Podcasts about tonic herbalism

History suggests the Olmecs of Southern Mexico were likely the first culture to use cacao as a divine food as early as 1500 BC.  Chocolate has long been an expression of love, an antidote to a breakup or a rough day.  So is it possible chocolate could be a powerful health food?  Sage Dammers believes so!  Sage is the co-founder, CEO, product formulator, and master chocolatier of Addictive Wellness.  He's dedicated his life to the pursuit of holistic wellness and nutrition. Beginning his journey as a curious teenager, Sage ventured beyond conventional education to immerse himself in the ancient herbal systems and nutritional practices of indigenous cultures, especially Taoist tonic herbalism.  In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Sage Dammers on how he's created chocolates with herbs to nourish your nervous system, gut, cells and soul.   What You'll Learn In This Episode: Why you can now truly say chocolate is your medicine The powerful minerals and neuro-chemicals in dark chocolate Benefits of heirloom wild grown cacao  Risk of mycotoxin exposure with chocolate Why adaptogenic herbs and dark chocolate are a perfect pair Little known intricacies of the chocolate trade that matter for your health How to acquire herbs from the most potent sources   Resources From The Show: Addictive Wellness Chocolate

#131: Today we are diving into the world of health sovereignty and tonic herbalism with our extraordinary guest, Mason Taylor, the CEO/Founder of SuperFeast and a renowned tonic herbalist. Mason shares his fascinating journey from the roots of Daoist philosophy to the creation of SuperFeast, guiding tens of thousands on the path to discovering the healing power of medicinal mushrooms and adaptogenic tonic herbs. Brace yourself for a unique blend of wisdom and humor as Mason, not just a health expert but also a budding comedian, bursts the bubble on the "health scene." Keep listening for an insightful conversation on balancing business and passion, debunking myths about herbs, and envisioning the future of wellness. Use code LAURENDELEARY15 for 15% off SuperFeast: https://www.superfeast.com.au/?rfsn=7187929.6884b0&utm_source=refersion&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=7187929.6884b0 Curiocity Pod: https://bit.ly/3szbD8r Lauren DeLeary: https://bit.ly/3FXuq0i Mason Taylor: https://www.instagram.com/masonjtaylor?igsh=MW5jbGE1M2NyNmwwbg== SuperFeast: https://www.instagram.com/superfeast/

In episode 33 of The Road to Wisdom Podcast with Mason Taylor, the visionary founder of Superfeast, Chloe, Keshia & Mason delve into the realm of tonic herbalism. Mason graciously imparts his wisdom, unraveling the essence of tonic herbalism and its profound connection to our lives. Throughout the lively discussion, he provides valuable insights on optimizing the benefits of Superfeast products. Beyond the surface, we explore the concept of metamorphosis, delving into Mason's personal experiences with herbalism. He candidly shares the transformative journey, intertwining the intricacies of the business side of Superfeast and its global impact. As we navigate the conversation, Mason guides us on seamlessly integrating tonic herbalism into our daily existence, fostering a harmonious relationship between ancient wisdom and contemporary living.   You can learn more about tonic herbalism via @superfeast and mason personally at @masonjtaylor   If you haven't tried superfeast products yet this is your invitation to with THEROADTOWISDOM10 for your discount at the checkout.   Loved what you heard in this episode? Your support means the world. Make sure to hit that subscribe button, spread the word with your pals, and drop us a review. By doing so, you're not just tuning in – you're fueling our community's growth and paving the way for more incredible guests to grace our show. As the week rolls by, we're already cooking up more tantalizing content for your hungry ears. Keen to stay in the loop with the latest episode releases? Follow our journey on Instagram at @theroadtowisdom.podcast and catch behind-the-scenes action on our YouTube channel @theroadtowisdompodcast. Don't miss out on a thing – also, snag the freshest updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter over at ⁠⁠https://www.theroadtowisdompodcast.com/⁠⁠. It's your VIP ticket to all things The Road To Wisdom

In episode 33 of The Road to Wisdom Podcast with Mason Taylor, the visionary founder of Superfeast, Chloe, Keshia & Mason delve into the realm of tonic herbalism. Mason graciously imparts his wisdom, unraveling the essence of tonic herbalism and its profound connection to our lives. Throughout the lively discussion, he provides valuable insights on optimizing the benefits of Superfeast products. Beyond the surface, we explore the concept of metamorphosis, delving into Mason's personal experiences with herbalism. He candidly shares the transformative journey, intertwining the intricacies of the business side of Superfeast and its global impact. As we navigate the conversation, Mason guides us on seamlessly integrating tonic herbalism into our daily existence, fostering a harmonious relationship between ancient wisdom and contemporary living.   You can learn more about tonic herbalism via @superfeast and mason personally at @masonjtaylor   If you haven't tried superfeast products yet this is your invitation to with THEROADTOWISDOM10 for your discount at the checkout.   Loved what you heard in this episode? Your support means the world. Make sure to hit that subscribe button, spread the word with your pals, and drop us a review. By doing so, you're not just tuning in – you're fueling our community's growth and paving the way for more incredible guests to grace our show. As the week rolls by, we're already cooking up more tantalizing content for your hungry ears. Keen to stay in the loop with the latest episode releases? Follow our journey on Instagram at @theroadtowisdom.podcast and catch behind-the-scenes action on our YouTube channel @theroadtowisdompodcast. Don't miss out on a thing – also, snag the freshest updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter over at ⁠⁠https://www.theroadtowisdompodcast.com/⁠⁠. It's your VIP ticket to all things The Road To Wisdom

In today's episode Mason takes the guest seat and sits down to chat with Melissa Ambrosini on her #1 rated podcast; The Melissa Ambrosini Show Melissa is a multiple bestselling author, keynote and TEDx speaker, and queen of mastering your Mean Girl.  In this explorative and thought provoking conversation, Mason shares the download on Taoist tonic herbalism, conscious conception/birth, how to incorporate SuperFeast herbs into your daily life/family culture, the signature China sourcing that makes SuperFeast so unique and the importance of tradition and lore in herbal cultivation. Mason also runs us through the practice of Gua Sha and emphasises the importance of connecting to the ancient roots that lay so deeply at its core. With a shared passion for holistic health, Mason and Melissa cover vast ground, their dialog spanning the realms of medicinal mushrooms, tonic herbs and Taoist philosophy. Whether you are new on the herbal path, are a sometimes herbal friend, or a seasoned pro, there are many pearls of wisdom littered for all throughout this informative conversation.     Mason & Melissa discuss: - Birth Magic & the conscious birth of Mason and Tahnee's two children. - Taoist Tonic Herbalism. - SuperFeast sourcing. - The Three Treasures; Jing, Qi, Shen. - Longevity and the merit of daily practice in the cultivation of it. - The SuperFeast origin story. - Herb dosage for postpartum, breastfeeding and children. - Gua Sha, what is it and how to utilise it in your life.   Resource guide Guest Links Melissa's Website Melissa's  Podcast Melissa's Facebook Melissa's Instagram Melissa's Twitter Melissa's YouTube Time Magic Book Wholy Mama Mentioned In This Episode SuperFeast YIN Gua Sha Tool SuperFeast YANG Gua Sha Tool SuperFeast QI SuperFeast JING SuperFeast I Am Gaia SuperFeast Astragalus SuperFeast Mason's Mushrooms Related Podcasts Gua Sha: Become Your Own Healer with Mason Taylor (EP#174)   Connect With Us SuperFeast InstagramSuperFeast FacebookSuperFeast TikTok SuperFeast Online Education   Check Out The Transcript Below: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/tonic-herbalism-taoist-practice-for-the-family-culture-with-mason-taylor-on-the-melissa-ambrosini-show-ep-209  

In this fascinating episode, Mason discusses his journey with tonic herbalism, the benefits of medicinal mushrooms and tonic herbs, important considerations when sourcing tonic herbs, and practical ways to integrate these powerful remedies into your daily routine to improve your overall health, wellness, immunity, and longevity.

My old friends forage for medicinal mushrooms and mineral resins, and concoct customized herbal tinctures for their clients. Today, I had the delight of interviewing them about their adventures in tonic herbalism. So, what exactly is Tonic Herbalism? Well, according to DJ and Jenny Ankenbrandt, tonic herbalism is so ancient that it precedes Taoism. A select number of time-tested plants and fungi are identified as tonics through thousands of years of safe, beneficial usage. But how effective are these herbs in treating physical and mental health? DJ describes his personal brush with chronic pain and how he has navigated addiction to western medication, along with the experiences of his clients regarding gut and immune system health by ingesting these “intelligent foods.”DJ Ankenbrandt is a Classical Chinese Tonic Herbalist & custom formulator who works with clients and small businesses to create optimal daily wellness protocols for enhanced health and longevity. He is the founder and visionary behind Cintamani Tonics, and has over 15 years of experience sharing the wisdom of earthen essences with the world. DJ custom tailors  unique and potent formulas with ancient tonic extracts to help his clients resolve a myriad of health concerns. DJ runs Cintamani Tonics alongside his amazing wife and business partner, Jenny Ankenbrandt. Jen is a mycologist and self-trained herbalist who manages many aspects of the Cintamani Tonics Apothecary and website. She is also the graphic artist behind all the product designs. Together, they make an incredible team that helps thousands of people worldwide access the wisdom and benefits of plants, and achieve enhanced levels of vitality. You can follow DJ and Jenny's work on Twitter @CintamaniTonicsVisit these websites for more information on Tonic Herbalism: Wildamericanshilajit.com and CintamaniTonics.com  If you enjoyed this conversation, please rate & review it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share this episode with a friend, or on social media. You can also head over to my YouTube channel, subscribe, like, comment, & share there as well.To get $200 off your EightSleep Pod Pro Cover visit EightSleep.com & enter promo code SOMETHERAPIST.Take 20% off your entire purchase of nourishing superfood beverages at Organifi with code SOMETHERAPIST.Be sure to check out my shop. In addition to wellness products, you can now find my favorite books!MUSIC: Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission. www.joeypecoraro.comPRODUCTION: Thanks to Eric and Amber Beels at DifMix.comWatch our medical ethics film, NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (formerly known as Affirmation Generation). Watch it online or on DVDs starting July 2. Learn more at NoWayBackFilm.com. Follow us on Twitter @2022affirmation or on Instagram at @affirmationgeneration.Have a question for me? Looking to go deeper and discuss these ideas with other listeners? Join my Locals community! Members get to ask questions I will respond to in exclusive, members-only livestreams, plus other perks TBD.Get your first month free with promo code GRANDFATHER; after that, it's only $8/month. Check it out at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Join Peter as he is given a tour de force into the Taoist Tonic Herbalism by the irrepressible founder of Superfeast, Mason Taylor.  Combining the ancient Chinese art of living - Taoism, with the power of mushrooms to heal, balance and enlighten. This podcast explores ways to combine these two elements to  live with greater Shen, Qi and Jing which are the pillars of healthy body and spirit.

Today on the podcast, we have one of our most loved returning guests; naturopathic doctor and best-selling author Lara Briden. If you have had the pleasure of listening to Lara on one of our previous podcasts, you know she is an absolute wealth of knowledge for all things women's reproductive, menstrual, and hormonal health. As a woman, listening to her illustrate the inextricable relationship between female reproductive health, mental health, and hormone systems, there is a sense of belonging and reclamation for the natural cycles that have been medically interrupted.   Over the years, we've had Lara on the podcast talking about period repair, PCOS, Hypothalamic Amenorrhea, and all they encompass; Today, Lara is joining us to talk about the transitions into perimenopause and menopause. Lara's enlightened wisdom reminds us that menopause is not something to dread or treat as a medical 'condition' to be corrected; but rather a gateway and rite of passage to be honoured and exalted.    In this beautiful conversation with Tahnee, Lara dispels menopausal fallacies replacing them with profound knowledge and biological facts about what this sacred transition within the female body/psyche represents. Lara reframes the metabolic/hormonal shifts between the reproductive years and perimenopause,  details the best diet/herbal medicines for menopause, and offers a beautiful evolutionary perspective of menopause across time and cultures. "How the perimenopause transition is going for a woman depends on a lot of factors. Your stress, your adrenal system, your stress support system, how stable it is, how strong your circadian rhythm is, how well-nourished you are, how your immune system is. All of those things, including, unfortunately, how many environmental toxins you have been exposed to. Any of those negative things can increase the symptoms of the perimenopause transition".    - Lara Briden    Tahnee and Lara discuss: Menopause. Perimenopause. Contraceptive drugs The reproductive years. Pill bleeds are not periods. The phases of perimenopause. The transition into menopause. Herbal medicine for menopause. Hormone therapy for menopause. Why alcohol and menopause don't mix. The difference between progesterone and progestin. Bone density loss with perimenopause/menopause. The hormonal shifts during perimenopause/menopause. At what age do women start getting symptoms of menopause?   Who Lara Briden? Lara Briden is a naturopathic doctor and author of the bestselling books Period Repair Manual andHormone Repair Manual. With a strong science background, Lara sits on several advisory boards and is the lead author of a 2020 paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. She has 25 years' experience in women's health and currently has consulting rooms in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she treats women with PCOS, PMS, endometriosis, perimenopause, and many other hormone- and period-related health problems.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    If you're wanting to enrich your knowledge and dive deeper into Lara's work, make sure you check out the resources below linking to Lara's websites, books and previous podcasts.      Resources: Dr. Lara's website Dr. Lara's Instagram Dr. Lara's Facebook Lara Briden Forum The Period Repair Manual-Lara Briden Period Repair with Lara Briden (EP#21) The Power of Menopause with Jane Hardwick Collings (EP#77) Is It PCOS or Hypothalamic Amenorrhea with Lara Briden (EP#99)   Resources Mentioned In The Podcast:   The Power of Eating Enough - Lara Briden Blog Post The Difference Between Progesterone and Progestin - Lara Briden Blog Post The Slow Moon Climbs - The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause (book mentioned by Lara in podcast)       Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everyone, welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I am here with Lara Briden, she is one of our friends of the podcast. It's our third episode with us today, really excited to have her here. And we're speaking about perimenopause and menopause, really in reference to her book, the Hormone Repair Manual, which if you're my age and over, I'm in my mid 30s, highly recommend getting a copy. It's actually a really good, fun read and really interesting just thinking about preparing for this stage of life. So thank you for joining us on the podcast again, Lara. I'm so happy to have you here.   Lara Briden: (00:34) Thanks for having me. Looking forward to our chat again.   Tahnee: (00:39) Yeah, another one. And we've been sort of all over the world. I think we've done a lot of stuff on menstruation really when you've been on with us, but I was really excited when I saw you publish this. It was last year, wasn't it?   Lara Briden: (00:48) Yeah. Came out early last year.   Tahnee: (00:50) Yes. I think I've had it for quite a while. And I guess from I think women hit this, I hit middle 30s and was like, "I don't have much information about menopause and I've only had these sort of anecdotal stories from family and friends about what happens to women and it's usually pretty negative. It's not really framed up in a positive way." And then I was telling you we had Jane Hardwicke Collings on the podcast and she spoke a lot around the spiritual side of things and these important transitions that we have in our lives. And it just made me a bit more interested and excited about what's coming.   Tahnee: (01:28) I think reading your book, yes, obviously it's a complex time, but just how you mapped out the stages and took something that can feel really sort of dark and unknown and maybe even a little bit scary and... I don't know, I think it just made me feel a little bit more confident and reassured, so thank you for that.   Lara Briden: (01:43) That's sweet. I had one review say, "Yeah, made me feel like everything's going to be okay." Which is-   Tahnee: (01:53) I think it's like with pregnancy, because I'm pregnant right now and you hear about birth growing up and it's always people's hectic horror stories. It's always like, "Oh and you have to carry a baby around this and that." And I think when you actually go through it, it's like, "That's actually really magical and quite beautiful." I mean, I know it's not for everybody, but that's been my experience and it's reframed a lot of that for me. And I think, just this book started that journey for me. So hopefully menopause is a fun experience. But I thought that idea of it being predictable was really interesting that you speak about early in the book, in the sense that there's a rhythm or a pattern that unfolds.   Lara Briden: (02:33) There's a sequence of events, it's not just chaos. It's portrayed as this hormonal chaotic time. That's not actually what's happening, it's a sequence. We'll start with this, it's second puberty. So we have first puberty, which we know is temporary, which we know is turning one thing into another thing. That's what perimenopause is. It's at the other end, it brackets our reproductive years. And it's second puberty, it's the end of periods.   Lara Briden: (03:08) The other good thing about that is it's temporary. And also, I guess the thing I want to say is that writing this book and going through menopause myself, I've reframed actually how I think about female physiology. I now have this sort of view that we have our basic female physiology, which starts at in childhood, we have low hormones, and then we go through 35 to 40 years at the most of our reproductive years, which is amazing. As you know I'm a huge fan of ovulation and periods and pregnancy and all of that's amazing and that helps us make hormones and build metabolic reserve.   Lara Briden: (03:44) But then that has to end, this is the thing about reproductive years, that is, there's an end point. And then we revert back to our more baseline female physiology. So for me, that's sort of really normalised it. It's far from being, "Oh, I'm longer a woman." No, it's the opposite. This is the basic female physiology and then I'm just thankful to have had, in my case about 38 years of periods, I guess.   Tahnee: (04:12) That's a really interesting way to think about it, I guess, because it's almost like this heightened state through these reproductive years, which are so intensive, really in many ways on us and then having this stability afterwards.   Lara Briden: (04:27) The reproductive years are a special time and that's true whether you have pregnancies or not, actually I would say. I mean, obviously pregnancies are a very special part of that, but even for women like myself who did not have pregnancies, it's still those years of ovulating and it's amazing. It also just, for example, having menstrual cycles and pregnancies increases our metabolic rate, increases our demand for calories. So when we exit that, come up the other end, our metabolism shifts, and that's always portrayed as a bad thing. You start to gain weight with menopause. But again, I've sort of reframed it as we need fewer calories in a way. And so from a-   Tahnee: (05:07) Less resources.   Lara Briden: (05:08) Yeah. From an evolutionary perspective, I might jump to that because as you know, I might have mentioned on the podcast before, before I became a naturopathic doctor, I was an evolutionary biologist and I see a lot of things through that lens. Menopause is particularly fascinating from an evolutionary perspective because all the evidence is now that even in ancient times, even in prehistoric times, there were women who made it through to 80 years old. Contrary to the mistaken belief that we all died by 40, that is not the case at all. A lot of people died young because of injuries and unfortunately childhood mortality and death in childbirth as well. There's lots of hazards before modern medicine, but it was always still possible and not uncommon for individuals to live to 80.   Lara Briden: (06:04) And actually what some of the research shows and in my book, I quote another book called The Slow Moon Climbs, where she builds the case that a longer human lifespan for both sexes evolved because of beneficial selection pressure on women in their post reproductive decades. So basically it's about the fact that 50 something, 60 something women are so productive for their group. They gather more food than any other demographic and they share it and they also need less themselves. So that's the perfect member of a society. They're helping everyone, they're gathering food. They're very lean, efficient machines themselves because they don't need as much energy. And it's a good thing, it's like a superpower. It's that reframing of the shift in metabolism as certainly beneficial for our ancestors.   Lara Briden: (07:00) It's a little bit trickier now in our modern world where we live with so many surrounded by sugar and processed foods. That's what you would call an evolutionary mismatch with our ancient metabolism. We can explore that a little bit, but just the basic message being, menopause is meant to happen. It evolved, it's not an accident of living too long. It's something, if we're lucky enough to live this long, that we do as women. I think understanding all of that just changed it all for me personally, I just feel far from feeling like I'm done. I feel now this is the next exciting chapter where you get to do lots of things.   Tahnee: (07:43) Well, I want to bookmark a little bit there because there's a couple things I want to drill down on. I think that piece around the mismatch evolutionarily is really interesting, but I just want to go back a little bit to what you said about, which I guess it's lining up, if you think about how we live now, back in those days it would've been that support of the older, wiser, probably more hands on members of society to the reproducing ones. And I think now we've got this interesting cultural thing where even with myself, I work full time, I have a kid, I'm going to have another kid. And I can see how that drains women as well as they head into their perimenopausal and menopausal years. I wonder if you've noticed that in your clinical work, is there's this extra pressure now on women during their reproductive years and how that affects menopause.   Lara Briden: (08:40) Oh yeah. Well, there's so many reasons. Couple things I'll say so that'll answer your question about clinically what I'm saying. If I could just allow me for a little bit to talk about the evolution a little bit more and restore of humans because I've [crosstalk 00:08:55]. So what we know now about hominids, well, ancient human groups is that we had to have a lot of... To do what we did and spread over the world and be so successful, there always had to be a high ratio between adults and children, which is very interesting. You had to have what they call, I think they called them alloparents. So you had to have non reproducing adults basically who would support and help the reproducing women do what they had to do.   Lara Briden: (09:28) And that's actually what enabled women, the reproducing members of society, to make babies every three years, back to back like that. Because you can imagine a individual human, a woman in the wild, there's no way you could raise baby after baby with no help. [crosstalk 00:09:46] And a husband isn't enough, one person isn't enough. You have to have aunts and uncles, grandmothers. And so there's that.   Lara Briden: (09:57) So obviously yes, I think to speak to your question, young mothers are under a lot of pressure now that they wouldn't have been. And that is a drain on their stress response system. That's certainly not ideal, in terms of stress level throughout the reproductive years. A lot of what happens at perimenopause, you know how in my first book I talk about the period as the monthly report card, perimenopause is like the final exam. It's everything that's been happening, what amount of metabolic reserve you were able to build up through... When you get to your early 40s, because for a lot of us, the change does start in our early 40s. It's not somewhere off in your mid 50s. I mean, that's a mistaken understanding that a lot of women have, like, "It's happening now." Not now for you, but for a lot of women, by 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, that's pretty common to start to get some of the neurological symptoms.   Lara Briden: (11:05) And the way that is going to be will depend on a lot of factors and certainly your stress, your adrenal system, we call it naturopathically, or your stress support system, how stable that is, how strong your circadian rhythm is, how well nourished you are, how your immune system is. All of those things, including unfortunately, how many environmental toxins you might have been exposed to. Any of those negative things can increase the symptoms of the perimenopause transition.   Lara Briden: (11:40) Because I'm convinced from a biology evolutionary point of view and also as discussed in the book that I mentioned, low Moon Climbs, the actual transition of perimenopause to menopause, historically would've not been symptomatic. There's no reason that we would've... The body should be able to make that change symptom free. Obviously you stop ovulating and stop having periods, that's what happens, but there's no reason that should go along with distressing, sleep or hot flushes or all the things that can happen. Just as there's no reason periods should be... Periods are not painful inherently. They are commonly painful, but that's a mismatch a lot of the time with our modern food supply and other things going on.   Lara Briden: (12:30) So that's the idea of evolutionary mismatch. I think actually to perimenopause and perimenopause symptoms is the classic example of evolutionary mismatch. This idea that symptoms arise from a mismatch between our ancient physiology and our modern environment. And not just food, not just environmental toxins, but circadian rhythm would come into that a lot, disrupted circadian rhythm. On the topic of environmental toxins, there's actually a bit of interesting research. I do include it in the book just only like one sentence [crosstalk 00:13:00].   Tahnee: (13:00) Lead stuff?   Lara Briden: (13:00) Yes.   Tahnee: (13:01) Yeah. I was going to ask about [crosstalk 00:13:03].   Lara Briden: (13:03) Good eyes. There's like one sentence about that, but possibly, and this is just one example of the way environmental toxins can affect us, but there's some research to suggest that some of the neurological symptoms of the perimenopause transition, so that would include anxiety, sleep disturbance, potentially hot flashes, may arise at least in part from the release of lead from our bones. It's sounds awful, but this is the case. That we've accumulated through a lifetime and now with increased bone turnover with dropping oestrogen levels, more of that lead is liberated into the bloodstream.   Lara Briden: (13:44) And so for example, just to give you... When I was a kid, we had leaded petroleum or leaded gasoline. Obviously the society has been trying to reduce lead exposure, but some of us, especially born in the '60s and '70s, were exposed to more. And with heavy metal toxins, as you probably know, the body sequesters it, so it's like, "Oh, this is bad." Puts it in the bones, which takes it out of circulation for a while, but eventually comes back. So that's an intriguing bit of research to kind of wonder if without body burden of lead, what would... I think there's other factors too. I don't think that would mean we're all of us symptom free, but it's an intriguing-   Tahnee: (14:26) It could be a tipping point or something.   Lara Briden: (14:27) Yeah. It's a factor.   Tahnee: (14:30) I found that really interesting too. And even just because you hear about osteoporosis in sort of menopausal years, but I think, I didn't really understand that it was just that turnover process was heightened and faster, I suppose.   Lara Briden: (14:43) Yes, it's an increased bone turnover. Which is real, and a lot of that's comes from losing oestrogen and progesterone to some extent.   Tahnee: (14:50) So that's happening in the body anyway. We have osteoblast clast going around and [crosstalk 00:14:56].   Lara Briden: (14:55) Yes, the turnover is always happening. Yes, exactly.   Tahnee: (14:57) So can you explain, is the difference with menopause is as the progesterone and oestrogen drop-   Lara Briden: (15:04) Yes.   Tahnee: (15:04) Is that just completely affecting the speed of that process, is that [crosstalk 00:15:09]?   Lara Briden: (15:09) So there's more osteoclast activity or the cells that kind of chew up bone. Osteoclasts are suppressed by oestrogen, not completely, but... So as you know, we're always, from peak bone density, peak bone mass around age 30, we, everyone, men and women, it's downhill from there basically. We're losing bone mass incrementally, continuously, and that's normal. But the idea is we want to have hopefully strong enough bones to last into our 80s or 90s. At some point we're not going to need our bones anymore. But around the later phases of perimenopause when oestrogen drops, because I just point out oestrogen is actually high in the early phases, which is interesting. But around the later phases and into after your final period, it is true, there is acceleration of that bone loss for at least about five years. And it's real, I think it's just, it's a lot of it your outcome.   Lara Briden: (16:15) And then, the concern is because you're not going to break bones from osteoporosis in your 50s, it's actually, what's going to happen when you're 75, 80. So it's all about this prevention for down the road, so it's about assessing risk. What other risk factors for low bone density might you have? A good example is eating disorders like undereating as a young woman is not good. There's some evidence that hormonal birth control actually impairs bone density, smoking. These are some of the obvious ones, smoking's [crosstalk 00:16:48] not good. So if you have any of those risk factors and then plus, especially if you have an earlier then for the sake of bones, there is a real argument to be made for taking oestrogen potentially long term to protect bones. So I'll just acknowledge that.   Lara Briden: (17:04) There's also lots of other ways to help bones. The muscle and bone are just connected like hand in hand. So maintaining strong muscles is a excellent way to maintain bone health. And we are unfortunately with the final phases of menopause or perimenopause and dropping oestrogen levels, we tend to lose muscle mass, which it's real. It's like you lose your bum, you just start to not have... You can maintain muscles, but you have to work at it. And well, it's a sad reality. And I guess just also speaking back to our ancestors, they didn't work at maintaining muscle exactly. They were walking around carrying [crosstalk 00:17:49]. Yeah. Carrying bundles of food and babies and-   Tahnee: (17:52) Children.   Lara Briden: (17:52) Yeah.   Tahnee: (17:53) Yes. 20 kilos to laugh that to me at the moment, people like, "Look at your arms." I'm like, I would, I have a 20 kilo child. I think that's a really interesting piece with our modern society. And we seem to keep looking back at this mismatch, but we would've been so much more active and just incidentally active through our day to day lives [crosstalk 00:18:17].   Lara Briden: (18:17) They didn't exercise.   Tahnee: (18:18) Yeah. They're not working out at the gym or anything.   Lara Briden: (18:20) No. [crosstalk 00:18:22]   Tahnee: (18:23) And I think that that losing that throughout our whole lives, it's a challenge, and for younger people.   Lara Briden: (18:29) Younger people. Sure.   Tahnee: (18:29) But I notice you mentioned walking, that's something you do a lot and-   Lara Briden: (18:33) Yeah.   Tahnee: (18:34) Some of the women I know who've had easier transitions movement does seem to play a part in that for them the more active jobs or people who walk a lot or do those more active things.   Lara Briden: (18:45) For sure. I love the fact that you use the word movements rather than exercise. I'm a convert to saying movement because of the inherent sort of just joyfulness of it. You're not, as you say, working out, it's not a chore. You're moving your body. So I would emphasise, it's pretty important to find a style of movement that is enjoyable because that's the way you're going to do it on a regular basis. Not to be healthy, not to specifically to build bone, but because it feels good to move your body.   Tahnee: (19:19) You actually like to do it. And I think that was interesting because you had some research around, I think it was yoga and hot flashes, which I hadn't heard and thought was super interesting, but I know yoga's not for everybody because some people it's too much stretching. Because sometimes I think resistance training can be better for like what you're talking about, holding muscle mass and strengthening bones and things. But I thought that was an interesting study because I hadn't heard of that symptom.   Lara Briden: (19:45) A lot of things affect hot flashes actually, because there are nervous system symptoms. So there's lots ways to help to stabilise. The nervous system is recalibrating. We can launch into that now, but I'll just say a word for... I love yoga and I agree [crosstalk 00:20:01].   Tahnee: (20:00) I love it. I'm a yoga [crosstalk 00:20:02].   Lara Briden: (20:01) You either love it or you don't. If you don't, that's fine, but it has a lot of things going for it. You do build muscle with yoga, especially if you're doing some of the stronger squats and lunges and things. And also as I talk about in the book, it's so good for the nervous system. It's this combination of actually arms above the head, controlled breathing, long exhales. That's really good for the vagus nerve as you probably know. And it's very stabilising for the nervous system. So I love it. I acknowledge not everyone feels the same, but I'm in the camp of how do people survive without yoga? [crosstalk 00:20:36]   Tahnee: (20:36) No, trust me, that's me too. But one thing I've noticed with, I don't know, I used to teach a lot of menopausal women and they seem to have, you mentioned it in the book, a lot of energy. And I do find sometimes I feel like they actually don't connect to the... They seem to enjoy moving more.   Lara Briden: (20:58) Okay. More vigorously maybe sometimes [crosstalk 00:21:01].   Tahnee: (21:01) Which is something interesting because I teach a lot of Yin and slower. I did used to teach hectic stuff too, but it was just interesting when I was watching how different people responded to practices. And look, it could be a nervous system thing too, like you're talking about. I thought that was an interesting chapter. I guess just thinking about how much, I mean, that affects all of us, like heart rate variability and all of these things. But I thought that was really interesting in relation to peri and menopause. So can you talk a little bit about that side of things?   Lara Briden: (21:33) Oh, about the nervous system [crosstalk 00:21:35]. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Perfect, because I mentioned about recalibration of the nervous system. And we'll get our terms straight too. So perimenopause is the lead up to menopause basically. I mean, there's different ways. Menopause itself as a word has different definitions depending on who you ask. But the definition I use comes from the professor who helped me with my book, Jerilynn Prior. She is in the camp that defines menopause as the life phase that begins one year after your final period. So she would call that menopause is the next 30 years going forward from perimenopause.   Lara Briden: (22:22) Some people define it differently. Some people call that post-menopause I'm with her, that menopause is all of those decades that come after. Whereas perimenopause is the change and that's where the symptoms come from. Most of the symptoms are temporary. With the, we probably won't get to it today, but just acknowledging that longer term symptoms with menopause or post menopause depending on how you want to define it, would be things like vaginal dryness and that whole syndrome that goes along with low oestrogen and how that affects the pelvis and bladder. And so that's obviously [crosstalk 00:22:57].   Tahnee: (22:56) Not the prolapse sort of.   Lara Briden: (22:58) That sort of thing. So that's-   Tahnee: (23:00) And you speak to that in the book.   Lara Briden: (23:01) I do. There's a chapter section on that. That's not temporary, but a lot of the other symptoms are temporary, especially the neurological symptoms of which most symptoms of premenopausal are neurological, and they arise from the recalibration process. So just as first puberty is, as you can imagine, a recalibration of the brain. The brain undergoes pretty major changes in first puberty, obviously. And the immune system undergoes changes with first puberty. The same happens with second puberty or perimenopause. So a brain rewiring, that's what I call chapter to seven in the book, is rewiring the brain.   Lara Briden: (23:44) The other system that undergoes quite a profound recalibration is the immune system. And that's why there's such thing as perimenopausal allergies and an increased likelihood of autoimmune flare. And the other system that undergoes a recalibration is the metabolic system and cardiovascular system all around a shift to insulin resistance, unfortunately, which also affects the brain.   Lara Briden: (24:09) But in answer to your question about the nervous system, I'll just talk about the nervous systems. So nervous system symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats. Night sweats are usually first, premenstrual night sweats, first in terms of sequence of symptoms to arise. And then sleep disturbance is quite a common one, increased likelihood of anxiety and depression, dialled up premenstrual mood symptoms potentially, and migraines. Did I already say migraine?   Tahnee: (24:44) No.   Lara Briden: (24:45) [crosstalk 00:24:45] No, increased frequency of migraines. I just had a patient the other day actually with classic. She said she'd had maybe two migraines in her first puberty and then they went away completely. And then they came back at 42, 43, they started coming back. And so I can talk about some of the underlying physiology that's contributing to that.   Tahnee: (25:07) Well, I just think it's super interesting because I guess reading the book that I noticed a lot of it seemed to come back to that nervous system piece around there's all the sleep symptom and that's really, if we work on regulating nervous system that helps. The hot flash if we work on [crosstalk 00:25:25]. And I guess one of the things I hear a lot from people is, how do I fix my hot flashes? Or how do I fix my insomnia? How do I fix my... And it's like the symptom becomes the focus instead of really drilling down to that root cause around well, maybe there's this imbalance in the activation of the nervous system.   Lara Briden: (25:43) Right. Or just the general strategy of supporting the nervous system rather than having to eliminate that [crosstalk 00:25:50].   Tahnee: (25:49) Yeah. Like focus on cooling down or eating [crosstalk 00:25:53].   Lara Briden: (25:55) For sure. And one thing before I launch into the nervous system and the physiology underlying that, I do just want to point out while I'm thinking of it, there's no diagnostic test for this. This is a little bit... This is worth mentioning-   Tahnee: (26:13) Like it's subjective kind of?   Lara Briden: (26:15) Because it's such a classic story, as women start having night sweats, increased migraines, they feel different. They're like, "Ooh something's happening? Could this be perimenopause?" And then the answer is probably yes. But they go to the doctor and they're like, "Oh, your blood tests are fine." That means nothing. That means absolutely nothing. And same with DUTCH testing or any kind of... There's no diagnostic test for perimenopause. It's purely based on context and symptoms. By context, meaning if you're older than 35, and symptoms and ruling out other causes. For example, thyroid disease can look and feel a lot like perimenopause, but it's something different. Although you can have both happening at the same time, which is confusing.   Lara Briden: (27:08) But I will say just to be clear, so I'm talking about a normal perimenopause, a normal progression where your symptoms might start in your late 30s or early 40s, but you're heading to a final period anywhere between 45 to 55, that's normal. Period stopping due to early menopause at like 35, that's different, and that can be diagnosed by blood tests. We'll leave the early menopause thing. I talk about it in the book, but we'll just leave that separately because obviously that's a whole other conversation.   Lara Briden: (27:45) Today we're talking about the normal timing of things. So what's happening with the nervous system is the sequence of events. Like I said, there's a logical sequence of events, it's not just random chaos. The first thing that happens is start to make less progesterone because we're having shorter luteal phases, your listeners know what I'm talking about, so we're-   Tahnee: (28:13) Yeah, I think so. I mean, the book has that beautiful graph I think. That visual was really good to show my husband. [crosstalk 00:28:20] But so we get that big curve of progesterone and sort of [crosstalk 00:28:26].   Lara Briden: (28:27) In the ovulatory cycle when we're healthy, when we're younger than 40, if we're not on hormonal birth control, we should be having every month, a couple weeks of strong progesterone production. And that helps to lighten periods, that is usually quite good for mood. Although there's a little bit of nuance around that, but generally progesterone for most women is a little bit tranquillising. Well, you've got lots of it right now. Second trimester pregnancy is usually quite tranquillising. I mean, again, it can vary as other factors.   Lara Briden: (29:00) But with on the journey to perimenopause, we just start, our ovulation just becomes less robust. It's nothing you've done wrong. In my first book, I talk about all the ways to promote healthy ovulation and we still want to do that. And in my new book, I have a chapter called cycle while you can. You still want to ovulate as best you can for as long as possible and always remove any obstacles to ovulation, but also accept the fact that ovulations are becoming less robust. Eventually they're going to stop, that's normal.   Lara Briden: (29:35) So with this reduction in progesterone, with shorter luteal phases, maybe a shift to having more anovulatory cycles or cycles where you don't ovulate, but still bleed, we make less progesterone. And that feels like trouble sleeping, increased migraines, increased anxiety potentially, and heavier periods as well, which we might not go into today. We'll see if we have time. But there can be heavy periods going along with all of this. So we lose progesterone, which is one of the reasons taking progesterone, not a progestin in the pill, but natural progesterone can be actually very helpful.   Lara Briden: (30:18) At the same time, we're getting in the early phases of perimenopause. And there's four phases, which I give a little chart in the book. But in the earlier phases, which in total last four or five years, we're also getting potentially oestrogen higher than ever before, up to three times higher than before and spiking up and down. And you can't really that with a blood test, because it's all over the place. But you know from symptoms and from some of the testing research that professor Prior has done, you can see this big oestrogen spikes. And along with oestrogen spiking up high can come this whole immune system reaction that I talk about in the book of high histamine and which is also very-   Tahnee: (31:04) Muscle reaction.   Lara Briden: (31:04) Very muscle activation and this in part is the perimenopausal allergies and it's headaches and irritability and hives sometimes or urticaria sometimes. There's definitely an immune thing going on that can feel terrible. And that I have noticed sometimes gets called oestrogen dominance, although I don't really use that word. But that's that kind of high oestrogen immune stimulated picture with very little progesterone sometimes to counterbalance that. And so that's the first phases and that is not pleasant. Sorry, so that affects the nervous system. That's where some of the other anxiety symptoms come from is that high oestrogen, high histamine plus then estrogen's on a rollercoaster. Then you get some oestrogen withdrawal symptoms leading up to the period, which also doesn't feel very good. That's where the night sweats come from is oestrogen dropping from high to low. So lowest [crosstalk 00:32:02].   Tahnee: (32:01) Kind of addictive. I just want to quickly dive in because I thought that was interesting. I'd never thought of it that way. It's a first.   Lara Briden: (32:10) Yeah. Oestrogen is addictive [crosstalk 00:32:11] for the brain.   Tahnee: (32:11) So when we're swinging, that's this kind of the low is like a withdrawal. [crosstalk 00:32:18]   Lara Briden: (32:17) Yeah. We get oestrogen withdrawal. Yeah, for sure. It's not pleasant. And just to reassure, it was perfect timing with your question, because I was about to say that once we get into that menopause phase, stable, low oestrogen... Not no oestrogen, we still make actually quite a lot of oestrogen still, but we don't get hot flushes and night sweats because it's not the like up and down crashing down part of the oestrogen roller coasters. So a lot of it comes from oestrogen withdrawal and also the oestrogen addiction side of things. It's worth mentioning that if women do take oestrogen therapy... And I think it's fine to take it. I just want to say, in general pro hormone therapy, not everyone needs it, but I think it's reasonable to take that.   Lara Briden: (33:09) Just one thing to understand, that if and when you decide to stop it, you have to taper down oestrogen. I've had patients who they want to take a break and so they've just stop it immediately, and of course get hot flushes back because you're going through oestrogen withdrawal. That doesn't really tell you anything about your underlying need for it, if you know what I mean.   Tahnee: (33:30) Okay. So that makes sense. It's like, you're got to be gradual in changing the body biochemistry [crosstalk 00:33:37].   Lara Briden: (33:36) When you're coming off hormone therapy, you can go on it more-   Tahnee: (33:39) Aggressively?   Lara Briden: (33:40) Rapidly. No, not aggre... No, I always think start low actually. I don't know if we'll have time today to go into all my thoughts about hormone therapy, but if [crosstalk 00:33:46].   Tahnee: (33:46) I think you really talk a lot about that option in the book and I think it's probably something better discussed clinically I think with a practitioner appointment and [crosstalk 00:33:57].   Lara Briden: (33:57) So read book and we'll talk, because I think we want to talk more about the nutrition side of things and-   Tahnee: (34:02) Yeah. I guess the distinction I thought was interesting in the hormonal chapters or sort of, was around the, so you're distinguishing between body identical, bio identical and then the more chemical like synthetic hormones, I suppose. Do you mind just giving us some distinctions around?   Lara Briden: (34:18) Yeah. So just very broad strokes. And I agree, because I think we should focus more on the nutrition side of things today. But I will say, put this simply, so-   Tahnee: (34:27) Good luck.   Lara Briden: (34:30) There's a confusion happening, which is that up until about eight years ago in Australia, it's different in different countries, but I remember exactly when body identical hormones went mainstream in Australia, it was 2016. So that's seven years ago. No, six years ago.   Tahnee: (34:48) Five or six.   Lara Briden: (34:49) How many years ago? I don't even know. With the pandemic, we're like, "Wait, how many years..."   Tahnee: (34:53) "Have I been?" I think it was five because my daughter was born in 2016 and she [crosstalk 00:34:58].   Lara Briden: (34:57) Okay. So it's only five years ago. Five or six years. [crosstalk 00:35:00] That's when body identical also called bioidentical hormones became mainstream. So until that point, which is not that long ago, the only way to access hormones that are actual hormones, actual estradiol, identical to the hormones we make, the only way to access those was compounded. You have to see an integrative doctor. So we have to be a special route to get to those hormones. And now they're pretty much mainstream, and I talk about it in the book, you have to ask for them by brand name. Not all the hormone therapy products on the market are bioidentical, but some of them are, and doctors do know now that it's safer and it's better.   Lara Briden: (35:51) And the real advantage, one of the big differences is that body identical or bioidentical, means the same thing, progesterone is safer for the breasts. So progestins, not progesterone, but the progesterone analogue drugs are not safe for the breasts. And that's actually where a lot of the breast cancer risk came from was the progestin part. So real progesterone in Australia is called Prometrium. This is the brand name in the US. It's Utrogestan in New Zealand and the UK. So hopefully there's a lot more detail in my book, but I hope that clears things up for some people listening.   Tahnee: (36:30) Well, I think that was interesting because you talk about women who've been on the pill until their 50s or some, and then they're like, "Oh I want to go back on the pill, because I got..." [crosstalk 00:36:43].   Lara Briden: (36:44) Don't do that. And then I say, "Yeah, no, no, exactly." And then [crosstalk 00:36:49].   Tahnee: (36:49) In the book you were like, "No," but they were yes in... Anyway, I thought it was an interesting, because I might have mentioned this another time [crosstalk 00:36:54]. But I had a professor who was doing all this research into how the pill's so great because it stops us having periods and blah, blah, blah. This is when I was 18, so this was a long time ago. But he made the point that if you're on the pill, it's mimicking preg... So he was coming-   Lara Briden: (37:10) No.   Tahnee: (37:11) Yes, I know. It's very [crosstalk 00:37:13].   Lara Briden: (37:12) Keep going. Yeah, yeah.   Tahnee: (37:14) But he was like, "It's just like these, our ancient ancestors, how they had lots of babies and they never were bleeding and blah, blah, blah." And so 18 year old Me's like, "Okay, this is making sense." And anyway, long story, but I feel like there's a little bit of that lingering sense of the pills keeping everything in balance and if I go off that it's going to... I hear that a bit in the world when I talk to people and yes, I'm curious if you could talk about how the pill relates to perimenopause and menopause.   Lara Briden: (37:42) Very good question. There's a whole section about that in my book. Again, I'll try to be concise here so we have time for some of the other things too. Just quickly to answer to what this professor was saying to you, which is that the pill mimics pregnancy, which is absolute standard narrative that we've been fed, not my strong word, but that's been out there-   Tahnee: (38:07) Well, this was in university biology course on human reproduction. It's a big thing to teach a bunch of kids.   Lara Briden: (38:13) Yeah. So the problem with that version of things, is that contraceptive drugs, just if we name them, let's say the drug called levonorgestrel and most pills or ethinyl estradiol, that's the synthetic oestrogen. They are not the same as the oestrogen and progesterone you make during pregnancy or during menstrual cycles. In terms of mimicking pregnancy, I mean only very superficially, not in terms of what that means physiologically for the body because the hormones of pregnancy are actually quite beneficial and particularly on the breasts.   Lara Briden: (38:53) And as you know, pregnancies in general, have a risk reduction effect for breast cancer long term. And part of that is the progesterone exposure because real progesterone that you make during pregnancy, that you make during a menstrual cycle, that you can take as Prometrium arguably has a risk reduction effect for breast cancer, whereas progestin increase the risk. So that's just one example of how progestins are different from progesterone. I have a blog post called the crucial difference between progesterone and progestin. So you can look at it there. So an answer to-   Tahnee: (39:28) I think you had the diagram in your book with the two different molecules as well.   Lara Briden: (39:32) Yeah, they're different. So an answer to your question, what does the pill mean for perimenopause? Well, it masks it for one thing. So as we talked about, we'll have to refer, you can put the show notes back to our first episode where I'm sure we had a little discussion about why pill bleeds are not periods. That's true in our 40s as well. So if you're having regular pill induced bleeds, you'll keep having those even after your body went through menopause. It doesn't delay it. If anything, the pill brings menopause a little sooner, it doesn't stop menopause. What will happen is if you've been on the pill and having those bleeds, then when you stop it, you'll be instantly into menopause, over the oestrogen cliff, which is probably why you asked that question thinking, but that's an example of oestrogen withdrawal going straight over. It's like... It's potentially not good.   Lara Briden: (40:32) And so in the patient story that I think you were mentioning from the book, she's like, "Oh, I need to go back on the pill is this is awful." And I'm like, no, well you might as well go on to modern menopause hormone therapy, which is body identical, which is at least giving you real hormones and safer than the pill because the pill is hormone therapy. It's a big dose of synthetic, almost like an old school type of hormone replacement therapy that's not even as good as what they give menopausal women now. So it always feels like a bit of a cruel thing that now finally menopausal women get access to natural hormones conventionally. The young women are still put on these horrible synthetic hormonal drugs that don't have...   Tahnee: (41:19) Very not good for us.   Lara Briden: (41:21) Yeah. So I have a chapter in Hormone Repair Manual called cycle while you can, making the argument. And I quote, professor Pryor, she said, "The 40s is not a time to take the pill because if you need something, you might as well take real progesterone to get those benefits rather than..." Yeah.   Tahnee: (41:39) Well, I thought that was an interesting point you made, I think it was in that chapter around just to have as many cycles as you can leading up to menopause and even pregnancies and things like how biologically we would've probably had babies until we couldn't. And that's actually quite potentially helps smooth that transition. Again, this is sort of [crosstalk 00:42:04]   Lara Briden: (42:04) Good eye. You have a good memory for all those parts of book. Yeah, it's true. Because-   Tahnee: (42:08) Not as much as I usually do, pregnant brain.   Lara Briden: (42:12) No, I'm impressed by those little parts that you remembered from the book, but yes, that's another example of evolutionary mismatch is our prehistoric ancestors. Well, and even historic, to some extent, would've had quite a different life menstrual history in that likely they would've kept having babies and breastfeeding and severe periods. Potentially what perimenopause would've looked like for them was you have your last baby at 42 or 43 or something, and then you breastfeed for three years and then you just never get your period back. It's just kind of a slow glide into... You come from the low oestrogen stage of breastfeeding into... And so there's no oestrogen withdrawal. You don't necessarily, they wouldn't have been going through these crazy up and down oestrogen roller coasters that we modern women do. So that's another explanation potentially for why they wouldn't have had the symptoms. I say wouldn't have, I mean, they don't have. In modern, I mean, the information we have is modern day hunter gather people like the Hadza don't report symptoms. They report stopping their periods at 45, but they're generally happy about it.   Tahnee: (43:30) Well, I've often fed this to my husband and it's something I think about with all stages of our biological shifts through life, but it shouldn't probably be as hectic as it is. You think about puberty, you think about pregnancy. Some people I talk to, they just have the most awful time. And I think, there has... And I guess that comes back to what you were talking about at the beginning around that mismatch around how we live and what we eat.   Lara Briden: (43:59) And environmental toxins. I mean, we really can't underestimate, environmental toxins are affecting our menstrual cycles and our perimenopause experience, unfortunately. And that's not-   Tahnee: (44:10) On pregnancy too, I'm sure.   Lara Briden: (44:13) ... women's fault. This is why I talk in the book and I'm starting to talk more about our environment, including our food environment, because we're like animals inside an environment. Certainly in terms of diet, we're eating because that's what's around us. I mean, it's not all about making the wrong choices, it's-   Tahnee: (44:34) It's what's available.   Lara Briden: (44:35) Yeah.   Tahnee: (44:37) Well, so on diet, I think in terms of what women... Because I noticed the piece on soy as well, which was interesting because I think we all grow up hearing soy good for menopause and don't really... Thought that was an interesting... You sort of debunked that.   Lara Briden: (44:52) Well, it's not oestrogen. This is the thing with phytoestrogens is their antiestrogen in young women, which can be good. That's not a bad thing. I actually think phytoestrogens are great. And they're somewhat pro oestrogen with menopause, just very briefly on phytoestrogens, and I do talk about it in the book, we're calibrated to them actually. Our ancestors, there's some research to suggest that especially those of us with agrarian ancestors, so ancestors eating grains and legumes, women evolved a higher level of estrodiol, ramped up our oestrogen to sort of overcome the anti antiestrogen effect from phytoestrogen.   Lara Briden: (45:41) So in that sense, we're calibrated to have those in our diet and phytoestrogens actually do have quite a stabilising beneficial effect on all stages of female hormonal health. In part with menopause, one thing they do that's very beneficial is they help to, this is a little bit technical, but they increase something called SHBG or sex hormone binding globulin, which actually helps to prevent some of the testosterone dominance and insulin resistance that can also happen, that I talk about in the book. So just to say, no, soy is not a substitute for oestrogen therapy or anything like that, but phytoestrogens generally are probably quite good for the perimenopause [crosstalk 00:46:26].   Tahnee: (46:26) Which would explain, I guess, why all those herbs that you use in those periods are very estrogenic.   Lara Briden: (46:32) And linseeds. That kind of thing can be very beneficial. So I certainly in trying to debunk that soy is oestrogen, would never want to take away from the fact that phytoestrogens broadly speaking are quite good for us. Yep.   Tahnee: (46:48) And I guess you did speak specifically to the isolates if I'm remembering correctly. So I'm probably putting words in your mouth.   Lara Briden: (46:54) Yeah. No, no. It's [crosstalk 00:46:57]. It's good to [crosstalk 00:46:57].   Tahnee: (46:57) But it's an interest. I do think like with that herbal piece, because there's... I mean, you mentioned black cohosh and there's a few talked about for sleep, which is one of my favourite herbs.   Lara Briden: (47:07) I love it.   Tahnee: (47:08) Yeah, it's a beautiful one. But I thought that was interesting because a lot of women, I think lean toward herbal therapy in the sort of, I guess alternative space. Can you speak a little bit to [crosstalk 00:47:20]?   Lara Briden: (47:19) Yeah. So herbal medicine can be very helpful. So I would say in the perimenopause space... So let's say if we're in the earlier phases of perimenopause, when oestrogen, as we've said is high, going high and then spiking low. There's different strategies to try to help with that. We're trying to stabilise the immune system, so stabilise histamine, that herbal medicine can be very helpful for that. We're trying support the gut so that the high oestrogen can clear safely through the gut, herbal medicine and supplements can help with that. And then there's the whole during the recalibration of the nervous system is where adaptogens can be quite helpful. So I don't name a lot of them, I don't go into a lot of the detail in the book, but things like Ashwagandha. A lot of those have anxiolytic kind of like, I mean calming, tranquillising-   Tahnee: (48:16) Effects. Yeah.   Lara Briden: (48:17) ... stabilising the nervous system. So there's a role for, I use herbal medicines quite a lot. I mean, I guess I do talk about how I've never seen that black cohosh as a standalone single intervention.   Tahnee: (48:33) Yeah. Well you mentioned you don't really use it, [crosstalk 00:48:35].   Lara Briden: (48:36) I've just never seen that it's... But I think as part of the whole programme, including diet, which we can talk about, and no alcohol, which we'll have to talk about, then I think adaptogen type herbal medicines can be part of that for sure and helpful. And phytoestrogen herbal medicines can be helpful in terms of stabilising the oestrogen roller coaster, sheltering from the spikes and at the same time helping with SHBG levels. And so it's lots of mechanisms by which phytoestrogens are helpful.   Tahnee: (49:10) It sounds like it's sort of a tapestry in a weave of maybe using the herbs, but also lifestyle changes. And maybe if we can talk a bit about diet and the alcohol is interesting because of the histamine. So let's jump into that.   Lara Briden: (49:23) Let's do my two big things. For my patients, this is basically what I say. If you could do these two things, there's a 50% chance that's all you're going to need to do. And then's 50% chance you might need some adaptogens or you might need some hormone therapy eventually or different options. But the two things are take magnesium because it's-   Tahnee: (49:45) I was about to say.   Lara Briden: (49:46) ... so stabilising and so-   Tahnee: (49:48) Nervous system, everything.   Lara Briden: (49:49) The nervous system loves it. And in the book, you'll see I talked about using of the magnesium taurine formulas, which is very easy to get in Australia. Taurine is an amino acid but it's also a neurotransmitter that's very calming. It's one of my favourite things for perimenopause, obviously, because I talk about it so much in the book. So, magnesium.   Lara Briden: (50:12) And then the second thing I would have to say quit alcohol. I mean, not forever potentially, but during the thick of it. If you're in that more intense part of perimenopause, phase two heading into phase three, approaching your final period, just removing alcohol entirely can be a game changer. There's several mechanisms by which that helps. I think definitely you talked about alcohol itself destabilises muscles and causes a histamine release. Also alcohol is just, well to put it bluntly, it's toxic to the nervous system, so there's that. I mean, it's just not friendly. It causes intestinal permeability, actually quite profound intestinal permeability when drinking, short term after alcohol intake and depending on the number of drinks.   Lara Briden: (51:14) And then also there's some research around habitual or even just moderate alcohol intake, sort of weakens the circadian rhythm response. So this is where alcohol can disrupt sleep. Not just the night you've had it, but more broadly. So I would invite people if you haven't before, try quitting it for a month and see what happens to your sleep, because it can be really quite interesting.   Lara Briden: (51:43) And the other thing about alcohol, I always try to mention this because for some reason, this is not common knowledge, but alcohol is conclusively linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. Now, the risk is not enormous. I don't want to scare people, but it's very robust in terms of the research is very clear. It's not, oh, we need more research, it's it definitely increases the risk of breast cancer. And as much as oestrogen therapy does in fact, moderate alcohol intake, five or six drinks in a week increases the risk of breast cancer as much as oestrogen therapy does. So it's quite a strong effect.   Tahnee: (52:32) And a fairly, I mean easy one to... I guess it's that sort of thing around a lot of women probably reach for a glass of wine as a nervous system thing. And it's really about reframing how you manage that.   Lara Briden: (52:46) They do, and I see on social media, a lot of messaging around wine for menopause or kind of... It makes me sad because I feel like that's damaging messaging potentially.   Tahnee: (53:05) Magnesium for menopause has more [crosstalk 00:53:07]?   Lara Briden: (53:10) Yeah. This has a better reason to it, I think.   Tahnee: (53:10) I noticed you spoke about neurotransmitters a bit, and that was a super interesting thing around you spoke about it earlier, the brain changes. But you mentioned glycine and a couple of others as well for... And I guess I'm hearing a lot, like the liver needs supporting. Is that sort of a fair thing to say? Because I mean, thinking about histamines, they all end up affecting the liver, and just thinking about these hormonal clearing through the blood, that's going to have to happen with all these changes. It seems like this organ gets to work a bit harder at this time. Is that something-   Lara Briden: (53:40) I mean, generally broadly, yes. And also, I think when we say liver and natural medicine, we do also mean other things too.   Tahnee: (53:49) I'm even thinking Chinese medicine.   Lara Briden: (53:51) Yeah. But from a Chinese medicine perspective actually encompass, definitely actually that's one of the main angles is using another really nice herb is herbal medicine is bupleurum, which I also love for [crosstalk 00:54:02], which is a cooling... I mean, that works on the liver in a TCM perspective. But the liver, I mean maybe correct me or you can agree with this or not, but from a TCM perspective, liver also includes the digestion, the gut and definitely that's... And the whole histamine system is probably sort of liver related I guess if we're trying to sort of put that across the two medical traditions, trying to connect [crosstalk 00:54:30]. Because from a Western medical perspective, liver means different things, but yes, all that kind of stuff.   Lara Briden: (54:37) And also just to bring into it, and we're not going to have time to go into this in detail, but I will just say there's this shift to insulin resistance that happens in the later phases of perimenopause and that can actually cause fatty liver. So that can actually... Now we're talking real liver things. And so I guess one of my takeaways might be if you're 40 something or late 50s or early 50, or at any age after that really, and noticing a significant thickening around the waist, especially if you've got higher cholesterol and fatty liver, and it's really time to find out if you have insulin resistance or not. I've written about that in the book and how testing... You have to test, not just for glucose, because that won't tell you, but you have to try to test insulin if your doctor will do it and then reverse that and [crosstalk 00:55:32].   Tahnee: (55:32) Of your diet, are you recommending more of a paleo-ey kind of a-   Lara Briden: (55:41) I mean, I lean that angle, but I guess I would say what seems to work is finding a way to feel satisfied with the meals, which always involves mostly about protein. Getting satisfied, having a functioning digestion and yes, liver to some extent. And then being able to, because you feel better and you're on magnesium and feeling better. That's when it's time to say no to both alcohol and concentrated sugar. So I mean-   Tahnee: (56:11) Dessert.   Lara Briden: (56:13) Dessert, [crosstalk 00:56:13] like a soft drink and fruits. This always becomes a tricky topic as people think... I talk about high dose fructose and how that research is really clear that that's bad for insulin sensitivity. And then people are like, "Well, do you mean fruit is bad?" It's like, no. So whole fruit is fine, just to be clear, but desserts, full on ice cream and fruit juice and date balls and-   Tahnee: (56:37) I'm pregnant. I know all about dessert.   Lara Briden: (56:38) Yeah. The thing is, even then it's a nuanced conversation because some people can have desserts and get away with it. And it depends on your insulin sensitivity. It depends on so many things. And then there's different desserts. There's lots of really delicious treat, things you can make with low sugar. They don't have to be... So I don't want to make a blanket statement [crosstalk 00:57:03].   Tahnee: (57:02) Demonising it, but-   Lara Briden: (57:03) No, no, no. I mean, but it is [crosstalk 00:57:07].   Tahnee: (57:06) Well, I think what you're really pointing to is you want to avoid these things that are going to spike the blood sugar dramatically. Because if you don't have the capacity to process-   Lara Briden: (57:15) It's partly about spiking the blood sugar, it's actually more about some actual physiological damage that high dose fructose does to the liver. That's kind of how we got on this topic actually.   Tahnee: (57:25) Do you mean the actual molecule fructose?   Lara Briden: (57:30) Above a certain threshold. So it's really-   Tahnee: (57:33) And that's what you're looking at [crosstalk 00:57:34].   Lara Briden: (57:37) The threshold is different for different people, and at different ages, and in different situations. And some people, especially people who are very active and have a healthy gut and liver and everything's good. They can probably have fruit juice and it's fine, it's not a problem. But for people with insulin resistance, because there's been a lot of confusion. I just get that from my own patients. They might be for example, very scared to eat potatoes because they've heard that that's... but still then hungry, so then bingeing on like a date bar, slice paleo dessert after dinner. That is-   Tahnee: (58:18) Backwards.   Lara Briden: (58:19) That's back to front. This is where I talk about getting full. I have a new blog post called the power of eating enough, which is protein. I actually mentioned potatoes by name because they're actually quite filling.   Tahnee: (58:28) It's a good starch. Yeah.   Lara Briden: (58:29) They're quite good. And then feeling good and then being like, "No, I'm not going to have that fruit juice. I'm not going to have that SoBe. I don't need that. I might have a little dark chocolate or some fresh fruit or some frozen berries or something. And that's enough for me."   Tahnee: (58:46) So that's drilling down on getting tested if you can around insulin.   Lara Briden: (58:50) Yes.   Tahnee: (58:50) And that's really, you're looking at symptoms of weight gain and you said this in the book a lot, specifically this middle area, this-   Lara Briden: (58:57) Yes. Specifically that apple shaped around the middle. And just to point out for everyone listening, some thickening around the waist is inevitable with menopause. So that's just-   Tahnee: (59:10) So don't get too stressed out.   Lara Briden: (59:12) It's just a fact. I mean, it's a hormonal... How it's interesting actually, because I heard this interview. There's a scientist who just did this quite groundbreaking study debunking the idea that our metabolism reduces with age, which was quite controversial. But I heard an interviewed by a friend of mine actually. And he said specifically, he gave the example, he said, "Well, there can be other things going on. Like for example, at menopause, there's a whole hormonal redistribution of fat. So this is a change in body shape." This is what I'm saying, this is inevitable to some extent. So young women have an hourglass. Well some, the kind of normal healthy figure is hourglass figure. That's estrodial, that's oestrogen fat on the bum and a narrow waist. That is what that hormonal profile does.   Lara Briden: (01:00:05) When we shift with menopause, even on hormone therapy actually to some extent, there is a shift, we never take as much estrodiol as you would've or we made when we're 25, you wouldn't do that. And then we get this shift to what I talk about in the books, sort of a testosterone dominance. It's a shift to a more male body shape, and it's going to happen to some degree to everyone. So don't worry about it too much. But if there's significant waking happening around the middle and progressing more to a strong apple shape, that is insulin resistance. I hope that... Yeah.   Tahnee: (01:00:43) And I mean, the other thing you mentioned getting looked at and tested is Hashtimoto's autoimmune, which I thought was really interesting because I've had a few friends who have had that be triggered by pregnancy or maybe postpartum and I thought it was interesting that you [crosstalk 01:00:59].   Lara Briden: (01:00:58) That's a hormonal transition state. I don't know how much more time we have, but I'll just say-   Tahnee: (01:01:03) Well, we don't have much, but I've wanted to say that word that you said in the book, it's... What did you call that [crosstalk 01:01:10].   Lara Briden: (01:01:09) Critical window.   Tahnee: (01:01:10) Critical window, yes. Here it is, critical window for health. I thought that was a super important concept.   Lara Briden: (01:01:16) So this it's a critical window. Perimenopause is a critical window for health because it's a hormonal transition like puberty, postpartum. Postpartum is another critical window and perimenopause. And what that means by critical window is if things start to go off the rails health wise during a critical window, you're potentially going to skew a lot more in a bad direction than if things go a little bit off the rails when you're in a more stable state, if that makes sense

