, I mean the TCM model is still being taught every day. Look, if you talk to some incredible acupuncturist like David White here in Australia, and these guys are bringing back some of that old acupuncture system, but it died, like it was killed. They killed it. It was dead. Luckily, we had actually had it for herbalism, Chinese herbalism, we had an actual physical thing to touch and to measure. So during the cultural evolution that was actually an opportunity to grow. It was then institutionalised obviously, but some of that old stuff survived. It survived in Taiwan, really. That's really what's made that survival. But it survived in practitioners like my teacher's teacher's teacher, Dr. Tian.   Simon Feeney: (42:14) So he lived till 98 basically treating 300 patients a day, and passed it onto a few students and one of those students was my teacher's teacher. And he survived with that same thing even though he went through that period, but he just kept practising the classic, kept practising the classic, practised what his teachers practised and he managed to pass it onto Arnaud, and now Arnaud is passing it onto us. But most of it definitely has been lost to a degree, very much similar to what happened in western herbalism. I remember talking to Jimi, I heard you interview Jimi and he's-   Mason: (42:49) Love him.   Simon Feeney: (42:50) He's a great guy. Yeah. He-   Mason: (42:52) That's Jimi Wollumbin, everybody.   Simon Feeney: (42:54) Yeah.   Mason: (42:54) Yeah.   Simon Feeney: (42:54) Yeah, he called me up one day just out of the blue and we just started talking, and I was like, "Wow, I could talk to this guy for a long, long time." So, yeah, very interesting, and I think he was sort of illustrating that as well, kind of that massive loss of herbalism, and then I think people like him are really kind of bringing that back to western herbalism, seems to me.   Mason: (43:15) Yeah.   Simon Feeney: (43:16) Seems to me. It's needed.   Mason: (43:16) And likewise yourself.   Simon Feeney: (43:17) Yeah.   Mason: (43:18) Having these conversations when... Well, I mean for you especially, and I know we won't go too much into it, you're really playing in both worlds.   Simon Feeney: (43:26) Yes.   Mason: (43:26) You really got your foot... You're rubbing up against the way that TCM is being taught here.   Simon Feeney: (43:32) Yeah.   Mason: (43:34) Directly with the new-   Simon Feeney: (43:35) Yeah, a lot of people get upset with me, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (43:37) It's kind of fun, isn't it?   Simon Feeney: (43:38) So you're thinking, welcome to my world.   Mason: (43:39) [crosstalk 00:43:39] world. I mean, I kind of tell people regularly. They're like, "How often does it happen that you have someone contacting you and getting upset?" I'm like, "I don't know why, not often."   Simon Feeney: (43:53) Oh, good, good. Yeah.   Mason: (43:55) But I don't know why. I think because I was beaten by the press and I think and try and have a conversation with myself to be like, "What am I doing that rubs up against the wrong way of... " and it's the TCM people, or even my classical acupuncturist. He gets upset at me sometimes because he's moved away now so, people, you can't ask me for his name because everyone's looking for that classic like, "Oh my God, you got a classical acupuncturist in the area? Can I have his name?" You know, for having like a few individual herbs, and I'm like, "I get it." I'll sit down and have a discussion of my rationale or where I was when I brought them into the range and now, how they're being used and how practitioners are using, so on and so forth. But I would much prefer to have it than leave that conversation in the shadows.   Simon Feeney: (44:47) Yeah. I think it's probably just jealousy for other people. I think they're probably just jealous of your success and that's not very attractive for those people.   Mason: (44:58) It's weird.   Simon Feeney: (44:59) But I think bringing this awareness to people in Australia is necessary. I think it's great what you've done, what you've achieved. I've seen your place now, it's really great. Well done. Yeah. I think it's great, yeah.   Mason: (45:12) Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I think part of the mission is on the sidelines it can be the joker scallywag bringing attention to what you're talking about, to what Jimi Wollumbin is talking about. Do you know Rhonda Chang?   Simon Feeney: (45:25) I don't, no.   Mason: (45:25) I'm going to see if I've got a spare one of her books to give you. She's got a book called Chinese Medicine Masquerading as Yi.   Simon Feeney: (45:33) As?   Mason: (45:33) Yi.   Simon Feeney: (45:33) Oh, yeah. Okay.   Mason: (45:38) Blows it out, like documenting exactly how this new TCM is an invention that came about in the 50s.   Simon Feeney: (45:46) Yes, yes. Yeah.   Mason: (45:48) And I'm sure none of it's going to be news to you.   Simon Feeney: (45:50) Yeah. Well, it's funny, I was talking about the, even on the weekend someone was talking about some basic concepts like chi, people still think it's energy. You look at the translation, it's really fair. So these kinds of ideas are very new to the western Chinese medicine practitioners. It's very hard to understand that, because a lot of people come into the medicine with a very romantic view of what Chinese medicine is and can do. I was the same. I was very, how herbalism they can treat all this stuff, but then when you really start to practise and you realise it's not as... You've got to be very pragmatic about it, you've got to be very systematic about it, you've got to approach it with a clinical mindset. It's a very different thing, a very different way of thinking about it.   Simon Feeney: (46:47) But when you see how it connects with natural phenomena then you can actually reconnect with that whole idea. When you start to understand that, for example, you learn about different conformations, or just the translations. So for example, like the six, they call the six channels, they used to call the six channels or the six meridians or the six systems or the six warps. It just gives you a... It's very planned, and you can learn it like that. I'm talking about Tai Yang, Yang Min, Shao Yang, et cetera. When you translate it a different way, which is we translate it as conformations which is the way my teacher, Arnaud, translates it. It takes on a whole different perspective.   Simon Feeney: (47:29) So a conformation is something that's... It's vessels that are conforming to natural phenomena. So all of a sudden you're looking at it from a natural perspective and you're looking from a metaphoric, you're using natural metaphors to understand the body because we are just the microcosm of the macrocosm. And then you can get that whole romantic perspective and artistic perspective of what the medicine is. It returns, but it's only due to this renaissance that we're going through at the moment. It doesn't happen in the current model that's taught, but it's like everything, probably the same as accounting, I don't know.   Mason: (48:15) I mean, the world of numbers, I know there's a... I know, I've got friends that are sacred mathematicians [crosstalk 00:48:22]-   Simon Feeney: (48:21) Yes, exactly. There you go. Well done, exactly. Well said, yeah.   Mason: (48:27) Yeah. It is exciting. It is exciting feeling the story-telling and the metaphor and the alive, spiritually alive world can-   Simon Feeney: (48:38) It is. It's living and breathing. You feel it when the pulse changes. When you give someone a formula and their pulse changes and you go, "Whoa!" Or the seasons change, you feel it in their pulse. It's awesome.   Mason: (48:48) I mean, and I know what happened to the water.   Simon Feeney: (48:51) Yes. Yes.   Mason: (48:51) I can feel that. Was it like-   Simon Feeney: (48:52) Yes, it changes. Things change. Everything courses and lives and breathes.   Mason: (48:59) It's nice to see that, it's so simple. It's something that's so, it's so looked down on to have that romantic, that animism, yet you should have that with extreme structure and discipline at the same time.   Simon Feeney: (49:17) It does. It's both of those things simultaneously, and that Daoist medicine. That is the interaction and the mutual exchange of yin and yang and the cosmos, it's good.   Mason: (49:31) And the people that feel it, they feel the lineage.   Simon Feeney: (49:34) Yeah, it's very, very... It's in you. Yeah, absolutely. You practise it, and that's why it's kind of protected.   Mason: (49:42) I'd love to just go down that rabbit hole maybe hear some more adventures along the way, especially around the dosing. As I said, Tahnee knew you.   Simon Feeney: (49:51) Yes. Dosage stuff, yeah.   Mason: (49:53) Yeah, heard your stuff and I mean, if anything can go to the difference between something not working clinically and working clinically...   Simon Feeney: (50:01) Yeah.   Mason: (50:02) Transformational.   Simon Feeney: (50:03) Yes, it's huge. Yeah. So that whole dosage journey started when I started to make those classical pills. So a good example is MaZiRenWan. It's a hemp seed pill that's used for chronic constipation and inflammation in the small intestine, and that formula when I was trying to physically make it, because this is what I was trying to do. I wanted to use the, this back to this kind of original dosage but as an administration technique, so I was trying to use the administration techniques to be the way they were originally used. As I mentioned before with Artemisia, these kinds of factors are really, really huge.   Simon Feeney: (50:41) So you have Tang, Sans and Wans. So Tang's a decoction, so it's much more for sorting the organs clean, a very acute medicine. Sans are the powders, and they're for things that you need a little bit of hydrochloric acid to absorb into the body. And then Wans are pills, so they're much more chronic issues that have to be gently administered into the body or you want them to slowly get into the bloodstream. So you use honey, acts like a slow-release mechanism so it helps the herbs to stabilise, not get affected by the hydrochloric acid and absorb through the walls of the small intestine, straight into the bloodstream, straight into the liver, and then systematically.   Simon Feeney: (51:20) So, I didn't want to use Wans as Tangs and Tangs as Sans and Sans as Tangs or Wans. I wanted to use them according to the classics, so then I have to make them. So, go to the textbook, go to make them, read the current dosages, like this gramme equal this liang, this is this gramme, make it, slop. What's going on? Try a different formula, totally dry. How am I going to roll this into a pill?   Simon Feeney: (51:51) Now, I'd made medicine with my teacher on the border in Burma and Thailand, and I made boiled pills with him. I'd seen everyone, I'd hang out with the monks in the temples, breaking, grinding up herbs. I'd been doing that for years, learning all these techniques. I went "This is not right. Something's not right here." So, then I went "Okay, well, like you do, foundational medicine. Go back to the foundations." Went back to the foundations, what were the dosages? Oh, it's one liang of this, I have no idea what that is. It's half a jin. Well, I don't know what that is. It's one jin. Well, at least I know that half a jin, if I figure out what a jin is, I can figure out what half a jin is. A zhang? Don't even know, that's like a volume measurement? And then a [chur 00:52:35]. A chur is just a foot of something. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? How am I going to make this formula?   Simon Feeney: (52:43) So, okay, what is a liang? Because I knew that eight liang is one jin, half a jin will be four liang, et cetera, et cetera. Then you have these fen measurements and zhu measurements, and all these old measurements. I read every book I can find about this measurement stuff, and then I start going to the people who I feel like know the most in the English world, and even found some Chinese text. One liang equals 15.625g, and I'm like, "That's pretty precise."   Simon Feeney: (53:17) My dad's a PhD in algebra and he taught me at a very age about all sorts of mathematical things, so I was obsessed. How come everything thinks it's 3g when he's saying, and these people are like the authority, it's 15.625. So find out that, I mean how much do you want to know? Do you want me to... Am I boring you?   Mason: (53:37) I mean, I'm fascinated.   Simon Feeney: (53:40) Okay.   Mason: (53:40) Screw everyone listening, I want to hear you.   Simon Feeney: (53:43) I'm not sure this is right for your audience, but even if it's just for me and you... Yes, I mean, I don't care if you-   Mason: (53:47) No, go for it. You'll be surprised at how much they'll be loving this.   Simon Feeney: (53:53) Okay. So, yeah, 15.625g. So it turns out that this weight system comes off an old measurement system, so it's this old bell and you need to use a pitch pipe to tune the bell and it's called a Huang bell, and you use this pitch pipe that's cut with a particular size of bamboo. You know, how you got the knots in the bamboo and the gap? So then they create this at different sizes, and would create a different tune, right, when you "hoo". You... whatever, blow on it, right?   Mason: (54:20) When you hoedown on it.   Simon Feeney: (54:23) So in order to figure out how high that had to be, it was based on putting pieces of broomcorn millet inside this thing, and 1200 of those would be where you cut it off to make the pitch for the bell, this is a ceremonial bell. Turns out 1200 of that is 12 zhu, and 24 zhu is one liang. So I went and became a specialist in black broomcorn millet because of course that's what you do.   Mason: (54:56) Of course, that seems so obvious.   Simon Feeney: (54:58) Then I counted... It was such an obvious conclusion, right. So I had to find not only that but I had to find black broomcorn millet that was produced in the Han dynasty, which was an interesting process. Counted them all out, 1200, weighed them all out, 7.8g, right, 15.625, that's how they came up with the conclusion. So I was certain that's what that dose was.   Mason: (55:17) There's no industry for this in the Han... Where did you say was it?   Simon Feeney: (55:20) In the Han dynasty.   Mason: (55:21) In the Han...   Simon Feeney: (55:22) Yeah. Oh, sorry.   Mason: (55:22) Like where were you sourcing the millet? Where did you say you had to go and source it somewhere in China?   Simon Feeney: (55:26) Oh, basically just research. Yeah, just extensive research into the growth patterns of black broomcorn... because I didn't want to know that the size was different. Like the wheat grain had changed, it's different. The size, so if I'm counting them individually...   Mason: (55:39) That's what I'm thinking, yeah.   Simon Feeney: (55:40) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're talking about a volume measurement with something that could be potentially bigger or smaller. So, long story short, I started to figure out what a liang was. Then I could find out what a jin was, and half a jin was, and then this, and a zhu and a zhang. Put it all together based on those weights, perfect pills.   Mason: (55:59) Do you know where the-   Simon Feeney: (56:00) Like, yeah!   Mason: (56:01) Like that is [crosstalk 00:56:01] I'm feeling [crosstalk 00:56:02].   Simon Feeney: (56:03) Yeah. It was good moment.   Mason: (56:05) You're looking at your dad about how elated he was when he got like a massive formulation and you're like, "I get it."   Simon Feeney: (56:11) Yeah. It was a revelation, yeah.   Mason: (56:15) Where was the crux point where it's gone away from these forms of measurements? Where has the standardisation occurred that led to such dramatic poor translations on the formulas?   Simon Feeney: (56:28) What an awesome question. I mean, gosh that's complicated. So many factors. I mean, every factor from... As we mentioned earlier, quality to so many species differentiation, change in the environment, change in climate, lifestyle, people's... In the Han dynasty [inaudible 00:56:48] are living in huts versus living in air conditioned housing, so the strength of someone's digestive system that could cope with that compared to now. So that's one theory why it kind of got reinterpreted, but then if you look back through the dynasties each measurement system sort of changed, and then there's conflicting arguments, and then it kind of... and let's just all, just a big discussion.   Simon Feeney: (57:15) And so, there's sti

Connect With Lucas:Website: https://www.ergogenic.health/https://www.instagram.com/ergogenic_health/To check out Lachlans full SLEEP course head over tohttps://listenable.io/for a free 7 day trial  and then use the link below or coupon code lachlandunnn for a 30% discount on your subscription.https://frstre.com/go/?a=76205-87a7d9&s=1505104-ffec16&p_affiliate.referral_code=lachlandunnnConnect with Lachlan:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lachlan.dunn/https://www.instagram.com/transcendingexplorations/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lachlan.dunn.161/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOSrM6mN5TcDst3MwUAjKfgAbout Lucas : From a very young age, Lucas became interested in the effects of certain foods and herbs on my own physiological and psychological performance. When He was playing soccer, He found myself monitoring my performance very closely and discovered that some supplements were having a drastic effect on his reaction times, decision making and ability to the "read" the play. This then sparked a passion to spend copious amounts of his "spare time" to research various ergogenic aids.During that time, Lucas decided to take a halt on his soccer career, and study Exercise Science/Business Administration at Australian Catholic University. Whilst he only completed 1.5 years of this course, despite absolutely excelling at it, he was constantly reading scientific journals and understanding more and more about the basic physiology of enhancing the body as a whole. This naturally lead him to study Naturopathy at Southern School of Natural Therapies in Fitzroy, Melbourne.Having had some health issues himself, Lucas began to biohack his way out of these, and got to the root cause of his issues. Through relentless experimentation and research, he has optimised his baseline to be consistently performing at a solid level. Having the privilege to work under Anthony Diclementi, lucas was fortunate enough to gain greater insight into various methods to enhance wellness.As he started to improve my wellbeing and vitality, he began to realise that more people deserve to know about everything that he gained. Lucas had an epiphany and realised that his greatest purpose and mission is to assist and empower people to reach their fullest potential. Lucas wanted to act as a catalyst, an information portal and teacher to give others the knowledge that they need to manipulate their own physiology and behaviors.  Too often lucas kept seeing friends and family "accepting" the sub-optimal state they're in, and desperately crying that nothing will help them. Lucas really disliked this belief. That is why He is here to make people better, every single day. .‍‍

Todays podcast ventures into functional medicine and nootropics. where I interview Naturopathic and Nootropic practitioner Lucas Aoun. Lucus studied Science/Business Administration at Australian Catholic University but spent most of his time reading science journals on basic physiology of enhancing the body as a whole then he decided this wasn't for him and then moved over to study at Naturopathy at Southern School of Natural Therapies in Fitzroy, Melbourne. We don't discuss your typical stuff which you would hear on most podcasts regarding the standard ingredients in food medicine we actually take a diversion and learn the other secret benefits of certain foods. Make sure you get a pen and paper. You'll need to take notes. Make sure you check out his links below: Lucas' YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/boostyourbiology/ Ergogenic Health Website: https://www.ergogenic.health/ Nootropics Masterclass: 
Please email ergogenic.health@gmail.com Lucas' Podcast: https://www.nofilter.media/podcast/boost-your-biology
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ergogenic_health/ Sponsor - https://eng3corp.com/snipes