Today on the podcast, we welcome back holistic lifestyle coach and men's work facilitator Nick Perry for a cultivating chat around personal transformation, fulfilling soul purpose, calling in harmony, and prioritising health in our daily lives. Both champions in their own right, carving out the lifestyles they desire with integrity and vision, Nick and Mase offer their insights on becoming the best version of your authentic self so you can show up for the grind of life, ready to achieve goals with more ease. In a world that seems progressively unpredictable and uncertain, there has never been a better time to dive into foundational self-development and hone in on core values that bring about the evolution we desire in ourselves and our future world. Nick discusses both the challenges and importance of prioritising self in all holistic facets to embrace life feeling confident and equipped for any challenge that comes our way. Having mentored and transformed the lives of many individuals on their paths to fulfillment and success, Nick gives some poignant words on finding your truth, connecting with your soul's purpose, and not diluting the unique essence you have to offer to the world.   "Maybe your health sucks, maybe you have challenges with your sexual function. What's the feedback life's offering you right now? That's the place I would start. And another good question to follow that with is; What do you want out of life? And most of the time, when that question's asked in a deliberate container, the answer is 'I don't really know'. Okay, so that's the doorway; now let's step through it."    - Nick Perry     Mason and Nick discuss: Fatherhood Relationships Goal setting. Value systems. Value building. The pain teacher. The transformation process Personal Development tools. Taking responsibility for yourself. Finding your identity, your authentic you. Who are you and what do you want in life? Having congruency and integrity with intentions and goals so we can achieve them.      Who Nick Perry? Nick Perry is a Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Corrective Exercise Specialist and Men's Work Facilitator who is passionate and driven by authentic relating and inspired living. Nick's education in Holistic Lifestyle Coaching draws from personal mentoring and learning from some of the world's leading healers, facilitators and physical therapists. For the last decade, he has immersed himself in study and experimentation, acquiring qualifications across a broad range of modalities. Over the last few years, his reach in the world has spread far, as he shares his knowledge, experience and personal story through podcasts, workshops and teachings in Pleasure School. Known for his deep presence, relatability and down-to-earth nature, Nick's goal when working with clients is to leave them feeling empowered and aligned in themselves - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Rhythm Health Nick's Instagram Nick's Facebook ManKind Project Australia Sexuality and Libido with Nick Perry (EP#45)       Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Nick, thanks for coming back into the pod room with me.   Nick Perry: (00:03) Well, absolute honour and pleasure to be here, mate. I was just saying it was 2019 the last time, so it's been a while.   Mason: (00:14) 2019-   Nick Perry: (00:17) November.   Mason: (00:18) ... that was November, wasn't it? Yeah.   Nick Perry: (00:18) Mm-hmm (affirmative). A lot happened, man. A lot has happened.   Mason: (00:22) Yeah. Well, it makes it even more relevant.   Nick Perry: (00:25) Yeah.   Mason: (00:25) I know your work continues to go and supporting the men, supporting the boys.   Nick Perry: (00:30) Yeah, absolutely.   Mason: (00:31) And I'm sure we've seen a bit of an exposing two years of the need and necessity to get our ducks in a row, as we were talking about when we're having that swim this morning.   Nick Perry: (00:45) Yeah. Yep yep. That was really cool and very refreshing to chat with you about like ducks in a row. And the terminology for me is getting the I sorted before we get too invested and entangled in the we and the all aspects of life and relationships.   Mason: (01:11) Well, so tell me about, I know you've got your, your course developing and it's always evolving. But then I know you've got your coaching services and your mentoring services. But I know you do have that awareness of bringing a harmony of the many areas to just start tuning into and checking into when it comes to health, which is... It's much more difficult than people think to bring the smorgasbord and the platter of the various modules and elements that are required when you're really dipping into taking on some responsibility for your health in all areas.   Mason: (01:49) And it's not just like, "Okay, tick this off and tick this off and tick off." It's finding which one is it the... How intensely do you jump in the deep end of each of these things? What's an appropriate way to start? And then where does that fit in the larger picture? As you know, it's a huge task to take to deliver it. So where are you at with it at the moment?   Nick Perry: (02:12) Personally?   Mason: (02:13) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nick Perry: (02:18) Reinventing myself personally. My identity has evolved as I've stepped into being a father, and that's changed everything. If I were to summarise what I'm getting at, it's fucking changed everything. And that doesn't mean my foundations have changed like thoughts, breathing, hydration, nutrition, movement, sleep, if I were to summarise what we need to work toward being in mastery of regarding health. But the environment that I balance that with, the environment that I conduct that symphony has changed completely from being like an amphitheatre to being like a shopping mall to offer a taste of what it feels like in this adjustment phase that I'm in right now.   Nick Perry: (03:20) It's like, "Wow." Being present enough in a relationship to keep the balance, and peace, and the harmony there has definitely been... It's been a stretch now that there's a baby with its high needs in the mix. My business is doing better than ever, and that's something that I love and I'm really passionate about and really excited to nurture and grow. And then somewhere in that, family, relationships, business, somewhere in that is me.   Nick Perry: (04:02) The longer I go without prioritising myself, the more dishevelled I become, and that impacts those are the three priorities, those are the three key aspects of life. That's really where the main adjustment is, is like, how do I nurture my own health? How do I embody and apply these foundations most of the time? So I'm feeling confident to embrace the daily challenge in the daily grind.   Mason: (04:39) How do you approach that? Because I think that's something like everyone listening, I'm sure relates to that, losing yourself and your commitment to yourself a little bit as life gets busy. And you're the last one that you nourish. Especially the men listening will relate, but how do you approach that while still staying... A lot of around here, it's like, "Oh, that's it. I'm checking out and it's me time." And it's like I'm going into self care mode. And it's almost at the sacrificing of other responsibilities.   Mason: (05:19) So how do you see... What's the goo and the space between all those elements of our commitments that allows us to dedicate that time for ourselves so that we're better at showing up for other responsibilities?   Nick Perry: (05:33) That's the essence, is like when my cup is full, I have more to give. We get that idea, but filling that cup is easier said than done. And I think one part to speak into that question, it's the quality of presence. And we chatted about this earlier this morning. It's not always volume of time that equates to a full cup. Because I can be diffuse in my awareness whilst having my "self care time." But if it's half an hour that I gift myself where I take that half an hour seriously.   Nick Perry: (06:18) I take it seriously enough to take nothing seriously and I do put my phone down. And I let people's problems be their problems completely and entirely. And I learn to really be in devotion to myself fully for half an hour, then four hours here, eight hours here, 12 hours here those days that happen and managing those responsibilities inside that bigger volume of time is easier. Because I came home to myself, which means I'm not resentful. I'm not resentful for the other things that need my presence.   Nick Perry: (07:01) And I think that's the first response that I feel to speak into is, how honest am I being in my self care time will determine how nourishing it truly is for me. That's one aspect.   Mason: (07:23) I think last time you were on, we chatted a lot about those pillars you were talking about, sleep, nutrition, hydration. I know people will be like, "Yeah, yeah, cool. Know that." But when men are coming to you and they're getting into their health, what are those little extracurricular elements or pillars? We've talked about like being able to have difficult conversations, those kinds of... What are those other little juicy bits and bobs for guys listening here going like, "Yeah, I'm starting to delve into my life, my health kick here"?   Mason: (08:02) For you, what are those little exciting, little [inaudible 00:08:04]? Maybe it's the core, maybe it's the extracurricular stuff. What are those things that you guys need to be aware of and jumping into?   Nick Perry: (08:12) Well, what I see men get most value from when I'm coaching them, things like the value of congruency, what I think, what I say, what I do. And being very aware, am I being congruent here in whatever it is that I'm doing, and in particular, in my bigger conquest, my bigger life mission? I wouldn't really rate that as a nuance, but that is an anchor point when I'm starting to integrate optimising my hydration or cleaning up my diet. Or getting the right dose of movement into my life weekly, whatever that is.   Nick Perry: (09:07) Overshooting puts me out of congruency. Overcommitting, saying, "All right, I'm going to train six days a week, 45 minute sessions. Meditate half an hour, seven days a week because I know this is good." And it's just unbelievably unrealistic. We cannot be congruent with that intention in that goal, so fall out of integrity. We're not being impeccable with our word and our self-esteem takes a hit. And the people that we're around see us or feel our energy deflate and shrink and contract.   Nick Perry: (09:50) And it's so invisible a lot of the time to somebody that's new to that and he is feeling puffed up and inspired to make changes, but doesn't have somebody there supporting them to qualify, is that goal realistic? So the subtlety is in essence to set yourself up for a win is so fucking important. One, because you'll get done the thing you need to get done. It's like, I need to do a little bit of resistance training.   Nick Perry: (10:22) I just need to keep that muscle mass on me, I don't necessarily need to build. But I need the density, it helps me stay grounded. And when I do meet that, when I say, "Okay, Wednesday morning and Saturday morning, I'm going to it 45 minutes." I can do that. My self-esteem starts to build, and then that impacts everything. It reverberates outwardly. But part of this is communication, which is another one of those subtle aspects that needs to be an awareness.   Nick Perry: (11:01) Because if I have a family and I have a business and I have these quarters of my kingdom that I need to invest energy into, there's people that I need to consider. So if I were to all of a sudden get up in the morning, not communicate to my partner, "This is what I'm doing now," And ask her for her support. And ask how I can reciprocate that support in another way. There's a failure to communicate the intention, and that's going to create disruption and disharmony, because it's going to shake up the dynamic as it is too much.   Nick Perry: (11:45) So again, this is is part of the process, is learning how to communicate, learning how to identify my needs. And then go that step further and ask for the people in my life for their help, for their support in meeting those needs.   Mason: (12:03) This is in the best way possible wreaking of like, all right, how do we find harmony of how we're engaging with our weight training? So you are talking about it in the sense of like, all right, you need to be realistic. If you try and do it six days a week, 45 minutes, maybe it's not realistic. And for most people, I think they'll resonate with that and be like, "Yeah, probably..." I've recognised that part of me that goes, "Yeah, I'm going to do this." And then you go, "Oh actually, that was shooting for the stars."   Mason: (12:34) Maybe you land on the moon, that's still good. Some people like that approach. I personally don't like that approach a lot of the time, because I do feel like the failure side of things. That's one way that's maybe not the approach. The other approach is maybe you go, "That's it, I'm going six days a week." And you say it, you don't know why you say it. You that commitment. And because you're someone that's so obsessive, you go and do it and create an excess.   Mason: (13:00) And I know a lot of people will go like, "Well, that's just a that's just because that person's a legend and they always do what they say they will do." Personally, I think that would be an excess for me and not be in harmony or balance. Because there's most likely many other things I need to be doing in my life that I could be committing to. And just because I randomly said it or the course said it, "You need to do this," I just go in. Maybe it's good every now and then just to go blow past my limits, but going back to the core and then going like, "What's the purpose of this? Now what's my purpose here?"   Mason: (13:33) And then that, whether it's that resistance training, allow that to find like an appropriate place within my timeline within my culture. I'm interested to talk to you about this, we've chatted... I think we've danced around talking this morning, and I definitely I just wanted to make sure we do talk about it on the podcast. The idea of just because something's good, there's like, do we have to be like that all the time? You need to get into a certain extent eating in a healthy way.   Mason: (14:06) You need to be to a certain extent, I want to talk about these other qualities of like calling people out in their bullshit and standing firm that you mentioned this morning. In the personal development scene, you say, "Guys, a lot of the time, I'm holding everyone to integrity and I'm going to be that shining light and not let anyone ever get away with their shit." It's like, at what point, first of all, I know a lot of men have a deficiency and their capacity to hold the line and call bullshit out.   Mason: (14:33) And I know a lot of guys who it's like, "Dude, you're at a party, relax." Just this is also quite excessive and quite boring. And so again, it hasn't fallen into harmony and it becomes, just because it's good, more must be better. And that's my identity now. So I'm keen again, the fabric of... Is it finding that purpose so all these little extracurricular things you're teaching people can fall into line and fall into a rhythm and in a harmony based on something more the core?   Nick Perry: (15:12) Yes. Yes, it is. Great. Such a cool question. And yeah, that overzealous, pulling out my sword all the time, what's motivating that? What's driving that? What do you gain from being that person? They're the questions that I would become curious about, especially if it's having an adverse impact on the people around you. Being masqueraders, no, I am the saviour, I am the caller-outerer person. And for sure, of course we need that. It keeps us honest and it keeps us accountable, and I am all about that.   Nick Perry: (15:54) But we both have been in the presence of people who are, like I said, over zealous in that, and that last piece you mentioned, then it's like, "What is this person's purpose?" Who are they? What is the thing behind all of this driving this way of being? That's where it needs to go always. Otherwise, it truly is an unconscious expression, and typically, that unconscious aspect is one that is wounded. One that is distorted might be a better way of putting that.   Nick Perry: (16:36) And that distortion will perpetuate and amplify and be projected onto people until that question is asked and explored. Not just through the mind, but through the body. Right into the nervous system when we can get into the deeper truths of who we are. And if we do find that distortion, then of course that becomes our work. That's when we need to start calling ourselves out on, oh, here's me being tyrannical in my friendships. Here's me being the perpetrator posing as the saviour.   Nick Perry: (17:14) But actually I'm just trying to hold power over my friends. Why? Because I'm feeling super insecure underneath it all. Where did I learn to be this way? Ah, yeah, then. And here I am in my adult life, it's still playing out. That's super important to address, but it's like, once I have this awareness, what do I redirect it to? How do I take that energy back and invest it in something that's truly affirmative to me and therefore affirmative to people that I'm responsible for and in relationship with?   Nick Perry: (17:48) And that's the bigger question. So the first port of call when it comes to purpose is knowing yourself. And taking as long as you need and seeking out as much support as you need to get a solid assessment of that. Scan the entire landscape of you and take it in.   Mason: (18:10) When you start working with someone, how do you approach that? Because obviously it can happen. It does happen through just the random nature of life's events and it's a constant feedback loop so we can know ourselves. But how do you personally give people that arena to as quick as possible, arrive at that place where they're in touch with their purposefulness and knowing themselves so they can have a bit of a compass as they start engaging with all the practises?   Nick Perry: (18:38) Well, that's the joy of being a coach is it really is unique to each individual. But I just get very curious about a few things. I get curious about what's not going right in your life? That's really important information. And sometimes, when we're in the thick of it, that's not something we want to really take stock of or audit or acknowledge. And it's like, "Well, let's just go there. This is a safe space. What's not working?" Maybe there's distance in your relationship. Maybe you are fucking hating your job.   Nick Perry: (19:20) Maybe your health sucks. Maybe you have challenges with your sexual function, anything. What's the feedback life is offering you now. That's a place I would start. And another really helpful question to follow that is, what do you want? And most of the time when that question is asked in a deliberate container where it's like, "Okay, we're getting real here." Most of the time, it's, "I don't really know.I don't actually know." So it's like, "Oh, cool, cool, cool. Here's the doorway now, let's step through that."   Nick Perry: (20:00) So if you don't know who you are and what you want, who have you been been? What is this identity that you occupy? Where did it form and what impact is it having for you to continue in this path? What's at risk here if you don't actually make contact with the authentic you. That's where I start, just really curious and it's really nice because there's no shame in that. It is a big and they are big and confronting questions.   Mason: (20:33) I think these types of conversations happen far too often accidentally when people stumble into the, for lack of a better word, like the health scene. This level of like maturity or going to the core is like what happens after someone's drunk the Kool Aid and gone too far down a dietary or spiritual or philosophical dogma? And then you come out the other side of it and then that's the impetus sometimes to be like, "Oh, I lost myself. Where am I here?"   Mason: (21:07) But again, I think more and more, hopefully there's a bit more ethic in the people who are welcoming people and to get healthy and to make sure that... I think this is the insurance policy, to make sure people don't lose themselves, especially when delving into the spiritual stuff. And especially, at the moment with everything going on in the world where there's so much division. Not just trying to find your identity through opposing another camp, but going in and finding what you want.   Mason: (21:39) I'm curious, because I definitely relate to like, if someone goes like, "What do you want?" And I'm like, "I just don't see... I don't know what you're really asking me or what you want me to say right now." But I'm not someone that works in those black and whites. I have a German friend who was talking to you about earlier. Maybe someone like that, he's like, "I tell you exactly what I want. This, this, this, that."   Mason: (22:01) I can tell you somewhat of a specific of how I want my life to unfold, but part of me doesn't give a shit what my life looks like. So I can't give you specifics, but I can tell you where I want to be as a person, as a man and a businessman and husband and father ongoingly bit by bit. So I'm in a position for life to unfold in a way that I know is congruent with my purposefulness. And so I just want to be in that. That's what I want, and so that's... I'm not going to go too much deeper.   Mason: (22:35) Here, it'll take me too long to explain to myself what my process is. But how do you then frame up that, what do you want? And then how do you bring colour to the responses and nuance into the way that men are answering that question when you're working with them?   Nick Perry: (22:54) Awesome. What you just said then is a really important detail, is we're not looking for the blueprint. It's like, what direction do you aim your arrow in? And I feel like that's what you described. You know what direction you aim your arrow, but you've been walking your own path long enough and being in a place of self responsibility long enough to know that as you evolve, so does that vision. And so does what you're about and what you're building, and all of that.   Nick Perry: (23:38) And that's a very important detail is, we're not looking for the thing and it has to be that forever right now. We're just trying to find what is your north? Where does north point on the compass? So the places that I would start is that question, and this is a really popular one in personal development. And I think it's deservingly so, value systems. So all things are governed by a value system, things that we deem as important and prioritise.   Nick Perry: (24:14) And a value system is basically like a filtration system. And things pass through that value system and I make my decisions based on those values. So when it comes to someone getting clearer on who they are, again, this is one of those confronting questions. It's like, what if you were to name me the things that you value highest, four of them, just four of them. And do so from as selfish a place as you can. Just you. And a meditation that can help with this is to call in and visualise you in a child and just observe them.   Nick Perry: (24:52) What do they gravitate to? What do they resonate with? And then you can call in your inner elder and just observe the essence in the energy of the inner elder that's past all the bullshit of that middle stage of life. Childhood to old age. And then it's like, name them. And for some people it's like adventure, some people it's... For me, one of my core values is solitude. That's so important for me to build and design into my life, and I have done.   Nick Perry: (25:32) Somebody else, it could be like honesty, and they just use that as their means of establishing what is a yes and what is a no in their life. And if somebody can't answer that, these are my prime core values, just four or five, then it's like, okay, no wonder you hate the job that you're in. Starting to make sense. Whose values are you living out right now? What drove you to say yes, to staying in a job that you fucking despise and is literally sucking you of your life force essence?   Nick Perry: (26:11) And you have inflammatory disorders, you're tired, you're using, alcohol and weed as a crutch and you not really connecting in your relationship. It's like, "Oh, okay. Well, yeah, this is what might dad did. He worked his fingers to the bone and he valued hard work. And so it's like, okay, now we're starting to take stock of who you are and where you aren't living in accordance with your true essence. And it's like, that doesn't mean you need to quit your job straight away, but just have the awareness.   Nick Perry: (26:51) And now you can start to dream into that question, what do I want? So if you were coming from your own value system, what would change?   Mason: (27:03) I think, and you just mentioned is that, what was coming into the back of my mind is that bridging phase. I think quite often, we don't go through a comprehensive value building where there's nuance. And when you bring those multiple value and virtue sets that arise, they often harmonise and balance other out. Versus being told, "Hey, if you don't like your job, you probably need to prioritise yourself." "Oh, so it's all about me," And then you just go and rip [inaudible 00:27:37]   Nick Perry: (27:39) Push like a Looney Tune scene, push the T&T bar down.   Mason: (27:43) Yeah. And it happens a lot in personal development as well. You see people just eject out of their relationships and all kinds of things and prioritising myself. And they just ride that energy. Sometimes it might be the right call, a lot of the time it's probably... Let's look at like a job's an easy one. Pointing the finger at the job being something you didn't like versus gently real... nourishing the learning that you went in there and committed to that job as a particular type of person and got what you were energetically putting out there.   Mason: (28:18) And can you just stay there for that little bit while you have a plan for what's going to come next, especially, if you have dependence? Or ensure.   Nick Perry: (28:26) Yes.   Mason: (28:27) ... that you respectfully, don't just... Now because the secret to life and prioritising yourself, don't make it everyone else's problem. And don't blame them for their unconsciousness and all that. Can you still meet them in that place of where they're at and gracefully and respectfully move on? Same in a relationship, right? That's what I think when you were saying, there's like that four values, however many come up. You see what you could... The holistic family of values and things that you cherish in life, they do harmonise each other.   Mason: (29:01) And if you go through that comprehensive work to begin with, that lays solid foundation to ensure what you are doing is in resonance with what you're actually trying to create.   Nick Perry: (29:11) Yes, yes, yes. Right on, it's a bigger picture and it's a longer game now. The long game is the way to go from my personal experience, speaking for myself. I see this often, and this isn't a diss or a judgement it's an observation in the coaching circles where it's like, "Okay, I'm ready to change the world." I'm a coach now, so I'm going to step out of the matrix. I'm going to two feet jump out of the matrix and I'm going to have a thriving coaching business. And it's like having built a coaching business, it's taken me nearly a decade to get where I'm at and I'm still very much a work in progress. I'm like, "That's not going to work."   Mason: (30:02) Do you mean especially the part of stepping out of the matrix?   Nick Perry: (30:06) Yeah. So I'm quitting my job and it's like, "Okay, well, who's going to pay the mortgage." It might seem obvious, but still it's a common thing that is often endorsed in the mind over matter ideology.   Mason: (30:23) Faith in the universe.   Nick Perry: (30:25) Yeah. Faith in the universe. And it's like, "No."   Mason: (30:26) Which has got some validity.   Nick Perry: (30:28) It does.   Mason: (30:28) But it's more like 80-20 rule. Just like the term.   Nick Perry: (30:33) Exactly. Again, don't be so rigid in that. And my advice to people, and I swear to God, I've had this conversation with many people because they're like, "Oh, how'd you do that? And this and that." And I was like, "Man, for the first few years I was wearing steel cap boots more than I was wearing sneakers." You know what I mean? I was on the tools digging holes and paying rent as a labourer and then doing my coaching on the side. And it was a transition that took, it took time and it was important that it took that time. One, because it helped me be an effective coach because I can relate, I can relate to people who are moving through a transformation process and all the aches and pains of that.   Nick Perry: (31:21) It gave me time to acquire experience right before I'm just gung-hoing because it's a big responsibility to be a coach. And the more exposure to complex problems and having mentoring first in how to resolve people's complex, support people to resolve their complex problems is super fucking important. Otherwise it's negligence, straight up. Don't take somebody to a part of themselves, one, that you haven't been to in your own way, and two, and you don't know how to get them back out of there. If you're taking someone down, there needs to be a level of experience and a skill developed where you can actually feel, where's the point in our return and how close are we to that right now? And is it appropriate that we go there today? And this just takes time and it's a beautiful experience and yeah, I feel like I'm rambling.   Mason: (32:23) No, I mean it's-   Nick Perry: (32:25) I don't know if that answers that.   Mason: (32:25) ... probably the most common thing. I don't have any specific questions, just jamming but bit what brings up a lot. I used to, and I've still got one client, one coaching client and was nearly considering do I go down the route where I'm running Super fist or do I go down the route where I continue my mentoring, coaching programmes, running retreats. And obviously ended up going down, running Super feast, which is not what I wanted, but it was probably it was what I personally, what I needed. Exactly for the reasons you're saying I would say I'm an ethical coach and I don't take people into cathartic process, but none nonetheless, I still probably wasn't willing to be a facilitator at that. I wanted to be more general in my approach.   Nick Perry: (33:24) Cool, cool. Yeah.   Mason: (33:26) In that, you talked about stepping out of the matrix. Now, the biggest thing I see in the coaching circle, and I'm sure this can be seen when people who when they're stepping out of their jobs, stepping out of and just making a big lane change in life, is you do excessively go right. What I was doing before, where I was super grounded into the earth and the earth's rules and the government rules and taxation and the matrix and all that kind of stuff. I'm rejecting that and it can of like the Darwin's model is like you've got the earth down the bottom, and that's got a couple of organs down there and you've got the human in the middle, and then you've got couple of other more up towards the heaven, organs up the top.   Mason: (34:14) And that's where all your vision and your purpose and all that is. But down the bottom is where your worry and your grief and your fear, but also your willingness to take on large responsibility. And as in the coaching world, people do just go like, "All right, well, that's it, I'm changing my job and I can straight up to the top and I'm all purpose and all vision." And the thing I can smell it on them now, when I know that they're not grounded and that they don't have their ducks. And are like, "I don't care if it's a... you can see, I only work all in like cryptocurrencies now because money ATO, all of that bad and new world spiritual awakening, blockchain, this is just an example, cryptocurrencies, that's the way of the future.   Mason: (34:58) And it's a complete bypass, regardless of whether you're running an official business or whatever it is, you are energetically ungrounded and lack the capacity to take on the responsibility to facilitate those big inner journeys, and then bringing people out of those journeys as well. If you don't know how to run your business and be super all over tight, what my cash flow is like, what my balance sheets looks like. All those things that are out, I'm getting out of the matrix and I'm going to be free and be a coach. What they think they are going and pursuing is they're just shirking responsibility. And coaching clients, you're either going to have a low IQ, not to be mean, but a low hanging fruit coaching client, who's not experienced enough to recognise that you are pretending to have your shit together, or you're delusional about having your shit together, or you're going to have good coaching clients and they're going to test you, like what a child does.   Mason: (36:02) Children are really smart to test your boundaries and see where there cracks, where you haven't got your shit together and where you emotionally haven't got yourself together. And good coaching clients will be like that. And you can say all you want like, "Oh, they didn't get it, and they just wouldn't listen, and they weren't teachable." It's like, no, their pointing out that you don't have your shit together. You are not grounded. Therefore you don't have the capacity to take on this big responsibility. I think it's really important what you're saying there. It's not all about this can be applied everywhere. It's not just coaching.   Nick Perry: (36:35) Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you brought in the Daoist stuff, I was waiting for that, and I love it. That's why I tune into this podcast because I'm just love that perspective so much and yeah, totally, it's like, if your coach doesn't seem human, then they're pretending, they're not being honest. Anyone that's worked with me would know that I am such a work in progress and it's not that I'm a perfect person. It's more that my relationship with hardship has matured, where it's something to embrace. It's something to love on, it's something to accept and recognise as part of the spectrum of the curriculum that we pass through. So that's my way of deciphering what you're saying. If it's like, "No, this is the way and crypto and I'm holier than thou and following me into the desert, it's like, where are we going though?"   Mason: (37:51) Yeah. And just all crypto's great. It's not [crosstalk ##].   Nick Perry: (37:55) Definitely Not, definitely not. That's just our   Mason: (38:01) The [crosstalk 00:38:01] example at the moment is on.   Nick Perry: (38:04) It's pretty on trend too.   Mason: (38:06) But I think, I talk about it so much on this podcast and I don't apologise because it's-   Nick Perry: (38:18) Everybody who can't see [inaudible 00:38:21] he looked up, looked off into the distance and raised his finger and said, "I don't apologise and I love that."   Mason: (38:30) It's the non escapism, not losing yourself to a particular identity, not feeling like you've found the holy grail, realising you're a constant work in progress. We talked about this morning to kind of... I like the Buddhist and they're like, "You chop wood, carry water, and you do that for your entire life, doing the basics." And as you're going along, chopping wood, again, you're going to have a moment of enlightenment as you're chopping that wood. And then your challenge then is to go, "Okay, get over it, integrate it, don't be attached to that and then keep on chopping the wood." So in that, what we're ultimately, as we always do talking about having enough ging and kidney essence, and what is that just the capacity to not get exhausted?   Mason: (39:20) That's just the physical expression of it. The more qi energetic base, which falls into our psychology is, can you maintain a connection to what is a unique set of emerging and malleable values for yourself? Where you take responsibility for mining those values and coming back and designing your life, where you come back to that. And from that a sense of, yeah, I can see what my sense of purposefulness is, rather than relying on anything externally to tell you what those values are, to tell you what that purpose is.   Mason: (39:58) And there is going to be a dark night of the soul at some point for everyone, especially if you've gone too far away from your centre and are identifying externally, where you might have... It have been that book or this community where it's like, "It is a good way to live." We can't argue, there's virtues there, but they're not yours. And might have been pointing you towards what your own values are. But at some point you're going to fall over if you're outside of that centre. Or you're going to have to become a little bit tweaked psychologically in order to... Your spirit needs to disconnect from your body in order to justify staying.   Mason: (40:38) That's what you said, it's what I see with a lot with a lot of these health ministers with the cracked out eyes at the moment, and they've lost all capacity to be human. So the spirit, we see it's a deficiency of shen. You see the life goes out of their eyes and they've just got that dead psychotic stare as they're berating the public down the camera. So that's the spirit needs to go away-   Nick Perry: (41:00) Right on.   Mason: (41:00) ... because it can't justify being in that system anymore. Because we've decided we don't need our own sovereignty, I'm just completely going to become a shield for this institution or this narrative. And so everyone... That's why I like talking to you and I like your approach to coaching people. Because I think coaching's become so diluted. I like reminding myself and everyone that, yeah, it just... But the more dilution there is, the more you're actually also going to define the pure, the goods.   Mason: (41:36) And we have talked about it lots on this podcast, but your ability to stay within your own centre, it's what we're talking about this sovereignty, mining for those values, it's so important.   Nick Perry: (41:49) I would argue that it's everything. Bottom line, [inaudible 00:41:54] what's the bottom line to this dream or dreaming? It's that, it's fucking that, because anything else is illusion or distortion. Anything else like you say is, your free will's been hijacked and it is no longer in service to your truth, your soul, your essence, your uniqueness, period. And therefore the offering you are to the universe is being hijacked or diluted somewhat. Who you are needs no justification.   Nick Perry: (42:39) Doesn't need to fit into anything, any demographic, any label or title ultimately. And for sure, when we are in the world, we can take that on, we try it on. But we need to know that it's something that we can take off like a jacket as well, and try something else on, and this and that, and this and that. And the feedback comes in. I'd like what you said about the spirit disassociating, detaching, and how you can literally see that. You can literally see that as a physical manifestation.   Nick Perry: (43:22) And it reminded me of that really important concept of the pain teacher. So the further from myself I get, I am going to... A messenger will come. And usually, it's through like health, pain, sickness, disease, or relationships is another place the pain teacher often shows up, relationships falling apart or becoming dysfunctional and unhealthy and toxic, et cetera. But that's so part of this, is my relationship with the pain teacher. When I outsource my responsibility to listen to the messenger, listen to the pain teacher, now I'm fucking in trouble.   Nick Perry: (44:11) Now I'm walking further and further and further down a path that's not true to me. And like you say, there's a lot of pressure to do that. There's politicians doing the most pure shit, guilting and shaming people to conform to whatever the fuck their agenda is, like who even cares? Is it promoting people to love themselves and to pursue their authenticity? Hell, no. Anything outside of that isn't a healthy pursuit.   Mason: (44:52) The clarity I'm getting, you're mentioning, it's everything. That's everything. Again, we hear purposefulness thrown around a lot to the extent I roll my eyes when I hear myself say it to an extent. But just as much as it gets diluted, when... I always watch myself when I'm like, "Oh gosh, another health coach. Oh, we're talking about purpose again. Oh, we're talking about this again." As much as something's become like, I keep using the word diluted, I think it's a really good one for myself. I've heard about things too much and I find myself getting eye-rolly.   Mason: (45:26) I remind myself that because there's... I've got such an awareness and I've heard it so many times, if I just tilt where I'm looking towards, like, "All right. Well, I'm looking externally too much, when I'm talking about purpose and I'm rolling my eyes hearing people talk about that." It's because I'm not looking in the same place. I need to look internally and feel... As much as it gets diluted out there and I roll my eyes, I equally know that I'm going to have the opportunity to actually know what purpose fullness is for me.   Mason: (45:55) I'm going to have greater, the more eye-rolly I get, the more potential I have to actually get clarity on for what it means for me, right?   Nick Perry: (46:04) Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Mason: (46:04) So I'm rolling my eyes at myself because I'm getting bored of trying to... I actually am trying to find the meaning externally and I'm just like, "[inaudible 00:46:12] these people [crosstalk 00:46:13]." And it's just I'm annoyed that I can't [crosstalk 00:46:15]   Nick Perry: (46:15) You're like, "I don't like that explanation, that person that isn't me is saying."   Mason: (46:20) I've heard that one before and I tried it and it didn't work and give a different answer that worked. It's like, yeah.   Nick Perry: (46:26) You said it wrong.   Mason: (46:28) Yeah.   Nick Perry: (46:28) [inaudible 00:46:28]   Mason: (46:32) And just realising that again for myself, as much as I love the taking the piss out of other people. Ultimately, for me, it's all well and good as long as I can practically find that place where I can shoulder the burden of responsibility of that annoyance. So I'm not putting that on someone else, as long as I genuinely have that skill in my repertoire, I find that I'm fine. And I don't mind being sarcastic and taking the peace out of it all.   Mason: (47:04) But I think the biggest thing that I'm getting today is the difference between just using tools for personal development, which we've talked a lot about, and there's lots of tools. And we see there's lots of little dogmas in churches that emerge around these tools that have been taken out of ancient eastern philosophy and taken out of psychology. So you can see like motivation and crafting your mindset is a tool within a rich tapestry of ancient psychology and spiritual development.   Mason: (47:39) But we see, just talking about love, and by the way, this is absolutely not a criticism, my own experience. So like the motivation scene or like the David Goggins' kind of like, "We're going to take this tool of crafting your mindset and making so you push past your beliefs and we're going to use that." And it's like, well, to what effect? Why?   Nick Perry: (48:09) What's the effect?   Mason: (48:10) Where is that coming from? And the way we can ensure that that falls into actually using an appropriate amount rather than going, "Oh my God, that was really amazing. I've pushed past my barriers and so more must be better." And then your identity falls into that tool, versus where's the why, that mining for your own purposefulness and values. If you know what your purpose of what you're actually creating in life or the direction you want to go in life, it becomes self informing.   Mason: (48:42) You use that tool to an extent and then you see where it actually starts pulling you away from your centre. And therefore you naturally find, "Okay, that's the appropriate amount that I really need to be pushing my mind and going beyond what I think is possible. And that's then where I can leave it and it's had it's done its job, and I'm just going to come back to my centre and cruise, and maybe not have to go and do another ultra marathon on broken legs."   Nick Perry: (49:11) Yeah, on these broken legs that are screaming, "You're not good enough. You're not good enough. You're not good enough. And I just fucking this, the moRE stamina I get, the more I reinforce that. Is that what this is about? Is this trying to fucking... I guess what I'm saying here, man, is I love that, what you just said then. And I think the biggest challenge isn't an ultra marathon, it's to do anything from a place of enoughness. Meditate on that. If I was in my enoughness now in this moment, would anything change?   Nick Perry: (49:53) Would I choose something differently? Would I communicate something else? Would I go downstairs and go in the gym and do the training session? In my enoughness, what happens?   Mason: (50:12) Huge question.   Nick Perry: (50:12) How do I feel? How do I feel about the world from that place? That's an important meditation. Otherwise, it's just people yelling at you. It's just the fucking drill sergeant yelling at you, to use the Goggins archetype, [inaudible 00:50:35], and it's like, "Stop the noise, shut up."   Mason: (50:39) Roger that.   Nick Perry: (50:40) Stop running and consider what it would be like to trust yourself.   Mason: (50:50) The enoughness, that's a huge one. What an exercise? What a process to come back to. Funnily enough, I've been using it a lot lately, because again, I live in my mind so much sometimes that I'm black and about like, "Am I an ambitious person or am I not an ambitious person?" Rather than coming, returning to that place. This is why I promote an uncolonized mind so much, because when you're in a non-colonised mind and you can step back into the natural, there's diversity, with various seasons, various things come up.   Mason: (51:32) Seasons of your life, different things come up and you're ready for that because you're not attached to going, "I am an ambitious person. You know what? I've just realised, I'm not an ambitious person anymore." Ambition is there in existence, in diversity with everything else. I've been meditating on it with my business and I'm like, "Where am I taking this?" And this is probably going to... What you just said is going to tilt me to go a little bit deeper, going, "Okay, if I'm enough already," and I go, "Wow." And I feel, but I'm enough.   Mason: (52:06) Then the first thing that came up is permission for my ambition to come up, but appropriately in resonance.   Nick Perry: (52:14) Yeah.   Mason: (52:15) You know what I mean? [crosstalk 00:52:15]   Nick Perry: (52:16) Look at this pump in here. Right. Right. And that's your contribution. That's your contribution. That's what your role modelling now. I don't give a fuck how big your business is. I don't give a fuck if your business ends. I'm more interested in seeing a man live from that place and exude that essence and show the way and give me permission to gift myself the same state of being. So like you say, we can get so identified with the form, with the material. But that's just the vehicle for growth, that's all. And sovereignty is the bottom line. Here I am, and here we are. And fuck it, this is awesome right now."   Mason: (53:07) Yeah, it's a trip and facilitating that journey for people, I can... When you feel the space that's been created now and what we're weaving into, and looking at what it means to create an environment where we don't just get that pop once, but we create the environment within our life that this can be a constant. Yeah, it makes-   Nick Perry: (53:30) That's where the tools become relevant. When the context is me, not measuring myself or comparing myself against someone that I have pedestaled or that markets themself as there. At where, some sort of fucking destination, they've made it. No such thing. One of my clients dropped some wisdom once on a call, and he's an avid sailing enthusiast. And what he started to... The metaphor that came to him, because we'd just gone through like an intense 10 weeks of learning tools.   Nick Perry: (54:09) It's like, "Here., here's some covery. Here's some swords and ninja styles and shit for the battlefield." And is like, "Oh, I kind of get it. When I sail, I'm continually tapping the steering wheel. I'm continually just having to read the environment, obviously, that's always in flux, always. And steering my vessel in the direction that's truest to me." I'm never not tapping it. It's never really smooth sailing. But if I identify as the captain, captain of the ship, I look after the ship, which is my body. And that's what will take us back to the start with the health stuff.   Nick Perry: (55:02) Then yeah. Then now I'm living. Now I'm living, now I'm present to where does the rudder need to move right now in this movement? Ah, ah, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool. And now we're getting closer to that bliss without it needing to be a sunny day.   Mason: (55:22) Are there any tools in particular that are really exciting you at the moment?   Nick Perry: (55:25) I don't know if that made sense, man.   Mason: (55:27) Yeah, yeah. No, for sure.   Nick Perry: (55:28) Cool. Cool.   Mason: (55:30) Just yeah, before we wrap up, I'm curious, just to the ninja styles for... We've taken it deep and given the bed. What are the ninja styles and little tools that are exciting you the most at the moment?   Nick Perry: (55:44) Well, to someone that's new to this, I really do feel like Don Miguel Ruiz's first book's great. The Four Agreements. I think they're great ninja styles, always do your best, and to know what that means. And that again takes us into congruency and integrity again, doing your best isn't perfectionism. It's something else. Don't take anything or anyone personally. And again, it's like we can take the feedback coming at us, but don't take it personally. So self responsibility matures when we embrace this ninja style.   Nick Perry: (56:24) Don't make assumptions. I think that's a really powerful... Whenever I do couples coaching, that's usually the big driver of conflict is assumptions. You should know, it's like, "Well, they don't." You need to make it known and vice versa. And be impeccable with your word to me. If somebody said, "What is freedom?" I would say that. How do I be a free person? How do I be a free man in the world? Being impeccable with your word and I really journey with that going to the depth of what that means.   Mason: (57:12) Love it, man. Good ninja styles. Good ninjaring. Where are your offerings at the moment? Are you taking clients?   Nick Perry: (57:21) Yes. I've got a few sessions. I'm not sure when this comes out, but I've got sessions left for the end of the year. And I've opened up, it's the third time I've run this, a mentorship. It's a 12-week container That's open to 10 people and it's a very holistic experience where we do you, and we also come together as a group and learn from each other. Again, there's lots more detail information in the infrastructure of that mentorship, what it includes, who is it for? Who does it serve? And I'm really excited for that.   Nick Perry: (58:05) So the next one is kicking off the 31st of January. It's about half-full, so if you're listening to this and you're interested, get in touch through my website, rhythmhealth.com.au. That's R-H-Y-T-H-M, spelled funny or Instagram, Rhythm Health.   Mason: (58:24) Nice.   Nick Perry: (58:24) That's yeah, that's it at the moment.   Mason: (58:26) You got to like mailing list I can jump on just to [crosstalk 00:58:29]   Nick Perry: (58:29) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jump on that, jump on that. You can do that through, again, through my website.   Mason: (58:35) [inaudible 00:58:35]   Nick Perry: (58:37) You'll yeah. Get a little gift if you do as well.   Mason: (58:40) Jump on it, guys. Get gifty. Man, thank you. It's been a really fun morning. Been a really fun podcast. It's been very enlightening, and as we know. Drop the enlightenment now and get on with chopping wood, carry water.   Nick Perry: (58:54) That's it, man. Why not?   Mason: (58:55) Yeah. What a gift to be able to have these conversations and make this a part of our businesses and work and purposefulness like yeah, what a fun way? What a fun way to exist.   Nick Perry: (59:07) Agreed, man. It's really is a privilege and an honour and a delight to just hang and let alone be invited onto your podcast and connect with your audience.   Mason: (59:22) We love it.   Nick Perry: (59:25) Thank you, man. Thank you.   Mason: (59:26) Absolute pleasure, man. Likewise, thank you. See you next time, man.   Nick Perry: (59:29) Yeah.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but how much of our perception of what we perceive as 'beautiful' is being prescribed, moulded, and manipulated through marketing campaigns and products? What if beauty brands were regulated by a set of ethical standards that didn't allow them to prey on our insecurities to sell their products? Let's be real, beauty brands have a vested interest in you not feeling good about yourself, in you wanting to change something about your appearance or enhance your features; It's how they sell their products.      We're exploring all these topics and more today on the podcast, as Tahnee chats with prolific beauty industry journalist and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino. You may have read some of Jessica's articles in Vogue, Harper's BAZAAR, Allure, The New York Times, Elle, Cosmopolitan, or Marie Claire. Jessica has earned herself a reputation for debunking marketing myths, exposing the ugly truths behind beauty product ingredient lists, and as the HuffPost once put it, "basically giving the middle finger to the entire beauty industry". We love Jess for this and are so excited to share this podcast with you.   In this episode, Tahnee and Jessica deconstruct the beauty industry as we currently know it. The insidious impact patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism have on the industry, how things like colourism, sexism, and ageism are enforced constantly through marketing campaigns, the ethical dilemma of dermatologists offering (and often suggesting) aesthetic cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers, the role of self-care as we age, and so much more. Most importantly, Jessica talks about the power individual behaviours have when it comes to shaping culture and the future of beauty culture for the better. Jessica also breaks down how and why we need to stop participating in this psychologically damaging industry that is the root cause of so many physiological and psychological disorders. There is so much in this episode; Jessica inspires transparency, truth, and the kind of beauty that can only come from within.     "I want the next generation of humans to feel worthy, to raise their voices, be seen, heard, acknowledged, accepted, and embraced by the people around them without worrying if they're pretty enough to ask for that acknowledgment and acceptance. And I mean, that's my whole motivation. I don't think anybody should feel the way myself and billions of people around the world currently feel. I want that to change. And the only way I know how to do it is to change myself and inspire the change in others".  - Jessica DeFino     Host and Guest discuss:   Botox. Topical steroids. Filter vs. Reality. Psychodermatology. The Skin/Brain connection. How meditation benefits the Skin barrier. The ploy of 'community' used in branding. The problem with the clean beauty industry. Jess's natural skincare routine and suggestions. The culture of consumerism and the beauty industry. Performative beauty masquerading as empowerment. Self Care; What It Means and How It Changes As We Age. Racism, colourism, sexism and ageism in the beauty industry. The Kardashian's, and the beauty standards they perpetuate. The most pressing health issue in beauty is the psychological harm of beauty standards.   Who is Jessica Defino? Jessica DeFino is a beauty reporter working to dismantle beauty standards, debunk marketing myths, and explore how beauty culture impacts people — physically, psychologically, and psychospiritually. Her work can be found in the New York Times, Vogue, Allure, and more. She also writes the beauty newsletter The Unpublishable.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Jessica's website The Unpublishable Jessica's Instagram    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everyone, and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm here today with Jessica DeFino, who is one of my favourite follows on socials. She's also the author of The Unpublishable, which is this amazing newsletter you guys should all sign up to. I've heard you describe yourself as pro-skin/anti-beauty product. I love that. So yeah, thanks for joining us here, Jess. I'm really excited to have you.   Jessica DeFino: (00:23) Thank you so much for having me.   Tahnee: (00:25) Yeah, really, really cool. And you're such a prolific writer. You've been in the New York Times, Vogue, Marie Claire, all over the place, plus all of those amazing online platforms we have access to today. But then you're kind of this punk, which I love. You're sort of in the beauty world, but also tearing it apart from the inside. So would that be fair to say?   Jessica DeFino: (00:45) Yeah, I think that is fair to say. It's definitely a balancing act and a tight line to walk.   Tahnee: (00:56) Yeah. I often say to my husband, because I really respect that line you're walking, and I think any of us in any industry, it's really important to be critical of like the work that we do and the kind of culture and everything, and also to love and enjoy what we do. And I do get a sense that there's that sort of dance there for you. You really love what you do, but then there's also this like.   Jessica DeFino: (01:23) Exactly. I mean, the whole reason that I got into the beauty industry is out of love and out of a passion for it. And yeah, I think we do critique the things that we love the most because we want them to be the best possible version of what they can be and sort of serve the highest good. And currently, I don't think the beauty industry serves the highest good, and I think it can, and I would love to be part of that transition.   Tahnee: (01:47) Well, you're doing a good job of getting us there. So thank you. So how did that sort of manifest for you? You are obviously a writer. Did you sort of always want to get into the beauty space or were you drawn into it for a certain reason or?   Jessica DeFino: (02:01) No. I was always interested in writing. In college, I studied songwriting. I went to the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. And I sang, I played guitar and songwriting was my main passion. After school, I decided I wanted to be more in the music industry. So I pivoted. I moved to Los Angeles and I decided to work for a wardrobe stylist in the music industry. So I was assisting her on shoots and helping to cultivate the look for rock stars like Green Day and Linkin Park and Daughtry.   Jessica DeFino: (02:34) And that was really fun. And eventually I missed writing. And because I sort of had this foothold in the celebrity space, I pivoted it into celebrity lifestyle writing for magazines, which eventually led me to a job working for the Kardashians, which eventually led me into the beauty space. So it was a long winding path.   Tahnee: (02:58) Okay. So I have to stop at the Kardashians because I've never watched that show. But no matter how avoiding the Kardashians you are in life, they seem to be everywhere. What were you doing for them? What was that?   Jessica DeFino: (03:10) I was part of the launch team that created content for their official apps. So in 2015, all the Kardashian and Jenner sisters launched their own individual apps. And they had content that was fashion related, beauty related, lifestyle. I mostly did Khloe's app. I wrote her sex column. I wrote her beauty column.   Jessica DeFino: (03:32) So it was really funny. It was really fun. It was definitely a learning experience for me. And I think looking back that's part of what inspired me to get into the beauty industry. Well, for one, it was a high stress environment and my skin kind of freaked out during the time I was working there. So I started independently researching a lot about skincare and beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (03:57) And then working for these women, you sort of see how beauty standards are created, and how they are consumed, and how that is a very strategic thing in order to get clicks and sell products. And so I started deconstructing that in my head and applying it to different aspects of the beauty industry. And eventually I was like, "You know what? This is super messed up. I want to do something about it."   Tahnee: (04:27) Well, that's kind of what made me start with that, that name in particular because I feel like they've really shaped, I guess ... Again, I'm not sort of someone who's super across all the trends with face things. But people have the skin that's really shiny and the implants and all the injections and all of these things these days. And it's like I really see they were part of that first wave of celebrities that were really, I guess, pushing that. And they're such an interesting family because they have sort of darker skin, but they're not black and they're sort of in this weird world. What sort of has come from that for you? You are obviously, I love how you call it dewy, diet culture. It's one of my favourite things. But where have you landed after this sort of journey from the Kardashians to now?   Jessica DeFino: (05:17) From the Kardashians? Well, when I started, I truly did think that they were great examples of empowered business women. I really thought like, "Wow! These people started out with not much talent to work with, and they've created these huge empires. And how amazing is that?" And that was definitely an early part of my own feminist learning and understanding, and journey.   Jessica DeFino: (05:43) And now where I am is recognising that those things aren't necessarily empowerment because that sort of empowerment within a patriarchal culture, what kind of power is that truly. I'm less interested in those forms of power and beauty as capital, and infiltrating the male business world as capital. And I'm more interested in chasing collective liberation, which I think looks very different.   Tahnee: (06:16) So where does beauty even sit in that, because I think that's such an interesting ... My partner and I talk about this as well. We're both white, fairly attractive people who run a Taoist tonic herb company. And I have to think if I was Chinese, I probably wouldn't be as successful as I am just because of the way our culture reflects back that sort of stereotype. And it's something I sit with a lot and I don't have any answers about yet. But I think it's a really interesting time because beauty does give us leverage and it does give us space in the world to take up.   Jessica DeFino: (06:53) I think an interesting path to go down, if you are interested in learn more about that and learning more about beauty and how these standards evolved, is just getting into the history of beauty standards. And when you do dive into the history, I wrote a pretty long article on that for Teen Vogue, if anybody wants to Google it, about the origins of beauty standards. But basically beauty standards all came about through four particular forces in society, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Any beauty standard from the beginning of time can be traced back to one of those things.   Jessica DeFino: (07:35) Beauty standards are how things like racism, colorism, sexism and ageism are enforced. These aren't just fun things, even though we tend to think of them that way now. These standards emerged to support these sort of more nefarious societal forces and to, not to get too conspiracy theorists about it, but convince us to reinforce these social structures. So when we are participating in beauty standards, a lot of the time we are reinforcing the very societal structures that oppress us and we don't even know it.   Tahnee: (08:16) I think that's such an important mic drop moment because we are all co-creating and participating in the ongoing perpetuation of these forms without any awareness around how we're actually contributing to that. And that's what I've loved about your work. You're really trying to bring that to the fore. And for me, it's been a big sort of, I think obviously that's been happening in my life for a while. But then your work has really helped me give words, I guess, to sort of some of the stuff that's been brewing in my thinking, because I did some modelling when I was younger and it was quite toxic for me.   Tahnee: (08:55) I know some people don't have that experience. But I had an eating disorder. I felt like people were constantly looking at me and judging me and just it really turned this kind of cog in me that made me very self aware and very uncomfortable. And I've noticed myself over the last probably 20 years just like I don't by stuff anymore. I barely use anything on my skin. My skin seems to be about the same as when I used all the things. It's really funny. Kind of as I decondition myself, it's like my life becomes a lot simpler.   Jessica DeFino: (09:29) Yeah. What strikes me there is that we often hear in the mainstream media beauty sort of touted as this path to empowerment, and beauty is empowering, and beauty builds confidence. And sometimes those things can be true. But more often what beauty culture does is it disempowers us because studies show that it contributes to things like anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self harm, and even suicide.   Jessica DeFino: (10:00) So it's really important to examine when we hear this beauty product is empowering or this thing is self care, because the flip side of that is that this disproportionate focus on our physical bodies actually leads to all of those things that I just mentioned. So we sort of have to weigh that and say, "Okay. Is the confidence that I get from getting this injection of Botox worth the anxiety that I get from now constantly worrying about my wrinkles for the rest of my life?"   Tahnee: (10:39) That's a tricky one. I know people in their twenties now getting Botox and I'm like, "Woo." And I think that's ... I mean, you've lived in LA. There's certain pockets where that pressure is really high for people. And I think it's definitely an interesting time to be a human. And that's something I really appreciate about your critique is you talk about this idea of brands and how they perpetuate this idea of community. And again, my brand is probably contributing to that in some way. But I think that's a really interesting conversation again around well, if someone is just getting money out of you and really selling you a narrative, is that actually a community, and is that actually sort of something you want to be a part of? Can you speak a little bit to that sort of, cause I see that as a theme in your work?   Jessica DeFino: (11:27) Yeah. I mean, I think community has become this sort of catch phrase that brands are using now. And it's an attractive one and it's one that really grabs our attention because I think as humans we crave community. Humans are creatures of community. We crave it on a biological, instinctual level. And because we have been so steeped in this culture of consumerism, we can't really see out of it. We don't really see any different. And it's really easy to latch onto this idea that this brand is my community and the other people that buy from this brand are also my community.   Jessica DeFino: (12:08) But it's not a community. There's inherently a power and balance in that relationship in that a brand's main interest is always going to be their financial interest. Brands don't do things unless they further the brand and make the brand money and further their reach. If something that is good for the customer also comes out of it, that's a bonus. But that is never the initial goal. The initial goal is to make a living. And so that inherently creates this power imbalance with brand and customer. And to call that a community is just, I think it's a little bit a psychological mind fuckery. I don't know if I can say that on you podcast.   Tahnee: (12:49) Of course, you can. Feel free. I think that's a really interesting ... So you probably don't know this, but I used to be a yoga teacher full-time and had a studio. And I found that really interesting when I worked in yoga before having my own business that, this is probably not a great thing to say. I won't name names. But people would talk behind students' backs and kind of be quite critical. But then to their faces, do the whole yoga thing.   Tahnee: (13:21) And similarly, within the teaching community, there was a lot of backstabbing and kind of really awful behaviour, and then this front facing kumbaya, look how spiritual we all are kind of stuff. And I found it really challenging and kind of went off and did my own thing. It was financially successful enough for me, but I really notice that when you focus on that community aspect, so much energy, so much time, so much of yourself and you can see why that's not a commercial proposition for most businesses. It's not a way to go and make you millions. But rewarding for other reasons. But I think it's like that word has become so loaded and so misused that it's really tricky now to even know what people mean when they say community, especially.   Jessica DeFino: (14:10) I mean, it's just, especially with beauty, beauty brands have a vested interest in you not feeling good about yourself. They have a vested interest in you wanting to change something about your appearance or not thinking your current appearance is enough as it is. And whether they frame that as "fixing your flaws" or "enhancing your good features", which sort of means the same thing, the baseline has to be there in order for them to be successful. You have to think your good features aren't enhanced enough. You have to think that your flaws aren't fixed.   Jessica DeFino: (14:50) I always like to use the Dove campaign, that everybody is beautiful campaign from years and years ago. That was kind of their first body positive thing. It was founded on this marketing idea of empowerment, and we're going to make everybody feel beautiful. But again, in order for a campaign like that to succeed long term, depends on most customers not feeling beautiful and needing to buy into this message of confidence and empowerment. So your insecurity has to be there in order for these brands to survive even if their marketing message seems positive.   Tahnee: (15:28) I do know. And I don't see that much difference you in the wellness space, if I'm honest. I know I seem to make those comparisons. And I think that's something that I'm aware of in terms of the world we live in, which I guess like you Americans, that sort of we are a version of Moon Juice or those kinds of companies here, obviously with less of a fashion focus than they have. But I think it's a really interesting thing because it's like the premise can be literally there's something wrong with you. You need to buy X, Y and Z to be healthier, or better, or in this perpetual grind toward optimization and stuff, kind of improvement. So can you speak a little bit to that, how you see that overlap up between wellness and beauty in what's happening?   Jessica DeFino: (16:16) Well, I think what has been happening more so is that the shift in messaging is less about outer beauty and physical appearance as it is health. Health has sort of become the beauty standard. And now of course we associate health with having all of these aesthetic markers that are not necessarily signs of health. For instance, beauty brands will use glowing glass skin, healthy skin, and glass skin. That look is not a marker of health. That's not what healthy skin looks like.   Jessica DeFino: (16:57) And I think wellness brands will do the same thing. They'll use health as this marker, but the things that they're positioning as health are not necessarily health, or maybe they are, but it's not going to be fixed by a supplement or a tincture. A lot of the problems that wellness brands are trying to solve are structural societal problems that require collective action and policy change, and not just a stress relieving tincture. So sure, a stress relieving tincture might help. But it's not actually solving the underlying problem. And I think if brands don't acknowledge that, it's pretty disingenuous.   Tahnee: (17:39) So it's really pointing to root cause, which is one of those foundations of neuropathy. And all of these, in theory, wellness things anyway, rather than going at what's the outside symptom.   Jessica DeFino: (17:51) Exactly. Which is so ironic for a lot of wellness brands because they claim to be treating root cause. A lot of the wellness philosophy comes from root cause medicine and holisticism and or holism and and all of that. And still, they're stopping at individual solutions rather than looking wider to systemic solutions. And again, that's not to say you can't do both. As a brand, you can of course say, "Hey, this blend of ashwagandha and whatever might help you feel less stressed throughout the day. And also-   Tahnee: (18:28) So you can go tackle the patriarchy.   Jessica DeFino: (18:31) Here are the systemic reasons why you're feeling stressed, and here is how we as a brand are going to encourage change in those areas too.   Tahnee: (18:41) Well, I think that's such a, not trying to point the finger at America, but that individual pull yourself up by bootstraps. That's such a cultural ... When I was at uni, we studied cultural colonialism. And it's something that really landed for me is how much we've digested that American like, "You can do it." But then it really takes out that we do need to come together as a community and there's this sort of usefulness in us having these conversations to together and sharing them widely. So I noticed that's changing in America slowly, I think, maybe. Are you saying that?   Jessica DeFino: (19:21) I think so. I think, again, it starts with buzzword. And that's not exactly a bad thing. But like just how we set ed brands are starting to use community. Okay, it feels a little disingenuous. But also, okay, it's getting the idea of community out into the collective consciousness and we can start valuing that more. So I am hearing more community, collectivism, collective care. And that feels really good. And I think what needs to happen is just sort of taking that next step from absorbing it as a marketing term and adopting it as a way of life.   Tahnee: (20:00) Yeah. And actually changing culture and letting that filter through. I wanted to step back to self care because you mentioned that before and it's something. I guess we both using Instagram. It's kind of one of those things that always makes me cringe a little bit when I see someone with their bubble bath and their face mask, whatever. And for me, self care has a pretty different definition, especially being a mom. It's usually like my practise and meditation and sleep. They're my pillars. But I'm interested for you obviously having been in the beauty industry and now sort of holding this space of holding up a mirror literally to this strange industry, how has self-care changed or been redefined for you over the last sort of decade or so?   Jessica DeFino: (20:47) I think for sure, I used to definitely give into the brand focused definition of self care as being like, "I'm going to do a face mask, and I'm going to take a bubble bath, and even I'm going to go for a run, or I'm going to exercise." And I mean, those are all valid things. It took me a really long time to realise, or not to realise, but to embody and incorporate the idea that yourself isn't your skin, and yourself isn't your body. Yourself is your values, your purpose, your passions, your deeper wants and needs, your emotions. And all of those things require care too.   Jessica DeFino: (21:33) So if my self-care stops at a face mask, it's literally stopping at the surface, not actually addressing the self. It's just addressing the fleshy coating that encapsulates my spiritual self. So just having that sort of aha moment was huge for me, which is not to say that I'm necessarily great at self-care. I still work too much and don't take time every day to meditate, and don't particularly feel like I'm in a season of my life where I am actively caring for myself the way that I should. But at least I have an awareness about it now. Is that any better? I don't know.   Tahnee: (22:16) I think so. I think that's a step. I mean, my experience is similar of being this, even though I'm a yoga teacher, been practising since I was 15. At the beginning, if I'm really truly honest, I was practising because I didn't want to get fat and I wanted to have a strong body and a healthy body. But it was quite an external motivation. It wasn't to connect to myself or to feel more calm in my existence or whatever. Now it's literally this thing that reminds me of my spaciousness and my connection to life and nature and all of it, and why I'm a mother, and why I'm ... But that took me, I'm 36. I would say in the last 10 years, that's really landed for me. But that's a long time with one discipline really to get to a place of not using it to beat myself up, I suppose. And I think it's a process.   Jessica DeFino: (23:15) Yeah. And it's also fine because I have said many times before that vanity was my entry point to wellness. So the reason I started meditating was because my skin was so inflamed, and I had been through the ringer with dermatologist. I had been on a prescription steroid treatment. It actually really damaged my skin. I went to topical steroid withdrawal and I couldn't put products on my skin.   Jessica DeFino: (23:40) And so I started looking at stress reducing exercises to sort of minimise the impact of stress on my skin because you get stress breakouts, stress can cause acne and rosacea, all of that. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to clear my skin." So I started meditating. And it was for purely vein reasons. And then once I got into the practice, it expanded and it became so much more. And it became not about my appearance at all. So I think it's fine to have these sort of vein superficial pursuits be your entry point, as long as you are able to cultivate that awareness and allow yourself to expand further and maybe even use it to let go of the original vanity and the original superficial reason why.   Tahnee: (24:33) I think that's so true because that sort of evolution of self has to be honoured and acknowledged. And I think that's probably what I see as so insidious about the kind of those four pillars you were talking about of patriarch and white supremacy and all these things. It's like it's so insidious and it's designed to really trap us in this cycle. And I actually do think it takes quite a lot of strength and self awareness to step out of that. And then I think what you are doing to sort of help raise collective awareness about these things, it's a big task and it's not ... So I think however people get there, it's great.   Jessica DeFino: (25:14) And it's also not easy. So I know like my work and my writing can come off as very harsh. And people will sort of come at me for it and be like, "I don't want to let of this certain beauty procedure or my Botox appointment or my lipstick. And I don't think you should be telling people to let go of these things. And how dare you? And blah, blah, blah." And that's a valid perspective too. And I think what we all need to realise is that so many of us have formed these beauty habit and these beauty behaviours as a coping mechanism. We are coping in a world where we are judged by our beauty. And it has material effects on the quality of our life. "Pretty people" make more money, get better jobs, have better social standings, have better legal outcomes even. There are material benefits to performing beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (26:11) And so when we develop these habits and these behaviours, those are natural and totally understandable reactions to living within a world that judges us based on our outside appearance. And then I also think we need to acknowledge that as we slowly let go of these behaviours, we are changing the culture that instilled them within us. We have that power collectively to change the way things are. And I personally think that it has to start with us individually and collectively deciding to stop participating if and when that is emotionally available to us.   Jessica DeFino: (27:00) If abandoning a beauty behaviour is giving you extreme anxiety and affecting the quality of your life, don't do that. Work on the anxiety thing first. And then maybe later in your life, you will start to let go of the beauty behaviour that prompted it. But there's a balance there where you have to protect your mental wellbeing, while also divesting from this industry and this culture that tells us our appearance is the most important thing about us.   Tahnee: (27:33) So you're still a fairly young woman like me. I often think, I'm not going to speak about other people. But for myself, I've often been like, "When I'm 60, I'll just kick around with my grey hair and not worry about how I look." But that was definitely more so in my 20s. As I'm getting older, I'm sort of integrating more. But how do you personally dance this dance between performative beauty and, I suppose, I guess wanting to present? I love mascara. I have blonde eyelashes. Mascara makes me happy. Those are things that I don't want to give up. Are there things for you that sort of still draw you into this world or?   Jessica DeFino: (28:14) Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing for me is my eyebrows. So I have, it's a mental disorder called trichotillomania, called hair pulling disorder. So when I get really anxious, I actually pick out my eyebrows. And I can't help it. I can't stop it. There is no approved treatment for it. It's just something that I do, and I've done since I was 16. And seeing my bald eyebrows is really traumatising for me. It makes me even more anxious, and then I pick even more.   Jessica DeFino: (28:51) So for me, eyebrow makeup and microblading is something that I'm currently not emotionally able to let go of because it does affect my quality of life if my eyebrows are completely bald, because it triggers the trichotillomania. It makes me remember of like, "Look what you've done to yourself." It starts it all over again. And so I always use that as an example of like this is not a safe beauty behaviour for me to let go of because it harms me to let go of it at this point. I'm working on that emotionally and maybe be someday I will be able to let go of that. And that would be a beautiful thing.   Jessica DeFino: (29:30) And I think I also still have a lot of anxiety around my acne scars. I have had pretty severe cystic acne since I was 14, 15. I've gone through the ringer for treatments of it. And I've done a lot of work to not have to wear a full face of makeup every day. I mean, in my early 20s, I would put on liquid foundation, concealer powder, lipstick, eye line, all of it to go to CVS for toilet paper. I could not be seen without it.   Jessica DeFino: (30:00) And now I pretty much don't wear makeup. But in social situations where I need like a little bit of cushioning to not feel different or weird or ugly, I have gotten down to just tinted moisturiser, a little concealer, blush and eyebrows. Those are my four. And I would love to be at a place where I felt like I didn't need makeup in those situations. But I still do feel like I need it. And so I'm slowly easing my way out of it and being gentle with myself when I do need that sort of skincare security blanket.   Tahnee: (30:42) I think it's such an important thing to talk about because I have a little girl. She's five, or she'll be five in two days. I'm making a rainbow cake right now. It's highly stressful.   Jessica DeFino: (30:53) Oh, so cute.   Tahnee: (30:56) But I watch her. I'm like you. My makeup kit is literally tinted moisturiser, a blush thing, mascara and an eyebrow grooming tool. But I will put that stuff on before we go out for dinner or do some kind of an event of some kind. And I've just watched her, without any encouragement from me, sort of integrate this idea that she now has to ... She doesn't sort of want to put it on every day or whatever. But if she sees my little makeup kit lying there, she'll grab it and she'll start putting on blush. And she'll ask me if she looks pretty, and this part of me dies. I'm like, "Oh my God! What have I done to her?" And then this other part of me is like, "This is life and we kind of have to navigate these things with our kids."   Tahnee: (31:46) But it's been a really interesting dance because I've sort of, I was raised with a mom who didn't really wear makeup at all. And in many ways, I found her lack of self care and presentation almost a bit confronting. It was like can you at least try? Can you put on some ... So it's this sort of interesting thing. And I haven't got any answers at all. But I think we all have to find a space where we're comfortable with what we're putting out there. And I think the piece that you really have been pointing to and we've been dancing around is it's that conscious awareness and choosing what we engage with and what we don't, as opposed to being unconsciously moulded by an industry that's designed to be very toxic for us.   Jessica DeFino: (32:27) Yeah. I mean, I think the mother daughter pipeline is such a powerful example of how individual behaviours shape culture, and how working on our individual behaviours and changing our individual behaviours can shape the future of beauty culture to be better, to be safer, to not be as stifling and suffocating. I think a lot of times people read my work and they think that I have completely freed myself from the pressure of beauty standards. And that's not true at all. I feel so weighed down by the pressure to be beautiful or to look a certain way or to ... I feel that all the time, that I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not beautiful enough to use my voice in the particular space. I am not pretty enough to be looked at and to be like a public figure or whatever.   Jessica DeFino: (33:25) And so many people feel that. And that is my main motivation, is like nobody should feel that way. I want the next generation of humans to feel worthy raising of their voice and being seen, and heard, and acknowledged, and accepted, and just embraced by the people around them without worrying about if they're pretty enough to ask for that acknowledgement and acceptance. And I mean, that's my whole motivation. I don't think anybody should feel the way that I know I feel, and it sounds like you have felt and millions and billions of people around the world feel currently. I just want that to change. And the only way I know how to do it is to change myself and inspire it in others.   Tahnee:  (34:15) Yeah. I think that one thing, this is weird. It's sort of a segue, but it's linked. My husband, when I first got with him, I was like, "You don't use anything." Literally, the guy doesn't use shampoo, he doesn't use soap. He doesn't. He literally goes in the shower, kind of maybe every now and then he'll use Dr. Bronner's on his armpits or something. Seriously, his little man bag when we travel is toothbrush, toothpaste, not even a hairbrush, a hair tie. And I'm like, "Hang on a second. This person-   Jessica DeFino: (34:49) And I bet he has fine hair and skin.   Tahnee: (34:52) No, beautiful hair and skin. I'm always like, "What the fuck? How come you have this amazing hair and this amazing skin and you've never used any of the stuff?"   Jessica DeFino: (35:06) That's the secret.   Tahnee: (35:08) I know. So I'm interested in this because my daughter, we've never used shampoo and things on her. We've used some conditioner because she has my hand. It gets really tangled. And she barely uses soap, all of these things. And I guess kind of inspired by my husband. I haven't quite got to his level of self corporation. But I'm really interested in that because I mean, yes, patriarchy. But bodies, they're sort of not these filthy beasts that can't take care of themselves. They have these self cleaning mechanisms. You speak about this a little bit. What's your kind of current deep dive into this world? How is that?   Jessica DeFino: (35:46) Sure. Well, I always like to say human skin survived and thrived for literally millennia before pre-bottled products were invented. So it's fine. It's truly fine to not use almost anything. The skin has built-in mechanisms to self cleanse, self moisturise, self exfoliate, self heal, and self protect. And oftentimes what we do when we apply all of these products, and again, not again, but a reminder, your scalp is skin. So this stuff applies to hair as well. When we add all of these external products, we actually interrupt the skin's inherent functions and we change the signals they get, because sort of the extension of your skin is the environment. It gets a lot of its cues out how much sebum to produce or how many dead skin cells to shed from the environment it's in.   Jessica DeFino: (36:42) So when you sort of cut off the connection to that environment with skincare products, you interrupt these mechanisms and they kind of go haywire. And then you become dependent on the products to keep your skin in that cycle because your skin hasn't needed to interact with its actual environment and figure out how to regulate itself. So oftentimes when you just stop using products, it'll take a week, two weeks, sometimes a month. A skin cycle is 28 days. So that's what I generally recommend. When you stop using these products, you'll find that skin self regulates and you actually don't need many products or sometimes even any products. Of course there are like some modern changes to the environment that we can account for. For instance, pollution levels are a lot higher, sun exposure is a lot more harsh.   Tahnee: (37:37) Air conditioning.   Jessica DeFino: (37:37) Yeah, exactly. So SPF, great. Sometimes your skin will need a little bit more moisture in that case. I love to use Jojoba oil on damp skin. Jojoba oil is like a 97% chemical match to human sebum. So your skin really responds well to it as if it were it's own. And I personally cleanse with Manuka Honey, and really-   Tahnee:  (38:03) I've seen you talk about that.   Jessica DeFino: (38:04) I love Manuka, but-   Tahnee:  (38:05) Well, I love it too. But I mean, I tend to use it on wounds and internally. So what's your take on skincare? I've used as a mask before.   Jessica DeFino: (38:14) Yeah. Well, exactly. It's used in hospitals for wound healing, for burn healing. And that's because it really supports the skin's inherent repair and healing mechanisms. So if your skin is acne prone or eczema prone, or psoriasis, rosacea, any of those big skin issues, Manuka is beautiful. It's so great for it because it supports your skin's inherent healing. It's a prebiotic. So it supports your skin's microbiome. It's food for all of those great beneficial bacteria that live on your skin. It's full of antioxidants. Antioxidants are great for fighting free radicals like pollution particles. There are just so many things. It's also humectant. So it draws moisture into your skin. So your skin is able to stay moisturised on its own. It's just, to me, a perfect product. Of course, if you don't have prevalent skin issues, a normal honey will usually do the trick. It has a lot of the same properties. It's just that Manuka has really special healing properties.   Tahnee: (39:25) Yeah. So you're talking about, they're the ones we use medicinally, they're the ones with the pluses. I can't remember what the compound is right now. I should know.   Jessica DeFino: (39:33) It's called the UMF rating. Unique Manuka Factor. So for skincare, if you're using it topically for its healing properties, you want to look for a UMF plus rating of 15 or higher.   Tahnee: (39:47) Yeah. Because I think it can go quite higher from memory. The New Zealand honey industry is thanking you right now for the plug. Well, I guess on a really practical note, it's very sticky. So how do you get around that?   Jessica DeFino: (40:01) Well, I mean I use it as a cleanser. So I will splash my face with water and then just take like a finger full and massage it onto your face for about a minute, and then wash it off. It's really not sticky at all. If you're doing it as a face mask, yeah, it'll be a little sticky. You're not going to be running around the house in it. But you also can't run around the house in a sheet mask. So take those 15 minutes to just chill. Don't touch your face. You'll be fine.   Tahnee: (40:31) Yeah, great. And I mean, are there other things you've sort of changed in your routine from your little research dives? Or like what else are you looking into?   Jessica DeFino: (40:41) Yeah. I mean, the bulk of my like "skincare routine" is mindfulness practices because one of the most fascinating finds of my skincare research has been the field of psychodermatology, which focuses on the skin brain connection. So the skin, the gut and the brain, it's called the gut brain skin axis, are all connected. They form from the same bit of embryonic tissue in utero, and there they form these pathways and these connections that are there for life. So that's why what you eat can affect your skin. It's the gut skin connection. And even what you think can affect your skin. That's the skin brain connection. And we usually see this in more negative settings. So if you're stressed out, and you get a stress pimple, anxiety acne, or when you're embarrassed and you blush, or when you're scared and the colour drains from your face. These are all everyday examples of the skin brain connection.   Jessica DeFino: (41:39) What I found in my research is that it actually goes the other way. So if you actively cultivate a calmer mindset, it results in calmer skin. So for instance, meditation strengthens the skin barrier. It makes your skin are able to hold in moisture. So it actually does create that, we call it, an inner glow. But it's actually an outer glow. It's actually your skin barrier getting stronger and being better able to hold onto moisture and producing balanced levels of oils. So that has been fascinating to me. So I try to incorporate practices like that in my routine.   Jessica DeFino: (42:15) And then a big thing for me was researching the skin barrier and realising that, it sounds so obvious. But your skin is built from within. Your skin cells come from the deepest layer of your skin, work their way out and then eventually shut off. So you're focusing on putting skincare on your face, you're caring for them at the final stages of their life.   Tahnee: (42:41) It's like palliative care.   Jessica DeFino: (42:45) Exactly. If you focus on consuming the nutrients that your skin needs to create healthy skin cells, you're great and you're actually not irritating your skin barrier with external products. So omega-3s and omega-6s are huge for the skin barrier. They're essential fatty acids. They are integral to skin barrier function and the body can't produce them on its own. It can only get them via diet. So once I started incorporating omega-3s into my diet through a supplement, but also through like salmon, nuts and seeds are huge sources of omegas, my skin saw the results of that very quickly. And that's goes onto your skin.   Tahnee: (43:29) And that's going to be overall. Yeah. I was going to say feel better.   Jessica DeFino: (43:30) Exactly. I mean, it's great for brain function, for hormones, for heart health. They're so important. And also yeah, it makes you glow. So why not?   Tahnee: : (43:40) Win-win.   Jessica DeFino: (43:42) Exactly.   Tahnee: (43:44) And topically, you're sort of just sticking to really simple stuff like you.   Jessica DeFino: (43:47) Yeah. Topically, I don't do much. Honestly, the best thing you can do for your skin is leave it alone. It does so much for you, and it doesn't really want to be bothered. So I really don't wash my face in the mornings. Sometimes I'll spritz it with water if I need to, and I'll put on a little bit of jojoba oil if it's feeling dry. On damp skin and if I'm going outside, mineral SPF. And then at night, I'll wash off the SPF or any makeup that I have on with jojoba oil as an oil cleanser, Manuka honey as a cleanser. And then that's it. I love to leave my skin bare overnight because overnight is when a lot of the skin's repair and renewal processes take place. And again, it needs to interact with your environment in order to do those to the best of its ability. So I just love a skincare free evening.   Tahnee: (44:43) Well, it's so interesting you say all of that because I've landed at a similar place. I basically use jojoba, if I do wear mascara, to get that off and then I wipe my face with a cloth at night, and then I wipe my face with water in the morning. And that's pretty much it. If it's dry, I'll use oil.   Jessica DeFino: (45:02) I love that.   Tahnee: (45:05) Like you said, it took a little while for my skin to sort of, I think probably like a month, just to feel like it was ... It was a bit patchy, I think, or something. I just remember it not being amazing for a little bit. And then it was totally fine.   Jessica DeFino: (45:19) Yeah. And part of that process is also like letting go of these arbitrary aesthetic expectations that we have placed on our skin. Your skin's not going to glow like a piece of freshly polished glass from doing nothing to it. But that's also because your skin is not supposed to glow like a freshly polished piece of glass. Things-   Tahnee: (45:41) Does that basically mean you've taken off, because it sort of seems to me you're taking off that protective ... My understanding is the skin's more mechanical. But it's a protective area and it's meant to be there, and you shouldn't probably be exactly deleting it.   Jessica DeFino: (45:53) Yeah, exactly. Everything that's happening on your skin is happening for a reason. It's meant to have a barrier for a reason. Dead skin cells are there for a reason. They're actually really important to skin functioning. And actually, your dead skin cells are the only skin cells that are equipped to hold external moisture. So when you absorb moisture from the environment rather than drinking it, your dead skin cells are the only cells that can actually do that. So if you're exfoliating them away every day, your skin is going to be dry.   Tahnee: (46:24) Then you need more moisturising things, and vicious cycle.   Jessica DeFino: (46:29) Yeah, it's important. Yes. It's important to just keep everything in place. And the reason that we have, part of the reason that we have come to repeatedly damage our skin through skincare and think that it looks good is because we're actually creating these micro injuries on the surface of our skin every time we do that. So for instance, intense exfoliation will often make you look very smooth and shiny. And we like that. And so we keep chasing that. What that is is your skin's repair process kicking in. When it's injured, your skin, your body, sends all of these healing nutrients and molecules to the surface, collagen, hyaluronic acid, which are supposed to be in the deeper layers of your skin, all of these other things. They flood the injured area with nutrients to sort of heal and repair. And we think that looks good because suddenly we're getting this rush of blood to the surface and all of these good molecules. And what it is is it's a response to injury. And we shouldn't have that happening all the time. [crosstalk 00:47:37].   Tahnee: (47:37) It sounds like a drain on our resources as well.   Jessica DeFino: (47:39) Exactly. Your skin doesn't want to be in repair mode constantly. So I think with glass skin and things like that, we've sort of normalised the look of injury, which again, traces back to capitalism because if you're constantly injuring your skin, you constantly have to repair your skin. And it's just a process that requires product after product, after product with no end in sight. And if you sort of chill and let your skin re-regulate, you can honestly wean yourself off of most of those products.   Tahnee: (48:10) It feels like it's gotten worse since Instagram. I don't know if I'm sort of ... Like I said, I don't really, my one kind of delve into this world, which my husband finds really funny is every now and then I read Into The Gloss Top Shelf, just because I find it incredibly amusing how much shit people have.   Jessica DeFino: (48:27) It is fascinating.   Tahnee: (48:29) Yeah. And I get down into this like, "Wow! This person uses 93 creams in the morning or whatever. And how do they have time? And they must be so rich." And anyway, it's just this funny little reality TV show world of mine. But that, sort of I've noticed. I remember when I first started reading, which would've probably been five or six years ago maybe, there was a lot more sort of, it was quite simple, I feel like, whereas now it feels like people are using a lot of different things. And you see these skin care routines that are 9,000 steps. And I wonder is that because, do you think that's in part because of this filter culture? And I mean, you call everyone dewy dust bunnies, which I love. But there does seem to be, and actually another thing you wrote, which I really loved was like is this fear of dead skin cells related to our fear of death?   Jessica DeFino: (49:21) Oh, yeah.   Tahnee: (49:24) I think it's a really interesting thing because it's like we've suddenly kind of got this platform where people are sharing these kind of quite synthetic versions of themselves. And then we're trying to match our 3D reality to this thing. And it's a bit of a concern.   Jessica DeFino: (49:38) It's so much. I think there are a lot of factors at play there. I think one of them is just that's the nature of consumerism. It's this constant need for more and more and more and more and more. And we've seen that grow in real time through Instagram. I think too, this skincare boom that sort of started with Glossier, beauty has always been messaged as this ethical, moral imperative. It's always been this ethical idea. Beauty historically has been associated with goodness. And so we sort of feel this moral obligation to be as beautiful as possible.   Jessica DeFino: (50:14) Recently, I think through the start of COVID, science has sort of been messaged as this ethical ideal as well, western science. And health has always been an ethical ideal. Of course, these things are not moral, but they have been messaged as such. And so with skincare, you get a lot. You get this sort of moral validation of, "Oh! This is something I'm doing for my health." Even though it's mostly just aesthetic, it's messaged as a healthcare thing and a self care thing. And so that feels really good. And so people are emboldened to share more of it and do more of it.   Jessica DeFino: (50:56) And then there's also this scientific intellectual aspect of skincare where people are just over the top about knowing everything about this particular active ingredient, and whether this ingredient mixes with this ingredient, and what this other ingredient does to your skin. So skincare offers a lot of ways to sort of show off and feel good about yourself. There's the science intellectual aspect, there's the health aspect and there's the beauty aspect. So I think all of those combined into this huge, just overwhelming mass of just skincare bullshit.   Jessica DeFino: (51:29) And then also, as you said, the filter thing is for sure part of it. We're seeing people through filters, and we're seeing less of people in person, especially again through COVID. So we're getting all of our information about what human skin looks like we're seeing through a screen, and we're actually not getting any validation of what real human skin looks like in person, because we're really not seeing people. Most of our interactions are through a screen, through a filter, through lighting, through all of these things that warp our perception of what our skin is supposed to look like.   Jessica DeFino: (52:07) So we're seeing everybody else out there looking "perfect" and we're seeing our actual skin, in an actual mirror, with no filter and we're saying, "Oh my God, what's wrong with me?" And so we start buying and applying all these products to try and match our real life skin to this sort of virtual ideal that doesn't exist in real life. And all of it is just this huge recipe you for, one, consumerism, and two, just skin stress.   Tahnee: (52:34) Insecurity. I think that filter, I'm thinking about the metaverse right now, whatever Facebook. I'm like, "Oh God, this is going to get more interesting." I mean, you've spoken a bit about, I guess we've sort of touched more on what I would say the conventional beauty industry. But clean beauty has become this thing in the last again maybe decade. I'm not really sure on the timelines. And it's sort of the same thing, right? Are you seeing any distinction in this clean beauty space or what's your rate on this trend?   Jessica DeFino: (53:11) I think the ethos behind clean beauty is admirable and necessary. There are a lot of unnecessary ingredients in our beauty products. There are a lot of potentially harmful ingredients in our beauty products and the science bears this out.   Tahnee:  (53:27) Well you also made a note of a dinner you went to where the person was sharing.   Jessica DeFino: (53:31) Oh, my gosh!   Tahnee: (53:31) I was like I wonder if you'd had a few wines when you wrote that?   Jessica DeFino: (53:37) Oh my God. I'm privy to some beauty industry insider information. And it's not good. There are-   Tahnee: (53:47) This particular comment was like, "Yeah, this is not good for people." And they're putting it in this mass produced product.   Jessica DeFino: (53:51) I was talking to a product engineer who was telling me that the ingredient that this cosmetic corporation was using as its star ingredient in a lot of new products was not safe. And they were trying to tell the company, "Hey, we can't use this." And the company was saying, "We're going to use it." So just know behind the scenes there's a lot of stuff going on. There are ingredients that just don't belong in beauty products that are in beauty products. They're not going to kill you, most of the time. They're just ...   Jessica DeFino: (54:22) And I say that talking about extreme examples of a couple of years ago, there was a moisturiser that was contaminated with mercury. That was a counterfeit product. And it actually did put a woman in a coma. Is that going to happen every day with the products you buy at CVS and Target? No. But there are these outlier cases. So I'm not trying to fear longer there. I'm just trying to say like, "Hey, stuff happens." So I do think that the ethos of clean beauty is a necessary one. But it has become this marketing monster and it has gotten so out of control. And a lot of the statistics that clean beauty brands and clean beauty influencers are using are actually scientifically incorrect. And so it undermines the more admirable overall mission of clean beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (55:16) And so I do have a lot of problems with that. I also think that the solution to most of our problems is not cleaner beauty, but just less beauty. We just need to be using less of everything. I see clean beauty products that have 52 natural ingredients in it. And it's like the skin doesn't want 52 ingredients on it. That's going to cause irritation. That's not a better product in any sense of the word.   Jessica DeFino: (55:41) And then finally, I think that in non-toxic beauty, we are focusing on the wrong toxicity. Sure, some of these ingredients can be harmful. But the most toxic thing in the beauty industry are beauty standards. And these products promote unrealistic beauty standards. And these beauty standards that these products are pushing, even clean products, are leading to physical and psychological health issues in humans all around the world, from anxiety, to depression, to eating disorders, to dysmorphia, to self harm and even suicide.   Jessica DeFino: (56:20) And that is what's toxic in the beauty industry more than anything. So I wish that the industry overall could adopt this attitude of clean beauty and apply it to the ideology of the industry and clean up the standards that we're selling people because if you're concerned is a health issue, the most pressing health issue in beauty is the psychological harm of beauty standards.   Tahnee: (56:48) And I mean, I'm just thinking about dermatology, because I know you've mentioned that before, and you've had your own experience with that. And the topical steroid piece you wrote was really interesting because I've not had any experience with it. But I've heard from a lot of people that come through our doors how damaging, and I guess my understanding is it's quite a commonly recommended first step is like, "Use this quite strong product. And I think what I've heard you point to a few times in this podcast is how much that psychological factor is influencing what's showing up on us.   Tahnee: (57:23) And I have a similar, I don't know if your stress was work related mine. I left a partner of 10 years. And it was a big life change for me, and came off the pill at the same time. So it was a combination. Or I'd come off the pill for years earlier. But it was a combination of things going on. But I can really trace my kind of emotional instability at that time to what was reflecting on my face.   Tahnee: (57:49) And I've studied all these practises, Taoist healing and things. And we speak about how these organs and these parts of body, like the emotion, if the body can't hold it, it comes out through these elimination channels. And I think that's a really interesting of an untouched topic. And I don't see dermatology really addressing that. I think what I tend to see as people getting trapped in these loops with prescriptions and kind of appointments. And is that sort of your experience? I mean, I don't know heaps about the dermatology world. But is that your experience?   Jessica DeFino: (58:20) Yeah. I mean, I will say that there are great dermatologists out there, and I do think dermatology is of course necessary for your annual skin cancer screening and anything relating to actual physical health issues that are manifesting specifically on the skin. That being said, in my experience in interviewing thousands of people or over the years and in researching the field of dermatology, the main goal for dermatologists day in day out with their patients is to eliminate the physical symptoms. That doesn't mean treating the root cause, and that doesn't even mean promoting skin health. So a lot of the very powerful drugs that dermatologists are describing will eliminate the physical skin symptoms for a time. And they often do this at the expense of overall skin health and skin functioning.   Jessica DeFino: (59:19) So for example, antibiotics are the number one prescription in skin care. Antibiotics actively kill the bacteria of your gut microbiome and your skin microbiome, which are huge factor in healthy skin long term. And that can lead to more skin issues down the road. Something like Accutane, while it can be very helpful for a lot of people psychologically because it can wipe out acne very quickly, it does this by destroying and damaging your sebaceous glands. And that's a direct quote from a dermatologist. A dermatologist told me in an interview that we damage and destroy sebaceous glands.   Jessica DeFino: (59:58) I was on Accutane in my early twenties before I knew much about it. And my skin still struggles to moisturise itself. I have not regained the sebaceous function at all. So again, this is an example of a prescription that sort of damages the skin long term. Steroids, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of scientific literature on how steroids damage the skin's inherent functions. So dermatology is still very much steeped in this world of aesthetics where it's just trying to create this certain aesthetic as quickly as possible, and that doesn't necessarily serve you or your skin in the long term.   Tahnee:  (01:00:36) So that's sort of making the problem go away without really addressing why it's cropped up in the first place.   Jessica DeFino: (01:00:41) Exactly. I also think there's a huge ethical dilemma to the fact that a lot of aesthetic cosmetic procedures are offered by dermatologists like Botox and fillers. These things are not markers of health. And I do think it's a huge conflict of interest that healthcare providers are not only offering these services, but suggesting them. Offering them is one thing. If people are going to get them, they need to get them in a safe way. But I have heard from dozens and dozens of people who will go into their dermatologist for an annual screening and their dermatologist will say, "Hey. So you recently turned 28. Have you thought about Botox?" And this is your healthcare provider who is now planting this.   Tahnee:  (01:01:25) That's so unethical.   Jessica DeFino: (01:01:26) It's so unethical. And planting the seed of doubt in your brain like, "Oh no, I look old. I need to do something about it. And my healthcare provider is telling me that this is an option. So it must be safe and it must be healthy." And it's equating aesthetic with health again. And it's creating this really, I think, toxic cycle of obsession with our appearance outside of health.   Tahnee: (01:01:56) Is there a long term effect to Botox? Because I've heard about people having preventative Botox, which I'm not ... So my husband's mom is disabled and she has Botox in her leg because it actually is a medical treatment, which was sort of new to me. I knew it had been developed for that, but I sort of figured it had become a beauty thing. But I've sort of been seeing it around that people use it preventatively. Does it actually? It doesn't work long term though, right? It stops after a few months.   Jessica DeFino: (01:02:24) No, it doesn't work long term. It wears off after a while. So you have to keep getting these injections. And just applying common sense, there's no way to know that Botox is preventing anything. You say you're using it preventatively, but what are you preventing? Everybody ages in different ways. Some people get really deep lines and some people get no lines at all. And I mean, there is just no scientific way to prove that you're preventing something. So that is just a, that's marketing. That's nothing more than marketing.   Tahnee: (01:03:01) And kind of we haven't spoken a lot about race. But I'm obviously conscious of time with you. But with things like gua sha, and even I've been seeing face yoga on Instagram recently and these things. I'm interested in, again, from my understanding of yoga, maybe I'm wrong, and of Taoist practices, gua sha, yes, there's the aesthetic, but also it moves Chi, it helps move fluid. It's this really powerful ... I use it on my body because it's this really powerful way of clearing chafe from the meridians and stagnation, these kinds of things. But I'm seeing it a lot now as this really popular trend to get rid of wrinkles and do this and do that. So it's like we've sort of taken, I guess it's the same thing with this whole conversation. It's like we take the real root essence of something and turn it into just an aesthetic kind of.   Jessica DeFino: (01:03:51) Yeah. I mean, to me, that is like the real tragedy of gua sha getting so huge and facial massage getting so huge is that there's been this focus place on it as this is a way to get rid of wrinkles, or it's a way to look younger, when actually these practices offer so many overall health benefits to not only you and your skin, but also your mind. Massage in any form is this huge form of stress relief. It sends a physiological chemical cascade through your whole body that lowers cortisol and promotes skin health and also promotes overall health. And there are just so many benefits to these practices beyond aesthetic.   Jessica DeFino: (01:04:31) And I think we do them a real disservice by focusing on the aesthetic benefits rather than the fact that facial massage supports your skin's inherent cleansing mechanisms, it supports your skin's inherent moisturization and exfoliation mechanisms. It boosts blood circulation. It brings nutrients to your skin cells so that they are healthier and more efficient and better equipped to protect you and to heal you. These are all wonderful reasons to engage in these practices. And I think that should be the focus rather than you're going to look younger.   Tahnee: (01:05:06) Yes, it's funny. I mean, it crossed my mind when my daughter was born. She's got that porcelain baby skin. It's like, "Oh! It's a shame we don't get to keep that." But it's also very vulnerable, right? And so you're always trying to pr