Join Julianne and Kristin as they talk with Shalini Nair Kozlowski.  In this Tech Talk, Shalini gives a wonderful insight into the phytomedicines that are used for pregnancy and lactation in her clinic.   Her extensive experience, education and training makes this podcast invaluable for practitioners who consult  with patients at any stage of their pregnancy.   Shalini is a practising naturopath and herbalist in Fitzroy North in Victoria. She completed her Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) at Southern School of Natural Therapies. Following undergraduate studies, she completed a Masters in Reproductive Medicine at the University of New South Wales, which further consolidated her knowledge of women's health. While undertaking her studies and since, Shalini was fortunate to have been mentored by Ruth Trickey at Melbourne Holistic Health Group, and has worked closely with her to experience first-hand the management of women's health in a collaborative medicine setting.Shalini is passionate about women's health and is excited to bring together her naturopathic and medical knowledge as well as her research abilities to help her patients achieve the best outcomes with the treatment options available. After Ruth retired in 2018, Shalini opened her clinic Inner North Holistic Health in 2018 to continue the wonderful work that was started by Ruth at MHHG. She continues to practice using Ruth's paradigm of collaborative medicine.To learn more, and hear how clinically relevant phytomedicines are used in pregnancy and lactation, be sure to purchase our webinar,  Clinical Advancements in Herbal Medicine, Conception and Beyond Series available to Practitioners available from >>  www.optimalrx.com.au   *****DISCLAIMER: All information provided via OptimalRx is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for independent professional advice.  Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you learn here raises questions or concerns regarding your health. Thank you.*****

Today on Moments of Clarity, I speak to Matt Radford. Matt is a physiotherapist, acupuncturist, Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor and the founder of Centre Of Health, Ivanhoe. With over 30 years of clinical experience, Matt uses his unique range of qualifications, blending eastern and western medicine, to take a holistic approach to health and wellbeing.  Matt has worked and studied in China, and has lectured at RMIT University, Melbourne University and Southern School of Natural Therapies. He was one of the first Physios in Australia to incorporate Pilates into treatment, working with the founder of Clinical Pilates Craig Philips at Dance Medicine Australia back in the early 90’s. More recently, Matt has trained as a Certified Instructor in the ground breaking Wim Hof Method breathing technique which he practices daily and shares with patients.  In today’s conversation, we discuss Matt’s experience of grief, opportunity and recovery after being diagnosed with cancer, what it means to be responsible, some insights and lessons taken from Covid-19, the similarities and differences between western and eastern medicine, diagnosis vs holognosis, travelling the world and Wim Hof. Thank you for listening to Moments of Clarity. If you enjoy the episode, please follow me on social media, leave a review and share the episode with friends and family. Visit https://www.centreofhealthivanhoe.com.au/ for more info

In today's podcast Tahnee speaks with Jenny Allison. Jenny is a seasoned acupuncturist with a special interest in women's health postpartum. With 25 years of experience under her belt, Jenny is a wealth of information and a true master of her craft. "A woman is never more beautiful than after the birth of her first child"     The ladies explore: The four common themes integral to postpartum care across traditional cultures. The importance of understanding the physiological processes that take place in the body postpartum. Nutrition care postpartum; how to use food to nourish the blood and strengthen the Qi. The link between food and postpartum depression. The essential role good quality complex carbohydrates play in women's health postpartum. Honouring the transition into motherhood. The East vs West approach to postpartum care. The concept of "the golden opportunity", a healing window available to women in the various seasons of their reproductive cycle. Who is Jenny Allison? Jenny Allison is an acupuncturist and graduate of ACA, Sydney (1984). Jenny has trained with teachers in Nanjing, Hangzhou, London and Sydney. Jenny's passion for the last 25 years has been women’s health, with a special interest in women's health postpartum. An the author of ‘Golden Month, Caring for the World’s Mothers after Childbirth’ (Beatnik Pub. 2016), Jenny has interviewed many mothers, grandmothers and midwives as part of the research for her book. Jenny has found that Chinese medicine offers a unique perspective in interpreting traditional postpartum practices worldwide. These practices have served women well for many generations, whereas the modern Western lack of good postpartum care, along with social pressures around appearance and workplace productivity, is not serving women or their health. Jenny is committed to preserving the worldwide heritage of women’s postpartum wisdom, and to improving the care of mothers everywhere. Jenny has two grown-up children, is grandmother of twin girls and practices acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in Auckland, New Zealand.   Resources: Jenny's Book   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify! We got you covered on all bases ;P   Check Out The Transcript Here: Tahnee: Hi everybody, welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. We're here today for the women's series with Jenny Allison, author of the Golden Month. Jenny is a acupuncturist and graduate of the ACA in Sydney and she's trained with teachers in China, London, and Sydney. Her passion for the last 25 years has been women's health, and she has a special interest in postpartum, which is what we're going to have a chat about today.   Tahnee: You can get her book from all good online retailers and bookstores or have a look at Beatnik Publishing. I'll put a link in the show notes for you guys to find it. One of my favorite things about the book were all the interviews that she conducts with mothers and grandmas and midwives as part of her research for the book.   Tahnee: It's through this lens of Chinese medicine that Jenny really offers her unique perspective and interpreting all of these traditional practices for the modern woman. Yeah, it's just this idea of how do we bring some of this postpartum care into the West. I know that we have a lot to talk about, and not a lot of time, so we might get going, Jenny, but I just wanted to welcome you first to the podcast, so thank you for being with us today.   Jenny Allison: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Tammy. Yeah, I'm really pleased to be on your podcast.   Tahnee: Very excited. I know you have your own grownup kids and little twin grandbabies, that's very cool. Are you able to tell us a little bit about how you came to be interested in postpartum care? Was that through your own pregnancies and birth or some other way?   Jenny Allison: Yes, actually, straight after I graduated I had my first child, and we'd been given the bear lines of the postpartum's in Chinese medicine theory, and I thought well, just sounds amazing. I'll put it into practice.   Jenny Allison: I was living in Australia, and I called my mom in Syd, "Can you come?" And she didn't have any background in Chinese medicine and she said, "Of course I'll come," so she was waiting in the wings for it to come, and I kind of explained the basic principles to her and she gave me most wonderful postpartum. We didn't do massages. This was a long time ago, and my mom was a bit old school, but she gave me what I think is probably the most important, which a nest of support that I could empower myself, and so I never felt as though she was dictating to me or trying to control the way I was doing things. I just felt that she was there for me, and I think that was really crucial.   Jenny Allison: I've been very inspired by that, and I started to talk to my patients about what they did in their postpartum, and most people said, "Oh, I wish..." It's just a time of complete exhaustion, and although people initially recognize the wonder of birth and they seem to look for hours and congratulations, but it comes down to the practicalities and what you need 24/7 basically. There isn't the framework and the wait for the new mothers' needs to be fulfilled.   Jenny Allison: So from there, sorry this is getting a bit long, I started to just research all around the world, and the most exciting thing I discovered that with these commonalities with almost every traditional country in the world with the Chinese medicine approach. That was just a tremendous validation of the inherent wisdom of these practices.   Tahnee: And so are you able to share the commonalities, because that was something that I picked up in your book, that you've really identified four kind of themes or similar practices across cultures that postpartum care was kind of focusing on.   Jenny Allison: Yeah, I mean there could be five if you stretched it, but I think the basic ones, first of all rest. I'll just list them first for you. So rest is absolutely crucial, and then very important and quite neglected in the West is the idea of warmth, keeping the mother warm, and warming her in certain areas of her body and giving her a massage.   Jenny Allison: Then of course, and this is a very big one, and that is diet, because in Chinese medicine diet is medicine. That's always the first intervention if you like, if you want to restore your health is diet, so that's tremendously important in the postpartum. Then the final one, which is the most important of all, because nothing else can happen without it is support, and just being cared for, traditionally it would be older women, one's partner, and just community around you. Support is crucial for everything else happening.   Jenny Allison: Those are the four basic-   Tahnee: What would the fifth one be? I'm really curious if you could throw that extra one in there.   Jenny Allison: No, it's just some people divide support into honoring the mother as well in quite a formal way. I think in anthropology, that's something that's quite well documented, that the mother is given an honor that everyone else in the community recognize, whether it's giving of gifts to her rather than to baby, or whether it's just acknowledging her on a daily basis like, "Hello new mother," or calling her, I know in North Africa if a mother has twins, she's called Blessed One, so she'll be addressed as Blessed One. That could be the first one, but it's really part of the fourth one.   Tahnee: Okay. I guess, is that in many ways to honor that transition from maiden to mother, and to kind of reposition that woman in the culture or the society that she lives in? Is that kind of the intention?   Jenny Allison: Yes, it's very much a daily reinforcement of her change in role, and the status and honor of her role. I mean, if we think about it, she has to be applauded for her bravery to go through birth, and also after, and her generosity in what she's giving in terms of her total devotion to the baby. She's been through what some cultures call A Woman's War. She needs to be treated as a hero.   Tahnee: When we look at the lens of Chinese medicine and these four commonalities, they seem quite simple, put in practice.   Jenny Allison: Yeah. I think what you have to understand first, I mean for people who haven't a strong cultural background of a postpartum, I've noticed that it's important for them to actually understand in terms of theology what's happening to your body and mind after giving birth in the postpartum.   Jenny Allison: I think women understand, and their partners and people around them understand these messes with all the changes happening that actually involve almost every organ in the body. When they understand that, then they can go, "Oh, okay, it's logical then that we treat this time as something really special, and take this opportunity for women to heal well."   Tahnee: So can you give us a brief summary, and obviously not a lot of time, so we don't... physiology, like-   Jenny Allison: Oh, the changes?   Tahnee: Yeah, what are some of those medical changes in case people aren't aware.   Jenny Allison: First off, the obvious one is that the placenta site has to heal, and that takes six weeks. You get the lock hair discontinuing and slowly diminishing over six weeks. That's in line with the placenta site healing, so that first has to happen.   Jenny Allison: And you've got big changes to the vagina and cervix, and they are quicker to heal, but there are big changes. And there is, in surgery, obviously much, much bigger healing takes place.   Jenny Allison: But then you've got some quite interesting theological changes because the output of the heart changes dramatically after childbirth. Initially the output is quite high because obviously you're supporting the placenta, you're increased blood volume. Once it's delivered, suddenly the output is lower, so it's like a water mill with suddenly the water flows through it is lower.   Jenny Allison: This explains why women can easily feel cold and tired, because their heart output actually takes up to six weeks to normalize to a pre-pregnancy heart output again, so that's just a really obvious reason a woman should be resting and caring for herself well.   Jenny Allison: Then you've got the kidneys. They're excreting quite a lot of the whole process of the uterus coming down and the cells shrinking again back to pre-pregnant state, so the kidney are working hard too. Then you've got these tremendous hormonal changes, which probably are more commonly known, and the other changes of the progesterone and the estrogen dropping dramatically when the placenta's expelled, and at the same time, the beginning of the output of the oxytocin, which will stay high while the mother births feet.   Jenny Allison: You could write, well people have written many books about oxytocin, because it's a huge subject, but a tremendously helpful hormone to have in the postpartum. I won't go into it here, but it's basically about love and trust, and trusting key people. It's not like a love dragon. It's about tuning in to key people, so both the baby and the mother, and father, and those around her to elicit agree to producing oxytocin which is a hormone of bonding.   Jenny Allison: Those are the main things, but the change with the estrogen and progesterone, some women, their brains are more susceptible to low estrogen, which means that there are fewer available to return in the system, and while initially you have this tremendous production called endorphin, which helps with pain, those levels drop after the first few weeks, and then you're left with low estrogen.   Jenny Allison: If you are one of those women who are more vulnerable to return in relationship with estrogen, then you can start to experience depression then. So that's one really obvious reason of why the mother should be absolutely coveted and really well looked after.   Jenny Allison: The final one that is also really important, which is perhaps also not talked about much, and that is cortisol. Initially just after the birth, the cortisol's high and it needs to be because it helps promote proper clotting, and obviously you need the adrenaline and cortisol being high during the labor, but afterwards you want that cortisol to normalize because if cortisol stays high which happens when women are under stress, then you don't get proper wound healing and you get a feeling of being stressed and exhausted, and eventually if the cortisol stays high for ages, you'll get adrenal exhaustion and your milk goes down and you're just totally depleted.   Jenny Allison: One really interesting thing is that cortisol stays high if people's status is in question. It's kind of of physiological truth about human beings, but if you feel that if you're low status your cortisol will stay high or it will go up. If you're on it and you're felt to be of high status, your cortisol level will drop, and so that makes it really obvious while you would honor the mother just for that reason alone.   Tahnee: Yeah, that's a really powerful kind of... Yeah, and when we look at our culture and how postpartum women are treated a lot of the time, it's all about the baby, nobody gives them any attention or takes care of them.   Tahnee: Yeah, I could hear in there that you were also talking about the kind of spleen organ system there when you're talking about the serotonin and this ability for the body to... Because I'm imagining digestion plays a huge part in this, and you talked about that a bit at the beginning like keeping the mother warm and nourished and those things.   Tahnee: You speak about food and herbs in your book, the Golden Month, and I've thought about it a lot in terms of this idea in Chinese medicine invading cold and winds and all of these things which are kind of fundamental ideas of what can create things like aches and pains and chills and fatigue and all this stuff in the body.   Tahnee: I mean, warm, mushy food? Like what other kinds of things that you see being really beneficial?   Jenny Allison: I mean, I've talked about Western medicine, but you could sum up really briefly from a Chinese medicine perspective, the woman is considered to be qi and blood deficient in general after childbirth, so that describes someone who is susceptible to cold, who can easily get tired, and with a blood deficiency can easily become emotional.   Jenny Allison: What you want to do with the food is you want to nourish the blood, and you want to strengthen the qi. As you said, what the very first approach is to make sure that food is digestible and warm, because there's also a very simple mechanical fact that if you put cold food into your stomach, your body has to work harder to actually get the temperature in your stomach up to a point where the enzymes can become properly active. So all you're doing if you put cold food in your stomach, is you're taking away energy that's needed for healing and for breastfeeding.   Jenny Allison: The most obvious thing to do is to prevent any unnecessary use of energy. Of course you put the food already warm into the stomach, and then the body doesn't have to work so hard. In Chinese medicine, we say that that will help to strength the stomach and spleen.   Jenny Allison: Then because there's a lot of healing taking place, and you're producing milk, you have to have food which is nourishing the blood. So if you just translate that into Western terms, basically it's nutrient-rich, and good quality protein. So some people say chicken. All around the world, women are given chicken soup. It's almost everywhere, and when I was interviewing women, and I said, "So, what would be the main things about the diet?" And then they'd go, "I know one thing I can say." And they said, "Chicken soup."   Jenny Allison: Chicken soup is like the most fantastic go-to for postpartum women, because it's nutrient rich. It's got all the minerals, the amino acids, everything that's being leaked from the body, the gelatin at the same time, so it's warm at the same it's helping to strengthen qi because you put other things with it, and it'll have some carbohydrates in it as well. It's almost like a one-stop shop, chicken soup.   Jenny Allison: There's one thing I've really learned, and that's that postpartum is about empowerment. The mother is really, she's in control, she's the queen, and if mother says, "Look, I'm sick of chicken soup," then you don't give her any more chicken soup. You give her what she wants.   Tahnee: Yup. I've really observed reading a lot of work around this that there are quite a lot of animal foods in there for rebuilding, and slow-cooked things, and often a use of herbs. Like, I used personally a lot of jing nourishing herbs, and kind of qi nourishing, and blood nourishing herbs postpartum. I would put them in my food.   Jenny Allison: I think what you can do is put those herbs into bone-based soups like chicken soup, which is a star basically, and then you're really concentrating your intention with all the vitamins, minerals, and the effect of the herbs, the jing herbs.   Jenny Allison: But I suppose I should also say that, I mean, why there's an emphasis on animals foods is because they are a very easy and good quality source of protein, and this is very important for women in the West who follow a vegan diet. Protein grounds the spirit in Chinese medicine, because it nourishes the yin in the blood. It grounds the spirit. That's really, really important postpartum.   Jenny Allison: So for women who are vegan, it's important that they think carefully about their diet, and manage to get a lot of good quality concentrated protein from another source, because that is really an important aspect of postpartum diet, is that it's grounding. It grounds a woman and her body.   Tahnee: Well, it's such a... I mean the marathon analogy gets bandied around a lot, but the process of creating another human and then birthing them, and then nourishing and feeding them intensively for a period of time. It does require resources, doesn't it? It's not something you just take on lightly.   Jenny Allison: Absolutely.   Tahnee: I know for you, we spoke a little bit before we jumped on this call, but around the sort of preparatory, you know making sure that you're ready, I suppose, during pregnancy and even before that.   Jenny Allison: Yeah, that's a really important point, because if you go into childbirth and nutritionally not resourced, then you're on the back foot basically. I think it's really important to make sure that during pregnancy you're eating well.   