With late Summer underway here in the Southern Hemisphere, we are experiencing those last balmy bursts of sweet summer energy with the dampening effects of late afternoon storms and muggy weather. Within the five Element framework of Chinese medicine, late summer is associated with the Earth Element, Stomach, and Spleen. More so than any of the other five elements, the earth element or spleen season is one to put aside your strict diets, feel into your intuition and cravings, and not only prioritise but ENJOY your food. As TCM Five Element Food Therapist Kimberly Ashton puts it, "The theme of the Earth Element is enjoying the sweetness of life".   The easiest way to understand the Earth element and how we can nourish the Spleen is to look out into nature at the earth itself; Think, soil, microbiome, digestion. The way we eat in this season is pivotal for nourishing our core, bringing balance back into the digestive system, and cultivating an intuitive relationship with what our body wants and needs. Helping guide and inspire this intuition through the fabric of functional food therapy and Chinese medicine wisdom, we have TCM food expert Kimberly Ashton covering the energetics, foods, cooking styles and associated emotions of this season. Mason and Kimberly journey into this multifaceted, (both) sensitive and practical element and discuss how we can bring balance back into our lives and digestive system through the foods we eat and how we prepare them. Kimberly outlines the exact foods and flavours to welcome into the kitchen and why Spleen energy is all about relaxing, enjoying and embracing the sweet aspects of food and life. Tune in now.   "The spirit of the Spleen is the intellect and this idea that we think or we overthink. It is the mind and the brain itself, but it's definitely related to the state of our spleen. If the Spleen is happy and warm and functioning well, you're going to be very clear in what you want and what you need".   - Kimberly Ashton      Mason and Kimberly discuss: Digestion. Food cravings. Spleen/Soil Qi. The Earth Element. Digestive imbalances. Foods for Spleen season. Warming foods for the spleen. Cooking styles for this season. Food Therapy for the earth element. Spleen energy: bonds and boundaries. Alleviating dampness and balancing digestion. Managing dampness within the body through food.     Who is Kimberly Ashton? Kimberly Ashton is a Holistic Wellness coach that focuses on the 5 Elements, Food Therapy and Chinese Medicine. She spent over 18 years in Asia and Shanghai, 8 of which she co-founded China's first health food store & plant-based nutrition cooking studio. Now back in Australia, she launched Qi Food Therapy in 2020, a platform offering e-books, online courses, and coaching for “balancing life energy” through food, food energetics & emotional wellness. In 2019 she published her second book “Chinese Superfoods” in Mandarin, which encourages new generations of food therapy enthusiasts to explore Asian traditional foods, everyday ingredients & get back in the kitchen. It has sold over 7000 copies in China. Her approach is centered on cultivating an intuitive relationship with food and helping people understand their energies through food choices, cooking techniques, the 5 Elements, emotional & energy practices.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Kimberly's Website Five Seasons TCM  Kimberly's Instagram Kimberly's Element E-BOOKS 5 Elements & Cycles E-Course How To Eat In Spring with Kimberly Ashton (EP#133) Eating For Vitality In Summer with Kimberly Ashton (EP#147)      Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hey, Kimberly. Welcome.   Kimberly: (00:01) Hi, Mason. How are you doing?   Mason: (00:03) I'm so good. Thanks for coming back on with me. We're getting through the elemental wheel slowly, but surely.   Kimberly: (00:10) Yep. I love it and I love the earth element.   Mason: (00:14) Well, I mean, it's the gateway. I think it's like the gateway element over towards Chinese medicine. I know for me it was. Well, it was the one that I didn't like the most when I was a raw foodist because it was the one that hit my ideology in the face the most with reality and therefore, I rebelled against it.   Kimberly: (00:36) Yes. Actually, that's a good term. A lot of people will rebel on the earth element and then they find themselves with digestion issues and emotional issues and become very ungrounded. Yeah, we'll be covering a lot about the importance of the earth element, not just the organs or the season, but the element itself.   Mason: (00:54) Do you want to paint a picture for us in your world, in your internal relationship to the spleen, the element that is the earth, just what it represents for you, whether you want to talk about the organs or emotions or how it impacts your life?   Kimberly: (01:12) Yeah, absolutely. The easiest way to understand the earth element is if we look out into nature and look at the soil and the earth itself. When we grow our food, anything that's just above or just below the soil is really our soil and our centre, which I always like to compare it to our belly button and everything just below and above that. The importance of our core physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically is really the core and that is not just unique to TCM. You see that in Ayurveda, you see it in Japanese culture. They even have certain words for this element. It's funny because in Chinese there is words, but they're much more powerful in other languages. If you may allow me to bring them in things like hara in Japanese or agni in Ayurveda, like this digestive fire. They're really short, concise words and in Chinese, we don't really have anything which is one word or a short phrase. We have spleen-qi and digestion and spleen stomach organs or organ pair, but it's not as sexy as hara or Agni in my opinion.   Mason: (02:29) No, I mean, I'm with you on there. Tahnee's got a big book at home called Hara Diagnostics and growing up with my dad doing in a black belt and Japanese jujitsu, we talked about the hara regularly. I'm much more connected there, but I guess it shows the translation. I mean, you're talking about in native tongue, but even for me relating to spleen, straight away it taps into my Western desire to relate to anatomical, Grey's Anatomy, separate, oh, that's that organ, maybe spleen, pancreas, organ, physical organ, and which it is representative of what we are talking about, but so not. It takes away everything. As you're saying this, it's much more than actually relating to the reality of it. It's hard when you're just saying the spleen-qi and doesn't represent the etheric reality that it is.   Mason: (03:27) I think that is important for us. Like a few people have always told me, never just say spleen, say spleen soil, say spleen soil so that you don't get lost in that mental trap, not that it's bad to obviously go there at times. Bringing up soil, I think is another one. Tahnee and I always have a little fun back and forth about this because for me, it's soil, the element of soil, because the element of earth goes into a larger concept of [Pachamama 00:03:59], which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it's so impractical, I find, when relating to the earth soil within yourself and doesn't play into the analogy or metaphor or story that I think is more captured in soil. You can relate soil and water and soil and metal a little bit easier. Yeah.   Kimberly: (04:22) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I know that we're both big fans of nature and in Taoist philosophy and wisdom, it's always about that internal and external. When we start to see as the soil and you see that now on the last, I don't know, five to eight years, this in the Western wellness world, this huge growth in talking about the microbiome and the soil and food. The Chinese wisdom of the earth element, soil element has been there all along. If you don't have a strong soil earth element, that's it, your health won't be balanced. It's very hard to define balance in other elements if this element isn't strong and of course, the digestion is the key part.   Mason: (05:08) You're bringing up agni is one that, yeah, it is beautiful to bring that agni fire into the fold because quite often people won't relate that fire with the soil, but yet as I think I've said quite a few times on the podcast, maybe even in chats with you, how that the kidneys are kind of like the pilot light for that light, for that fire of digestion [inaudible 00:05:39] to the spleen to be able to be turned on. But it is that spleen that is the actual fire that sits under the pot that is the stomach, which I know people are like, well hang on, no, isn't it soil and not fire. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah. We're talking about a yang function of that soil-qi. The goal posts keep on moving, but again, the beautiful thing is staying slippery because there is no goal post when it comes to health, there is no balance. You got to be able to dance in that harmony.   Mason: (06:13) But then hara you bring up as well because the way my dad talked to me about my hara, relating somewhat to lower dantian-esk kind of like if not exactly that reality in the body, but he also always referred to it as the centre of my universe. I'd orient myself around that core as you brought up, which is something I guess I've just found myself not feeling when I do tap into that spleen soil-qi and I'm like, oh wow, but of course, it is that earth element that sits at the core of all the others and is the centre of the universe that there's an orientation around it. I mean, I just wanted to kind of like [inaudible 00:06:59] to that and bringing that up because that really helps me get a clearer picture on what we're actually talking about here with spleen.   Kimberly: (07:06) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I just mentioned the belly button because when I'm teaching kids and we draw, trying to learn the elements or apply them, even as adults we start with that middle line, that's the middle line of the earth and so that's where we're starting, especially when we're going to dive into food later in this podcast. I'll be talking a lot about that middle line and suitable foods because it's very logical. If we break it down, the five elements are really logical and this element is very easy to interpret in terms of foods and the energies purely by understanding that that middle line, middle ground and therefore, all the issues that we have with digestion or imbalances. I call them digestive imbalances. There's plenty. People will be very familiar with IBS and diarrhoea and bloating and all of that. You go to a acupuncturist or a TCM doctor and they'll be like, oh, usually they'll say something along the lines of spleen-qi and people go, what? What's that? But you can definitely eat really nourishing foods to build that and it's something that I love building and we can talk about that as well today.   Mason: (08:25) Well, let's talk about the season as well because you're going to be talking to us about the somewhat of maybe the cooking styles of our kitchen maybe not completely at its core, but somewhat transforms towards a particular direction in terms of cooking styles, techniques, ingredients that are coming in, intention we're putting into our food to match the season and what's going on around us, which is late summer's something that in some areas it kind of feels like it's always late summer in other areas doesn't have any of those qualities. I'm interested to hear that and also point out that it might be that those ingredients and these insights that you use during this season, but this is probably the diet, and I'd to hear your thoughts, that is used therapeutically to heal most-   Kimberly: (09:17) Correct, yep.   Mason: (09:17) ... for most people. Yeah. It's I mean [crosstalk 00:09:21] yeah.   Kimberly: (09:22) Yeah. Yeah. As you said earlier, this fluidity is needed when we are approaching the five elements because it's not just five elements, five seasons and then there's lines and rigid boxes around them. We have to blend them and when we need them, we draw from the other elements even in this season. It's now late summer, the weather's changing, it's getting cooler. There's a little bit more rain. There's dampness and humidity typically. We need to modify the way we eat and cook definitely.   Kimberly: (09:54) The key theme for the season would be to alleviate dampness and to balance the digestion. As you said, that can apply to a lot of people in other seasons, but also in Chinese medicine, in between the seasons, you can draw from this. Say, if it's spring to summer or autumn to winter and you get a upset stomach or you're feeling a little bit slow or you have some dampness or you're feeling lethargic or you have some bloating or diarrhoea, we can draw from this, the wisdom of the earth element and foods to come back into balance. It's always about coming back into balance in this element and this season, the earth element is about transformation, our ability to transform, our food, our thoughts, our energies to prepare us for what's coming. Like you said, we can slide that into really any time of the year when we need it and it's definitely the most healing, cooking and ingredients for anybody at any time.   Mason: (10:58) Well, just because we get a lot of questions about the spleen. We talk about it a lot and there's many different ways to approach. It's intimidating in its simplicity. I think because it requires such practical transformational changes that are grounded in the core of your personal food culture or family culture and that can be confronting if we are really rigid in the way we're doing things. And our rigid patterns, personal habitual patterns, within the kitchen, food and emotions, a lot of the time as well are out of alignment. It's often quite confronting to admit that, which is I think something really is I just want to constantly extend my compassion, cheering everybody on that adventure, just go in nice and easy with a lot of empathy for yourself, which is a lot of like very spleen [inaudible 00:11:52].   Mason: (11:54) Just again, little reminders that I think for emotional journeys for a lot of people, for me, the way that I relate to the spleen, there's several aspects of that element and that system within the body. One being the muscular system, seeing that there is the food that you're eating is building good high quality muscle and then the way that you're moving is going to help you develop appropriate high quality muscle. I feel it's really important to remember that as well as a huge part of the spleen being about creating bonds and boundaries and with soil, moving soil and creating boundaries that are organic and not superficial.   Mason: (12:37) But I find a lot of people when they're really ready to go like, all right, I've got really poor boundaries or my boundaries are too rigid and I'm not able to create strong bonds with myself, a bond with earth or bond with my family and friends as to the depth I'd want, that's when the spleen really starts coming up as a theme. Or maybe you're just going, I'm just [inaudible 00:12:59] attracted to spleen friendly diets. Maybe just in correlation to that, there's maybe other areas perhaps would be of interest to you. I like throwing that in there and with that, I'd love to go on a deep dive with you and definitely going to be yeah taking notes myself today.   Kimberly: (13:16) Yeah. It's funny what you just said. The spleen and this earth element, it's not just the spleen, but as you said, spleen stomach pair, will throw in the pancreas as well, so spleen, stomach, and pancreas, it's like the chicken and the egg. It's like, do we need strong nourishing foods then the muscles and then the emotions, but the spleen is so sensitive, well, the whole earth element is to the emotions. Maybe you're eating really well, but then you're bombarded with overwhelm and worry and anxiety, so it's which comes first. In my mind it's well, you got to have both. You can eat all the... I'm going to talk about millet and puddings a lot today-   Mason: (13:55) [crosstalk 00:13:55].   Kimberly: (13:58) ... we're going to talk about puddings, all these foods, but if you're still having these emotions, it's really hard. You have to manage both and maybe people don't want to hear that because they want a quick fix or a easy solution or one food to help. I've got maybe top three to five foods for you today, but definitely the earth element is the most sensitive to those emotions, so definitely look at that as well. It also-   Mason: (14:28) [crosstalk 00:14:28].   Kimberly: (14:28) It also impacts our decision making ability. I said, worry and anxiety, most people who study the elements and the emotions in yoga and qigong, they're familiar with the emotions, but actually feeling them and embodying them is different. But decision making is a funny one, too. If your spleen is a bit weak or you're getting some spleen weaknesses or IBS of any sort that I just mentioned, your ability to make decisions reduces. Therefore, it's really hard, it's doubly hard to then know what to eat and then I see people who are a little bit lost and like, I don't know what to eat, I don't know what to eat. If we can have those simple steps and simple foods, a little bit of warmth, a little bit of getting that fire back in the belly, then you step up and you become much more grounded and calm. And then you can deal with the emotions and the diet and nutrition as well. It's a multifaceted element.   Mason: (15:21) It's practical. It's real. It's not easy, but I mean, it has to be and I hope everyone loves as much as I do just how we can't not go into the reality of the energetics or the philosophy of the emotions, whatever you want to call it. Otherwise, we have bastardised and commodified the system in which this has emerged from. If we don't continue to come back to the essence, as you're talking about there, the anxiety piece. A lot of people would just go anxiety, heart [inaudible 00:15:55] disruption, but there's many so different shades of anxiety and there's lots of different types of clinical diagnosis on different types of anxiety. But even that for us to just be aware of like, oh, that's different shades of our own inner anxiety and perhaps one is over just ruminating and chewing, constantly ruminating and chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, and not digesting a life lesson and therefore, not making a decision. That's going to just throw off your spleen-qi and then you can have a drip of millet just straight into your stomach and it doesn't matter. It's just like, it doesn't matter.   Kimberly: (16:37) We should have intravenous millet drips. That would be amazing because not many people are familiar with it. But yeah, no, I'll mention some of the best foods and they're actually really yummy and delicious and as you said, quite simple, actually, if we take it back basics, but I thought I'd just quickly mention a few imbalances. How do you know if your earth element needs strengthening? Appetite, if you have a loss of appetite, if you have any of those symptoms I mentioned earlier, like diarrhoea, loose stools, bloating, anything really in that whole IBS, irritable bowel syndrome category, which doesn't really exist in those terms in Chinese medicine. Water retention as well, so there's a fluid metabolism effect that's important with the spleen, any kind of nausea, indigestion, anything to do with the stomach and the lower half of the body.   Kimberly: (17:33) If you're feeling really lethargic and heavy in the legs or have edoema and swelling in the ankles, that's all to do with this system. Most people have a look at the list and go, yep, I can relate to one of those or many of those. It's important to know what we're feeling. And then the simple list of foods or categories anyway would be, what I call, ground and round vegetables. As we come back to that line in the soil, anything that's just above or in the soil itself, so pumpkins, sweet potatoes, onions are actually perfect example of the earth element. They're very round and they're got all this lovely layering and they're sweet. A lot of the vegetable that I just described and the flavour of this element is sweet. In that way, most people love the earth element.   Kimberly: (18:29) As soon as you start talking about earth element, they're like, oh, I can have more desserts. I'm like, well actually, I do recommend and I prescribe desserts because we want to have this calm, nurtured, motherly love through this element. If you look in every food culture, there's always desserts and always sweets. Of course, I'm talking about not white sugar and refined junk, but using sweet vegetables, wholesome sweeteners, and condiments, fruit. We're talking pudding, but we're also talking pies and cakes, all this very, maybe even grandmother kind of warmth and love through our food. That's missing in a lot of modern day dietary habits. We kind of demonise dessert or sugar or sweet flavours when actually we need them.   Mason: (19:26) Well, I mean, I feel, again, it's the pendulum swinging quite far, which I understand and went there, especially when there's that energy of like have a massive, I don't know, Sunday roast dinner and then put a big, heavy, overly sugary dessert on top of that and you can feel the dysfunction of your body just trying to compute digesting sugar, which is I think my friend [Sage 00:19:53] talks about. It's like a Ferrari in the digestive system, you put it on top of like a tugboat equivalent, something that's like a heavy protein that's slowly digesting. Again, it's a hard and fast rule, but I do prefer that Chinese medicine does bring in awareness of yeah, well, don't throw the baby out with the bath water because there's a lot of medicine in that.   Kimberly: (20:19) Yeah. You could still have that roast. I mean, you could still have that roast and the dessert. The earth element's also related to not doing anything in excess, it's all about balance. Overeating, you can eat, earth element's all about the food and nourishing and having this beautiful satiating feeling after you eat. It's good to have a have that, for example, but not overdoing it. The boundary comes from most people just overeating, good food or bad food. The earth element's like, no, we find balance, we eat a little bit of everything. We have our roast, we have our puddings, we have our whatever it is, but in balance. But as I said, most people are missing the sweet, the naturally good sweet flavour, and by that I would prefer or rank very highly the sweet vegetables and some fruit and definitely more natural sweeteners and things like cinnamon, and cardamom, and all the sweet herbs can really help with this flavour and coming back into balance through our cooking and our food.   Kimberly: (21:24) On that note, carbs are a good thing. The earth element is all about wholesome, happy carbohydrates. It's not about eating lots of too many pastries or white bread or white rice, but just having some good, wholesome carbohydrates, whether it's rice, white rice or sticky rice or brown rice or red rice, and then millet. Millet is the best friend of the spleen. If we're looking at the colour of the season or this element, it's a yellow or an orange or even like a earthy brown soil. Foods that come into that category and millet is really something that I share with a lot of people. I've worked with people who just they literally add more pumpkins, some sweet potatoes, some millet into their diet and depending what it is of course, but they start to notice their energy, their happiness. You just feel happy when you eat these nourishing foods and you feel comforted as well. It's very soothing to eat foods like millet.   Kimberly: (22:27) If you don't know what millet is I highly recommend you look it up. It's a small, yellow, soft, sticky, mushy grain.   Mason: (22:37) Yum.   Kimberly: (22:38) Yeah.   Mason: (22:38) Wow.   Kimberly: (22:39) You can make it sweet and savoury. You could make it into a porridge with some milk, soy milk, some cinnamon, make it with nuts in like a breakfast porridge or you could make it with roasted vegetables and make it into more like a fluffy salad kind of like quinoa, but a little bit moister. Those would be my suggestions of just simple foods and then cooking styles for the season would involve a little bit more warmth, using your pots and pans and a little bit more moisture. Think soups, stews, casseroles that kind of texture and consistency. Texture isn't something we've talked about a lot actually, but for this season, it's a really nice one to bring in this soft, creamy, comforting flavour, whatever that means to you. I'm going to say pudding again, but it could be pudding, it could be pie, it could be crumble, a nice fruit crumble. Or even I start to crave in late summer and going into the colder months, more creamy beverages as well. I'm a black tea, green tea kind of girl, but when it gets cooler, we can start having some nice milk or soy milk or oat milk or whatever milk you choose. Start to bring that into your mornings as well.   Mason: (24:13) Because I kind of always sense the question, I think I feel like I've asked quite a bit in terms of like recipe guides and that kind of thing. Have you got those on your site?   Kimberly: (24:25) I do. I actually have an ebook for each element and the one for earth element's on managing dampness, so it's more specific to that, but yeah, there's other recipes for certain elements and certain seasons. I'm actually going to be doing a short course with beautiful recipes that I haven't written myself have enlisted some wonderful teachers and chefs in Australia and overseas and it's just purely on the earth element and it's about relaxation and food therapy. There's a lot of desserts and the idea of understanding how we can relax our body and our mind purely by looking after the earth element in late summer season because a lot of us that experience anxiety, worry, nervousness, tension, stress, it's all around the earth element. We can definitely reduce those symptoms and come back into balance with food.   Mason: (25:30) I might just quickly ask some reiteration what I really there is like as you know, I've got a spleen-y constitution, which I think surprised me more than anyone, but it's actually not [inaudible 00:25:43] I'm like, oh actually it's not really that surprising. What happens because it's, I know, I don't know if you gone too much into this, but the personality or spirit of the spleen, the [crosstalk 00:25:55] so much about the intellect and from what I can tell or the way I'm relating to it at the moment is that aspect of somewhat reflection and intellectually taking stock of how are we going moving towards manifesting our visions? How are we going? Have we planned effectively? Are my actions detracting from one another? Has my timing been good? It's kind of the time to really take stock of how the harvest was that year and how we prepared going into winter.   Mason: (26:30) I do have a tendency to overthink intellectually a lot and so quite often, because I have that proclivity to constantly ruminate, therefore when I start looking at the, not that these are laid down as rules, but I'll treat them as an intellectual rules of like, all right, this is cooking style, this ingredient, or can I do that ingredient? I'm like you, you said, quinoa and when my spleen-qi when not flowing, I can feel it go oh, gosh, there are people out there that are worried. Well, can I eat quinoa? Is that right for the earth season? It just goes around and around. I like for you then bringing up when we are cooking or eating or doing a dessert, the intention there just immediately takes me out of my mind is to bring that relaxation into the body and that feeling of nourishment and therefore, I go, okay, that's a real good guide for me. When I get into the kitchen, don't worry about the rules or remembering the ingredients and [inaudible 00:27:35] that are going what I'm bringing into... And I'm curious about the other qualities [crosstalk 00:27:40] that you're looking for and seeing in a recipe or ingredients like what the outcome is and using that as a lighthouse rather than getting stuck in the rumination for spleenies like me?   Kimberly: (27:49) Yeah. First comment is you've probably got the spleen-y rumination going and then your metal element going, I need a rule or a recipe. The earth element is all about intuition and it's a very feeling, sensitive element. When we're in the kitchen, definitely, I always encourage people to look at the recipe or use it once or twice and then just throw it away or scribble all over and change it. I actually, really, this is a public announcement, I hate writing recipes. I hate it. I do it. I actually have to finish one more on the kidney and the water element at the moment, but because it is rules and it's rigid. When I cook, I don't use recipes and I know people need them and I understand that.   Kimberly: (28:38) But what we want to cultivate on what you just said is to have this intuitive nature. If you wake up it's hot or cold, it doesn't matter what season it is or what podcast you've listened to, if you're feeling like eating salad, eat the salad or think about, oh, maybe there's a reason why I need to cool down. Same with the earth element, if you wake up and you're thinking, oh, Kimberly and Mason said I must eat more pumpkin and millet and this and that, but you're just not feeling it, there definitely isn't any reason to stress about it or overthink. But yes, the spirit of this organ is the intellect and this idea that we think or we overthink. It is the mind and the brain itself, but it's definitely related to the state of our spleen. If it's happy and warm and functioning well, you're going to be very clear in what you want and what you need.   Mason: (29:36) Can you talk about warmth there, the importance? I feel like I think we've hit it several times, but I can never get enough reminders, especially coming from the raw food circles.   Kimberly: (29:45) Yeah, yeah. The idea of the spleen or the spleen-qi is to be able to regulate the upward and downward energies in the body, whether it's food, emotions, everything, how we're feeling and thinking. I always think of it as like, if you have your spleen, which it is a small organ in Western anatomy and it's not considered if much importance, but in Chinese medicine, it's very important, up there with the gallbladder, both very small, but very powerful and important. When we pour lots of cold water on the spleen, we lose that fire, we lose that even zest for life. We lose a lot of upward energy, potential, and warmth. In Chinese medicine, the, I don't want to say, rule, but the guiding principle would be to have more warm foods than cold and to avoid ice.   Kimberly: (30:41) I personally love a good ice cream in summer on a hot day, no problem there, but I always tune in and think is my spleen okay with this today or if I have it three days in a row? A lot of the traditional food cultures and wisdom will say not too much cold and to have warm foods, especially in the morning. If you're a smoothie or raw person, no problem, but not ideally first thing in the morning, so have something like a ginger tea or a warm porridge or a tonic herbal drink, something warm first, and then start your day. That's just a long term health thing to cultivate the energy of the spleen and not just put that fire out constantly.   Mason: (31:28) Yeah, I mean, I feel there's a real maturity coming about now in terms of Chinese medicine's having been having to hold in the west, especially, such a strong place and maybe sometimes a rigid place of just being like, no cold, no raw. A lot of practitioners who maybe are really good in their treatments, but maybe not good at communicating nuance, even though they embody it and so there is just this kind of like, just stop doing all this bloody smoothies and raw foods and juices. I think now there's more of a nuanced integration, a colouring of that conversation coming up, little distinctions, like well, your spleen element might not necessarily care that you move to Bali and Hawaii and the weather's always warm. You maybe think you've tricked the system and you can always do tropical fruits and cold drinks because you're in that environment, but your organs maybe don't want to be long term stationed in that environment or even if you live there, maybe they still want to have a bit more respect and honouring. I think that's definitely happened maybe even an overcorrection away from raw foodism and veganism and that kind of thing. But then the other one is the cold plunging that is now probably the biggest, such a huge, awesome practise, but [crosstalk 00:32:57]-   Kimberly: (32:57) I think they all are and they all have their place. I'm a very modern, flexible five elements practitioner, so I will never say you can't have ice cream because I quite enjoy good quality, personally vegan ice cream, but any ice cream for those. The ice baths, the smoothies, there's a time and a place. For some people, they actually probably are craving that for a reason. It's when that happens and then you start finding you get diarrhoea or digestion issues that you might feel really hot on the outside, on the external layers of your body, but your inside, spleen, intestines, for women, even the uterus, if there's cold, or kidneys even, on the inside, you just need to balance that out. Some food, some herbs, some acupuncture, get back to balance.   Kimberly: (33:46) I have a teacher who's always said, "We should technically be able to eat anything." If we have a strong earth element, an ice cream here or a cold bath there or whatever is not going to cause you that grief or pain, but when you do it and you're out of balance in the first place, you're just going to overburden the system and make it harder to come back into balance one day when some other condition or illness will manifest and that does happen. There is a time and place for cold things, absolutely. Just know what it is and when your personal level or limit has been reached. I mean, the other thing I do is I play with it, I experiment. I'll have ice cream and then I'll have a ginger tea and I feel the effects on my body or I'll have a ginger tea knowing I'm going to have ice cream tonight.   Kimberly: (34:38) You just self-experiment, you really test the feelings and the energies of the food, knowing full-well the properties of it. That's fun, too. Or you can use [moxa 00:34:50] as well sometimes, but I definitely notice the difference when I eat foods that my spleen doesn't like. I feel it the next day, whether it's brain fog or an upset tummy or dampness, I feel it. But yeah, maybe it's the sensitivity or the awareness, but then the beauty of the five elements is you can always do that balance. You can use food, you can use cooking, herbs, acupuncture, moxa is fantastic. Not that I'm suggesting you eat ice cream and use moxa, but you can bring warmth to your body in other ways.   Mason: (35:26) Yeah. I mean, that's like qigong, like it's all on offer and they all kind of integrate.   Kimberly: (35:34) Yeah. The ancient wisdom was all about balance. If you are staying in balance, you can come bring yourself back to balance and the earth element is all about that. As long as we nourish it and have these foods on a more daily basis, then you can challenge yourself or challenge your spleen in small ways. I mentioned ginger, let me just add a few more foods for everybody. I mentioned those round and ground vegetables. Don't underestimate onions for their sweetness, carrots, parsnips, turnips, for the vegans and vegetarians red beans or adzuki beans are really good for the spleen, the spleen-qi, the spleen energy, also our blood, chickpeas and lentils. When I was living in China, my TCM doctor would recommend for everybody, meat eaters and vegetarians and vegans, for everybody having lentils, sweet potatoes, also artichokes. They have a spleen-qi quality to them to enhance our spleens. That's something just to note. If you're a meat eater, then absolutely a little bit of meat will help with the energy of the spleen, keeping it strong and robust.   Mason: (36:53) Any particular meats for this season?   Kimberly: (36:58) Meat's a funny one because with each food chart that I find in Chinese medicine, there are some books, not many, but in terms of food energetics, chicken's a funny one, for example, because some people will put it in the wood element, which is spring, and some people will put it more in autumn and winter. It's a tricky one, but one of the charts that I have for the five elements, because you can apply meat and any food to each element, one that I found that most people agree on would be duck, pork, salmon, tuna, mackerel, so some of the more oily fishes as well, they classify them in this element or in the season. Again, that comes back to charts and tables and recommendations, but seeing how you feel would be my suggestion. But as a comparison, a lot of what Chinese medicine would classify as warmer meats, such as lamb, would definitely be more in winter and then more seafood and fish in spring and summer. You can experiment with meats for sure, just as you can experiment with vegetables or even beans or pulses in each season. There are definitely different ones that are more suited.   Mason: (38:26) Beautiful.   Kimberly: (38:27) Yeah. I'm actually going to make a chickpea pumpkin stew this weekend. That's a very earth element, roundness. If you're a meat eater, you could put some meat or fish with that as well. That nice, creamy, rich, hearty kind of stew is what we're looking for.   Mason: (38:49) Yum, happy spleen [inaudible 00:38:52]   Kimberly: (38:52) Yes.   Mason: (38:55) Yeah. Are you sometimes fascinated by how much notoriety damp spleen have these days in the health world?   Kimberly: (39:02) Yeah.   Mason: (39:02) It's like the one thing that's permeated purely Western orientations. It's like someone who's like [inaudible 00:39:11] a full pelt keto, they're just talking about ketosis and talking about all those other areas of fat metabolism, but then they'll bring up spleen dampness just out of nowhere. It's like, I don't know, instinctively the spleen's just going like, dude, please, please, please can we not be so rigid? [crosstalk 00:39:35]-   Kimberly: (39:34) Yes.   Mason: (39:36) ... keto can definitely fall into the same category as a therapeutic diet, just as a spleen friendly diet can become a therapeutic diet and then people fall too far into ideology around their therapeutic diets, which is spleen friendly, keto. And then thinking that that can become a holistic approach to life dietarily when this doesn't quite work like that. Again, it's another maturity or [inaudible 00:40:06] that we need more maturity and conversation and making a distinction. I'm going to start and then I'm going to hopefully create this result and then I'm going to be able to slowly integrate further back into one more full spectrum, integrated, elementary, romantic, lots of laughter, lots of fun, different aspects of different organs and virtues and nourished at different seasons or different times of my life. We need to just remember that, so we don't get stuck in trying to find the right diet.   Kimberly: (40:35) Absolutely. Yeah, variety in every season would be key and definitely in the earth element finding those sweet qualities, creamy, nourishing and go whatever ingredients you want just within that framework and enjoy it. This is the time, this is the where the foodies live or the earth element people are. They prioritise their food because they feel it and they enjoy it. Taking pleasure from our food would also be my suggestion for this late summer earth element and throw away the rigidity. Bring that back in metal, bring that back in autumn if you want, but just let it go and relax, chill out for earth element. Have some pie and just life's okay. You don't have to worry so much because that also comes into this element, this overthinking. We're worrying like, oh, guilt and all of this in there and it's no fun. This is a season to enjoy. It's also in the 24 hour cycle we didn't talk about that, but it is in the afternoon. This is afternoon tea time. This is when people want that sweet piece of cake or pie or cookie, muffin, whatever, energy ball. This is the time to respect that, honour that and yeah, you have my permission to enjoy afternoon tea.   Mason: (42:05) That's good therapy. It's good therapy [crosstalk 00:42:07]-   Kimberly: (42:07) Yeah, absolutely.   Mason: (42:08) Yeah. Yeah. I think we've got a pretty great community and I think a lot of people have gone through that stage of going, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this rigidity. I can't do this feeling dirty if I have something that's not in my mental scope of the right thing to eat. Again, it's just like that doesn't have to be come your whole life as well. Going no, I just need to enjoy, that can lead to, gosh, what's the word I'm looking for, that can lead to a, not gorging, but just like never stopping chasing that sweetness hit versus going, there's a season or a time of day where it could be nourished and then not dominate everything as well.   Kimberly: (42:56) Yeah. The sweetness of life. That's the theme for the earth element, definitely.   Mason: (43:03) Beautiful. What's the best way currently for everyone to make sure they're in touch with you and your work and all your future, I don't know if it's a surprise yet, of what you're bringing out in the future soon, but things that people should be aware of and be able to hear about?   Kimberly: (43:17) Yeah, well definitely with the earth element would be this relaxation in food therapy short course that's coming out very soon, Hopefully around the time that this podcast is out and qifoodtherapy on Instagram or qifoodtherapy.com. I've got some eBooks, online courses, fantastic online summit coming up soon, and I'd love to connect with anybody who wants to talk about pudding or desserts or cooking.   Mason: (43:46) Love it. Thank you so much again for coming on and helping keep everyone's spleen soil nice and dry and fluffy. I mean, that's another one I want to [inaudible 00:43:56] like, really, if you go away from even a really Disney style of imagining of what that earth looks like internally and allow it to break out into a real gritty, grounded reality of soil, imagine yourself grabbing soil and if you're grabbing that sloppy too wet soil, it doesn't have many worms, it doesn't feel great. Verse, when you find a really nice, fluffy, aerated, rich, aromatic soil that you can smell, it's alluring. It smells like life itself. Imagine, oh, I'm going to [inaudible 00:44:36] and I'm going to ease myself over in that direction of having that quality and feeling when I relate to my spleen. Thanks for holding that space for everyone getting there.   Kimberly: (44:47) My pleasure and yeah, fluffy soil, I just wrote that down. Brilliant.   Mason: (44:52) Lots of good work gets done when we're in our chats, doesn't it?   Kimberly: (44:55) Yes.   Mason: (44:55) Lots of good insights.   Kimberly: (44:57) Thank you much.   Mason: (44:58) Beautiful. Have a great weekend and looking forward to jumping on with you again next time.   Kimberly: (45:04) Thank you. Bye.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

  Today's guest Dr. Daniel Keown is an author (The Uncharted Body and The Spark In The Machine), licensed acupuncturist, and a registered medical doctor (trained and specialising in emergency medicine). In this fascinating conversation, Tahnee and Daniel discuss the problem with western medicine (and its lack of predictive power), the subtlety of acupuncture, Qi in the body, The TCM Channel system (Jing Luo), Fascia, understanding how the body works, and the all-pervading spark that is electricity.   Daniel's brilliant mind and extensive education allows him to illuminate the distinctions and integral components of traditional Chinese medicine and western allopathic medicine with a simplicity that seems effortless. This conversation is a beautifully comprehensive scope into the organising life force of the body (Qi) and the Jing Luo channel system that allows us to reimagine the body as a landscape with folds, creases, hollows, and structures, all connected by a system of energetic intelligence.    "Those guys who wrote all those classics must be like, 'Oh, could we have made it any more simple?' They must be thinking. 'We literally said, it's like water. Over and over again, Qi is like water'. And now everyone's like, 'Oh, what's it like?' It's like water. What does water do? Water goes from high pressure to low pressure; it flows in a current in channels and generates energy as it moves. But the only thing I would say, is it's not water, it's electricity".    - Dr. Daniel Keown     Tahnee and Dan discuss: Qi is Spirit. The Triple Burner. Movement and electricity. Pregnancy and Jing essence. How Qi operates in the organs. The TCM channel system (Jing Luo). Hypertension and low blood volume. The Lymphatic system and Gaul bladder. How Qi, Jing and Shen operate in the body. The predictive power of traditional Chinese medicine. The subtleness of acupuncture in emergency medicine. Why movement is so important to the flow of Qi in the body. The damaging effects of Western pharmaceuticals on the body.    Who is Daniel Keown? Dr. Daniel Keown MD MCEM Lic Ac became interested in Chinese medicine when hearing from his octogenarian grandmother about her traveling around China. In 1998 he qualified in medicine from Manchester University, England, and then obtained a degree in Acupuncture from The College of Integrated Chinese Medicine in 2008. He continues to practice Western medicine having passed the membership exams of the College of Emergency Medicine (MCEM) in 2014. His enduring aim is to re-establish acupuncture and Qi at the forefront of medicine in the West. To this aim, he published The Spark In The Machine in 2014, which shows how the principles of Chinese medicine can be fully explained with a deeper understanding of how the human body works, an understanding that necessitates a semi-mystical force at work ie Qi. He lives in Kent, England, with his wife and two children, and still searches for the elusive perfect wave.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Dr. Daniel's website The House Of God book. The Uncharted Body- Dr. Daniel Keown The Spark In The Machine- Dr. Daniel Keown   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:02) Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. I just wanted to give you a quick intro to what we do, so you have some context.   Tahnee: (00:08) So we have a Taoist tonic herb company here, my husband and I. My background is a little bit more... I've studied with someone called Mantak Chia, so I've done a fair bit of Taoist healing work. And we've both studied herbalism, but we have a lot of practitioners, a lot of people who are really interested in healing, listening to our podcast. It goes around the world. We've ranked in lots of countries, which is weird to us. But mostly our audience is in the Western countries, but we do have... Strangely, we're very popular sometimes in Korea and other places, which is very odd to me.   Tahnee: (00:44) But yeah. So, we tend to just talk about topics related to health and wellness through the lens of the Eastern medicine practice, but also open to all sorts of things.   Tahnee: (00:55) I'm also a Yin Yoga teacher, like I said, so I got introduced to your work a long time ago by my teacher. And yeah, so that's all that stuff around fascia and the more modern research around what might be going on in the body that starts to validate the Eastern model is really exciting to me.   Tahnee: (01:12) So that's the framework of what we do. We try to stay away from pathology. We're really interested in how people can take healing into their own hands. So that lens of education. But we do have a lot of practitioners, so I'm quite excited. I saw you've got some more courses coming up as well soon. So I'm excited to promote your work.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:33) Well. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Tahnee. What I didn't understand was how Qi operated in the organs. And so then I sat down and wrote The Uncharted Body. And when I started writing that book, I didn't actually know... Oh, wow. You've got it.   Tahnee: (01:49) We've got a couple of copies actually. We were going to do a giveaway. We've got a few of The Spark as well, but yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:55) Oh, great. Yeah.   Tahnee: (01:56) Hopefully to someone who will understand it. Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:59) Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So that's what I'm turning into a course at the moment. Effectively, what I'm going to do is just turn that into animations.   Tahnee: (02:12) Mm. Yeah. The visualisations you do. Yeah, they're really good. And I remember years ago, you had some Vimeo videos as well that were addressing Qi and a few things.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (02:22) Yeah.   Tahnee: (02:23) This is probably five or six years ago from memory.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (02:27) Yeah.   Tahnee: (02:27) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (02:28) Yeah. That's right. Yeah. They're all still valid those videos, but I think what's happened is I've got much more sophisticated in my understanding of what's going on. So especially with regard to how simple it is, it's all very simple. That's one of the things I try and impress upon people. I mean, that book you just picked up, effectively, that takes you beyond university PhD level embryology.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (03:00) I bumped into an anatomy professor and I was talking about the coelomic epithelium, which forms the [inaudible 00:03:07] channel. And he'd never had a conversation like that with anyone ever before. And he was like, "Well, I'll have to actually check some of this stuff."   Dr. Daniel Keown: (03:17) So, even though that book looks dense and it looks thick, that is a complete anatomy, embryology, physiology, and medicine book. So it is actually not as onerous as it seems, because if you can understand that book, you basically understand medicine at a level that's beyond Western medicine at the moment.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (03:41) And the main thing is, it's just a translation. It didn't come out of my brain. The translation came out of my brain, but it's a translation of Chinese medicine into a form that the Western mind can appreciate and understand.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (03:57) And the key thing is that in order to really understand how the body operates, you've got to get into this concept of it's running on energy. It's definitely 100% without a shadow of doubt, running on energy. It's ridiculous to... To me, it's just like, how can anybody have thought it wasn't running on energy?   Tahnee: (04:18) Yeah. Especially when you are looking at healing and medicine. I've actually heard you say in another podcast, like a doctor just augmenting healing and the arrogance that we think that we're in any way in control, really, of the kind of healing mechanisms. It's really about removing those blockages to Qi and creating the capacity for that to just do the magic.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (04:43) Yeah.   Tahnee: (04:44) Yeah. It's something we've really missed in [crosstalk 00:04:46].   Dr. Daniel Keown: (04:46) The body wants to be well. Everyone's body wants to be well. There's nobody out there... Well actually, there's a few. Because people have perverse incentives to stay unwell, that's a societal issue. But generally people want to be well, and if you can bypass those societal issues, like sick benefits for instance, it is a perverse incentive to stay unwell. But yeah, people do generally want to be well. And so if you can just remind the body how to be well, then it tends to fall back into that pattern of wellness.   Tahnee: (05:30) Yeah. And I guess that's what I love about acupuncture, is it's just re-inviting that harmony and that movement toward wellness, instead of chopping out chunks or trying to take something away, or burn something or delete something in some way.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (05:48) One of my favourite books on medicine is called, The House Of God.   Tahnee: (05:54) I don't know that.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (05:54) Which is interesting. Because my first book was called, What God Forgot To Tell Surgeons. The House Of God is this classic book from the '60s, that was about a doctor who went through the medical system and realised how bankrupt it was. And he just about got through at the end. But he has these laws of the house of God, which are basically laws about how to operate within the Western medical system. And the first law is the art of medicine is doing as much nothing as possible.   Tahnee: (06:27) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (06:27) And I operate that law in emergency medicine. In emergency medicine, I try to do as much nothing as possible the entire time. In other words, you're like, "Whoa, we're dealing with this really delicate balance here, that's a bit effed up. And we don't want to suddenly move in there and mess things up even more, we want to be really gentle and just move things in the right direction." And generally, whenever I saw other people fuck up in emergency medicine, it's because they did that. They basically went in there with sledge hammers and fucked things up. But acupuncture is effectively as close as you could get to doing nothing, as you can get. I mean, literally it's like the very next thing to doing nothing.   Tahnee: (07:24) Well, it's so subtle.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (07:25) It's like I'm almost doing nothing, but I'm just going to do this tiny little thing. I'm going to take this tiny invisible needle, and it's actually so small I can barely even get it into your skin. That's a skill in itself, getting it through. And then I'm just going to move this energy. And then you're going to miraculously feel better. It's doing as much nothing as possible.   Tahnee: (07:48) I really like that. That's such a great way to describe it. Because it is, it's so subtle and yet it attunes to this really... Well I think, it doesn't stress the body or create more stress, so there's not that extra layer to deal with. I think about a lot of what happens in hospitals and it's like, first of all, the environment is quite challenging. And then, there can be a lot of intervention and that just creates more stress. And so the body's not really in a place to heal. It's, if anything in a survival response.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (08:23) The only Western medicine that works, and this is backed up by studies, is emergency medicine.   Tahnee: (08:30) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (08:30) None of the other Western medicine works. None of it works. If you actually look at the evidence to show Western medicine works, there's only evidence to show 15% of Western medicine works. From the study, this was a letter in the BMJ years ago, I think 15% of medicine, there's good evidence to show it works. 8% of medicine there's actually evidence to show it does harm. And the rest of it, there's no evidence either way. All of the surgery, there's no evidence to show it works. Yeah? And basically, because you can't do the studies. There's evidence to show it works.   Tahnee: (09:10) Don't chop that person, but do chop that person. Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (09:17) There's not the evidence that you would... They certainly use to discredit alternative medicine. There's certainly nowhere near that level of evidence to show it works. And when they do do studies into, for instance, surgery, where they can do studies, they are often very surprising. They show that placebo surgery is as efficacious as surgery. And so, the emperor has no clothes, as far as I'm concerned. However, emergency medicine, I'm an emergency doctor, still am, want to go back into it one day, I'm not going to argue with anyone who wants to say that emergency medicine works. It does work in my opinion. But when doctors go on strike, mortality drops every single time.   Tahnee: (09:59) Interesting.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (10:00) [crosstalk 00:10:00] going. Yeah. Yeah. It always drops. And that's because almost all of Western medicine, like the non-emergency stuff doesn't work.   Tahnee: (10:12) My husband and I always say that though. We're grateful it exists for car accidents and even broken bones and things. It's great to be able to go somewhere and have that treatment. But yeah, for chronic stuff, all the things we're seeing, and that's really the stuff we get, is a lot of people that have been through Western medicine and they're so disillusioned, they've been, basically... And it's things like autoimmune conditions, cancers, genetic stuff, these kind of long term chronic things that we don't have a system or a model in Western medicine that addresses it.   Tahnee: (10:46) And I've heard you speak to this, the sort of mind, body, spirit aspect, like that Jing, Qi, Shen, which is something we talk about so much in our work. And it just is seeing completely from the Western model. It's like, "Oh, cool. You've got a tumour. We can cut it out or we can radiate you or chemo you. But that's pretty much it."   Dr. Daniel Keown: (11:06) Yeah.   Tahnee: (11:06) It's like, well why does this person have this thing? It's not like it's dropped in from out of space or something. Where did it come from? So I think that's a really interesting topic, and I don't hear it addressed a lot. I guess there's pockets in Western medicine where people are interested in it, but not so much in large.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (11:27) Well, the fundamental problem with Western medicine, aside from emergency medicine, which is great and works. And I'll extrapolate that into any specialty that effectively does emergency. So emergency obstetrics is great. Emergency eye surgery is great. The reason I think that emergency Western medicine is so good, because effectively in an emergency you get down to a reductionist level of, "My eye is about to lose all sight because there's been a bleed in the back of my eye," for instance. "And if I get a laser in there and cauterise the blood vessel that's bleeding, it will stop bleeding." Yeah? "And that will possibly save my eye." Now, why is that eye bleeding? Western medicine is very useless at, because that's a much more holistic question. But when it comes down to pure reductionism, it works very well, Western medicine.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (12:21) And the fundamental problem at the core of the Western medical model, is there's no concept of Qi, there's no concept of spirit, which... Qi and spirit are the same thing, by the way, I don't know if you know that. But the origin of-   Tahnee: (12:35) You talk about it in your book.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (12:38) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.   Tahnee: (12:41) Well, I'd love if you could drill down on that a bit, because Qi was always... You Google it I guess, and people would get Qi is energy. And I think that's such a vague definition for people.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (12:53) Yeah.   Tahnee: (12:54) Do you have a working definition at the moment, that you are really loving? Or is there something...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (13:00) Yeah, I would call Qi the organising force of the body, best seen in the embryo. That's my working definition when it comes to sticking needles into people. It's kind of like a semi-mystical God-like quality. It's the life force, it's the same as the force in Star Wars.   Tahnee: (13:21) We use that analogy a lot too. The force. I just want to stop on that quickly. So when you say it's best seen in the embryo, because this is something I think is a really interesting and important thing, is like, embryologically we're unfolding along the lines of this blueprint, which is quite magical really, when you think about the fact that a sperm and egg become a baby, becomes a human. How does that know how to be that? And so that's the Qi factor, is the capacity to know what to become. Are you agreeing with me?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (14:02) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's reasonable. I don't see the Qi as having... It's able to take the instructions in the genetic code, and-   Tahnee: (14:16) So do you see that coming from Jing? Or are you...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (14:19) Yeah, it's more Jing. Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:20) Yeah. Okay.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (14:21) Yeah. Yeah. What you become is more Jing, definitely. So, the Qi is the energy that organises things.   Tahnee: (14:28) The activating force to decode that Jing blueprint, I suppose.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (14:35) Yeah, that's right. Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:36) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (14:37) Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's the thing, you've got to have Qi, Jing and Shen, in order for a person to exist. You can't have Qi without Jing and Shen, and you can't have Shen without Jing and Qi. You've got to have all three of those things to create a person. So, it's kind of difficult to describe one without the other two. Equally, Qi I see, it's the energy, it's the organising force, the organising energy that takes the Jing, the blueprint, and manifests that into matter. So, one of the best descriptions I heard was from Twitter. [crosstalk 00:15:22].   Tahnee: (15:22) The wise place of Twitter.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (15:24) Exactly, yeah. It's like the group consciousness, isn't it?   Tahnee: (15:30) The best and the worst of humanity.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (15:34) And somebody's came back and said, "Qi is the..." Now, I've got to get this right. And I didn't get it right last time either.   Tahnee: (15:45) Oh, it's high pressures. Deep breath.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (15:50) "It's the energy by which matter manifests into form." I haven't quite got this right. He put it so brilliantly and I haven't quite got it right. But basically, what he was saying is that matter... Life is a great example. You start off with a single cell and then suddenly, as you're going to find out, nine months later, and it's not even months, even by 12 weeks...   Tahnee: (16:15) I'm 22 weeks. And there's a human in there.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (16:19) Well, there we are.   Tahnee: (16:19) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (16:20) Well, basically, yeah. Yeah. Basically, a sperm and an egg combined, and then bang, you have a cell. And then somehow, magically over the next 12 to 22 weeks, that cell just multiplied, multiplied and made a baby. And it was the thing that allowed it to make that baby was organisation, and that force was Qi, that's what Qi is. But it had to have the Jing of the genetic code, in order to have the instruction manual to make the baby. And if it had a different genetic instruction manual it would make a baby mouse or baby [inaudible 00:17:00] or a baby whale or something like that.   Tahnee: (17:02) It's still a possibility. We never know. Talk to me in a few months.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (17:06) That would be pretty amazing. It's the same thing. It's the same Qi in a whale embryo as in a... I really see it like some kind of electricity. Qi's an analagist to electricity, but it's a life force electricity.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (17:25) I mean, it's interesting, in Star Wars, when the emperor tries to kill Luke Skywalker, it's electricity that comes out. I'm not saying Star Wars is [inaudible 00:17:37] Chinese medicine is based, I'm saying that Star Wars was stolen from a Japanese film, I think it was, that was based on-   Tahnee: (17:47) Yeah. Chinese medicine structure.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (17:48) Yeah, exactly.   Tahnee: (17:50) Yeah. The Taoist worldview.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (17:51) Yeah.   Tahnee: (17:52) Yeah. Because I think that's the idea... You speak about it in Spark, I'm pretty sure. I don't know. There's a man called Dr. Motoyama who my teachers are very interested in, and he was trying to measure Qi. And what he found was, it was a very, very low current, hard to measure electricity. And he got poo pooed by everybody because he had to invent a machine that was subtle enough to actually detect this stuff. And his work has not been widely accepted, but it's interesting because he's got this machine that actually measures all the meridians, and measures the flow of Qi in the body. And you speak about the DC current and AC current, and the sense that the Qi or the sort of regenerative force in the body is this more consistent flow. Is there any detail you have on that? Or is it still a bit out there?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (18:48) Yeah. No. But firstly, I'd never used the word meridians. I always say channels. Yeah. Yeah.   Tahnee: (18:55) Channels. I know. And I've been told off about that a thousand times. It doesn't actually translate.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:00) Yes. Exactly. That's the prime issue. It's a poor translation. So it's a Jing Luo, which is the channel network.   Tahnee: (19:12) And also, I think I always love the poetry of the Taoist...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:16) One second. There's some super bass going on in the background with my kids.   Tahnee: (19:22) I love it. I actually can't hear it.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:25) Oh, can you not hear it?   Tahnee: (19:25) No.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:25) Okay, fine.   Tahnee: (19:27) You're probably vibrating, but it's not coming through.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:32) Yeah. It's like, they're clearly playing some game with explosions. Okay. So yeah. So it's really important to get rid of... Oh, that's really loud. It's annoying me. Give me one second.   Tahnee: (19:43) Yeah. Go. Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (19:44) Hey, kids.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (20:07) Yeah. So channels. So the words were Jing Luo, and they were channels. In fact, they translate perfectly. If you look at the characters, I was just doing a video today about this. Because I keep saying this over and over and over again, and it never seems to get through. Well, it gets through, but very slowly. Because these things are [inaudible 00:20:27]. And so, it's clearly the connective tissue network, that's what they're describing. Fascia. And the best translation is channel. So this is really important, because you can have a conversation with lay people or especially doctors that goes like this. "Oh, well there's Qi in the body. It's like an energy, that's a kind of electricity that flows through the body and it flows through meridians." "What's a Meridian?" "Well, it's structures in the body that allow Qi to flow." "Okay. Has anyone ever shown these meridians?" "No." Kind of thing. Yeah?   Tahnee: (21:09) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (21:09) And you can have this conversation with any doctor. The conversation can go very differently. It can go something like this. And bear in mind, meridians is a terrible translation. It's not a good translation. It's not a valid translation of Jing Luo.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (21:25) And it goes something like this. "Well, the body runs on energy, electricity. You can see it for instance in the heart. But actually, every cell, every organ, every muscle runs on electricity, and that electricity has got information attached to it. And that's what Qi is." And they go, "Okay. So, how does this flow around the body?" "Well, it flows in channels in the body." And it's like, "Channels in the body? I don't know of any channels in the body." "Well, no, there's loads of channels in the body. Every time a surgeon operates, he basically moves through channels. And for instance, you've got the peritoneal channel. It's called a peritoneal cavity, but it's actually a channel in the body and that's the liver channel." "Oh. No, surely there's nothing flow..." And the doctor will say, "There's nothing flowing in that peritoneal cavity in the channel." "Yeah. There is. There's fluid flowing in the peritoneal channel. In fact, every single potential space in your body, and there's loads of them, there's an infinite number of them, has fluid flowing in them. And that fluid is flowing and that's a channel."   Dr. Daniel Keown: (22:23) And then, that conversation ends at that point. Their scepticism just evaporates because there's nowhere for them to go. That's why it's so important. That's why language is so important.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (22:36) And so, that's why I hate the word Meridian. For two reasons. Firstly, it's just an awful translation that the Jing Luo didn't have a neat translation to put it into for [inaudible 00:22:49]. So he put it into this word because someone said, "Oh, sounds a bit like that." And secondly, because it's such a bad translation, then you just go down this blind alley. Where basically, you are digging yourself a hole to put yourself into when you say that word. So that's why.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (23:12) So, to go back to your original question. Sorry, you touched a nerve there.   Tahnee: (23:17) No. Look, I really appreciate it. And I always think from the Taoist perspective of, everything is so poetic, and the body as landscapes and structures. And it's like, of course it's a channel or like a river, or even like the English Channel. It's a natural body, instead of this like an arbitrary kind of human construct of a Meridian or a lay line or something. So yeah, I totally hear you on that. And I think-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (23:43) Well, that's exactly it. Because a Meridian is a human construct.   Tahnee: (23:46) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (23:47) It's exactly that.   Tahnee: (23:48) And it doesn't actually mirror what's happening. And I think this idea...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (23:52) No. It's underground rivers. The character for Jing is drawn as underground rivers, carrying a mystical substance, which is obviously Qi. And it's like, okay. Well, yeah. I mean, nobody's going to dispute that on the earth there's underground rivers. There's 100% guaranteed, there's one-   Tahnee: (24:13) Keeping us alive. Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (24:16) [crosstalk 00:24:16]. And then it's like, okay, that's what the character's actually drawn as. It's drawn as underground rivers, which are enveloped by... Well, the character is sea, which people have translated as silk. But actually, it is very clear that it's not necessarily silk. It can be any material. In other words, it's fascia. So it's fascia carrying underground rivers. That's what Jing translates as. And Luo translates as a collagenous net.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (24:45) Now, where did, where did the M word come from in that? If you're going to translate it into one word, it's channels. But even channels doesn't really do that justice.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (24:58) And so, the key thing to understand about the Western and Eastern appreciation of the body, is the west is really obsessed with things. We're always obsessed with things in the west. It's fine. I quite like having a cup for you to drink your cup of tea out of.   Tahnee: (25:21) Useful, yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (25:22) But the cup is only useful because of the space within it. And so, the east is more thinking about the space within things. And the west is saying, "Ah." So the west was always like, "Where are these meridians?" And obviously-   Tahnee: (25:37) "Why can't I cut them out of a dead body?"   Dr. Daniel Keown: (25:40) Yeah. And it's like, "No, it's channels. It's spaces within the body." And so, within that space, travels this organising force that enables your body to stay connected. It has to stay connected. All the cells have to stay connected, otherwise you get things like cancer developing. Worst case scenario it's cancer, best case scenario, the cells just die if they're not connected anymore. And that energy that's travelling in the channels is basically a form of electricity. And it can be measured and it can be seen as well. There was a guy called Becker who measured it in amphibians, who have very powerful-   Tahnee: (26:24) [inaudible 00:26:24] frog head guy.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (26:26) Ah. Yeah, close. That was Spemann. That was a German embryologist. He didn't actually measure the currents, but he discovered that you can have parts of the embryo that control growth.   Tahnee: (26:41) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (26:43) Yeah.   Tahnee: (26:44) So these smaller animals, because you talk about this in Spark, the lower animals. But you talk about how that divergence to what a bigger brain we lose that regenerative capacity, the smaller, less developed animals.   Tahnee: (27:00) I remember as a kid, this is a horrible story, but I used to pull the tail off lizards and then keep them as pets. Because the tail would grow back. I thought it was really cool. Those poor lizards.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (27:12) It is cool.   Tahnee: (27:13) Yeah. It is really cool. And they always grew back slightly different.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (27:16) Do they bleed when you pull them off?   Tahnee: (27:19) No. They wriggled a lot though. I don't think they were happy. But yeah, say if they were-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (27:24) [crosstalk 00:27:24]. So hang on. You pulled them... I know this is displaying your inner psychopath.   Tahnee: (27:24) I know. Hopefully my inner scientist and not my inner psychopath. Yeah. I would have been maybe six or seven. But my house had a really big white wall. It was really hot and we'd always get these little lizards. I don't even know the species, but they were quite tiny. And if you stressed them or held their tails, they would try and run away and drop their tail as a survival mechanism.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (27:57) So you didn't pull them off. You basically just-   Tahnee: (27:59) Well yeah, they let them go, but I would hold them and-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (28:02) You encouraged them.   Tahnee: (28:06) I've got to say, I'm sounding like a psychopath. And then we would like look after them and try and keep them alive whilst they grew back.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (28:13) And they regrew.   Tahnee: (28:14) Yeah. So, say they were brown originally, they might grow back a funny lighter brown colour or something. And there'd be a little seam. It was always a little bit wonky.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (28:27) Yeah.   Tahnee: (28:27) But yeah. It was like, "Wow. This is cool." And so, when I read your book about how humans can grow back fingertips and things when they're babies. And I was like, "Oh, great." Haven't tried on my child.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (28:40) Yeah.   Tahnee: (28:40) Chopping off fingers or anything. But it is such an interesting... I think about Qigong and all of these practises that are designed to help us cultivate Qi. My teacher's 76 and he still looks about 50. He's just had children. He's got many children now. He had a kid a couple years ago. He's really defying what we would term ageing. And you can see, well, this practise is doing something to him where he's actually still holding onto that regenerative capacity for Qi.   Tahnee: (29:11) So I think it's a really interesting and under acknowledged area, I suppose, in our culture. Especially with health and healing, I just think if it's as simple as breathing practises, meditating, eating well, looking after ourselves mentally, why aren't we encouraging this more as a baseline human practice? So, yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (29:33) Yeah. Well, it's because there's not-   Tahnee: (29:38) Lots of shit going down.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (29:39) Yeah. It's difficult to mass produce that and profit from it effectively. It's not that there's no profit in it, there's definitely profit in it, but it's difficult to mass produce that and make profit from it. That's why, I think.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (30:01) Because yeah, that's kind of my mission at the moment actually, is to create a model of acupuncture that can be effectively mass produced, and people can practise... My ambition at the moment is to raise... So it has taken me 20 years to get to a point where basically, pretty much everyone I treat at the moment gets better. Which I find astounding. I'm amazed by that. Because as a Western doctor, I see people and I'm just like... If I didn't understand what I was doing, then I'd be like, that's just beyond medical comprehension. But it isn't, because basically you understand what Qi is. But it's taken me 20 years to get there.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (30:52) And my ambition is that I can create a teaching programme effectively, that can get you there in five years.   Tahnee: (30:59) Yeah. Fast-track that.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (31:03) And I would say where I am is generally where it takes you to get, if you're good, 40 years to get to. So in China, they say you're not mature until you're about 65. And I reckon I probably got there at age 47. But that's just because I've spent my entire life in medicine, effectively. And I've written a couple of books on it, and I've spent a lot of time studying. And I've had the advantage of a lot of information and...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (31:33) Yeah. But if we can get people there in five years, so if you're 20, you can get there ar 25, you can get to the point where it took me 15 years to get to, and then you've got another 40 years, 50 years, 60 years of practice, of getting people well. So that could be really revolutionary, in terms of where medicine goes. And that's my ambition at the moment.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (31:58) Because this stuff is so simple. It's unbelievably simple. My criteria for the videos I'm producing at the moment, is I'm going to show them to my 10 year old son. And if he doesn't understand them, then I'm like, that's-   Tahnee: (32:13) You're not doing your job.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (32:14) Yeah.   Tahnee: (32:15) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (32:15) Yeah. The whole thing's just so crazily simple. Even the function of the liver and stuff, it's just so simple. It dredges, drains and regulates. If you understand what those three words are, and bear in mind, I had to look up the word dredge to check exactly what it meant. And then I was like, "Holy shit. That's exactly what the liver's doing. It's dredging." It's dredging, to clear a waterway, especially of debris. That's what the definition is.   Tahnee: (32:47) Mm. They do it to... What are they called? Bays where boats go.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (32:53) Yeah.   Tahnee: (32:53) Yes.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (32:54) Yeah. That's it. And that's what the liver... The liver basically clears all the food that comes out of your digestive system.   Tahnee: (33:00) So are you talking about this... Because I had an acupuncturist who's unfortunately moved, but he was probably the first person who I started to drop in on how simple... I think before that it always seemed a little bit complicated and mysterious. And he got me looking into [inaudible 00:33:19] because he said the Chinese model's a little bit messed up. I think you call it cookbook acupuncture, which I really like. He's like, "There's a recipe, da, da, da." It's like, "No, you go straight to the [inaudible 00:33:32]. Symptoms are like a guidepost, but you can't always trust what the person's saying, da da, da."   Tahnee: (33:40) But I guess I often, coming from having learned a lot of this stuff, the kind of rote learn, like multiple choice, da, da, da, that sort of way of, the liver governs wood and it's spring. I've learned to think of it more like, "Okay, the liver, it's not the liver per se, but it's like the energy of every cell operating on that liver Qi level is the ability of the cell to dredge itself. The ability of..." Is this making sense? I hope this-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (34:14) It definitely works in that kind of aspect as well. Every cell within your body has respires and creates proteins, which is a liver function. Respiration is a lung function [crosstalk 00:34:28]-   Tahnee: (34:28) Lung function, yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (34:30) So it's got grey in the nucleus, which is also like the heart as well. And it's got little vesicles which are like stomachs, and it's got a membrane, which is like skin. So it is fractal in nature, the body. The heart will also effectively do functions of the liver as well, which is why if you get heart damage, some of the enzymes that are released are liver enzymes. And in the olden days, when I was a junior doctor, they used to check they didn't have something called troponins. And they used to do enzymes that were also produced by the liver. And there would be a bit of confusion about, has this person maybe just got a liver problem or is it a heart problem?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (35:12) So all of the cells within your body are kind of a microcosm of your body. Equally however, there are definitely six planes, six confirmations within your body that are the six systems I talk about in The Uncharted Body that are clear... In terms of practical medicine, they are as clear as the liver is within Western medicine, as the heart is within medicines. These six divisions are-   Tahnee: (35:44) So the [inaudible 00:35:45] Yang and all Tao Yin and all that sort of stuff.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (35:48) Yeah. That's it. And you can definitely think about them as... When you say about the liver, and you started to get, with all due respect, a little bit airy fairy about it-   Tahnee: (36:00) Yeah. Go for it.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (36:04) And that's kind of true. But actually the liver, the way to see it is the liver is like the biggest concentration of energy and cellular material within this division called [inaudible 00:36:17], this division has concentrated its energy and power, certainly in the lower aspect, within the liver, to perform this function that it has to perform within the body. But the layer is performing that function. And so, all the cells within that layer, which also include the peritoneal channel and also part of the venous system as well, will be performing that same function as well. It's just the body has concentrated that power within the liver itself, in the same way that in the United Kingdom, in a way everyone is performing a political system and even political function, and even within our town there'd be politicians of sorts, minor politicians. But the country has concentrated that political system within Westminster. Like burn the fuckers down, as far as I'm concerned.   Tahnee: (37:20) Don't burn your liver down.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (37:21) As long as no one's to blame. But yeah. And in the same way... I'm trying to think of another system that's not-   Tahnee: (37:33) Well, you were speaking on your blog about COVID and how you are seeing that sort of... I think it was the Tao Yin level, I could be wrong. It was the lung and spleen level.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (37:45) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So COVID affects the lungs and pancreas. And pancreas is part of-   Tahnee: (37:53) Yes. Pancreas. You're calling the spleen.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (37:56) Pancreas, yeah.   Tahnee: (37:57) Yep.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (37:59) Yeah. So, this is the amazing thing about this six division model of the body. So one of the big problems, Western medicine's got no predictive power. For me as a scientist, that's a massive problem. If you've got a scientific model or theory that has zero predictive power, that model's bunk. It's useless.   Tahnee: (38:15) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (38:15) Yeah? It's absolutely useless. And Western medicine does not have a model of how the body works, in my opinion. It's got little parts that work in isolation, but in the big picture, it doesn't have a model. In other words, it's not holistic. It cannot explain really how health is maintained. It just says, if you look at the WHO definition of health, it's just an absence of disease.   Tahnee: (38:40) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (38:41) I would say, no. Health is a smooth flow of Qi, effectively. You also need good Jing, and good Shen as well. But effectively, presuming your Jing, in other words, the body you were born with, and your Shen, in other words, your spirit and your soul, they're in good shape, then health is a smooth flow of Qi. If you've got a smooth flow of Qi, you'll have health. And then you can define what Qi is. But in Western medicine there's no model whatsoever of... And that's a big problem.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (39:13) Now within the six divisions, that has predictive power. So if you get a disease process occurring within one aspect of this division, it will also affect the other aspects of that division as well. So within COVID, COVID is a disease that really seems to affect the lung, especially. So then you say, "Okay, that's also going to affect everything else within Tao Yin, which is pancreas, spleen." I bet coronavirus will accumulate in the spleen. It's well known to cause diarrhoea. That's part of Tao Yin. And I bet you it's going to cause thyroid problems as well, long term. Things like Hashimoto's.   Tahnee: (39:53) Which is part of the lung...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (39:56) It's 100% part of the lung. Yeah.   Tahnee: (39:58) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (39:58) It's the messenger of the lung.   Tahnee: (40:00) And so, what I was being taught by this acupuncturist before he abandoned me, was that if that is allowed to stay in the body, that pathogenic factor, it will descend down. That's where you get the heart fire and these kind of problems, I guess, with COVID that are... When it actually gets really bad in people. Is that an accurate... I'm not going to say-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (40:21) Yeah.   Tahnee: (40:23) [crosstalk 00:40:23] Across the pathology.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (40:24) Yeah. The heart.   Tahnee: (40:26) Because the heart is the most, deepest layer of these six layers. So if it's getting there, it's bad.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (40:35) As befits the body, it's complex.   Tahnee: (40:44) Okay.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (40:44) This is what it's like to have to keep things simple. Yeah. Well you have to keep things simple. This is why I'm always like, "Look, let's just keep things as simple as possible." Because it fucking gets complicated. Guaranteed. Because every single person is different. So you have to keep this thing really simple. But yeah, the six divisions, bizarrely, the deepest level is Xue Yin, which is liver and peritoneum. However, the heart is also the emperor and is protected by everything. So it's the equivalent of the king on the chess board. Apparently fairly weak, but everything has to move around it to protect the king. You shouldn't ever really move the king in chess if you can get away with it.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (41:24) So it's the same. In a way, the heart as the emperor is the deepest, but in another way, it isn't. Within the six divisions, it's actually not the deepest. And this, I'm still trying to get my head around exactly what that means.   Tahnee: (41:43) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (41:44) Yeah. If it sounds a bit confusing it's because it [crosstalk 00:41:50]. I mean, this is really simple medicine compared to Western medicine, but we're still dealing with an organism that's unbelievably complex. And the body is just unbelievably complex.   Tahnee: (42:05) Well, like you said, with pathology too, you're treating individuals who are showing up with their own constitutional patterns, and all the unknown factors of what a human gets up to day-to-day.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (42:18) Yeah.   Tahnee: (42:18) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (42:19) Exactly. They pop up into your clinic after 47 years of existence, and just go, "I've got pain here." Somehow unravel that 47 years of existence and find out what's causing that pain there. And that's when you just have to go, "Man, I can't have too much information at this point because it's going to really fry my brain." So, you just have to kind of keep things as simple as possible.   Tahnee: (42:49) And you're listening to the pulse. You're kind of working through on that level. I had a guy the other day on the podcast, who's an acupuncturist. And he said something that I thought was really interesting. He said, "When I needle stomach 34, I don't actually think I'm needling the organ." And I was like, "Well, what do you think you're doing?" And he sort of... I didn't feel like we got anywhere with the answer. And I'm like, this is interesting that someone who practises this medicine doesn't really believe... And I'm not trying to poo poo him.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (43:23) I completely disagree. When I needle stomach 36...   Tahnee: (43:28) That's the one, yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (43:30) I've never needled stomach 34.   Tahnee: (43:32) No, it was 36. I'm pregnant and [inaudible 00:43:34].   Dr. Daniel Keown: (43:35) But that needle, the way I feel that needle going into a plane within the body, a tissue plane, like a fault line within the body that is then directly connecting to the entire gastrointestinal tracts and especially the stomach, but it's the entire... So no, for me, it's the opposite. When I needle these points, I'm like, this is connecting to that organ. As far as I'm concerned, there's no contradiction between Western and Eastern about how the body operates, apart from one important thing. And that is that Western medicine is a primitive model of the body, that's not particularly helpful and actually fits in underneath the Chinese medicinal model of the body, as a kind of useful adjunct in emergency situations. That actually, because it has no model of health, because it has no model of how the body operates, and because effectively, the way it's been organised is back to front.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (44:41) So, what Western medicine has done is, it didn't start off with a model of how the body operates, and instead has used a microscope to look closer and closer into the body, and then-   Tahnee: (44:53) Rebuild.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (44:54) [crosstalk 00:44:54] the body. Yeah. So, the equivalent I explain to people is, imagine if you didn't have an idea of the phylogenetic tree of life. Yeah? I don't know if you know what that means. It's like the idea that we all came from jellyfish and jellyfish... Which we did actually, thankfully from my [inaudible 00:45:11]. But there's another story behind that as well, actually, that I might tell you another time. But imagine instead of that phylogenetic tree of life, where we came from jellyfish and jellyfish then turned into... I don't know, molluscs and snails and whatever. And then they developed into vertebrates, and they developed into-   Tahnee: (45:32) Higher mammals and things, yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (45:34) Higher mammals. You've got it. Yeah. Imagine if you were just looking right at the top, and you saw all of these different animals, and you have no idea of the phylogenetic tree, which is the equivalent of embryology. And you started to categorise all those different animals according to what they did and how they behaved. And you went, "I'll tell you what. Why don't we put all flying creatures into the same bracket? Because they appear to all be behaving in the same way. So we'll put bats and birds and... What else flies? Flying squirrels. We'll put all of those. They're all flying animals, so they must be related. And everything walking on two legs must be related as well. So we'll put chimpanzees and humans and ostriches and..."   Tahnee: (46:20) Kangaroos.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (46:22) "Kangaroos. Yeah. They're all related as well. So they're all related. They're all related." That is what Western medicine's done with the body. It's basically taken all of these things and grouped them together, into systems that don't make embryological sense.   Tahnee: (46:37) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (46:37) And you really have to have a good grasp of medicine and the body to understand exactly what I'm talking about at this point. But that's what they've done.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (46:48) Now, what the six division model is, is an embryological model that builds from the bottom upwards. So, the original three divisions were endoderm, exoderm and mesoderm. Which, anyone who studied any medicine probably knows. And that's the end of their embryology. And what happens, the endoderm and the exoderm become Tae Yin and Tae Yang, which stay as consistent division or layers within the body. And the middle division, the mesoderm splits into four, and that forms then things like the heart, kidney and vascular system, the arterial system, which will become Shao Yin.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (47:27) Now, if you have this model of the body, you can make predictions about how each of these divisions are going to behave. And the fact that a pathogen or even a drug that affects one of the aspects of this division will affect all of the other aspects.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (47:43) So for instance, my favourite one is with hypertension is always a problem of Shao Yin. It's always a problem with a lack of blood effectively, to the body and the body then responds by increasing the pressures, as you would in any fluid system.   Tahnee: (47:59) Blood [crosstalk 00:48:00].   Dr. Daniel Keown: (48:00) Yeah, exactly. You would increase pressure. And so that's what hypertension is. It's the body that has perceived a lack of blood for whatever reasons. And therefore, that is always a problem with Shao Yin, of the heart, kidney, or the blood vessels themselves, the arterial system. And every single anti hypertensive known to man, with one exception, acts on that-   Tahnee: (48:22) On that level.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (48:23) On either the heart, the kidney or the blood vessels. And the same with COVID. So COVID has got a particular propensity for attacking the Tae Yin system, which is all about dampness and the phlegm. And that's why it attacks the pancreas, that's why it attacks the lung, that's why it gives you diarrhoea. And it will, like I said, it almost certainly is going to give you thyroid problems. And also it will have a propensity to hang around in the spleen, which is why hydroxychloroquine works so well as well.   Tahnee: (48:52) Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that's making me think around that Wei Qi level as well. If you're talking embryologically, that surface protective level, sort of this making sense that we're going to have this really deep... Because you were saying before, the liver is right in the middle there, it's that very, very centre of the egg, I suppose. Is that what you were talking about before? I'm just trying to build this puzzle out in my mind.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (49:28) Yeah, the six divisions though, I like to think... Yeah, yeah. In a way in the middle it's a bit like...   Tahnee: (49:38) Yeah, I know it's not accurate to say the middle, but I think it's Deadman's model. There's layers, like the surfboard layers, and they kind of...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (49:48) It's like Russian dolls.   Tahnee: (49:50) Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (49:51) So the skin in the Tai Yang, the skin is your outer layer of the Russian doll. And then right in the middle is your Xue Yin, your liver right in the middle. That innermost... Now, the interesting thing is, that obviously the inner and the outer have to connect. Yeah?   Tahnee: (50:10) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (50:11) Things have to always flow. Things always have to flow. And there is actually a connection between, effectively, your Xue Yin and your skin, and in women that's through your uterus and vagina.   Tahnee: (50:26) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (50:26) So when the sperm, it actually swims in through the skin, effectively through that little hole in your skin, called the vagina, and it swims into the uterus, which is actually in the peritoneal channel, which is Xue Yin.   Tahnee: (50:48) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (50:50) So, it is, you're right. The liver is your innermost layer. But connects to the outside, through the uterus. And then that connection is the rebirth of new life.   Tahnee: (51:04) And I guess, is that then pointing to that blood layer being... Because again, through my understanding of being a patient really is, being needled on that blood layer, it's very deep, quite painful. Because the liver's responsible for storing the blood and all of that sort of stuff, are we looking... Because I think about the uterus as well, the sea of blood, it's like this kind of idea of that deep substance of women being blood and for men, it's more Qi. So do you guys have a different connection between the Tae Yang?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (51:36) Yeah. Between Xue Yin and Tae Yang. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm just speaking...   Tahnee: (51:47) Theoretically?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (51:47) Yeah, because the interesting thing about our sperm is, it kind of effectively at an embryological level comes out of your Tae Yang, your kidneys, bladder.   Tahnee: (52:06) Well that's where the Jing element comes in, I guess. Yeah?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (52:12) Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a different kind of embryological process going on.   Tahnee: (52:19) Interesting. Children.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (52:23) Yeah. I was trying to work out what it is. Yeah.   Tahnee: (52:26) I want to jump back to electricity because we were talking about that when we got wonderfully distracted. But yeah, I think that's an interesting... It seems really logical to me that we're governed by this electric force, but it's not really that...   Dr. Daniel Keown: (52:42) One second.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (52:42) Kids. What's up? Right. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. It's simple, yeah. You can either stop crying and watch telly and enjoy yourself, or [inaudible 00:53:11] it's time for bed.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (53:25) Okay. Might just take a pause for a bit.   Tahnee: (53:29) Yeah, that's fine.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (53:31) Yeah. I'll just try and...   Tahnee: (53:33) That's my future.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (53:36) It's time for bed. Right, bedtime. Come on, bedtime. Well you have to stop crying immediately. Immediately. Okay. Now [inaudible 00:53:54]. Okay. Right. This is going back in the freezer because you're only allowed one. How come you have two? All right. Listen, listen. If you start crying again, it's fine, it'll be bedtime. Okay? So pull yourself together.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (54:20) Okay.   Tahnee: (54:29) We can make this very short.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (54:32) Negotiation. Yeah. It's always negotiation.   Tahnee: (54:38) Little ones.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (54:40) I'll just mute it because...   Tahnee: (54:43) Yeah, no stress.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (54:45) I'm just going... Yeah.   Tahnee: (54:46) Negotiate. Good luck.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (56:15) Yeah. Harry's my oldest. He's 11. And he's worked it out. He's basically worked out that, so long as he does what I ask him to do, which I like to think I'm fairly reasonable, he can do what he likes outside of that. Whereas Cora's a bit more likes her drama a little bit more.   Tahnee: (56:33) How old is your daughter?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (56:35) That was me saying basically you can have your drama, but then it's game over.   Tahnee: (56:40) Yeah. How old is your daughter?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (56:43) She's seven.   Tahnee: (56:44) Seven. Okay. Yeah. I have a five year old, so I'm gearing up for siblings.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (56:52) Five year old girl or boy?   Tahnee: (56:53) I have a girl. Yeah. She's got a tendency for theatrics sometimes as well. I think it's just kids. Yeah, I won't keep you too much longer because I know it's the witching hour with little kids. But yeah. If you're happy to jump back into the electricity conversation.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (57:14) Yeah, sure.   Tahnee: (57:14) And then we can start to wrap it up. Yeah.   Tahnee: (57:17) So yeah, I guess we got very pleasantly distracted, but I want to bring it back to the electricity conversation, because I think I've always... I guess, especially since discovering fascia and the research around [inaudible 00:57:32] electricity and all this stuff, I was like, "Okay, so this makes a lot of sense to me." I've always felt a bit like a glow stick. If I move it's like I light up. I don't know if that makes sense. But like cracking all of my bits makes me feel really alive. And so that made a lot of sense to me. And you speak about that in The Spark, around these electric currents. So if there's any elaboration you can give on that, or how you see that.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (57:56) Yeah. This all links into the triple burner and fascia, and this concept of... So, collagen is something like 30% of our body protein.   Tahnee: (58:07) Mm. Really high.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (58:10) And then the water within our body is 60% of our body, of which... No, I think it's higher than 60%. I haven't checked this recently, but something like 40%.   Tahnee: (58:19) [inaudible 00:58:19].   Dr. Daniel Keown: (58:19) Yeah. And something like 40% of your body water is extracellular. Yeah? So in other words, 30% of your body protein is collagen, which is extracellular, and 40% of your body water is extracellular. And Western medicine just pretends that those two things don't exist. There's no organ for either of them. There's no concept of when you replace fluids in the body, it's really blood that you're trying to replace when you give intravascular. So effectively, Chinese medicine goes, "No, no, no, no, they're two organs." They're triple burner, and what we call lymph is effectively gallbladder. And gallbladder is an interesting one. The gallbladder definitely does control lymph. It keeps it clean, because the most important thing in lymph is your fat content. It's fat that basically will bind up lymph and stop it moving correctly.   Tahnee: (59:25) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Dr. Daniel Keown: (59:27) And the gallbladder is critical in making sure your fat's emulsified, which is why-   Tahnee: (59:33) That makes so much sense when you think about where the fat deposits and then the lymph, and just the aesthetic of that. Yeah. Makes so much sense. And then that being associated with [inaudible 00:59:44] Yang.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (59:48) Yeah. You can really [crosstalk 00:59:50]. When you're feeling like all stiff and groggy and phlegmy, you can imagine that fluid within you is actually also just full of gunk.   Tahnee: (01:00:01) Mm.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:00:02) I mean, it is. When people come to me and say, "I feel like I've got brain fog." I'm like, "Well, you have. You've got gunk in your brain. You're not imagining it. It's not like you've woken up in the morning going, 'Mm. I think I'm going to imagine I've got gunk in my brain.' Brain fog. Yeah."   Tahnee: (01:00:27) That was one of the most mind blowing things for me. I remember about 10 years ago, they were like, "The brain has lymph." And I'm like, "Are we really just accepting that?" I think before that they always were like, "No, no." It's like, "Of course it does."   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:00:41) Yeah. I know.   Tahnee: (01:00:43) Yeah. But was only I think 10 years ago, they discovered the [inaudible 01:00:45], I guess, that did that, or whatever it was.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:00:48) Yeah. So the triple burner. So all of this collagen that makes the fascia, that makes the connective tissue, and actually even gets down into the bones themselves and makes the bones themselves that everyone thinks of them as hard minerals, but really they are collagen. And I actually did this myself because I didn't believe it. But if you take a chicken bone and pour it into a bowl of vinegar, it will dissolve all of the mineral, and you'll be left with this collagenous bone that is unbelievably strong. You will not break this thing. You can flex it because it's just made out of collagen. The crystals of hydroxyapatite are there to keep the bone stiff, so that you can resist gravity effectively. Because fish don't need this, because they don't need to resist gravity, but we do.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:01:45) But that's the only reason there, but the collagen is still there and it's unbelievably strong. You will not break this. And this creates a three-dimensional web within your body, that's an organ. There's no doubt about it in my mind. That is definitely an organ. In fact, it's probably as important as all of the other organs in your body. And this is the triple burner.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:02:13) And one of the interesting things about the triple burner is the burner part of it. Why is it called a burner? And the reason is... There's a few reasons, but one of the main reasons is this thing creates electricity as you move. It creates energy as you move. In the same way that when you click a cigarette lighter, it makes a little spark of electricity. This is also doing that through piezoelectricity. And this is why, if you sit at a desk, especially in a slightly cold room for a few hours, you get up and you suddenly feel really cold, and it's a deep cold that goes to your bones, because this network does go to your bones, and why you have to... If you get moving for a bit, you start warming up. And then everyone thinks, "Oh, it's because you get the blood pumping, and you've metabolically increased your rate." But actually it's really because you're moving your triple burner. You're moving your-   Tahnee: (01:03:09) [inaudible 01:03:09] system, effectively.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:03:10) Yeah. And that's creating electricity, and that's really what's warming you up. I mean, the other two things are probably important, your blood pumping and also metabolically warming you up. But I think they're less important than actually the fact that you are making your triple burner, your fascial network, wake up, warm up.   Tahnee: (01:03:29) Because some definitions of fascia include the blood vessels, because of that sort of structure, I suppose they have. Do you include that in your definition?   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:03:38) No. Because I'm now completely six divisions.   Tahnee: (01:03:42) Yeah. Okay. And yeah, that Chinese model. Yeah.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:03:48) Blood vessels are interesting, because they actually sit within two divisions. And this is backed up by embryology. So your arterial system is part of Shao Yin, and that's linked into kidney and heart, whereas your venous system is actually Xue Yin. And they do emerge embryologically from two different areas. I mean, they're in a similar starting position because they're both mesoderm, but then they branch off.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:04:17) And interestingly, the venous system shares more embryologically with the lymphatic system, than with the arterial system. Which fits perfectly because the venous system sits within Xue Yin, which is paired with Shao Yang, and Shao Yang is lymphatic system, which takes us back to the triple burner. And the lymphatic system and the triple burner, are basically the yin and yang of that aspect because the triple burner provides the structure for the lymphatic system to flow through.   Tahnee: (01:04:49) Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you are not just, because I've heard some people define the triple burner as those three pleural cavities, like the fascial sort of-   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:05:00) Yeah. Yeah. That's part of it. Yeah. That's part of it.   Tahnee: (01:05:03) But yeah. You are taking a broader, whole body definition, I suppose, where it's really every fascial connection through the body.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:05:15) It's exactly like you were saying before with the liver. And about how the liver is the densest concentration of energy, the Westminster of the political system in the United Kingdom. And the triple burner, the most powerful manifestation of this ability for fascia to divide up the body, manifests in these three burners, which are basically the pleura pericardium, or the chest, the peritoneum, or the abdomen, and the retroperitoneum, or the pelvis. The pelvis, abdomen, chest are the triple burners. But really the triple burner is this ability for fascia to divide up the body.   Tahnee: (01:06:01) Mm-hmm (affirmative). So all of these compartments and sacks that we find within the body. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think for people, because I guess a lot of acupuncturists throw away the triple burner, the [inaudible 01:06:17]. I think if you think about what Mao Zedong and that sort of legacy of Chinese medicine, we end up with the triple burner being almost clinically irrelevant. But just what you are explaining sounds incredibly important.   Dr. Daniel Keown: (01:06:32) Oh, gosh, yeah. I love the t

We're keeping the sexual embers alive and burning on the podcast today. Australia's leading sexologist (and SuperFeast's favourite), Juliet Allen, talks to Mason about post-birth sexual desire, how to funnel sexual energy into all areas of your life and filling your cup first so it can overflow with more energy for yourself and others. Almost eight months after the birth of her son, this conversation reveals another blooming layer of Juliet that we've never seen before. She talks very openly about her lib*do, while fully immersed in the role of motherhood, her evolution as a sexologist with such longevity in the industry, and why advocating more time for self is so connected to our sexual vigour. Mason discusses the best herbs and practices for supporting our Jing/Kidney essence and how to maintain long-term sexual vitality well into our old age. Make sure you tune in, you don't want to miss this episode.   "I feel all those things contribute to sexual desire, and that's not just coming from me, but for the hundreds of people with whom I've worked. A lot of the work I do with people when I'm coaching is evaluating their life and going, "Okay, what's working? What's not? How can you get more time to yourself?" or whatever it is. As soon as they get their ducks in a row, become more organised, and start advocating for themselves and what's important again, the lib*do is like BOOM. 'Oh, surprise, surprise. You want to have sex again', every time".   - Juliet Allen     Mason and Juliet Discuss: Sexuality in isolation. Lack of lib*do shaming. Birth and sexual energy. Excessive leaky sexuality. Jing essence within the Kidneys. Self pleasure without ejaculation. Leaking Jing and long-term sexual vitality. The Yin/Yang expression of sexual essence. SuperFeast tonics for sexual essence / lib*do. Why advocating for time to self is so important. Tantra; Choosing with awareness what brings joy. Juliet's postpartum journey with her sexual desire.      Who is Juliet Allen?  Juliet Allen is a Sexologist, Tantra practitioner, host of the Authentic Sex podcast, and head teacher at the Pleasure School. Juliet comes from a background in psychology and sexology, is a qualified Yoga Teacher, and is trained as a Kundalini Tantra practitioner. Juliet is a committed mother, passionate entrepreneur, and lover of all-things sex and sensuality. Known for authentically sharing her own experiences as a sexually empowered woman, Juliet is committed to freeing people from mundane and disempowered sexual relationships and opens up the conversation of how to have great sex every day. Now Australia's leading Sexologist, she resides in the hinterland of Northern New South Wales, Australia. Juliet spends her days with her family, making love and swimming in the ocean.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Juliet-Allen.com Juliet Allen podcast Juliet Allen Instagram Yinn Body Instagram Superfeast Deer Antler Superfeast Cordyceps     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hello, Australia's leading sexologist and SuperFeast's favourite sexologist, friend of the show.   Juliet Allen: (00:07) Hi, Mase. Thanks for having me back.   Mason: (00:10) Yeah. I think this is round three, I think, for the SuperFeast Podcast. I think-   Juliet Allen: (00:18) I think so.   Mason: (00:19) Remember the first one you came to that we sat in that spare room of that house I had I think up in Coorabell? That was the first one for the SuperFeast Podcast.   Juliet Allen: (00:30) Yeah, I remember that. That was fun. Yeah. I think it's around three. I was trying to think about that this morning, as to how many we've done now together. It's always fun though, so I'm glad to be back.   Mason: (00:37) Yeah, and I'll never forget the one over on my old podcast, the Mason Taylor Show, masturbation in utero.   Juliet Allen: (00:45) Oh. What a great title.   Mason: (00:46) Yeah. I think that still just randomly trends every now and then. It just enters into the charts of top downloads. I'm like, "Oh yeah, there it goes again."   Juliet Allen: (00:56) Yeah. You can't go past that one.   Mason: (00:59) Thanks for coming on. I know you're postpartum right now and I know you're in that baby bubble, and I just really appreciate you coming on. We're having a libido month as you know at SuperFeast, which can mean any number of things when you're coming at it from the way we talk about sex and libido and daoism. I just really value your take always on how to more... I mean, someone said to me yesterday, they don't like me using the word sustainable, and I think because it's been politicised and turned into green washy, shitty businesses going, "We're super sustainable." Just like, "Dude, you're a fucking beer company. Shut up."   Juliet Allen: (01:39) Oh, I said that to Nick the other day. I got some promo from a clothing company saying, "We're sustainable." I was like, "What? Does that make me just want to buy your clothes, now that you've just put a sentence on the end of an email saying you're sustainable?" Like, it just, I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe a word.   Mason: (01:59) No, I mean let's, we could go on about that. Businesses should just be in reality, do the best they can and stop patting themselves on the back so much. But in terms of sustainability, talking to you about libido and sexuality, you've been doing this for so long, and you have this amazing ability to go into, have those fun taboo conversations that burst through these layers of mental programming. They're like, "You're not allowed to talk about libido that way or anal that way," or whatever it is.   Mason: (02:30) Then at the same time, this is what I talk about a lot in the podcast when I talk to practitioners, I like practitioners that can treat symptom and disease, but know that they need to provide the bridge over to never coming back to the practitioner ideally as well. Which you have that ability to bring people into this beautiful world of sexual essence, everything, sex, love, and then know that we are bridging over to that essence and that reawakening and renaissance of people connecting their sexuality, connecting and integrating to their life so that they have a real, sustainable, in harmony life where that's integrated. That's why I like talking to you and why I wanted to jam about libido with you. So yeah, what's on your mind and in other places and things?   Juliet Allen: (03:20) What, with libido or life?   Mason: (03:22) Yeah, I mean libido mostly.   Juliet Allen: (03:24) Well, I was saying to you off air, let's call it, that my libido is actually, since giving birth has been... Well, no, I lie. I gave birth and then straight away my libido was bam, back on. Literally within a couple of days. I was, like, "Whoa, this is amazing." I thought I was like a unicorn, because I'd heard so many stories. Obviously this was my second baby, so I'd been through it before. But I'd heard so many stories from clients who had said, "My libido hit rock bottom, and it was really challenging." I'd never really experienced that.   Juliet Allen: (04:05) So then my libido came back online straight away and I thought, "Yep, it doesn't happen to me." Fast forward about two months postpartum and I just, my libido disappeared. I got to two months postpartum, and my libido just disappeared. I'm now seven months, seven and a half months postpartum and I still don't have much of a libido, which is really new for me. As you know, my libido is always pretty high, and I have quite a... It's quite consistently high.   Juliet Allen: (04:41) It's cool though. I really love it, because it's giving me an opportunity to feel what it's like to have a really long period without really feeling like sex, except for when I'm ovulating. I'm all for it when I'm ovulating. That happens to a lot of women. Yeah. That's where I'm at with it. But I'm also really cool with it. Because I'm like, "Yeah, this is a season in my life where I'm parenting my new son, and I'm being super present with him and we both are, and that's a priority for us." We co-sleep and I'm breastfeeding on demand and all the things that feel good for us.    Juliet Allen: (05:25) Occasionally I say to my partner, Nick, "Baby, are you okay?" Because I'm not used to being the partner who's not up for it so this is new for me. I'm like, "Are you okay?" He's like, "Babe, I'm fine. This is our season to just be with Soul and it's going to change and it's okay." We still have sex every now and then. So I wanted to be honest about that because here I am talking about libido and mine's quite low at the moment, but I also think that that's really normal and that there'd be so many people listening who'd be like, "Oh my God, thank God. It's normal."   Mason: (06:05) Yeah, I was hoping to have a few thank God moments. I love talking about the spiciest of topics. Then we were just talking about the Byron Bay tantra scene and just thinking about little hot pockets. I'm thinking about the Ashram communities over in Costa Rica, everywhere, just how they're sacred little places where everyone can be excessively sexual and create these abnormal expectations on libido. All of a sudden all the personal practises, whether it's Daoist practise or tantric practise, starts revolving around sexual essence and libido.   Mason: (06:41) So it's good to go through those little initiation bubbles, but when that expectation becomes the norm, it's really, I find it disturbing to think that people have to go into that level of isolated dedication to sexuality and libido. Always being at this, probably if you think about over a 50 year period, it's very unreasonable to expect yourself to be at that peak that our mind tells us is actually healthy. Then at the same time, you've got to juggle processing your, let's isolate anger and let's process our anger. Then let's isolate our mental acuity. Then let's isolate the gaining of skills and then isolate being a good husband or wife or partner. It's all these isolated things, it's like they're good for a moment or a period to isolate and study, but then it has to become integrated so you're not thinking about these things and it becomes a wholeness.   Mason: (07:44) I'm interested there. For you, if libido not being present, but then what is there? Because libido is like a dangle, as we were talking about earlier. It's a dangle to talk about this, but your libido's not gone. Your libido's connected to other parts of your body. I'm sure you're getting lots of insights as to as Nick said, going into maybe a winter season around the yang expression, which is maybe that's what we call libido, the yang expression of sexual essence. What are you learning about the different sides of the libido conversation?   Juliet Allen: (08:18) Yeah, that's a really good topic. I love talking about this. What I'm noticing is, and what I see libido as is also an expression of our creative energy and that they're quite similar, that our sexual energy and creative energy is one really to me. It's interesting because I'm not feeling to connect sexually much. I think that's due to many reasons. I guess we could talk about how different things impact our libido. For me at the moment, I know it's lack of sleep at night because Soul's up a fair bit. I'm not, if I were to be honest, food prepping as much as usual so my nutrition's probably gone down. We still eat amazingly, but not as good as we would like to. I think that's impacting, and then lack of solitude is impacting my libido. I'm making sure I schedule it in, but it's so little compared to what I had before so that definitely impacts me.    Juliet Allen: (09:30) Then I think I get to the end of the day, or I wake up in the morning and I've been breastfeeding a lot. When you've got a baby on your hip all the time, you're always in contact with something. So the last thing I feel like is then going back into contact and intimacy with my partner. So they're, just backtracking, some of the things I think have been impacting me with libido. But what I'm noticing is because I'm not dropping into that energy with myself or with Nick, I've got so many creative ideas. It's like a bubbling pot in my head and it's actually, I'm trying to get more organised in my week so that I can actually schedule in the morning, which is called my creative morning or whatever we are going to call it, where I can just get all the ideas out of my head onto paper and then look at it and go, "Okay, how could I manifest these? How can I create them? How can I get my team involved?" But I think that what I'm noticing, is that now that I'm not engaging in sex as often, the energy's being redirected into new creations.   Mason: (10:48) What is that showing you? There's so many things going on in my head. The one hearing you, I just can see the value of understanding that there's certain things you're not able to do when you're in this bubble of nurturing your little one, that it's okay. Maybe it's just not the time, but you're doing enough and being aware of just because it's winter, keep the embers, let's just do enough to keep the embers going, knowing that it's going to come back. Because I think it's probably a good thing to be aware of, for people not to get it down on themselves when it goes right down, but really try not let those embers go out. I think a lot of people do have that year or two or three years sometimes after birth where the libido flame goes. Right?   Juliet Allen: (11:35) Yeah. They do. Yeah. It's a good one, the embers thing, because yeah, I think it's important not to let it go out completely. I don't feel like for myself that that's happened at all, and it's definitely picked up in the last month since Soul's gone on solids actually, because he's having a tiny bit less feeds. It's like I'm having that bit more of space to myself. But yeah, you got to keep the embers just simmering away, whatever you say. I think that's what's great about using, and this wasn't intentionally a plug for SuperFeast, but every day I use the SuperFeast products, and I think they help me and they definitely help Nick. He swears by them for libido, help the embers just keep hot.   Mason: (12:27) Yeah. The tonics, even if we, and we'll use them as a reason to talk about this concept of keeping the embers alive. If we're not having the pressure to have to be, and it doesn't have to be postpartum. I know a lot of guys. I know I've gone through this phase where I've been come the closest I've ever come to a depression or a self-hatred and after having some what I considered monumental failures, and everyone's like, "Your failures are your biggest lessons," and I'm like, "Yeah, they are now." But at the time, my whole identity is crumbling and it's hard, so I definitely, I've had that phase.   Mason: (13:13) And of course when I talk about the tonics and lifestyle, it pales in comparison to having open communication with for me with my lover or even if you've got just a good friend, if you're alone or journaling with yourself to be like, "This is what's going on." Just that alone can keep those embers alive and not let it go out. But then talking about tonic herbalism, it's where they fit in a lot of the time. And people do associate taking say the deer antler or Cordyceps and being like, "I'm horny, I'm hard." But sometimes it is about taking them during convalescence periods, postpartum periods. It's just they're not going to let you, they're going to help you just not tip over the edge.   Mason: (14:02) Same as you saying, I think this is an important one because I feel like there's a lot of subconscious no libido shaming sometimes in our culture, especially in our circles, and you saying you've got Nick, you're talking to Nick, and he's like, "I've got awareness of this is a season of our life." You're trying to have moments where you do book in your solitude, which seems like it's obvious. It's like, that's hard when you've got a lot going on. That just keeps it alive without necessarily I think with the tonics even taking tonics, not expecting them to just turn the libido on, not seeing it as a failure that they don't immediately, it's not all bubbling over straight away. But it is a just keep hanging on, keep those embers alive and just clinging on that little bit. I think that's a really important distinction. Glad you we danced there.   Juliet Allen: (14:53) Yeah. It's a long term thing I think with the tonics too. It's not just like, "Oh, I'm going to take deer antler this morning in my cacao." I mean, Nick swears by deer antler though. He's just so protective of his jar of deer antler. If I haven't put it in, he's like, "Where's the deer antler? Why didn't you put it in?" However, I don't think-   Mason: (15:11) Nick's a winner, though. Nick's a winner. That's why.   Juliet Allen: (15:14) Yeah, yeah, yeah. He loves it. Yeah. But I think with the tonics, for me it's a long term thing. I know that if I have them, which I do daily, they're keeping me just simmering away, but also looking up to my health long term, which is what my vision is. I'm going to be in my sixties, seventies and still enjoying a really great sex life and not get to 60 and be like, "Yeah, now I have cobwebs and I'm never going to have sex again." That kind of mentality. I want to feel vitality and I want to feel libido and I want to enjoy a great sex life for a long life. I know people and mentors in my life who have that and that's my long term vision. So incorporating things like the tonic herbs is part of that long term vision for me.   Mason: (16:05) I think that's because when you think about that vision, we're going 50 years into the future, it's impossible to hold onto all of those. I want good bone structure. I want good mental health. I want good libido. I want to be able to be generous. I want to be able to receive. I want to be able to dominate. I want be able to also submit. It's too much to hold. I think this is again why I appreciate talking to you about sex so much is that we just such a deep dive into the subject and then such a relinquishing of the isolation of the subject and watching it bleed over into a real life that doesn't have idealism within it to be where it's boring and hard to... It's the most interesting thing, but in an Instagram world, it's the most boring thing to try and market this reality.   Mason: (16:57) But yet I know I like the SuperFeast podcast and having conversations with you. I feel like I've been a custodian from that road to Rome that you sit in, where people go, "Wow, at some point I really do forget about libido and I really do forget about sexuality in isolation. I become integrated and harmonious so that all of those things by happy accident are there when you're 60 or 80." I want to talk to you about that. Because the tonic herbalism is about having the capacity for say spontaneous joy. You have the capacity for libido to emerge, which is different to giving you libido. Here right now you've cultivated capacity for it to emerge.   Mason: (17:44) I don't know if you've got any insights there around that relating to your own sexuality and your own libido in order to make that, to be able to perceive how it's something that is bubbling under the surface and you're cultivating and it comes out at a natural time without possessing you. Yeah. That's I guess my question I'm roundabouting.   Juliet Allen: (18:08) Oh, a couple of things pop up for me around that. What did you say about joy with the tonic herbs?   Mason: (18:15) It's especially from the Ayurvedic as they talk about taking the tonics in order to cultivate a capacity for spontaneous joy.   Juliet Allen: (18:24) Ah, that's so good. Because tantra, which I teach and which you mentioned, and I've studied lots and experienced and travelled the world learning about. Tantra for me, the definition I was told by a mentor of mine is choosing with awareness what brings joy to our life. So tantra isn't just about like, "Let's have a orgy and all the kind of myths around tantra," although there is a lot of that going on, but choosing with awareness, what brings joy. So it just popped in my mind, the link there between the herbs and what you just said about joy and then tantra, which is for me choosing a lifestyle and a life that brings joy. But for me, when I feel joy, I also feel like the embers are alive and that I'm feeling turned on by life.   Juliet Allen: (19:22) That's the most important thing for me. The most important thing for me is not having sex every day and having multiple orgasms and all the stuff that's in Instagram at the moment, squirting and this and that. If you do this in the G-spot and all these things that are becoming more and more spoken about, which is awesome, because it's downing the stigma. But for me it's like how can I feel turned on in work? How can I feel turned on within my family and not in a, you know what I mean by that? How can I feel really, yeah, excited by life, because when I feel excited and when I feel joy, then I'm more likely to feel like I want to share that with others, including share it sexually, share that energy.   Mason: (20:16) I mean, look, I know you brought up getting turned on in life, turned on within family and then we got to be like... But I know what you mean, but I think about it quite often. It's how we want to deny in birth that that came from sex and love. So we're like, "No, not allowed to have any of that near," which I get, because it's a very, that's a very nuanced conversation that a lot of people new to the conversation would be like, "Oh, hey, you can't bring that energy near children." Which it's like, yeah, hear your nuanced conversation, but don't literally throw baby out with the bath water. I think it's a symptom of that isolation. Like, all right. Sex sits over here and that energy sits over there. Then that energy can't come anywhere in real life or around other people. You do that where only God can see you and then God's watching dirty little [inaudible 00:21:16], you know?   Juliet Allen: (21:18) Yeah, yeah, definitely. Oh, with the birth stuff I could get into that big time around, yeah. I don't know whether we go there, but how that energy brings the child in, and then we're not encouraged to enjoy that energy when it comes into the birth space in general, unless you have the midwife I had or the birth team of your dreams that does encourage that. But yeah, so much there.   Mason: (21:51) I mean, by all means jump into it, but I just wanted to bring up that it's like a real syndrome that people are trying to cut that part of themselves that they associate purely with sexuality and libido and that feeling and that energy from anywhere else in their life. But if you get out of the Western colonised way of thinking, you'll see it's not just pure sexuality. It is like a lustre for life.   Juliet Allen: (22:16) Yeah. That's what it is. When I say turned on by your family, it's not like I'm feeling all horny when I pick up my son. It's not that. That's what mainstream would be, "Oh, yeah, she's a fucking whatever you call it."   Mason: (22:30) Exactly. They would.   Juliet Allen: (22:31) It's like, no, I'm talking about I'm excited when I walk into the family home and Nick's in the kitchen with Soul on his hip and my daughter's in her bedroom at the moment because she's 15 and a half and loves hanging. But you know, when my daughter's in the house, it's like I'm feeling excited by that. I'm not feeling like, "Oh God, back to the family or okay, locking in for dinnertime." You know, I want to bring that energy into everyday life. Yeah.   Mason: (23:06) I mean, I would love because I think we're close to birth as well, so I'm always interested to talk about birth and the reality of the energy of birth. But just very quickly, and I think you've covered it a lot on your podcast and I think we've probably talked about it before, but just some basic maybe some kind words or some guiding words for people who maybe they love their life and they love their family, et cetera, but it's just that spark is perhaps not there. Perhaps they could do with a few real practical things that they can do or practises perhaps from the sexual realms of themselves that they could explore to see what's emotionally energetically or sexually in the way of them just getting that spark back when they walk into work, family home, when they're going to bed. Any just little guidance?   Juliet Allen: (23:56) Oh, there's so much to that.   Mason: (23:57) You have one sentence, one sentence to nail it.   Juliet Allen: (23:59) Stop it. Neither you or nor I are a one sentence person when it comes to these topics. Look, for me, it's like coming back to where, and this is so cliche saying this, but how can we fill up our own cup so that we walk into the family home feeling full within ourselves so that there's this bubbling brook just overflowing so that we can then share that with our family. That is so easy to say and quite challenging I would say for a lot of parents. You know what it can feel like to have a child and want to give them everything and then you can neglect yourself. I can neglect myself because I just want to give so much. So for in particular parents, it's like defining what's going to make you feel like you are overflowing so that you can give that to your family.   Juliet Allen: (25:04) Because when I feel overflowing, I feel like, "Okay, now I can give." Whereas when I'm coming from the dry well, it's resentment. Resentment begins to build and that's just a killer for relationships. It's a killer for your relationship with your kids, if you're resenting them. Catch yourself if you're feeling any sort of resentment and then communicate that and then get help, like therapy, coaching, mentors, whatever you need. Yeah. This feels like really basic stuff but it's stuff that really helps me.   Mason: (25:41) I mean, well I guess again, if we are talking about it over a 60 year period, you are going to come back to the basics I think constantly. It's just whatever releases the dam. I mean, I will go quickly because I know people don't want to hear from me. They want to hear from you, but-   Juliet Allen: (25:57) No, they probably do want to hear from you. I would.   Mason: (25:59) Maybe, maybe both. Me too, secretly.   Juliet Allen: (26:04) Yeah, yeah.   Mason: (26:11) I think you've just reminded me though of what is often a dam for myself and remembering different ways to fill up my cup. I guess one of the ways I forget that I can fill up my cup is, because sometimes I'm like, "God." I'm moving, I'm even doing some meditation. I'm really trying to make sure that I have time with Tahnee and my kids, and something just still feels like, Great. I go to therapy. What the hell is happening?"   Mason: (26:41) I think I've spoken to enough guys that I know for me, this isn't an all the time practise, but maybe a once a year period where I'm really good at not feeling, which is I think a stigma for men, but I feel like for everybody. But I think you see there's a renaissance of especially on Instagram of women going like, "I'm actually going to get in touch with my essence of my sexuality," and they put the videos up. It's all lovely and never would I suggest this for guys to do that, but the essence of that, where-   Juliet Allen: (27:16) I'd love to see you do a dance video. Could you please? They'd like it.   Mason: (27:19) I mean, I've got my character. I've got my character, the Conscious Cucumber, that I do.   Juliet Allen: (27:23) Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think you've written about that.   Mason: (27:27) I've got an influencer as well, Masella-Moon.   Juliet Allen: (27:29) Oh, I love the influencer. You could do a merge of the two and do a really amazing dance video where you're feeling into. Yeah. Anyway, sorry.   Mason: (27:39) Oh, I was just going to say sometimes for me the thing that I need to release the dam of me getting some colour, because I'm just really, I'm just so good at hiding from my feelings and pretending. I'm a good actor. Is just that 20 minutes of self-pleasure without the focus being on release and ejaculation. I remember when I first came across that practise, for me people listening to me would know I'm pretty comfortable talking about sex and talking about my sexuality. I've had open conversations with Tahnee about it on this podcast, with yourself.   Mason: (28:14) But actually again, it sometimes can be like, "Oh, I've gone into a little bit of an act of my outward identity. Can I sit there for 20 minutes touching myself and feeling myself?" It's like I'm getting the [inaudible 00:28:29] for myself. I'm just not a finished project, but that's when I do do that, I put it like, "Okay, I'm going to focus on that this week," and maybe two or three or four times, I am able to do that. It completely releases the emotional dam for me, because I just can't hide from feelings that I have towards myself when I'm in that space. I can when I'm stillness or standing meditation or qigong formations or yin yoga, but when I'm in a self-pleasure without a focus on ejaculation, it's like, yeah, I think it's pretty significant. So yeah. Bringing it back to basics.   Juliet Allen: (29:09) Yeah. Thanks for sharing because not everyone's going to share about stuff like that, so it's cool that you feel comfortable to share that. I think it's a really good one you've brought up, is how can we connect with ourselves like that without having the goal of orgasm at the end? It's just connecting in with our sexual essence and our sexual energy, and you're right. You can't hide when you're doing that. You can, I find I can in stillness or silence or meditating or whatever it is. But when I'm just laying there with myself and connecting with that energy, there's no hiding from myself. It's like, "Oh, I can't even bring myself to, what is it, touch myself right now. What the fuck is that?" Jesus, that's... So whatever comes up for you, I'm not saying that's me, but if that came up for me, I'd be like, "Whoa, okay. There's something there." So it's yeah. It's like a self-exploration without the pressure of the big bang at the end or the fucking multiple orgasm or whatever, without having to write about it on Instagram afterwards, without having to talk about it. It's just like, "How can I give this to myself?"   Mason: (30:27) I definitely, I think we've talked about this quite a bit and it's fun. I really have fun talking about the cringiness of the excessive sharing and the excessive leaky sexuality that I've definitely been there in this community. Again, it's a phase. It's an initiation phase. Then for me, hopefully, there's an integration where I don't need to feel like that person's touching themselves in front of me at all times and moments at me all the time. But again, it's a phase. Definitely no judgement . I think it's a precious time when someone is going through that and sharing a lot and being really vulnerable, even on Instagram and sharing all their insights and their meditations. But I think there needs to just be, I think we are alluding to a little bit of a maturation in the conversation to be like, "And perhaps then there will be a time where you may not need to go and share that and really play with that without it being good or bad. See what happens when you don't share as much."   Juliet Allen: (31:29) Yeah. It's an interesting time. It's really interesting because I've seen it change so much on social media from when I first started working as a sexologist to now, where I was one of the only people and now there's so many people out there talking about sexuality and their experiences, and I think that's really great. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I do, I think what it's done is polarise me into the opposite because I used to share more and I used to talk lots about my sexual experiences, and now seeing so much out there has polarised me into the opposite of like, You know what? Some things have got to stay sacred."   Juliet Allen: (32:14) I've always been that way, but even more so now I feel like the most potent amazing experiences are the ones that nobody knows about that I don't feel the need to jump on and talk about afterwards. There's magic in that. I think for me, when I share too much, it takes the magic out of those moments, especially for myself and Nick too. So yeah, I think eventually, there's no judgement on people who feel that that's their avenue to express, but also I think eventually there does come a bit of I like the word maturation. It's a different level of a different stage or phase or level of awareness.   Mason: (33:01) Yeah. I wouldn't describe, because I think your energy is very different to when we first spoke I think seven years ago.   Juliet Allen: (33:09) Fuck. Yeah. So different.   Mason: (33:10) But I also wouldn't, because I don't see you swinging, I don't see that being so much of a pendulum swing where you are in opposition because you're not. I can feel you're not in opposition. As you said, it's just a moving down the path.   Juliet Allen: (33:24) Yeah, and life changed too. Like, oh my God, seven years ago, what the hell was I doing then? Probably in the orgies, in the orgies just travelling around slutting about in a really wonderful way. Now I'm in this beautiful monogamous relationship with a new son and it's just like we go back to, the seasons of our life change. So for me, I need to honour that and I love that.   Mason: (33:58) I won't get too philosophical here, but it brings up a little connection to Jing. I know we talk, people can see, you can become ideologically, you can fall in, which is kind of good I think for a moment, where you fall into whether it's that that tantric world, the orgy world, whatever it is. Polygamy. You can see how it can either be a I've never really gone into the depths of that space. For me it was this different dietary kind of ideological things. But it served the same purpose where I'm like, "Oh, I've gone a little bit too far away from myself. Let's integrate those experiences."   Mason: (34:40) I just want to point out two things. Jing essence within the kidneys, in which libido is said to emerge from. Especially that yang Jing is where we feel the vaporisation of the water and bringing the fire to the water, so the water, the yin, the potential heats up and the waters can go and fertilise everything within the body. It's how I see libido and yin being the potential for libido. It completely drains with over ideology and also opposition.   Mason: (35:12) Because I think that was a key distinction I think there, what you've said. You're not in opposition to those people who are doing maybe similar to what you were doing, which is a real easy trap I feel like, especially when we've got careers as we do, and I felt it towards extreme health people, extreme raw food people, where I've been. If you form your identity through opposing them, rather than just smiling and moving along on your journey, it's a Jing like trap. I think that people don't realise the hook that that, forming your identity from that rather than letting go and starting afresh and being in that vulnerability. It's important long term libido.   Juliet Allen: (35:54) Yeah, definitely. One of the words you said was integrate, and I think it's important that if we do go into the extremities of something, like for you it was dietary stuff, for me it was sex stuff let's say, then it's coming back into centre and going, "Okay, how can I [inaudible 00:36:13] about me coming back into my own centre," and catching myself and thinking, "How can I integrate this now into life?" No more workshops, no more fucking retreats, no more this, no more that. How can I now integrate this into everyday life so that I choose what parts of it I loved and what parts I didn't and how do I remain in my truth in a way and not get caught up? Yeah. So for me, that was big, to just stop everything and find what works for me rather than what I feel I should be doing or what I feel I should be exploring.   Mason: (36:54) For you, what are the top, when we talk about a lifestyle that is going to facilitate you, you said moving along within your truth, which I know is a huge thing to try and perceive. Well, I can't perceive it. Only you can perceive it, and we're trying to all describe what we're talking about through these really unique feelings that we have about ourselves and our own journey. But for you, when you look back over the last couple of decades, have there been particular patterns or practices within your life that have helped you burst the bubble every now and then, and be like, "Okay, now in order to stay on that path of my truth this is where I need to go, or I need to stop and move on now?" Is there anything in particular that helped you stay in touch with that purposefulness?   Juliet Allen: (37:44) Yeah. Something that comes to mind is, well, my children are always my biggest inspiration for pulling myself back into centre. How can I... I hate sounding so cliche all the time. I feel like lots of these things are bit cliche, whatever. How can I be really authentic to what works for me in life so that I can be that model for my daughter so that when she flees the nest and grows up and is finding her own way, she has had some sort of transmission from me as her mother of a woman who can come back to centre and who can also honour her sexuality and yeah, all the things that I value. She's been my biggest inspiration actually. She's nearly 16 so it's been a long journey with her. I had her when I was 23, so a long time, but yeah, she's always brought me back into line, her energy and her presence in my life. She's my biggest teacher in a way, my biggest inspiration. Yeah. That's something that comes to mind.   Mason: (39:10) I find it's going to be trippy when we're 60 and 70 just to look back and see what the pattern of consistency was. It's so easy to get lost in these different phases.   Juliet Allen: (39:21) Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's so easy to get lost. Yeah. The other thing I keep talking about is having time to myself. So just time to refocus, time to just go for a freaking swim by myself. All the simple stuff that I know if I get in the ocean that I reset my body, things like that, that I have to advocate for, because at the moment I have to advocate. I'm like, "I need this." And not feel guilty for wanting it too, because there's that parental guilt and lots of parents will relate. Mothers, I think, especially of like, "Hang on, I'm supposed to love this 24/7." It's like, I do love him and I do love this, but I also love myself enough to be like, "Hey, take the child, I'm going to the beach," and I'm okay with that. I'm not going to feel guilty. You know, stuff like that. That's on topic for me.   Mason: (40:21) Yeah. Well again, I mean like you say, it's a cliche, but I remember thinking, "Oh, it's going to be a cliche to say, 'Hey, let's come back to the breath,' during Aya's birth." It was not. It was, Tahns is just like, "Wow, that was the best." I think about in these instances, it's just like, "Hey lady, you really need to advocate for that time." It's the most obvious thing, but it's like, bring it up [inaudible 00:40:49] hundred bajillion times and they'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." It's like, "He's going to bring it up again."   Juliet Allen: (40:53) Yeah, and not just for parents though. Even people who are stuck in a really full-on job. Not stuck but they're choosing to be in a really full-on job or they're in a relationship that's really codependent where they're doing everything with their partner and it's time to go, "Actually, I need a Saturday to myself." Whatever that brings up in you is your shit, but I'm going surfing all day and that's going to fill up my cup and I'm going to be a better person for that.   Juliet Allen: (41:23) So all those things, let's bring it back to the topic, I feel really contribute to libido and that's not just for me, but for the hundreds of people who I've worked with. A lot of the work I do with people when I'm coaching is evaluating their life and going, "Okay, what's working? What's not? How can you get more time to yourself?" or whatever it is. As soon as we get ducks in a row like that and they become more organised and they start advocating for themselves again and what's actually important, then libido just boom. It's like, "Oh, surprise, surprise. You want to have sex again." Every time.   Mason: (42:11) I think that's a really beautiful place to leave everyone pondering that. Everyone reach out to us. Hit us up on Instagram or email or wherever if you'd like Juliet to come back and I know that conversation around birth, sexuality, and libido is a huge, one.   Juliet Allen: (42:31) Yeah, that's a big one.   Mason: (42:32) Yeah. So if everyone's interested in that, yeah, hit us up and you should go over and follow all the things that Juliet's doing. Best places, Instagram, websites, all that. Anything bubbling under the surface right now?   Juliet Allen: (42:48) What, for work stuff, work offerings?   Mason: (42:50) Yeah.   Juliet Allen: (42:52) I'm doing my best to keep the bubbling just simmering at the moment with all the ideas I have, because I even tell my team, I'm like, "Do not say yes to me. Just do not say yes." But if people are interested in learning more, they can go to my website. There's a couple of things that I have that they can join. Or my podcast is another place to get heaps of information and I have an online school. So it's juliet-allen.com and Instagram is @Juliet_Allen. Yeah. You know what I thought? For another episode, if people are keen, we could do a Q and A if they send their questions, so we get to answer some of their questions about all these topics because then we really get to know what they want to hear about. I always find those ones fun.   Mason: (43:40) I think that's good. I think that's good to do. What I've actually, what I want to do is have... Because SuperFeast is really coming into its own. That's why I've done a lot to listen to SuperFeast's voice and not project my voice onto this really great mission. But naturally that's meaning that I'm having to go and get my own itches scratched. My podcast is slowly rearing its head again. That's actually the model that I was going to do, is I was just going to constantly do Q and As and jump on and stream it live on Instagram at the same time.   Juliet Allen: (44:20) That's a cool idea.   Mason: (44:22) I think that's something maybe we can do on my Instagram as well, really cut loose and have some fun. I definitely want to hear what everyone's interested in at the moment because those two years have probably brought the essence of what everyone needs to the surface.   Juliet Allen: (44:38) Most definitely. I think that's a really good point. The last couple of years have brought so much to the surface and people's priorities have changed a lot and within relationships so much has changed in people's relationships and it's just added a whole different, weird, crazy dynamic, but cool too, you know?   Mason: (44:59) It's been cool.   Juliet Allen: (45:02) Yeah, really cool.   Mason: (45:03) I know it's been tumultuous for a lot of people, and I did bring up earlier that when was going through my hardships, it was hard to be like, "Don't worry, it's going to be cool, Mase. You learn lots." There may be a few people listening to this of like, "Hey, it's not cool for me yet," but I'm definitely, I'm with you. I can only see going through the pressure cooker. If you can really, that's why I bring up, it's like, "Well, what's going to bring out the context for you to get in touch with what you need?" That's time alone, maybe time alone with your sexuality, not being able to avoid your feelings. I think that's when you naturally are like, "Is this job for me? Is this relationship for me? Do I need to alter my priorities in life"" I think it's been a cool two years for that.   Juliet Allen: (45:59) Hell yeah. It's been awesome. Yeah.   Mason: (46:01) Yeah. Let's do it. Everyone go and follow everything. Juliet does, Juliet Allen, especially. Yeah. The backlog of your podcast is awesome.   Juliet Allen: (46:15) Yeah. There's so many episodes there. Yeah.   Mason: (46:17) Yeah. I mean, you can just go through the titles. It's really well-titled so you can land on what you're wanting pretty easily. Unlike mine sometimes are a bit mysterious, like Masturbation in Utero. It's like, "Do I want that?"   Juliet Allen: (46:29) You're like, "What is he on about now?" Yeah, I get really specific.   Mason: (46:35) Yeah, I think it's good. I think it's an endearing quality. Yeah. Hope you and the team fall into a nice sync with ensuring that those ideas can come to fruition.   Juliet Allen: (46:47) Come to fruition. Yeah. Yeah, they will.   Mason: (46:51) Awesome. Love to the family.   Juliet Allen: (46:52) Thanks, Mase. Thanks for having me.   Mason: (46:54) Yeah. Pleasure. Hope you can get to the beach today as well.   Juliet Allen: (47:00) I'll do my very best.   Mason: (47:02) All right. Lots of love.   Juliet Allen: (47:04) Thank you.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Caitlin Priday has been devoted to the path of women's healing and birth work, weaving her threads of medicine through nourishing food and ceremony into future generations of women for over a decade now. A Kinesiologist, full-spectrum birth worker, shamanic practitioner, women's work facilitator, ceremonialist, and co-author of the brilliant book, Nourishing Those Who Nurture (More than a Food Bible for new mother's). Caitlin is an embodied full feminine force of integrity, supporting, teaching, honouring, and witnessing women as they traverse the many seasons of life, meet their shadows, and journey through sacred rites of passage. There is currently a remembering, a renaissance of women's work and birth work, rising up in communities globally. A new (but ancient) paradigm of birth work is emerging, with increasing numbers of women choosing to transition through the realms of birth at home while being supported and held by birth workers like Caitlin. Everywhere women are reclaiming birth, and with it comes both the shadow work and generational healing.   In this full spectrum conversation, Tahnee and Caitlin journey deep into the birthing portal exploring all facets of doula work, postpartum planning, the inextricable relationship between fear and pain, birth as a rite of passage, and why we need more advocacy and education around birth. Caitlin discusses her powerful ceremonial work with the obsidian egg, womb boundaries, her upcoming workshops, and the sacred act of living life as ceremony.    "I feel comfortable in my experience. I don't want to escape my feelings or leak my energy somewhere to get something back. And that is what women, I believe, need to learn through their lives; How to have strong womb boundaries and be firm in themselves. I think this is how femininity will heal. When women can be comfortable with being in their bodies and being firm in their womb boundaries".   - Caitlin Priday      Caitlin and Tahnee discuss: Birth work. Postpartum care. Rites of passage. Caitlin's doula work. Closing of the bones. Kinesiology and birth. Integrating the shadow. The history of doula work. The potent energy of obsidian. Working with the obsidian egg. Honouring the maiden season. Community and supporting the mother. Father's and their important role in birth. Shadow work; Identifying and working with it. Rebozo; A way of life and how it is used in birth.   Who is Caitlin Priday? Caitlin Priday is a Byron Shire-based Kinesiologist, Shamanic Practioner, Doula, Ceremonialist, and Co-Author of Nourishing Those Who Nurture: More Than A Food Bible for New Mum's. She is passionate about supporting women in all facets of life, from pre-conception, fertility, birth, postpartum, and beyond. With vigorous training and dedication over a ten-year period, Caitlin has learned the teachings of strong energetic boundaries, discernment, and psychic hygiene and how to hold these within everyday life. She prides herself on holding a sacred, grounded space no matter what the container is for and is a fierce advocate for women to reclaim their voices, bodies, and wombs for themselves, their lineage, and their descendants.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Rebozo  Obsidian egg  Caitlin's website Caitlin's Instagram Sharon Bolt's website Mother Tree Creations Catering Empress and the Dragon workshop Caitlin Priday Shamanic Energy Training Nourishing Those Who Nurture 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, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, everybody. Welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. It's Tahnee here today with Caitlin Priday. Really excited to have her on the podcast. She's a business partner actually to Tahlia, who we had on last year. They have this amazing book called Nourishing Those Who Nurture and I actually saw it under a few Christmas trees this year, Caitlin, so you'll be happy to hear that.   Caitlin Priday: (00:20) Oh good.   Tahnee: (00:21) Yeah, and she's also a kinesiologist, shamanic practitioner, doula, does ceremony and she wrote all the beautiful recipes in the book as well as contributed to the content. So I'm really stoked to have you here today, Caitlin. Thanks for joining us.   Caitlin Priday: (00:37) Thank you so much.   Tahnee: (00:39) Yeah. So great to have you here. We only recently met, but I just was so interested in our brief chat. Your story, your personal journey, just sounds so interesting. So I was hoping, if you don't mind, if you could share a little bit about how you got to be here, writing the book that you just wrote, and what was your kind of initiation into this world that you now inhabit?   Caitlin Priday: (01:03) Oh God. I feel like [inaudible 00:01:06].   Tahnee: (01:05) You start it, "I was born in..."   Caitlin Priday: (01:09) But I don't like that. Well, I'm a Shire local, so I feel like the Shire kids have always got some kind of alternative edge. So yeah, I was born in the Byron Shire. I've travelled the world for a little bit in 2012 and kind of started getting into spiritual awakening, I guess. It was that year that everyone started opening up to everything then. And I was just travelling around India and Canada and Mexico and just trying out all types of different things.   Caitlin Priday: (01:40) I actually got into to more of the shamanic aspect of things by working with cacao in Guatemala in 2012. So that was actually a really big part of my journey and my story. But when I got back to Australia, in 2014, I met my teacher, who's still my teacher now, Sharon Bolt. Her business is called Shamanic Energy Training and she also goes under the business of the Temple of Mythical Magick now as well.   Caitlin Priday: (02:10) So I started working with her, and that was more in the realm of workshops, women's work, ceremonial work in the sense of working with cacao and blue lotus and different plants like that. So I got quite thrust in quite early. She loves to tell the story that I told her that I could cook, but I couldn't really. But I'd told her that I could cook so that I could get a job with her basically, which is quite funny because that's-   Tahnee: (02:41) [crosstalk 00:02:41].   Caitlin Priday: (02:41) Yeah, it was... I was a sneaky young lass.   Tahnee: (02:42) What you just did for your book?   Caitlin Priday: (02:45) Pretty much. Yeah, so that actually was the baseline of learning how to cook and getting into recipes and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, back then I was only 22 when I met her. So I spent pretty much like the better part of my maidenhood working with her and just learning space holding through workshops and just being immersed in retreats and that kind of thing. So interfacing with people a lot, learning a lot about energy, learning a lot about how to be a good space holder, how to be grounded and also how to work through my shit...   Tahnee: (03:20) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (03:20) ... through that mirroring. So I kind of went a bit backwards. A lot of people go as a practitioner first and then go into group work later, but I worked in group work first and now I've moved into practitioner work. The thread that's always been the same is wanting to assist women. So, that's quite a full spectrum thing. I like working with women that want to get pregnant all the way through to pregnancy and then in postpartum, which is my real deep passion and commitment now. And that's how the book also came about because Tahlia and I met around that same time that I met Sharon and we just had a really deep bond, and then Tahlia and I were like, "Let's do this book, because postpartum is such a gap." So yeah, it's a pretty broad thing, but I'm predominantly now a kinesiologist and I work one-on-one. Yeah.   Tahnee: (04:13) Yeah. Where do you think that drive to work with women came from? Was it something you observed in your community or yourself or just a calling or?   Caitlin Priday: (04:22) To be honest, I'm very much a shadow worker and it actually came out of wounding. It came out of feeling the wounds of my experiences with the sisterhood and also the wound with my mother, so that deep mother wound and that deep desire to connect with women on an intimate, true, authentic level. But I had had a lot of wounding around that in the past. So it was through being thrust into environments with women that I realised that that wound was there and I felt like being able to heal that wound would be through interfacing and connecting with women in a deep way. Yeah.   Tahnee: (05:04) Can you talk a little bit to shadow work because I love this topic, but I don't think we've actually really talked about it on the podcast. I'm trying to think maybe a little bit with Jane Hardwicke Collings. But yeah, I guess I'm just interested in your take on that, like how you... You said that's sort of the work that you do or your personal journey. So yeah, what does that mean to you? How do you kind of work through that in your life?   Caitlin Priday: (05:33) Definitely a shadow dweller. I definitely am. I mean, don't get me wrong, I-   Tahnee: (05:39) [crosstalk 00:05:39].   Caitlin Priday: (05:40) Yeah. No, I find that terrain of the underworld, like that really mythical aspect of the feminine which is like that Persephone journey. Persephone was in the Underworld and that's how seasons were created on Earth because Demeter, her mother, went through seasons because of her daughter Persephone being in the Underworld with Hades.   Tahnee: (06:00) Being taken away.   Caitlin Priday: (06:02) Yeah, exactly. And I'm really view my life as a seasonal journey and a cyclical kind of journey. And obviously that's the same with menstrual cycles, but that's another topic. So I really honour the shadow when it needs to come to surface. I think a lot of it has got to do with working with Sharon. Sharon's very much a shadow woman and a shadow worker and it's helped me realise that shadows are not enemies, shadows are friends. And so I've discovered this more in going to my own therapy as well, learning more how to bring the shadow up and out of that shadow and bring it to light and learn its mysteries and its power and help integrate that, and that's how we become more of a whole and integrated person.   Caitlin Priday: (06:50) When we say we don't want to be something and we shove it away, that's when that thing will come up and try to dominate us even more. So within the feminine psyche there's a lot of that shadow work as well, like in women's work and women's workshops, if people are familiar with that kind of world, there's a lot of promotion around the dark feminine or the shadow feminine. Even in motherhood, there's a lot around the dark mother. So I think-   Tahnee: (07:20) Kali.   Caitlin Priday: (07:21) Kali, yeah, that kind of thing.   Tahnee: (07:22) I was thinking about the sort of eating heads. Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (07:25) Yeah, even like the [crosstalk 00:07:26] mother-   Tahnee: (07:28) Well, how do you define shadow for yourself? Like, is it the stuff that you avoid or feel triggered by or is it just anything in the sort of subconscious? How do you define that in terms of your work?   Caitlin Priday: (07:44) If something triggers me, then I definitely know that I'm looking at a shadow. Obviously you've got family stuff, that's a perfect place to do shadow work is just go stay with your family for a week. I just-   Tahnee: (07:57) You think your spiritual, go hang out with your family.   Caitlin Priday: (08:00) Exactly. I just had my family here for three weeks, so I'm just like decompressing.   Tahnee: (08:05) [crosstalk 00:08:05].   Caitlin Priday: (08:07) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (08:07) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (08:07) Actually, it's a good point though, because my mum and I ended up having a fruitful conversation after she stayed, which was her telling me that she gets triggered by me because she sees so much of herself in me. And I think that's a really good way to look at the shadow is that like when you're having that mirror come up and place that thing in front of you, you've got to look at where that is unintegrated inside of yourself that it's becoming a problem. And so we've gone into that a lot in more of the shamanic workshops that we've done with Sharon, but also in our women's work, The Empress And The Dragon, which is the three month women's programme which I'll be running up here soon.   Caitlin Priday: (08:49) We work with the obsidian egg. So the obsidian egg is known for bringing up shadows and known for bringing up mirrors and triggers. And we work through that in the workshop on the weekend and the months after. Because we want to be able to bring things up and have a look at them, but I'm really a big believer on there being a firm and held container for when shadows come up.   Tahnee: (09:14) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Especially when you're learning to work with that energy, I think, because-   Caitlin Priday: (09:20) Yeah, definitely.   Tahnee: (09:21) ... it's powerful stuff.   Caitlin Priday: (09:22) Yeah.   Tahnee: (09:24) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (09:24) Yeah, I'm not about going into shadow work and flinging your energy all around and getting crazy on it. Shadows are things that we learn how to tame and that's a very Daoist perspective, which I know you're really into as well. And that's the background of our training as well, is Daoism, so learning how to do it with containment and befriending and also a right relationship. Because when we don't, when we allow an emotion to own us, we are just being dominated by it. So it's [crosstalk 00:09:57].   Tahnee: (09:56) It's a possession at times.   Caitlin Priday: (09:58) Yeah, exactly. So it's learning how to not allow shadows to possess us, but for us to find how to dance in a relationship with them. So yeah, I think shadows are mostly a mirror.   Tahnee: (10:12) Yeah. I'd like to go jump back to that workshop quickly.   Caitlin Priday: (10:17) Yeah.   Tahnee: (10:17) You're talking about... This is an in-person one that you do.   Caitlin Priday: (10:22) Yeah. We also do them online.   Tahnee: (10:25) Yeah, because I thought I saw on your socials that you had online versions.   Caitlin Priday: (10:28) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.   Tahnee: (10:29) So for people that are interested in this, it's learning to work with jade eggs and energy practices. Can you explain a bit about the container of the work [crosstalk 00:10:37]. Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (10:37) Yeah. We work with obsidian eggs, so jade-   Tahnee: (10:41) Oh sorry, yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (10:41) No, that's okay.   Tahnee: (10:42) It's my brain.   Caitlin Priday: (10:43) She's got baby brain, everyone. Baby brain.   Tahnee: (10:46) [inaudible 00:10:46]. Yes, eggs. I should have just... yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (10:49) It's all right.   Tahnee: (10:52) Those things in your vagina that you move around and helps with itching.   Caitlin Priday: (10:57) Exactly.   Tahnee: (10:58) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (10:58) So obsidian a bit unique. Obsidian comes from the Mexican protocol. It's quite strong. I discovered the egg in Mexico about 10 years ago. And then I came back to Australia with it and had to contact for it for a while. And then I told Sharon about, and she said, "Oh my God, I've had this programme written for ages." And she'd actually been told by a psychic that she'd write a programme around the egg. And she was like, "Oh no, no. I don't want to do that." Because she'd worked with the jade egg when she was a Daoist monk and had gone, "No, that's not for me." But when I brought the Mexican egg in, she got really excited because Sharon's actually Mayan, so it was very lineage aligned for her.   Caitlin Priday: (11:45) We kind of started working with egg ourselves and we were like, "Okay, this is really powerful." And so we wanted to honour the protocol of working with the obsidian egg, which is very different to jade. Jade works with vaginal strength, also just like pelvic floor, sexual energy, that kind of thing. But we are really firm believers on if you don't have a cleansed and clear womb before you get into doing sexual and central practises with the energy body, you actually can amplify a lot of the wounds that you already have there.   Caitlin Priday: (12:18) And the obsidian really, really is like a cleansing and clearing stone. So we put it in at nighttime and it helps bring up the subconscious. So the subconscious will come up via dreaming and it's also a mirror stone, so it will... It's very special the way it works. It will bring people in and out of your life to help you realise what you're working on deeper. Like pretty much every time, at least four or five people in the group will have an ex-boyfriend pop up. Every time. It's magical, because... It's a womb Buddha. The womb broom, that's what we call it. It helps clear the womb.   Caitlin Priday: (13:01) So things will stop popping up, and it will also amplify things, like I was saying before, like sisterhood wounds or the mother wound or where we're unstable in our energy bodies, that kind of thing. Because obsidian really grounds you into your body. So people that disassociate easily, it's a really good stone for that. It helps people like come firmly into the body. So yeah, that's been one of the most potent tools I've had for doing shadow work because we've been working with it for about five years now and we've had over 500 women go through the programme and it's also developed into working with other eggs as well. Working with rose is the second part of the programme, and then working with amethyst is the third part of the programme.   Tahnee: (13:44) Beautiful.   Caitlin Priday: (13:48) Yeah, it's a fully embodied programme.   Tahnee: (13:50) So kind of womb, heart and then third eye. Is that what [crosstalk 00:13:53]? Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (13:54) Yeah. Well, it's very Daoist, like I was saying. So the Daoists actually work with the three cauldrons. Yeah. So you have the womb caldron, the heart caldron and then the upper dantian, which is the pineal gland. So it's like a full embodiment programme.   Tahnee: (14:09) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Caitlin Priday: (14:10) Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:10) But that's this Empress and Dragon or that's another [crosstalk 00:14:13]?   Caitlin Priday: (14:13) Yeah. No, that's The Empress And The Dragon. I just specifically run an obsidian... I'd love to run the other ones at some point, but I'm just an obsidian woman.   Tahnee: (14:21) My shadow friend.   Caitlin Priday: (14:22) That's what I am.   Tahnee: (14:24) Well, I'm so interested that... You know there's heaps of obsidian here in Byron, like in the hills?   Caitlin Priday: (14:28) Exactly.   Tahnee: (14:29) Yeah. So it's [crosstalk 00:14:30].   Caitlin Priday: (14:30) Obsidian woman.   Tahnee: (14:31) Yeah. And we lived on a property with a really deep underground obsidian reservoir and man, whew, that was a time.   Caitlin Priday: (14:41) Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:43) Okay. It was like, we conceived our child, but also just like the psychic kind of downloads and the awakening on that land was really powerful.   Caitlin Priday: (14:53) Yeah.   Tahnee: (14:53) It's an amazing stone.   Caitlin Priday: (14:57) Well, you know, on that point, thanks for bringing that up, that's why people come to the Byron Shire. Generally they'll come and have... They'll break up with their partner or they'll get pregnant, or they have a massive awakening.   Tahnee: (15:09) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (15:10) Obsidian is volcanic, and obviously good things are formed under pressure, like diamonds are. It's the same with obsidian portals. High obsidian places are usually places of deep transformation, like Bali's obsidian.   Tahnee: (15:25) Hawaii area.   Caitlin Priday: (15:25) Yeah, Mexico, Mount Shasta.   Tahnee: (15:27) Shanghai.   Caitlin Priday: (15:28) And they're the places that people are drawn to in order to hear. So once you pop that inside of your body, you have the possibility for deep transformation.   Tahnee: (15:38) Well, I will definitely link to that in the show notes for your upcoming one. So you've got one coming up in the Shire.   Caitlin Priday: (15:43) In March.   Tahnee: (15:43) And then in you guys run them online sort of regularly, is that?   Caitlin Priday: (15:47) I've got one here in March. I've got one in Bellingen for the first time in April.   Tahnee: (15:53) Cool.   Caitlin Priday: (15:53) And then I'll run one online, and Melbourne if the... If Mr. Andrews permits, I will come to Melbourne.   Tahnee: (16:02) Throw some obsidian at him and... That's unkind. Maybe it might help.   Caitlin Priday: (16:05) Hmm.   Tahnee: (16:10) Yeah, I'm interested in that link you have with Mexico, because I think your book was one the first I saw where... I mean I've heard a lot of postpartum books, and you actually had Rebozo in there.   Caitlin Priday: (16:21) Yeah.   Tahnee: (16:22) The tying and... I'd read about that online but never in someone's actual postpartum books. I thought that was cool. So could you speak a little bit about that impact on the kind of Mayan lineage has had on you and your work. And obviously is Sharon's into it, that's obviously [crosstalk 00:16:37].   Caitlin Priday: (16:36) Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. I don't know how it's happened. I lived in Central America for a year. And it's funny, without having any cultural appropriation, that's definitely not my style, and I love having right relationship with all indigenous rights of passage and ceremonies and all of that. But it's interesting if I revise my journey to getting here, how much the Mexican practices have impacted me as a person. I think living there and being able to be in such a deep connection and honouring of the land really helped me understand their magic and their way. But yeah, obviously I worked with cacao. That's definitely one of my master plants. I don't work with-   Tahnee: (17:21) With Keith, right?   Caitlin Priday: (17:21) With Keith, yeah.   Tahnee: (17:24) Just for those listening, we were both in the same... Probably not the same time. I was a 2015, I think. But yeah, in San Marcos La Laguna in Guatemala. So it's a great cacao shaman who's very well known around the world.   Caitlin Priday: (17:40) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.   Tahnee: (17:41) So you worked with him or you [crosstalk 00:17:43].   Caitlin Priday: (17:43) Yeah, I worked with him a little bit, but I also mostly just had cacao all the time, which I don't do anymore. I don't recommend it, definitely fried my adrenals. And I've been on my SuperFeast Jing Herbs since then trying to put myself back together.   Tahnee: (17:59) Yeah, absolutely.   Caitlin Priday: (17:59) Yeah.   Tahnee: (18:02) Especially the ceremonial cacao, it's really... I get high off it. I can't touch it really.   Caitlin Priday: (18:04) No. A tiny little bit for me, and oh gosh. Anyway, I made chocolates and all that kind of thing. I've had my massive journey with cacao, and I love it dearly but I don't need to indulge in it so much anymore.   Caitlin Priday: (18:17) But yeah, as I've gone more into my birth work, I found that that Mexican lineage has really come through. And it was no surprise that I found a teacher that is Mayan, like very Latino. She's got her other practises as well, but having that Mayan thread in there has been really deep and resonating for me. But with the birth work, yeah, Rebozo... Look, I really am not an expert on Rebozo. I still have a long way to go. I really honour the Rebozo and how it's even created. It's like all of the South American and Central American countries, like they have their own special weave. So their weave is like their creative signature. And so most Rebozos will never be the same because it's created by a woman whose signature is that weave or that colouring. So Rebozos-   Tahnee: (19:12) Could you just even quickly explain what it's because I was just thinking that-   Caitlin Priday: (19:12) Oh yeah, sorry. Of course.   Tahnee: (19:13) ... people probably don't even know. That's my bad.   Caitlin Priday: (19:16) Mm-hmm (affirmative). No way, that's also my bad.   Tahnee: (19:20) Like, "What even is this thing?"   Caitlin Priday: (19:20) Yeah. So they're actually this beautiful long piece of fabric. They're quite thick. And like I was saying, they all have different colours and different weaves and designs on them. And Rebozo basically means like the way of life. It is such an integral part of Mexican women's lives. Like they use their Rebozo to carry shopping, they tie it up. They use it to tie babies on. They use it in birth work. And it is used in postpartum a bit, that's with closing of the bones, which I can go into in a moment. But in birth itself, it's a labour technique.   Caitlin Priday: (20:00) Again, I've learnt, but I'm not fully, fully trained. So it's not something that I necessarily offer because I'm really integral in wanting to understand something before I go and put it on the table for myself. So I'm by no means a Rebozo expert. But they do, in Mexico, use it for helping if interventions kind of starting to creep in, or baby's not moving or there's a lot of techniques that they can do. They call it sifting, so they'll pop the Rebozo underneath the womb and the woman will be on all-fours, and they'll sift the Rebozo.   Tahnee: (20:42) [crosstalk 00:20:42].   Caitlin Priday: (20:42) Yeah, to get the hips kind of jiggling and open. It's a really integral part of their work. If people do want purchase Rebozos, I highly recommend finding a really good source for them because some of them are just getting pumped out of China and if we're going to use indigenous tools, we want to make sure that we give back properly. So yeah, so that's Rebozo. But we use it in closing the bones as well, which is a postpartum technique where we basically help put a woman back together, so that's physically and also energetically. It's kind of like helping shut down the story of the birth. Because there so many women I've heard, I haven't had a baby yet, but obviously I work with women a lot in this realm. Most women say, "I have to reach out to the stars to find my baby and come back with my baby before I could birth it," which I'm sure you can definitely resonate with. And so-   Tahnee: (21:40) It's a portal, that's for sure.   Caitlin Priday: (21:43) Yeah, exactly. Where there's a portal... mm-hmm (affirmative). I see closing the bones, you know, shut the portal down.   Tahnee: (21:47) Yeah, well it's like any... We've both done plant medicine and it's like you don't just walk away at the end of the journey. You have to have that ceremonial ending and then beginning the integration process. I think that birth is the same, right?   Caitlin Priday: (22:05) 100%   Tahnee: (22:05) We have to honour it with ceremony and... yeah. So you work... because we've spoken a bit ourselves about your doula work.   Caitlin Priday: (22:13) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (22:13) So you offer that sort of pre, I guess, natal support or during the prenatal period, and then also into maybe the pregnant period. Prenatals before that, yes? I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. And then you also do of this aftercare, so can you speak a little bit about your work with that and how you work with women and I guess what you observe as a... Because it's interesting, I think. I actually don't know that many doulas who haven't... You and I both know, Oni. There's a couple of people I know that haven't kids, but most women seem to come to this work after they've had their own children. And so it's interesting there's all these young women in this area really picking up the torch, I think. So yeah, I'd love to hear your take on all of that.   Caitlin Priday: (22:59) Yeah. Well, I think like for me at the moment, I definitely feel like I'm not completely maiden anymore. I feel like I'm transitioning more into mother, but I've had the exuberance of the maiden for the last 10 years and mothers need maidens. And I'm very, very into helping other maidens in my community learn how to look after mothers properly, because mothers are the backbone of our society. So that's been my driving force as a birth worker to really, really help mothers be strong and able to support this next generation. So that's kind of my passion, to make sure that this next generation are coming through in a strong and supported way, like in a village.   Caitlin Priday: (23:41) I can't really explain why that's been my thing, but that's just my heart calling, so I'm just... That's what I've followed. But postpartum kind of comes naturally. I think having that backbone of cooking and also space holding and helping people just in workshops and that kind of thing, I think it's easy to see where a gap can be filled. And postpartum is such a gap. It's just horrific. We think that we're doing well in the West, but you have to just turn to the East and see how well they're doing it to see how much more we could be doing.   Caitlin Priday: (24:18) Initially with the book, that's what Tahlia and I talked about a lot, because I was there with Tahlia when she was in her preconception period with her firstborn. And then I also was at her secondborn's birth, Ochre, and helped with postpartum as well. It really became the fuel to our fire, and just realising that the village is really... Not even necessarily missing, but it actually needs to be retaught.   Caitlin Priday: (24:43) There's something about our culture that because we haven't experienced or we haven't seen our mothers experiencing it, we don't know what to do. And so we need other people who say, "This is what you do and this is how we care for them." So essentially, that's how the book was created, like a really easy go-to manual for that. But in postpartum, I'm all about nourishing, and that's across the board, but predominantly with food. Yeah.   Tahnee: (25:11) It's super interesting you say that about the cultural piece, because I had a friend have twins recently and another friend of ours, who's in her maybe late forties, she... I said, "Oh look, I've set up a meal train." And this person was like, "A what?" And I was like, "A meal train." She was like, "I've never heard of this." And I was like, "Well, we all make food and bring it to the family." And she was like, "Oh, when I had kids that wasn't... you didn't do that." And I was like, "What do people do?" She's like, "I know you just ate... Your husband made food or..." And I was like, "Oh."   Tahnee: (25:43) It's such an interesting... It's only been... She's what, 10 years older than me? That still wasn't even on her radar when she had children. And yeah, I think there's stuff we really take for granted, especially in the Shire, where there is such an awareness, I think, of postpartum being important. It's still not perfect, but it's getting better.   Caitlin Priday: (26:03) Yeah.   Tahnee: (26:04) Yeah. I think there's this real lack of awareness of... I think when there's those big changes, like grief births, people often back away.   Caitlin Priday: (26:12) Yes.   Tahnee: (26:12) It's almost like, "I'll give you space and then I'll kind of lean in later."   Caitlin Priday: (26:17) Yes.   Tahnee: (26:19) It's almost like a reminder to people that it's actually really great to lean in and maybe they don't know what they need or what to ask for, but bring them food, bring them a treat, make them a cake, you know? There's some sort of basic things we can do. And that's what I loved about the book. You guys had some stuff around boundary setting, which I thought was really awesome, with families. It had all the great recipes. You talked about different ceremonial aspects around whether it's closing the bones or any of those kind of things.   Caitlin Priday: (26:46) Yeah.   Tahnee: (26:46) I think that sort of stuff more and more... You know, bringing that awareness through is so important. And it's kind of what your work is about, like with this shamanic dimension of your work. It's like we need to honour... You're feeling that transition already, like your maiden to motherhood transition. So many women I speak to don't even observe that change until they're a couple of years postpartum and they're like, "Oh my god, I'm a totally different person."   Caitlin Priday: (27:09) 100%.   Tahnee: (27:11) Yeah. Have you been tuning into that through your practice or is it just like an awakening that you're feeling that motherhood is calling? Or what's that feeling like for you?   Caitlin Priday: (27:22) Well, it's interesting that you just brought up this like people backing away and death, and birth. Because I've always wanted to be a mother, but when my father died three years ago, that's when I really, really realised more about that nature of death and birth being such a similar portal, very much not like Hollywood, as we are all shown in the movies. Very gentle, humbling. Yeah, very different, very ceremonial act. So that really concreted that for me. Yeah, it's been hanging around for a while, but what I'm starting to realise more is, and I wrote a post about this the other day, is again honouring that season within, like honouring the maiden while she still is here. And by doing that, that's like having fun, enjoying moments of silence, doing all of things that I want to do because I watch my friends around me not be able to do that anymore.   Caitlin Priday: (28:30) And in society, I think we have a lot of lost mothers who have a tendency to hold onto the maiden because they haven't been celebrated or witnessed in that shift or that rite of passage correctly. And so like you're saying, in postpartum it's four years down the track and they're like, "Oh my god, what just happened to me?" So I try to really honour those seasons within myself, but I also like to facilitate that for other people. And as much as closing of the bones is a postpartum practice, there are some people who open up closing the bones for people that have gone death as well. And so I even experienced my own closing in the bones on the grief and the death around my father to help close that portal down as well. So yeah, motherhood is something that I think about and I feel like I do embody that archetype of the mother for many people. But I do like to honour the maiden as well because she has a place and I don't want to be a mother in a few years that's still trying to hold on to my maidenhood.   Caitlin Priday: (29:35) You know, obviously we have an internal maiden that lives within us, as we do a chrone and a maga, which is the menopausal season. But when I become a mother, I want to be embodiment of the mother, not holding onto aspects of myself that don't need to have the stage. You know?   Tahnee: (29:54) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I think it's really interesting. And I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, my daughter, feeling this... It was a grief, but it was like a poignant grief. It was kind of like, "Oh, I'm changing seasons." We talk about that in TCM, like the full, the autumn season, like things falling away and the sort of dying that needs to up for something new to happen. And I think our culture is so afraid of death in all of its forms that we kind of lose the beauty of those transitions and those seasons. And motherhood is a death. You do have to, to some extent, kill the person you were before to become the person you're becoming. It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't mean you don't integrate. But it's like, yeah, there's a bit of a... Well, it's certainly been my experience and I've really enjoyed it. But I think it's something that we...   Tahnee: (30:53) We conceived this child, my partner got the call to go to Sydney. His father was dying. His father died. You know, we were at the funeral within... I think I was six weeks pregnant or something.   Caitlin Priday: (31:03) Yeah.   Tahnee: (31:05) And it's just like there's something for me that's so beautiful about that transition, even though it could be... Like people were saying to us, "Oh my God, I can't believe what you're going through, and you're pregnant." I'm like, "It's actually... " You know. My partner did all the death care. He washed his father, he dressed him, he cut his beard. And his ability to hold that, that's the kind of... that I'm birthing with this person, it's such a... and that I'm getting to share this goodbye and this ritual with him. I think it's something really powerful about that and that's given me a lot of confidence and faith in the other side of the coin, right, which is birth.   Caitlin Priday: (31:44) Yeah.   Tahnee: (31:44) Birth and death are the same portal really.   Caitlin Priday: (31:47) Yeah.   Tahnee: (31:48) So yeah, I think those death and grief teachings are very powerful when it comes to motherhood. And that's what I think people don't get, like of having a doula or someone around who can support that process if you aren't someone who maybe naturally is drawn to that work on your own.   Caitlin Priday: (32:07) Yeah.   Tahnee: (32:07) And I think that's where people... I don't know. What do you see when you first meet with women? What do they think a doula does versus kind of what you feel like you do? Do you have any experience with that or?   Caitlin Priday: (32:21) I think it's interesting. What comes to up a lot actually is that they want... Generally what I've found is that the doula wants the woman to be there to do all of the things that she thinks her partner can't do. But what I've actually really realised is that this thing that we placed on to men in the birth world, about men being redundant, or this is how a lot of men say, "I feel redundant," actually breaks down the family unit a little bit. So when I go into my initial meetings with people, I'm very focused on supporting and talking with the father, just as much as I am talking with the mother who's pregnant. Because if we talk again about that rite of passage aspect of things, a woman is very visibly going through a rite of passage. Whereas a man is also having a rite of passage, but there's nothing visceral or physical about it.   Caitlin Priday: (33:19) So, a lot of women that want a doula, I think, are quite familiar with what a doula is, which is that emotional support or that physical support, or if there's other kids involved, somebody that can cater to and hold space for the family as a whole. But I'm really into making sure that dads are included in that as well, because we can't have a society of women that are going through a rite of passage, and men that are just ignored or forgotten about. So for me, as a doula, that's been a pretty strong part of my work. I'm not sure if that's what is happening for other doulas, but it seems to be a theme with me that I'm actually there to help equally empower men as I am to the woman.   Caitlin Priday: (34:06) But yeah, I think we're lucky now. I think people do know what doulas are more often. If people that are listening don't know what a doula is, it actually means woman's servant. So midwife means with woman and doula is woman's servant. Doulas have been around forever. We were wet nurses back in the Greek times, or we were nannies or... Women have been assisting women for thousands of years in this way. Doula, isn't a new thing. It's actually a Greek term from thousands of years ago, so it goes to show that we have been here forever.   Tahnee: (34:41) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Caitlin Priday: (34:43) It's just that now people are realising that they need us more. I think it's challenging at the moment for doulas because COVID has really put a strain on our ability to work. Women that are home birthing generally are in a different state of mind. And sometimes they don't need a doula as much, because if you're home birthing you're going to have a private midwife, or your free birthing and you don't feel like you want that support anyway. So that's a different thing. Like doulas are really needed in that hospital environment at the moment, and it's really challenging. All the births that I've had in the last few months that were lined up, I haven't been able to attend. So [crosstalk 00:35:25].   Tahnee: (35:25) Just for people who are listening, they've basically said there's no support people allowed, is that right?   Caitlin Priday: (35:30) Yeah. Just the partner. But even in Sydney at the moment, they've had really intense birth restrictions where-   Tahnee: (35:36) No partners have been allowed.   Caitlin Priday: (35:37) ... not partner. Mm-mm (negative).   Tahnee: (35:39) Which is just horrific.   Caitlin Priday: (35:41) Yeah.   Tahnee: (35:42) Yeah. And talk about fracturing the family unit.   Caitlin Priday: (35:44) Exactly. Yeah, because women come out completely disturbed. There's a lot of birth trauma going on, not to discount people who have had beautiful experiences in hospitals. Because even in the Shire, I love hearing the stores that come out of Lismore.   Tahnee: (36:01) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (36:02) There's so many positive obstetricians and midwives out there. But on a predominant basis, if you look at statistics, we are failing women in the hospital sense of things. There's cascades of interventions, as my birth working teacher, Ria Dempsey, calls it. So yeah, we are needed, but we are not able to be there, so it's... Not for the portal itself when the baby comes through.   Tahnee: (36:29) Yep. Yeah, I think when we met, you were having to phone support the partner in one birth and-   Caitlin Priday: (36:35) Yeah. That's right. I forgot about that.   Tahnee: (36:38) Yeah, I think it's actually really devastating for women. I mean, I also believe in the power of the female body and the energy to be like, "This is my space." But it's a lot to hold if you aren't experienced and you don't know the system in you. I think that's what's so valuable about having someone who's like a birth keeper of some kind with you who navigates that world regularly. It's like they can be of support and help. And it's quite scary that that's all happening at the moment.   Caitlin Priday: (37:09) Yeah. It's wild. I mean doulas are advocates essentially, but as I've spoken to other birth keepers who are obviously... We're all having the same problem. Once the other woman can't go to hospital, realising that doula support is not just holding your hand as a baby comes out. Doula support is like teaching women how to advocate for themselves, what their rights are, teaching their partner, "This is how you rub her back properly. No, not quite there. A little bit down, you want to know now or she'll scream at you in labour if it ain't right."   Caitlin Priday: (37:43) Other things like postpartum planning, people really hone in on, "Oh, this is my birth plan." But postpartum planning is... if not more important, I think, than birth itself. Because you're got to have your structure and your village set up. So doulas are stepping into different roles now. We're learning how to work with what's going on. We can FaceTime, you know?   Tahnee: (38:09) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (38:10) We can call.   Tahnee: (38:12) Well, I think that piece around education and advocacy is super important. I think, I even can reflect on my first pregnancy being... Like wanting to be nice to this midwife suggesting something I didn't want to do, just a prenatal test. But it's that sort of conditioning we have as women sometimes to be like, "Okay. Well, I don't want to do it, but you're the professional so I'll agree." You know?   Caitlin Priday: (38:40) Yeah.   Tahnee: (38:40) It's just like... And I'm pretty stubborn and strong and I'm easily affected by that stuff. I think having someone there that can be like a sounding board and just provide that mirror, that reflection back to the couple around speaking to fear, speaking to... having someone to voice those concerns to I think just can be really helpful, that isn't your care provider necessarily, that isn't... you know? Because I think they can... I don't know. Like you said, it's just a mixed bag because some people have great experiences and other people, they get the fear of God put into them.   Caitlin Priday: (39:12) 100%.   Tahnee: (39:12) So it can be really different for everybody.   Caitlin Priday: (39:17) That's where at the moment I'm... because I'm a kinesiologist as well, that's my kind of-   Tahnee: (39:22) You're psychic. That was literally my next question. Yeah, I'd love to hear how you see that kind of intersection, because I think...   Caitlin Priday: (39:30) Yeah.   Tahnee: (39:31) I see that as a really helpful tool to have the doula as well.   Caitlin Priday: (39:35) Mm-hmm (affirmative). I mean you touched on a really important thing, which is what is your relationship to fear or stress or pain. You know? These are things that most doulas will go into anyway before the... Like, when we take on a client, we have our paperwork and we're generally having that rapport with not just the mum, the dad as well. If the dad is fearful of birth, that's going to come into the room. So it's important that we have these kinds of conversations with people.   Caitlin Priday: (40:02) At the moment, I'm really incorporating that into my kinesiology work. Because I did that workshop and retreat work for such a long time, I really felt like even with Empress And The Dragon, I could be doing more. And I'm really into integration, like helping people actually understand what's going on. Because I think people can have really spiritual experiences, but they have no grounding. They'll come out kind of going like, "What just happened?" Like you said with plant medicines, people come out and go, "I don't know what just happened to me."   Tahnee: (40:32) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (40:34) Yeah. "I've been blown open, now what?"   Tahnee: (40:35) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (40:35) So that's why I got into kinesiology. But what I've actually been really finding is helping women in kinesiology prior to having birth. So really using their birth as a goal, like the kind of birth that they want to have, and helping them move stress and fear around that to help them get more mentally straight around the kind of birth that they want to have.   Caitlin Priday: (40:58) Kinesiology's amazing because it goes into your own birth story, and that's an important thing even without kinesiology. I think if a woman's preparing to get pregnant even, or is pregnant, unpacking your own birth story, which I'm sure you and Jane would have talked about on her podcast.   Tahnee: (41:14) We talked about menopause.   Caitlin Priday: (41:17) Okay, yeah.   Tahnee: (41:17) But I've done her workshops and obviously unpacked that. I think it's really helpful... I mean, I was very conscious after my birth of my daughter that my mother was very big on physiological birth, and like, "You're like a horse. You pace around. You don't lie on your back." But it was also this very stubborn kind of... I don't know, like almost a masculine approach to-   Caitlin Priday: (41:43) Harder.   Tahnee: (41:44) Yeah, like kind of a tough approach. Like, "I don't need anybody. I can't do..." And I could feel elements of that where I was like, "Don't touch me. Get away from me. I've got..." You know? And I think partly is necessary because that's who the person I am, but also I can feel that being some of her energy.   Caitlin Priday: (42:03) Yeah.   Tahnee: (42:04) Yeah, so I think it's really interesting to reflect on it and... yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (42:07) Yeah.   Tahnee: (42:08) And I mean, I imagine doing it with kinesiology where there's an embodied response that you're able to translate or... yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (42:14) Yeah. You've got that really somatic response of where it's at and what's going on. But I believe that you don't have to go and see a kinesiologist to get fear out of the body before birth. I think that there are so many practices that women could be doing prior to even getting pregnant. The preconception journey is just so important to start as a maiden, like you were saying before. Like unpacking these things, "What was my birth? Like what was my first period like? What's my relationship with fear?" Doing things like dance, movement, like meditation, shamanic journeying, drum journeying. There's so many different avenues that we can go into to start helping us unpack our relationship with our body and our relationship with the internal mother or the mother, the mother wound, that is really important to go into prior to having your baby.   Caitlin Priday: (43:14) I know that people have mother wounds that still have amazing births, but I think that anything that you can do to help you get prepared for a normal physiological labour, if that's what you want, is just so deeply important. And we do go into that a little bit in the book as well. But even what you're saying before about the people pleaser. You know? Like how you're saying that, "No. Yeah, you can do that. I'll do that." I do believe that the good girl archetype is something that needs to be talked about more in society, for women.   Tahnee: (43:49) Yeah, nice girl.   Caitlin Priday: (43:52) Like, "Okay, I will do that." Yeah. I think [crosstalk 00:43:54].   Tahnee: (43:54) I agree. And I mean it's a shadow really of what you're actually thinking, which is, "No." But I think that's an interesting... I think that's one of the things people underestimate. I actually wanted to bookmark this a while ago. At the very beginning you spoke about therapy, and for me, therapy has actually been a really important tool over my life. Probably at like 19 I started going seriously for quite a long time, probably close to a decade. And then I had a bit of a break, and then I've gone back at other phases of life. Now I work with more like a somatic therapist I guess.   Caitlin Priday: (44:36) Yeah.   Tahnee: (44:37) But I just find for integration and for self-reflection, it's just such a useful tool. But it's not often... The spiritual world, in my experience anyway, poo-poos therapy a little bit sometimes.   Caitlin Priday: (44:49) Yeah.   Tahnee: (44:50) I'm interested in your own journey with therapy and how you sort of see that affecting the integration of your work.   Caitlin Priday: (44:56) I'll say one thing, never trust any practitioner that doesn't go to a therapist. That's just my opinion.   Tahnee: (45:03) I agree.   Caitlin Priday: (45:04) If you are seeing somebody that isn't getting supervision, run. I really believe that we have elders and therapists for a reason, like we have people that have gone through rights and passages before us to call us out on things. So for me personally, I have a lot of supervision, mostly because I obviously offer a variety of different things. Sharon is a supervisor for my shamanic work. My teacher, Parajat, supervises me for kinesiology. I call Anna, who's my postpartum teacher for birth stuff, if I'm not really sure what's going on. And then I also just have like normal therapy, which I use EMDR as a tool for me. That's been great because I've of early childhood trauma. If people don't know what EMDR is, I really recommend looking it up. It's an eye movement, very sensory experience where you are basically just helping turn off neural pathways. And I also do parts therapy, which is definitely a shadow thing.   Caitlin Priday: (46:13) Do you know what parts therapy is?   Tahnee: (46:16) No, and EMDR interestingly enough, when I studied Daoist stuff with Mantak Chia, we used it... We didn't call it EMDR, it's actually a Daoist technique that we use in energy work to clear patterns or loops that people get stuck in. It's interesting you're using that because that's... yeah. We're taught at very effective for trauma and loops.   Caitlin Priday: (46:36) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Well, we do it in kinesiology as well. It's more like a subconscious... like sabotage programmes we call them, where it's like the brain goes into internal conflicts or reversals. So the brain kind of fries itself when it's gone through trauma.   Tahnee: (46:51) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (46:52) But EMDR has been really helpful for me because it was predominantly used to people that have gone through really hectic PTSD. They started using it on like war victims and stuff, and it just kind of helps turn off a memory. Because when somebody's rerunning a traumatic memory and over and over again, their amygdala is unable to get out of fight or flight. So it just helps people calm down the fight or flight, or freeze response.   Caitlin Priday: (47:16) So that's been helpful for me, but parts therapy has been more interesting. That's what I've been going into recently and that's more shadow work. It's like calling out archetypes within ourselves and letting them have the chair. We move in the room and we'll sit on the chair and it's a bit more interactive and you actually let that part say what it wants to say.   Tahnee: (47:38) I've actually done stuff like this with this anthroposophical therapist I saw years ago. I did it about five years with her. But yeah, I would sit and I would talk to... and then I would go over there. And then I would also have to move as that kind of aspect of self and throw things.   Caitlin Priday: (47:55) Exactly. Yeah.   Tahnee: (47:56) Make shapes. It was quite... At the beginning I was like, "What the fuck am I doing?" But it actually was very powerful. Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (48:06) Yeah. And with parts therapy as well, you find the opposite of the parts. So when you have a very dominating part, you'll have a part that's very quiet.   Tahnee: (48:12) Timid.   Caitlin Priday: (48:12) Timid. So, that actually is also a shadow. It's not a bad shadow. This is what I was saying before, shadows aren't good or bad, it's just a part that that's been suppressed. Recently I found one of my main shadows was the nurturing quiet woman, because most people that know me personally will know that I'm quite loud and vivacious and extroverted. And that's partly my family conditioning, but that's also my personality.   Caitlin Priday: (48:39) But I also have a very nurturing, quiet, internal side of myself, and I really shoved that away. That was a shadow as well, so that was really helpful. But yeah, I've just found having any form of therapy... I mean, I've done most things, to be honest. I've drank plant medicine a million times, I've done kinesiology, I've done ecstatic dance. I've done ceremonies, but I've actually just found traditional therapy helps a lot.   Tahnee: (49:07) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Caitlin Priday: (49:08) Yeah.   Tahnee: (49:09) And I mean, in terms of your ceremonial work, what does that look like now? Because I think life is ceremony to be a bit... you know?   Caitlin Priday: (49:19) Yeah.   Tahnee: (49:21) But how do you integrate this element or this idea of ceremony into your personal life and work, given that it's something that you've obviously had a lot of experience with?   Caitlin Priday: (49:29) Hmm, it's interesting you ask that. My relationship with ceremony's interesting at the moment. Website thing keeps coming up. Yeah, it's different at the moment because I put it on the back burner a little bit. I think I've become quite masculine in the last few years. That's a product of the grief and just things I've been going through, practicality-wise. I find ritual and ceremonies very feminine and I haven't, funnily enough, made enough space for the feminine.   Caitlin Priday: (50:00) As you were saying, a lot of people are like, "Ceremony is life." And they'll poo-poo it, but actually life is... it really is ceremony. And you know, five years ago I'd build altars and light candles and incense, and it's a big show. And actually, to be honest, I think it was more of a performance. Like, "I'm so spiritual, look at the spiritual things I do."   Tahnee: (50:22) "Look how much incense I can burn." Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (50:23) Exactly. But now I'm older and I'm more integrated. I mean, I've also done a huge ceremonial training with Sharon. And like I said, I've sat in ceremonies many times and serve cacao ceremony, blue lotus ceremony. But yeah, to be honest, now it honestly is the mundane. It's just like watering my plants or having a little bowl of food for the ancestors in my therapy room. That's really important for me. And even just ritualistically having energy hygiene in my clinic space, like a bowl of salt water for every client that comes in, or a candle when I feel like the presence of my dad. It's not such a full blown thing anymore.   Caitlin Priday: (51:06) But even just... like I got to go over and see one of my really close friend's newborn babies two days ago, and that was a ceremony. You know, flowers and-   Tahnee: (51:17) They're baby Buddhas too, you can't be in-   Caitlin Priday: (51:18) Exactly. I was like-   Tahnee: (51:20) You can be in the presence of a newborn and not be like, "Hello, special being."   Caitlin Priday: (51:23) Oh my god. That is holy.   Tahnee: (51:29) Yeah.   Caitlin Priday: (51:29) And then big ceremony in my life is being with my dad when he passed as well. My relationship is very different. I don't need to post about it on Instagram to know that I'm a ceremonial woman. You know?   Tahnee: (51:40) Yeah, it's interesting. I did a workshop earlier this year. I actually can't remember the guy's name right now, having such a blonde day. But he's a teacher from... He's been initiated to Native American lineage, but he is actually also like a pastor in the Christian tradition, and he's also just studied theology. And his point was really around... and I know this life is ceremony thing can feel sarcastic. But his point was like "It's container, it's intention." You know?   Caitlin Priday: (52:13) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (52:13) It's this sort of idea of also having enclosure and then integration. And we can do this when we get in a car. We can do it when we... you know?   Caitlin Priday: (52:23) Yeah.   Tahnee: (52:23) It's like how many times you get in the car and you're on your phone and picking music and you're putting your seatbelt on and you're trying to reverse. And it's like, "Get in the car. Get clear on where you're going. Save attention. Be present with the moment." It sort of just really landed for me how much that changes in my life as well. It used to be I had to practise and I had to do this. It has to be all these things. I have to look like something. And now it's like tending my family, and my chickens, and myself. It's very boring and not particularly... Like you said, not Instagramable, but...   Caitlin Priday: (53:00) No, it's the beauty of the mundane. But I will say in terms of actual ceremony, like when somebody is intentionally running a ceremony... I just have to bring it up because...   Tahnee: (53:13) No, please.   Caitlin Priday: (53:16) ... I promised Sharon that I'd be real on the call. Because I'm a part of her lineage, and so I'm like a spokesperson for the lineage and ceremony is a big part of our lineage. I've obviously apprenticed to her and worked with her for a long time. It's unfortunate in these times where Western people want to put a dollar on Eastern practises and really sell it out, in a way. I am a very, very big advocate for people that want to run ceremony for a job or to have a financial exchange that they actually get proper training for it, because ceremony works with spirits. That is what it is. That's how it always has been. And a true ceremony needs to be run in a proper grounded container, which is also generally known as a medicine wheel. Medicine wheels are in all types of cultures. They vary depending on the culture. But even if you're Celtic, they've always had medicine wheels as well.   Tahnee: (54:28) The Daoists have the turtle.   Caitlin Priday: (54:28) Yeah, exactly. And the native Americans have got their wheel and... Anyway, so there is always somebody there is the holder and the spokesperson and the leader of that wheel, if there is a ceremony that's going on. That's why there's always wise people or sages or whatever. I do have a problem with ceremony being thrown around and I do have a problem with ceremonies being put on the internet, because I believe that true ceremony isn't shared in that way. I do think that we could do better. People that post pictures of altars and things like that, they're sacred portals, they're sacred spaces where the spirits come in to do their work. So I don't believe that posting sacred pictures online is doing that work justice. If anything, it's diluting the magic and the ritual that people have been putting their energy into.   Caitlin Priday: (55:22) It's like if you're building an alter for manifestation and then you put it on Instagram and then everybody looks at it, it can really actually do the opposite. It can actually dilute the energy from it. So ceremony is sacred, but I do believe that ceremony is also contained. And if somebody wants to run ceremony that they definitely need to get proper training because a real ceremony will bring up shadows and triggers. And if the facilitator doesn't know how to handle that and hasn't done that work themselves, you're not going to be in a good space.   Tahnee: (55:54) Hmm. I'm really glad you've said all of that. And when I think about formal ceremonies I've attended, the casualness with which an experienced facilitator operates belies how much is going on underneath the surface. I've sat with people in their 60s and 70s who have been holding ceremonies for a very long time. They seem so nonchalant and relaxed. But then if you really tune in, there's like this eagle perception of they're literally above it all, watching and holding and architecting. You know?   Caitlin Priday: (56:31) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (56:32) It's just this very interesting dynamic to observe. And yes, I think that's a good distinction around, I guess, life is ceremony and our own personal relationship with that aspect. I'm a yoga teacher, and I find posting... My personal practice, I can't share it. I cannot. I've never been able to record. I watch people on Instagram. I'm like, "It's so interesting that they can record their practice." Like, I can record a class that I'm intending to share, and share it. But if it's like my practice, I'm like, "This is..." It's like recording myself having sex with my partner. It's very intimate for me. And yeah, I find it really interesting. Not to say other people are wrong, but it's just something I've never been able to cross as a boundary for myself.   Caitlin Priday: (57:18) Yeah. I mean, that's a really good point because we have to question before we post things, why are we actually posting it? Do we want validation? Do we want other people to think we're spiritual? Do we want to sell a workshop that we're bringing out in three months? You know? When something is truly sacred and intimate, why would you feel like you need other people to be involved in that? That's between you and the divine, or you and your ancestors or you and your spirit team. Yeah, I think it's a good point for us to put into the podcast. I think that would be a thing in itself.   Tahnee: (57:52) Yeah. Totally. It's like its whole-   Caitlin Priday: (57:54) I can feel the mystery between you and I going, "Well, that can be a whole other conversation."   Tahnee: (57:59) Yeah. I find this stuff... and I guess I find it valuable to discuss with people who have relationships with these things, because a part of me values that if someone saw someone's practice and was moved by their intentionality and their self connection and... I can see the value in that being a transmission that people can receive and maybe inspire them into their own version of that. You know?   Caitlin Priday: (58:27) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (58:27) I get it. I get that seeing someone's alter can inspire someone else to go and maybe... I remember last year seeing pictures from people on All Hallows' Eve kind of connecting with their ancestors and I thought, "Oh, that's actually really beautiful."   Caitlin Priday: (58:45) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (58:45) But I agree with you that part of me was also like, "Urgh. Did the ancestors want to be like on Instagram as well?"   Caitlin Priday: (58:52) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Tahnee: (58:54) Yeah. And I don't have a black and white answer for it. I have a very uncomfortable relationship with social media as it is. But I do think it's interesting when it comes to these things that are deeply intimate, like how do we maybe inspire or serve others through our work and our practise, and also keep something for ourselves. So just a constant-   Caitlin Priday: (59:13) We just embody it.   Tahnee: (59:15) Yeah. Constant dance, I think.   Caitlin Priday: (59:17)