Jenny Allison: There was a very interesting study done of the Mediterranean diet, which I think everyone knows it's high in antioxidants and low in trans fats and bad carbohydrates. Basically there was a big study done in Crete, and the daily olive oil intake was quite big. It was more than 40 grams, but it was not processed, it was locally produced olive oil. It was very high in antioxidants, but the Mediterranean diet basically is high in antioxidants, so it's got a lot of fresh fruit and vegetable, airy sea food, not a lot of sugar and junk food and overly sweet food.   Jenny Allison: What they found was they compared another group of women who basically ate what they called was a Western diet, consisted of salty chips and red meats and takeaways, trans fats, and a lot of sugar, and they found this relationship that was so clear that it was quite stunning really and that was that 50% more depressive symptoms were recorded in woman who ate a Western diet.   Jenny Allison: The women who ate the Mediterranean diet were half as likely to get postpartum depression as those eating with the diet. It was a good study, so basically it wasn't these women who were upper class and eating well anyway, or got all situations anyway. It was just two different populations, probably rural and probably urban. Anyway, the result was so clear, and it was a big study of 500 women, so that becomes a groundbreaking research I think to show that what you do in the pregnancy is really going to have an effect on the postpartum.   Tahnee: And so simple I think when we look at diets like that, that they're very moderate in all ways.   Jenny Allison: Yes, not expensive. Not an expensive diet.   Tahnee: Yeah, it's not an extreme, because certainly something I'm quite passionate about is moving away from extreme ideologies around eating. I think women have enough pressure on them as it is, you know?   Jenny Allison: Actually on that, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that brings me to a point that is really, really important Western woman that matters, the postpartum is not a time to cut down on carbohydrates thinking that you'll be losing weight, because complex good carbohydrates are absolutely essential.   Jenny Allison: Our midwife, she's now passed and she was in New Zealand, but very China, and she said, "You're down at coal freight. You're like painting, and this is like 25% more energy you need. You've got to have something that gives you energy," and carbohydrates in Chinese medicine, as you know promote qi, sanction qi. In Western terms if you have carbohydrates in the morning you actually get a boost of serotonin. So then definitely not something to be kept down in the postpartum.   Jenny Allison: Sorry, I just-   Tahnee: No, I'm really glad you did, because I was going to talk a little bit about that cultural pressure, and so much... I mean, it's such a complex topic, the world we live in now. But you know I do, I remember like myself, I would eat nearly a loaf of local soda a day when I was breastfeeding. I was shocked by how much bread, because I don't normally eat a lot of carbs. You know, I'll have a little bit of whole grain a day or whatever, but yeah, I was just craving it really hard, and then having more protein and stuff at night.   Tahnee: You know, remember thinking I'm really glad that I'm not having to think about what I look like, because you know, it was such a funny time.   Jenny Allison: You touched on such an important point, because a nutrition they say, "A woman is never more beautiful than after the birth of their first child," and the beauty standard is different after you've given birth. That doesn't mean that you've left go, but you're illuminated from within. I just, clearly the possibility of, in Chinese medicine we say the spirit being fulfilled. That gives a beauty that's just incomparable, I think.   Tahnee: Yeah, I think too that this idea of getting back to something that we were. I think our culture really misses the transition and the honoring of it, and I think what you spoke about-   Jenny Allison: Yes, because you aren't going back to what you were because you've changed fundamentally, and physical, emotional, psychic if you like. It's all over that you've made this transition on, so to want to go back to what we sometimes call the skinny jeans and praters. It just doesn't sooth women, and it's like a misconstruction of feminism. It does not sooth women.   Jenny Allison: The way that postpartum is seen generally in the West nowadays doesn't sooth women, because this is their time, and the whole idea of, "You have to get back into life as soon as possible. You've got to lose weight," and incidentally if you're cortisol's high because you're not rested and you're stressed, high cortisol is much more likely to gain weight, than if your cortisol is normal.   Jenny Allison: Just going back to the idea of losing weight, and that's not really to the process. It's not relevant.   Tahnee: Well I read this really fantastic, actually no, it was through one of my yoga teachers because I study yoga as well, and he's a big advocate for adipose tissue. He calls it an antenna, and he says that when we're holding our babies, that fat is communicating. It's the kind of tissue of love is what he calls it, this transmission. He said hormones, all these sorts of things transmit when there's this fat-to-fat contact, which is through the baby's squishy body and our squishy bodies.   Tahnee: Yeah, I was like, "Oh, that's a really beautiful way of thinking about it." It's just kind of an antenna for qi. For my body as well, once I sort of stopped breastfeeding and was back to my normal life I guess my body did just change back to more or less how it was, you know? I was quite shock at how I just stopped being as womanly. I was like, "Oh, and there I am."   Tahnee: Yeah, it was quite a surprising, almost overnight.   Jenny Allison: I think the point too is that if you haven't had sufficient nurturing and rest in the postpartum, if you've taken this golden opportunity we call it, then your, we think in Western terms, your cortisol will be normalized, and normal cortisol really means that your weight will be more normal as well. So high cortisol, gain weight. Low cortisol, normalize weight.   Jenny Allison: Yeah, it's kind of a no-brainer.   Tahnee: Which is why we see women pushing themselves to be back at work. I've had friends with really brutal maternity leave, contracts and things where they have to go back after six months and all this kind of stuff.   Jenny Allison: Yeah. I think that the workplace has a lot to answer for in terms of women's exhaustion. This is sort of going beyond the postpartum, but yeah, just women feeling that they just have to push on, push through, and that's been what leads, when the baby's a year old or 18 months old, then they're coming into the clinic with exhaustion and catching colds all the time, and feeling in low mood.   Tahnee: Yeah, I think, I guess I don't know what the answer is. I wonder if you have any insights, but I think that's a really tough one for women, especially as the child gets maybe that little bit older, because something I've observed with myself, which was challenging, was that my capacity has changed and I just can't push myself as hard as I used to. That was a big shock for me.   Jenny Allison: I think it's required, both internal and external change, so internally or with your own self as a mother, and with those around, it's a matter of changing your family culture and your wider community culture around the great importance of this, and then from a political perspective, it's really about women getting better pay to to continue the role, and fathers getting paid just a catch on to you, and these are things that Western government always very reluctant to part from the Scandinavian countries.   Jenny Allison: They're very reluctant to concede to women. What I've noticed actually, which is really quite hopeful is in this generation, in your generation of young women having babies now, there is a bit of a ground swell about oh, the postpartum, we forgot about that, because way back when women took control of birth, way back in the '70s, and you got these... The Bible really was Spiritual Midwifery a book [crosstalk 00:23:59] by an American woman.   Tahnee: I love it.   Jenny Allison: Wonderful book, but I found what was interesting was that wasn't a postpartum, it wasn't a change of awareness of the postpartum, and I think it's because by that time in the West, postpartum all the postmodern traditions had basically slipped away while women gained tremendously through this movement in the way that they controlled their birthing processes.   Jenny Allison: Nothing happened about the postpartum because it was already from the West called The Cinderella Period, like unobserved, not even thought about really, whereas all this time in most tradition cultures, it was continuing on strongly. I think sometimes immigrant women coming to Australia and New Zealand are really shocked to find out that the way that they are treated in hospitals is all about the babies. They say, "What about us? We expect to be treated like queens," and this is not happening.   Jenny Allison: I think that an awareness is growing, and there was actually a book published last year from some researchers at La Trobe University in Melbourne. One section of it was some research that they did about women coming from backgrounds where the family supported the mother after childbirth, and the women who had family support after childbirth, it wasn't necessarily the immigrant mothers, it was that the family culture was to support mother, but they reported almost zero distress, whereas those who didn't have family support reported high levels up to 70%, 80% difficult stress.   Jenny Allison: That was another really obvious message to everyone. Look, the evidence is there.   Tahnee: I think that's really interesting, because that idea of feminism and how we've almost interpreted it, because I think about what happened in the '70s as well because it was really that feminist movement, is this idea of taking control of birth is very empowering. Then the yin to that is then the surrender of postpartum. I know for me, there was probably a few weeks where I really resisted.   Tahnee: I felt amazing because of all the wonderful hormones. I felt very strong and had a wonderful birth. I think a part of me was very resistant to this idea of rest. I felt like I was weak and not strong if I rested. I can look back at that time and really feel that there was some subconscious things going on for me around that, and my own sense of self worth.   Tahnee: Yeah, and I think that's kind of a general theme for a lot of, I guess, modern women with this idea of feminism and doing it all, you know? It's an interesting and tricky one.   Jenny Allison: There was a myth going around of you know, well the tribal women just give birth, and she just goes back to work. I don't know how the myth grew, but it became something that Western women, it gave them another high bar that they had to reach. Something else we have to do. We don't just have to work at our jobs and our careers, we have to give birth well, and then we have to just pop straight back. It really is a complete mess because the only circumstances where a so-called tribal woman or a woman in a tradition rural culture would not rest for 40 days in most places, if her family had left or there was extreme poverty and breakup of the family, or there was war or some big social influence that would take away the family's cohesiveness, but otherwise every single time mother would be resting for 40 days.   Jenny Allison: I'm lucky to be married to a man from Marley, whose mother gave me the most amazing instruction about resting for 40 days, and Marley's not a rich country, and the Marlian women and the men around as well insist on 40 days of rest after childbirth. They say, "You are the queen." Everyone runs around doing everything for you. Food, support, you don't even have to bath the baby if you don't want to.   Jenny Allison: My sister-in-law actually said, "You know, I had this situation with my first baby where I was up in the desert near the border of another country, and I didn't have any family support," and she said, "I felt so ill inside, and yet no one knew how I was suffering." For her next baby she was back in the family and had that family support, and it was a totally different experience with her, and she recovered really well. She just gets so wonderful and strong. She was able to describe how it was when she didn't do it, and how it was when she was able to.   Tahnee: I think when you look at what a rural tradition requires, they need people to remain strong and healthy so these periods of rest become, like in Chinese medicine, the confinement period. They become cultural and they become just a non-negotiable I suppose.   Jenny Allison: Yes, I think that's great word. It's actually women's rights to be well cared for after childbirth.   Tahnee: I think the opportunity, one of the things that I was told about Chinese medicine was that when we looked at these big transitions in women's left, there's opportunities for us to become, I think you called them the golden opportunities, which I really like. Could you talk a little bit about how these can become actual healing?   Jenny Allison: Oh yes, because it's a wonderful concept, and it is born out by oxytocin research actually. So cultivating one's health in the postpartum is part of this whole tradition in Chinese medicine, which is called the art of self cultivation for health, it's called yun xin. Within that, there's cultivation of one's health in the postpartum.   Jenny Allison: The term in Chinese medicine for the opportunities in women's life for rehabilitation, restoration, and improvement of one's health, they're called golden opportunities, and there are three.   Jenny Allison: The first is just a small one, and that's every time a woman has her period, that's an opportunity for her to nourish her blood, to look after herself to make sure she's warm. Then the other one is during menopause, which is another huge transition for women, that's also seen as a golden opportunity. They say that the blood goes from the uterus to the heart, and promotes wisdom, so that's a different transition.   Jenny Allison: But the biggest golden opportunity is the postpartum. It's such an intense transition, and it involves such an intense change on almost every metabolic process in your body, every organ. It actually reaches what's call a peak of change, where because of the changes of the metabolism during pregnancy, and then this intense change after birth, you can influence very strongly your health either way. You can either influence it negatively, and become depleted and maybe get depressed, end up with aches and pains, or you can use the opportunity to intensely change in a positive way.   Jenny Allison: Women talk about how old problems are resolved. Some of my patients who've done the postpartum in the Chinese way have said, "Yeah, I find that I'm stronger than before." You're more resourceful than before. Some of my old symptoms have gone. All of these things, so there can be a very strong physical and spiritual change.   Jenny Allison: When we come into intense oxytocin, that is an absolute parallel description, because oxytocin production is probably at it's most intense during the postpartum period, when a mother's beginning lactation and lactating. With oxytocin, because it's a newer modulator, it actually has the ability to annal old uronal connections in the brain to dissolve and new ones to form, so it can be this opportunity to heal former.   Jenny Allison: I finally talked to one other group in the world where they actually recognize that birth is an opportunity to heal former, and Druze mother, in the Druze tradition, which is a very, very strong and very profound tradition of postpartum care as well. But in Chinese medicine that's acknowledge through the concept of the spirit, which we call Shen. The transformation of the spirit allow for this tremendous psychic opening and healing place, specific to the right, and that's the other thing about oxytocin too.   Jenny Allison: If you're in high oxytocin production, but the circumstances are wrong in the sense that you feel endangered, unsafe, stressed, then you'll go into the mother lion aspect of oxytocin, which is aggressive and really stressed and traumatized, so it's an incredible moment.   Tahnee: Well, that just really clarifies this whole birth trauma thing, because I can imagine that hormonal cascade has interfered with intervention or non-optimal birth setting, and then there's some kind of trauma. I can just imagine. Yeah, that's a bit of a recipe for what we say-   Jenny Allison: One mother in the Druze tradition said to me, she said, "Look, in our tradition if someone's had a traumatic birth for whatever reason, I'll work really hard for their next baby to make sure that's healed."   Tahnee: Which country are they from, sorry?   Jenny Allison: The Druze tradition is they are culture that is basically around Lebanon, Syria, and North Israel. They're in a particular part of the world, but Druze immigrants in Australia and there's Druze communities I think around the world, but that's basically [crosstalk 00:32:42].   Tahnee: They have a very strong kind of midwifery tradition too, don't they? Sort of medicine woman kind of... Is that true? Do they have a very strong kind of midwifery tradition that women-based medicine. I feel like I've read something about them.   Jenny Allison: Ah, well I'm not sure, but they have a very strong mother-based postpartum. They also have ideas of a punctilious pregnancy, because what they talk about is that they don't just want quantity of babies, they want quality of soul. They talk about during the pregnancy a real awareness of eating food that comes from places that you've gone, the providence of the food is known so that you're not eating an animal that's been killed inhumanely, or if you're a vegetarian, not eating [inaudible 00:33:25], and you're conscious of not having, not cooking ham in pregnancy, of maintaining harmonious relations with those around you. All of those things.   Tahnee: Sounds really beautiful and intentional. Well, I think that's something I'm seeing is becoming more popular, or there's more emphasis now on women, maybe being conscious conception. I see that popping up a lot in the social media accounts that I follow and things.   Jenny Allison: Yeah, I think they're about conscious conception and conscious pregnancy, and conscious postpartum, because they also believe that there's a soul incarnate. They say how important it is in the first few weeks of the postpartum that the mother is just really takes a warm quiet space that she doesn't even go to a cold window if it's winter. She's just very cocooned with her baby. Her baby's so cocooned, and only basically handed to the father or one or two close relatives so that baby gets to recognize his or her new incarnation with the family that she or he has incarnated into.   Jenny Allison: Some of these ideas, yeah, they're very interesting.   Tahnee: I actually had an experience after my daughter was born, meditating that she was connected to me by this kind of golden tube when she was quite little, and I could really feel-   Jenny Allison: Oh, lovely.   Tahnee: Yeah, but I could really feel that until maybe three or four months, like it was very strong for the first three or four months, and then it started to... I could still feel it quite strongly until probably we stopped breastfeeding, I guess. Maybe around 18 to 20 months.   Tahnee: You know, and now she's two and a half. I don't have that same feeling that she's... We're still spiritually connected, I guess. I could really feel like that psychic connection between her and I when she was really little, and I've read a lot of accounts of those kinds of things. When you were saying it's a possibility for psychic kind of shifts, I could really feel that in my experience.   Jenny Allison: I think many midwives talk about just the first three months alone being the fourth trimester with the baby is so connected with the mother that really the best way to be as a mother is to assume that they're still inside in terms of protecting them, in terms of making a quiet environment.   Jenny Allison: I think all of this stuff is inherent in these really profound worldwide traditions. We've just got so much to learn from them, because of what we've lost.   Tahnee: How do women navigate hospitals like this? I read in your book there was a couple of accounts of women from different cultures who birthed in New Zealand hospitals. They couldn't believe they were sent home after a couple of days. Like you said, they weren't cared for. They baby was cared for.   Tahnee: That really kind of broke my heart in a way because I see that as such an integral part of the birthing system in our culture, and I don't know how we move away from it. It's a tough one.   Jenny Allison: Well, it kind of brings us back full circle, doesn't it, to the mother is to be honored as a queen.   Tahnee: I think you said something earlier that it's not about self care, it's about being held and empowered, and that to me is a really good distinction, because I do see a lot of... I think this is another problem in our culture is we really emphasize-   Jenny Allison: Oh yes, you're making a really good point.   Tahnee: Taking away the community aspect.   