Something we're passionate about at SuperFeast is honouring the depths and beauty of living with each of the five season seasons. Through observing the energetics of nature and consuming foods that are in season, we can flow in harmony with the element of each season. Summertime is the season of joy, festivities, sunshine, the heart and is associated with the Element of Fire. The energy of this season is upward and outward and driven by Yang energy. Naturally, we crave full sunshine, warmth, cooling foods, and activities that bring a sense of excitement. All too often in this season, we tend to overdo it and exhaust ourselves to the point of depletion. More than any other season, Summer is about maintaining balance (not always easy); The true art of living in Summer is to energise without exhausting. When the Fire element is in balance, the heart is strong, the mind is calm, and sleep is sound.    Here to introduce and explore the flavours, fruits, grains, vegetables, herbs, and spices of Summer, we have our favourite TCM Food Therapist, Kimberly Ashton. Kimberly's healing work centres around the power of functional food, Chinese medicine, the 5 Elements, food energetics, emotional anatomy, and energy medicine. Kimberly and Mason discuss dampness within the body, the Five-Element cycle, how to nourish the Yang energy and not overexert yourself to the point of affecting the kidneys, and adrenal burnout. Kimberly gives the full breakdown of what foods and flavours we should be eating to support vitality and how the energetics of these foods and the fire element work together within the body.    "Summer is a time for cooling foods, lighter cooking styles, a little bit of spice, a little bit of bitterness, and keeping your circulation moving; it's not a time to sit in front of the tv, save that for winter. Look after your sleep, mental, and emotional state as well because that can be easily tipped, as well, in this season".   - Kimberly Ashton      Mason and Kimberly discuss: The Fire organ system. Foods to eat in Summer. Burnout and the Kidney's. How to avoid Summer burn out. Chinese medicine food therapy. The beauty of the afternoon naps. Why we need to sweat in Summer. What is the Fire Element and Fire Qi? Signs your fire element is out of balance. Cooking and preparing food in Summer. Bitter and spice; The flavours of Summer. Listening to your body and seeing what it wants. Dampness and not over cooling the digestive system.   Who is Kimberly Ashton? Kimberly Ashton is a Holistic Wellness coach that focuses on the 5 Elements, Food Therapy and Chinese Medicine. She spent over 18 years in Asia and Shanghai, 8 of which she co-founded China's first health food store & plant-based nutrition cooking studio. Now back in Australia, she launched Qi Food Therapy in 2020, a platform offering e-books, online courses, and coaching for “balancing life energy” through food, food energetics & emotional wellness. In 2019 she published her second book “Chinese Superfoods” in Mandarin, which encourages new generations of food therapy enthusiasts to explore Asian traditional foods, everyday ingredients & get back in the kitchen. It has sold over 7000 copies in China. Her approach is centered on cultivating an intuitive relationship with food and helping people understand their energies through food choices, cooking techniques, the 5 Elements, emotional & energy practices.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Kimberly's Website  Kimberly's Instagram Soothing Liver Qi Stagnation 5 Elements & Cycles e-course      Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Kimberly, thanks so much for coming on again.   Kimberly: (00:02) Glad to be back. Thanks for having me.   Mason: (00:05) Yeah. Oh, it's nice. In between... since our last chat where I was able to get on, and have that session with you, diving into my dominant organs, based on your technique, which is really revealing and amazing, and really nuanced, which I really enjoyed as a part of your process, the nuance of not just having it just be like, "This one organ system kind of just..." Yeah. You went deeper. It was nice.   Kimberly: (00:31) It's fun knowing our predominant elements. I always have to catch myself because we all have five elements in and around us, but we have a predominant three that are more easily to get out of balance, let's say. Or more typical that come out in our emotions and personality. And food. We're driven to certain foods based on if you're an earth element or a wood element person. And yeah. It's really fun. And today we'll be talking further on the elements, and more so with the fire and summer element.   Mason: (01:03) I definitely recommend everyone jump in and have that... have a session with you if they're interested in figuring out what their dominant organs are.   Kimberly: (01:10) Yeah.   Mason: (01:10) And I'm looking forward to hearing and getting some insights about how we can weave in with the fire element and summer, and what are those foods that are going to help that fire, Qi, transform between its yin and yang. And I mean, I feel like I always... I was telling my team, I was talking about summer just especially in the Southern hemisphere, just really watch out in summer because we have these huge festivities in the middle of the time when we don't need extra festivities.   Kimberly: (01:44) That's right. That's right.   Mason: (01:48) Yeah. What's your take on that? Because I talk about going... your preparation for winter and your capacity to cultivate and be in a cycle of cultivating energy rather than just trying to heal yourself after burning out. So it starts now. Your cultivation for winter starts now. Because if you go real hard, the fire runs too hot, burns out, then you're going to be spending winter trying to heal rather than cultivating.   Kimberly: (02:13) Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a part of modern society. We live... No matter what season it is or where you live in the world, whether it's a tropical place or in Sweden or I don't know, somewhere really cold, we tend to burn out just as a general fire element. I'll dive into more details, but we do tend to do that. And then we get to winter or the water element, and then we're burnt out. And then we're always playing catch up. Because of this cycle, we're going round and round. There's no stopping it. People don't understand that it... what you do now affects...   Kimberly: (02:46) And the Chinese practitioners in the Chinese medicine system understands that beautifully, right, that what you do now affects the next season. So as you said, even though it's Christmas and beach weather and barbecues and parties, and end of year in the Southern hemisphere, we do burn out. But people can do that at any time of the year. You can use your fire in autumn or in late summer as well. But it's just more prone to being used up. And as you said, it actually affects in the five element cycle, and the nourishing cycle, and the destructive cycle, if you want to go there quickly, you affect the kidneys, and you burn out with the adrenals.   Kimberly: (03:26) I actually personally have just done that in the last few weeks. I had acupuncture yesterday, and I was like, "I'm tired and it's self inflicted." And yeah. It was... well, it is, just too much mental and physical activity. So we're just getting too burnt. And that's a modern day trait, I think, with everyone burning out so literally with the fire element. So yeah. I'll share a little bit about what the fire element is for those people who are into Chinese medicine, which they probably are if they're listening, or maybe some people that are new and are just exploring the elements and realising the depth and the beauty of living in seasons and elements.   Mason: (04:10) Yeah, I mean, that's the beautiful thing here. If anyone is listening, as I know a lot of people... You come here and listen to this podcast. And especially, I know a lot of people really tune in for these seasonal ones when we chat, or when myself and [Taney 00:04:22] have them as well, where we go a little bit more philosophical. We're very practical in this podcast here.   Mason: (04:28) And if it's like, "Oh gosh, I don't have room for like fire element, and fire Qi," the information, that's just a way to relate that the information that we explore here, and that's why I really like your work, it's so practical and just comes down to just wisdom-based principles that have been refined... the insights that have been refined over thousands and thousands of years. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. The idea is for you to relate to what's going on energetically around you, or seasonally around you, and what food is available locally, as well. And then it's just those simple, "All right. This is the type of energy of the food that is going to keep that organ system moving. This is the food preparation that's going to keep that organ system moving" because at this time of year, this is what you need to keep going based on the temperature, based on what's going on.   Mason: (05:17) So just for everyone, just make sure you... you don't have to like... You can just be like "Oh yeah. Interesting. They're saying fire." But we're coming down to... And as you said, the burnout and the kidneys, I think this time of year, I've had a lot of people, interestingly enough, talking about hair lately. And that's a real... I think that's one... Whether it's little symptoms going on within joints, little symptoms going on within hair, and I'm kind of there at the moment as well. I really have not been quite listening to my body in how much rest it desires. And I can see my hair health just like, oh it's just not quite as rich. And it's such a big sign and a slap in the face. I had a lot of people coming to me about poor hair health. And it's like, "What do I do?" And it's like... You really... These podcasts, this topic, this is what we do. There's subtle principles.   Kimberly: (06:11) Yeah.   Mason: (06:11) Living seasonally, listening to your body so you don't burn out. And everything around... We're talking about food and preparation of food, and everything around this, you'll hear there's characters of this time of year and character of the fire organ system that hopefully gives you insights so you can get back and flow with your temperament, and aspirations with the season. And hopefully, then you don't pull from your kidneys, your water. Therefore, that's where the hair health emerges from, from the kidneys and from the lung lungs also. But it has a lot to do with just what... I think what you just said, the burnout.   Mason: (06:43) And you've got to call a spade a spade and just be like, "You know..." and I'm really trying to do. It's like a hard process for me. Just be like, "Mate, you just have to acknowledge it. You just... You can't go on this way. You're going to have to keep on provisioning smarter." So yeah. With that, let's dive in.   Kimberly: (07:02) Yeah. Awesome. And it going back to personality, as well. I believe you were earth and wood and some metal, so... And I'm wood. So I had this upward energy and go, go, go. And so people who have a lot of wood and fire, the idea of slowing down and not burning out is like, "What? No. I wouldn't do that. I can just keep going" until you can't.   Kimberly: (07:24) So the fire element is this energy of upward and outward. The springtime is pretty much up. And if we're talking about food, I always bring in asparagus and leaks, which I mentioned in the spring talk that we had, which is this upward. And this fire element is about an expansion. So if you think of pineapple, or like dragon fruit, or even vegetables that go up and out, like all the beautiful salad grains, that's the energy of the season. And so it's about embodying and capturing that through our food, but not overdoing it, if that makes sense.   Kimberly: (07:59) It is full sunshine. It's warmth and heat, but again, not overdoing it. So if you want to have some spicy food and chilli it's... it could be a good thing. And that's when a lot of people enjoy it, and they love things like Thai food, and Vietnamese spicy foods, and all the curries and things like that. It is a good time to have it because it encourages more of this expense nature. You sweat, it helps you cool down. There's many factors to incorporate those foods. But if... I want to bring it back into this idea of balance. We have to... This is a season to really watch the word balance more than any other season so that you don't overdo the parties, or overdo the spice, or overdue certain lifestyles because it also affects the organ of the heart and small intestine, which is the organ pair in this season, which is easily disturbed. And we get... It disturbs the [inaudible 00:08:57], disturbs our mental capacity, our emotional capacity, and people tend to get a little bit overly excited, or easily excitable, and bit chaotic and manic. So that's not good, either.   Kimberly: (09:09) So we have to be very careful in every season, but this one is a really easy one to tip over, I see and I also feel in my experience with the five elements. So the idea of overexcitement for some people is a bit weird, potentially. They're like, "No. Being happy and full of joy is good." But you can overdo it.   Mason: (09:29) Yeah. Well... I mean, everyone does associate constant upward and outward motion with summer, but forgetting that the Yin Qi of the fire element has got such a calm serenity. It's on cruise control. It's relaxed. It's... I mean, it's like a Sunday... it's it like a summer afternoon nap. You know? It's like swinging in the hammock while reading. But I feel Christmas and New Year, especially, they hijack that time.   Kimberly: (10:03) Yes. Yes.   Mason: (10:03) And I mean, and I don't know why I'm surrounded by so many [foreign language 00:10:07], so many birthdays around at the moment. And you've got to... I mean, and you-   Kimberly: (10:11) A lot of birthday parties.   Mason: (10:13) And this... As you said, that excitement, it's the thing that I often... I think for our... where we are in the Southern hemisphere, I think it really throws off the entire other cycle more than anything else. That, and then in getting around to autumn, and not able to transition down and welcome and mourn the fact that the summer's gone.   Kimberly: (10:33) Yes.   Mason: (10:34) Everyone, if you can... Yeah. Quality, not quantity. So if you can get quality celebration in upward times where we get really excited, and then be sure that you come down and cruise during these months would be... I think that's good... Good way to go.   Kimberly: (10:48) Yeah. You bring up a good point about afternoon naps, something I don't do. It's just not in my... It's not in my DNA, but I should. And I'll just briefly mention a few imbalances, so how do you know your fire element is out of balance? And then we can talk about foods to support that. You get heart palpitation, like actual physical disturbance of the heart. You get anxious, you get some insomnia, there's a lot of sleep issues that surface during the height of summer for people. You get, obviously, more easily sensitive to the heat outside as the temperature's rising. You get nervous. You get forgetful, as well. So there's a lot of agitation in this chaos, wire-iness, to the fire element as well. So... But as you said, if you're balancing, you can have a nap. You can slow down in the height of summer, and you take the time for a little bit of cooling down that fire, heat, and excitement, which is really, really key.   Mason: (11:48) You know what? Just what you're saying, what it... something points out to something to me, like... Because quite often, people find themselves in situations where they're like, "Well, that's all... That's very well and easy for you to say that, but I can't because of this. I've made... I've got this many kids," or "I've got... I'm in this phase of my business." I've been really watching myself kind of say that. And then watching the decisions that I'm making that are going to affect my next two years or three years. And it's like... you've got to become a custodian of the fire, the future fire.   Kimberly: (12:17) Mm.   Mason: (12:17) So it's like, "Oh. Well at least I'm going to learn from when I've bitten off more than I can chew. And I'm going to ensure that I make choices that when I get around to summers three years from now, that I actually do have greater capacity to get into that serene flow."   Kimberly: (12:32) Yes. All love that future of fire. I wrote down a note here as well to... which kind of ties in with that future fire idea. It's like, energise but not exhaust. So you want to have the energy in summer... well, the whole year round really, and that flow of yin and yang, and that balance, but not exhaust. And we tend to, in modern day society, to just go to the edge and exhaust ourselves, and then try and catch up and take herbs, and eat food, and sleep. And then you really depleted yourself to another level and it's harder to catch up, so...   Kimberly: (13:05) But on that note, there are foods that can help in the season. And for those that are familiar with the flavours and the five elements of five seasons of five flavours, it's one of bitterness, and not many people like to hear that because likes to eat bitter foods. But in Chinese cuisine, there's a lot of bitter and spicy foods that can... They don't have to be like eating something really obviously bitter or spicy like a whole chilli or like... I don't know if you've ever had bitter melon in Chinese cuisine?   Mason: (13:40) I was thinking about bitter melon. Yeah.   Kimberly: (13:44) The kugua? Oh. It's like... I used to hate it. And it's a really weird-looking food, a vegetable, as well, but it is the classic vegetable in Chinese, in summertime. There's a few others, but that is the classic because it just... it goes straight to where it needs to go in the body, and it does its job, and you feel great afterwards, after you've had it. And there's obviously ways to cook its so it doesn't taste so disgusting. But yeah. So you're looking at some bitter and spice. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, a little bit of chilli, but it... I'm not a big chilli fan, but you can have other spices that make your food taste good. You can go to Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Thai cuisine and borrow from their condiments list.   Mason: (14:25) Spice rack. Yep.   Kimberly: (14:26) Spice rack. Yeah.   Mason: (14:27) Condiments list. Yep.   Kimberly: (14:28) Yeah. And herbs as well. Like Thai basil and all those beautiful flavours, as well. And there's a reason I wanted to explain as well why they have those in... especially in tropical places in Southeast Asia, is to cope with the season. It's pretty much summer all year round there. So they have foods and herbs that... and spices that help with that. So that's important just to start thinking about, oh, different ways of eating in different times of the year. Because most people that I meet eat pretty much the same all year round. And so I'm always encouraging like, "Explore different flavours, explore different vegetables, spices." Not every day, but maybe once a week, cook something different, or borrow from different cultures.   Kimberly: (15:12) So the main aim of food therapy in the fire element or in the summertime is to cool, hydrate, and enjoy your food as well. Because I don't want people to become too... to worry about cooling themselves and having certain ingredients. So I'll mention a few of those ingredients that support that. But then I'll also talk about the digestion, because it's really important that we don't overcool the body. I did that when I first started doing Chinese medicine, and it was in summer, and my TCM doctor was like, "Oh, the cooling foods." So I overdosed on some of these foods. So I'll mention things like zucchini, melons of all types, watermelon, rock melon, mint, papaya, chrysanthemum is a very popular.   Mason: (15:59) Yeah. Drainer. Drain from the face. Yeah.   Kimberly: (16:01) Yeah. Just cool the body and get... Exactly. So if there's too much heat coming up, we want to cool the body, the whole body, but from the upper half. Cucumbers also fall in the melon family.   Kimberly: (16:13) And then the bitter of flavours can come from bitter of melon. If anyone hasn't heard of bitter melon, Google it, because it's fascinating. It's a really wrinkly-looking green thing, and scary on the inside with seeds. But as I said, highly nutritious, the most bitter thing you'll ever eat. And then on a Western, it's probably a lot easier to associate with arugula or rocket. That's got that nice bitter quality to it. And look at the shape of rocket and arugula leaves. So that's something good, as well, to incorporate. So those are nice cooling bitter flavours that you can start to add to your salads, or your stir fries, or your soups. Like a zucchini soup, I like to make it with leak. So you can still use your spring vegetables. You don't have to ignore the green good stuff that we talked about previously, but just starting to add more variety because this is the most abundant time of year, where we have... in the farmer's markets or in the fruit and veg shop, you have so much choice. So really start to have more variety in your meals.   Kimberly: (17:15) And then the colour red. So the colour of the season is this beautiful red quality. So that could be literally things like red rice, or red lentils, or red beans, as well as red coloured vegetables. Last summer I discovered red sorrel. I don't know if you've... You've probably...get that a lot up there, as well. It's a beautiful leaf, and it's really bitter. But it looks like a baby Swiss chard kind of, and it's just delicious. It's got these red veins through it.   Mason: (17:47) We mainly just got lemon sorrel.   Kimberly: (17:49) Lemon sorrel's good, too. Yeah.   Mason: (17:51) I mean, that's like... That's a nice thing about the bitterness coming from all those greens, and a little bit of dandelion here and there when you're walking around. It's just like... I mean, that's where... like, you're having bit of melon available is really great, but it is really... The bitterness kind of slaps you in the face. And I think that's the thing like... It's like it's all mangoes, it's all calling foods, and it's all easy to eat celebration foods. And it's like bringing foods to take to that party, and that Christmas party. Things that are rich, things that are really easy for everyone to eat. And it's... no one wants to bring that challenging meal a lot of the time that's like... got like quite bitter of tones.   Mason: (18:31) Maybe... everyone's not used to having massive aromatic... You said like a lot of the spices we get here, whether it's in India, Italy, it's like... They're often... It's like, of course. They're aromatic, and there's a bit of pungency in there, and bitterness is just layered in through all of them. So it's nice to put them in there, but... I think that is a... It's a good... Just little heads up warning, and something good you can do, just like what I do. Walk around, you see like a little bit of sorrel, you see a little bit of dandelion, just go and whack that in, just to kind of ground yourself, and remind yourself that, "Hey, it's not all just like getting the helium... getting in the big balloon and just going up, up, up, up, up, up, up into the sky." You need something to slap you on the side of the face and be like, "Come back down to earth, buddy. Here. Have some bitter tones." Because it's... Otherwise, it's-   Kimberly: (19:16) That'll do it.   Mason: (19:18) That'll... And it does do it. As you said, the over-cooling that's just... I mean, it is... People just run off in one direction. They forget... I think everyone forgets that in the centre of the elemental wheel is earth.   Kimberly: (19:35) Mm.   Mason: (19:35) So there is like a consistency.   Kimberly: (19:38) Yes. Yes.   Mason: (19:38) There is still... It's still okay to have a little bit of warm water to nourish the spleen first thing in the morning.   Kimberly: (19:45) Absolutely. Yeah. And exactly. And that's... We'll get to that when we talk about the digestive system. Because we tend to either overcool, or go to that extreme, like you said, and think in summer we can just have lots of ice cream and like raw salads, and... But there isn't... A huge benefit to still having some warmth, whether it's warm water in the morning, especially in the morning, something warm so that we're not just hurting the spleen first thing in the morning. Just because it's summer and it's hot outside, the body on the inside, especially the stomach and spleen don't enjoy having ice cream for breakfast, for example.   Kimberly: (20:23) So some other foods that have a little bit of redness to them, but also have that bitterness are... I mentioned red rice, but I'm a really big fan of amaranth leaves, and we can get those here quite easily. Or even amaranth seed, so you can make a really nice porridge or desserts. Like, we can get quite creative with these fire elemental summer seeds, grains, vegetables, fruits, where we don't just have to stick to the ones that I mentioned. I mentioned the most common ones to start with, but I do encourage people to explore other grains and vegetables. So amaranth is a nice purple... well, you can get green ones as well, but purple leafy vegetable, which is a really nice thing.   Kimberly: (21:03) And then another really cool... I love sea vegetables, and I think you know this. So we can start to look at dulse, as well, red coloured seaweeds. So we don't want to just keep it to land vegetables, and cooling, and things like that. But we can bring in a lot of the sea vegetables, as well.   Mason: (21:22) Do you use that in soups mostly?   Kimberly: (21:25) Yeah. So I'm... The easiest way I found it is in flakes, so the dulse flakes that you can get in the health food store. You can put it on salads, you can put it on like savoury porridge or congee or meal, or things like that. Because it's in flake form, it's very small. So it's not too... It's not actually that strong. But it's the right colour and the energy, quality of the food that you can sprinkle out on anything really. It's not as strong as like wakame or arame, those sort of more suitable for like miso soup, or more Japanese style. Dulse flakes are just... you can put them on anything. You can put them on barbecue things if you want to. Yeah.   Kimberly: (22:06) So again, explore are different things that you can add to your spice rack, or to your kitchen condiments. I think condiments are one of the most fun things. And especially in summer, you can make really nice toppings or dips, or sources to go with your meals.   Kimberly: (22:23) I will get back to the cooling food. So I mentioned mint. Some people love or hate cilantro or coriander. That's a great one for this season. And mung beans are the classic Chinese cooling food outside of bitter melon. And I have to say one more Chinese vegetable, which is it's called winter melon. It's a silly name, dong gua, but it's this big melon. It looks like 20 times bigger than a cucumber. And it has cooling and dampness removing properties to it, which is also the beauty of Chinese medicine, food therapy. Every food pretty much has a function in a season, in a meal. So yeah. I know mung beans aren't a Chinese ingredient. They're used a lot in Indian cooking and in Ayurveda as well, so we can start to look at that.   Kimberly: (23:13) And lotus seed, again a little bit more on the Chinese ingredient, but beautiful in soups and stews. And chrysanthemum I mentioned as well before. And then papaya is a good one that's very often and used, as is dragon fruit and guava. I love guava. So again, there's like nutritional benefits. There's a lot of functional things. And a lot of these fruits help with your digestion, help with dampness, as well as cooling the body. They... All the tropical fruits have this beautiful cooling nature to them. And ginkgo. I have to mention ginkgo. It's got a bitter and sweet flavour to it. I don't know if you... Do you use ginkgo at all?   Mason: (23:57) Yeah.   Kimberly: (23:58) Yeah? As a whole ingredient?   Mason: (24:01) I don't use nut. I use leaf.   Kimberly: (24:03) You use leaf. Oh, nice.   Mason: (24:04) It's in a herb formula that's-   Kimberly: (24:06) Oh, great. Nice. Yeah. The so ginkgo is like a yellow... It's big for a seed, but it's a big chewy kind of seed, and it's... You'll see it in Chinese stir-fries a lot, but it's a classic also summer ingredient. Yeah. It's got a lot of... It's got like a multitude of functions including dampness and stabilising the heart, as well. So I love it. And it's good for the brain. I know that you can tell us more on the tonic side of it. But it's just another ingredient to consider yeah.   Mason: (24:50) Yes. Ancient dinosaur tree.   Kimberly: (24:50) Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then in terms of cooking styles, because that's also something that I love to talk about because that's also seasonal. So if we're cooking the same thing all year round in the oven, which is a very easy thing to do, especially with Western cooking, we get a lot of heat. And if you look in Asia, traditionally, they didn't really have... in Southeast Asia or Southern China, they didn't have big ovens like to make bread and bake whole roasts and things like that in summer in particular.   Kimberly: (25:20) So it's important to change or shift, adjust your cooking styles to incorporate more stir-fries, or steaming, or quick sautes, blanching, which just means a dip in hot water. It's a really nice way to have a bit of light cooking. So you're not cooking things soggy or in the oven, but not all raw. And that leads me to the point on raw food, which I think we might've mentioned last time, but I've been hearing a lot more lately... I've been listening to a few people talk about Chinese medicine, but also the correlation with Ayurveda and other natural medicines, and this idea of strengthening or keeping the digestive system strong, and they call it Agni. In Chinese, it's Yang Qi or Yang Pi, Pi being the spleen and stomach, Pi Wei.   Kimberly: (26:09) So especially in summer, when we think it's really hot and we want to reach for cold orange juice, first thing in the morning, you mentioned having some warm water, or some warm tea, herbal tea first, then you can have whatever else later, so as not to shock the stomach, and spleen, and the whole intestine system. So I really recommend people to keep that in mind, and not burn out or really cool down too much their stomach in spleen.   Mason: (26:41) It's amazing how quickly untethered you can be. And it is the nice thing about summer, is you kind of... the party animal kind of comes out, and so it should because to an extent, you want to be free...   Kimberly: (26:53) Yeah.   Mason: (26:54) ... non-tethered to rules and dogma. But that's... You go... Well what happens, you go that step too far, you become untethered from your reality. Right?   Kimberly: (27:04) Yeah.   Mason: (27:05) Which is always-   Kimberly: (27:06) Very easy to do.   Mason: (27:07) Yeah. I mean... And it's such a fine line there. So I mean it's... As you said, it's like simple set up for success. And they're like... When you look at the organ wheel, it's like this time of year, more than ever. It's the easiest, too. And therefore, hopefully the one... the time when everyone can get onto the bandwagon soon. Like, it's get up, go and move your body, get sweating. Help the yang crack through the concrete of the yin, and all the stagnant water, and then have your warm tea, your warm water, and then you've set yourself up right.   Mason: (27:38) And then, when you do inevitably break the rules because you're like, "No, no. I'm going to be good. And I'm not going to have any one of those organic, natural, homemade ice blocks. I'm not going to have too many of those." And then everyone's having one that like... in the mid-morning and you're like, "Oh, why not? I'll just have a little one of those, have another little one."   Kimberly: (27:54) Yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (27:54) At least you set yourself up with the principles correctly. And I always want to remind people, remember you can... If you're feeling cold in there, maybe it's a super hot day, and you're like, "This is medicine." Some, maybe. It's... You feel the cold, hang around just a tiny bit. And you sneeze once. You go, "Oh, cool. I'm going to go and have a tea." Boom. If you're really cold, you go, "Oh, cool. I'll just go have a little bit of cinnamon." Even... It's not a bad thing to have cinnamon in the middle of summer.   Kimberly: (28:20) Absolutely.   Mason: (28:20) Just kind of like...   Kimberly: (28:20) Absolutely. Yeah.   Mason: (28:22) It's simple. Simple little techniques.   Kimberly: (28:24) Yeah. And you bring up the point... I thought about it earlier to mention, as well, of just listening to your body and seeing what it wants. Because just because everyone is eating, I don't know, a salad or whatever. Mint, things that are cooling, things that I mentioned, you might need more warmth. Some people are still... even though they've come through spring and the wood element, they're still feeling... there's still coldness trapped in there, in their body.   Kimberly: (28:46) And the fire element is actually about hydration that I've mentioned as well, but also circulation. So the heart is responsible for circulation. And a lot of people will still have cold hands and feet through summer. So that's a perfect example of what you just said. Like, you might need cinnamon. You might still need to have some of those warming herbs and tonics and things like that because you're still cold on the inside even though it's 30 degrees, 40 degrees outside. So it is very much listening to your body and what it needs. And just because Kimberly is talking about cooling foods, maybe it's not going to work for you because you're not warmed up yet, actually.   Mason: (29:21) I think it's... I mean, I've talked about it before with how... before our acupuncturist moved away. And he would... Taney did kind of like... and Taney was vegetarian for so long, but maybe not with your principles in place. I know you help people do this in a way without meat. But with... after Taney came through, she was quite depleted, especially within her spleen. And our acupuncturist was like, "Hey, listen. I know you want to live super seasonally, but you've been off the elemental cycle for so long, it's probably going to be two to three years of you camped out within the spleen, grounding diet. Don't... Just because it's summer, don't run off and just smash a bajillion mangoes and think that you can just go and enjoy the fruits of summer when you haven't actually..." I'm putting it a little bit more bluntly than he did. "You haven't put in the time. You're not listening to your body. You haven't put in the time."   Mason: (30:21) And I kind of feel like this with a lot of people I see. It's like, "Well, you've... It's going to take you a long time before you've got the capacity to warm yourself up and heat yourself up before you can actually go nuts in summer. But you haven't..." Yeah. Because the foundations of the diet haven't been created. And as we said before we jumped on, yes. There's a different principles within each season, which... within each organ, but they are connected-   Kimberly: (30:45) Yeah.   Mason: (30:45) ... by something. There is a continuity that's there, and you kind of have to cultivate that, and know and feel that, and know what your baseline markers are. Know... You need to know what your edges are, so you don't get exhausted. You need to know how to feel, whether you are cold.   Kimberly: (31:02) Yes.   Mason: (31:02) You need to be able to perceive what the difference is between you living in a way where you can heat your feet and your hands, and not.   Kimberly: (31:09) Yes.   Mason: (31:10) And then you... So maybe you might not be completely exploding into summer or out there into autumn, but you will be going... learning from the principles as we go along. It's an important one. Yeah.   Kimberly: (31:22) Yeah. Absolutely. And some people... You bring up a great point because some people... like, they might be listening and thinking... especially at the beginning, when we were talking about this explosive energy and warmth and they're like, "I don't feel that. I'm flat or cold or..." And it might take three years for somebody to warm up, or to feel that energy of summer because they haven't had that for so long. Or you live in a really cold place, and your summer's really short, and it takes a lot more energy to get to that fire-iness. So yeah, we need to be very mindful of your climate, your individual constitution, and your condition of where you're living. Someone who's listening, maybe if they're in Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Mexico where it's much warmer the whole year, that's a different story. Right?   Kimberly: (32:08) You're going to have different foods, and different... Hopefully, you're not having cold hands and feet in a very warm climate. That might actually be an indication of even more severe cold on the inside. But yeah. No, circulation is really important as well in summer. So you mentioned getting up and moving. So exercise and sweating because one of the, the biggest problems with dampness, and I'd love to talk about that as well even though it's more earth element, we can have that at any time of the year. But if it's not being expressed out of the body through sweating, and it doesn't have to be a gym session. Most people think of sweating in that terms, but you can go for a walk in summer, and still sweat. Or you can just dance or do something fun that encourages that energy of upward outwardness, but also the sweating.   Kimberly: (32:56) But you mentioned mango. So that's why it brought my attention and back to dampness. So in summer, we tend to enjoy lots of fruit, which is great, but you can overdo that, as well. And a lot of the raw fruit in summer, particularly mangos and bananas, tropical fruits of... and those two will... For someone who has dampness issues, which is a stagnation in the spleen, and then it can move up to the lungs as well, and you get mucus. So we want to keep that clean and not being bogged down. So I liken dampness to being like a swamp, or a steam room in your digestive system. It's a very unusual term for us in the West, but something to just keep in mind. And I actually personally think there's a lot of gut issues, and IBS, and things around that.   Kimberly: (33:41) Whereas if... And if you tie that into Chinese medicine, you're like, "Well, that makes sense." It's just like this bogged down moist, not pleasant environment. So sweating is really key, having the right foods. So just reducing your mangoes or bananas and dairy for a while, and having a lot of those foods that I mentioned earlier, actually. Those bitter flavours, a little bit of cooked foods, and dampness removing foods such as coix seeds or Job's tears. They're around... you can get them in Australia quite easily. And I didn't mention corn yet, but corn is a really nice summer vegetable. And corn silk, which is the hair of the corn, is a really nice thing just to boil... boil the whole corn with that hair, and then drink the water. That is like one of the best ways to get dampness out you. You just pee more. It's fantastic. But again, keeping that water and fluid metabolism balanced and moving, and not overburdening your spleen is key in summer, as well as late summer. Excuse me. But very important in this hot weather. Yeah. I don't know how you feel about dampness.   Mason: (35:02) Oh no. Like just... I mean dampness, I feel like it's the most prevalent issue we see from the Western diet, especially when I came out of the raw vegan... I came out of the raw vegan community. And so that was the biggest... the most common diagnosis that everyone would self-diagnosed, or that you'd... I'd come across a furious acupuncturist who would just be like waving their fist at me in the face for all the damp spleens that we were encouraging and creating. I was quite aware of it early on, because I personally didn't care whether I had to change my diet. Going back onto animal foods was a big change for me. But I didn't... I never... I stayed doing, whether it was bee products or colostrum, I stayed there, with my intention being health.   Mason: (35:55) So for me, when I started, if I would see anything start emerging that showed that I was actually... that my foods were too cold, I'd just change and alter my diet. And so I kind of like... I used to get very annoyed. I was very annoyed by Taoism and Chinese medicine because it would just... it would like ruin the party that we had. Like, we've got the perfect diet.   Kimberly: (36:18) Yep.   Mason: (36:20) But it ultimately... It's saving a lot of people. It's like the paramedics at a festival where everyone's gone nuts, going too hard-   Kimberly: (36:27) Yes.   Mason: (36:28) ... just sitting on the sides like, "Come here. All right. Come on. Yeah. We'll get you on some of these. We'll get you on more of the grounding diet."   Kimberly: (36:35) It's so true.   Mason: (36:36) And again, I mean, like just pointing out to everyone. I do include meat in my diet. I know you don't. You have a like vegetarian approach to it.   Kimberly: (36:45) I'm a flexitarian, to be very honest. So the vegans that are listening won't like to hear that. But I've done a bit of-   Mason: (36:51) We've got pretty inclusive vegans listening [crosstalk 00:36:54].   Kimberly: (36:53) Well that... Maybe I'm a... Yeah. Well, I'm a vegan flexitarian, so I'm not strictly anything. I don't like labels, so I will eat whatever I want when I want. I don't tend to eat much meat anymore. I used to, a lot. But I... Yeah. No, I'm open to eating whatever my body needs, whether it's a little bit of ghee, or some seafood. I maintain an open stance, but yeah. What I really like the challenge of is support... through the TCM lens is supporting people who want to go... who are vegan, vegetarian, because classically TCM's like, "No. You must have meat." I'm like, well, actually... I like to challenge things. You know? I'm like, hang on a second. You can do this with the wisdom of Chinese medicine, and you can do it. It's just not classically in Asia... Well, I mean, Buddhist in the temples and things like that, it can be done, is what I'm trying to say, if you do it properly.   Mason: (37:48) It's there for sure.   Kimberly: (37:48) But most people just don't do it properly.   Mason: (37:50) Well, and that's the key. And I think there's always a confusion between, well, there's an ideological diet, which that's... that we all... We're all kind of more familiar with that. But then post-ideology, which I think everyone listening has heard us talk at length about post-ideology, there's often... Because nobody... I don't know. I don't know a lot of people doing veganism and vegetarianism quite right, even though I lived within that world of collecting justification about why... But I've never really found outside of Chinese medicine principles, Ayurvedic principles, I didn't really find... I found a lot of unhealthy vegetarians in that community as well.   Mason: (38:34) So but then you get to the healing... You get into healing cycles. And that, likewise, is like a healing cycle from being excessively on Qi, Western meat-fueled, crappy oil-fuel... Nonetheless, you go into the convalescence, you go into the healing cycle. Well, maybe it's a... Maybe you go out of veganism, ideological veganism, and kind of where Tanny was at now. Acupuncturist was like, "Listen, mate. You are going to have to eat meat beyond not just every day. Like, more than one meal a day for like two years, three years." That was his approach about how to get back, and get the spleen so tight and so nourished, and that the foundations are present. And then... Then you can go off, and you earn the right to go and explore the many roads to Rome.   Kimberly: (39:19) Yeah.   Mason: (39:19) Where your diet, emerging from ancient principles and it comes about... Often I find at that point, that's when meat becomes a side.   Kimberly: (39:29) Yes.   Mason: (39:29) In any cultures where they're honed, they've got their diet, they're eating seasonally, and they know their body and they generally know for the body and the people around them, what the signs are that they are in balance nutritionally. So you can see right now there's so much fighting because everyone's fighting about what the ideal diet is, but they're in the convalescence, or the post-ideal logical stage. And that's why we've got still extreme veganism, or cleansing diets, when you come from a Western diet, extreme carnivore when people have been vegan for so long, and they've got no yang left, so they go three years of just eating meat and healing. And they're going, "Oh my God! I bloody found the way. I found it!" And it's all excess.   Kimberly: (40:17) Yeah. Either way is excess. Exactly. Yeah. And it's about the... Well, that's the beauty of Chinese medicine. So I think when acupuncturists or TCM doctors... because I was in China for so long, and they would be like... quite against vegetarianism because they would see the results of an extreme vegetarian diet, which was pretty much tofu and white rice. That was it. Like, I've seen people in Asia do it, especially when vegetarianism and veganism started only a few years ago in China in a modern Western sense. And it was very depleting. And I was running behind people going, "Don't do this. This is going to give... You're going to give yourself a bad name, the vegetarians and the vegans, because you're just taking the meat out. You're not replenishing. You're not learning about different ingredients, and herbs, and foods, and beans, and grains. You're just eating white rice and tofu, which is not very good at all."   Kimberly: (41:08) So like you said, we don't want to go to either end of deficiency or excess. You just want to find that middle ground. And that's what Chinese medicine has always been about. Right? And it's not that you'd have to eat lots of meat. They just use meat as a side, or as a medicine really. You know? To strengthen certain organs. And meat also is seasonal. You can put that onto the five elements, as well, and to eat lamb more in winter because it's warming and really building for the young Qi, and things like that.   Kimberly: (41:37) But that being said, if you're wanting to go a little less heavy in your diet summer, and the fire element is a great time to eat more vegetables, and become 50% vegetarian, whatever you want to have. So plant-based diet or things like that, where you do reduce a little bit of the meat, just on a digestion and heat perspective, it's a great time to explore that, and then use the meat and animal products more in autumn, winter, just to really warm yourself, nourish yourself, build your blood, your Qi. And again, it's that cycle and the five elements. So yeah, we shouldn't be eating lamb roasts all year round, or I don't know, raw arugula salad all year round. It's just-   Mason: (42:22) [inaudible 00:42:22], all year round.   Kimberly: (42:24) Yeah. Exactly. There's a time... There's a time. And you enjoy those foods more. Right? You're going to enjoy that salad more in summer. You're going to enjoy that lamb roast in winter or a cold day, or whatever it is. Knowing your body, knowing how you feel, you could wake up on a summer's day, or a summer's evening, and want to use the oven and roast some either vegetables or meat or whatever it is. But knowing the energy of the food and the effect on what it'll give to you, that's key, I think, more so than following a food list. And that's what... I mean, I have a food list from Chinese medicine, but you've got to know when to use them, and what you personally want to achieve from your food and cooking it.   Mason: (43:08) Well, I mean, what a great conversation to have. Don't... Yeah. I mean like, and especially that, what you pointed out, like a lot of... whether it's going to be... Like, it's going to be naturopath, same thing, or it's going to be a lot of the TCM doctors who, because of what they've seen and maybe rightfully so... They've seen the aftermath, and I've seen it a lot, of the aftermath of extreme veganism. I've also seen it of keto. So remembering... Just remembering, everyone, that there is an ideological approach to diet. And if you are looking around going, "Gosh, I'm trying to gather evidence. I'm trying to gather evidence that 'Oh, that ancient thing works because of this.' Okay, great. I feel good now. And I'm getting my dopamine hit because I'm right. I'm right. And I feel safe here."   Mason: (43:53) It's not... It's like, acknowledge where you are, but keep on moving. And then, when you're starting to get advice from other people, you'll feel that self-righteousness, especially from the carnivore kind of community at the moment, because they're so self-righteous in knowing that this is the healing because everyone's been such a soy-heavy vegan, vegetarian- dominant, or just eating shitty vegetable oils, and eating lots of crappy cereals, and so they're like, "Yes. This is the ultimate diet." But there is a difference between ideological diet, and then healing diets, and that's where keto kind of comes in. Keto in these little areas for particular clinical situations, it seems to work. And it's great.   Kimberly: (44:34) Yeah.   Mason: (44:34) But unless you feel the uniqueness, you kind of... You can use these principles, and when you kind of get out of that ideology, and you move past your own convalescence/healing stage, you will feel this uniqueness, and this... You'll feel you can just on walking past the noise, because all these people are gathered down the bottom of the mountain, yelling and angry at each other, and standing on little pedestals that they've made for themselves and tapping themselves on the back...   Mason: (45:00) But if you just don't get distracted, just keep on walking, keep on walking up the hill. And eventually all the noise will fall away, and you can still look at... whether it's Chinese medicine, you can look at Ayurveda, you can look at all the carnivore stuff and vegan stuff, but all of a sudden, the noise will go away. And what will be there is your capacity to cultivate what's right for your body, your family, wherever you are in the world. And it's a great... it's a great feeling. It's only... It's just... It's hard to get attention that way, which is almost good.   Mason: (45:30) I don't think we should be getting that much attention from our diet. We want the attention to be like a magnet kind of eventually, maybe people come and ask us about it later on, when we've cultivated that much vitality, and it... and then where people are naturally attracted. But yelling and screaming about being right, or trying to feel like you've got it right and don't have it wrong, it's... Keep on walking past all of that. And-   Kimberly: (45:52) Yep.   Mason: (45:54) And then yeah, picking up some tips along the way with what you are sharing as always helps us just get back into a harmonising kind of flow, which is always helpful.   Kimberly: (46:02) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely. And you said the word "vitality." So we should feel the most energised and full of vitality in summer. So if you're not, that's a great sign to know that you're doing something off, or you've been living out of harmony for the other seasons. So by the time you get to summer, we should be ready to go and have a beautiful, fun, energising summer and not get burnt out.   Kimberly: (46:29) So yeah. Hopefully, today again... the theme was more in Chinese medicine, it's all about cooling and hydrating the body and the mind and the heart in summer. Because it's just the way that it tends to go energetically a little bit too high, and too overly excited. So if you're not feeling that way, then there's something to dive into and explore. But for the most part, yeah. Cooling foods, lighter cooking styles, a little bit of spice, a little bit of bitterness through... It's easiest to do through vegetables and herbs. That's why I mentioned it. And keep... yeah. Keep your circulation moving. It's not a good time to sit in front on the sofa. Save that for winter. Yeah. And look after your sleep, and mental, emotional state as well because that can be easily tipped, as well, in this season. So yeah. We can do that through food. We can do that through changing our cooking, as well. And yeah. Then it becomes more enjoyable summer, and you can have those afternoon naps.   Mason: (47:39) I love it. Thanks so much for coming and sharing the wisdom and-   Kimberly: (47:42) My pleasure.   Mason: (47:43) ... what we know and you know. It's always nice talking to you, but especially because you've seen this... You've seen this work so many times. And the beautiful thing about Chinese medicine is it comes down to the energy, and the flavour profiles. And so it isn't... As you said, it's not about foods from China. It's about foods from where we're at. So that might mean Chinese foods and herbs, but it's about the energy of the food, and feeling that that energy flows and helps us flow in harmony with the season. So yeah, it's nice. Always... We can personalise all we want.   Kimberly: (48:16) Yes.   Mason: (48:18) And I do recommend... I don't know if there's anything else you want to share, but I do recommend everyone goes and checks out your website, which is Qifoodtherapy.com.au?   Kimberly: (48:29) Just .com.   Mason: (48:29) Oh, just .com? Oh, nice. Global.   Kimberly: (48:32) Yes.   Mason: (48:34) Is there anything else you wanted to leave everyone with today?   Kimberly: (48:38) Just to recap... Yeah. Introduce or explore new flavours and vegetables, and herbs and spices. And summer's a fantastic time because we've got the most choice, whether it's salads, or warm salads, or a little bit of new flavours, vegetables is something... Now's the time to do it. Or summer, when you get round to it if you're in the Northern hemisphere.   Mason: (48:59) Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much. And yeah. Hopefully, we'll be able to get on soon and chat late summer.   Kimberly: (49:07) Awesome. Thank you.   Mason: (49:08) Bye.   Kimberly: (49:09) Bye.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Today on the podcast, we have acupuncturist Russell Brown; Founder of Poke Acupuncture LA, with over 15 years of experience practicing this ancient medicine with exquisite finesse. Using his distinctive voice and gentle wisdom, Russell advocates for a realisation of the constraints and meritocracy of the current whitewashed, capitalist-driven wellness industry. Russell is an educator and a brilliantly poetic writer who brings forth the kind of gentle healing one's soul longs to fall into at the end of the day. As a practitioner of acupuncture, Russell operates through the subtle energetic realms of Chinese medicine with ease, translating the insightful metaphors of this ancient knowledge into soothing remedies for the intensity of modern life. In this episode, Russell offers his nuanced perspective on the invention and westernised packaging of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the existence of cultural appropriation and privilege within the wellness industry, and how conscious social activism lies at the confluence of these topics. Tahnee and Russell discuss the Eight Extraordinary meridians, constitutional energy and life trajectory, The Five Elements, and the type of strength required of practitioners to support their patients through healing.    "I want you to experience beauty for an hour every week, every two weeks. I want you to be removed from the story of your life. I think that's the only way we're going to survive, frankly, is to have a chance to cushion ourselves from how hard the world is with some softness. And that's how I practice acupuncture now. I want people to be given an opportunity to catch their breath, to float, to not feel like the world is coming at them in a hostile way"   - Russell Brown     Tahnee and Russell discuss: The Wei Qi. Yuan Qi (source Qi). The Five Elements. The eight extraordinary meridians. Doing the work of social activism. The whitewashing of the wellness industry. Stomach 36 and our relationship to nourishment. The importance of creating and nurturing as humans. The history of Traditional Chinese Medicine communism. The institutionalisation and education system around TCM. Becoming very clear on your perspective as a practitioner.   Who Is Russell Brown?  Russell Brown, L.Ac, studied journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and enjoyed a career in feature film development (including The Fast and the Furious films and Cruel Intentions) before quitting his job on a whim and enrolling in Emperor's College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. After passing the California State Board in 2007, Russell opened Poke Acupuncture in Los Angeles in 2009.    Russell has operated pro-bono acupuncture clinics for the HIV/AIDS community in San Francisco and L.A. and was the in-house acupuncturist for the Alexandria House, a transitional home for women in Koreatown. He wrote a book on meditation titled Maya Angelou's Meditation 1814 and his writing on wellness has been published in several outlets including Bust and Lenny Letter. He sheepishly did acupuncture on Paris Hilton for her reality show in 2011, a real moment in time he only slightly regrets.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Poke Acupuncture Instagram Russell's website - Poke Acupuncture Subscribe to Poke Acupuncture Substack    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi everyone. And welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. Today's guest is an acupuncturist from Los Angeles who's been practising for over 15 years and has, in my opinion, one of the freshest voices in the industry.   Tahnee: (00:12) He's an advocate for understanding the limitations of the industrial capitalist wellness machine, that's a mouthful. And he is an educator and a writer who, in my opinion, manages to put TCM theory into this most beautiful language and metaphor that's really accessible and relevant for modern humans.   Tahnee: (00:29) And Russell also has an ex-film producer background. And if you're a 90s kid you'll know some of those movies. Fast and the Furious, Cruel Intentions.   Tahnee: (00:36) So he's had this amazing 180 coming into this more subtle kind of energetic realm of traditional Chinese medicine. So I'm really excited to welcome you here today, Russell.   Russell Brown: (00:48) Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited.   Tahnee: (00:50) Yeah, I'm so excited.   Russell Brown: (00:51) I spent some time in Australia by the way in the 90s.   Tahnee: (00:54) Did you?   Russell Brown: (00:54) Yes. I went to Sydney and then I was young and took a tour of the outback, which I'm sure you guys hate, but-   Tahnee: (01:01) Oh, nice. I love that.   Russell Brown: (01:02) One of the stops was at this farm in a place called Coonabarabran, I think.   Tahnee: (01:07) Yes.   Russell Brown: (01:07) I just stayed there. And so I lived on this farm for, I think like two months, and just worked on this farm out there. Yeah. And it was great and it was not my real life and it was nice to be not in my real life.   Tahnee: (01:19) And the stars.   Russell Brown: (01:21) Beautiful. Insane.   Tahnee: (01:23) Yeah.   Russell Brown: (01:23) Obviously coming from LA, like we don't really have stars in LA like that, so it was all very shocking to me so I have very fond associations with Australia.   Tahnee: (01:32) Yeah. They've actually preserved Coonabarabran, so the Warrumbungle is like a National Park there and that area is now a dark sky park, so.   Russell Brown: (01:39) Oh wow.   Tahnee: (01:40) They're trying to preserve it for yeah. Like, so you can't-   Russell Brown: (01:42) Because otherwise the development would come in and sort of just make it-   Tahnee: (01:45) Yeah. I don't know if they'd ever developed that [crosstalk 00:01:48] pretty far away. Yeah. But just more like, yeah, so people can't have, I don't know, flood lights on their farms or I don't know what people would do, but yeah.   Tahnee: (01:56) So you're the founder of Poke Acupuncture and you've got this amazing clinic going. I actually heard about you through lots of sort of connections in LA and then started following you on Instagram. And it's been a delight following you for a few years.   Russell Brown: (02:10) Thank you. It's so funny. Obviously I have such a take on wellness and part of that take is that I don't know that I need to be on Instagram.   Russell Brown: (02:20) I don't know that acupuncturists need to be on social media. I don't think that I have such an issue with like content creation. I don't think that I personally need to be making more content, but I also think there's something sociologically interesting about it.   Russell Brown: (02:33) And so I've sort of tried to find a use for Instagram that doesn't make me feel like a 17 year old. And I don't know if I'm succeeding at that personally, but I am enjoying the process of it most of the time.   Tahnee: (02:48) Yeah. I vote for you. I've had a really love, hate relationship with the platform and I really hear you on that. And I think it's evolved in really positive and negative directions, but there's this positive where it's this place to yeah, like share ideas and connect and use the kind of medium for education and inspiration.   Tahnee: (03:10) And I think you do a really good job of that and Wellness Trash Can just makes me laugh first of all. But also I'm always like, "This is so relevant big because we've got this culture," and something I've always said to my husband, the first time I went to LA was probably I think, seven or eight years ago.   Tahnee: (03:26) And I remember being like, "It's so artificial here. No wonder the wellness industry came from here," and my husband kind of looked at me and he was like, "What are you talking about?"   Tahnee: (03:33) And I'm like, "Well, everything's just plunked on top of the desert. It's not really meant to be here." And then we've got like this really toxic kind of culture there around aesthetic and lifestyle. And I'm sure you know all of that very, very well.   Russell Brown: (03:52) Well, I also think about it in context of one of the things about Los Angeles and Australia too, but really LA, we don't have seasons here, right? Every day is exactly the same weather wise. It's going to be between 75 and 85, right?   Russell Brown: (04:05) It's always going to be sunny. We have a couple weeks of rain, but there's no passing of time essentially. I wear the same thing to work every single day. I wear black t-shirt. I wear black pair of jeans every day. It doesn't really matter.   Russell Brown: (04:15) And I think as a result, we don't get the passing of time. We don't see it. There's no, the jacket comes out, the jacket goes away. Now summers here we get to go to the pool. We go to the pool every day here and as a result our relationship with ageing is affected by that. Our relationship with the way the body passes through time is affected by that.   Russell Brown: (04:38) And so I do think that wellness sort of came in as a sense of in part, because we have such a resistance to believing that we're ageing, people just can't believe that 10 years has passed because we didn't have any markers of that.   Russell Brown: (04:50) And I always say like if you're a man especially, like women you guys have a cycle, you have a menstrual cycle that says a month has passed. But for me, I really can't believe time is passing. I don't have children. I don't see any of that.   Russell Brown: (05:03) And so I think that wellness was really born a lot from this idea of how do I rectify the fact that I'm ageing even though I just can't believe it's to be true? And Los Angeles is really I feel like the epicentre of that.   Tahnee: (05:17) And if we drill right down to what you speak about a lot in your work anyway, we're talking like this idea of capitalism and how it's driving this kind of constant work ethic.   Tahnee: (05:28) And we can take that right back to the industrialization of the world and you speak about that online. The moving from it's a candle to get anything done at night to like, "Hey, we can electrify your whole house and you can watch TV or work on your computer or whatever."   Russell Brown: (05:44) Have that computer in your pocket and then go into your bed and so you can have the computer with you in the bed, in the place where you're supposed to be resting.   Russell Brown: (05:51) And then you wonder why you can't sleep because you've now made your bed into an office. And you're like, "I couldn't possibly meditate. There's just no way that could be." It's very, very complicated.   Tahnee: (06:03) It's a trip. And even if there's not that seasonal variance, we used to have that nocturnal rhythm, so there'd be dark and you'd have to go to bed at some point.   Tahnee: (06:14) I often think about that when I'm camping. I'm like, "Well, it gets a bit boring." You have a chat, you drink some wine and then you're like, "Well, let's go to bed." There's nothing else to do.   Tahnee: (06:23) So it's like, yeah, I think we've lost that natural kind of push to shut down. And so I think LA really, you've got the film industry there, not just that, but a lot of other kind of economies in that area that are just driving this kind of constant, hectic pace.   Tahnee: (06:40) And culturally, I think America too has had that anyone can achieve anything kind of push. And I see that in the wellness industry as well, it's almost like this kind of spiritual version of that sort of drive to succeed.   Tahnee: (06:55) And if you put your mind to it, you can be anything you want to be and create anything you want. And sometimes I'm very concerned about how toxic that is, so. Is that something you see?   Russell Brown: (07:04) Well, it's a lie, it's 100% a lie. And now like, especially lately in America being like, "Oh, actually it's still just intergenerational wealth."   Russell Brown: (07:13) The entire idea of American meritocracy is a lie, but we use that lie as a dangling carrot to make everyone feel terrible for not doing enough.   Russell Brown: (07:24) And I think the wellness industry is all braided up in that now. And that's part of the problem is that the foundation of it is that lie. It's not like manifesting, I don't believe and I don't think that's a thing.   Russell Brown: (07:34) I think this idea that you're supposed to rise yourself up in the bootstraps because allegedly one person did it one time, because Oprah Winfrey came from nothing and became Oprah Winfrey.   Russell Brown: (07:47) But she is the exception to the rule, which means that the rule is there that no one really can do it except for one person, two people, which are a complete, complete exception.   Tahnee: (08:01) They're unicorns. Yeah.   Russell Brown: (08:04) Totally. And now you are chasing a unicorn and thinking something is wrong with you is part of the problem, right? And that's the illusion of it all.   Russell Brown: (08:13) And I think America is starting to rectify or at least reckon with that lie, that it's not true. And part of the racial reckoning that's happening right now in America is like, "Oh, a lot of this meritocracy, the manifesting nonsense is for white people."   Russell Brown: (08:29) It's really not for any one of colour. It's certainly not for immigrants, queer people. It's really a very specific version of success that is not available to just about everyone.   Russell Brown: (08:41) And wellness is a part of that and that's why I am critical of it now more than I was before is that I see it and I see myself as the beneficiary of a lot of it too. And I feel like it's a lot of my responsibility to speak out on it.   Russell Brown: (08:55) One of the reasons why I am so critical of wellness and specifically acupuncture is because I am successful, but I am successful because I am a white man as an acupuncturist.   Russell Brown: (09:05) And I understand that media outlets like to see me and like to give me press, because it's easier to project Asian tradition and culture onto me than it is to actually just speak to an Asian person or an Asian American person.   Russell Brown: (09:22) And I feel that tension, even now on this podcast, I feel that tension. We're two white people talking about wellness and that feels odd to me. And I feel like it needs to be called out that I'm not from Asia. My ancestors are not from Asia. I learned this very generously from a Taiwanese woman in my school but I don't feel an ownership to this medicine.   Russell Brown: (09:48) And I feel very strange being a representative of the medicine often publicly, because I don't know that it's the most appropriate. I do the best I can, but I don't like often that I feel like sometimes when Caucasian people take up the spaces in these conversations they are doing so at a disservice to their colleagues who are minorities and I wrestle with that myself.   Tahnee: (10:19) Yeah. My husband, he has a comedy Instagram, he often says things like, "Look at the white people enjoying the empire," and it's as much a reflection on his own processes and people take it. They're like, "Oh, its not very kind."   Tahnee: (10:35) But we know we need to process this our own way. And I see that in your work with Wellness Trash Can and these things, it's like it's as much a self reflection as it is criticising the industry and we are a part of the problem.   Tahnee: (10:49) I have staff that are Sri Lankan and have different names and we've had people be really racist to them on the phone, like "Put me onto an Australian." And I'm like, "Jesus fucking Christ. You're buying Taoist tonic herbs from like two white people that have a company with some people with strange names in it. How can you be racist toward them?"   Tahnee: (11:07) And it's just a funny situation sometimes. And I often think, we have this amazing person in China we work with, with sourcing. And I often think if I put him front and centre on our social media, people just they would freak out. They wouldn't get it.   Russell Brown: (11:23) Well, that's the thing. What does it mean? Like what does it mean? Like what are we talking about here, especially like me as an acupuncturist, you're a yoga instructor.   Tahnee: (11:32) What are we doing?   Russell Brown: (11:33) What are we doing? And how did the industry become this place where it's like we have sort of appropriated a lot of these traditions. And now the industry wellness in general which is based on so many traditions of countries that are not Caucasian people. And yet the consumer is a white person who wants it to be a Caucasian thing and how that tension plays out.   Russell Brown: (11:59) I don't exactly understand, I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do with it, except for talk about it as much as I can and signal boost the other of practitioners who I'm close with and who I really believe in who I think need more attention put on them than I do.   Russell Brown: (12:19) But I don't know what it means about wellness. And it's one of the things that just makes me uncomfortable about wellness in general is knowing that how whitewashed it's become, how clean it all feels.   Russell Brown: (12:30) And it didn't actually come from a place of cleanliness. It's like a very superficial cleanliness. Particularly last year in America, there was so much anti-Asian violence because of COVID.   Tahnee: (12:42) And Trump.   Russell Brown: (12:42) That's like the least of it, I could just talk about forever, but for me to see acupuncture, white, Caucasian acupuncture, saying nothing about the anti-Asian violence really didn't ever compute to me.   Russell Brown: (12:58) And it would be like, "You owe your careers to Asian immigrants. You owe your careers to social activism on the part of racism. And now when racism is actually happening here in communities that are tangential to you and the work you do, you say nothing."   Russell Brown: (13:12) And that really just pissed me off last year. It still pisses me off. And there are friends of mine who want their Instagram and their social media to sort of portray that same cleanliness.   Russell Brown: (13:26) And I'm like, "The ship has sailed on that cleanliness." Your silence is what? What exactly do you think your silence is buying you around this? I don't understand it.   Russell Brown: (13:37) And COVID has only made it worse because of all of the conservatism around masks and the vaccines and things. And I think a reckoning is coming. I just think that the wellness industry can't continue to operate like this with a lot of these lies really at the heart of it.   Russell Brown: (13:56) And that's sort of where I ended up kind of going with my social media some of the time. And then sometimes I'm like, "Who needs to hear from me? I'm just like one more white guy who thinks that the world needs to my voice in it. And it doesn't." And I go back and forth with it. I go back and forth with it.   Tahnee: (14:19) Yeah. I really hear you on that. And I find pushing the button sometimes on publication myself very challenging. So I'm sure you have the same feeling.   Tahnee: (14:28) But I remembered you shared a whole piece on, is it Miriam Lee who was one of the advocates for Chinese medicine in your country and that was new to me. I didn't know that history.   Tahnee: (14:39) And I was really grateful you shared that. And if you don't mind, would you mind sharing a little bit about that? Because you talked about the politicisation of like all these wellness people avoiding politics, but really to get where we are now this is what's had to happen.   Russell Brown: (14:55) Well, Miriam Lee, we sort of consider her like the pioneer of Chinese medicine, at least on the west coast in America. She was a woman who came over from Asia I believe she came in 1969 and she was an acupuncturist in China.   Russell Brown: (15:07) And then she set up in the Bay Area in California and she was not legally allowed to practise medicine at the time. No one was really legally allowed to practise acupuncture at the time, but they did. They practised acupuncture.   Russell Brown: (15:19) And so she operated sort of under the radar and had a clinic and it was quite successful. And the versions of the story told of her is that eventually they found out about her. They came and arrested her and her patients came to court and demanded that she be freed.   Russell Brown: (15:43) And as a result, she was given licence to practise acupuncture. And which paved the way for California to be able to have licence.   Russell Brown: (15:51) The truth is is that she was not the meek, very subservient female acupuncturist that they portrayed. She was working with various organisations. She baited them to arrest her because she wanted to push the issue. And she actually had been lobbying for it. She bankrolled lobbyist's. She was out there actually doing the political work.   Russell Brown: (16:15) And I think that the difference is interesting because in one version we get to sort of just be either the victims of politics or the heroes of politics. But her version is actually no, you have to be a social activist.   Russell Brown: (16:31) The harder story to tell is this is a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and was doing it intentionally. And I think that that is a much better role model for acupuncture than just this very heroic tale of all of her patients worshipping her and wanting her to be able to practise.   Russell Brown: (16:46) But actually she was out there working in Sacramento, which is the state capital, to make sure that this legislature went through. And I think that that is something that we don't talk about enough is that we have to be really doing the work of social activism and not just hoping that our patients speak on our behalf, which is the fantasy that is told about Miriam Lee.   Tahnee: (17:09) Yeah.   Russell Brown: (17:09) The part that's also tangential to that is that Miriam Lee was only arrested because essentially what happened was is this cohort of Caucasian men at UCLA essentially discovered acupuncture in the 70s. They had never even heard of it before and learned it in about a year and a half from a teacher here in Los Angeles.   Russell Brown: (17:30) And as a result, they used their connections to get themselves permitted by the government to be able to practise medicine. But the terms of their permitting were that anyone who wasn't associated with medical school, they were with UCLA, anyone who wasn't associated with a medical school, then they became illegal.   Russell Brown: (17:50) So Miriam Lee was only arrested because these white men decided that they should have control of the laws around acupuncture. And they then went on to found most of the acupuncture schools in America, the curriculum of what it takes to become an acupuncturist, and worked with most of the states around the licencing of acupuncture.   Russell Brown: (18:11) And to me, that is the much bigger conversation is how it is that this group of white men basically decided that they should own the medicine, be responsible for the medicine, of which they had no connection to, to the detriment of the practitioners who actually this was their legacy. This was in their family. This was lineages of knowledge.   Russell Brown: (18:33) And that's why I think of myself as someone who is now one more in a lineage of white men who thinks that they should be the spokesperson for this medicine. I don't like that.   Russell Brown: (18:44) And I am very cautious of that because I understand how these things work. And I wonder, that when I am even on this podcast now talking to you, is there a Miriam Lee out there who's paying the price for my speaking on behalf of Chinese medicine in a way that perhaps I shouldn't be. And it's something that I think about.   Tahnee: (19:05) Yeah. We have a friend, Rhonda Chang, who's a Chinese-   Russell Brown: (19:10) Rhonda Chang's, and she was like, "I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore."   Tahnee: (19:14) This is what I was going to say. She just was like, "This fucking system is broken and you've taken my medicine and you've turned it into something that it's not, and I'm taking it back."   Tahnee: (19:26) And we've both been deeply inspired by her work and we spoke before we jumped on about the challenges of the institutionalisation and the education system around this work.   Tahnee: (19:37) And people like her, I'd much rather sit at her feet than the feet of some of the people I was studying with, so yeah it's a really tricky situation.   Tahnee: (19:48) And it sounds like you had a beautiful teacher from the little bit I've heard. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about your experience at school and how that went down?   Russell Brown: (19:57) I had a few teachers, but my first real primary teacher was a woman named Christine Chang, who, the first time I saw her, she had a man in a headlock on the floor of the clinic because she was cracking his neck which, of course we're not really allowed to do, but she doesn't care.   Russell Brown: (20:10) And she looked like a small woman wrestling a bear. And I was just like, "Who is this woman? I need to know everything she knows."   Russell Brown: (20:18) And so I followed her around and basically just made her talk to me and she was from Taiwan and she was the first person that would look at it like a point I was needling. And she'd be like, "Who told you to needle that?" And I'd be like, "Oh, Dr. Jai." And she'd be like, "Don't listen to Dr. Jai. Dr. Jai is a communist."   Russell Brown: (20:36) And I didn't know what she was talking about but come to find out that she's not wrong. I would be like, "No, Dr. Jai was born in America. I don't think she's a communist," because my understanding of what that was.   Russell Brown: (20:51) But what she was actually basically saying is that how when the communist party took over China in the 40s and 50s, they basically created acupuncture out of nothing.   Russell Brown: (21:01) It was an invented tradition that sort of took what they liked about eight principles and applied it to dialectical materialism, which is sort of communist ideas and sort of syphoned it down into a version of Chinese medicine that they could then package and sell to the west that would appeal to sort of Orientalism.   Russell Brown: (21:25) But it stripped out a lot of the things that she really believed the medicine to be. And Rhonda Chang, that's exactly what she speaks about, is that this sort of communist hybrid that they've made is not interesting to her at all. And it doesn't speak to the lineage she understands.   Russell Brown: (21:39) And so she is doing work that's around that but that's what my teacher was basically into and is that there was TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine is a communist invention, and she's from Taiwan where they didn't subscribe to the TCM.   Russell Brown: (21:55) And so she was very strong about that and making me understand the difference between the two. And I was very fortunate of that. She was a real firecracker and just a very strong woman and taught me to be very strong in terms of my perspective on the medicine and having a perspective on the medicine. And I think that that's really ultimately what I teach.   Russell Brown: (22:20) And when I work with students now is that I want to say that there's a lot of ways of looking at the medicine. This idea of TCM, that there's one thing, it was never true. It never looked like that in Asia. There's always different perspectives on this.   Russell Brown: (22:36) Whether it's Five Element, all of them, whatever Rhonda Chang's doing. And the idea I always want is that you just see what you see and really own your perspective on it.   Russell Brown: (22:47) I like to work with a lot of students on just honing that perspective. What is your version of it? Do you see the world through the eight extras? Do you see the world through secondary vessels? Do you see the body through whatever mechanics? Orthopaedic mechanics?   Russell Brown: (23:02) But really becoming very clear on your own perspective is I think the most important thing. And I associate that with any success that I think that I have is that I've always had a pretty clear perspective. I see it the way I see it and I can own that.   Russell Brown: (23:17) And I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm a white man and so culture allows me to own my perspective in maybe a way that other people wouldn't. But I really think that that's the most important part of it.   Tahnee: (23:27) Mm.   Russell Brown: (23:29) I got that from my teacher.   Tahnee: (23:30) Well, I'm interested in that because, this is from my background research, I believe you were raised Jewish?   Russell Brown: (23:36) Yes.   Tahnee: (23:37) In kind of a fairly alternative household model, which if you want to talk about that you can, and then you studied journalism, then you've ended up in film and then you suddenly had a restaurant like, "Okay, I'm going to go study TCM."   Russell Brown: (23:51) Correct. You done your research.   Tahnee: (23:51) What is Russell's journey? Because how did you find your voice in all that? Because it doesn't really like seem particularly clear from my side of the pitch.   Russell Brown: (24:01) It's interesting. So yeah, I grew up Jewish is sort of a little bit of a stretch. I had a Bar Mitzvah, but that was about it and it was LA Jews. And my family was going through a very strange transition around the time of my Bar Mitzvah.   Russell Brown: (24:17) My mom had just left my dad to be with a woman. And so she and Diane had gotten together. My dad got remarried right away after that. And so by the time I was like coming of age, whatever that actually looks like, at around 13, it had been a long couple of years.   Russell Brown: (24:35) And so I just wanted to be done with that particular chapter and move on with my life. So I don't know that I ever really like thought like of myself as a Jewish person, even though my family was, but gosh, I never really thought about the full story.   Russell Brown: (24:53) One of the things that I knew growing up was is that there's more to be felt than to be seen in the world. And I think I always sort of like that. I always thought that there was magic. I always thought there was magic. I just really thought that there was things that I could see that other people couldn't see and that those were the things that impressed me the most, that I liked the most.   Russell Brown: (25:22) I had a grandfather who had a park and he would take us to the park and he knew every tree in that park in New York. And he would put bird seed in his mouth and the birds would sit on his chin and eat it out of his mouth because he would go there every day and the birds knew him. And I understood that to be the real world. I just knew that that was real and everything else was not.   Russell Brown: (25:45) And he played music and I understood that that was real and music was real. And I think that from a very early age, I understood that beauty was the point. The point was beauty and finding beauty in the world that is becoming increasingly ugly has always mattered to me.   Russell Brown: (26:03) And when I was, as you said, I got into the film industry and was working in films. And I think that that's a really beautiful service actually, out of the time to provide, I think we work hard, we deserve to be transported for a couple of hours to something else. I think we deserve to see other stories and to be transported by the stories of other people.   Russell Brown: (26:23) And I thought that was a really beautiful service to provide. I worked on the Fast and Furious movies and though those movies are ugly in a lot of ways. I think what a beautiful gift to give young people, to say to a 17 year old, "You could be somewhere else for a few hours. You could be in a flying car for a few hours. You don't have to be in your life that is hard."   Russell Brown: (26:47) And I still think that that's a beautiful gift and I knew that I wasn't going to be in that profession for long. But I still think that what I do now is a version of that.   Russell Brown: (26:59) I want you to experience beauty for an hour every week, every two weeks. I want you to be removed from the story of your life. I think that's the only way we're going to survive, frankly, is to have a chance to cushion yourself from how hard the world is with some softness.   Russell Brown: (27:17) And that's how I practise acupuncture now is I want people to be given an opportunity to catch their breath, to float, to not feel like the world is coming at them in a hostile way. What could it feel like to just be soft and to sit alone in the dark and wait for something to happen?   Russell Brown: (27:40) I just think is such a beautiful way to be for a little bit of time, especially in Los Angeles where it's not like that. And it's hard and we drive cars and everything feels hard here in a way.   Russell Brown: (27:51) It's easy here in LA, but it's also hard in that like parallel parking and all of that, the tiny streets and part of the Los Angeles lifestyle is it's a hustling lifestyle, right? Like these are people who are here to make things happen and that hustle is hard and it feels like it's coming at you.   Russell Brown: (28:09) And I like to offer people a space where it doesn't feel like the world is coming at them for a little bit. And I think that's beautiful. I think that that's what I'm still offering is beauty.   Russell Brown: (28:20) I like to think that I'm giving them a chance to feel what it could be like in a soft world where your grandfather gets birds to sit on his chin and eat out of his mouth. That's all really I'm trying to do. That's really all I'm trying to do.   Russell Brown: (28:36) And so I don't know that I'm a great acupuncturist in that way. I don't know that I know the most about endometriosis or herbs, but I do know that that's how I'm trying to practise, is to give people that small space in their lives for some magic to fill it.   Tahnee: (28:54) Hmm. What do you do for you to get that same thing?   Russell Brown: (28:59) The best question. The blacksmith does not get his shoe shined. I go through phases where I'm good at it and where I'm bad at it.   Russell Brown: (29:09) I had a place in the desert and the desert really helped me out a lot there because it is so quiet and it's so peaceful out there. I spend a lot of time with my dog.   Tahnee: (29:17) Backpack.   Russell Brown: (29:19) Backpack is my dog, but Backpack is really helpful because Backpack is a reminder that the world is polite. He's a very, very polite dog. He doesn't take anything for granted. He always asks for permission. Even like to sit on the couch, he looks at me like, "Will you please invite me on the couch?"   Russell Brown: (29:36) And just being in relation to that kind of gentleness is incredibly healing for me. And it slows me down and he just wants me to put my face on his face and I just think that's the best. And I find that kind of sweetness is very, very medicinal for me. So we spend a lot of our time together when I'm not at work.   Russell Brown: (30:01) I read a lot. I write a lot as you know. I really like to write and part of that writing is that I get to spend time with myself and it's a place of creation for me. And creation is really important for me.   Russell Brown: (30:12) And so I have to remember that when I hit the send button on the Instagram post that I'm embarrassed about or that I think is too much it's as much because that kind of creation is very important for me. I don't toil over it too much. I just need to be able to make and to create.   Russell Brown: (30:29) And that's how I sort of restore myself a lot is just with that kind of creation is helpful for me. I don't have kids. I'm not interested in parenting like that, but I do think that creation is still important. I think nurturing is still really important and that's how I nurture.   Russell Brown: (30:49) I eat. I like to eat. I like to watch TV. I like to check out, I need that too. I need stupid. I have a boyfriend and he's a genius, but he's also very stupid. And that balance is very, very important for me.   Russell Brown: (31:05) He's one of the stupidest geniuses I've ever met and will just make me laugh. We've been together a long time and I just can't believe he still makes me laugh, but those are some of the things I do. Yeah.   Tahnee: (31:18) That's really nice. Do you receive treatment yourself from anyone or?   Russell Brown: (31:21) I do. I go to an acupuncturist who does not know I'm an acupuncturist.   Tahnee: (31:26) Secrets.   Russell Brown: (31:27) Yeah. I don't need him to know. I prefer he think that I'm not so that I don't have an opinion or a position and I don't want to talk about acupuncture.   Russell Brown: (31:39) So he thinks I'm a law clerk, which is a job I don't know what is.   Tahnee: (31:41) I was going to say, what does a law clerk do?   Russell Brown: (31:45) I have no idea. Actually someone told me, I can't say I don't know what it is, a lawyer finally told me a law clerk is a lawyer who works for a judge in America.   Russell Brown: (31:53) So like when a judge does a whatever judges do when they make rulings and they write out their rulings, the law clerk writes it out. So that's what I do. My understanding is it is the most boring profession there is because there is no follow up question you could ask to a law clerk. Like there's no like, "Oh you wouldn't." And so he just never does.   Russell Brown: (32:15) And whenever I've said I'm a law clerk, because I'll say at a party. Because sometimes I don't-   Tahnee: (32:18) So just shut downs conversation.   Russell Brown: (32:20) It just kills a conversation dead.   Tahnee: (32:23) Love it.   Russell Brown: (32:23) There's nothing you can ask. There's nothing you can ask about a law clerk, but there's something about being an acupuncturist, especially in LA, I don't want to talk about it.   Russell Brown: (32:31) Especially in certain settings in LA, at an LA party, the minute you say you're an acupuncturist, then you're like in a whole place. And a lot of times I like it. My boyfriend's always like, "You will find some woman with a menstrual disorder at any party who wants to talk to you about her menses."   Russell Brown: (32:48) And I love it. Nine times out of 10 I love it. But like I will always be at a party at a chocolate fountain talking about menstrual cramps and my boyfriend will always walk up and be like, "How? How did you find this woman to talk about her cramps with you?"   Russell Brown: (33:00) But I like it most of the time, but sometimes you just don't want to talk about that. And so that's when you say you're a law clerk and people change the subject or they never speak to you again.   Tahnee: (33:09) I'm so stealing this.   Russell Brown: (33:11) Law clerk's the best.   Tahnee: (33:13) There was a time about six or seven years ago, where if we said we worked with medicinal mushrooms, people would kind of back away.   Russell Brown: (33:18) Oh, yeah.   Tahnee: (33:20) But now it's unfortunately you're-   Russell Brown: (33:26) You're just a law clerk.   Tahnee: (33:26) Yeah. Got to get there. So on clinical practise, and I want to bring it around to that because we've spoken about this before we came on, but I have a little bit of background in understanding some of the basics of what acupuncture means to be as a practitioner and-   Russell Brown: (33:40) You know more than the basics. I think you probably know more than most acupuncturists.   Tahnee: (33:44) Well, yeah. I've had some really amazing mentors and like you said, people who are pushing back against that sort of communist industrial sort of model.   Tahnee: (33:54) So they've pushed me to learn very deeply, which has been something I'm really grateful for. But I wouldn't feel comfortable sticking needles in someone just yet.   Russell Brown: (34:04) You can do it. It's not that hard.   Tahnee: (34:07) I know my husband's always like, "You can test it on me maybe." But yeah, some things I've really noticed about your work which I find interesting, is you work a lot with the eight extraordinaries. So for those that don't know, could you explain a little bit about and how you came to work with those in clinic?   Russell Brown: (34:23) Absolutely. But people don't know is when they go to an acupuncturist, most of the time the acupuncturist is doing like, "We're working on the liver channel, working on the gallbladder channel."   Russell Brown: (34:30) But when they say that they're talking about a very specific type of meridian. There's 12 primary meridians. And those are the ones that most acupuncturists use. Stomach channel, the heart channel. Those are meridians that deal with blood that go to the organ level.   Russell Brown: (34:47) But when an acupuncturist is selecting to use the primary meridians, often they're doing that because those are the meridians that are taught most in schools, but not necessarily because those are the ones that are the most clinically relevant to what is happening with the patient.   Russell Brown: (35:02) The primary channels are the middle level of energy in the body, but there's two other levels of energy that are accessible by acupuncture.   Russell Brown: (35:08) There's Wei Qi, which is the superficial level of energy, which is deals with the skin and the musculature of the body. The Wei Qi levels have no organ connection. They're really just superficial levels. And you can access them through different types of meridians called the sinew channels and the diversion channels, which is a different type of meridian.   Russell Brown: (35:31) And then there's the deepest level of energy that is below the blood level, that deals with something called Yuan Qi, which is source Qi, constitutional Qi, really the energy that is dealt with.   Russell Brown: (35:43) And we sort of talk about more with destiny, like the actual curriculum of your life. And that is what the eight extras are. The eight extras are the deepest level. These are vessels that deal with the trajectory of your life.   Russell Brown: (35:55) And I like them because often when you're dealing with the eight extras, when you deal with the primary channels, this is the thing that they don't tell you much is, the primary channels are a response to life.   Russell Brown: (36:07) The thing happened and then it affected your body. And now it's in the meridians, the primary meridians. And so by the time you're working on the stomach channel, it's because of all the bad things that already happened to your stomach.   Russell Brown: (36:18) When you deal with the eight extras, you're saying, "Life didn't matter." This is energy that was not affected by anything that happened to you after you were born, this is energy that is related to your constitution and what you have to learn in this lifetime.   Russell Brown: (36:33) The directionality of your life, as given to you at birth, the minute of conception even. And so when you deal with eight extras, you're really dealing with life trajectory. And I often think that that's probably, for me, that's a more useful place for what I want to do with patients, which is to step back from the bad thing that happened and actually have some perspective on maybe what that bad thing means to the bigger story of your life.   Russell Brown: (37:02) Or even to forget that the bad thing happened and actually see yourself as so much bigger than that all together. And that is how I think you get back to healing is to widen your imagination back to how you were actually considered before you were even born.   Russell Brown: (37:17) And so the eight extras are a way for me to look at the body that way, or to explain the body that way. Could we just look at your primary resources? Could we look at the way you think of nourishment? Can we look at the way you think of curiosity?   Russell Brown: (37:35) The eight extras are a really good set of metaphors for that curriculum I think. And so that's how I was always taught them. But again, it's about the selection of them. I don't do the eight extras on every patient. Some patients they have a stomach ache and they need to be worked on their stomach. And so then you do a primary channel and that's what it's there for.   Russell Brown: (37:53) But what happens is because the boards tend to only test on the primary channels, acupuncturists don't learn anything but the primary channels. And so they think those are the only ingredients. But there's other options.   Russell Brown: (38:04) And what we're talking about is they're Russian nesting dolls. It's like the primary's in the middle but there's bigger ones and they're smaller ones. And so I want to pick the nesting doll that is most appropriate to where my patient is and that I just want to have as many tools as possible.   Tahnee: (38:21) Well, I've heard acupuncturist claim that you can't clinically work with the eight extraordinaries, which I know not to be true through people like yourself and other people I've worked and studied with.   Tahnee: (38:32) They say, "Oh, once you're born, once you're incarnate there's no effect there." But my experience is that's not true. So what would you say to those people? They just haven't learned enough or?   Russell Brown: (38:46) What we're talking about now is...   Tahnee: (38:49) The woo woo.   Russell Brown: (38:50) It's not even the woo woo. I'm just like, well, it's how literal you want to interpret anything as far as I'm concerned.   Russell Brown: (39:00) I think that the primary meridians are metaphors, frankly. I think Stomach 36 is a point that everyone uses, which is like the big point for digestive function.   Russell Brown: (39:10) But I don't actually think that when I put a needle into Stomach 36, it sends a signal into my stomach that helps me digest food better. I don't think of acupuncture as operating necessarily on the most literal level.   Russell Brown: (39:23) And so I think of the eight extras in terms of all of that. I think all of the meridians are metaphors, frankly. I think they're all poems that I'm trying to talk to the body through. And again, that's what I'm speaking about before is that I think the whole thing is poetry, frankly.   Russell Brown: (39:38) I think that the points are all poems. I think that the metaphor of Qi moving through the body, of feeling stagnant is the metaphor I think. The metaphor of how I digest the world, make sense of it, use it to make me stronger and dispose of the waste. That's the metaphor of digestion I think.   Russell Brown: (40:02) And so perhaps none of it is true. I'm open to that possibility. But I do think that those metaphors are still powerful and I think they're more powerful than any medicine, frankly.   Russell Brown: (40:12) And so that's where I come at it from. I can't say that you can or can't use certain vessels. I think it's sort of a silly conversation to have at some point.   Tahnee: (40:24) So what do you think is happening when you needle 36? Is it your intention? You've been educated and you're sending that through that person?   Russell Brown: (40:34) I'm not going to use Stomach 36 by itself. I'm going to use it in the context, the conversation about how one uses nourishment. What are we talking about when we talk about where you think nourishment is? What do you think it means to take something in and make sense of it? How much worth do you think you have that you deserve that nourishment?   Russell Brown: (40:53) I think that there's when we get into stomach stuff, we're talking self worth obviously. We're talking about how much I want to take care of myself, how much I learned how to invest in this body, to invest in my life.   Russell Brown: (41:07) And so I'm often involved in sort of a larger conversation when it comes to that. And that's why I think like my version of Stomach 36 is going to be different than your version of Stomach 36 because I have my own take on what digestion is and which is informed by my own mom issues. And which is what stomach is, is about how we-   Tahnee: (41:31) Oh, I know all about that one.   Russell Brown: (41:33) I'm sure. Yeah. As a mom and as a daughter, but like, yeah, how much I feel safe in the world and how much I trust nourishment and how much I trust to be continued to be taken care of in this lifetime and how much I trust my capacity to give care relative to my capacity to receive care.   Russell Brown: (41:54) I think all of those things are involved in that. Stomach 36 is a particularly one because in five element tradition, it's the earth point on the earth channel, which means it is really about rectifying that relationship to digestion.   Russell Brown: (42:07) It is saying, "You had it all wrong. You were confused actually about what that relationship to nourishment is." And so we are saying, "It's time to reset that relationship."   Russell Brown: (42:19) So when you do Stomach 36, you're basically instructing the body that you're from an earth standpoint, your earth is confused and we're going to restart, which is why it's such a powerful point and why everyone uses it, because it is a way of basically resetting your understanding of basic nourishment on the deepest level there is.   Russell Brown: (42:40) And that's why, for some acupuncturists, that's the only point they need to use. They only want that because the idea is that if I can get a patient to just understand clearly nourishment on a very basic level, then all the rest of the body processes will come back online. And I think there's some truth to that.   Russell Brown: (42:58) So I do use Stomach 36 quite a bit, but I don't think that it's just going in there and telling my body to help me not be lactose intolerant anymore. I'm still lactose intolerant.   Russell Brown: (43:12) But that's why like then you do earth points on the other meridians. And you're like, "Oh, Lung Nine is actually this beautiful point for saying nourishment... Grief is part of nourishment."   Russell Brown: (43:22) That's what the lung points. The metal element is about loss and what the earth point on the lung channel is about saying is like, could you take all of that loss that you've experienced in your life and understand that even that was a way of taking care of yourself? That even that was a version of self love.   Russell Brown: (43:38) That is the most beautiful thing I think Lung Nine is so beautiful as to say, "All of that loss you ever had, that heartbreak that you had, that was for you, that fed you too. There was actually nutrition in all of that loss." What a beautiful way of looking at that loss I think from point of nutrition, from the point of nourishment. I love Lung Nine.   Russell Brown: (43:59) And doing Stomach 36 to say, "You've had it wrong. Now we're going to think of nourishment a new way. And you're going to take that understanding to lung, to your broken heart, to all that grief." Perfect treatment, as far as I'm concerned.   Russell Brown: (44:12) Those two points, that's it, I'm done. I'm out. Those are primary channels. That's not secondary vessels, but that's a perfect treatment, I think. But that's how I look at it.   Tahnee: (44:21) And your work, especially your writing I suppose, but even how you speak is so poetic and my husband was supposed to see you, but didn't get the chance because of COVID.   Tahnee: (44:32) But I get the sense from your writing that you speak to your clients about their lives and use these beautiful metaphors from Chinese medicine.   Tahnee: (44:42) And I think that's something I've really loved about your work is you bring a really fresh... A lot of people just repeat the wrote learned kind of chart of five element theory.   Tahnee: (44:52) Deliver, "You might feel frustration or irritability." I get a little bit like, "Oh, okay, can we evolve this conversation now?"   Tahnee: (45:00) And yeah, I think that it's not an embodied or useful way, I suppose of speaking to these things. And I wonder if you could, I know it's a long conversation, but could you give us a quick journey through the five elements from your perspective?   Russell Brown: (45:16) I really think that the seasons are such a perfect way of looking at it. And that's why I sort of wrote about it recently is that we learn the five elements and then learn the seasons, which I think is sort of backwards because they're going to teach you wood, which is means nothing, right?   Russell Brown: (45:30) They're going to teach you metal which means nothing. And these are all the things. Wood is frustration. What is anger? Wood is spring. Wood is green. And you're like, "Oh, okay." But they teach it that way because they're going to test you multiple choice. Right? So they just want to make sure that you've covered the bases.   Russell Brown: (45:46) But I like to go the other way. I want to start with the season. By season I think of spring and that's wood, right? And what's spring about? Spring is about the force that was required for a seed to break through snow and want to grow.   Russell Brown: (46:03) The liver and wood is about understanding the path forward. It's the journey that's taking you up. And that is really what we're talking about when we talk about wood. It is vision for the future, capacity to plan, knowing which way you want to go.   Russell Brown: (46:21) The wood is the general, it's like, "This is how I want to go. I want to go this way. That's how it is." And that's what spring is. It takes a lot of energy to crack that seed open after winter and that's what the wood energy is.   Russell Brown: (46:34) And so when you meet a wood personality type, those are aggressive people who know what they want, they are competitive and they're prone to anger.   Russell Brown: (46:43) And the reason why they're prone to anger is because they want to grow so badly that when life gets in the way they take it personally. They don't understand that obstacles are part of growth. And they perceive it as a stagnation. They perceive that as someone blocking their capacity to grow, and that is what anger comes from.   Russell Brown: (47:03) And so that's how you get to anger. You can't learn anger first. You have to understand that the end of it is where, oh, it's like, "Yeah, those people are really angry because they think that growth is supposed to just be a free flow of energy." And it's not. Growth comes with challenges.   Russell Brown: (47:23) Kites rise against the wind, not with the wind. But if you think that the world is coming at you hostilely and it's trying to prevent you from manifesting the plan that you see so clearly in your mind, you're going to be frustrated all the time.   Russell Brown: (47:35) And that's what a wood type is essentially. But that's how it is. So then you get through wood. Next is fire and fire is the culmination of that, that's summer, right? It's like the height of life.   Russell Brown: (47:47) And I have always sort of joke that I never like fire because fire people tend to be so full of life and in LA a fire type is like an actor, right? We're a fire city. People come to LA because they're fiery. And I hate that. I never want to talk to those people generally.   Russell Brown: (48:03) And as I was younger, I was like, "They're too vexing." Like that kind of fullness, that kind of like so much fire is about inspiration, being enlightened is fire, which could be annoying.   Russell Brown: (48:15) And especially in LA and love is fire, which I find to be just sort of treacly and basic. But as I've gotten older, I'm like, "No, actually those people are right. What else is there?" It's what we're trying to do. We're trying to reach up to fire.   Russell Brown: (48:32) That is the point of fire is that we should be looking for love. We should be inspired. We should want to be set on fire with excitement for living like that is the point. And that's summer.   Russell Brown: (48:45) Summer's not my season. I don't like being hot and I don't like parties and I don't like splashing or in the pool, but I get it now that if you have come from snow and if you live in not LA, but you live in some place snowy, you love summer and you just want it to be sun and summer all the time. And that's really what the fire element is about.   Russell Brown: (49:05) And then you get on the other side of fire and you're in fall, which is where I'm at now, which is about the pairing back. The bloom is over. And now we're actually coming into a state of decline again.   Russell Brown: (49:18) And it's about the tree losing its leaves, but it doesn't lose the leaves for pain. It's losing the leaves because it's going into a state of hibernation and it's going back into a state of contraction.   Russell Brown: (49:29) And I'm writing a lot about grief right now, and it's not that the grief is meant to break people's heart. It's about to see yourself clearly and what metal is about, metal is fall, and metal is about letting go of all of the things you thought you were, but you weren't really.   Russell Brown: (49:46) And that's why the metal organs are the lungs and the large intestine, because the lungs and intestine are filters. The large intestine is saying, "All the things you ate that you said were who you are, you're not." And actually you could just let them go. It's a filter.   Russell Brown: (50:01) That's the idea is just because you digested it, it didn't become who you were, your job isn't who you are, your mom isn't who you are, your role as a mother isn't who you are. There is an essential you underneath it.   Russell Brown: (50:14) And if you could let those things go, you actually get a chance to see yourself more clearly. And you take that essential part of you into the hibernation of winter, which is what the water element is about. And that's where you go after that.   Russell Brown: (50:28) Water is the conservation period. It's about saying, "I need to actually incubate for a little bit." Water is so interesting. And I'm looking at it now from a different point of view, which is that if you look at the five element cycle, water is the beginning. It's actually the beginning of life, but it's the dark part.   Russell Brown: (50:46) And the idea is that life begins in darkness and then brightness comes out of darkness. And that's really what water is about saying, "It's going to be dark. Can you move through the fear to know that there's life on the other side of that?"   Russell Brown: (51:03) And I think that that's so much part of the life experience is that the Big Bang itself was about light coming out of dark.   Russell Brown: (51:11) And that's what the water element is about, is that this virtue is the wisdom of saying, "I don't know, but I am willing to go into darkness in my belief that life will come after this, that there will be something that comes after this. I'm not sure I'm making peace with that darkness because I believe that there is light that comes out of the darkness."   Russell Brown: (51:35) And trusting that that is the case. And that's really where you get to when you get with the water element, which is why water types tend to be wise.   Russell Brown: (51:44) We think of the water type is the wizard because the wizard is the one that's like, "I don't need to control things. I don't need to know everything. I'm actually just going to soften myself and move really slowly and trust that there's light here."   Russell Brown: (51:58) And that then turns into spring again, which is the burst of light that comes out of that, which is insane. And it's deranged, completely insane that there would be grass growing under snow. I just think it's crazy. But that spring, it comes back around.   Russell Brown: (52:16) And so I didn't do a great job explaining the five elements, oh, I skipped earth, shit. Earth is a tricky one.   Tahnee: (52:21) Well, they can stick it in the middle and then nobody knows.   Russell Brown: (52:24) Earth is in the middle. Either Earth is in the middle, earth is after every season or earth is in the fall, right? Is in that period of fall where it's harvest, but earth is about reaping what you sew basically.   Russell Brown: (52:36) Earth is about saying after summer you actually get to collect all of the things that the summer gave you and bringing it back into a place of nourishment.   Russell Brown: (52:45) Earth's the most important one for any of us who are listening, because it's all going to be healers who are listening and we're all earth types, because that's why we got into healing to begin with is because we all have inappropriate relationships with giving and receiving care. It's the only reason you become a healer to begin with.   Russell Brown: (53:00) And hopefully we get that worked out, but that's also why we're all burnt out is because we give more care than we get. And that's the earth, that's the earth deficiency.   Russell Brown: (53:11) But that's how I am looking at the cycle now. And I see that cycle in myself and I see that cycle in myself every day, because that cycle is every day when I wake up in the morning and then I crash at the end of the day.   Russell Brown: (53:23) And I see that cycle in my patients and explaining some of that helps me contextualise a lot of where patients are. And I think it helps, like I said, to step back from where you are in the immediacy of your life and be like, "Oh, this is just one part in this big story."   Russell Brown: (53:42) And actually the context is important because if you are lost in darkness and you are lost in grief right now, and you don't understand that the grief is so important and that it's actually incubating something very special in you. And you just think that all of the leaves on these trees are falling because it's sad and your heart is supposed to break for it.   Russell Brown: (54:04) And you don't know that actually that tree is alive under there. It looks like it's dead, but it's not. And that is what actually metal is about, is that you are being stripped down to what is most bare in you so that when you come back, you come back stronger.   Russell Brown: (54:19) I think that that's such an important part that we don't get from just talking about regular old metal and grief. I just think that parts of it are missed if you don't actually sort of put it in the context of all the other organs and elements.   Tahnee: (54:34) Yeah. And I was taught the word poignancy, which is like the beautiful grief and then the counter to that almost, the courage that comes from facing what we don't want to face and actually that growth.   Tahnee: (54:48) And that for me really transformed because I was a grief avoider for sure. Especially in my 20s. And yeah, I remember when I was taught that it was a bit of an epiphany for me. And you mentioned an epiphany earlier. Should we segue to epiphanies?   Russell Brown: (55:06) I would love it. I'm in a class with an acupuncturist. I won't mention his name because there may be some patient confidentiality stuff, but I'm with a teacher who I've been with for years. And he's an acupuncturist and he's brilliant.   Russell Brown: (55:20) But I also kind of think he's a little bit pompous in a way that a lot of-   Tahnee: (55:26) They tend to be.   Russell Brown: (55:28) Acupuncturists can be, and his arrogance does something visceral to me that makes it hard, but I just find him to be so brilliant.   Russell Brown: (55:35) And so we're in this weekend courses now where we basically are watching him do intakes with patients and he does pulse and he doesn't actually do needles on anyone. It's all just intake. And then we talk about the patient after that.   Russell Brown: (55:45) And so people in the class bring in a patient and normally the patients are of a certain type, just like, oh, maybe a little trauma, maybe a little psycho emotional stuff, because that's kind of his focus, but they're all interesting.   Russell Brown: (56:00) But then a couple days ago I was in one over the weekend. We had this patient who was probably like a 45 year old electrician, like a blue collar guy, which isn't classically someone who would show up to an acupuncture workshop.   Russell Brown: (56:16) And he was sort of doing a little bit of like he would talk to my teacher and then he would sort of talk to us, like he was kind of entertaining a little bit and wanted to sort of have a laugh and be a little bit of a performer for us, which I appreciated.   Russell Brown: (56:30) But when it came down to it, he ultimately was talking about h