Jenny Allison: Not on the mother, actually. It's about allowing herself to be dependent on those around her being totally worth of that dependence, like being absolutely there for her.   Tahnee: Which, again, I guess requires a big shift in how we all relate to that.   Jenny Allison: Absolutely, because we're just taught how important independence is, and I think this is a general kind of Western idea that interdependence is not really something that we emphasize much, where as we know all around the world interdependence at these moment, it's absolutely crucial.   Tahnee: And I read in your book that you did interview a lot of women, and you had some of their dialogue, which I really enjoyed reading. You spoke to women who, you know, they were maybe in African countries or in other parts of the world, and they still did have jobs, and they still went back to work and things, but they did take that time to prepare their bodies. I thought that was really nice, because sometimes I feel like it's either/or, you know you're either the stay-at-home mom who has the support of the family, or you're the mom who puts her kid in daycare and goes back to work. I feel like we've got to be able to have these conversations a little bit more.   Tahnee: My partner calls it in a slippery way.   Jenny Allison: [crosstalk 00:37:35].   Tahnee: Yeah, I know. I mean, I don't think we can solve the world's problems, but it's just something that I'm really aware of. I guess, when you had these women, was it just purely that they've done these 40 days, or do you think it's the cultural thing? What do you think?   Jenny Allison: Depends on the country. I mean, if you're in an extended family, obviously it's real easy to go back to work because everyone around you is going to take the baby if you need to be away for a while, a few hours or something like that while you're working.   Jenny Allison: In a rural situation, obviously it's very different because most people have their babies with them as they do their agricultural work. I remember a Moroccan woman saying, "Look, 40 days you're treated like royalty. After 40 days you're back into everything, whether you're as a working mom outside the home, or a working mom in the home, you're a working mom."   Jenny Allison: I think the importance of 40 days is that there's no other time that you can do this healing. I mean, if you say, "Well, I can't. I haven't got a moment to heal after childbirth. I'll do it six months on," well, the opportunity's not there anymore. All those big changes, each change we talked about, all those other massive changes are no longer happening and what you've done is you've lost that opportunity for your body to recover itself properly.   Jenny Allison: For those important changes to be made, yeah, you can't go, "Well, I'm going back to work, and I'll have a big holiday later," because it just doesn't work like that.   Jenny Allison: It's true that you don't have to have another baby in order to work on a traumatic birth or to work on depletion after childbirth, but you just have to work that much harder, and you have to take time out and go, "Okay, well the next six months, whatever I need, I'm going to look after myself, because I haven't been able to recover my energy since the birth."   Jenny Allison: A lot of women come in to connect, three four years on, and they feel that they still haven't got their energy back.   Tahnee: Wow, I was talking to my acupuncturist about this, and he was saying he thinks it's at least a year of living very, very, very carefully to even start to get some of that energy back, blood back, with women that haven't done their golden month or the 40 days. So I don't know if you agree with that, but that was an interesting perspective. He said it's very, very slow to turn around once you've gotten to that point of depletion.   Jenny Allison: You have to put a lot of effort and time if you want to be able to turn your health around. I mean, it can be done, but why not take this amazing opportunity and not just recover, but actually improve your health?   Tahnee: That sounds exactly perfect. We might wrap it up there. I guess I really wanted to first thank you, because there was some really amazing stuff that I didn't know as well.   Jenny Allison: It's a pleasure to talk to you about it. Very exciting time actually in a way, because we've got to work for. It's going to make a big difference to mothers and children's health.   Tahnee: Yeah, and I think that's... My partner and I talk a lot about this idea of cultural change and generational change. I think my daughter will be raised with these conversations, and I think that's just one of the best things we can all do as individuals is keep it alive, I suppose.   Tahnee: Yes, I appreciate you helping us keep it alive. I know we do have a few practitioners who listen to this, so if you could share... You mentioned that you have a webinar, and I think a talking Melbourne, if that's right?   Jenny Allison: I think that the lecture will be restricted to students from the Southern School of Natural Therapies. The webinar will be available once it's launched. It's not launched yet, but that will be available probably by the end of the year from a group called Native Knowledge, which are up and running and they're based in Vancouver. That will be on there. I'll need just five new interviews.   Tahnee: Okay, so what we might do is we'll update our show note on the blog with all of the links when they're ready to those webinars and things. If people... They can obviously purchase your book [crosstalk 00:41:12]. Yeah, and if they wanted to connect with you, do you have a website or any other way of being found?   Jenny Allison: I don't. I'm sorry.   Tahnee: That's okay.   Jenny Allison: My publisher deals... If there's any kind of social media thing, people write to my publisher.   Tahnee: Okay, so I'll put details up there as well, that's Beatnik Publishing in Auckland. Yeah, okay, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jenny. I really appreciate it.   Jenny Allison: Oh, and thank you so much too. That was a great conversation.   Tahnee: Yeah, it's been such a pleasure. Have a wonderful day.   Jenny Allison: You too, Tammie. Thanks.   Tahnee: Thank you so much. You're amazing.   Everybody thank you so much for tuning in today. Now time to take that information, round it into your lifestyle so you can amplify your health to the next level. You can really help amplify the help of this podcast by going on to iTunes and subscribing and leaving us a review. Really helps us spread this information around Tonic Herb, around sovereign help, further out there into the community so we can help more people experience the best out of this life.   Thanks, guys. I'll speak to you next time.

Today I have Jad Patrick on the show! Jad gained his Bachelor of Health Science Degree in Naturopathy from the Southern School of Natural Therapies in 2005 and completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling at the Australian College of Applied Psychology in 2013. Jad utilises his counselling skills to empower people to look after their own health. This compliments his naturopathic approach, guiding people on their journey to a more healthy, happy and meaningful life. From an early age, Jad has been passionate about nutrition and health. He believes a whole foods-based diet, combined with exercise, stress management and healthy relationships is the key to preventing many of today’s chronic health issues.   I really love this outlook and mix of modalities which is why I’m excited about having Jad on the show. Some of the things you'll discover in this week's episodes are: PART 1 + What sparked Jad's passion in health and a bit about his story and what lead him to study Naturopathy  + How Jad's own journey with anxiety and mental health lead him to study to be a councillor + How Jad think this compliments the Naturopathic approach + What mindfulness is and how it is different from Meditation +Tools to help people be more mindful throughout the day + Jad walks us through the 'soles of the feet' meditation + Why having a Mindfulness practice is important + How you can cultivate mindfulness and meditation into your life if you’ve never done it before + Jad explains what self-compassion is and what mindful self-compassion + How to incorporate Mindful Self-compassion into your day to day life + AND SO MUCH MORE!!   CONNECT WITH JAD + Facebook: www.facebook.com/jadpatricknaturaltherapies/ + Instagram: www.instagram.com/jadpatricknaturopathy + Website:  www.mergehealth.com.au  REVIEW Your written reviews and feedback inspire me to improve each episode. Plus they help spread it can't be that friggin hard message far and wide. If you love the podcast and the information shared then please leave a review and rating over at iTunes or Stitcher. Don't have an iTunes account??? No worries! Listen on Spotify HERE. I would also really love to hear about your own health journey, what your struggling with and what you'd love to hear covered in upcoming episodes please leave me a comment below or reach out to me at Ashleigh@itcantbethatfrigginhard.com

Today I have Jad Patrick on the show! Jad gained his Bachelor of Health Science Degree in Naturopathy from the Southern School of Natural Therapies in 2005 and completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling at the Australian College of Applied Psychology in 2013. Jad utilises his counselling skills to empower people to look after their own health. This compliments his naturopathic approach, guiding people on their journey to a more healthy, happy and meaningful life. From an early age, Jad has been passionate about nutrition and health. He believes a whole foods-based diet, combined with exercise, stress management and healthy relationships is the key to preventing many of today’s chronic health issues.   I really love this outlook and mix of modalities which is why I’m excited about having Jad on the show. Some of the things you'll discover in this week's episodes are: PART 2 + Jad answers a whether having self-compassion will make you an emotional mess and how he suggests moving through tough emotions + What some of the most common myths Jad sees surrounding mindful self-compassion and meditation + What some of the major roadblocks that Jad sees people come against and how he suggests to overcome it + Jad shares some of his favourite resources or books he recommends for people interested in getting started in meditation and mindfulness + How diet can affect our ability to be mindful and be able to meditate + Nutrients that are important for brain function that helps us meditate + How can Mindful self-compassion practise benefits both patients and practitioners + AND SO MUCH MORE!!!   RESOURCES + Courses on mindfulness with Merge health + Kabat-Zinn books  + The mindful path to self-compassion book by Christopher K. Germer (A great introduction to self-compassion)  + Kristin Neff Youtube videos on self-compassion  + Paul Gilbert 'The Compassionate Mind' book  CONNECT WITH JAD + Facebook: www.facebook.com/jadpatricknaturaltherapies/ + Instagram: www.instagram.com/jadpatricknaturopathy + Website:  www.mergehealth.com.au  REVIEW Your written reviews and feedback inspire me to improve each episode. Plus they help spread it can't be that friggin hard message far and wide. If you love the podcast and the information shared then please leave a review and rating over at iTunes or Stitcher. Don't have an iTunes account??? No worries! Listen on Spotify HERE. I would also really love to hear about your own health journey, what your struggling with and what you'd love to hear covered in upcoming episodes please leave me a comment below or reach out to me at Ashleigh@itcantbethatfrigginhard.com