Today on the podcast, Tahnee is joined by nutritionist and award-winning author of The Healthy Skin Diet, Karen Fischer, for a very real breakdown of why so many people suffer from skin conditions and how healing from within is always possible. Working as a nutritionist specialising in eczema and skin health for the past 20 years, Karen has just about seen it all when it comes to skin inflammation issues (acne, eczema, rosacea, psoriasis) and the lineup of factors that cause them. The author of seven health books, including best-sellers The Eczema Diet, The Eczema Detox, and The Healthy Skin Kitchen, Karen's approach to healing the skin is utterly holistic; She addresses lifestyle, environment, emotional wellbeing, and diet. Whether you're a mother of a baby who has eczema, someone who suffers from acne or allergies, has an autoimmune condition, or wants to have clear, healthy skin; This episode is brimming with something for everyone. Karen discusses the increasing prevalence of salicylate sensitivity, autoimmune conditions, food elimination diets, nourishing the liver for healthier skin, calming the nervous system, Inflammatory load, protocols for skin conditions, and provides practical lifestyle, diet-related skin advice.       "In traditional diets, when you eat seasonally, your diets change with the season, and that's how you would notice the food you're reacting to. But in western society today, we have the same foods available every day. and that's a problem with diagnosing food intolerances".   - Karen Fischer    Tahnee and Karen discuss: Acne. Eczema. Rosacea. Psoriasis The itchy dozen. Salicylate foods. Salicylate sensitivity. Inflammatory load. Eczema in babies. The eczema detox. Oils to eat/avoid or acne. Histamine intolerance. Salicylates and the Liver Autoimmune conditions and skin. Glycine for food chemical intolerance. The mind-body connection and skin sensitivities. The correlation between lung function and health skin. FID programme: Food Intolerance Diagnosis programme Why child teething gel is not great for babies with eczema.   Who is Karen Fischer?    Karen Fischer is an award-winning nutritionist who has written seven health books including, bestsellers; The Eczema Diet, The Eczema Detox, and The Healthy Skin Kitchen. Over the past 20 years, Karen has helped thousands of people with skin inflammation including, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, dermatitis, and acne.    Karen runs a skincare and supplement company called Skin Friend and The Healthy Skin Kitchen Membership; An online support network for people with skin inflammation.     CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources:   Skinfriend.com Eczema Life website Karen's Instagram Eczema Life podcast Skin Friend Facebook The Eczema Diet Facebook The Healthy Skin Kitchen Facebook The Healthy Skin Kitchen website Shop all of Karen Fischer's Books and products HERE     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everybody. And welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. Today, I'm joined by Karen Fischer, which makes me very happy, because I've known Karen for a very long time and she is an incredible author and creator of beautiful skin supplements and many websites, we were talking about before we jumped on, and her work has been for me, it was really profound to get to work with her in my early twenties. And I've seen just so many positive reviews and feedback from her work, especially around things like eczema and acne and rosacea. So I'm really stoked to have you here today, Karen, thanks for joining us.   Karen Fischer: (00:37) Oh, thanks Tahnee. Thanks for having me.   Tahnee: (00:40) Yeah, it's been such a long time, but so nice to see your face again.   Karen Fischer: (00:46) Yeah. [crosstalk 00:00:47]-   Tahnee: (00:46) Yeah. And so I was hoping we could start off with your journey because so just for some context, for those of you listening, Karen and I worked together on her first book, the Healthy Skin Diet, which was probably in the late 2000s, 2008 maybe.   Karen Fischer: (01:03) Yeah, it was published in 2008.   Tahnee: (01:05) Okay, great. My memory's still working. And so I remember reading your story in that book and it's just such a beautiful story because you had such a personal relationship with the work that you do and you went on and educated yourself and healed yourself and your daughter. And so if you could share that story with us, I'd love for you to start off there.   Karen Fischer: (01:27) Yeah, absolutely. Look, I became a qualified nutritionist probably about the age of 25 and shortly after I had a baby girl, Ava, and she two weeks after she was born developed really severe eczema all over her body. And it's funny, I only have like one photo of her with the eczema everywhere, as I just didn't take a lot of photos and just used the general topical treatments for her.   Karen Fischer: (01:54) And it wasn't until a nurse from the early childhood centre, she saw Ava when she was about 10 months old after seeing her earlier, and she's like, "Has your daughter still got eczema?" I was like, "What? Eczema is a genetic condition. What can I do about it?" And she knew I was a nutritionist and she's like, "Oh look." She mentioned salicylates and don't use baby teething gel because it's salicylate. Medication and salicylates are related to eczema. And I was like, it was a light bulb moment for me. I was like, "Oh wow. I know how to get rid of salicylate sensitivity because I had it when I was younger and I studied nutritional biochemistry and I worked out how to fix it from my uni studies." And I was like, so it just changed my life and started me on a journey.   Karen Fischer: (02:42) And by the time my daughter was two, I developed the eczema diet and a supplement routine for her and it cleared up her skin and I kind of, "Oh yeah, that's great." And I forgot about it. But then as a nutritionist, word got out that I treated eczema and I kept on having all these eczema patients come and see me and it grew from there. And I thought, "I don't want to specialise in eczema. I just want to specialise in skin health and beauty." But I was like, "Oh, but these people are suffering." And I was like, "No, I actually really should focus on it." So I wrote the Healthy Skin Diet first and I'm like, "I know I should be writing an eczema book, but I want to help everyone."   Karen Fischer: (03:21) I know there's acne information, acne's a very important thing to treat as well. In my first book I wanted to help everyone and then I went back to, "Okay, let's publish the eczema diet because this is what I did with my daughter." The diet for someone with eczema is totally different to a diet for somebody with acne. Acne's oily skin, eczema is very dry skin. So any dry skin condition, you are going to need a vastly different diet to someone with oily skin.   Karen Fischer: (03:53) So that was the start of my journey. And well, actually before that, I grew up with skin problems as well. I was the kind of kid that looked like I was sick all the time. And I used to joke, "I grew up on aspirin." So no one really knew [crosstalk 00:04:11] salicylate sensitivity because I had headaches every week. I was popping aspirins as a kid. So I did end up with salicylate sensitivity and that's why look, no one really talks about salicylate sensitivity, but it's the most widely researched chemical in the world because of all the problems that people had with asthma, aspirin and getting asthma attacks and being seriously ill from aspirin. So yeah, so it's a massively researched area. So when I was treating eczema, I was like, "Oh." Or there's so much scientific research on salicylates, it actually made it easier for me to design my diets.   Tahnee: (04:50) Yeah. And I mean, I remember the first time I heard about salicylates was probably from your book and then speaking to, I think it was our accountant whose son had really bad eczema and they drew it down to salicylate sensitivity being the cause. And what shocked me, I think about when I learned about them is they're in so many foods and actually a lot of foods we would consider like healthy and maybe even like the foundation of our diet for, especially if we're trying to feed our kids lots of vegetables and fruits and whole foods and that kind of stuff. Could you speak a bit to that?   Karen Fischer: (05:23) Yeah. So it looks like salicylate foods aren't unhealthy. They are definitely in healthy foods and my goal has always been to get people not being sensitive to salicylates so they have a varied diet. So yeah, I know we tend to demonise things like gluten and histamines in foods and amines in foods and salicylates in foods. And I probably did that in the early days as well going, "This is bad for eczema." But while really it's our immune systems are overreacting to a harmless substance. So that's the bottom line with any sort of food intolerance. Look, food allergies might be a little different, but with any food intolerance, such as salicylate sensitivity, histamine intolerance, even gluten intolerance in the milder sense and other food chemicals, there's glutamate such as MSG. Those are intolerances based on our immune system overreacting to stuff.   Karen Fischer: (06:24) So while with my dietary stuff, it's really important to reduce those things in the diet, to calm down your skin and get you feeling normal again, and that calms down the immune. And then you can start reintroducing those salicylate foods again, even reintroducing little bits of gluten. And it does depend on the dosage to start off with. So it's calming down the immune system by giving it a little break, a three month break from those high chemicals is often enough for people to be able to consume them again. Some people, it does take longer. Some people it takes a year or two.   Tahnee: (07:01) And I guess I'm thinking about that naturopathic concept where there's like that bucket of tolerance, I suppose, or chemical inputs into the system and the body gets to a point where it really just can't handle what's coming in anymore. And so I think what you are talking to there is that if we reduce the load on the body, it gives the body a chance to heal and repair and then it doesn't have to necessarily be a lifetime of avoiding... Because they're in mangoes and things, right? Like yummy foods.   Karen Fischer: (07:34) Yeah. So the bucket being full, that's a really good analogy because what happens is, yes, so the bucket does get full. And how that occurs is your liver is designed to deactivate salicylates and eliminate them from the body but your liver needs nutrients to do that. So your liver needs a range of B vitamins and zinc and minerals and glycine and a bunch of other proteins in order to deactivate salicylates and other chemicals and drugs such as paracetamol and so forth. The liver does all of that, but when your liver runs out of nutrients, the bucket fills up really quickly. So a nutritional approach is also really important and also calming down the nervous system is really important as well and stress, so that all helps to empty that bucket. So yeah, it's an important thing.   Karen Fischer: (08:29) Because they're our fun foods, salicylate foods, almonds, which are [crosstalk 00:08:35] as well, which can damage the gut lining. There's so many good and bad things to any health food. It's funny because people just say, "Oh avocado, coconut, almonds, the best thing for your skin." I was like, "Well, yeah, if you process them properly. Absolutely." Yeah. If your bucket's full, avocado could give someone the worst itchy night of their life and they'll be crying all night because they can't sleep and they're itching like crazy. I've had head to toe eczema myself, and I've had nights like that even while avoiding all the foods when I had an autoimmune condition for a while that made everything go crazy. I'm better now. So those things are absolutely reversible.   Karen Fischer: (09:25) And I'm really excited about that, but I know how itchy and uncomfortable it can be and I've of people email my team and just say, "Oh, I found you because I searched eczema and avocado because I've been eating a lot of avocados and I can't sleep because I'm itchy all the time." And they said, "Your website came up, your itchy dozen worst foods for eczema came up because... And I was like, oh, I've always been told to eat lots of avocado. So I was eating more and more and more and getting more [crosstalk 00:09:58]." I say one person's superfood is another person's sleepless night itching.   Tahnee: (10:07) Like a kryptonite.   Karen Fischer: (10:08) Exactly. Yeah. My daughter and I, we can eat avocado and things like that again. My daughter's a funny one. She can eat everything again, but if she has avocado every day for a week, she'll start to get itchy. So it's like having it two days a week and you're totally fine with it, but it's I just say it's not an everyday food.   Tahnee: (10:30) And in terms of that, like I mean, I guess thinking about kids coming in with eczema as tiny babies. Are you looking at the toxic load to use that sort of phrasing on their bodies? Because my understanding is their little livers don't function quite as efficiently as ours anyway. So that's-   Karen Fischer: (10:51) That's right. That's in my books, yeah.   Tahnee: (10:52) Yeah. Maybe I learned that from you, but yeah the factoring is this like, "Yes, their bodies don't process that." So is it something that if your baby's got eczema, are you looking at your diet as well? Or is it overall supplementing them to help assist their liver function? Or what are you looking at when you're dealing with babies?   Karen Fischer: (11:13) Yes. Babies are complicated.   Tahnee: (11:15) Yeah.   Karen Fischer: (11:16) There's not a lot you can do, but definitely, I mean, the first thing is look at what is going on in the home. From anything like stress within the family, babies pick up on that, if the place is dusty or carpets. So we look at the external stuff first for babies. The fabrics, if they're got a hundred percent cotton fabrics on their body, in their bedding, that's great. What you're washing their clothes with, is it a sensitive skin washing powder? So we tick all those boxes first and then we go to making sure you're not using teething gel because use the frozen kind of chew rings instead of the salicylate teething gel, because that can seriously cause eczema to bleed and some of my patients have gone, "Yeah, no. Yeah. When I gave my child teething gel, their skin started bleeding." And so it's not great for babies with eczema.   Karen Fischer: (12:23) So once we've ticked all those boxes, then we go to what the mother's eating in the diet. I don't like to tell breastfeeding mothers to take a whole bunch of things out of their diet. Just say, "Look, just avoid the itchy dozen. And once your baby's the age of one, then we can deal with things a little bit differently." But I think it's more important that because when you're breastfeeding, you're just like [crosstalk 00:12:46]-   Tahnee: (12:48) Eat whatever you need.   Karen Fischer: (12:49) [crosstalk 00:12:49]. Your baby is second priority to you, having good nutrition and getting good sleep and not having to fuss with a major diet while you are going through these big life changes with a new baby. So the eczema comes second in those cases. And look, just doing those changes is enough to reduce symptoms in a lot of cases. And having just a good skin cream as well, that's really hydrating. We've got one on my website, but just anything that's going to just lock in moisture and not make them more itchy. That's a really wonderful approach for a young baby, making sure the ingredients are okay for babies.   Karen Fischer: (13:39) A great time is when you're starting to introduce new foods for a baby. So your first foods so we have a list of babies' first foods that are lower in salicylates and lower in those natural chemicals because there is research showing that babies' livers are naturally under functioning and they don't process salicylates very well and that's aspirin research. So it's really well researched. So it's not just saying, "Oh this could be it." It's like going, "Okay, this is scientific research." So any salicylate food so don't give babies avocado first, maybe give them things like white potato is a low salicylate-   Tahnee: (14:24) Mushy pears that kind of thing.   Karen Fischer: (14:25) Yeah mushy pears. Yeah. Mushy peeled pears that's low salicylate. So just starting with the easy to digest foods for a baby, just does wonders with starting them off on the right track. And a paediatrician, not a doctor, but a paediatrician can also prescribe a really special formula if the baby's formula fed. So it might be Neocate or something, but it's something that a regular doctor can't prescribe for a baby with eczema. But yeah, that's a really great approach if someone was using formula as well.   Tahnee: (15:04) Yeah. So just back on that diet thing is an interesting thing that I came across much later after working with you when I was studying Chinese medicine and dietary therapy. So they actually recommend for babies, a clear bland diet with a lot of white foods, which is really interesting because if you look at what eczema diets typically are, and again, from having read a couple of your books, they are usually pretty bland and pretty white.   Karen Fischer: (15:33) [crosstalk 00:15:33] with white cabbage. You can have red cabbage as well [crosstalk 00:15:36].   Tahnee: (15:37) Yeah. Like the peeled potato, it's a lot of these really, like I imagine things like congee and stuff would be quite good. Things that are quite simple to digest. And we certainly didn't have that approach with my daughter. We were a bit more in that whole baby-led weaning world, but it's interesting. I think being pregnant again, I'm like, I might be a little bit more gentle this time and not be she was eating avocado and green smoothies and all sorts of crazy-   Karen Fischer: (16:05) But if she doesn't have eczema, then you don't need to worry about it. If there's no problem, you don't need to fix anything. You can be intuitive like that. An eczema baby, there is a genetic component to having eczema in the family. I don't suggest everyone has to necessarily follow that. So if the child had eczema or asthma or any signs of inflammation, then this is the approach for that type of child.   Tahnee: (16:37) Well, I remember, and this is interesting because that stuff supports lung function in Chinese medicine and spleen function, which are those two really weak organ systems in a baby according to their sort of philosophy, and I know you've spoken, I think it was in the Healthy Skin Diet, you spoke about lung function being really important to healthy skin function. So there's this interesting correlation I think, between supporting those organ systems and having minimising things like asthma and eczema and any skin dysfunction. So is that something you've seen in practise showing up?   Karen Fischer: (17:08) Yeah, absolutely. And I feel the body supports each other as a whole. I know there's a lot of diets that just focus on liver health or they just focus on gut health. And I was like, "Oh that's nice, but that's, what sometimes..." Or heart health, it's like, "Your red wine for heart health." I'm like, "Yeah, but it's not great for your liver health." Let's not forget it's a body as a whole. So absolutely, I think all those systems we can learn, take the best of all the information that helps a certain system in the body and put it together in a holistic way. It's not all about gut health, it's not all about liver health, it's like the body as a whole.   Karen Fischer: (17:54) And I think the mind is one of the biggest predictors of our health as well. What we tell ourselves every day is one of the most important things for our mental health and wellbeing. Because if we are telling ourselves, "Oh I look fat or I look this." That's an instruction, that's setting your GPS to make food decisions that will keep you that way. So we've really got to be really careful and kind with ourselves. And those thoughts will naturally pop up and you can just say, "You know what, that's not true. I'm not going to focus on that. I'm going to focus on having great health. I'm going to focus on eating for healthy skin. I'm going to focus on creating my best life." You've got to shut down the negative thinking because it's going to happen naturally, but you can't buy into it. So it's like, "Oh yeah. That's not true." You're just going to remind yourself-   Tahnee: (18:56) Not helpful, thank you. Moving right along.   Karen Fischer: (18:59) [crosstalk 00:18:59].   Tahnee: (19:00) No, it's so true. Yeah. And I mean, I had an eating disorder as a young person and it's really interesting how sitting where I am now, I can't even relate to that thinking process, but I remember that loop and I remember being like... I almost remember the day it snapped as well. And through a lot of work, it wasn't just magical, but I think it's like a spiral that you can really easily get sucked into. And I remember you addressed it in the Healthy Skin Diet. And I remember thinking, that was for me one of, [inaudible 00:19:34] you had the breathing and the mind aspect in there, which I think was really new at the time. Because a lot of people weren't talking about those factors in terms of skin health and just general wellbeing. It was the 2000s, I guess, were the start of that movement toward us really understanding that mind-body connection more collectively and I think that was really special. So thank you for bringing that into everybody's consciousness before it was a thing.   Karen Fischer: (20:03) Yeah. You remind me because that books from so long ago, but I remember people saying, "Oh, I've never thought like that." Because there's a walking meditation where you think a nice thought about a person who's walking past. You pick a good point about them whether it's something about the way they look or they look confident, they look like a nice person. Because I used to do that and I'd go, these people would smile at me, I'm going, "Oh, can they read my mind?" I got lots of comments. So I've had readers saying, "Oh, I never thought to do that, but it actually made me feel really good and really connected to people."   Karen Fischer: (20:40) And I just really wanted people to know it's just not all about food and weight and weighing yourself or denying yourself stuff. It's about eating foods that aren't harming you, whether that's for if you have a salicylate sensitivity or a gluten sensitivity or whatever, and also bringing the mind aspect into it and just that kind of self-love, it just is growing the good in you and it retrains your brain to avoiding eating disorders and avoid harming ourselves, which we do by accident. We don't mean to, but we train our brains to get into this loop of choices, which we aren't good for us.   Tahnee: (21:27) Yeah. And I think that negative or, I mean, it's easy to look for fault and negativity and what's wrong I think. And there's all the evolutionary research around why we do that and obviously our family upbringings and stuff too. I learned from a Daoist teacher, a practise called inner smile where you purposely, and at the beginning you feel like a real idiot, but you like, "Smile at my body." And over time it becomes quite, you condition yourself to look for that joy and happiness and pleasure in experiencing your body. And I think those kinds of practises are really helpful. I think if you are listening to this and that's something you're interested in, Karen's first book, which we'll link to, talks to that.   Tahnee: (22:12) You also speak to, from memory, acne and rosacea and psoriasis and ageing and all sorts of stuff in that book. So that was definitely a more general piece of work. And I remember it has all the programmes and protocols and I mean, I've looked at it when I had my daughter. She didn't, she actually, so we didn't have eczema early. She didn't have anything until she started probably when she was two, she first got eczema and it was because I was giving her heaps of coconut milk, almond milk and avocado. And I was sort of like, "What the hell was going on?" Because she'd had perfect skin before that. And I'd had sensitivity to preservatives as a kid, like fruit juices and stuff. So I knew that there was something in our family that was a bit like that. And we just took that out for a few months and she was fine after, now she can have all those things like you say, we don't overdo it.   Tahnee: (23:13) It was really interesting to me picking that book up again and it was really helpful to have a look at even that small programme on eczema you have there, but you've gone on to write the complete eczema diet and you've got your new book as well, Healthy Skin Kitchen. Is The Healthy Skin Kitchen again, aimed at a more general kind of audience or is it still specifically for-   Karen Fischer: (23:37) [crosstalk 00:23:37].   Tahnee: (23:37) Yeah. Okay. Can you tell us a bit about that then?   Karen Fischer: (23:38) Yeah. So that's really the accumulation of 20 years working as a nutritionist, specialising on skin health and eczema, because there was just so much new information. So I've covered vagus nerve wellness and some really great research on that and your microbiome and all the research that's on that. Because it's just the research side's really fascinating. So with The Healthy Skin Kitchen so I do mention the different diets for things like acne. So you can look up your skin disorder and you can see what supplements you need. For example, with acne things like flaxseed oil and chia seeds and things like that, wonderful, everyone writes about how they're great for skin, but for some with acne, who's already got oily skin that is going to make you break out like you're a teenager again. So it's little things like that.   Karen Fischer: (24:36) With acne, the only oil you should ever use really is the olive oil or extra virgin olive oil because it's not going to change your skin oiliness. So researchers who have done flax seed oil research shows how after using it for six to 12 weeks, it's increased your skin hydration and the oil content in your skin and their placebo they use is olive oil because it doesn't change your skin oiliness. That's kind of a scientific factor. If you've got oily these skin, it's just the olive oil or extra virgin olive oil.   Karen Fischer: (25:06) For someone say that has psoriasis, their diet is probably closer to the eczema diet. But one big thing with psoriasis is calcium deficiency because calcium is needed for your skin cells to differentiate so for your skin cells to exfoliate and shed in a normal way. So with psoriasis, your skin cells are turning over crazy amounts and you're getting really flaky, but with all my psoriasis patients and I've had it as well, you need calcium and magnesium in equal amounts. We've got a product specifically for that. Because too much calcium without magnesium's not good for you. You really need equal amounts of magnesium when you're doing a supplement form. And that will just really quickly decrease the psoriasis and make the skin cells not turn over as quickly, just to turn over at a normal rate. So it's just little things like that in The Healthy Skin Kitchen, just to help break it down very specific for specific skin disorders and the prescriptions that I've prescribed over the last 20 years, just so people aren't doing just a blanket, healthy skin programme that's designed for everyone because really different people-   Tahnee: (26:23) You've got to drill down really on what you need, yeah.   Karen Fischer: (26:27) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.   Tahnee: (26:28) And I mean, if there's, because I know with psoriasis and probably a lot of these things and you mentioned the immune system at the start, that autoimmune factor, it was one of the things that my husband and I first talked about when we met. He said to me like, "You've got to understand, of course autoimmune is serious, but there has to be ways to sort of start to work with it and heal it because why would your body want to attack itself?" And I'd been to doctors and naturopaths that had just kept me on protocols and routines forever, but never really... I wasn't necessarily getting anywhere. I was just staying in this homeostasis place. And that for me was a really big mindset shift, which also then led to me exploring things like medicinal mushrooms and things which changed, I think, how my immune system functions, because I can tolerate things I could never tolerate before. I wonder what your experience with that is and how that relates to skin, because I mean it's something that I hear all the time in our business, people coming to us with autoimmune.   Karen Fischer: (27:29) Yeah. And it's such an important topic to talk about because having an autoimmune condition is just awful. It really changes the way that you interact with society. I know when I had it, so I had mast cell activation syndrome so I became allergic to cold weather. So I'm on the Gold Coast and when the Gold Coast got cold, I was covered head to toe in eczema and I'd get hives if I had a [crosstalk 00:27:57]. I tried the Wim Hof Method and I'm like-   Tahnee: (27:57) Don't do that.   Karen Fischer: (28:00) [crosstalk 00:28:00] all over my body. So with me, my autoimmune condition, it was just, and I actually I'm saying that I really don't talk about it anymore. Because just talking about it can make my skin itch. So a big thing with autoimmune is not to make it who you are, not to talk, talk about it yet when you need to, but try not to all the time or make it an excuse for not being able to do things, even if-   Tahnee: (28:29) Yeah, that identifying with it sort of-   Karen Fischer: (28:32) Yeah. I couldn't eat out with my friends, but in the end I'll just say, "Oh, I'm just busy or I can't." Rather than going, "Oh I can't eat." And now I can, I can go out with my friends and I order whatever I want and that's great. But so with autoimmune, the biggest thing I found was reducing stress or changing the way you process stress. So that's the a lot of calming activities, a lot of self-love because yeah, I always look at what's the body trying to tell you. If the immune system's attacking you or you're attacking yourself, like an auto way, how am I attacking myself? How am I attacking others? Am I being self critical? Am I being critical of others?   Karen Fischer: (29:20) I think it's changing, with the brain you're training, it's changing pathways of the past. It's the way of accepting people, accepting myself. So a lot, lot, lot of self-love, breathing techniques is important. Meditation is important. I know you guys do all of that. Someone with an autoimmune condition it's really about going within and finding what works for you. I'm actually developing a programme on how I reverse my autoimmune condition, which I'll bring it out next year. So I've got The Healthy Skin Kitchen membership and at the moment, so that's the membership that helps people to follow my diet programmes, the food intolerance diagnosis programme from the Eczema Detox so that's going to be in there. We teach people how to diagnose their food intolerances and then how to expand their diet.   Karen Fischer: (30:19) But then I've got another programme which helped me to reverse my autoimmune condition. So about calming down the nervous system and the steps and brain retraining and the steps on how to do that. Because I tried brain retraining and it didn't quite work for me so I had to flip it and do the opposite of it using partly what I learned from brain retraining. But I had to change it to suit my autoimmune condition. And I just want to share that with everyone. So I will bring that out in mid 2022, it's going to take me quite a while to do all the videos and stuff. But yeah, so autoimmune very much self-love and getting back to nature. I grow fruit trees and veggie patch, I've got 20 fruit trees in my backyard, my soil [crosstalk 00:31:09]. I'm very much in the dirt trying to get my sand to be real dirt.   Tahnee: (31:17) Coastal problems. Yeah.   Karen Fischer: (31:18) First world problems.   Tahnee: (31:22) They're good problems to have.   Karen Fischer: (31:25) Yeah. Autoimmune, yeah. And it's also important for people with autoimmune to just listen to themselves and go within, because everyone's slightly different. We have our different triggers and our different reasons for having it as well.   Tahnee: (31:42) Yeah. I really relate to that piece on attacking yourself and that shows up in your thought processes and how you... And it for me, it was around there was the eating disorder that was sort of an extreme expression of it, but the autoimmune was almost like my secret continuation of that same process if you know what I mean? And so it took a little while to really understand that. And yeah, for me, things like Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra and meditation and the Daoist practises and stuff I learned, they all contributed to healing. But yeah, it does, I mean, I would say it took 10 years for me to really be okay and probably still have to manage things.   Karen Fischer: (32:26) [crosstalk 00:32:26].   Tahnee: (32:27) Yeah.   Karen Fischer: (32:28) We're told it's a life sentence kind of thing. We're not told, "Hey, you can reverse that." I think us talking about it today, going to people, "Hey, you can reverse that." I think that's an important conversation to have. Because I went out to dinner with a couple of friends the other night and one she's just recovered from this terrible arthritis that was all over her body and she's only in her forties and another one she's just got it because of the pandemic. It came on because then she was in lockdowns in Melbourne and she had terrible crippling after arthritis in her hands. And I was like, "Oh, hey, you can reverse that. It's a lot of self care and it's a lot of not being so driven and relaxing a little bit." She goes, "Oh no, I'm very driven. I'm not going to stop that." I was like, "I'm there with your, sister. I'm very driven too, but I had to put my health first."   Tahnee: (33:19) Yeah, it's a type A kind of a thing, isn't it? And look, I think if you look at, and that was something I wanted to touch on quickly with the piece about salicylates and the liver as well, it's like you're looking at this inflammation, this inflammatory load, and if you look at what these autoimmune conditions are all the time they're associated with really high inflammation and stress on organs like the liver and dysbiosis in the gut and things. But again, from that whole systems approach, it's like you don't need to then go and attack the liver with detox chemicals or like it's really more about how do you bring everything into harmony so that the system can harmonise. And like you're saying, reducing stress, reducing the goals in one's life, they're all really important parts of it.   Tahnee: (34:03) And I've noticed it with my daughter. I keep her home from school and you can just see when she's starting to fall onto that side of things and getting stressed and she'll... I don't know, this is something you start to see in kids and that she's been a really good mirror for me where I've been able to see her start to fall into a behavioural change or something where I go, "Okay, she's hitting stress and I'm actually reflecting. I'm really busy. I'm stressed. We all need to take it down a notch today." And if you can get onto it early, it really helps I think and so that stuff-   Karen Fischer: (34:35) Yeah. That's great. And just noticing and identifying that, that's really important in children as well, so very, very important. Because it's like modern life, we just have all these goals and are really, really driven and that can... And the funny thing is, is when I had the autoimmune condition and before it, because I think I've... I never knew that my body was so tense and then I was so, I mean maybe even anxious for it. I just thought I used to be shy as a child, but I was probably riddled with anxiety and it's only just come out in my forties, the autoimmune stuff. And once I learned to calm myself down and relax my body, I was like, "Oh wow."   Karen Fischer: (35:24) And when I do start to feel my body getting tense again or feeling tense again, I was like, "Oh yeah, that's not normal so now I need to do something." So I always feel like I could be on the brink of tipping back, but then I notice it and I just do something to tip me back the other way. And it's so simple when you identify it, it's like people that are tired all the time and need coffee all the time. Once they detox off coffee and go back to eating well, they're like, "Oh wow. I feel amazing. I never knew I could feel this good. I just thought feeling bad was feeling normal." So it's identifying stress and seeing in our children and in ourselves when we start to tip over into that stressy kind of mode because yeah, it's not healthy for our skin, it's not healthy for [crosstalk 00:36:15]-   Tahnee: (36:16) No. And yeah, what you're saying that course correct. One of my teachers used to teach this. I can't remember which one right now. But if the pendulum is swinging in extremes, then you're going to have extreme symptoms. But if you can get your pendulum to swing in like a smaller range, then you'll notice, "I'm getting tense or getting run down, course correct, rest." And then you can kind of start to navigate in a more graceful way, I suppose, without as many extreme symptoms and needing to have those... I used to need a week in bed to recover from my life and now it's like I have a day off with my daughter and we hang out and play in the garden. We're evolving, look at us let's go. And getting there.   Tahnee: (37:04) I wanted to bring it back to rosacea because this is not an area I'm super familiar with. Again, I'm aware that there's a bit of a liver correlation there and I don't know what your research has brought up around the MTHFR, is that how you say it? That sort of process, but a lot of the people I've spoken to with rosacea tend to seem to have that genetic variant. I wonder if you could speak to that and rosacea in general, what you know about that.   Karen Fischer: (37:32) Yeah, absolutely. So look with rosacea. So rosacea for anyone who doesn't know, it's kind of when your skin goes all red and you can end up with this a bulbous nose, if you have rosacea really badly for a long period of time. So you want to kind of reverse it before your nose starts to grow. So what rosacea, what your body is kind of telling you with rosacea... So blood is having trouble getting to your skin surface. So what's happening is the blood cells are opening extra wide to let the blood into the skin surface. And that's giving you this red appearance because all your blood vessels are vasodilated and staying open. If you kind of analyse that, you go, "Okay, well, how do I naturally get blood to the surface of my skin without this vasodilation needing to happen?"   Karen Fischer: (38:27) So exercise is one massive thing for people with rosacea. I had it very mildly, many years ago. I lived a sedentary lifestyle, not much of an exercise back then and whenever I exercised it went away. So it really is a matter of how do I get really great blood circulation to my skin without... And that's, first of all, exercise. Vitamin deficiencies are important to correct as well. And so rosacea is also, so drinking alcohol is a big issue with that. So histamine, so it's a histamine response. So people with rosacea, I find if we take them off amines, sometimes they need to reduce their salicylates as well ,that gives them relief really, really quickly. And then they get their body healthier so then they don't react to those things down the tracks.   Karen Fischer: (39:22) But getting onto it early is better before because the vasodilation changes can become permanent. So, but they don't need to be so that's really important. So the MTHFR that kind of gene variant, so look those genes can be switched on and off so that if you're really working on stress management, relaxation... And I know that some of their treatments, they use really high methylated B vitamins, which I disagree with very high of anything can have side effects and they talk about all the side effects. So I do really low doses, if you need the methylated version of B vitamins, but in super low doses. Our bodies don't need a lot to function properly, but they need everything in balanced amounts or else you'll end up deficient in something else. So too much of one B vitamin will cause a deficiency in the others.   Karen Fischer: (40:25) Magnesium's really, really important. So if you are deficient in magnesium and taking these methylated B vitamins, you're going to react to the methylated B vitamins. So magnesium's a really, really, really important nutrient, helps us to get calcium into the correct places in our bones or else calcium just floats around in our bloodstream. It helps with our liver to deactivate chemicals. So when our body's functioning properly, when our liver and our gut's functioning properly, we don't have these gene issues. So definitely methylated B vitamins, but low doses, more magnesium, less B vitamins would be my kind of prescription for anyone with those kind of issues. Yeah, less is more.   Tahnee: (41:14) And that epigenetic piece, I guess, is super important because that's, I think for me as well, I think I've technically been diagnosed with celiac disease, but I can tolerate gluten now. I'm going to have to be careful with dosage. I can't go and eat it for a month, every day, like it wouldn't do me any favours, but I can have it a couple of times a week without dramas. And that I believe is sort of pushing me into that space of like, "If I maintain my stress levels, if I tend to myself in other ways, then that sort of aspect of my diet needs to be less controlled." And I think that's probably that overarching theme of what we've been talking about in terms of autoimmune, in terms of all of these things, it's like, there's the environmental factor, there's the personal, and then there's the things like diet and supplements and stuff as well. It's never just one, I wish, just one piece of the puzzle. There's lots of things obviously that can be done.   Tahnee: (42:12) And I saw your product, the Skin Friend product, there's like an AM and a PM. I did notice you had magnesium in there. Do you want to talk a little bit about what the intention with that product is? Is it mostly for eczema or is it...   Karen Fischer: (42:25) Yeah, absolutely. So the Skin Friend AM, so that's like your morning multivitamin, because it's really important that we just aren't deficient in things so that I actually initially designed that for people with salicylate sensitivity and eczema, but then people with acne just said, "Oh, it got rid of my acne as well." The AM is a liver helper. So that's just giving your liver what it needs to deactivate chemicals. So it's like when your bucket gets full, I thought I needed to have something to, because it wasn't available for me to prescribe to my patients. So I designed this for my daughter initially and then one of my patients said, "Why don't you give me the supplement you gave to your daughter?" So that came from that. It's just the liver nutrients that helps your liver to deactivate all the chemicals. We can't avoid chemicals and pollution and pesticides or whatever. We breathe them in, we ingest them accidentally or on purpose. So it's better to focus on giving our liver whatever it needs to cope with all the chemicals, without the bucket getting full. And so-   Tahnee: (43:37) And like is said, a lot of the, I was just going to quickly say, a lot of the chemicals are healthy chemicals. Things like salicylates and histamines and amines aren't necessarily bad for us, but if we can process or digest them. Yeah. So moving on to PM-   Karen Fischer: (43:51) All those chemicals are in healthy foods. So yes, and the liver's job is to deactivate them. So we just want to help the liver so it's not working so hard. And now the PM, so that's got the calcium, magnesium and glycine. So a lot of [inaudible 00:44:14] people with eczema and psoriasis and skin inflammation, they're actually deficient in calcium and magnesium. But so more so calcium, they're getting it in their diet, but if they're deficient in magnesium, they're not absorbing their calcium. So everyone recommends calcium and vitamin D but it's not the whole story. So research shows that your calcium will stay floating around in your blood and not get into your bones where it's meant to be if you don't have enough magnesium. And taking calcium on its own can even be harmful because, because it needs so much magnesium to be processed properly, it will make you deficient in magnesium. So there's another 300 enzyme reactions in our body will miss out on work, it won't work properly because calcium's-   Tahnee: (45:05) Dominating.   Karen Fischer: (45:07) Dominated your, made you deficient in it. So this product's evolved over the years. So it's got equal amounts of calcium and magnesium. So it's a really safe product and it really helps with sleep. People just say, "Oh, one night have taken that and I started sleeping better." Because people with eczema, as you might know, they just get really itchy in the middle of the night. It's like, I don't know, you just wake up itchy all over. So it just helped to maybe knock those people out a little bit and it just, magnesium calms the nervous system. It's muscle relaxants. And calcium blocks the absorption of zinc. So it needed to be away from the AM ingredients as well so that's really important the way a supplement's designed to not block the absorption of other nutrients.   Tahnee: (46:07) And glycine, can you speak about that a little bit, because I feel like you mention in The Healthy Skin Diet and probably in The Eczema Diet.   Karen Fischer: (46:18) Yeah, absolutely. So glycine's a component of collagen in your skin. So it's a really important one. People talk about taking collagen supplements. So glycine is a component of collagen and I feel glycine works better than collagen supplements. I've taken a collagen supplement and they say, "Oh, it takes 18 months to show results." I don't know if that's true or not. I think maybe some are better than others and probably some would do better results, but glycine's a component. So I find that taking glycine separately can really help and it helps the liver deactivate chemicals as well. So that was just another way... It does need magnesium and B vitamins and your vitamin C as well. So it's not just all about glycine, but yeah, really, really helpful for people with food chemical intolerance.   Tahnee: (47:08) And I guess I'm hearing, as a bit of a side effect, it's going to have some of those benefits of collagen that maybe people who are looking for anti-ageing and stuff are going to have some better collagen structure in the body, in the fascia and that kind of thing is that...   Karen Fischer: (47:20) Yeah. So yeah, collagen is super important with skin elasticity as well with avoiding things like stretch marks. So yeah, so making sure you've got your collagen nutrients, that's really great. Whereas if you're taking a collagen supplement, that's naturally high in histamine, so that's not really suitable for someone say with eczema or skin inflammation.   Tahnee: (47:41) Yeah. And that was something I thought was interesting I think in The Healthy Skin Diet, you spoke to how sometimes things like bone broths and things which everyone on the internet likes to say are amazing for skin health, but not necessarily. Could you speak a little bit about that?   Karen Fischer: (47:57) Yeah, absolutely. And I do have a bone broth recipe in The Healthy Skin Diet and-   Tahnee: (48:01) You do, it's a good one. I think I still make it.   Karen Fischer: (48:06) Yes. But for someone with eczema who also has amine intolerance or someone with histamine intolerance then that's what going to make them itch like crazy. So 35% of eczema sufferers are sensitive to amines and histamines so only 35% of them can't have a bone broth. And on saying that, a homemade bone broth that's say lower in salicylates is probably a better option for them.   Tahnee: (48:29) Yeah, because storing it actually increases, is this-   Karen Fischer: (48:33) The amines.   Tahnee: (48:34) The leftovers? Yeah.   Karen Fischer: (48:36) Absolutely. Yeah. So leftover meats develop amines the next day, that's why they get all yummier the next day. [crosstalk 00:48:43] and bone broths get more flavoursome the next day as well. So amines is a flavour enhancer.   Tahnee: (48:52) Yeah. Okay. So if you're intolerant to those, then you're going to find those yummy next day foods not so good for you.   Karen Fischer: (48:58) Yeah. And we probably should say how to find out if you're intolerant to it because so it's doing a special elimination diet. So we call it the FID programme, it's the Food Intolerance Diagnosis programme. So it's temporarily taking those foods out of your diet and we just have set recipes that make it really yummy for people. So it's not just a eating rice and bean kind of diet. It's come a long way since the 1970s, we have a trendy, fabulous recipes and smoothie bowls and whatever you see online, we have a low salicylate version of it. We've got out [inaudible 00:49:39] flat breads and just some really nice gluten-free wraps or whatever so people don't miss out on a single thing.   Tahnee: (49:49) Yeah. Is that part of your online membership as well as the book?   Karen Fischer: (49:53) Yes.   Tahnee: (49:53) Yeah. Okay.   Karen Fischer: (49:55) Yeah. The Healthy Skin Kitchen membership. I've got the healthy skin kitchen book, which has lots of great recipes. My wonderful publisher, Exisle Publishing, I had 90 recipes and they went, "Oh, we can only fit in 50." So the other ones have gone in the online programme plus we do free recipe every week and we have a support network, a forum where you can chat with everyone else who's on the programmes and you can see all the videos explaining the programmes and how to diagnose your food intolerances. I find that diagnosing it rather than just taking everything out of your diet and not testing it, is really important to diagnose it, put everything back in and see how you react because you don't want to be avoiding something you actually don't need to avoid. And the diagnosis program's a temporary programme so you expanded diet after that.   Tahnee: (50:51) I'm curious as to your thoughts on those IG, I'm going to probably get this wrong IG protein allergy tests. Do you know what I'm talking about?   Karen Fischer: (51:00) Yeah.   Tahnee: (51:00) Am I making sense? Yes. Because it's really interesting you say that. I did a lot of elimination diets in the early days trying to work out what was going on before I knew the gluten factor and that was useful because I sort of isolated gluten as being a problem. But then I went and saw a naturopath probably, I don't know, a year or two later and she told me I was allergic to like the whole world through one of those IG panels. And I was like, "God how am I going to function?" Because it was everything. It was eggs, I was vegetarian at the time, but it was chicken. It was heaps of different fruits. I mean, I literally remember it being broccoli. Like it was so many things and I remember thinking, "God, I'm basically going to be eating, like you're saying, rice and beans for the rest of my life."   Karen Fischer: (51:44) Yeah.   Tahnee: (51:46) But I turned out to not really be relevant to me. I've ended up being able to eat all those. I ate everything now without exception, except for McDonald's but yeah. It's like, I don't eat crap, but yeah. If I'd gone off of that, I would've lived my life rather miserably. My understanding now is that that tests where you're at, which is you're in a highly inflammatory reactive state and you're reacting to things, but it's not necessarily a end of the world life sentence that you're stuck with that.   Karen Fischer: (52:18) Yeah, absolutely. So that type of allergy testing is probably the one that doctors don't believe in, but the one that the doctors do believe in the IgE testing, it has its limitations as well because they tested the same amount of people say with an egg allergy, they did a skin prick test and they also did a blood, another test, which was a patch test that had a immediate response and a delayed response. And they got completely different results. 60% of people react to the skin prick test and with the patch test, not a lot of people reacted, but then later like hours later, the patch test 82% of people reacted. So it's amazing. Every test kind of has different things. So 25, 20 or so percent of people who had an egg allergy wouldn't have been diagnosed if they'd just done say a skin prick test.   Karen Fischer: (53:20) So I take any test with a grain of salt and you let your body tell you what you're reacting to. That's why I love food elimination diets. Like say, if people follow the FID programme, they take the foods out and go, "Oh wow, I don't have to take antihistamine medications anymore. I'm not itchy anymore. Oh my skin's starting to clear up." Then you know you're on the right track. But if you do the IGG test or whatever it's called and you take all those foods out of the diet and go, "Oh, I'm all better. Oh, that really worked for me. I feel different. Or hey, my symptoms are starting to reduce." Then you know you're on the right track. But if you take all the foods out of your diet and you go, "I'm no different or I'm a little worse." Then further investigation is required.   Karen Fischer: (54:08) Because I know that people with eczema, they take dairy out of the diet, they take gluten out of the diet or take wheat out of the diet or egg and they go, "Oh yeah, that helped a tiny bit or that didn't really help much at all. Diet might not be the issue. Diet's not the issue because that didn't work for me." So it was just relying on allergy testing is not usually enough. I find that if we're eating the same foods every day, we'll never know what we're reacting to. So it's rotating your diet. For one week of totally avoid grains, full stop, next week, add them in, but don't have same grains every week, every day. Don't have the same smoothie every day. Don't have the coffee every day.   Karen Fischer: (54:52) That's how I knew I reacted to caffeine because I would have a coffee or tea once a month and I'd feel achy on that day or the day after and I'd go, "Oh, that's the caffeine or that's the coffee." Or else I'd probably be achy and arthritic every day and not know. And if I was having coffee and red wine, because those are the two things that made me go, "Ooh, that doesn't feel so good. So it's our same, same diets. In traditional diets when you eat seasonally, your diets change with the season and that's how you'd notice more what you're reacting to. But we have the same foods available every day. And that's a problem with diagnosing food intolerances because we're the same.   Tahnee: (55:37) And so you've mentioned a couple of times that these, like say you do do a food elimination diet and you end up, "Okay, amines are a problem for me, but that isn't a life sentence." When would someone feel confident to start experimenting with bringing those things back in? I believe you talk about this in The Eczema Diet book, because I think it's the FID diet's written up in that. Yeah. Could you speak a little bit to that as well? How do you know when it's okay to start experimenting?   Karen Fischer: (56:06) Well, I feel like as soon as your symptoms totally get better or partially get better, that's the time to reintroduce and I say, look, reintroduce just... You've just got to maybe once a month, just test stuff. I like to, if I go to a cafe go, "Oh, I feel like eating this today."   Tahnee: (56:26) It's experiment day.   Karen Fischer: (56:31) [crosstalk 00:56:31]. Exactly. So I will generally do it when I'm out with friends and I just want to eat something. But I say, if you're really stressed, if you're having a bad day, if you're really stressed, if you're under pressure, that's not a good time to test foods. But if you're really relaxed, if you're laughing with your friends, that's a really great time to try something and just try small amounts because you want to win. So with the initial testing phase, you eat big amounts of stuff to see if you get results. And I'm in two minds about doing that, because I'm like, "Well you want to win." So I know that for me, if I drink a glass of soy milk, I react to it. But if there's a little bit of soy hidden in foods, I'm fine. So I'm like, "I'm not sensitive to soy." Because with your mind stuff, you shouldn't go, "Yeah, I can't have this, this and this." So I'm like, "I'm not sensitive to soy when it's in sensible amounts."It's about testing at the right times when you feel happy and when you're laughing.   Karen Fischer: (57:40) Some brain retraining techniques involve eating while laughing and smiling while cooking and things like that. It's about not going, "Oh my God. Okay. I'm going to try this and I might react. Okay. I'll notice and if I'm looking for a reaction, I'm going to eat it and look for a reaction." Don't do that. Just don't do that, go, "You know what, I feel great." Visualise eating it maybe for a couple of days beforehand, be really happy and relaxed. So you want to win so you want to do it in low amounts when you're happy.   Tahnee: (58:15) This reminds me a lot of that holiday phenomenon where people can go to Italy and suddenly eat pasta three times a day and not die, but they come home and they can't eat anything. So much of it is how we are when we're digesting and how we...   Tahnee: (58:31) I actually had an experience that is really indicative of this. I didn't eat dairy for probably close to 10 years and then I was at work really stressed, really busy and decided to have a banana smoothie and it came out of me in about two seconds. It was a milk banana smoothie and it was the same thing, it was a whole whatever, half a litre of milk or something, whatever it was, a cafe sized banana smoothie. I was hyper stressed. I hadn't eaten in, I don't know, probably close to 12 hours because I was at work and busy and drinking coffee all morning and then I hadn't had dairy in 10 years. My body's just going like, "What is this?" And then over time I started to creep it in slowly and now I can have it, no problem. So yeah, it's very same thing.   Karen Fischer: (59:17) That's a good example, a really great example. Yes. It's [crosstalk 00:59:21] and it's gradual and sneaking it into the body. It's like, "Oh, look at that nice flower. Look at this. Oh, beautiful sky today." And it's [crosstalk 00:59:32]. It's all about not making a big deal about it as well and being in a good place.   Tahnee: (59:37) Yeah, well that's, I think that mindset thing and I was going to touch on quickly with teenagers because I know you've had two, or you've got one and you've had one, and acne because it's such a common phenomenon in young people and I'm just curious as to your advice to parents who might be listening, how to navigate that time obviously there's the hormonal factors, teenagers don't usually want to eat particularly healthily. It's all the stress of being a teenager.   Karen Fischer: (01:00:12) [crosstalk 01:00:12].   Tahnee: (01:00:12) Yeah. I'm just curious about that because I'm still 10 years away from that, but I'm interested in what you think, how we can navigate that.   Karen Fischer: (01:00:22) [crosstalk 01:00:22] primarily for that.   Tahnee: (01:00:24) Getting organised.   Karen Fischer: (01:00:25) Well, teenagers and adults in traditional societies that don't eat the crap that we eat, they don't get acne. And that really does sum it up. And there's research showing four year olds are getting acne, which is ridiculous.And I know that whenever-   Tahnee: (01:00:41) Wow, okay.   Karen Fischer: (01:00:43) Yeah. And I mean, look, my kids don't eat a perfect diet. They do most of the time, but when it's holidays and I just want to spoil my son or he steals, we only have chocolate in the fridge over the holidays and he... I spoil him a bit and I actually [crosstalk 01:00:58] chocolate. And I know if he eats a whole block of chocolate, he'll have a little spot the next day and I'm like chocolate is a big one because of all the fats in it as well. So things in moderation. And teenagers, they're away from home, they are eating a lot of crappy foods and they're really stressed.   Karen Fischer: (01:01:16) So look, I do a lot of marketing health food to kids and with teenagers, you just appeal to their vanity. It's like mention that, "Oh yeah, these are the pimple foods and these are the healthy skin foods." It's like, "Yeah, chocolates a pimple food so maybe just have it only one day a week and hey, why don't you have this instead? Why don't you make yourself this oat milk smoothie, we'll put some cacao in it or we'll put some berries in it as well, maybe we'll make a blueberry and smoothie instead. And that can be your sweet treat instead of chocolate." So it really, really is diet related, really is stress related as well.   Karen Fischer: (01:02:02) I know with my kids, I took the pressure off them achieving well at school. I know that my son went to this high pressure school that gets you ready for high school two years before high school and he couldn't cope with it. And he was anxious and he was vomiting in the morning and all stressed out. And I just, I could not get him out from under the bed to go to school some days. It was actually really stressful for me. And it was an awful, awful time and I just went, "You know what, I'm never going to pressure him to, because he's an anxious type, I'm never going to pressure him to do well at school." I was like, "I just want him to not hide under the bed and to not be so nervous in the tummy that he's vomiting." So I mean, he doesn't do that anymore. He's totally fine, loves school. I'm like as long as he does his homework, great, but I don't care if he's smart or not smart or...   Karen Fischer: (01:02:56) It's like with my daughter, I was like... We got tutoring for her because she wasn't very smart. And I didn't pressure her to do well in high school, but she ended up getting amazing grades and got into the top architectural university in Sydney, Sydney Uni [crosstalk 01:03:12] end up doing it, because she chose something else. But I was like, that was self motivation. And gosh, she was a nightmare that one in year 12 because she was so motivated, she was crying. And I was like, "Oh." Kids are under so much pressure to do well. So I, for me, mental wellbeing is top of the list for teenagers and children, teaching them how to love themself and care about themself and to have goals, but to not work themselves up into this crazy state as well. And I guess that's just long term chatting with your kids because I know my parents never chatted to me about that stuff.   Karen Fischer: (01:03:55) I was a really anxious teenager and I cut a fringe to cover the pimples on my forehead in high school because I was this super stressed out teenager. So yeah, don't be like my parents talk to your kid, talk to them about stuff. It's like, I would've loved to have been taught how to put on makeup when I was a teenager. So I could hide all the horrible bits. And I think that would've helped me to cope better, just talking about stuff and asking, "How are you going at school?" A kid will always go, "Yeah, fine." I mean, I did that and my son does that and I'm like. It's kind of maybe play video games with them because that's probably when they're going to open up about stuff, do something they love, sit side by side-   Tahnee: (01:04:41) Like get on their level, yeah.   Karen Fischer: (01:04:43) Get on their level, talk to them because they could be really stressed out on the inside and we need to know as parents because just if they can confide in you that instantly calms their nervous system and helps them to calm down is that connection of, "Wow. My mom really or my dad really knows me. I know I can tell them anything if I get into trouble, if I get stuck out in the middle or in the middle of the night, I can call and go, hey, can you pick me up?" But yeah, so-   Tahnee: (01:05:13) God bless parents.   Karen Fische

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

What is Taoist Tonic Herbalism? Why should we develop a love for herbs? In this episode of Wisdom of Ages, host Ayn Cates Sullivan and guest Rehmannia Dean Thomas discuss discovering ancient Taoist herbs that have worked for 5,000 years already. Rehmannia has an eight-year personal apprenticeship with master herbalist Ron Teeguarden. Tune in and find the new formula called Shield that helps provide people with a healthy immune system.