Hello everyone and welcome! Today I have Adrian Harper who is a Naturopath and Yoga Therapy Practitioner in clinical practice for the past ten years, working within integrative medicine for the majority of this time. He has a particular interest in Functional Digestive Conditions and Microbiome Health along with complex chronic health conditions including Mould Biotoxin Illness, Tick-Borne and Stealth Infections, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.   Adrian personally became involved in naturopathic medicine due to his own health journey with chronic kidney disease. This demonstrated to him the power of natural medicine. This experience has resulted in a special interest in chronic kidney disease, including renal failure. He utilises a range of modalities including nutrition, herbal medicine, food as medicine, lifestyle medicine and yoga therapy.   Adrian has completed a Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) from Southern School of Natural Therapies and a Master of Public Health (Global Health) from the University of Melbourne. He has lectured in Naturopathy and Nutrition at Southern School of Natural Therapies and completed a number of Yoga Teacher and Yoga Therapy training in Australia and India.     Some of the things you'll discover in this week's episodes are: + What a Yoga therapy Practitioner is and how that is different from a yoga teacher + Adrian shares how his diagnosis of a rare kidney disease lead him to study Natural Medicine + What changes Adrian made that made the most significant impact on his health + What Mould Biotoxin illness is + What some of the signs and symptoms + How is Mould Biotoxin illness is caused + How  Mould Biotoxin Illness affects your health + How to identify if you have a mould issue + How Mould Biotoxin Illness is diagnosed + How you can use natural therapies to help heal from it + The kinds of moulds you should watch out for in your home, body and foods + How you  can prevent mould Biotoxin illness + 3 things Adrian does every day to stay at optimum health + AND SO MUCH MORE!!   RESOURCES + Dr Ritchie Schoemaker website  + Building biologists CONNECT WITH ADRIAN +  Website:  www.adrianharper.com.au + Facebook:  facebook.com/Naturopath.Melbourne/ + Instagram:  instagram.com/adrian_harper_naturopath/ + Twitter:  twitter.com/naturopathmelb REVIEW Your written reviews and feedback inspire me to improve each episode. Plus they help spread it can't be that friggin hard message far and wide. If you love the podcast and the information shared then please leave a review and rating over at iTunes or Stitcher. Don't have an iTunes account??? No worries! Listen on Spotify HERE. I would also really love to hear about your own health journey, what you're struggling with and what you'd love to hear covered in upcoming episodes please leave me a comment below or reach out to me at Ashleigh@itcantbethatfrigginhard.com

Today, Chris Gebhardt joins Dr Nirala Jacobi to speak about constipation in SIBO. Chris works at Resonance Complementary Therapies in Melbourne, Australia, and has been working with SIBO for 3-4 years.  Chris graduated as a Naturopath from the Southern School of Natural Therapies in 1995, has done post graduate studies in Japanese Acupuncture. Chris works with his partner, Natalie Cruttenden, also a Naturopath and SIBO practitioner.  Chris introduced Dr Jacobi to the use of the herbal medicine, pomegranate, in SIBO treatment, which is also touched on today. Topics discussed in this episode include: Chris's journey to becoming a SIBO treating practitioner. Methane dominant SIBO and the constipation relationship. Chronic constipation beyond SIBO treatment - what is Chris seeing in his clinic with constipated patients who remain constipated even though methane levels are dropping? Post SIBO treatment therapies to support healthy digestion throughout the entire digestive tract. Resetting and stimulating peristalsis in the large intestine. The importance of supporting bowel movements during the antimicrobial SIBO treatment phase . The theory that high methane on baseline that remains elevated throughout the test reflects IBS-C and not necessarily SIBO (via SIBO breath testing). Chris's clinical pearls for treating constipation, and supplemental supports: Prescript Assist Partially Hydrolysed Guar Gum (PHGG) Herbal based laxatives Metagenics laxatone Mediherb cascara complex Xymogen Probiomax Plus Sachets Bioceuticals Ultra Biotic 500 in later phases of SIBO treatment. Dr Jacobi's supplement supports for peristaltic action Bifidobacterium Lactis HN019 Found in Probiomax, and Orthoplex Multigen Biotic. Mutaflor - beneficial E.coli Repair work to consider after Neomycin use. Dr Jacobi's bowel retraining techniques: PHGG use Flaxseeds, chia seeds, and dietary adjustment to support bowel movements for patients with high methane production in the large intestine. Anatomical squatting position for best evacuation alignment. SIBOtest's Resource - Retraining a Sluggish Colon Coffee enemas - Chris and Dr Jacobi's opinions for therapeutic use. Kinesiological testing for the function of sphincters of the abdomen. Sphincter work and what type of constipation patients may respond better Chris's seed blend for moving the bowels - chia seeds, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almond. Methanogen specific herbal support Allisure Bactrex Atrantil Removing Methanobrevibacter smithii by moving the bowels. Testing available for high baseline methane and high methane throughout, and when to use this test - Methane Spot Test. Pomegranate - when to use it, what form to use, how often to use it, and Chris's results from using it. Other herbs for treating SIBO and Small Intestinal Fungal Overgrowth (SIFO), including Usnea and Horopito. The Biphasic Diet and reintroducing FODMAP foods. The damage to the villi in light of SIBO and repercussions of this. SIBO relapse, and how to integrate a repair phase to lessen the occurrence of this, either post treatment, or pretreatment (as indicated in the The Biphasic Diet) Chris's treatments for gut repair: Prebiotic rotation. Lactulose Bimuno galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS) Fibre integration. Soluble Insoluble Probiotics Colonic foods (polyphenols) Green tea How SIBO causes leaky gut and damage to the brush border enzymes. Chronic SIBO patients who relapse and why they may relapse. Dr Jason Hawrelak's talk at the SIBO Summit 2016 on pre- and probiotics. Dr Jacobi's gut repair program Vitamin A Zinc - 60mg Bimuno GOS Stress as a factor in sluggish bowels. Supporting serotonin for gut motility. Resources Resonance Complementary Therapies Melbourne, Ashburton, Australia. (03) 9885 5964 SIBOtest practitioner education and patient handouts Chris's supplemental supports: Prescript Assist Partially Hydrolysed Guar Gum Herbal based laxatives Metagenics laxatone Mediherb cascara complex Xymogen Probiomax Plus Sachets Bioceuticals Ultra Biotic 500 in later phases of SIBO treatment. Dr Jacobi's supplement supports for peristaltic action: Bifidobacterium Lactis HN019 Found in Probiomax, and Orthoplex Multigen Biotic Mutaflor - beneficial E.coli Squatty Potty Easy Stool Chris's seed blend for moving the bowels - chia seeds, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almond. Methanogen specific herbal support Allisure Bactrex Atrantil Methane Spot Testing The Biphasic Diet Bimuno Dr Jason Hawrelak's talk at the SIBO Summit 2016 on pre and probiotics. SIBOtest's Resource - Retraining a Sluggish Colon

Susun Weed answers 90 minutes of herbal health questions followed by a 30 minute interview with Gill Stannard. Since childhood, Gill has been fascinated with herbs and was delighted to turn this passion into a profession after graduating from Southern School of Natural Therapies (Melbourne, Australia) in 1991. She ran a successful multidisciplinary clinic in Melbourne for 23 years, before taking her business online and moving to Sydney. Gill’s well known for her radio show, which aired for almost 20 years, and television appearances. With a move to Sydney in 2014, Gill refocused the way she practices by going back to the grassroots of natural medicine and working with clients in a health coaching framework. She also supervises naturopaths and herbalists struggling in practice through individual and group professional supervision, lectures and articles. Website: http://gillstannard.com.au this episode Q&A includes: • post traumatic stress change- make us stronger, healthier, broader... • can we change the immune system? Wise Woman Tradition nourishes wholeness... • get in touch with your anger so you're not so afraid of it... • joint health- bone broth, comfrey leaf infusion and jewel weed brew... • any part of dandelion harvested any time of year will make good medicine- most generous plant... • animal fat is so critical in fertility... • not menstruating is healthy for women.. • wild carrot seed for birth control- Robin Rose Bennett • are your concerns about herbs during pregnancy overblown.. • horse chestnut for varcosities.. • SMASH- Salmon, Mackerel, Anchovies, Sardines, Herring for omega 3 fatty acids.. • supplements cannot make us healthy..      

Our guest proves that that through social media, even an isolated, rural school can connect, grow and share amazing stories. Follow: @Joesanfelippofc @DaisyDyerDuerr @TonySinanis @bamradionetwork Daisy Dyer Duerr is a K-12 Principal at Saint Paul Schools, in Saint Paul, Arkansas; Huntsville School District. This is her 9th year in school administration and 17th in education, spending her first 8 years as a Social Studies teacher and Basketball Coach.