Over the past two years, the world has witnessed an onslaught of lifestyle stress and disruption brought on by a global pandemic and its ripple effects. The mental stability of many has suffered, and we are currently witnessing a mental health implosion like never seen before. On the podcast today, with remedy and reason for staying robust and ready for any invasion (microbial or psychological), we have our favourite lifestyle medicine man/Qi practitioner, Jost Sauer; Supercharging us with wisdom and guidance on maintaining sovereignty and strength. If you're a regular listener of the SuperFeast podcast, your ears have most likely been blessed with Jost's lifestyle elixirs before.   Given the current circumstances, we thought it was time for another injection of Jost's knowledge, guidance, and warrior mindset. This episode carries a potent message of going within, getting back to earth, and taking care of our inner world, our health, and not being sucked into noisy distractions of the outside world. Jost shares his insights on approaching COVID as a personal growth strategy; An opportunity for a new level of growth not yet encountered, and a reason to nourish the body, spirit, and essence. Jost also breaks down simple Daoist instructions on how to get in sync with nature, our organs, protect our Jing, Qi, and Shen, and follow the path of yin and yang; So we can maintain sovereignty and strength, no matter how many times we get knocked down. Be sure to tune in for this poignant, powerful conversation.     "If the blood gets weak, we get caught up in politics. If the blood is strong, we feel good within ourselves; And if we feel good within ourselves, we stay detached. That's all it is. So when I talk about detachment, it requires strong blood and strong Jing. Just focus on your Jing, focus on your blood, take your herbs, take your mushrooms, live the lifestyle, and that's really all there is; The rest will come naturally".   - Jost Sauer      Host and Guest discuss:   Signs of depleted/weak blood and Jing. The best hours for deep rest, and why. Why blood/Qi levels are at an all-time low. How fear triggers weakness within the body. Lifestyle practices to harness and guard Jing. The Metal element Lung-Kidney relationship. The importance of having a spiritual connection. Why we guard the three treasures; Jing, Qi, Shen. Why people are feeling depleted and weak right now. Following the Qi cycle model to strengthen blood/Jing. Why rest and recovery are essential for a robust immune system. Supporting your health/wellbeing through consistency and lifestyle. The body/mind connection and how weak blood/Jing leads to a weak mind.     Who is Jost Sauer? Jost (aka the lifestyle medicine man) was born in Germany in 1958 and is an acupuncturist, author, Qi practitioner of 40 years, and healthy lifestyle expert. His background includes competitive skiing, body-building, and ironman training. Post-drug addiction and suicidal depression led him to martial arts, TCM, the power and cycle of Qi, and the understanding that a natural rhythmic lifestyle holds the secrets to anti-aging, health, and success. Jost has been using lifestyle therapeutically for his clients for over 20 years. Jost is an expert in Chinese Medicine, which he lectured in for over a decade at the Australian College of Natural Medicine, has been running successful health clinics since 1991, initially specialising in addiction recovery, and has treated tens of thousands of clients. His passion is sharing his ongoing discoveries about making lifestyle your best medicine through his books, blogs, articles, workshops, and retreats (all of which we linked in the resources below).   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Jost Website Jost Facebook Jost Instagram Jost Youtube Jing Blend SuperFeast Eucommia Bark SuperFeast The 15 Minute Bodyweight Workout Higher and Higher Book - Jost Sauer  Chi Health Cycle- Jost Sauer's new book Qi Cycles And The Dao with Jost Sauer (EP#48)   Lifestyle Medicine with Accupuncturist Jost Sauer (EP#63) The Importance of Sleep For Healthy Hun and Qi with Jost Sauer (EP#102)     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Okay. Jost, Welcome back, man.   Jost Sauer: (00:03) Yeah, welcome back. Nice to be back on here again, I think.   Mason: (00:07) Yeah, I think fourth podcast?   Jost Sauer: (00:11) Must be.   Mason: (00:11) Look at this [inaudible 00:00:12] I'm sorry. I'm so excited. Mostly because I know the realms we're going to be touching on. But I'm genuinely excited. I know the pace that you move in and your chemical process is transforming at such a rate that I know I'm going to hear things from you and the way that you've synthesise them based on all this material that's going on in the world. I'm going to hear it completely newly plus some new downloads. I can't wait. Let's jump straight in. How you going at the moment and how you are finding the world and where's your work taking you?   Jost Sauer: (00:50) Okay, look, I've been working with people for 40 years now. It's 2021, I started in 1981. And so obviously, originally I started in social work. The focus on mental health always was the main focus. So 40 years working with people you come across a lot of stories, and you really observe people's inner world, because you have to dig in. But what I'm experiencing the last year, what I've observed in the last year, I have not observed before. That's obviously something a totally new game that's playing and impacting on people more than all the other ramifications and troubles and tribulations I worked with in the past. Obviously, stress level is going through the roof, and because the question was about how I cope with this, I mean, from a Chinese medicine perspective, stress is a good thing. I mean, when we do tai chi, we stress the body. We need the stress in order to evolve. And so the body is actually designed to unleash forces during stress that otherwise wouldn't come forward. There's obviously a massive growth potential right now, if we know what to do.   Jost Sauer: (02:14) If you don't know what to do, then it's obviously, it can be a killer. It can really destroy you. And so the key element is here that without a stress factor, that means churning on the organs and churning on the blood, we can't actually produce vital forces. The one thing we can do to the body is to be lazy. Sit around all day, be comfortable, and just waiting for things to happen, and get delivered the action, rather than us actually stimulated to act on stressful situation and needing to get up and dig deep. Especially, dig very, very deep, and unleash forces that otherwise we didn't know we had. There's obviously always a principle of all-growth factors. We get thrown into a situation, we didn't know we could cope with, and suddenly, we discover we got vital forces available to us that before we couldn't. So from a Chinese medicine perspective, that would say, "The universe would never give us a problem if we don't have the potential to cope. The universe would never give us a situation if you don't have the ability to grow from."   Jost Sauer: (03:23) It's almost like the situation that we're facing, it's like what a martial artist would look at. Is that COVID, the virus, it's a threat, but it tries to invade the body, and we need to fight against it. So in order to fight against it, we will get stronger. It's like a battlefield right now and we need to look at life we are at war. But the war is a little bit tricky because it's not only COVID, the virus, it's also the government and it's also Big Pharma, and it's also people will buy into a belief pattern that are definitely based on some sort of like development from the dogmatic foreign politics and big business. So the enemy is not really direct. Personally, I'm not worried about COVID because I know what to do, but I'm more worried about what the government is going to do.   Mason: (04:31) I'm curious there because you said in 40 years, you haven't you haven't ever seen anything like this, and with your patients and with people that you're talking to. We talked about cracks showing, big crack showing mental health issues been gone through the roof. I'm curious. There's a few ways to approach this question. Now, what is it about the approach? What is it about that? The virus, the pharmaceutical companies, the media. Why are so many people... Let's say if no one has a challenge that maybe you don't get through it, but you do have the potential if you make the right choices to get through this challenge, why are people stumbling more than ever? What's tripping them up that's leading to so much mental disharmony and how are people going to get back into a flow and meet this battle in staying mentally healthy?   Jost Sauer: (05:25) The primary reason is, people's core is deficient and weak as never been before. From a Chinese medicine perspective, people's blood and chi level is at an all time low. That's as a result of having lived a life in comfort, too much in comfort, or the life of not needing to work as hard physically. Instead, to hand over to the computer to do the work. So means, getting up and sitting down and straight, alleging all the work done mentally and wire the computer without engaging bodily function, which would produce blood. Blood production is vital in China's medicine, because that's your fuel, that's your Elixer, that's your life. If your blood is strong, you got passion, you got drive. You want to express yourself, and you feel strong. This is the most important thing if the blood is healthy, your Jing is healthy, you feel strong. If your blood is deficient, and your blood is unhealthy, you feel weak. Of course, when you feel weak, you need to be protected, you've got the instinct, I need to get protected.   Jost Sauer: (06:42) And so over the last 10 years, society has depleted their blood, their Jing and their Chi, and therefore progressively year after year feeling more and more weak. And so people are actually starting to reach a point now where they feel weak just by getting up and all day they feel weak. And having observed people for 40 years, I must say this year is probably the highest number of weak people I've ever seen. I do regular workplace wellness talks. I'd go to companies and I talk about health measurements. And the last few weeks the talks I've been doing in particular last week, I was talking to a company, and there were 60 people in the audience. I've never seen so many weak people in one spot. I'm not judgmental, but I'm observing and I know what to look for. I know the signs of when blood is deficient. I know what to look for when the Jing is deficient. And I look at the face, I look at the way their [inaudible 00:07:41] the posture, the body, and I can see, "My God, these bodies aren't producing enough blood. Not producing enough Jing." If they don't produce enough blood and Jing, your self awareness is tempered by your psychological self profile of being, I am weak.   Jost Sauer: (08:00) If I feel weak, I am prone to accept the protection from a higher instances. That's why the government obviously now is doing all this fear mongering in order to trigger that weakness, and then obviously people are, "I need to get protected. I need to get protected." If that would have done the same thing, like 2,000 years ago to a village, [inaudible 00:08:25] the Vikings they wouldn't have had a problem. They would have got up and put the sword up and, "Get the fuck out of here. You don't get fuck with us." But if I feel weak, and the fear comes in, obviously, I defeat myself. So obviously, in all ancient cultures, the most important thing is, always nourish your essence. Always nourish the treasures. The Jing, the Chi, the Shen, because that gives you the feeling of being strong. If you feel strong, you will ward off enemy. If someone tries to invade the village, you are ready to attack, you're ready to fight. And obviously, I mean, people would say it was done [inaudible 00:09:17], whatever it is. Over the last 10 years, the lifestyle has led to a high level of lifestyle disease as never before. So we're looking at an enormous number of people dying because of lifestyle disease. But fundamentally, lifestyle disease is the deficiency in the vital forces. And that is really the real problem.   Mason: (09:38) When you talk about weakness, I can't help but just bring up in my terminology, like a weak mind. And we know the blood is transporting the Shen, our mental acuity to the rest of the body. And I do so to bring up the term "weak mind" because I know that people will think what I'm saying is, if you go and trust the government, you have a weak mind. Or if you go and do ABC, you have a weak mind. But it's not that it's what... You've nailed it. You bought into the fear, and you've got a weakness within yourself that you're not self generating, and you can topple over. And so you reach for a higher power an institution to tell you what to do. I mean I always feel, there's people listening to this that are choosing one road or the other road. I know, people that have beautifully with a strong mind, choosing to do medical interventions, and I know other people that are just freaking out with a weak mind and choosing to do that same thing. And there's a very big difference there. I love the way that you describe that man.   Jost Sauer: (10:41) I mean, the mind in Chinese medicine is affiliated with the substance, and that is obviously once again, connected to an organ. When we talk stronger mind, we don't really talk stronger mind, we talk strong organ, strong blood, which then means you have a strong mind. It's like, in order to experience power, you need a strong engine. And so the body-mind connection is obviously always number one in Chinese medicine. And so when we're talking about a weak mind, what we mean is, "I got weak blood, I got weak Jing."   Mason: (11:25) [crosstalk 00:11:25] no will no capacity to have that will take on responsibility for yourself.   Jost Sauer: (11:29) Yeah. If you if the battery's low, you feel defeated. If you've got lots of Jing, lots of power, lots of blood, and you're wrestling with someone or you go for a run, obviously you're trying to win. But if you come at the end of a marathon, and you're completely depleted, the battery is empty, and then someone tackles you, you would give in to the power invasion and say, "Okay. I can't do it anymore." That's what we see now. On the line is that people can't do it anymore. I hear this all the time now in clinic and when I do my talks, "I can't do this anymore. I had enough. I can't do this anymore." So when the battery is empty-   Mason: (12:16) Do they just mean life in general or?   Jost Sauer: (12:18) What they say with that is, "I can't fight against this anymore."   Mason: (12:21) Yeah, right.   Jost Sauer: (12:22) I had enough. I can't fight. It's too much fighting. But what it means it's like saying, "If we would have the same problem we have now 30 years ago, it wouldn't have been a problem." 30 years ago, people were still much healthier than what they are now. So 30 years ago, Jing and blood on a communal level was four or five times higher what it's now, if you want to give it a hypothetical figure.   Mason: (12:52) People that were like a strong piece of German rye bread versus a piece of flabby tip top white bread these days.   Jost Sauer: (13:00) Yeah, yeah. It's been too long. But the most important thing is obviously, the endless stimulation and lack of sleep. When it comes to what builds blood, every effort will tell you, it's recovery. We work hard, we get stressed, we work hard, we recover. We engage with the stimulus, we work hard we get our best, we recover. That's a principle that all the ancients have been doing. The vikings you fight hard, and then you recover. But recovery is now completely impaired in the western society, because recovery requires a deep, nourishing sleep. And for recovery purposes, the best sleep is before midnight. 9:00 PM go to bed, and then you sleep beautifully till two or three. So you got this six-hour sleep. The sleep before midnight is like four or five times more powerful than the sleep after midnight. That has been established already in the old times from way back. Everyone knows you got be trying to get that sleep before midnight. I still remember back in the early '80s, when I came to Australia, television stopped at 10:30 PM.   Mason: (14:22) It goes, "Fyiii."   Jost Sauer: (14:24) Good night everyone. And those of us who stayed up and smoked lots of bongs, we were staring at that ABC symbol for endlessly.   Mason: (14:37) I've vague memories, vague memories of that little like rainbow.[crosstalk 00:14:41]   Jost Sauer: (14:44) It was totally hilarious. The way I looked at it. Shit is still the same shit. But what it meant, good night, everyone. Let's go to bed. If you didn't go raging and partying, you actually had your sleep. And then you went to bed and there was no stimulation. But over the last 10 years, that has been dramatically changed. So first of all, television has gotten several channels now so it goes on 24/7, then you got the internet. But the next problem is the smartphone. Obviously, that means people have the phone, the stimulation brought up into the midnight and later. And so the body never actually goes into the recovery mode. There is absolutely no traces anymore for us to recover proper. Therefore, people would say, I just had enough I can't cope anymore. If exercise constantly, if you do like one of those ultra marathons and you do three, four days in a row, after the fourth day, you would say, "I had enough." You need to go home, you need recovery.   Jost Sauer: (16:04) Recovery is something that has been taken outside the equation of our lifestyle, we don't have that anymore. And so it's just people taking emails home, people working. I mean, we get emails that, when me see that next morning, when we go through the emails like after breakfast when I turn my computer on, I see emails have been sent at 2.00 AM, 1:00 AM and things like that. And especially with all those lockdowns people going working later into the night. And so obviously, all that impacts on the blood. And so the vital force needs to be replenished. If the vital force is not replenished through effective recovery, we're getting weaker. You would never see a martial art fighter in the UFC, before a big fight, having six weeks stay up all night. You never hear that. Never hear that. I live in the martial art world, I love martial art, and that need you to be strong because you don't know what that opponent is about. You don't know what the fight is going to be. You got to be prepared. You don't know the outcome. It's all about being as prepared as possible. You don't go in unprepared, you've got to be totally prepared. And then you're ready for surprises to come forward. Suddenly you discover a strength you didn't know you had.   Jost Sauer: (17:33) And this strength, this power that suddenly comes through, is stored in your blood, and it's stored in your Jing, and it's stored in your kidney. Your kidney stores the essence. And so therefore, the lifestyle of the fighter, or the female fighter, because there's a lot of incredible female fighters out there now, like women I would not face up to. I wonder, "My god, their power is mind boggling." But when you look at their lifestyle, all of them, early to bed, up early especially before an event in order to get the maximum recovery. And because we are at war now, we got to understand, "Okay, the only choice we have right now is, we're going to just protect and guard our essence." Those government, I mean, I nearly said those government assholes. It's absolutely it's fiery it's what they're doing now.[crosstalk 00:18:37] off their heads. It's complete insanity. They should all be shot. That's it, finished, start new. It's almost like we need a revolution shot at everyone's head and start again. I mean, it happened before in the past. They're crossing the line, they're crossing the line.   Mason: (19:01) The whole nature. I mean, I remember our last podcast went into sleep as well. And I want to keep on talking about it. Because we're not listening. I know why. I've I haven't. I mean, but I'm kind of like that battlefield. This is what we're looking at. We don't know how long and we don't know what's coming next. I have a lot of friends that when I do talk about it from this combative kind of mindset, and I also kind of have faith and trust in the process and I just simply do. I have, as we both know, there's that yin yang goes, on the Dow and something's going to happen eventually. There's going to be opposite reactions and I love having faith with that. It doesn't mean that I don't also call a spade a spade and acknowledge that there is a huge assault on the natural human right now. And so, the battlefield... And lot of your posts recently that spurred me to kind of get you on again, is just like I might be putting my own terminology into it. How do you maintain your sovereignty and not get knocked over, regardless of your choices through all of this? How do you guard your centre, guard your essence, and remain you and don't get compromised?   Mason: (20:21) Don't lose this battle essentially. The fact that you've gone up going to sleep, it's such an unlikely battlefield, isn't it?   Jost Sauer: (20:28) Yeah.   Mason: (20:29) Because right now we need stamina. We don't know how long this is going to go for. Maybe everyone forgets about it, like next February. Who knows what comes next? Who knows how much corporate interest and pharmaceutical interest goes in trying to the claim ownership over the human body? Who knows regardless of what choices you make, hopefully strong choices, not from fear, how much do you stay an individual. And the first battlefield the fact that you've gone back to sleep, and I feel like something's ringing in me right now. Because I have not been treating it as such. And I can feel I'm like, "Now, this is where you need to start." And I will ask you what other elements you see emerging as going, "These are the basics that you need to be aware of in order to stay within the natural and not fall over into reliance." But I really appreciate you hitting that space again. For the sake of our sweet kidneys and livers.   Jost Sauer: (21:30) Yes. And spleen. First of all, I always remind myself that being here in the physical is a battle. All the ancient scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita is based on a battlefield, the Taoist look at being in the physical is a battle, is a fight. That's why they're all trained warriors. The sea culture that I've studied quite extensively under, they carry a dagger and a sword with them all the time. So they understand that you've got to be a warrior or a female warrior. And so we are in battle. So the nature of the physical of planet Earth is, it's a battle. It's a battle between good and bad, yin and yang and so you got that constant struggle between one force trying to override the other force. You always have, obviously, from a Taoist perspective is like the source of inspiration. There are two forces, there's a dark force and there's the light force. And depending on how you live, and what you want, you will be guided by that source of inspiration.   Jost Sauer: (22:53) So if you got sinister motives and incentives, you will be guided by the source of inspiration that comes from a darker source. If you have a well being in mind of all humanity, you affirm with the lighter force, then obviously, your source of inspiration will be the light and you will be guarded accordingly. The support is obviously always behind the scene from either force. So Big Pharma, those people, obviously, their source of inspiration comes from the darker side, where, obviously, us freedom fighters, our source of inspiration comes from the light. So that means we have our connection to the light, they have their connection to the dark. And so behind the scene, those forces will actually move through us in order to act on us. For some reason, this planet Earth, which is considered planet number four, in the constellation of developments towards the journey of the soul towards higher realms, this is always been the planet of war and peace or the battle in order to understand the forces within.   Jost Sauer: (24:06) For example, they've identify that there's trillions and trillions of viruses in our body and those viruses fight each other all the time. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, and that the battlefield that creates the field of yin and yang, and that creates actually, what that physical makes up to be. And so it is dark and light, wet and dry. And so as a result of that is we got our existence, and that then shapes us somehow. So every morning, I remind myself that that is actually what we're here for, to engage with that field. And that's obviously the yin and the yang and the readiness to prepare to fight. And so then the next thing is that Taoism in particular has given us a lot of instructions, how to deal with that battle, how to fight the battle. So the first thing what they do is obviously they have identified the lifestyle. And the lifestyle is those who follow the path of yin and yang will become invisible to those who try and to control yin and yang.   Jost Sauer: (25:20) Big Pharma tries to control yin and yang. If you follow the path of yin and yang, you got under the radar. And this is something been said for thousands of years. So what we're experiencing right now has not been here before. It's just like in our lifetime, for the past 40 years, we haven't experienced it to such intensity. But it has been before many times and it's been observed in the history of Taoism and Buddhism all along, which is why obviously, those cultures always dedicate themselves to prayer and worship towards the forces, so that the group forces support them. And if you obviously you don't do that, then you may not have as much support. So obviously very important is to have a spiritual connection. Very, very strong, just be firmly grounded in a spirit of connection every morning to, "Boom. All right, I am a fighter of the light, I am connected to the light, I want the light." And obviously in that moment, it will come through to us. Every time you say, "I am light," bang, it's there.   Jost Sauer: (26:28) Obviously, if I can neglect that I weaken my position. That means I am on my own and that is not a good idea. I mean, my genetic background is, I'm the Viking. That's my philosophy, the Viking philosophy. The Vikings were enormously grounded and connected to the spirit of belief, that would not go into battle without being spiritually connected. That was their absolute most important thing. I am spiritually connected to my spiritual path, and when I lose my body, I will continue my battle. And that's all the training I've had all along with the Masters I studied under for all those years, that the spiritual of connection is crucial. So if you've got the spiritual connection, that means you actually feel supported. And then you understand deep down, "Okay." It's all part of life what we go through now.   Jost Sauer: (27:23) So the next thing is that Taoism has given us the instructions about how to nourish this body so we can fight effectively, such that we can keep getting up because what makes a good warrior, a strong warrior is the person who keeps getting up. They get flogged but they get up again. Like Rocky said, "It's not about how hard you can punch, it's about how hard you can get punched." It's about getting up again. That's why all those Rocky movies are great, because he just gets flogged, he gets up again, gets flogged, gets up again. And that's the spirit. That's the spirit that we need. Of course, they're trying to flog us, but that's the nature of the game. If I go into the ring for a sparring session, of course I get flogged. But I also keep getting up.   Mason: (28:26) That tenacity and that knowing that no matter what happens, I'm never giving up. I'll never going to stop. That connection. And then you come back to lifestyle, which is always amazing. Lifestyle [inaudible 00:28:42] it's always so fun to forget that it comes back to the consistency and lifestyle. That that's the thing that's going... And always when you start getting battered and beaten a little bit and you feel like you're losing your way, you get up, you go right. I'm going to get into my bad habits again. I'm going to like, [crosstalk 00:28:59]   Jost Sauer: (29:06) That's boom. That's a downward spiral.   Mason: (29:06) Well, and that's what you reiterate here because what we were talking about is our capacity to stay within our warrior, within our warriors centres, within our natural self with strong blood with a connection to what our own unique spiritual path is, to regardless of what choices you make know that you're not compromising and that you're willing to just get up again and again and again no matter what life throws at you, you never give up and hopefully doing so without deteriorating as you go along. Ideally doing it that way. Again we've talked about sleep. For you, going back into those basics and what's going right now, why are the cracks widening and people being exposed mentally having weak blood and weak bodies and then showing I can't do this anymore. I can't get up anymore. What are we introducing again to the lifestyle? Why don't we just reminding everyone about it, what we need to be doing and what are our staples and what of our flows in order to keep that blood strong?   Jost Sauer: (30:05) Okay, before we get into that, China's Medicine says that your blood and your Jing is your armour. If I live incorrectly, it's like, I'm going into battle and throw away the armour. I don't need it. So guarding the one is the holy mantra, the highest mantra in Daoism. Guard the one, and the one is your blood, your Jing, your Shen the treasures. Obviously that means I need to understand that this requires a certain life. If I live incorrectly, I will throw away the armour. That means, bullets will enter. The sword will get me, because the attack is obvious. I mean, anyone can see now that we are under attack. So when you get under attack, you're going to put the armour on. So obviously, it's not about choice anymore it's about a necessity. We need to shift in our mindset that it's not about, "Well, I'm going to say up late tonight, whatever." No. You got to put your armour on. Because if I don't follow the rules of Dao, if I don't follow the natural laws, those fuckers will get me. Whatever Bill Gates, whatever those fuckers are, they will get me. But if my blood is strong, he fucking can't get me. It's a promise of all masters, if our Chi is strong they   Jost Sauer: (31:40) That's why they do all this technique. That's why they're trying to undermine you. They're trying to make you weak. Because if you weaken your blood, they can get into you. It's a war tactic. Dismantling the beautiful castle, dismantle the foundation. First of all, we need to understand we are it's an urgency right now. It's not about a debate anymore. It's like we have no choice. We've got no choice other than nine o'clock, nine thirty, you got to turn off that phone. If you're not, Bill Gates is going to get you and fuck you. And he will. If not, there's going to be Pfizer, or some other fucking spike protein shit going on. Some other moderated gene that's coming next time. They're gonna have a lot of weapons, they haven't even started yet. But it's all part of a process and they will never do anything if our blood is weak. They can't get in. It's been a [inaudible 00:32:46] and it's been forever like that. The strong will always survive. It's how it is. And the strong are the blood and the Jing.   Jost Sauer: (32:56) So therefore, first of all, we need to switch the mind to, it's not about free of choice anymore. It's about we have no choice. It's because of those big pharma. We got no choice. We don't live in peaceful times anymore. There's rockets throwing everywhere now. And so it's silly to go without putting the armour on. It's totally silly. But when the armour is on they can't pierce yourselves. That's how it is. That's the first thing. The mindset needs to take you from choice to urgency, so I don't have any choice. We are at war, they are after me, they're trying to get me. And if my blood is strong, they can't get me. That's the first thing. So the next thing is obviously, to develop the discipline to ward off to the demands of the physical to be stimulated 24/7. We got to just ward that off and say, "Okay, if I'm stimulated 24/7 I jeopardise my recovery phase. If I jeopardise my recovery, my armour will get weak. My blood will get weak. Jing will get weak, so I got no choice."   Jost Sauer: (34:21) That means the Chi cycle is in fact, the ultimate model right now because it tells you what to do. The Chi cycle is like the model that will strengthen our blood, our Jing. All along, it's a system to make us strong, so we can live our path, so that we can follow up on our ideas without getting infected or impacted by those who are trying to stop us. And so obviously, that means we need to understand that it's there to support us. Once again, the universe will not give us a challenge without giving us all the possibilities to succeed. It's in old scriptures. Whatever God is, whatever that higher consciousness is it, it will constantly give us challenges, but it has given us also the ability to succeed. So it's within us.   Jost Sauer: (35:23) It's just like the dark forces like Bill Gates and Big Pharma. They know that. They're really sneaky little shits, because they're undermining you why you believe. So they give you a 24 simulation, they give you all the beautiful gadgets so that you are completely addicted to it 24/7, so you're lost in it, so all your blood gets weak and weak and weak, year by year, so you feel weaker all the time so they can get in and get you. It's not much point demonstrating against those guys, it's more important to build our blood and Chi because then they can't do anything.   Mason: (36:07) It's a huge point. It's the classic point, make your own bed before you go out and try and change the world. It's never been more palpable. As you're saying, we are on. We are on at the moment in terms of thinking that, "Going out and protesting, fine." A part of really does love that, regardless of what it's for, I really love watching people go and do that. But as you said, that's secondary. To you taking responsibility-   Jost Sauer: (36:42) That's it. It's secondary. Of course, we need demonstrating. We need to speak up. Of course, we need to speak our truth. But you need to have your armor up, you got to be strong. You got to believe in yourselves. And really just, "Fuck, you can't get me." I mean when I was young, back in the days as an anarchist in Germany, I was facing up against the cops. We were fighting the cops in demonstrations. They came to us with their plastic shields just like Melbourne. They came up with their rubber bullets and their gas bombs. So they're in formation, they matched towards us. And obviously, we learned very quickly, we also need to be armoured. And obviously, I learned all the tricks how to get armoured. And so obviously, then you can actually go face-to-face with that force. Because there is a psychological warfare, fundamental and underlying to that, that is far more impactful and far more sinister. And that psychological warfare wards off, can't get in if your blood is strong.   Jost Sauer: (37:51) Jing is stored in the kidneys. Jing is just your shield that's like the shield of a strong animal. Like when you look at a tiger, that's Jing. And of psychological warfare of the tiger. And of course, if there's this little mosquito bang warfare goes in. And obviously, but the beauty of that is, we have got all the tools available to get so strong, we got all the tricks, we know everything how to get so strong, stronger than those guys who are trying to screw us. Stronger than Bill Gates. And when I look at those Big Pharma dudes, they don't look strong. If I would have a wrestling match with them, I would flock them on the ground straightaway. They don't have that power. But they have these collective cheers, this psychological warfare, but they're not strong warriors. They're just like, they actually are weak. Imagine as one of those guys, by yourself on a street, it would be a totally different scenario. Look at Bill Gates. Look at him. It's just like if I probably move a little flag on his face, he will break his arm.   Mason: (39:05) I have this I have this joke. I'm not sure if I'll ever be allowed to do stand up comedy again at this point. I have this joke that I'm with Bill Gates, that when you look at his body, it's so flabby that they call it the antibody. They talk about the fact that when he has sex with his wife imagine all the vaccine sexual innuendos that she has to put up with. But just looking at the fact that, "Oh my God," Bill Gates, the antibody. When he has sex with his wife, he inoculates her and then she has his antibodies in him. He's the human vaccine.   Jost Sauer: (39:52) Yeah. It's very twisted. I know exactly what you mean. I mean, in order to get into that lifestyle of what they're doing, in order to have that intent, you got to be twisted psychologically in the first place. And then obviously getting evolves this loss force of the source of inspiration in order to keep you going. Obviously, they're going to twist you more and more and more, because they suck out Jing. Dark forces live on Jing. It's like vampires. They live on Jing. So they're sucking you out-   Mason: (40:19) Can you talk a little bit about that how Jing... With the fear cycle, I assume it's something to do with them. How exactly is that Jing funnelled off and out of somebody?   Jost Sauer: (40:32) Okay. It's metal element, which is the prime element to armour the Jing. So the metal element is lung. Your lung communicates with the kidney, kidney-lung communicating. Pathologies are the result of kidney-lung not harmonising or kidney-lung not communicating. For example, a lot of pathologies develop because people's inability to breathe correctly. When we breathe in, we take the Chi from the kidney, from the lower path, right up to the lungs, but then we're going to ground it again in the lower path in the lower genitals. And when you look at the whole spectrum of your breath, starting at the sacrum, going right up to the upper chest, so pathology develops, if that ratio that gets smaller and smaller and smaller. It starts initially as the whole range, but then the range gets smaller and smaller and smaller, till people only breathe in the upper region, only the upper region. Now they're not communicating, lung and kidney not communicating anymore. And that obviously when pathology starts to develop.   Jost Sauer: (41:48) When you have sex, automatically you engage lung and kidney. That's why sex is important. Tantric sex is important because immediately, it rectifies that deficiency in the breathing, and brings the whole ratio and the spectrum of the breathing all the way from the upper to the lower. You got that long, deep, connected breathing again. And then obviously gets rhythmatic, and when it comes to the combination of the orgasm, what happens now you breathe in all the cosmic Chi. And now the body gets flooded with cosmic Chi. That is all instrumental to metal. So the metal element is the prime element that regulates the function of having the ability to connect to this breath correctly. So this is where the protection of the Jing comes in, and the leaking of the Jing. So someone who just breathes with only in the upper region, and never Breathes deeply, most likely suffers from premature ejaculation or has got no patience in sex. So the more you get into deep breathing methods, the better lover you become, it's a fact. And that's why a lot of tantric movements work with the breathing first.   Jost Sauer: (43:09) The Jing needs to be guarded. So when we have sex we guard the Jing effectively. If you wouldn't guard the Jing and guide the Jing through the body, you would lose the Jing which is means premature ejaculation, you would lose the semen. And then obviously, bang, that's all and done with. You need to de la musica, no good sex. Obviously, that means if you have unhappy sexual experience is because the Jing is not nourished. The Jing was weak, it's that the essence has been lost. It's not a happy experience, if a man gets involved and then loses it straight away. And then obviously, both parties men and women, are not happy. Whereas, a really profound sex experience is where the Jing is hold on to on every level. So you take it through all the body parts, you play with the Jing in all different postures till it comes to the final culmination, and that makes it really, really happy both parties. The result of that is, the happiness is the result of holding on to that Jing.   Jost Sauer: (44:18) The trick in life is to know how to hold on to that Jing. And so that's where obviously, the metal strategies come into. That's why the Qi cycle is so important, because the Chi cycle always starts at metal time. Metal element is the harnessing of the Jing. We're getting up at a time when metal is in its peak time. So that means, I can now go in and get a grip of the Jing, harness the Jing and then circulate through the whole, body through my practise. So whatever practise I do, if it's Yoga, if it's tai Chi, martial art, it's all the same. First of all, we need to hold on to that Jing. And that's obviously the pranayama breathing technique, all kinds of breathing techniques. What we spoke about last time in depth about the Wim Hof and things like that. That allows me to hold on to the Jing, and then I move it through the body. That means now I have actually got a grip of the Jing. So in order to prevent the Jing leaking, I need to get a grip of the Jing, I need to feel it. So metal is armour, metal is holding on and some holding on. And so that means I'm holding on to the Jing.   Jost Sauer: (45:37) And obviously, holding on is also affiliated for letting go. So at the same time, I'm letting go. And as I'm letting go, what comes in is the cosmic Chi, because metal is breath. And your breath is directly connected to the cosmic Chi. So if I do the practise straight on waking up, that allows me to hold on to that Jing, but also connects me to the cosmic Chi, and then through the mechanism that is inherent in all of us, which we don't need to understand, we just have to do, the Jing comes in. And once we get a grip of that Jing, it is with us all day. And then we hold on to it, we feel it, we feel the armour is up. And then obviously the next thing is, once we have done that process, the next step is now we're going to have a nourishing meal. A nice substantial nourishing meal. Where we sit down in peace, because we do feel at peace by them. Because we went through all the incredible pathways where every emotion has been looked up and transformed. We feel at peace. And that means we feel good. There's no need to engage with the stimulus of the physical world because we feel so connected to the inner world, that the outer world is irrelevant.   Jost Sauer: (46:56) So there's no need to go to look at the phone, there's no need to go on Facebook. There's no need because I feel too good. It's like a good drug. That's what good drugs do. You feel good within yourself. And that's what Jing is. Is like a good drug. So I feel good, I don't need the outer. I'm happy. If you got good gear, you don't need the outer world, you're happy. And so that's exactly the same thing. So I feel good. I then eat a substantial meal and as I eat that beautiful substantial meal, of course with lots of good herbs, I always have my Eucommia bark. I do my beautiful porridge, then I have my beautiful porridge sold overnight with seeds lots of seeds and lots of ginger, lots of cinnamon I mean a big pot not a little pot. A huge pot. And then I have a beautiful cup of tea with the Eucommia bark. Because I found it works really well to eat porridge in peace transcended in a deeper state, and then having this dip of Eucommia bark with every bite. And be like, "Whoah," this goes in, goes in, goes in. I feel like, "Whoa," I just want to sit there and just don't move.   Jost Sauer: (48:07) And then may have a little bit more, and then maybe have a bit of Reishi. Because when I have my breakfast, I usually have little cups. I showed them on the website here. I got my little cups and I got my cup with my Eucommia bark, I got my cup with my Reishi, I've my cup with knowledge of the tongue under the four major. And then I've got them all there. It's like a banquette. What a feast. [inaudible 00:48:40] like a glass of water. I have a couple of Eucommia bark. And while I'm eating I'm sipping a bit of this and I'm sipping a little bit of Reishi. I just go with my feeling. I don't go by, "How much is supposed to be put in there?" I usually always put more in then I sip. And then sometimes I drink the whole out, sometimes I'll leave half behind. I'll just go with how I feel. And same with eating. I can go with how I feel. And then when I eat, then I drink and I'm always, "Ah." Then I just sit back and then I realised, "Ah, it's 2021 and there's other people out there. Oh, there's Bill Gates trying to screw me. Fuck him. Ah, there's like Facebook or whatever. Ah, all right there's emails."   Jost Sauer: (49:27) It's sort of like I was totally gone, totally in a different world. And obviously I use my Jing practise, I use my metal practise, and I use the tiny syrups, I use the mushrooms. And I use all that. And then obviously that has taken me into the inner world and it makes me strong and happy. And then that's the reference point for the rest of the day. It's far more pleasant to be there then dealing with the outer world which is bullshit. So of course I want to return.   Mason: (49:58) Oh Man. I feel I've got so much to digest of my own. Really it's nice. One thing I've really remembered today is the gravity of the situation. Just in western civilization, as the technology gets rolled out, the gravity of the situation of staying connected to our essence, and remembering with these little disciplines that we don't, and as you said, we don't have time, there's no there's no choice anymore. There's no time to muck around. If you're ready, if you're doing this, if you're going to be one of these people that goes, "I'm watching this. I'm not going to be able to be knocked over permanently I will get up again and again and again"   Jost Sauer: (50:46) Yes. Get up again.   Mason: (50:47) I'm going to [inaudible 00:50:47] on the side, I'm looking for one of those ways where someone needs just to be committed to putting roundup all over everything always. I'm not going to be a weed, you will never get rid of.[crosstalk 00:51:02] I mean, weeds is where it all starts. And then the natural ecosystem always does return.   Jost Sauer: (51:09) Yeah. That's the whole idea. Because that's the whole idea. It will always continue. This is not the end. We need to understand that this is how life works. But it will continue, it will not be finished. Of course, they always will try to get the old upper hand but they will never get the upper hand. That's not possible. It will always move towards the good. Tao always got the final saying, because we are protected. We are protected. We have given blood and Jing. And those people don't have that. And because they're using chemicals, they're using all these weird shit, I don't even know what it is anymore. Whatever the fuck that is mRNA whatever the bullshit. The body is so complicated, they will never get even close to it. The body is far beyond every one of those scientists. We don't need to understand how the body functions, we need to align the body with the forces then will understand why other feeling? Why that annoying? But we can't put it into words, is not necessary. Because we are healthy we are fit and living correctly is the most important thing right now. And whatever that is that created everything, it is good and it only as good in mind, but it wants to make a strong. That's all it is.   Mason: (52:50) I love it. I love it. I always love chatting to you mate. I feel like I'm getting the sense I can feel everyone listening to this throughout time and I think it's a good time to let everyone go and digest everything and really get the gravity of the situation. You're the lifestyle medicine man and just really let it sink in and allow you your lifestyle to emerge in relation to protecting your essence and your treasures. And you mentioned, for everyone listening, you're talking to a lot of businesses you're giving talks to people on how to stay healthy and radiant. From business culture perspective and you're also doing, you're doing your own clinic as well still?   Jost Sauer: (53:39) Yeah. I still got my own clinic. The reason why I'm doing talks at the moment, it's actually is about how to cope with COVID. But not about from the point of view, what is COVID, more like looking, "Okay. How are we going to get stronger as a result of that." I look at COVID as a personal growth strategy. My focus is personal growth. I look at COVID is just other means for another level of growth we haven't had before. And so if I go to the gym, and I've got to put five kilogrammes on the bench press, of course, it's going to not care and going to take me far. But if I going to put 85 kg on the bench press, I can go somewhere. And so that's obviously the situation. But in order to know how to deal with it, I need to be prepared. I go into businesses at the moment because they really truly suffer from all that because just so many people are so scared, and that we really are scared, and because of so much fear, it impacts on their mental health. And as a result of that mental health is now deteriorating rapidly as never before.   Jost Sauer: (54:47) So my books are out in the UK, so I'm talking to a lot of people in England, and they're observing the same situation that mental health is deteriorating rapidly. And so obviously what also realise is that counselling techniques don't deal with this anymore. Because when you are riddled of fear of COVID, because of the government, you just... Like here in Queensland the CHO is just every day, "Delta is coming. Delta is coming. Delta is coming. You will get infected." I mean this is just part of... And I emailed him anytime and said, "You got to shut up. You're going to cause one too many anxiety problems." Because I've got clients now, who don't leave the house anymore, because they're too scared Delta is around the corner, because the chief health officer said, "Delta is coming." And obviously, but the emails not seem to getting through. So from a psychological perspective, counselling perspective, what they do is completely opposite to what we need, we need encouragement, we need like a Winston Churchill who'll make us strong, not someone who tells you, "You'll all be fucked."   Jost Sauer: (56:03) So that one works or the businesses suffer from that, because a lot of workers are scared of turning up at work, and then they're too scared of someone around them has got Delta and they're going to get Delta or so are you vaccinated. If you're vaccinated, I could get your spike protein, if you're unvaccinated I'll soon get Delta. So either way, I'm screwed. That means if I got the vaccine, I can't get transmission, but then the other source said, now you'll still transmit, but then you've got a higher viral load if you're not vaccinated. So people have no idea what's going on anymore. And as a result of that if you can't resolve it, trying to resolve a Facebook or Instagram discussion on the vaccine. Try to resolve it.   Mason: (56:54) Try the Byron Bay community board. I think that's the least humanity and the funniest as well discussions around the vaccines.   Jost Sauer: (57:07) This is like, "You can't go there." So because we can't resolve it, as a result of that is we got now the highest level of mental health weaknesses before. Because mental health is a part of the five attributes of focus, memory, nourishment, and the ability to perception and reaction. So the five elements make up your mental health. But if you can't get any information anymore you can resolve, and now you're trying to resolve, you're going circles, you're going in loops. And as you go in loops, you are there, where a drug user finish off when they take too many drugs. So that's why we have a mass psychosis now. Everyone now is basically in the same situation, same stage, as someone who has taking a little bit too many drugs. They're trying to resolve and you can't resolve it, you're going in loops.   Jost Sauer: (58:09) But once you start going in loops, what happens is you weaken your spleen, your earth element. And earth or spleen is transformation and transportation. Transform, transport, move, move, move. But if you can't resolve it's going in circles, you don't move. So if the spleen doesn't move, that means nutrients aren't assimilated and they aren't moved up to the heart to produce blood. So trying to resolve and can't resolve leads to blood deficiency. That's what I observed when I worked with drug users. The whole world is exactly there now, what I've seen in drug rehab. It is the tweaking, too many drugs you're trying to tweak, if you finish you are in psychosis.   Mason: (58:53) The dopamine hit, like that as well?   Jost Sauer: (58:56) They can't get it anymore. When I treated psychosis back in the day in my rehabs, all I did, I didn't engage with the psychosis. I tried not to make the client resolve the situation. I just focused on building the spleen by herbs and lifestyle, and practise, and acupuncture. And as you build the spleen, transformation and transportation takes place. Suddenly things are moving again. Suddenly, it's clear. When the spleen starts moving again, mental health is going strong again. Mental health is either weak or strong. We all have mental health, but it's either impaired or it's strong and fundamental to mental health is your spleen. And so mental health is deteriorating over the last year because of people's innate desire trying to resolve the situation. You can see the whole trouble on the internet because people try to resolve what's going on, and they get really, really angry with each other because they can't resolve the debate. And you can't, and that's exactly the psychic war tactic that Bill Gates and those Big Pharma evils are doing. They're basically, "Make everyone loop, loop, loop." And then make everyone's spleen weak, weak, weak. As a result of that your mental health goes weak.   Jost Sauer: (01:00:26) Now, obviously, businesses suffer. Your business suffers. If your mental health is low, you're not productive. That's why they're realising that the vaccines don't do anything in terms of building mental health. And the campaign makes it worse, it weakens mental health. Obviously, some businesses started looking at alternatives, and that's they approached me, so I go into businesses, because I'm not going looking into what is COVID from a scientific or medical perspective, I look at how it's impacting on your organs? How is the government programme impacting on your organs? How is the whole mass psychosis caused by all these constant mental warfare they're doing? And all we need to do is build your spleen. So I'm doing strategies with businesses. I take everyone through a process. Do this, do that, eat that food, take this mushroom, take that herb, do this breathing technique. And automatically, the spleen gets stronger. And as a result of that is it will start impacting on the other organs, which are affiliated with mental health, and suddenly your mental health gets good again. This is the other thing, that this, whatever they do this Big Pharma dudes, it has a massive impact on your spleen. And that's obviously another aspect we need to look into. That's metal, Jing, and then there's the spleen.   Mason: (01:01:59) I think we've talked about the spleen, I think on our other podcast with Jost. And we've said it multiple times, if you're out of sync with your organs and with nature, the place to start stepping back in his start standing on the earth and on the soil, which is the spleen.   Jost Sauer: (01:02:18) Yes. Get back to earth.   Mason: (01:02:24) Get back to earth. Don't get fancy around going into kidney time and liver time and all that just yet. Just get back in three square meals, consistency.   Jost Sauer: (01:02:35) I never focus when I work with clients, I never focus on get up at five, I don't follow the organ clock I follow rhythm. And the rhythm, always the Chi cyclic rhythm. So it's about the rhythm, and then the rhythm eventually will move it towards the right time. But that will happen naturally. But the rhythm is always metal, earth, fire, and then water, and then wood. That's how the rhythm works. Because, everything metal is reaction. Every chemical process, everything in your life is dependent on the reaction. Metal is the starting point to everything. What I hear lots is, "My life is so out of control. I don't know where to start." And the Chi cycle says, "Of course, you can start. The start is always metal." It always starts with metal, because metal is your breath. Metal is the change in state, metal is reaction. You can't have anything in life without a reaction. A reaction is prior to something. And if you want change, it means you need to instigate the reaction. And that's metal.   Jost Sauer: (01:03:53) So we always start getting up to metal. So that means we start getting up to do breathing first, because everything starts with breath. When you look at all the spiritual practises, if it's martial art, Kung Fu, if it's yoga, if it's Tibetan Buddhism, it all comes down to 8,000 years ago, the first practise was breathing. It all comes down to breath and breath is metal. So it all starts with metal. Then from metal, that means you start the day with breathing. You're getting into the breath, you're going into metal, then we'll start to initiate a cycle of reaction that will move you towards betterment. And then you go into earth, and then you go into fire, and then you go into water, and then into wood, and then to sleep. It's just the rhythm which is more important than anything else. And that automatically then, once you follow the rhythm, you will discover the Tao. Like jazz music is all about getting the rhythm and you suddenly know what to do. Get into the rhythm. Like sex when two partners meet and have sex, you and get into the rhythm first. And once you have the rhythm, you discover what do.   Mason: (01:05:02) It emerges, it's a good exercise to go. Okay, can you tell me, Jost, exactly what time do I get up and what time [inaudible 01:05:09] breathing you're looking from that Western medical, give me the solution versus what you're saying? There's a rhythm. I mean, remind everyone that you've got a book. What is the new book's name I kind of-   Jost Sauer: (01:05:25) That's The Qi Health Cycle.   Mason: (01:05:28) That's the Chi Health Cycle.   Jost Sauer: (01:05:29) The Chi Health Cycle. That's actually now in 11 languages. So that's published in the UK, it's published in Germany, it's published in Italy. It's going really well in Europe. Welbeck Publishing took over that book about two years ago, and they made incredible beautiful job out of it. It's one of those really expensive high class, British publishers who just put like a real lot of effort into that book. It's all beautiful gloss and beautiful symbols in there. And it's beautiful. It's really well presented, a lot of nice pictures, a lot of yin and yangs. And it's all about that real lifestyle. Because Tao says over and over, "It's not our job to understand it." We can't. That's why we don't have to be scared of Big Pharma because what they know about the body is just so minimal to what really goes on. The secrets of life they never will be able to tap into it. They're trying to corrupt it, but they won't win. And the real power is within. And if we align with those forces, and commit ourselves to the light, that information will come through us. And we get stronger.   Mason: (01:06:46) Yes. I love it. You're my favourite warrior. I selfishly do these podcasts. I come out firing and just I'm like, "Yeah, that's right. Yup, that's right. I remember." So I love it. I really encourage everyone to jump over to your website. We've got all that in your show notes. Is your website the same?   Jost Sauer: (01:07:07) Yeah, still the same?   Mason: (01:07:11) Guys, go get after it. Jost Sauer.   Jost Sauer: (01:07:18) That's correct. J-O-S-T. Jost a Viking name. Viking warrior name. It means hope.   Mason: (01:07:28) Fill me with hope. All right. Everyone go get [crosstalk 01:07:30] the book that will give you the Chi cycle. Get on your herbs, get some good sleep. And you can work with the Jost as well. I've had a few friends go and do it. And just always incredible. You've been around doing this for so long. I've got so many incredible stories. It's definitely an asset to our community here. So get on it. Love your work, man. Thanks so much for coming.   Jost Sauer: (01:07:56) Thank you. It's always great fun.   Mason: (01:08:00) Well, until next time, we'll give it what? Maybe we'll just keep it at a four to six months cycle.   Jost Sauer: (01:08:05) Yeah. There is always something that goes on in the western world in the physical that needs to be discussing.   Mason: (01:08:12) Yeah. Maybe next time everyone will start calming down and will digest the intensity-   Jost Sauer: (01:08:19) Maybe Bill Gates is gone. And the Big Pharma blew up, new communities everywhere.   Mason: (01:08:27) That's a lot to do in six months. Beautiful. Anything else you want to share with everyone? Or you're good?   Jost Sauer: (01:08:34) We just have to understand that what we go through right now, it's all part of a bigger picture. If the blood gets weak, we get caught up in the politics. If the blood is strong, we feel good within ourselves. And if we feel good within ourselves, we just stay detached. That's all it is. So when I talk about detachment, it requires strong blood and strong Jing. Just focus on your Jing, focus on your blood, take your herbs, take your mushrooms, live the lifestyle, and that's really all there is and the rest will come naturally.   Mason: (01:09:08) I love it, mate. All right, catch you next time sending lots of love.   Jost Sauer: (01:09:13) Yep. I will do that. Okay, [Mason 01:09:16]. Talk to you then. Okay, bye.     Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Today's episode is one of the most important conversations we've had on the podcast all year. In this first of our Brovember episodes, Mason chats with Aaron Schultz, the founder of Outback Mind, A mental health and wellbeing programme that helps men from regional Australia manage anxiety and develop the right skills to stay healthy in the body, mind, and spirit. Growing up in regional Australia himself, experiencing the downward spiral of mental health issues, unfulfillment, and toxic environments, Aaron knows first hand the challenges men can face. A healing journey ignited by an introduction to Buddhism and self-love, Aaron has spent the past 20 years building a career around helping men to become more conscious and connected to their true selves. Today, Aaron is a leading Anxiety Management teacher, meditation/yoga teacher, and a specialised mind/body coach, with a great ambition to help others; Particularly men from regional areas. Aaron works to bring about a level of consciousness and understanding to a whole collective of men, born into an environment where a natural trajectory is to work for the economy and serve the colonial system; With little to no cultural ideologies in place that nurture them connecting to their true purpose. His organisation, Outback Mind; Focuses on creating a culture and lifestyle that gives these men the tools and solid foundation needed to deal with emotions and realise their heart purpose. In this soul-centred conversation, Aaron talks a lot about untying the embedded emotion of fear in society. An emotional response instilled in most of us; Fear permeates the colonial structure and has become a default operating system for so many. Fear of judgment, being different, or being vulnerable inhibits a lot of men from discovering their true purpose and potential. This is a beautiful conversation about masculinity, vulnerability, and the destructive cultural ideologies placed upon men. Mason and Aaron dive into Men's holistic health, the changes we need to make in society so men can thrive, and why we can't wait for a system that's not serving us to bring about the changes we need. If we want to change, we have to activate it ourselves by supporting each other and our communities in the areas that matter. This episode honours the strength, spirit, and wellbeing of men and is a much larger conversation about humanity. Tune in.     "It's so important to be able to give guidance and be strong within yourself so you can be a light to others, because that's really what the world needs right now more than ever. I believe my job here is to try and create light so these men can start to become more conscious and take autonomy within themselves". -Aaron Schultz     Host and Guest discuss:   Men's circles Yin Yoga for men. Men's mental health Self love and acceptance. Resources for a purposeful life. Processing anger in a healthy way. Learning from indigenous cultures. Using physical exercise to process anger. Compassion for ourselves and each other. The prison system as an industry to make money. Developing a relationship with the masculine and feminine. The power of daily routine for a purposeful and productive life. Getting in flow with the seasons, cycles and our circadian rhythm.   Who is Aaron Schultz? Aaron Schultz is a leading anxiety management teacher, speaker, and private coach. He focuses on practical solutions to help individuals improve mental wellbeing and overcome anxiety. Aarons vision is to empower people to take a proactive approach to wellbeing, feel safe and supported, and become free of physical and mental illness by building healthy lifestyle behaviours that help individuals become self-aware, live more consciously, and thrive. Aaron is the founder of Outback Mind, a yoga, and meditation teacher (with over 5000 hours of practical teaching experience) specialising in Yin, Hatha, and Kundalini Yoga and transcendental meditation. Aaron also has extensive experience training individuals and groups in high-stress industries to manage anxiety in and out of the workplace. Aaron was recently awarded the People's Choice Award at the Queensland Men's Health Awards for his work creating a healthier future for men and boys.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Shen blend Cordyceps Deer Antler Ashwagandha Eucommia Bark Outback Mind website Outback Mind podcast Yin Yoga with Anatomist Paul Grilley     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Aaron, thanks so much for joining me, mate.   Aaron Schultz: (00:02) Pleasure, Mason. Thank you for having me.   Mason: (00:03) Yeah, well, yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. Good. Do you want to just like give everyone a little up to date, little download on what you're doing at the moment, where you're focused at the moment is, and what the grander vision is for yourself and likewise, Outback Mind.   Aaron Schultz: (00:19) Yeah, thank you. I guess I come from a rural background in country Victoria. I was brought up traditionally, getting all the trauma that the education system sort of laid upon me, and that took me into poor lifestyle behaviours and believing what the TV told me. So, I started drinking and doing all the wrong things, and I disconnected from my real purpose and my soul pretty early because of the way society was sort of gearing me. So, sort of went into those poor lifestyle behaviours, and I knew underneath all that there was something greater, but I had to follow the breadcrumbs society had sort of laid out for me and worked hard, did all the things, bought the houses, and had the material stuff, and all that too.   Aaron Schultz: (01:15) And yeah, basically ended up a bit of a mess in my thirties and had to redirect myself. But following that, I've sort of had a real vision to be able to help guys like myself from rural communities to be able to find out who they really are and follow that. Everyone's got something inside them that maybe they haven't had the courage to dive into. So, I've been able to help others through my own experience to fast track that basically by giving them some tools and some guidance and advice around following their true purpose in this lifetime, I guess, at the end of the day, and not having to go through all the shit that I went through, but that's also beautiful in its own essence because we do learn from that sort of stuff. But to be able to help a young man or to help someone get some direction, I think's my real purpose here, and to be able to explore all the beautiful things that humanity has to offer without going into all the negative stuff that takes us away from our true alignment at the end of the day.   Mason: (02:27) With this young, colonised Australian culture that we've got here, I mean, especially in the tribe, what do you see as the biggest thing? You are a part of that culture, and you and others are emerging to fill these gaps that are allowing such big mental health challenges, or just generally not being able to get onto your purpose and everything that kind of comes with that. If you look overall at our culture, what do you think is the biggest thing that we're yearning for, or that's lacking, or there's a blockage around that's enabling all these things that you're solving? What's enabling it to become an issue to start with?   Aaron Schultz: (03:11) Yeah, really. I always say to people "What are traps that are holding you back?" And it's primarily the underlying fact that is fear. We get put into fear early and that pretty much becomes our default. You always keep going back to fear all the time. But to be able to help people understand what helps them feel calm, I need to be able to create a culture and a lifestyle around that because that's really the heart purpose and the soul journey, I guess, at the end of the day which a lot of guys, including myself, never understood or don't understand, and I don't like seeing people go through the whole lifetime without having that connection.   Aaron Schultz: (03:58) I think we've all got something within us which is our true purpose and our true calling. We've got a job here to do, many of us, and to be able to find what that is, to be able to direct your life around that I think's really, really important to be able to make it simple to people. I go back to my own sort of journey. I was sort of messed up in my thirties, and I went to a doctor, and all he wanted to do was tie me up in knots. But I basically just had to take direction for myself and then start to work on myself again and get back to that little boy that was never really nourished, I suppose, at the end of the day.   Aaron Schultz: (04:35) So, that sort of resonates with guys when you talk to them because they sort of see that within them when you're done, and to be able to give them real-life experiences and stories about it but to do it vulnerably I think's really important. I was never courageous enough to be vulnerable about the way I felt as a human, come from a very judgemental environment which most rural communities are. It can be very much like that. And you touch on the colonial model. The colonial model is pretty much all about fear, force, and control, and ourselves are really penetrated with that early on. To be able to release that I think is really important. It's our birthright to feel that freedom, I guess, at the end of the day.   Mason: (05:23) When you work, so especially, I mean this isn't just going to be rural community, but that's where you are predominantly working, when you're working in rural communities with the lads and you start looking at purposefulness, soul journey, I'm sure there's different for them, they resonate with different ways of the connecting with that, and talking about that, I'm sure you've got lots of ways of approaching, what's the outcome? Do you find that it's different where you go? Everything's going to be unique, but for some people, is that purposefulness something that's a big life goal? Are you seeing at the moment, is it just them dealing with some inner turmoil so that they can just do their job purposefully and enjoy where they're at? What do you see the biggest outcome of how they actually feel their purpose, and what does it look like? I'm just thinking for some blokes and women, but blokes that are listening that are like, "What is that?" Is that, all of a sudden, I know my purpose is ABC or how does it look?   Aaron Schultz: (06:23) Yeah, yeah.   Aaron Schultz: (06:25) Men are confused, to be perfectly honest to you. We're educated to support the economy really at the end of the day. We come out of school, we go into uni or work, and we sort of have lost that real connection with our true self. That takes us into poor lifestyle behaviours, getting into relationships which we aren't aligned with. Really, once you start to explain this to people in a men's circle or one on one or whatever it is, people start to actually realise that not so much that they're fucked up, but they've actually taken themselves away from their true alignment to be able to do what society's expected of them or what their community's expected of them, and I was very much like that. I was always trapped in this thing of what other people thought about me and a lot of guys are the same.   Aaron Schultz: (07:21) They're very much at that entrapment of expectation of others. To be able to start to give them tools, to unpack that so they can feel safe within themselves because a man very, very rarely feels safe with who he actually is, to be able to develop a relationship with this masculine, feminine energy too, which took me a lot of work to be able to understand that as well, to be able to release anger, but then also to be comfortable with that anger too so you can develop a relationship with both sides of you and humanity, I guess, at the end of the day. But I think we have this lack of awareness within ourselves about who we truly are, and we're not just put in on this planet to be able to work, pay taxes, get a super, and die, and to be able to bring that back into real-time for people so they can start to work towards their true alignment.   Aaron Schultz: (08:24) One thing that really changed me a few years ago was going and talking to old men at the end of their life about had they had a successful life and nine out of 10 said no because they were never able to reach not so much their potential, but who they really wanted to be and be able to follow their passions because of expectation of fear, judgement , all that type of stuff in these rural communities where I come from. So, that's been said to me. I'm not going to wait. I want to try and fulfil my life well and truly before then, but also to help others do the same. We've all got that ability within us. It's just about sort of untying the knots and the tangles to be able to get some structure on how we live our lives a bit more functionally and freely moving forward, I guess, yeah.   Mason: (09:11) You brought up men's circles. It's an offering. It's an ancient happening. It's something logical, and to be honest, something I've been engaged in a lot, but have kind of just a bit, I think, steered clear of a little bit, while especially the Byron Bay scene kind of figures out without the political correctness, just open a space where you can truly explore what it is for you as a man, without dictating the outcomes and trying to say what a man is necessarily. But just how important are these, not just in rural communities, in metropolitan cities? Is this just a novelty, something we're doing in Bali and Byron? Just how important is this to the emerging and evolving culture of Australia and around the world?   Aaron Schultz: (10:10) Yeah, and you think about it because I had a good core group of friends in primary school, right? It's just been high school, the egos and everything open up, right? You just become cynical, critical, judgemental, all those sorts of things, right? But at the end of the day, strip everything away, you've got a heart connection with your brotherhood, I guess. When you see the egos of others and their judgements and opinions of the mind and all those sort of things, but once you strip away that, all the work's got to be done in the privacy of their own heart.   Aaron Schultz: (10:47) I start a men's circle with a meditation, and I take them on a journey for 11 minutes, and I stripped them away from big citation of the mind and all the things that are going on. We get back to this true purpose again. Okay. After that 10 minutes, we're de-escalated and we're right, and then we can start to open up about what's going on here. So, what I'll do is I'll talk, I'll bring a topic in. I'll pair people up. They'll go and talk about that topic, come back, then they're de-escalated even further. Then we go into a circle and we talk about what's going on in our lives to be able to unpack that and have that support of others as well. So, the vulnerability is the biggest thing for a man actually be able to be vulnerable. As I said, it was a tough thing for me.   Aaron Schultz: (11:33) When new people come along, I'll talk about that sort of stuff so they actually feel safe. That's the thing with a man. We're in this protection mode consistently. We're in this fight and flight, this fight mode. Once we can be free of that protection and start to open up, that's when we can start to unload and start to unpack some of the challenges that we have going on within ourselves, and a great way to do that is to express that around other men, to be able to be vulnerable, but also to be able to tap into the feminine side which we don't understand, which can really help us create great levels of self-awareness at the end of the day which many of just don't have.   Aaron Schultz: (12:13) As I said, we're constantly on chasing the bread crumbs and all the material things that society now thinks that we need to help us feel good. But once we sort of get away from that and start to talk about the way things are and the way things are going on with us, I just think we can start to be more conscious about the way we live our lives at the end of the day.   Mason: (12:36) I mean, it is quite simple. It's amazing, but when you dip in, when you sink into that space, even just that intention, and you can just see. Sometimes, yes, whether it's a group of mates that we have, or if you have a partner, it's incredible to be able to be vulnerable to that partner and share. There's sometimes so much to unpack, it doesn't feel like it's overly appropriate for your lover to be that person that has to cop all of it and hold it, and that's the biggest thing. Having a group of men, strong men, men that can be soft as well just to feel supported in that, that you don't have to bottle it in to protect the people around you as well.   Mason: (13:21) Then also, you mentioned anger. I think it went from that culture where men are just aggressive and angry to that's bad and that's toxic, and then to this point now where no, it needs to be felt. If you've bottled it up that long, it's going to be raging and wanting to come out, and to know that you're in a space of other men that understand it, and ideally a space where you feel you're not going to get judged for it, it feels, yeah, it's obviously very sacred. And just going through your website, I've just gone, "You know what? That's really something that could be healthy for me right now."   Aaron Schultz: (14:01) Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. I just share a bit about my own journey. I had these little traumas going on in my childhood which I've never dealt with, and that sort of took me into drinking and masking all that sort of stuff. When I hit 37, I was at the stage where I could take my life or I could change and move through that. So, I had that seesaw going on, and the easy thing was to go, "Okay, I've had enough of this. I'm out of here." And that's what happens to lot of guys. I lost my job and I felt worthless because I was attached to that title and that outcome, and yeah, as I said, I've never got to know myself.   Aaron Schultz: (14:51) So, put my foot into the gym and fitness, and a lot of that anger came out with the fitness and lifting more and more chin-ups, and all that sort of stuff, and I went from an average body into a pretty strong, fit body, and all the accolades and everything that came with that. Then I started to win things, and then I started to do these unbelievable athletic pursuits. And I had this moment where I could have went further and went to America and done all this sort of great stuff, or I could have said to myself, "Okay, Aaron, you've done well here. You don't need to do that anymore." That's what I did. I didn't keep pushing.   Aaron Schultz: (15:32) So, that took me into Buddhism, and Buddhism taught me to be kind to myself and be vulnerable. That's where the healing started to happen. With men, we'll keep pushing. That masculine side is very strong. That was the opportunity and the learning curve for me to be able to retreat from that, and then start to find that side of myself which had never been explored or never understood. To fast track things a bit, yin yoga was the thing for me which basically helped solve a lot of problems that I had because it just taught me to settle down, slow down, be accepting of myself, and then to be able to, yeah, learn how to use the body to settle the mind at the end of the day, to be able to develop a relationship with yin and the yang of life.   Aaron Schultz: (16:32) So, if I hadn't kept pushing fitness, that would've pushed me into this yang space, and the ego would've been dominant. To be able to understand the ego and become teammates with the ego, rather than just living that mindset consistently because I think that's what a lot of us try to do. We just think we've got to be a performer consistently to be able to have the vulnerability which was very hard for me with yin yoga because my body was so tight and that. But over time, I just had to keep showing up, and now I teach others, but also, it's part of my daily practise to be able to use the yang and use the yin together and have that harmony to develop that neutrality, I guess, at the end of the day and a high level of awareness.   Aaron Schultz: (17:22) Your mind, the way you are feeling on a basis changes, but if you can provide yourself with the practical tools to manage that better, I think you're not only going to be a better individual personally, but that's going to help spread light to others as well.   Mason: (17:41) How does that go down when you... I know we were talking just before we jumped on the podcast and when you're working in the prison system. Are you still working in the prison systems?   Aaron Schultz: (17:49) Oh, well not really. I don't work for the government, but I was going and teaching yoga in the prisons and doing some self-awareness training for prisoners. That may change now that we've got to be double jabbed so I'm not too sure about that one. Yeah. So, what we do is I'll just talk or the guy from WA will go and help guys come out, put them into a job, and then give them that pathway so they haven't got that vulnerability when they're out. The whole system is about bringing people from punishment or trauma, giving them more punishment, and then they're on their own when they get out. That doesn't work. We actually are able to go in, help identify the right people to match them up with the right employer, give them stability, but my role is to be able to keep them self-aware through mindfulness practises before they're released, so they come out and they've got a daily practise they can tap into so they can keep their job, don't get caught up with all the old belief systems and stay on track.   Aaron Schultz: (18:54) So, we don't get funding for any of this. We're trying to create something here which is going to help humanity in many ways, and that's something I'm really passionate about. That's primarily helping guys that have got lots of issues. We're punishing people consistently for trauma that's not their fault. To be able to help guys identify that, to help them feel safe, and it's okay, they can start to rebuild their lives again, this is something that's groundbreaking, that hasn't been explored before. So, to be able to take a young 25-year-old that's had a terrible life to help them reinvert that or a 55-year-old which has had this constant cycle of incarceration to be able to feel sacred in themselves, to learn some of the life skills which can keep them balanced is really beautiful at the end of the day because everyone's got a purpose in this lifetime and be able to help them become more stable and self-aware about their emotions, I think it's really important, and that's something that I want to try and do more of over the next period.   Aaron Schultz: (20:06) But I've got higher things that I want to do later on. It's just the stepping stone, and I keep getting downloads about this when I do my meditation in the morning that this is my journey and this is my purpose for this time. So, trying to be true to that, I guess, at the end of the day, rather than chasing money and all those sorts of things because I think if you're working in alignment with yourself, then everything else will take care of itself.   Mason: (20:33) What do you see is the biggest consequence here with the trauma? Obviously, the same is happening in various ways for women, but sticking to men, this lack of capacity or want or willingness or ability of our culture, the system, especially the corporate system to identify with a lack of initiations, a lack of support to identify traumas, having men being comfortable in themselves, what's the biggest... When you look at our country and our world, what do you see is the consequences that are rolling out of this being the case of us having this unwillingness and deficiency to support men to get in touch and on that path?   Aaron Schultz: (21:19) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, look, I just think that the whole system is working against this at the end of the day. You say, for example, that someone is experiencing self-doubt consistently. Well, as soon as they drive around a corner, they're seeing a billboard to drink beer. It's going around the other side, they're seeing a billboard to eat junk food, all this type of stuff. So, we're getting mixed messages consistently. Your body is smarter than you. Your body's always trying to give you the truth, but we're blocking that consistently because of the domination of the mind. We haven't been taught how to read what's going on below the shoulders and the message that that's consistently sending us.   Aaron Schultz: (22:06) So, yeah, to be able to find ease within yourself and ease with that trauma, some of the things that have held you back, this has happened for a reason, whether it be good or bad, and then to be able to accept that, and self-acceptance is such a hard thing because we are so geared to keep consistently beating ourselves up. We're consistently beating ourselves up, and I have that issue, not so much now, but I know it pops in every now and then. That is not a bad thing because it's there to protect me and keep driving me in some ways, but sometimes I really need to recheck myself and be kind to myself at the end of the day, and that's a skill that we're lost that ability to be able to nurture ourselves and be kind of to ourselves I think's so important because we've got the foot on the pedal consistently where we're not actually taking that off.   Aaron Schultz: (23:03) So, yeah, to be able to dive into some of those traumas, through my meditation practise now, I'll go into some things that happened to me when I was younger which gave me trauma, and then I'll be able to say thank you to that because it actually helps me move forward. That's a big thing for a guy that's new to this sort of stuff to learn, but you can give them simple things that actually help them on a journey of self-acceptance, then all of a sudden, they're on a pathway to transformation rather than being stuck in the old patterns all the time, if that makes sense.   Mason: (23:39) I mean, it completely makes sense. I mean, it's funny. I know I can go really sinister right now and talk about the motives of a keeping a culture this way and keeping everyone kind of huddled down, and kind of like a commodity, as long as they're just designed and as long as it's all working to design, just working, being in the workforce, and doesn't matter. We can deal with all the issues. And then you add the confusion of there's a lot, and some of it kind of rightfully, some that's gone absolutely too far is the bastardization of men and masculinity kind of thrown in there at the moment, and I'm not sure what your position is around this. It's something that's been obviously going on for years and super prevalent at the moment.   Mason: (24:29) I'm just saying with that perfect storm, for the efficiency's sake, for the resources's sake of our country and our culture, it makes complete sense to put energy in into this, and I guess I can just say for people listening as well, I get the sinister intentions and also get the fact that you're looking, I don't know, looking through the matrix and being like... Even if you guys can't see that this is the greatest thing to bring love, getting people on purpose, men on purpose, better for families, better for women, better for everyone yet you're fighting for funding.   Mason: (25:08) I mean, it always perplexes me, but then it doesn't because I go, "I know if I can have a..." I don't know why it's surprising, but it does still. It's baffling because the yield of benefit from... You imagine rolling out what they've done with PCR testing and vaccination, what they've done in such a small amount of time, if they rolled out with half of that, a quarter of that resource and intention towards let's get everyone properly rehabilitated, feeling purposeful, and getting over the traumas, the amount of efficiency that would be put into our culture, the amount of stress that would come off our medical system from all these mental health... Suicide comes off. All of a sudden, you got all the stress that goes into families when that happens. It really kind of brings it. It makes me really quite emotional. With the work you're doing, I'm sure you feel the gravity of it. Just how much, the utopia, that we're knocking on the door of?   Aaron Schultz: (26:20) I don't get angry about it. I see with compassion because I know there's such a better way. So, the whole government model is keeping people DDC which is dumb, docile, and compliant. Right? The whole system is around keeping people unhealthy because it's good for the economy. We've actually fucking become topsy-turvy here with the way that we really should be directing humanity. You're right. Giving people the tools and skills to be able to deal with those things rather than pushing it the other way is really the key to that.   Aaron Schultz: (26:54) Now, I believe that there's going to be a moment in time over the next, maybe 10, 20 years where there will be a real shift. We can't keep going down this role of basically pushing people away from what we're meant to be doing here as humans. You think about it. At the end of the day, it's only been the last 20, 30, 40 years that we've had so much domination. People were living in those days where they were sharing. Things were much more aligned with the way we're meant to be functioning here as humans, but they've taken away our vegetable gardens, our fruit trees, all those sorts of things to direct us to go to the supermarket. Convenient has become so much more common these days because really, at the end of the day, what it is mostly is it's the economical support and stimulus that goes with it.   Aaron Schultz: (27:49) So, if you look at a person that's incarcerated, that's an industry. The prisons have become an industry. The junk food has become an industry. All these different things have popped up. When I was a young fellow, pubs closed at 10 o'clock. Now, they're free for all because they realise they can keep more people employed. There's emergency services that are going to be employed to compliment all the pisspots, all those sorts of things. So, keeping people mentally unbalanced and physically unwell has become an industry, an entity of its own so that's continually stimulating the economy. But you're right, the counterbalance that is to be able to create a wellness culture which is going to be so much more beneficial at the end of the day, they can't see that at that level. The whole draconian thinking and the draconian model is really wrong.   Aaron Schultz: (28:45) My job here and I believe your job here is to try and create light so people can start to become more conscious and take autonomy within themselves so they can actually start to think, "Well, maybe what I've been fed is bullshit. Now, I'm going to put some decent fertiliser onto my body, and around me that's going to help nourish me," rather than sort of punishment at the end of the day because we're really directed into a world now of self-punishment. Most people are feeling like a shithouse on a daily basis, physically and mentally, and that's the only way that they know. So, where I live, there's a coffee cart. People are lining up there consistently to get their energy. I'm going down and I'm doing meditation on the beach and getting energy from the earth and the sun. People don't see that because the TV's telling them to go and get their fill of coffee, and then at the end of the day, drink beer to find that balance, and I was brought up in that.   Aaron Schultz: (29:42) So, I understand what it's like, but I see that with compassion. I see these people that are making decisions with compassion. I spend time in Parliament House in Canberra, and I've been around the government, and I understand how it all works. I have people that are in fairly high-level roles come to me consistently because they're actually empty and lost with themselves. They're putting energy into all the stuff that they think is real and right, but at the end of the day, it's taking away from their true alignment, and I don't want to see them get to the end of their lives and think what if. We can actually create a culture of self-autonomy and well-being now for them. That's why it's so important to be able to give guidance and be strong within yourself so you can be a light to others because that's really what the world needs right now more than ever.   Mason: (30:38) I mean, you brought up again, getting to the end of your life, whether or not there's regret or whatever. I always like to sprinkle in that it's going to be diverse, I imagine very diverse in terms of little regrets and tweaks, or was I on track or not. It's not just black and white. But I was just thinking, for everyone listening, especially the boys listening, tracking to the end of their life which I think you've been with your meditation practise. I'm sure there's a lot of work in acknowledging your death and the impermanence, and I always find that most of the time, ultimately, my most rewarding and favourite part of my own inner practise is facing my own mortality and always going into that darkness and seeing what emerges.   Mason: (31:32) But I always love thinking about that, either that deathbed or my 80-year-old self, and using that as a lighthouse, and that always gives me insights, and can I map somewhat or an understanding of the terrain. Well, I can feel it. I can feel the terrain and how many things are going to change in all those years. For you in your work, for the guys listening, when they think about themselves kind of on that deathbed, or when they're an elder, hopefully an elder, and they're tracking back, what resources would you recommend for them to have in place which would be the fertiliser to give the capacity for that rich garden of a purposeful life to come about?   Aaron Schultz: (32:15) Absolutely. Look, we're only on this journey in this body for a period of time, but primarily, if you can keep yourself in routine on a daily basis, you will not age. Physically, you may change, but mentally and spiritually, you will stay coherent. So, to be able to utilise a physical body in a manner where it's being nourished on a daily basis, externally by movement, those types of things, to be able to nourish it with the right nutrients externally that come into the body to be able to help it survive and thrive really well.   Aaron Schultz: (32:57) But also, to be conscious and connected to nature and all the things that are beyond that, I think that that will hold you in high regard so you don't leave this life feeling unfulfilled because every day for me is an opportunity to have an opportunity that I've ever had before and I've got to remind myself consistently that every day has been different, and I'm grateful for the days that have gone before because yeah, once you've got that, you will not have any regrets, and every opportunity, every moment is unique, and it's something that we've actually become disconnected with because we're so dominated by the mind and what we think is real.   Aaron Schultz: (33:45) Humans are the only creatures on this planet which are working away from our alignment. Look around at everything else and they know what they're doing. They're sourcing the food. They're doing all the things that nature intended and provided for them, but humans have become disconnected and lost from that. There's so much we can learn from our indigenous cultures that can give us that connection again. You and I are on this land through other entities, by people that have come from other lands that have come here and created us so we've actually lost a sense of purpose as men as well because we haven't got that connection with something.   Aaron Schultz: (34:27) I've learned so much of indigenous people from when I was a young boy, but to also what I'm doing now to be able to really connect and learn from them, and I'm helping indigenous guys connect back to their culture because that's the most powerful gift that they could have while they're in these bodies in these times primarily at the end of the day because that is human, isn't it? You know where you're living, you're living in a community, you're sharing, you're in a tribe, all that type of stuff. This is what I believe we're meant to be doing as humans. We're actually just lost touch with that at the end of the day. To be able to be grounded on a daily basis is so important.   Mason: (35:06) Yeah, I think it's kind of one of those things. I've done a few podcasts lately with some... I just did one with Jost. So, I don't know if Jost from-   Aaron Schultz: (35:17) No.   Mason: (35:17) He's a German Daoist and acupuncturist and can go in all kinds of direction. And again, in this podcast, we just came back to sleep in terms of the ultimate thing to bring that armour in terms of what's going on in the world at the moment and love. It's so often, and that racing part of my mind is like, "All right. So, what's that thing?" And asking you that question, you're like, "All right," that consistency through your day, that routine through your day so that you're grounded. It just landed again. I've tightened it up so much this year, and I'm one of those people that I'm like, "Oh no," if I've got that scheduled dialled and I'm refining it and it's all scheduled and locked in, it means I'm not free, and I've got that little Peter Pan syndrome kind of going on.   Mason: (36:03) But I've just watched what happened to my mental health this year when I just dialled in to that calendar and not really respecting, when I have a meeting, respecting the clock, respecting that I've put that in my schedule for a reason, and keep on refining, don't get down on myself. I can't believe what's happened to my mental health and stability just through that, with movement, with breathwork, with meditation. And again, I'm one that stumbles a lot in that and it quite often doesn't go well, but then just to not give up and just remember, that is the key. You've just given us that that's the key for when you're an old codger. That's what will get you feeling really purposeful when you get there. I find that potent.   Aaron Schultz: (36:48) Yeah, absolutely. It's called [inaudible 00:36:53] on a daily basis if you can do something for 10% of your day. I like to do it early in the morning so you can get connected. If you can have a practise every morning which grounds you, then you get rid of all the uncertainty, the fears, the worries, all that sort of stuff, and get back to okay, this is what it's all about, and then you start to live more from your heart. Yeah, I just think that is ancient wisdom which is much needed in modern times. All the ancient traditions talk about it. And in Kundalini yoga, we talk about juts, so just repeat. You repeat on a daily basis., you've got that foundation for your life. It's so important. It's so easy to get up in the morning and go to the coffee machine and get stimulated straightaway. The average man's going to the TV or the radio, and they're putting the fear in the first five minutes of their day, But if you can say, "No, I'm disconnecting from that. I'm going to do something which nourishes myself." That's turning inward primarily to be able to connect.   Aaron Schultz: (37:56) Physical movement is a great way of doing that. I had to do it through fitness to really push my body and learn to connect with myself again. But really, that took me into meditation. It took me into okay, now I've got rid of all my anger, now I can be still. That stillness, it's come from yin yoga now to be able to help the mindset also. I used to be really rigid on a daily basis with regards to what I had to do, but now I wake up and I have all these tools that I can use. So, I wake up and okay, this is how I feel. This is what I'm going to do, and my practise every morning goes for a couple of hours or more, depending on what's happening on that particular day. But that's my rock and my foundation that I've worked on over the last sort of 10 or 12 years.   Aaron Schultz: (38:48) It's a journey because most guys, they want to get to the end of the marathon before they start. The whole thing is to be really in love with the journey. Don't worry about the outcome. Really be in love with the journey and what's happening because every day is unique, and it's a new opportunity to learn about yourself and others. You've got new experiences going on in your day on a daily basis. So, to be able to be in love with that, rather than the outcome, we're so attached to the outcome. I want the beautiful wife. I want this and that and the other, but just be in mind and love with yourself and work within your own truth, and everything else will take care of itself I guess at the end of the day.   Mason: (39:35) And quite often, I mean, in my experience, it's still those things which you perceive to be superficial in terms of your wanting. They're still there. They are created in your life with substance. Beautiful partner, the ability to get on purpose, get some cash in the bank, build some assets, maybe be a provider, maybe not fall into... Whatever it is, it's still that superficial stuff. From what I could see, it's still there. It's just got something in the middle of it.   Aaron Schultz: (40:09) Oh, a hundred percent. It's really interesting. I'm not huge with social media, but I have these memory popups come up, right? And what I was doing three years ago, five years ago, eight years ago, it's amazing. This is one thing that we don't understand as men, right? I believe that we have this cyclic thing going on within us that we're actually engaged in this type of stuff at particular times of the year. I looked at these popups that have been coming out recently. They're exactly how I'm feeling now. These are just reminders of what's happened at the same time throughout a year in years gone. So, these seasons and cycles that we're going through, we actually don't have any awareness and consciousness around that to be able to be in alignment with that.   Aaron Schultz: (41:00) I think that is something that's really powerful and next level with regards to reaching our potential as humans, but also to be able to be more responsive and conscious of what's going on within our lives at any particular moment throughout the calendar year or whatever that may be. It's been a real light bulb for me to actually observe that. That's been a gift as a reminder to show me those sorts of things. And when your emotions and so forth are out of check, it's usually probably a lot to do with what's going on in nature which we don't really understand that much. The mental health industry doesn't probably understand that much about either because it's all about interventions rather than proactive solutions I guess at the end of the day.   Aaron Schultz: (41:50) So, they're the things I want to try and help people understand. Maybe you're feeling like this because of this reason. How many men know about moon cycles and how that works? None. That's the feminine side of them that they don't want to have anything to do with, but if we could start to educate guys more about this sort of stuff, and how this might be affecting their sleep and their circadian rhythm, and all those types of things which we're unconscious of, I think that's really, really important. That's how we can start to be proactive about mental health rather than being reactive like the whole model is currently because that model is about making money out of people.   Mason: (42:34) Isn't it just? So, you've just touched a lot on circadian rhythm connecting to the land. Something I've been, yeah, saying for a few years now is that it's just very obvious and has been obvious for many people for a long time, and there's somewhat many diversions, but there's especially a diversion. I can see a diversion in the genetics and the way that people want to live right now. One I see is those communities wanting to keep at least a foot but two feet grounded on the earth, and then those that I think I kind of see more going up into the cloud, and wanting to plug into a smart city in a technological way of living that doesn't abide by any connection to nature and circadian rhythm.   Mason: (43:20) I mean, we don't have too much longer. I'm sure you've got some resource, or if you want to quickly share your practises for staying tuned in to that natural rhythm so that you can stay tuned into reality, and maybe the reality of what's going on with you. But I also just wanted to touch, and you mentioned mob indigenous culture, any indigenous lads listening, you've already recommended, it's the number one thing. It's kind of in the faces, connect back to culture, connect back to the song and your dance and language. For the Western lads listening because I kind of find it still a little bit icky around here in terms of still a little bit of spiritual just taking of indigenous culture.   Mason: (44:08) Have you got recommendations or just a reminder of how we can also, through connecting with the land, also connect or respect or learn about indigenous culture in a way that... It's energetically. You can feel it's still like a hive there. There's karmic stuff there. Obviously, there's a lot of developing and forming that energetic relationship where we're living harmoniously together. It's still unravelling. Have you got any tips for guys to how approach it, how approach that?   Aaron Schultz: (44:43) Yeah, definitely. A lot of us have had no connection with spirituality because it's combined with religion, and a lot of us have had religious trauma. So, a lot of this stuff that we believed was right about connection is probably not really filling us anymore. So, to be able to, I wouldn't say disregard that, but just to let go of that now what your beliefs probably were, to be able to be more aware of the universal consciousness is key. What's in this life and what's beyond this life is taking your awareness and dimension to another level.   Aaron Schultz: (45:26) And for me, that came from pushing my body really hard and going running early in the morning before the sun come up because I had no noise. It was no life. All you heard or all you saw was the sky and silence. So, I'd go running at 4:00 in the morning, and lot of the ancient traditions talk about the ambrosial hours as being the best time to connect with yourself because you've got no domination from anything. Yeah, so for me as an individual, it was actually using that time in the day to get grounded. You hear a kookaburra wake up at five o'clock, and then all of a sudden, life starts to evolve. You start to realise that life's so much bigger than yourself, once you actually have got that time for connection.   Aaron Schultz: (46:18) So yeah, if anyone's wanting to challenge themselves, let's say get up in the ambrosial hours. Get outside. Do some meditation, whatever it may be. Get connected with the land somehow so that it can actually give you an appreciation of the gift that we've actually in this lifetime. To be human in this lifetime's a pretty unique opportunity and a unique gift. As I mentioned before, we're going about life incoherently to what was really expected of us or what we're meant to be doing here. So, to be able to connect with the fundamental things I think are really key because that'll keep you grounded on a daily basis, and once you've got that foundation, then the rest of your life will evolve around that.   Aaron Schultz: (47:04) We have this innate connection with ourselves, but also humanity. Once you start to get out of the lower levels of consciousness of fear, shame, guilt, greed, and get into the higher levels of consciousness of gratitude, love, kindness, compassion, all those sorts of things, if you can start to tune into those sorts of things on a daily basis early, then that will spread, and you'll have that connection with yourself but also connection with others as well. I think that's really key, and they're the skills that we don't know as men, we don't understand as men because we've been pushed the other way to be sort of in those lower levels of consciousness of society, as I mentioned.   Aaron Schultz: (47:45) But we think that happiness comes from greed and all those sorts of things where really the happiness comes from love and kindness and compassion and all the things that we're meant to be doing here as humans. We're not meant to be in fear all the time. It's a small part of our life, rather being a major part of our life. That fear's here protect us occasionally, but we're not meant to be living in it consistently. So, use the time you have early in the morning if you can to be able to become connected to what's really important. Then, you do this consistently, and over time, you'll develop these habits which become part of your foundation, part of your strength moving forward.   Mason: (48:26) I love it, man. The little simple reminders that are just how profound the outcomes are there. It's just a beautiful, beautiful reminder.   Aaron Schultz: (48:38) Yeah.   Mason: (48:39) For everyone listening. I mean, outbackmind.com.au is your website. Where are you currently at with your offerings and how people can engage with you, besides your podcast, Outback Mind podcast, is that right? Yeah.   Aaron Schultz: (48:55) Yeah. You know, mate, there's not much really. It's something I'm not really strong at. I probably need to be able to do more in this space to offer up things for people. So, really at the moment, we're trying to set up the Outback Minds and foundation side to be not for profit. What we want to do, I've got a friend here that's helping set up a training platform. So, we want to be able to develop men's circles in regional communities throughout all Australia to be able to train guys in those communities so they can run these heart-based circles of men's circles for many years. And I ran them in Victoria and Tassie, and a lot of them are very ego-driven. It's very much in the masculine which is okay, but I just think if we can actually start to build capacity for people through these things, rather than using it as a tool to get things off our chest, to actually be okay to explore what's been going on with their own lives, but also to be able to build our capacity, and that helps us as a man, but also helps us as a family member and members of our community at the end of the day, and that's a proactive way that we approach mental wellbeing, I guess, to be able to provide people with tools.   Aaron Schultz: (50:09) So, yeah, I bring meditation. I bring yin yoga into the men's circles. So, to be able to train guys with some of the simple tools on how to do this, and that I think's really important to be proactive in that space, yeah, so to do that. And I guess I want to get out into regional communities and talk more, try and get into places where they don't have access to great advice or help. The online stuff's been really good for that, but hopefully, once things open up more, I can get out and start to connect with more people out there.   Aaron Schultz: (50:51) Yeah, as I mentioned to you earlier, my real vision is to be able to set up a Vipassanā centre where I can help people come and be still inside for three and 10-day retreats so they can reconnect with themselves because I believe that's a functional thing for humans. It's just to be silent and still for parts of our year. If we can do that twice, three times a year, that's got to be good for our mental wellbeing. We've got to be able to give our mind a rest, and the mind isn't king here. The heart is king. If you can reconnect with the heart, that's really what it's all about. That's how we can improvements health in Australia rather than be too dominated by what's going on above the shoulders.   Mason: (51:30) I love it, man, and I love your work. Encourage everyone to go and at least subscribe to the podcast, stay tuned in on that way, and yeah, it looks like you've got lots of things kind of planned. I can see there's little life experience, adventures there, and workplace wellbeing, all kinds of things. So, yeah, exciting to see the rollout.   Aaron Schultz: (51:51) Yeah. That's the other thing. The workplace has got such a strong opportunity to be able to help people. We're not just going there to get a paycheck. I want to try and engage more with more of our better employers that are ethical to be able to help people, particularly men in their workplace to feel safe, feel secure, feel supported and really valued in the workplace because that's a problem that a trap we've had as humans is to be able to use people by paying them money, but not really give them any care and support, and that's a huge problem with regards to understanding ourselves and our mental health because if we're not feeling good about ourselves in the workplace, then we take that home with us and that creates issues with domestic violence and drinking, and all that sorts of things.   Aaron Schultz: (52:45) So I just think the more employers that I can engage with to be able to help builds a culture I think's really important. My background, I ran labour hire companies. So, I worked with lots of organisations and industries throughout Australia, and I didn't see many employers that were doing it well. So, now, starting to connect with more employers and give them platforms on how to be able to develop a culture which is coherent in the workplace and starting their day with meditation, and all these sorts of things so people can feel grounded before they start their work, rather than just going there, and working to lunchtime, and then going and finishing their day off just to get home, but you actually feel part of something I think's really important. That's [crosstalk 00:53:33] improved capacity for sure.   Mason: (53:36) Yeah. Integrating the workplace back into cultivating a society and a culture that isn't just... Yeah. It's a funny dynamic. I'm an employer, and the amount of energy that needs to go in at each new evolution of the business, all of a sudden, it's not the same as when you were just a small little crew where all your values and these principles just seem automatically known. There needs to start being an unravelling of some structure so that there can be that flow of humanity and that flow of purposefulness, and there needs to be little checks in place. It needs to be integrated into a HR department. For a lot of people, it's beyond what they can handle. I don't endorse it, but I definitely can see how companies get to that point, and they go, "You know what? There's no actual cultural requirement of me to do this. So I'm just going to go to the efficiency route or the easiest route and just do the whatever culture thing." And you just end up using people. It's crazy.   Aaron Schultz: (54:48) Yeah. That's what it's all about. The whole model to do with MBA and human resources, and that's really about what can you get out of people, all the fear you can put into them, all that type of stuff. Oh, there's an EAP at the end of that. If we fuck them up. I'm saying organisations, and I have been for years, that is a last resort. You've got to be really proactive rather than reactive. If you're fair dinkum about what you're doing, if you can look after people, the results will take care of itself.   Aaron Schultz: (55:17) It's the same as with our wellbeing. If we can show up at a value basis as individuals and do things which nourishes, then the results will take care of itself. So, don't worry about the outcome. You worry about the journey. Help people on the journey and then things will evolve. That's where I believe at sports clubs. I've done a lot of work with sports clubs as well to be able to help them become successful, but not worrying about the outcome. If this is the process that we've got to do, so you can start to tune in with what's really real here, and enjoy the process of the journey rather than the outcome at the end of the day.   Aaron Schultz: (55:51) I've worked for businesses. It's all about KPIs and budgets and all that type of stuff. If people are really in flow and intuitive and enjoying what they're doing, then everything will take care of itself because they're engaged, and the output is significant that way rather than sort of worrying about the results so much, you know?   Mason: (56:13) Yeah, and what I've experienced is when the culture is put in place, all of a sudden, something like a KPI or a budget doesn't have that disciplinary... This is a very hard line. To have optics through the business, like a KPI, have them available so that everyone in the team can see what's going on in other departments and for the benefit of the person who's in that, say, my position as a CEO to have those things be present and then to have it entrenched, not just say it, but so it's felt this isn't about making me wrong or bad. This is genuine feedback loop and genuine neurofeedback so that I'm aware of what my team is doing. I'm aware of whether I'm in a place where I'm flowing or not.   Mason: (57:07) And if, this is the hard one, if there's enough trust that you're not getting in trouble, but if there's something starts not going well, it's really great for us to know it so that we can all rally and be like, "What's happening here? Do you need some support?" It seems simple, but my goodness, it's a bit of a difficult task, I think just because we're all so programmed to be like, "I'm being judged. If I don't get the answer right, I'm marked wrong, and I don't get given other opportunities." It's a pretty insidious little parasite of the culture.   Aaron Schultz: (57:54) Get excited, and if you can get rid of that competition or that competitive nature, and give back more compassion, that's where you can grow. I've worked with business. It's all about achievements on a monthly basis and you're competing against others and all those sorts of things. It's really wrong. Yeah, being able be supportive and nourishing of yourself and nourishing your others, I think that's work.   Mason: (58:17) Because when you don't enlist them, them, me, people, whatever in competition, for me, this competitiveness from this jovial place and this playful place, and often, quite a serious place for me, I can drop into the gravity of which I enjoy around, look, in terms of my life vision, this is what's actually on the cards right now in terms of whether I get this project done in time or not. I've only got a certain amount of time here, but that's an emergence, that competitive charge. I'm not trying to beat down anyone else. That's something I think we've got wrong. We try and project something which is going to get us the result, like competition onto a company structure which then brings about reprimanding kind of culture, therefore for fear verse hey, it's really takes a lot of vulnerability to get this feedback and be vulnerable to your team and how you're performing and how you're doing.   Mason: (59:15) But if you come from a place of trust and you give trust willingly or have conversations to get yourself there to where you give trust, all of a sudden, that natural and organic, that's the fertiliser, then that competitive edge, appropriate for you and your nervous system, can rise up and then go back down as well when it starts getting a little unhealthy. It's a hell of a thing, business culture. I'm aware of the time though. I think we'll go on with this for ages.   Aaron Schultz: (59:46) Just remember, it's a friendly universe and everything's trying to work for us, not against us. If we can just work with that, the flow of everything, then everything will be okay, will take care of itself. When we're forcing where we're getting forced against and that's what competition does, it really does put us into a short-term fix, but really the long-term outcome is not great, but the more you can be able to work with the universal charge, if you've got a product, you let products go without any attachment. You've got something great. You're not producing it because you want to get these outcomes. You're producing because it's something which is going to help people. If you've got that belief, that energy goes into that product, and then it goes out and expands.   Mason: (01:00:40) Yeah. That faith, I mean, I've got a bit of trauma around religion, going to a Catholic school as well, but then when I've reconnected to the natural state of faith for me versus institutional faith, as you said, I'm like, "Oh wow. What freedom." I've got an intention and I trust my intention around herbs and education, and I'm sure you have the same experience, and watch it open up as long as you give it... When you keep on turning up and staying consistent within it. Yeah. It's fun. It is fun. It's a great reminder. And I love your work. I really appreciate you coming on and chatting to all of us during Brovember.   Aaron Schultz: (01:01:26) Thank you, mate. I've given a listen to it and we really appreciate what you've done and what you've created here and the great products that you have. I've only started using Mason's Mushrooms and I'm not consistent. I'm only using them every few days. Maybe I need to have it more up, but I like it with cold water rather than hot.   Mason: (01:01:46) In a smoothie. You got the tropical fruit up there I think coming on at the moment. Yeah, it's all good, goes with it. Whatever, a bit of mango, a bit of mango sorbet.   Aaron Schultz: (01:01:57) They'll be out in a couple months so I be into there, I reckon for sure. So, appreciate it.   Mason: (01:02:00) Yeah, well, yeah. It is that consistency with the mushies and the tonic herbs and even do a little bit more than you think you should be doing. Go up the dose a little bit. With your meditation practise, You'll definitely have a greater capacity for the dose.   Aaron Schultz: (01:02:18) Yeah. Yeah, awesome, mate. I appreciate that. I haven't used any drugs for 25 years, marijuana, or any of that sort of stuff. I've never used magic mushrooms and everyone else around the same seems to. Yeah, this sort of stuff is new to me. I was a raw vegan guy for a long time. So, I know it's like to feel dialled in. It felt amazing consistently, but I just couldn't get the product to keep myself sustained. So, I have to find different things now that can help me, I give it a stab.   Mason: (01:02:51) Nice one. Yeah. That was me. I was raw vegan basically, and a yin yoga teacher, funnily, when I was like, yeah, yeah.   Aaron Schultz: (01:03:01) Unreal.   Mason: (01:03:03) Yeah. So, I definitely relate to what you're saying. My wife is a yin yoga teacher and goes over and studies with Paul and Suzee Grilley, yeah.   Aaron Schultz: (01:03:10) Yeah, yeah. Cool. It's interesting. I was to go over there in 2019, but that got stuffed up, and I've done training with four, five other teachers that have all studied with Paul, but I haven't actually gone and studied with him myself. So, yeah. It'll happen at some stage, I reckon, but yeah.   Mason: (01:03:32) For sure.   Aaron Schultz: (01:03:32) Yeah. [inaudible 01:03:33]. It's been something like I come from Bikram yoga to hatha to Kundalini to yin so I've gone through all those journeys. The Kundalini yoga is very powerful as far as creating connections and that type of thing. It's amazing what the energy that comes from the practise actually can do for you. Yeah, so I was really grateful to sort of fall into that too, but it's all these tools that have sort of popped up over the journey.   Mason: (01:04:03) Yeah, they all fit into a piece of the puzzle.   Aaron Schultz: (01:04:06) That's true. Clearly.   Mason: (01:04:09) Beautiful mate. Well, I look forward to chatting to you on your podcast, and yeah. I'll keep an eye up for everything you're up to. Thanks for coming on.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

In our season finale, we have an exciting guest: Mason Taylor, founder of Superfeast - your tonic herbs and medicinal mushroom superstore. In this episode we ask Mason to consider his encyclopaedic knowledge (think Daoist Philosophy, Adaptogens, Medicinal Mushrooms, Tonics... the list goes on) and provide his best advice for mothers. We discuss how a woman can support herself through conception, pregnancy and post-partum with a number of strategies, as well as specific herbs, discussed. We learnt what Jing, Qi and Shen is and reflect that the Daoist modalities are more a way of life that allow you to be your best self. This is in contrast to western medicine that is often turned to once symptoms arise. Perhaps this interview will encourage you to support yourself BEFORE you experience depletion, brain fog and other motherhood woes.

Today on the podcast, we are graced with the highly cultivated holistic healer; Erin Lovell Verinder for an intimate discussion around her devotion to the plant path, the world of herbalism, and why we are witnessing a timely resurgence of this revered profession of healing. A Herbalist, nutritionist, energetic healer, mentor, and author of two incredible bodies of work, Erin's the kind of woman that leaves you wondering; How does she do it all? Birthed consecutively amidst a pandemic, Erin's books, Plants For The People (Thames & Hudson 2020) and The Plant Clinic (Thames & Hudson 2021), are modern classic guides to the world of plant medicine and herbalism, endowed with elegant visual codes of your favourite coffee table book. This is the second time we've had Erin on the podcast, and we're so thrilled to have her back. Both versed in the love language of plant medicine, this conversation between Tahnee and Erin is a celebration of herbalism, filled with nuance and some progressive insights on not gendering herbs through their application. Erin discusses what she calls her pillars to thrive, supporting the immune system during the pandemic, and the profound effect of having a gentle approach to healing and detoxing. A remembering, a becoming, and unfolding of the world of holistic herbal healing; This episode is one for everyone. Tune in.      "You have to be a savvy business owner as well. I've had different iterations of having a healing space, my own multi-modality wellness space, which sold and successfully ran for many years. Then being a head-practitioner at a busy, busy clinic in Sydney, and then being digital and writing books. I've had all these different iterations, and it's given me a lot of perspectives. But there's a lot of things I wished that I knew when I came out, and if I can help people in that way, I'm really excited to do that because it's a big job".     - Erin Lovell Verinder      Tahnee and Erin discuss: Immunity protocols. Drop dosing for kids. Herbal remedies for kids. The gendering of herbs. Detox and cleansing culture. Viewing fear as a mental virus. Herbs as the people's medicine. The matriarchal lineage of herbalism. The process of healing and becoming. Knowing yours, and your child's constitution type. Healing the gut; An energetic core of our constitution.     Who is Erin Lovell Verinder? Erin is a fully qualified Herbalist, Nutritionist, and Energetic Healer who has worked in the healing realms for twenty-one years. Erin holds a Bachelor of Western Herbal Medicine, an Advanced Diploma of Nutritional Medicine, and a Diploma of Energetic Healing and is a member of the (ATMS) Australian Traditional Medicine Society. Walking the plant path, Erin is a woman in tune with the natural world. On a full-hearted mission to educate, assist, and up-level how we can all heal with the rhythms of nature. Marrying the wisdom and philosophy of naturopathic medicine as the golden compass to treat the whole- not just the symptom is the pure guiding force in Erin's practice. Getting to the roots of ill health is the solid intention and directive of her work. Through her practice, Erin addresses the drivers and encourages the body to gently return to balance, using food as medicine, medicinal plants, lifestyle changes, functional testing, and energetic healing; Delivering a wholesome, high vibrational experience. Erin has written two phenomenal books: Plants For The People (Thames & Hudson 2020. The Plant Clinic (Thames & Hudson 2021).   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Erin's Instagram  erinlovellverinder.com The Plant Clinic Book Plants For The People Book Plants For The People SuperFeast podcast   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the SuperFeast podcast. We have one of my favourite guests. You're Mr. Guest of the show now, Erin. Erin Lovell Verinder, who is a beautiful Herbalist, she's also an author, and we're here really today to talk about her new book, The Plant Clinic, which has already gotten pre-discussed in my house. It's, again, a stunning book, but also a really practical manual. Even for someone who's like trained in herbalism, I'm using it all the time because it captures all these protocols and concepts and ideas in this really beautiful and succinct way. I want to congratulate you on your new baby. Well done.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (00:39) Thank you so much. That's so sweet.   Tahnee: (00:42) Yeah, and welcome back to the show. It's great to have you.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (00:44) Thank you for having me.   Tahnee: (00:45) Yeah, I'm so happy to have you here. Your first podcast was one of the most popular, so it's really great to have you.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (00:51) Oh, that's so sweet.   Tahnee: (00:52) Yeah, I know. We're like aww. I think people just love... and that's something we've always been really passionate about is like, yeah, it's great to buy products and we love that you can buy SuperFeast from the shelf or whatever. But when you start to make your own herbal medicines, I think there's something, I don't know, that connects you to herbalism in a different way and connects you to the energy of the plants in a different way. I use pre-made stuff and I make my own stuff. I think it just depends on where I'm at in my life. But, yeah, I think having books like yours, especially, modernising herbalism because a lot of the old books can... like they're awesome, but they can be a bit retro [crosstalk 00:01:28]. How's it been going since publication? Have you been getting any positive feedback or?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (01:37) Yeah, it's been lovely. I've done two books now in the pandemic which has been like fairly wild and interesting. That they're being birthed at this time when actually I feel like they've been really needed and the spirit of plant medicine is like singing, I think, at this time within the pandemic and everything that we are moving through as a collective. Yeah, so Plants for the People came out in my March 2020 when the pandemic hit, and then The Plant Clinic just came out August 31st in Australia when we were all basically in lockdown. We were in the eye of it, so there were no stores open. Which was strange and I had to add a real block around that initially like, "Oh, I can't do in-person and people can't go see it at the stores."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (02:22) But I moved through that and it's actually, of course, it's been really well received and people are finding it and ordering it, and yeah, giving me such beautiful feedback. There's nothing more rewarding than that. Honestly, I get so much from those messages and emails about how the book has impacted their life or their little ones life or how they're working with their family in health and herbs and how they learn how to do this from the book, or I came at the right time. Like a lot of people say that I picked the book up and it's just at the most perfect time and that really thrills me. Yeah, it's been beautiful, it's been a beautiful exchange of putting the book out and what's coming back to me, which is beautiful.   Tahnee: (03:02) Yeah, it must be really rewarding, and how much work goes into these things. Yeah, incredible to see it in the flesh.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (03:13) So much work.   Tahnee: (03:13) Yes, so much work.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (03:13) Sorry, I was going to say this book really held us captive for over a year, and Noah, my husband, designed it so it was this real family effort and creation from our little family to you all. It was a major, so much work. So I'm so proud of it to see we did it, we did it, we made it.   Tahnee: (03:33) Yeah, well it's quite encyclopaedic in a way of like it really... I think Plants for the People was this amazing introduction to the world of plants. But then this is almost like working with a herbalist. It's got almost protocols and what a day would look like if you're working on a specific issue? And there's pillars of health that you might get introduced to working with a clinicians, so for me it felt a bit more actually going and seeing a practitioner. Like this book's almost like one in your house.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (04:05) Yes. No, really, that was truly my intention of writing it, for sure, was taking all of my years of clinical practise and knowledge, and as best as I could, distilling it down onto the paper to support and guide people with these daily protocols and how to work with plants as if you were working with the herbalist. Because the truth is like not everybody can access that one on one care and afford to weave that into their support team and whatnot, or access it. I just wanted to create a body of work that was super accessible and had all of those. Oh, so much in there, there's just so much in that book, for sure.   Tahnee: (04:44) Yeah, well, I think and I really appreciated like you have got a lot there for children and around dosing. I think that's stuff we get asked about a lot at SuperFeast. There's a lot of fear around working with herbs and children, and at different stages of pregnancy and postpartum and things. It's quite confusing on the internet. Like I saw you made a note in there around like you're going to read different things and they're going to conflict sometimes. Like I wonder do you have any overarching philosophies around working with kids and how do you approach that? You've got some dosing guidelines in here, but I'm just interested to flick that out a little bit.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (05:22) Yeah, for sure. I wanted to shed light on that because, yeah, you're right, I get asked all the time as well. When I started my practise as a herbalist, I was really specialising in paediatrics. And for years I really worked very closely with kids and their parents because you're always working with parents when you work with kids too. Which sometimes is the harder piece, to be honest. But so dosing was important and shedding light on working with children was important to me. I'd say that one of the biggest pieces around dosing with kids is that often less is more. So really even looking at drop dosing and working with more this energetic concept of dosing herbs, then these big wacky, not wacky, but big therapeutic dosing.   Tahnee: (06:10) Mamado herbs.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (06:10) Yeah, I had a whole section on drop dosing in the book, which I feel like can be really helpful. That more ease, using your intuition to start it just like these small little drops. You might start with five drops in a little bit of water for your little one, or instead of doing like a big meal dropper, it might just be like a few drops and see how your little one responds in that way. Drop dosing's a really good one to consider with kids because I feel like kids are so responsive often to herbs, to the plant world. Yeah, so I always start more with a drop dose approach, but there's a bunch of different rules in herbal medicine that you can calculate doses based on...   Erin Lovell Verinder: (06:52) So there's Clark's rule, but there's also Young's, and excuse me, so I would look at those and I've actually highlighted Clark's in the book because I feel like that's you're looking at... There's ones that look at age and weight and there's all these different methods that you can use. But I feel like Clark's is just really easy.   Tahnee: (07:12) Really simple.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (07:13) Yeah.   Tahnee: (07:14) Yeah, I've noticed that in my treating my daughter, because we've not really had much more than colds and she had a sore ear last night actually at 3:00 in the morning and gave her some immune herbs and put some Colloidal Silver in her ear and gave her a little limp massage and she woke up like, "Oh my ear's fine now, mommy." I'm like it's amazing to me how fast they heal, and I'm like, "If that was me, I'd probably still be in bed going ugh."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (07:42) Totally [crosstalk 00:07:43].   Tahnee: (07:42) She's like, "I'm good, I'm good. I'm ready to go to school and I love just..." Yeah, I hardly gave her, I probably gave her eight drops of this little immune tincture that we have. Which it's a bit stronger than the mushrooms like to give her sometimes things that pack a bit more of a punch if she's properly unwell. But, yeah, I really noticed that you just don't need much and homeopathics are so effective for them and those kinds of things.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (08:05) Yes, absolutely. Responsive, so responsive, and they shift really quickly, really quickly. Like a stupid charged shift with kids. I would say like really go low dose and just read a bit more about it. Like in the section of The Plant Clinic, get familiar with that, and then you do have to use your intuition a little bit knowing your little one like what's their constitution like? What do they respond from? Are they really... I've outlined the constitution piece in the book and there's only a little section on it.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (08:39) But I feel like it's so helpful to think about whether someone has a more robust constitution or a more sensitive constitution. Because it really changes how you approach dosing with plant medicine based on that. I would even implement that ethos into looking at your little one, are they quite robust? Are they sensitive and how would you dose them as well around that?   Tahnee: (09:00) I think that for adults too, it's something we speak about a lot when people come to us with dosing issues. Like they might take a quarter teaspoon and be like, "Are you sure these aren't psychedelic?" I'm like, "No, they're not. But you're obviously very sensitive, so for you, you're not going to need a very large dose at all. You can get away with like probably an eighth of a tea spoon or a pinch or something." That's great, good value, off you go. Then you're going to deal with people that are stronger, more robust, less sensitive to their energy body and they're going to be able to take much higher doses and not be affected by it. Yeah, I find that a lot that people miss that bio individuality piece of like you are going to behave and perform differently to everybody else.   Tahnee: (09:43) It's tricky like we were chatting before we came on with the compliance and regulations that we have to meet as herbalists. When working with a product like ours where we're selling it directly to the public, we have to state dosage and this isn't always aligned to what I believe to be true. I would actually prefer it to be a lot more nuanced, I suppose. But, yeah, just the way it is. Energy's kind of that was your first domain, I suppose, like working in that more subtle realm. How has that come into... has that been coming into clinic more for you lately with all this stuff going on? I imagine you probably need some protection yourself.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (10:29) I [inaudible 00:10:30]. Yeah, that's so interesting. On lots of levels, it's been coming in strongly. For my own practice because what has been presenting... so clients, what people are moving through and what we're moving through collectively, I really do believe it's a whole new paradigm and people are operating on a really different level than they were operating on pre-pandemic. As a practitioner, definitely it has impacted how I show up and what is needed? What's the demand on me to hold that space, and it's like I have to cast a bigger circle to hold it. That's been interesting in my own process and witnessing what that's bringing out in me and how I can show up. Yeah, for sure, that's been a whole thing.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (11:25) But in terms of what people are moving through and whether or not I have to call on those energetic parts, for sure. I'm always, in everything that I do as a practitioner, I'm always doing my best to honour the unseen forces and the subtle anatomy of it all. That means even if I'm working with somebody on their gut, I'm also honouring the emotions of the gut and the energy systems of the gut. I'm not just looking at it in a very black and white physiological anatomy and physiology, or like even the action of the herb or the action of the nutrient of food that we're working with, I'm more thinking about to the energy of it and the energy of what that person's moving through.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (12:13) Yeah, it's always a consideration and it's for sure a big consideration right now. Because what people are moving through is far... Like obviously people present with physical symptoms or imbalances that need support. But I really do believe that things are driven by our emotional bodies and spiritual bodies and our mental bodies too. I do believe that there's always involvement, right? I do believe that those aspects aren't... it's a lot going on right now. There's a lot of deep emotion that's tied into the physical right now. Yeah, I'm for sure working on those realms and levels always.   Tahnee: (12:51) I know you're seeing that in presentation more around adrenal type stuff or is it like... Personally, in myself, I can feel like a tendency to withdraw a lot more in a lot more sensitive just in general to people and energy. I'm also pregnant, so it's hard to know how much of that's pregnancy and how much of that's COVID. But, yeah, I've really noticed that in myself, like I just have a much smaller buffer between myself and the world and I'm having to be quite protective of that. Which was unusual for me because normally I'm quite comfortable with big groups and people, and now I'm like, "Oh, no, there's like 10 people [inaudible 00:13:33]." It's that stuff. I don't even know what you call that, like sensitivity and maybe anxiety and a bit of that.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (13:44) Yeah, I would say that there's... Like really what's coming forward, it's got a lot to do with the nervous system, and for sure, I would say that there's a lot more anxiety and a lot more deep fatigue. But like sensitivity, a lot of sensitivity, sensitivity to stimulation, depression, or low mood, low vitality. And just a lot of fear, there's a lot of fear that's going around, and I think fear can be a bit of a collective thought virus as well? There's like people are dealing with the fear and how that's cycling in their body, and fear of being unwell. There's just a lot of fear. I think that that's what I started talking about and referring to that new paradigm. Like everyone's just operating on a very different level right now.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (14:43) As a clinician, having been in practise now solid for like over 10 years, of course, I've never seen anything like it where everyone's experiencing the same thing in some way, in such a way. Obviously, we're experiencing similar things by being alive on the planet at the same time, but not like this.   Tahnee: (15:01) Acutely.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (15:03) Acutely, so people present with being maybe they want to talk about what they can do to support their immune systems, or their concerns about the vaccination, or which is very hard to navigate as a practitioner, for sure. Because actually this is a space that we are legally meant to step back from. There's just a lot of like what people are curious about and what they're worrying about. But the anxiety and the depression and the adrenal stuff, it's all like nervous system adrenal system, fight or flight survival mode stuff big time.   Tahnee: (15:48) Yeah, we're activating the sympathetic nervous system.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (15:50) Absolutely.   Tahnee: (15:51) Yeah, I can see that like we've got a team of about 30, so I can see different waves of things move through, and yeah, I've noticed those kinds of things in our team. I think I really... like that's one of the things I love about this book and would really recommend to people if you are thinking about immune protocols, you're thinking about anxiety and managing that with herbs. Like you've got calls for those listed out in here like whole chapters devoted to them. I think just having, I know for me, having things that I can lean on that support me, it's like a bomb.   Tahnee: (16:26) It's like you might be aware of that feeling and that sensitivity, but you don't have to lean into it too far because you've got these things to prop you up. It's where I think herbs can really store on all these beautiful, calming, gorgeous herbs that we have of access to reishi. I'm loving all these [inaudible 00:16:44] lately. I can just feel this real need to nourish that inner aspect.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (16:50) Absolutely. Yeah, and personally, it's funny, even oat staw are like I've got a little milky oats tincture on my table here, on my desk. Yep, and I've also been taking reishi myself as well. The two that you mentioned are very much like present in my field, in my body. Because I think the biggest thing is how can people shift from that sympathetic nervous system state to that parasympathetic rest and digest state? And how can I support them to do that? That's a lot of the work I'm doing right now, for sure. A lot of it is about our herbal helpers and how our plant medicines that calm the nervous system, and even can gently sedate the nervous system when you're in a really acute state of anxiety or panic or fear.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (17:42) It's I just feel for everyone. I feel for everyone so much right now. There's just so much of that going around, so that's why I actually... Obviously, I didn't... Well, I was writing, so I was writing the book in the depth of the pandemic. But, yeah, that was a part of why I wrote the emotions, mind spirit section, in The Plant Clinic. Because, as a clinician, even pre-pandemic, I was always treating lots of anxiety and working with people with anxiety, panic, depression. Just that low vitality as well, and all stemming from more of a mental, emotional place. Yeah, so I'm really proud of that section because I just really feel like it's rare to come across a body of work in herbalism that addresses that directly. I feel like often we're not talking so much about the spirit in, at all. Sometimes-   Tahnee: (18:39) I completely agree. It's all physical and often very... Like it's something I really love about your work is obviously you have the background of the energy medicine and then you've also got the more chemical constituents like biomedical background.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (18:54) Yeah, herbals and nutritional medicine.   Tahnee: (18:55) Yeah, and like this nice intersection of... which I think is where medicine really needs to go is like, and what has drawn me to Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and these things in my life is like we need to acknowledge that subtle realm and their unseen forces, as you call them. That's a really potent part of healing and a potent part of why we often have anxiety and things like that. We disconnect from what we really need or what we're really calling for in our deepest selves. Yeah, I think herbs really help with that, and I think even the action of preparing your own medicine and preparing your own tonics and things like there's something very nourishing and soothing in that.   Tahnee: (19:40) I don't know, just like it's a small, simple process that moved you toward maybe where you want to be. I think that was something I really noticed and loved about the book was it was that section, and you should be proud of yourself. It's important and I know it's hard to speak to those things as a practitioner sometimes because people can sound woo woo. It's something we struggle with a lot. Like we want to be woo woo.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (20:06) Totally. Yeah, girl, I'm just so at a point where I'm like, "This is what it is, guys. I'm not even worried if I sound woo woo."   Tahnee: (20:14) Totally.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (20:14) I'm just like, "This is my message. This is what's coming out. Receive it or don't."   Tahnee: (20:19) Well, I love it. You're a little bit more evolved than me. I'm still [crosstalk 00:20:24]-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (20:24) No, no, no.   Tahnee: (20:26) Bit, no. I think it takes some confidence though, and some like, probably, like you've had these 10 years in clinic. You're like it's this little experience of this is what I see and it's proven to me over and over again and I can't avoid it.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (20:40) Well, it's just that thing of like you can't compartmentalise health. It's like we're whole beings. If you're going to, like I said, just example of the gut that I'm circling back to that, if you're going to work on the gut, of course, you have to work on it from a very physical level. What's going on in the gut and how can we heal the gut? What are we eating? What are we feeding? But what are we thinking? What are we, actually, what are we absorbing from self-talk? What's our environment like that impacts our digestive systems? What are the roots of the gut dysbiosis? Is there trauma there? I think working on the gut, it's like the deepest seed of like our actual beginning of our root system. The beginning of us-   Tahnee: (21:23) Yeah, like our, what's the word, evolution in the womb as well-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (21:27) Absolutely, it's the beginning.   Tahnee: (21:28) ... with primal layers.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (21:30) Yeah, and it's like so I often feel like when people are working deeply on healing their guts, and I do a lot of digestive healing with clients, we're going back to the roots and it's so powerful. There's people always go through really big, almost like deep initiation and rebirth canals when they're working on the gut in a way. And I'm like, "Well, it would be like I'm going to get half of the results if I don't honour those other parts of what someone's going through and support them through that too." I know this from doing it for so many years, so yeah, I'm like I'm all in, I'm all in.   Tahnee: (22:04) Well, that's enough.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (22:06) I'm all in.   Tahnee: (22:06) Here I am and I noted that page in your book where you talk about on unfolding and healing isn't pretty, and I think that's something I often try and emphasise for people. It's like it's not just these detox reactions or herb reactions and things that we get. But it's like if you are... I know this personally, like my work around my gut was deeply connected to a lot of stuff from my childhood and it was not fun. It was not fun at all to start actually acknowledging the pain and the stuff that was brought forward from remembering and acknowledging those things. But the outcome being have a great digestive system in these days and it's like, yeah, it's worth it but it's not always nice.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (22:54) Absolutely. Yeah, that's really important in my process working with people, and I think my ethos is healing is not always pretty, it's not always straightforward. It takes time, you're unfolding and allowing that to be a process. It's the process of becoming. I think becoming is a real theme in my work, and when I mentor people too who want to walk the plant path it's like we're a little bit I'm geared towards like this a little, a lot. Geared towards instant culture, like this instant culture, instant gratification culture, and we just want to do the thing and then that's that. That's what we are, and I'm like, "Ah, there's a whole process."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (23:42) For me to show up who I am, I've walked these 20 something years now to get to this place where I can confidently say to you all, "Hey, take it or leave it. Like this is who I am and this is what I've got to say." I'm not saying I'm... I've got work to do still, I'm just saying this is who I am at this point. But-   Tahnee: (24:03) It's still unfolding.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (24:04) It's still unfolding. Like I've become to this point and healing is like that. It's a becoming and it's just an unfolding and it's gentle and it can be gentle, sometimes it's not. But you have to be gentle with yourself in that process.   Tahnee: (24:18) I was going to say, and I noticed a tendency toward gentleness in your work, which I like. There's not these extreme, like your detox protocols and things, they're not these extreme crazy things that we've all... Maybe not everyone's tried, but I've definitely tried some of it [inaudible 00:24:33]. Look, there's space for them in the world and I'm not trying to say they're wrong, but I think, especially in times like this, where people are so sensitive and there's so much collective for like angst and fear and stress. Like gentleness is probably the best medicine we could give ourselves at this point. I hope I'm not speaking for you, but that's-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (24:54) No, I totally agree. Yeah, for sure. Gentle is definitely my approach, and in writing a book that I know that is going to be accessed by all these different people and they're not going to be guided by me personally. As in they can just call me up and ask a question. I really wanted to write a book that I knew would be gentle for people and they could have a really soft pace with it, but also get results. I think that kind of concept, detoxification as well, because, yeah, there's a whole detoxification section in the book. I wanted to dispel a bit of myths around like this whole cleansing culture and detox culture.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (25:38) Yeah, the whole section explains it well around like your body's naturally detoxifying all the time, so how can we just, every minute, so how can we support those systems to just give them a little extra lift? But in a way that just actually flows with what they're already doing. So you might find that, "Oh, my liver is stagnated." Well, your liver is still doing its thing, it just needs a little bit of help. Yeah, that was my approach of like, "We're not going to do anything drastic. We're just going to be really gentle." But it can often be so profound when you are gentle in your approach.   Tahnee: (26:15) Yeah, I definitely like preconception with Ayo was pretty hectic, and this baby, I made a real effort to not be like that and I focused a lot more. I still did a bit of preparatory work that was very gentle, and then I focused a lot more on building and nourishing myself. Which I think I neglected that part a little bit with Ayo was a bit more like gung-ho with the cleansing. Like I didn't get any morning sickness at all this time. I did get a lot of rage, so maybe I did quite of both.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (26:50) [crosstalk 00:26:50] rage.   Tahnee: (26:53) But it was interesting having like just that really different first trimester experience of like with Ayo was like if it wasn't salty and crunchy, it wasn't going in my mouth. Whereas with this baby I was like, "I can eat pretty much everything." Yeah, it was a lot more gentle to navigate that first trimester, and yeah, except if you were Mason Taylor because you were not having a gentle time, but [inaudible 00:27:18] high oestrogen perhaps. Yeah, really I thought that was really interesting just personal anecdote. Yeah, and again, like you speak to hormones a lot in your book and it is a gentle approach.   Tahnee: (27:35) I think especially with women, we are cyclical beings and we are very sensitive and I think a lot of... and I've read a lot of books by male herbalists and that can be very gung-ho. It can come in hard and it can come in a little bit aggressive, and I think it's nice to bring some of that gentleness into that space as well.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (27:58) Yeah, I think, yeah, fully, and I think herbalism has been... I think there's a heavy matriarchal lineage running through herbalism. The OG lineage perhaps.   Tahnee: (28:10) Yeah.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (28:10) The OG lineage, exactly. So I think there's also a really different lens of perspective when you've been trained in that lineage as well. That's definitely been my lineage, and all my teachers were women, which women identified which felt correct learning with this softer... I mean not all soft but-   Tahnee: (28:35) Yes, I've had Susan Weed on the [inaudible 00:28:37]-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (28:37) Not soft, Susan, not all soft. But, yeah, the teachers I really resonated with were just very, very soft. So that really also expanded my path around how important that felt for me to have that gentleness as a teacher and a writer and a clinician as well. I just I really want people to feel held in whatever I do, and there's a softness to that, whatever that is. That matriarchal maternal instinct to want to be soft and to want to hold that space.   Tahnee: (29:16) Yeah, and I think that's really aligned to... One thing I think we both have like as a theme in our belief systems is this idea of herbs is people's medicine. If you think about like traditionally women are going to hold the kitchen, they're going to hold the garden, and they're going to be holding the medicine in a way. I think there's this real sense of something I've always said to Mason, like I want to be 60 and I want to be old and I want people to come and be like, "I've got this," and I always give them something. It's like a potion. I think there's this real beautiful ancestral line of women healers that I think we're seeing this resurgence in like...   Tahnee: (29:57) I just had Asia Suler on the podcast, and she's very feminine in how she works. Yeah, I can feel this, I don't know, this softening in the herbal world. When I started with Mase, it was guys doing tablespoons of mushrooms and it's bio hacky. It was really hectic, and I was like, "Whoa." I wasn't drawn into that, like I was drawn into working with the herbs and the mushrooms, for sure, but not in that way. Yeah, it's been interesting to watch that space change as well. It's a lot more feminine now and a lot more soft.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (30:29) Yeah, for sure. Then on the flip side of that too, I feel like what's fascinating is as we let go of these concepts of gender, and gender is a construct as well, how people, non-binary people, might be practising herbalism. And bringing it into this space that, they're definitely practising herbalism, but bringing it into this space that is like neither that nor that. As we upgrade our language and the love language of herbalism just keeps expanding from different voices who have different perspectives. I think that's also really interesting. And just also thinking about plants, not in their male or female plants. I think that's really limiting in terms of my idea of how I think about plants, and that's changing and growing, and as I grow. But, yeah, I've really been feeling more into that.   Tahnee: (31:36) I'm interested in this, because we come from a modulus tradition where there is a lot of genderizing of everything. I definitely had that bias, and I would obviously love to... I've done some workshops, actually, I did a really amazing workshop with a non-binary teacher in Oregon and she was like... Well, she wasn't a she, but she looked feminine to me, but I think she was a they, and they were speaking a lot about female bodied people and herbal abortions and working in that space around trauma to do with birth and miscarriage. Look, it was one of the best workshops and trainings I've ever done, and they spoke a little bit about the non-...   Tahnee: (32:26) Like this person's clinic really served that community, so they spoke a bit about issues in that community. But I don't see a lot of representation of that in the herbal world, maybe you do more because you might be a bit more exposed to it. But, yeah, I'd be interested in your experience. Like how are you now relating to plants through that energetic realm if you are not choosing binary terms?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (32:50) Yeah, look, it's really interesting because I think that, first of all, I think herbal culture in Australia is really... and we've talked about it. We went into this in the last podcast, which I really loved because I thought it was just a really interesting perspective for you and I to talk about that. Because we both have a lot of experience with American herbalism and that spirit of herbalism in the States. Having you train there and me spending so much time there, and because my husband's American and having such a kinship with America. But Australian herbalism is just so, so different because we have to study in these private colleges or university settings, and essentially, it's a health science degree, or whether you do a health science naturopathy degree or whatnot. And you're learning herbs or you become a herbalist at Western Herbal Medicine.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (33:39) So that in itself already puts herbalism in a really inaccesible place for a lot of people here in Australia. Because unless you've got... My debt from school is from training is insane, let alone what they're paying now and that mine was so long ago. I'm just saying that because it like casts an awareness on not all types of people would have access to doing this kind of training here in Australia. Obviously, you can learn herbs in different ways, but if you were to go out and practise and learn in a structured setting. Whereas in America, and this is what we went into on the last podcast, it's like it's the people's medicine. It's like essential to have that medicine in the system where there is no universal healthcare.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (34:28) Therefore, I think herbalism reaches a lot of different types of people, and not just privileged people. Not just people of privileged who can go and do those kind of degrees. There's a different spirit to it. I think that there's a lot of exciting things happening in the States with non-binary people who identify non-binary, but are herbalist and they're practising in ways that are undoing some of those structures, which I think is really fascinating. I'm still listening. I'll continue to listen and learn, and yeah, I'm curious. But the way that, for me, how it's impacted, I think I just always felt like those systems didn't feel super true and resonate with me.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (35:15) Some of the systems of like these are women's herbs and these are the men's herbs. I know these are ancient traditions, so I'm not saying that they don't have a place and there's not a lot of gold in all of that, of how we can treat female body people or male body people, or let's use those terms just to streamline this conversation. But I do feel that I didn't deeply resonate with that. So there's a section in The Plant Clinic that's Mums & Bubs, and there's a section that's hormone health. I was like, "How do I be more inclusive in those spaces?" But I'm trying to convey what I'm trying to convey. I had to use certain terminology like Mums & Bubs, or like this is first-   Tahnee: (36:01) [crosstalk 00:36:01] people and-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (36:01) ... Birthing people and mensturating people. Yeah, so that was a little tricky, but I wrote a little note in the book on gender terminology and I was like, "Oh, this is going to really shake it up, isn't it?" Maybe this is going to shake it a little bit up, but hey, I think that's what we're all here for as well to open conversations and to get people thinking about a different layer, a different perspective. And how boring if we all just felt like we all knew it all and it was the exact same way forever. The times are changing, and that means herbalism is changing too. I've witnessed it changed dramatically from when I started studying to now. There was really like it was so wacky, if you're a herbalist. It was like, "Oh, good luck. Like get onto the world, let's see what happens?"   Tahnee: (36:55) All in three months.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (36:58) Totally. Yeah, exactly. You might not have a job real soon or your clinic probably will fail because there's not that many people into this. It felt like that when I got out and now it's like it's in a totally different place where I feel like it's having this epic renaissance.   Tahnee: (37:15) I agree, yeah.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (37:16) Yeah, and it's just so rich. But so rich in action, in movement, in growth. I just feel like... Oh, so back to your question about how I'm practising it, it's more about the energy. It's just, honestly, it comes down to the energy and the presentation of what someone's going through and how I would meet them with herbs. It's like a herb like Shatavari, which is a very beautiful I think central herb that is very much linked in with a woman's herb. Because it has such an effect on the menstrual cycle, and it is a beautiful herb for women. But it's a beautiful herb for everyone in many different ways. Even like those really we think of them as really Yang ginseng like Panax ginseng or Korean ginseng.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (38:12) We think more to apply those to men. But, absolutely, I just do not think that is true in terms of how we can apply it to all people just in... If it suits, if the presentation's correct, if the energy's correct, if the dose is correct, it's just about listening. I think it's just about listening. Like I might think, yeah, a herb like Rose is just really feminine. We use that like soft, feminine, the unfolding, the petals of Rose. But I know a lot of people who could do with Rose, and it's just heart medicine. I just challenge that a little bit in The Plant Clinic, but it's just it's my own perspective.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (39:04) But it doesn't mean it has to be true for you, and I do think that aeons of information around herbs that would be supportive for our menstrual cycle, and say, supportive for sperm motility. Of course, I understand that they're applied to like this male identified person or this woman identified person. But, at the same time, I'm just challenging that idea of that actually isn't everybody as well. There's just this nuances, so we just need to open up space for nuance.   Tahnee: (39:36) Yeah, and I think it comes down to the intention of the person ingesting the herbs as to what kind of energy shifts they want to experience in their body? I can imagine if you're a male body person who identifies as female, you might not care about your sperm motility so much. So you might not be interested in working with those herbs. But then, again, I'm very clunky in this space, so anyone listening please feel free to write me an email about it. But I definitely have had like a personal experience of the universe having a binary, like two binary forces that are constantly in motion. It's hard to explain in words, but it's more of a visual or a felt sense that I have.   Tahnee: (40:26) I can understand that there's a spectrum between an extreme of each, whether you want to call it yin and yang or gender and male-Feminine, whatever, the Shiva-Shakti from the yoga traditions. Like I can feel this real truth in that sense of the binary is always in motion between one another, and that creates this experience that we live in. We're going very deep right now.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (40:51) Yes.   Tahnee: (40:53) But for me that-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (40:54) Unexpectedly deep into this area.   Tahnee: (40:57) [crosstalk 00:40:57] on the radar today. We haven't had enough sleep for this conversation, but yeah.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (41:01) Totally, forgive us if we're stumbling through this. But I think it's important to talk about it. It's important.   Tahnee: (41:09) It is, yeah. This has formed my, like cosmology, has formed my worldview. This sense of this dance between these two poles creating this manifest reality. That's literally how I've ended up explaining to myself how all this is here. I can understand that those like masculine and feminine terms aren't necessarily useful, but I think what you're pointing to, and I've had this experience in myself. Like postpartum, Deer Antler is not a herb I relate to normally. Postpartum, I'm like, "Give me that stuff." It's like I can see that I've gone through this big depletion of my yang of given birth. It's like a huge journey, and it's like to pull some of that masculine or yang energy or whatever you want to call it into my being is a really powerful medicine for me at that point.   Tahnee: (42:02) I don't keep doing it for long, it just it's a period of time and then I'm done with that again. I think I can relate to what you're saying there. It's also I think I often, for me, I've really related to ratio's a very feminine energy, but I would always expect men to take it because I think it can connect them to that softer part of themselves, like what you're saying with Rose. Yeah, and I remember you... I might not remember it word for word, but you said something to the effect of this book is for older people. There are some sections that are working toward women's reproductive stuff, and yes, they might not be useful for everybody. But, in general, herbalism is for everybody, like just about tuning into what's right for you in the moment.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (42:51) That's it, that's ultimately what it is. I think I'm just curious as well about out doing, undoing old paradigms. I think there must be something with that [crosstalk 00:43:08]. What's that?   Tahnee: (43:11) Just in like paradigm breaking mode right now.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (43:13) Yeah, make it all [inaudible 00:43:14]. No, I know, I'm just curious about these things that sometimes I think... Look, I know that that's even in writing these books, I felt like that was actually breaking down a bit of a paradigm in herbalism. Because, personally, my experience of, and I think most people would agree with this if you've got a big herb collection of books, you would know that most of your books are written by older people. There's a real sense of like, which is beautiful, of course, the elders in the community and these people that have lived all these years and all this experience to put it down in a book, what a gift. But being a younger person, and I'm nearly 40, I'm not super, super young, but being a younger person, writing a book about herbal... It was like breaking the boundary there a little, and I think I just maybe like doing that. I don't know.   Tahnee: (44:10) I think that's a theme in your work, and I think I also see a lot of courage in that. Like that you were able to so young guide yourself. If you haven't listened to our first podcast, Erin did a lot of really early training in energy work and things before training to be a herbalist. For a young person to have the courage to fuller those paths, I think that takes a lot of, I don't know, self belief or faith or whatever you want to call it. Is that something, you know, did you bump up against that in putting these books together? Was it like there's a self-worth thing here or like an imposter syndrome thing or were like, "No, I'm feeling strong and solid in there."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (44:52) I was really supported, so I think that feeling really cheered and supported was a huge piece of feeling like I've got this as well. Well, I just felt like someone had to do it. I felt a bit like, "Well, someone's got to do this, someone's got to do this."   Tahnee: (45:12) You're an Aries, aren't you?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (45:15) Yeah, [crosstalk 00:45:16].   Tahnee: (45:15) That's why.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (45:18) Yeah, I don't know.   Tahnee: (45:19) Aries runs a lot, "Yeah, of course, I can do it."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (45:21) Yeah, totally.   Tahnee: (45:22) Everybody else is like, Oh my God, it's so scary."   Erin Lovell Verinder: (45:25) Well, and like it's so classic me as well to just like... even when I enrolled in herbal medicine and nutritional medicine, which was like a double degree vibe is what I was doing at the same time. I didn't even read the syllabus, I was just like, "Yeah, I'm going to do this. I've got this." It was like, "I really want to be this. I wonder what's going to happen?" Then I got it and I was like, "This is a science degree."   Tahnee: (45:45) What am I doing?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (45:46) Yeah. What is this biochemistry and pharmacology? I really didn't know. I think, in a way, probably anyone doing their first book feels that way too. Like you're so excited about it, you sign up, you do it, and then you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is so much work. This is so demanding and hard." I think I did that with the first book, I just dove in and was really excited and eager. I was like, "Yeah, someone's going to do this. It's going to be great. I'm just going to tell the stories of the plants again and just introduce people back to that remembering." Then I got there and was like, "Oh, this is just this is hard." But I felt confident, and I was like... I sound like such an Aries right now.   Tahnee: (46:31) [crosstalk 00:46:31] a lot of it.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (46:35) I felt confident that I could pull it off, even though it also brought out other parts of myself. I'm a Liberian rising, and I think that I'm so such an aesthetic person and I really love things to look beautiful and be visually like visual eye candy and pull you in. That was actually really fun for me because both books, I got to strengthen that muscle in me of making things beautiful. I think too that has been missing in the modern herbalism space of bringing books to life that people want to put on their tables and the coffee tables and having the kitchen because it's beautiful.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (47:16) I think that there's just no denying that we're all very aesthetic creatures these days, and particularly, with Instagram and the social media channels where we're all pulled in from the visual of everything. Yeah, I just think it was timely to just bring a book to life that both books that are just visually pretty. But, yeah, for sure, that's definitely my nature just to be very much like just jump in.   Tahnee: (47:44) Yeah, I love it there. I think like you have brought it up, more than brought it up, and it's you're completely right in the visual. I think I've got your books at home, but I think we've also got both of them in the office and people just go straight to them. We have like, I don't know, I want to say thousands of books on herbalism and-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (48:04) You have lots of books [crosstalk 00:48:06]-   Tahnee: (48:08) I've got more even at our house, and people would just go straight for them and it's, to me, I'm like, "Oh, that's like the plants are being sung into people's hearts through the visual storytelling as well as your words." I think that's really powerful because images they connect us in a different way. Just I was looking into the moustache and picture in here and I'm like just that joy and that bright laugh that these sessions bring to a space. I think there's something really magical about that. I think what I really also liked about this one, I'm trying to remember your first book which I haven't read in a little while. But you talk about the pillars to thrive in this and I'm not sure that was in the first one. I don't think it was.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (48:55) No, it wasn't at all.   Tahnee: (48:55) Yeah, could you talk a little bit about that? Obviously, get the book for the in-depth look at it. But I'm just interested in right now we've talked a lot about where everyone's at, sensitivity, we're feeling a bit un-hinged [inaudible 00:49:10]. We've gone deep into the cosmos. We've tried to navigate gender issues in terms of some really practical stuff. Like not that none of that is practical, but-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (49:21) Not really.   Tahnee: (49:23) ... like how would you say to people like, "Yes, we've got herbs," but what are those lifestyle pieces that are non-negotiables for you that need to be honoured to be well in this time?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (49:34) Yeah, I think I feel like that's such a foundation of the book are those pillars. I wrote the book really with all of those elements in mind in every single daily planner.   Tahnee: (49:47) [crosstalk 00:49:47].   Erin Lovell Verinder: (49:47) Yeah, I wrote it around them and that's it. In my clinical practise, I've learnt that, like we talked about before, you can't compartmentalise a person's healing process and you can't pull them apart and say, "Just do this and you'll be great." What I've learned is that we've taken the herbs to really allow them to sink into a deeper state of received healing in the body. We need to do other elements and to take care of the body. We need to make sure that we are hydrated, we're eating good nourishing food that's healing for us, we're resting, we're connecting to nature. We're really mindful of what we're saying to ourselves. So our self-talk and we're moving our bodies. The pillars are just those elements, and the rest, the good food, moving your body, connected to nature, self-talk, body movement. No, I missed one.   Tahnee: (50:41) Yeah, I think you got them all.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (50:41) Drinking water.   Tahnee: (50:41) Diabetic.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (50:41) Diabetic.   Tahnee: (50:41) Connected with nature.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (50:48) Yeah, those pillars are super important. It's very naturopathic thinking about what are the elements that the body needs to, the body being, needs to be supported with to heal. You'll see in every protocol. Like let's say there's a protocol for an acute cold, it will say practise the pillars, and then it says which pillars to practise. You might want to do, obviously, like to do them all, but you really focus on rest and really focusing on hydration and eating good food. Then I suggest some foods that could be really helpful too. The book was really written around those because I really believe that to work with plant medicines, you need to also work with those elements. I felt like it was seriously negligible of me to write a book about healing with plant medicine without mentioning all those elements of how we can heal holistically and truly.   Tahnee: (51:36) It's something that comes up so much for us where someone will call and be like, "Oh, I run 50 kilometres a day and I work 80 hours away. Can I do this essentially at work? Can you give me for my adrenals?" I'm like, "Hmm." I just would like to say that I'm happy to help you and support you, but really that's not a sustainable way to live forever. These hormonal issues you're experiencing in this insomnia and all of these things that are coming up for you like we can't avoid looking at our lifestyles. I think, again, this gentleness, that was something that I've certainly learned and I felt in your... You're not preaching anything, you're not trying to say like there's a right way or a wrong way.   Tahnee: (52:21) It's just like, look, these are pretty basic foundations that we all need to acknowledge are essential to living. And you have to sleep at some point and you have to drink water. Yes, I think they just become... and it's nice to have them laid out in such a simple way, I think. I think it was really I liked that you had like say with the code immunity one, like rest is a priority now instead of maybe moving your body. I think it's important for people to remember that it's okay to not do your physical practise some days if your body needs to rest more than anything else.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (52:54) Absolutely. Yeah, they're just so fundamental to really working with healing your body and your being. It's just the simple reminders to return back to those practises and a gentle guide. That's really what it is, like those pillars to thrive when you read them and get to know them. But I can't tell you how many times in clinic I returned to those, and then constantly I'm just repeating myself around, "Let's drink more water, let's rest more, let's move the body more, let's eat these foods." It's amazing how simple it is, but we need to be reminded. I know, personally, I've got my big water bottle here and I fill it up and I'm going to really work to hit three of those a day and drink three of those a day.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (53:43) If I don't have my water bottle there, I forget. I'm just not an amazing natural water drinker. That really helps for me, and so I have to put my intention and energy towards weaving that in. Because I feel way better when I'm hydrated. It's just, yeah, it's always those elements, those little things in that book where it says, "There's a little tip on how to drink more water." I hope that really helps.   Tahnee: (54:07) That's what we get in clinic. Again, I remember being... I know we've both had adrenal crash in our lives and mine came I must've been about 23 or '4. I was pretty young. And I remember going to see this naturopath and she was like, "Okay, babe, you're going to put a bottle of water on the front seat of your car. You're going to put a bottle of water in your hand like this." Then she's like, "If you're stuck in traffic, you drink a sip of..." I had to be coached through, God it's embarrassing now, but like having enough water. Then she's like, "I know you're going to eat three meals a day and you're going to have some protein in everything."   Tahnee: (54:45) It was just this stuff that now obviously has become integrated and is stuff I'm trying to teach my kid, and constantly stay on top of it. But, yeah, I'm the same, I'm not someone that would go and reach for a glass of water unless I'm dehydrated, basically.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (55:01) Yes, to the point of dehydration.   Tahnee: (55:04) It's like, yeah, it's good. I'm like just have a jar, always there, refill it regularly. I've even had to have apps at points in my life, but it's just like that's how you get through it. Same with [inaudible 00:55:16], I was talking, a lot of moms can probably relate, you get to like 9:00 and your kid's asleep and you're like your house is clean and then you're like, "Ooh, me time." It's like-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (55:26) Yeah, and then you sit up and watch three hours of shows.   Tahnee: (55:29) [crosstalk 00:55:29] I've had to just be really tough and no fucking computers in the bedroom. Like, no, we don't have a TV, so it's like I have to be tight with that stuff or else one slip and I'm doomed. I appreciated having that, it was a good reminder even after all those years and all this money spent.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (55:55) That's the thing, these pillars really they're free. Obviously, we pay for our food, but a lot of them are super accessible and pretty much free. It's like that concept too that "wellness" is this big thing and it has to be expensive, and it's like that's actual bull. It's about coming back to these really foundational, fundamental practises that make our bodies and being seen and thrive and they are so simple. That's really what the pillars to thrive are, and yeah, you very much heavily referred to throughout the whole book to bring you back and keep reminding you how to practise them.   Tahnee: (56:41) Again, like you would have with Erin in face to face [crosstalk 00:56:44]-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (56:44) Exactly. Can you imagine me being like, "You can do it. Drink your water."   Tahnee: (56:49) Take care of yourself.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (56:50) What are you saying to yourself?   Tahnee: (56:53) You could record me a go to bed Tommy lullaby, that'd be good.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (56:59) I like that you like a-   Tahnee: (56:59) Got to sleep.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (57:01) ... little note, like a little alarm that just says, "Honey, switch off."   Tahnee: (57:05) Yeah. I've been good with pregnancy. I'm trying to really honour that I need about two more hours than I used to need at night. But, yeah, I know definitely it's an easy thing. Literally, every week at daycare pick up I chat with some mom and she's like, "Oh my God, I just started watching something I'm sure and I shouldn't have and now I had everybody..." I'm like, "I know, I've been there." I really like you're not taking clients at the moment, and you're in this liminal space. Obviously, you've had birth to book, it's not a minor thing, but I know you're still very busy with your clinic. But, obviously, don't have space for new clients. But you mentioned, is it okay if we talk about the mentoring things that are going to come? Yeah, could we talk through that one?   Erin Lovell Verinder: (57:50) Yeah, so I've got a wait list for clients, just for new clients. At this point, it's closed so we'll see when it will open up again. But, yeah, for the mentoring. So I've been doing mentoring one to one for, gosh, years and years and years, and I've loved it and I've learnt so much mentoring so many people. I really wanted to do that before writing a programme to just get this deep sense of what people are seeking, and they absolutely are themes that have come through to what I share and what people are going through. I'm in the midst of writing the mentoring programmes now in the hopes they'll be released. These things sometimes take time, but early 2022.   Tahnee: (58:36) Okay.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (58:37) Yeah, there'll be two different strains of mentoring and how you can mentor with me. It's really exciting because it's the first programmes I'll have done. Though I've taught many groups over the years, this is my first group digital offering and I think it's going to be really exciting and new ways for me to work with people and reach more people and be able to support more people and spread myself into those different spaces. It's exciting, yes.   Tahnee: (59:05) Yeah. Well, as a clinician, I could see a limited as to how many people you can see. But if you're teaching teachers and people that are working with people, then yeah, you're able to make a bigger impact.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (59:20) Sure, I mean... Oh, go ahead. Sorry.   Tahnee: (59:20) Well, I was just going to say that what are the qualifications? Is it for people who are trying to settle or studying or that what's your-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (59:23) There'll be two different streams, so one is more for people who are studying or graduated, and the other one is more people who are curious to step onto the plant path. Because they have two very different ways to teach and audiences to speak to. I'm really, really passionate about doing my very best as well to shape, or whatever I could do to help support and shape someone into feeling like a really capable and strong presence as a practitioner because it's a big job. I think that we come out of our studies, particularly here in Australia, and it's... I don't know. I was flabbergasted at how I didn't learn so much at school and I felt really unprepared. Then it's like, "Oh my God, I'm working with people. Is this right? How do I do this? And how do I set up these basics elements of my business?"   Erin Lovell Verinder: (01:00:22) You really have to be like a savvy business owner as well. I've had different iterations of having a big healing space like my own multi-modality wellness space for many years and selling that successfully and running it. Then being a head practitioner at a busy, busy clinic in Sydney, and then being digital and writing books. I've had all these different iterations and it's given me a lot of perspective. But there's a lot of things I wished that I knew when I came out, and if I can help people in that way, I'm really excited to do that because it's a big job.   Tahnee: (01:00:56) I guess like that, is that business aspect part of one of the streams? Like your-   Erin Lovell Verinder: (01:01:05) Yeah, we're definitely weaving that in and I'm so lucky to have my husband who's like-   Tahnee: (01:01:12) Mr. Noah.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (01:01:13) Mr. Noah, he's a virgo who is so amazing at... He really can show up with a skill set that I do not have and I am totally okay about not having that skillset. He's amazing at that. I sounded like I was talking myself out before, but I really I'm lacking much of that [crosstalk 01:01:31]. But, yeah, and he has a marketing background, so that's been really helpful to have his input into the course as well and how to run a business and the marketing aspect. It's huge, right? It is a huge element.   Tahnee: (01:01:48) Yeah, I only know it from yoga, but like similarly you do a teacher training and they're like, "Okay, you're a teacher now." And you like, "well, and like how do I go to class? What do I..." That worked for a studio, so I had a silver platter, like I was very fortunate. But a lot of my friends never ended up teaching because that jump from education to actual practise was really difficult.   Erin Lovell Verinder: (01:02:11) Really difficult and overwhelming.   Tahnee: (01:02:15) Yeah, and I was lucky to have worked and then managed other businesses so I had a bit of a business brain. Like I often think, God, if I didn't h

Today on the podcast, we have the performer stand-up comedian, author, and Love Your Diagnosis podcaster Lainie Chait (more famously known as Electro Girl) sharing her incredible story, wisdom, and revelations from more than 20 years living symbiotically with Epilepsy. Lainie's journey with what they call 'the invisible illness' (Epilepsy) is a testimony to intuitive holistic healing and the power of transmuting trauma into something beautiful. Diagnosed with Epilepsy at the age of 19, Lainie suddenly found herself in the depths of managing an illness that her teenage self wasn't ready to accept. What followed; An integrative journey spanning over two decades of denial, rebellion, acceptance, and the birthing of a phenomenal woman dedicated to inspiring others. Lainie has written and self-published a book, Electro Girl (2017), performed a one-woman stage show, done stand-up comedy, and now hosts a podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of people like herself, who have defied the odds of their diagnosis. There is no doubt that Lainie has taken the road less traveled with her approach to living with Epilepsy. Not willing to accept a lifetime of prescribed pharmaceutical medication, she thrust herself into the throes of trauma healing, alternative medicine, research, visceral guidance, and lots of trial and error. Almost 300 tonic clonic, grand mal seizures (aka the big ones) later, she is here with a message for anyone who's had a dire diagnosis to jump in the driver's seat, direct their journey, and believe in the power to heal; However that may look. This is a truly inspiring episode laced with comedic cure and a potent message of why we need to handle our brain, nervous system, and ourselves with care. Tune in.     "You've got a choice when you walk out of that doctor's office; Are you going to let someone else take charge of your life? Or are you going to be in the driver's seat? If you have to use the medicine, great, but I encourage people through my experience and other people's stories to be back in the driver's seat of this. And research, that's been the message so far from everyone. At the end of each podcast, I ask everyone to say a little tip for someone going through it. And it's always research, go and get second opinions and be in it. Be right in it, right in it. Don't let anyone control how you look at your health and how you heal".   - Lainie Chait     Mason and Lainie discuss:   Trauma and Epilepsy. Understanding Epilepsy. What triggers seizures? Healing through comedy. Over-prescribed pharmaceuticals. Allopathic vs holistic healing approach. Lainie's healing protocols and supplements.  Lainie's diet; What she avoids and what helps.  Taking care of the brain and nervous system.   Who is Lainie Chait?  Lainie Chait is an author, performer, podcaster, and stand-up comedian. Lainie is a big advocate for people treating themselves holistically, and exploring healing modalities outside of allopathic diagnosis/treatment. In 2017 Lainie self-published her autobiography, ‘Electro Girl', a story of her journey living a symbiotic existence with Epilepsy for 16 years. In 2021 Lainie started a podcast called Love your Diagnosis, which takes a weekly look into the lives of people who have been diagnosed with a condition/illness. The interviews find a flow and dialogue around the choices and changes people start to make in their lives when they learn that they have to live with dis-ease, partially brought about by their choices. Lainie believes a diagnosis can be seen as a gift if you look at it as a second chance to get to know and treat yourself in a more loving way. If you would like to connect or work with Lainie, please explore the links below.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Electro Girl Book Electro Girl website Lainie Chait Twitter Lainie Chait Linkedin Love your Diagnosis podcast   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hey, Lainie.   Lainie Chait: (00:01) Hi, Mason.   Mason: (00:02) We're back.   Lainie Chait: (00:02) We are, we are.   Mason: (00:04) We tried again, but it was retrograding too hard that day.   Lainie Chait: (00:08) For both of us. My little thing that I'm going to bring out, malfunctioned, but I fixed that because of retrograde, which is good.   Mason: (00:15) I had, I think, for the first time ever not... I hit record, and then I'm going to blame the laptop and the fact that that just didn't record. All right, but good. We're off and running again.   Lainie Chait: (00:27) We are.   Mason: (00:29) You're just an interesting person. I mean, everyone's had a little bit of an intro, but do you want to just get everyone caught up on who you are and what you're working on?   Lainie Chait: (00:40) This book is part of a bigger... Well, this was actually the start of it. I wrote this book, because I was diagnosed with epilepsy at 19, and I just wasn't prepared to accept that I had it. I was just not interested in knowing that my brain was going to work against me to live a normal life. Yeah? This is like a dialogue around my journey and of basically how I came to deny it, rebel against it, accept it, and then use supplementation and even products of yours, which is why I want to... been so interested to talk to you, about how to control and manage the seizures and the brain farts with a holistic approach, not just throwing pills into my face.   Mason: (01:32) How long did you get swept up in the, this is your new normal?   Lainie Chait: (01:37) I hid it for the first four years, in my teenage years. I was too afraid to tell anyone about it. At that stage, I had the seizures that were just kind of jerking, and just like jerks, and maybe hiccups and things like that, but I hadn't had any tonic-clonic seizures, the big fall to the ground seizures. The scary ones that people are often scared about. It was only when I started drinking and dating, and introducing teenage stuff into your life that you're just not prepared for really, that the big seizures started to happen. At 19, my mum saw that going on and then it was seven years of doctors.   Mason: (02:24) What's the... Okay, because you call it, it's like the silent...   Lainie Chait: (02:27) The silent disease, I think they call it.   Mason: (02:29) Disease. Yeah. I mean, I was like is disease even there, but yeah, that's I guess, kind of appropriate based on the west.   Lainie Chait: (02:34) Oh, no. Invisible illness.   Mason: (02:35) Yeah. The invisible illness. Yeah. It's a little bit more gentle.   Lainie Chait: (02:38) Yeah, it is. Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (02:43) You were bringing it up in reading your email. I was like, "Yeah," and I know maybe a couple of people that have told me, in the past, how they dealt with their epilepsy, but just the walking around while you have a sign, that did like you, that you have a sign on telling people, any point you're going to be going into a fit. You can't do that, so how is your life get affected?   Lainie Chait: (03:05) Well, I guess for me, luckily, because there's 40 different types of epilepsy, right? Which I didn't know that at the time. I just thought there was the small ones called absence seizures, where your brain just shuts down for a second, and you have like a minute, maybe two minutes where you're just out, but you're not jerking or you don't drop or anything like that. They're called absence seizures. I did have a few of them when I was younger, but for me, it's all been about the grand mal, the tonic-clonic ones.   Lainie Chait: (03:36) I saw my first seizure in hospital when they did all the tests and I had to stay inside and get my head all... They had a big turban with EEG and I was hooked up to a machine, so I was about 19 when that happened, and I saw and heard my first seizure from someone else in hospital doing the same thing. From that moment on my ego and myself went, "Oh, there's no way, there is absolutely no way I'm going to let anyone see me like this, no way. It's too scary.   Mason: (04:07) So you just stopped heading out.   Lainie Chait: (04:09) No, I just hid it. If I felt like I was going to have one I'd fuck off and do it alone, Mm-hmm (affirmative). Or, risking death. My ego was stronger than my logic to get help or tell people, or... Yeah, and the fact that I kind of intuitively knew that it was an emotional... That I'd created it. I know that's weird to say, because it developed at 14 when my parents got divorced, it's not really in my family history, and the triggers that still align now are still about stuff to do with abandonment, stuff like that.   Lainie Chait: (04:55) If I'm in certain situations that trigger me, there's still wired in there somewhere, even though as an adult I've totally dealt with all of that logically and done cathartic everything's, but somewhere in the wiring, there's still that little faded memory of something to do with what triggers them. That I still find really hard to break. Yeah. It's really interesting.   Mason: (05:25) That still set you off?   Lainie Chait: (05:27) Yeah. But it's not everything, it's just certain things. Like flashing lights, that's not my type of epilepsy.   Mason: (05:34) Yeah, right.   Lainie Chait: (05:35) I myth bust in this as well. I do comedy about epilepsy. I know you do comedy. One of the reasons I started to do stand up was that I wanted to do a 45 minute show on making epilepsy funny, because when you're living it, that was the way that I found that I could get over it. Understand it, break through it, because otherwise it will destroy you actually. It's a pretty shit condition.   Mason: (06:07) Did you, within yourself, you made it funny or did you make it like, "If I'm going to embrace it, so it's not embarrassing. I'm going to like tell everyone, in a comedic way, that I'm dealing with this"?   Lainie Chait: (06:19) Okay. Here's a joke I made up. "Why did the epileptic chicken cross the road?"   Mason: (06:25) It's already funny, yeah. Why?   Lainie Chait: (06:27) "Because it couldn't fit on the sidewalk." I mean, it's not funny, but it's funny. Anyway, therefore I think that's it. Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (06:40) Do other people that have the epilepsy get offended by you taking the piss out of it, or have you got a hall pass?   Lainie Chait: (06:46) I think, in this world of PC, way too PC, I've definitely got a hall pass. I got a hall pass as a comedian, to being a woman, so I can say anything I like about being a woman, epilepsy, and being Jewish.   Mason: (07:00) Are you Jewish as well?   Lainie Chait: (07:01) Yeah.   Mason: (07:02) Gosh. Yeah.   Lainie Chait: (07:02) I've got passes in comedy that...   Mason: (07:04) It's like what Lee, the dentist in Seinfeld, going for complete immunity, complete comedy immunity. Yeah. And becoming a Jew was the last one, I think, for him.   Lainie Chait: (07:18) That's right. I remember that. I remember that. Yeah. I don't know. I think the hall pass is out of respect, because I'm allowing people to understand it rather than be scared of it. The jokes that I make about it is more about looking at it from a perspective of, "Oh, I don't need to be scared of that then. Okay." All the things, that you can swallow, that there's a stigma or a myth that you can swallow your tongue, bring light to that, because it's so not... That's just impossible. To swallow a tongue. It's connected. The myth is to swallow the tongue, but actually, because it falls back into the mouth it blocks the airways and that's when the trouble can happen, so just will, as a muscle that's limp, block the airway.   Mason: (08:13) What about treatment-wise? What were you told the rest of your life was going to look like after you got diagnosed?   Lainie Chait: (08:20) Medication for ever. No late nights, no parties.   Mason: (08:27) Is this at 14?   Lainie Chait: (08:30) No, I hid it.   Mason: (08:32) You hid it from like everyone even-   Lainie Chait: (08:33) Everyone.   Mason: (08:33) Yeah, right, medical profession.   Lainie Chait: (08:35) Everyone. It was my little dirty little secret, but I didn't know what was going on. It's in the book though.   Mason: (08:43) Yeah, okay.   Lainie Chait: (08:43) Very interesting.   Mason: (08:50) Everyone listening, we've gone live on Instagram as well. The book we're referring to, I know I've already mentioned it, but it's Electro Girl, but yeah, if you hear us talking to the viewers.   Lainie Chait: (09:01) Yes. We've got two sides. Yeah. It was the doctors. It was lots of tests all the time. Yeah, it was pretty grim, and I guess being quite a stubborn personality in myself, when I was diagnosed, I just kind of went, "Oh, I'm caught, I'm caught. I've got no choice. I'll just sort of bend over for a little bit," and then the medicine, it just kept being thrown one on top of the other, because one wasn't enough and then another wasn't enough, and so there was a cocktail. That was creating all these co-morbidities of depression and I'm like, "Fuck, do I really actually want to live like this when I think that it's emotional?" So I brought that to the doctor's attention and they're like, "Nah, it's not. It's something in your brain."   Mason: (09:51) Do doctors know what emotions are?   Lainie Chait: (09:53) I don't know. Any doctors out there? Just text in.   Mason: (09:59) But, I mean, that's a common theme. I think everyone listening to this, not just on this podcast, probably everything that everyone's listening to, just realising there's that crusty institution that's so good at particular things, but then stepping outside and acknowledging, even when... I don't know whether you're an example of this, you may just say you go back to that doctor and say, "Hey, dead set, look at this. This happens, epilepsy happens, because of emotions, and then I deal with those emotions down the track, and I see symptomatology go down." I'm just kind of like putting words in your mouth, and I'll let you tell the story of what actually happened.   Mason: (10:33) Or it's the same, I've got friends with cancer all of a sudden coming back and the tumor is halved in size and they go, "Oh gosh, whatever you're doing," it's the same thing, "whatever you're doing, keep on doing it." "Do you want to know what's happening?" "No, absolutely not. You're an outlier. You're a bloody miracle, but I don't want to tell anyone about that miracle, because..." I don't know. It's one problem.   Lainie Chait: (10:56) Well, it's about trials you see, and in a world of being sued, they have got the blinkers on a little bit. I mean the involvement of CBD, maybe some doctors have gone, "Oh, okay. I'll just, maybe 45 degree my blinkers a little bit," because there is some evidence around that, but even with what you do and making claims, and I worked for the Happy Herb Company for many, many years and I mean, it's all just about claims, and what you can and can't say, and what you can and can't... Yeah. Claim that works or doesn't work, it's so individual. Yeah. My doctor still kind of says to me that whatever I'm doing, it's sort of like, he humours me. It's like "Great, great. That's really good." Yeah, exactly the same sort of thing, but he won't kind of give it a lot of merit.   Mason: (11:55) I guess, it's not his problem either. He works within an institution that's effective in some capacity and that's like all doctors. They're not revolutionaries. If you're revolutionary, you don't go into one of the most stagnant institutions that you can possibly go into.   Lainie Chait: (12:13) Yeah.   Mason: (12:13) You just hope sometimes they're not bought into the religion of it, and they're at least realise, "Yeah, this is the way we do things over here, and I hope that everyone else has the capacity to go and evolve along with us, for our collective intention of keeping humanity healthy."   Lainie Chait: (12:28) That's right. I suppose they're very, fix the symptom, and alternative medicine are, look at where the problem's coming from. That's kind of, intuitively, what I decided, that that's the approach I wanted to take. Seven years I gave it a go and I became a zombie, and started smoking a lot of gunjah to balance out the fact that I felt like a zombie and that just made me more zombie. At 28, I just woke up and went, "Oh, fuck I can't do this anymore at all," so I did that classic, stereotypical, Saturn return. Quit the job, left the boyfriend, bought a Kombi, drove up to Nimbin.   Mason: (13:09) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nice. That's fitting.   Lainie Chait: (13:12) Yes. You've been wanting to say that, haven't you?   Mason: (13:17) Oh, that was 10 seconds ago, I was like, "All right, all right, I've got one."   Lainie Chait: (13:21) You've been dying to say it.   Mason: (13:22) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Lainie Chait: (13:25) Yeah, I just thought there's got to be people that understand that there's another way to do this, and there was. Not long after that, I met Ray and Eliza from Happy Herbs, and it was that fate thing. Yeah. Oh, look, there's just so many incarnations of it, because I was then so committed and so obsessed with healing it. Curing it though, instead of... I went all the way over the other side. I went, "All right, fuck you medicine. I'm going to go over here and completely just immerse myself in everything, and I want to cure this. I want to be the first girl to cure her epilepsy," because I kept using that word cure. Cure, cure, and that was a big mistake.   Mason: (14:15) Was the mistake... I mean, because there is an initiation period where the way you approach it, if you come from a colonised Western medical mind set, you have to use the word cure to even get... but then I think we see it a lot in the health scene as people just hang on too long in being a patient. You're trying to work with the natural, but with the kinds of conversation of the synthetic Western model, and you hang in there too long. Is that what you mean?   Lainie Chait: (14:47) Yeah. I hung in there a bit, but I think the dialogue should have been more about how can I treat and manage this, because there is a part of my brain that has got a low seizure threshold. Yeah?   Mason: (14:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Lainie Chait: (14:58) That part is the part of science, and genetics and chemistry that I'll never cure. Yeah?   Mason: (15:07) That was being off in never-never land a little too much thinking, "All that data doesn't apply to me." That's how I was with my mum when my mum had an aneurysm. It ripped me down emotionally, because I was like, "Nah, we're going to defy the odds here," and you probably did, and we did as well, but when you're that out of reality, and pie in the sky, and looking for miracles, it just doesn't help that much, does it?   Lainie Chait: (15:33) Yeah. Well, I would pay someone to heal me. That was the other thing, I'd be like, "Here, take the money that I really should be paying rent for or buying some very healthy food for. Take this because wow, I've read your thing and it said, 'you can perform miracles,'" so I would pay, just a shit tonne of healers, of every different modality. Moxa sticks. I mean, who the fuck can cure epilepsy with a moxa stick? Tell me.   Mason: (16:02) It depends on whether they've looked at the classics. The classic Chinese texts maybe have some secret little formula there.   Lainie Chait: (16:08) Well, it didn't frigging work.   Mason: (16:10) No, I imagine it wouldn't. It doesn't feel like it's in the ballpark of moxa.   Lainie Chait: (16:17) But I was a little bit obsessed to do it that way, so I went all the way over that side and things were working, but there's still the underlying problem, and the story that was in my brain, and the neural pathways that were leading to the seizures were still in place. You can't outsource that. You can't outsource how your brain is wired. That's the work you have to do yourself, and that's what I didn't realise in my twenties and early thirties, is that I actually had to go deep into the ugliness of when they started, why they started. I created a journal for about four months in my late twenties to document everything around what was happening.   Lainie Chait: (17:13) I started to go, "All right, maybe moxa sticks, won't cure it. Let's see what actually else is going on here," so I wrote down what I ate, what I drank, who I'd slept with. Did I fight with anyone? What supplements was I taking? Everything, and then got a list of actually, "Oh, there's a bit of a pattern occurring here," and then started to really appreciate what I was bringing to the table. How I was making myself an epileptic. How I had created this, and so I've been on a journey ever since to just go from total denial and rebellion to now preaching a message of personal responsibility and what you bring to your conditions. That's why I wrote that. You don't have to have epilepsy to get messages from this. It's actually quite across the board, but it does, obviously, specify my journey with epilepsy.   Mason: (18:18) That personal responsibility one, and I think that freaks people out. We just came out with a little... We're testing out having a line of apparel called Sovereign, and essentially exploring that. I think there's a lot of people looking at the common law kind of sovereignty, kind of side of things that's been hijacked over there versus the sovereignty of your greatest capacity to take on responsibility for your reality. I think people get confused, because just if you start taking on extreme personal responsibility, especially in a healing sense, does that mean you don't go and interact with particular institutions sort of thing? Not the case.   Lainie Chait: (19:00) Not the case. I think you need guidance, mentors and all that sort of stuff as well, because also again, you can over heal. You can get into that space where you're not living life anymore and you're just like going, "Oh, I shouldn't eat that because it might do this," you know?   Mason: (19:19) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Lainie Chait: (19:19) It's this fine balance of what personal responsibility looks like to you and how you can still enjoy your life. I don't wear a halo. I know that there's stuff that I do now that potentially will bring on some electrical unrest, but I go, "Well, you know what? I've done really well to be alive." I've had nearly 300 grand mal seizures. Most of which were on my own. There is a thing called SUDEP. Have you heard of SUDEP? It's an acronym, it's sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy, and it happens around that age group where I chose to have just a lot of seizures. Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (20:04) Okay. When you're taking personal responsibility, is that in the fact that I'm inside my body, I'm going to be ultimately the one that's going to be able to put this much time and understanding what's emotionally triggering me or what environmentally was doing it?   Lainie Chait: (20:18) What foods you're eating that might be contributing to the way that your body functions.   Mason: (20:25) Do you talk about what you found the pattern to be?   Lainie Chait: (20:28) Yeah.   Mason: (20:29) Can we get a snippet of it?   Lainie Chait: (20:32) I should have got a few chapters-   Mason: (20:34) A few excerpts.   Lainie Chait: (20:34) ... a few paragraphs ready. I found that, what was diet related, yeah? Was obviously sugar and too much alcohol. The way I was thinking about relationships, because it all stemmed from when my parents got divorced, there was all this abandonment story in there about men, so I would attract that in my life. Then when I would attract men that would show kind of abandonment behaviour or things that would trigger that, that would just set me off incredibly. There's a type of epilepsy now, called catamenial epilepsy, which I used to bring to my doctor and say, "It's really weird. I just keep getting a seizure a couple of days before I get my period," and they're like, "Yeah. Okay. Well, it's probably not related." Now, it's an actual... It is a particular type of epilepsy that's related to hormones.   Mason: (21:41) Mm-hmm (affirmative). But it wasn't in the textbook at the time.   Lainie Chait: (21:50) It wasn't. It wasn't. Hormones. Yeah. I didn't know it then that you could supplement certain parts of your body to compensate for that hormone change, at the time that happens just before you...   Mason: (22:03) Supplement even particular hormonal cascades, you mean? Or...   Lainie Chait: (22:06) Yeah. There's so much around now that I don't particularly take anymore, but at the time there was like perhaps... Can't even think of the herb that I was taking just before I got my period, just to sort of balance out that oestrogen, progesterone sort of imbalance that might then set... Also, internal temperature. If you're internally hot, and that's a Chinese thing as well, if you're hot inside, then that can trigger it as well.   Mason: (22:42) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. You could almost like pinpoint what kind of symptomatology, and excess heat, and excess liver heat, and all those kinds of things.   Lainie Chait: (22:56) All that.   Mason: (22:56) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Lainie Chait: (22:56) Unless you find the right practitioner at the right time, which I did, because when I moved here, I saw a lady called Ann-Mary. She was working in the Integrative Mullum, which doesn't exist anymore, her and her hubby, and she just was spot on. She did all the tests. She worked with me. I trusted her completely. We were doing collation and she got me starting to think about magnesium. She got me starting to think about there's too much copper in my body and all the-   Mason: (23:28) Oh, what a legend.   Lainie Chait: (23:29) Yeah. It was like this amazing epiphany to find the right practitioner, who just guided me in the right way to actually start balancing out what was going on. At the time, also, CBD wasn't even on the radar, because this is nearly 20 years ago, so I had to go looking for little backyard people to...   Mason: (23:54) Yeah. There were a few around back then.   Lainie Chait: (23:55) Back then, there was a few around. Yeah, I tell you, they lived in squalor, but it's not about their lifestyle, but the thing is-   Mason: (24:05) And look at them now. Look at them.   Lainie Chait: (24:09) Palaces. Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (24:10) Yeah.   Lainie Chait: (24:15) But the one thing about that was there was not so much information. I couldn't get the dose rate. I was experimenting, big time. It backfired for me.   Mason: (24:26) In what way? Just the non-standardisation?   Lainie Chait: (24:29) Yeah. Backfired in the fact that I was probably taking a strain of CBD that didn't... That I was taking too much. There were no dose rates. It was kind of like, "Here, take this bottle and see you." No consistency in the medicine, obviously, because it wasn't really a medicine at the time. It was just, "Here's some..." So I overdosed. Not that you can overdose, it's a really shit word.   Mason: (24:53) Saturated?   Lainie Chait: (24:53) I saturated myself to the point where it was the wrong strain for what I needed, and it made me more depressed and more anxious. Then, because of that, that was the catalyst to go back to Melbourne after being here for quite a few years. Go back, and sort some shit out, because it was too unpredictable. Yeah. Lots of amazing stories.   Mason: (25:26) It's like the wild west of treating yourself naturally back then. It's kind of on a platter. I wonder how many people though, because epilepsy doesn't... I mean, I just haven't thought about epilepsy, but is it one of those ones that at the moment where people are... One of the ones, I know that's insensitive, but are people immediately thinking, "Right. I'm going to go and get a naturopath here. I'm going to get my minerals tested, get my hormone panels." Is there any correlation there, do you think at all, in the wider population?   Lainie Chait: (25:53) Definitely not. It's fear-based, because of the stigma around it. It's, my neurologist knows better than me. There's a lot of fear, because to have a seizure takes... They say that the impact on your body of the seizures that I have, the tonic-clonic ones, is like running a 14 kilometre marathon in that two to three minutes that you're on the floor. People don't want to experience that. It's also hard for the people watching, because I've also had experiences where people watching me, there's not much they can do, and so they go internal and it becomes about them, so they get post-traumatic kind of like stress, not a disorder. Just at the time, they're just like, "Fuck, that was intense, and I couldn't do anything to help, and I don't want to see that again."   Mason: (26:48) It's like they get victimised, based on their own lack of capacity to do anything. I wouldn't say incompetence, but ...   Lainie Chait: (26:59) It's just lack of knowing, I think, and having faith in themselves, because there are people that would just be all over it, be like, "Yep. Okay. I've got this. She'll come around in a couple of minutes. It'll be fine. Start watching, fuck off." Yeah, and others are like, "Oh my God, what do I do? Ring the ambulance. Oh, I can't deal with this," and then outsource it, but you don't actually need to do that. That's part of what my work now is about. Is just to educate so that... Because I believe, Mason, seriously, through what's going on, on the planet now, and how fragile the brain is. Anyone can have a seizure. Anyone with a brain, any mammal, animal, human, warm-blooded can have a seizure in the wrong environment, and at the moment what's happening is the very wrong environment in the world. You are considered an epileptic if you have two seizures, that's it. If you have two seizures in your life, you are then claimed by the epilepsy people.   Mason: (28:04) Are there lots of different types of medication or is it just kind of like a few standards?   Lainie Chait: (28:10) There's a few standards that they rely on. There's a lot more than when I was treated 30 years ago. They're not designed specifically for epilepsy, so it's a massive guessing game. They've got their like, "Okay, you're displaying with these kinds of things, so we'll try this." Yeah? "And if not, we'll throw that on top." Yeah. I mean, I've heard about lots of people. I mean, I, myself was on 1500 milligrammes of different drugs at one stage, but that was just way too much. People are on 3000 milligrammes of drugs. I mean, that may not actually, in this conversation, mean anything, but it's a lot, it's a lot.   Mason: (29:01) Yeah. I mean, it's slightly... I mean, I have a friend at the moment, she was having... Well, she didn't know what was going on there for a few weeks and then got the diagnosis of been a brain tumour and then was told that she was having these little fits, and now she's been diagnosed as epileptic, and that's the one medication that she's on while she's trying to find her way around that whole conversation and getting on. Are you on medication at the moment? Do you mind me asking?   Lainie Chait: (29:32) I had a hip replacement this year and it was advised that I go back on, what they call a small dose, but what I call big enough. Yeah? For someone that wanted to do it without it, but actually, because it was the unknown, and because I've been fighting the medical industry for so long, and pharmaceutical industry, and going... This time, it was all just about yes, because this was all foreign to me. To be cut open and things that I hadn't experienced, so I didn't know how my brain was going to...   Mason: (30:06) Acute times like that, Western medicine comes in.   Lainie Chait: (30:08) Yeah. That's right.   Mason: (30:10) Just like a little bit of padding. That's like what I'm watching my friend go through just trying to have, cool, get that little bit of padding, get that diagnostics. Utilising it appropriately, and then for the fits are one thing and then the tumour is another, but the...   Lainie Chait: (30:26) But they all stem from the same thing, which is abnormal electrical activity. That's really all it is. That's all epilepsy is. It's abnormal electrical activity that is fueled by fuck, who knows, everyone's different. I think there's a lot of people with epilepsy that are living lives that bring them on. That are just ignoring stuff that they've been maybe just too hard trauma. There's big dialogue around trauma at the moment.   Mason: (30:59) Huge, isn't it? Yeah.   Lainie Chait: (31:00) Yeah.   Mason: (31:00) That's great.   Lainie Chait: (31:00) It's really interesting. Really interesting. Yeah, the trauma's just too deep and too dark to go into, and too painful, and so it represents in abnormal electrical activity that perhaps could be padded with dealing with some of that.   Mason: (31:17) What have you found has been effective for you? To go into the trauma into the dark places?   Lainie Chait: (31:26) Well, no one would ever let me do an Ayahuasca journey because the facilitators were too nervous, I suppose, is what has been reflected back to me. I haven't been able to journey in that way, so it's all had to be talking, experiencing, watching, observing, understanding, and kind of making peace with writing this book, I suppose. Yeah. I think I went to a hypnotist once and this past life... Depending on who you talk to, this past life stuff coming for me to fix it, and find peace. It was a test, it was a fricking good test, I tell you.   Mason: (32:28) Yeah. It's like, "Yeah, thanks for that."   Lainie Chait: (32:33) But, it's been such a gift. Such a gift, because I have a really big understanding of how you create your reality. Yeah. When I didn't, I would be on the floor convulsing, if I went against that.   Mason: (32:58) I was going to ask you about neurofeedback and that's the neurofeedback, I guess, right there for you. It's like a giant neurofeedback machine, which the brain is at all times, but whether you've been intentional about the way that you're creating your life or not, for you to go to have that much of it extremely thrown in your face.   Lainie Chait: (33:17) Well recently, what was interesting is that I was seizure free for a while, and then I had to move house. I had to move house four times within a year. Each time, of those four times, two weeks after I'd moved in, I had a seizure. When I looked and analysed, and maybe had a look into that, what was happening, it was more about coming back to that place when my home was torn apart at 14, and I didn't know, and I didn't feel safe, and I didn't have a base. That made heaps of sense to me. Why would it happen every time I moved two weeks after? It's this feeling of just instability.   Mason: (34:08) Yeah. That wouldn't be, because I think they say that moving house is in the top two most stressful things you can do, but if it was cortisol level related, that would most likely be during the move, but no.   Lainie Chait: (34:21) No. No, it was kind of when I was just feeling a little bit settled, and then I would wake up and within... Mine usually happened in the morning, so I would... Yeah, it would happen. I'd get warning, and now I know to brace myself. I used to just go, "No, I'm going to win this, not you, brain." That could be a good time to bring out... Oh, so me and my brain have a dialogue.   Mason: (34:54) [crosstalk 00:34:54].   Lainie Chait: (34:54) This is going to be hard for people listening, but ...   Mason: (34:58) It's okay. Let's get some fun voices.   Lainie Chait: (35:02) I turned this book into a stage show, and the best way that I could explain about the dialogue between me and my brain, and the relationship, was to actually get a puppet made of my brain. So if you could see it, "Hello, I'm Norah, how are you? Named after Bloody Norah, which if you're an Australian, it's very easy." We did a show together at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and I got her in... I had different LED lights put in her. "Yeah. One's really exciting. Look at this one. Whoa, that's like..."   Mason: (35:43) I'm looking at Lainie's purple brain. The brain's got her hand up the clacker, and there's some big, bright, fantastic lipstick, and now it is lit up like a Christmas tree.   Lainie Chait: (35:55) Yep. This is the explanation of what happens in the electrical storm, during a seizure, because there's no pathways that it can relate to. Right? Then this one, you can explain that one.   Mason: (36:09) Well, it's all looking connected. We look like we got some flow electrically.   Lainie Chait: (36:15) There's a little bit of flow. This is more about trying to find, after a seizure, just trying to find the pathways back to what normal is. Yeah? What a functioning... This is just kind of going, "Oh yeah. Okay. What's that one. Where can I find out my arm moves?"   Mason: (36:36) What colour are we there again?   Lainie Chait: (36:36) This is just normal. "Normal. That's what you call yourself. Huh? Normal. I don't think so." This is just a normal brain. "Hello?" Yeah, so-   Mason: (36:51) Okay, [inaudible 00:36:51] the back.   Lainie Chait: (36:51) Okay, [inaudible 00:36:51] the back. Yeah.   Mason: (36:51) When was the fringe show? Obviously it was 2019, maybe?   Lainie Chait: (36:56) Yeah.   Mason: (36:57) Was it? Yeah.   Lainie Chait: (36:57) Certainly was.   Mason: (36:57) Thought it [inaudible 00:36:59] been on before?   Lainie Chait: (37:00) Yeah. I'll leave her, this one's the nice one. I'll leave it on that. Yeah, it was 2019, and not only made her Scottish, I don't know why, because you're a comedian so you push yourself, I suppose. Never been a puppeteer, so I was struggling with so many firsts. So many firsts. Using a puppet, being on stage and learning my lines for a one hour show with dialogue between me and her. It was amazing, amazing. Used lots of lion's mane, Mason, during that time.   Mason: (37:37) Did you? Yeah, cool.   Lainie Chait: (37:38) Got off the booze. Yeah. Used a shit tonne of lion's mane around then. Yes. It just worked incredible. Yeah.   Mason: (37:48) I mean, she is wonderful. May I say so?   Lainie Chait: (37:51) Do you want to feel her?   Mason: (37:51) Absolutely.   Lainie Chait: (37:51) Do you want to put your hand in the clacker?   Mason: (37:54) I do want to put my hand in her clacker.   Lainie Chait: (37:56) It doesn't... Oh, you did. You changed her.   Mason: (38:00) Oh, I changed her. Oh, wow. Oh whoa. Oh, now we're on.   Lainie Chait: (38:02) "Oh, he's turning me on. He's turning me on.I don't think I've ever had a man's hand in my clacker."   Mason: (38:08) Well. Oh no. I turned her off.   Lainie Chait: (38:12) Yeah.   Mason: (38:12) God, I have. Oh yeah. Oh gosh. Well, yeah, you got to be on. You need nimble fingers.   Lainie Chait: (38:24) Yeah. Just, yeah, you... She gives me a lot of shit, so I tell a story and she's like, "That's not how it actually went. You drank too much and you fucked too many guys." Anyway... Oh, sorry.   Mason: (38:39) That's okay. So she's cheeky?   Lainie Chait: (38:41) She's really cheeky. She's sassy.   Mason: (38:47) I understand, comedy for me has been healing. It's been a way for me to reclaim parts of myself, which I'd allowed to be swallowed up by my egoic pursuit to be something else, and also, getting swallowed up by my own stage persona, and comedy was my way to take the piss out of myself and come back down to earth. I can imagine for you, this on a whole nother level.   Lainie Chait: (39:10) It is.   Mason: (39:11) Do you get that stage clarity when you're up there? It's like when you're in your zone, it's like a professional tennis player, the ball slows down and all of a sudden you can be in your show, and you can be in your lines, and you can be fretting about what line's coming up, but then you go above yourself and you start doing... You've got some kind of healing and observation about what's actually... Making connections that are beyond... You couldn't have done it anywhere else, except on stage and in the middle of a show.   Lainie Chait: (39:39) Well, that's where I plan to get to. The director that did the first run with me, she was amazing. She was very lines based and I'm on stage, when I can riff a bit and I can get off that script. I work so much better like that, but with this particular first run of the show, and if anyone's a director out there I am looking for one, because I'm looking for... to bring this back to the stage. It's a fantastic show actually. Yeah. I'm looking for a way to be able to have a little bit of fun with it, but a little bit off script as well, but still knowing what I want the message to be, but having a bit more of a riff with her, because she's talking for all brains. She's sitting on her pedestal talking for all people's brains saying, "Take care of us, just take care of us. We're everything"   Mason: (40:49) Before we go, where are you at in practical terms? What are your favourite little brain healing activities and supplements, or whatever it is?   Lainie Chait: (41:01) It's a good question. I'm taking some CBD, and I am also taking lion's mane. I am taking vitamin B, B12. Very good for... and magnesium. Now, I kind of let the supplement call me. It's like, "Okay, well, you need a bit more of this, or your adrenals are a bit low, so I'll go for the Jing.   Mason: (41:30) Then you go intuitive after a while, don't you?   Lainie Chait: (41:33) You do, you just do. I mean, supplements or vitamins are a bit... The same with any kind of medicine. It's like, you don't want to rely too much on any one thing. You want your body to sort of like get a big hit of it and then see what it can do itself. In the work that I'm doing now, can I just plug my podcast? [crosstalk 00:41:55] one.   Mason: (41:55) Yeah, absolutely.   Lainie Chait: (41:56) I now do a podcast called Love your Diagnosis, and what that is celebrating, is every week that I have a person that's been diagnosed with something, that they've found the light. They've gone on the allopathic journey and gone, "Oh, this might not be everything that I need," and they've done exactly what I did, and have just gone and riffed with the rest of the world and alternative medicines, and found ways to treat and manage, not cure, but treat and manage the stuff that's going on for them, so they can live a really fun, healthy lifestyle. Yeah, if you've got a story like that, please hit me up. I'd love to have you on the podcast.   Mason: (42:38) I mean, that is fascinating, because that's a dark night of the soul sometimes. Like a lot of people, it's too scary to go into that darkness, to go off on your own. Yeah. I mean, especially if you think that it's one or the other. You just said allopathic going, "Okay, maybe that's not everything, and I need to make some other considerations," but that's you. Again, I'm watching a friend go through that at the moment, going, it's either open up your brain, they take your skull off and cut out this tumour, or go down your own route for however long. It's that moment, those crossroads, I guess. You talk about those crossroads a lot.   Lainie Chait: (43:15) Totally. Yeah, and all sorts of different diagnosis, and some really slips of gold in there for people, because I think when you get diagnosed with something like this.   Lainie Chait: (43:39) You've got a choice, when you walk out of that doctor's office, am I going to let someone else take charge of my life? Or am I going to be in the driver's seat of it? If I have to use the medicine, great, but I encourage people through other people's stories to be back in the driver's seat of this. Research, that's been the message so far from everyone at the end, because I ask everyone to say a little tip for someone going through it. Research, don't take your first... Always go and get second opinions and be in it, be right in it, right in it. Don't let anyone control how you look at your health and how you heal.   Mason: (44:27) That's where Western, I guess, comfort path of least resistance, automation. That's where it can come and bite you on the arse. If you've been living that life of just cushy Western life, and you get that first diagnosis and you go, "Cool, got no choice. This is what you do." Right? It's a shame, just how much we've given away that power. Not to say that we don't make a choice fully to go allopathic or whatever.   Lainie Chait: (44:58) Right. Yeah. But I think there are also a lot of people that are like, just give me the magic pill. I want to forget about it. I just want to get back to normal. I mean, we're seeing that today, still. It's fear-based. It just requires a lot less time to maybe take the pills, but I think at the end of the day, there's a sacrifice that you give over when you have that mentality of just throw the pills down. There is a sacrifice, whether it's stated or not, I believe there's a sacrifice your handover when you say, "Give me the pills," to your overall life on this planet and living to its fullest.   Mason: (45:46) Mm-hmm (affirmative). It is confronting. I can see why it's a very confronting thing, because if you do take responsibility and say, "I'm fully going to make this decision," you then have to acknowledge all the other decisions that you possibly could have made, and that you don't know what the outcome is going to be, so it's not just the way that it's presented now, when you go, "Look, your only choice right now is whatever, chemotherapy." That's your only choice, and so people go, "Okay, cool. It's my only choice. I do it." Then whatever the outcome is, they're like, "Oh, well, wouldn't have turned out any other way. That was the only choice." Very easy. Although it's hard going through something like chemo, it's a very easy way of approaching something, which is... and I get it. I haven't had to be... I've watched lots of people go down that route.   Mason: (46:36) It's nice, even those friends that have gone for chemo, they've gone, "I know all my other options, and I'm the one... I'm not doing this because the allopathic doctors are getting their kick back, and all they can do is say, 'This is what you need to do, and anything else is unethical.'" They're like, "I'm making that decision fully, because I know." Then also, that gives them the opportunity to go, "Well, I'm not just going to play their game. I'm actually going to be engaged with my treatment and make sure that I come out the other side of life," but it can be harrowing to take that responsibility.   Lainie Chait: (47:05) Very, and the guy that I just did a podcast with, with colorectal cancer, he has some incredible information about his journey. Yeah, I recommend it to everyone, Love your Diagnosis. This last one, he had just incredible stuff that he... He's not saying chemo's a bad thing. He's just saying, "In my case, I did this, this, this, and this, and I cured it." Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (47:33) Sounds like a legend.   Lainie Chait: (47:34) Amazing. So, yeah.   Mason: (47:39) Yeah. I wonder if your podcast will start getting featured in little doctor's Facebook groups.   Lainie Chait: (47:48) As don't listen?   Mason: (47:49) Yeah. Yeah, you're a quack. Lainie the quack. Lainie, thanks for coming along and sharing your story.   Lainie Chait: (47:57) That is my pleasure, and we're giving away a book?   Mason: (48:00) Yeah. We're giving away a book. Hopefully you guys are up to date. Hopefully you're up to date on the podcast schedule, and you're in time for you to go over to the SuperFeast Instagram and go in the draw right now. You guys, you're onto it. Look at you guys. Thank you so much for hanging around and watching the live. That's like...   Lainie Chait: (48:24) It's amazing. Thank you.   Mason: (48:25) That is amazing, and thanks for everyone for listening. What's the best place for everyone to find you?   Lainie Chait: (48:30) Well, Electro Girl Productions is on Facebook, and just lain_star on Insta, I suppose that's probably the... Then private message me if you want to be part of the podcast, or if you just want to talk epilepsy, because I know it, so if you're out there, the invisible illness, it doesn't have to be so invisible. Talk to me. Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Mason: (48:50) Thanks so much.   Lainie Chait: (48:52) Thanks.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Benny Fergusson, aka The Movement Monk, joins Mason on the podcast for an insightful discussion around how we can be more adaptive in our physical practices, embody flexibility with integrity, and bring a broader range of diversity into the way we approach movement. Bringing 20 years of experience and wisdom to the table, Benny comes versed in many forms of physical practice; Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Shaolin Kung Fu, Martial Arts, Yoga, Bodyweight training, to name a few. But what really lights him up and continues to evolve his work is providing people with unhomogenised frameworks of physical movement; Connecting them back to their unique bodies, their nature, and supporting them to thrive and achieve what they never knew was possible. Through his business (The Movement Monk), Benny and his team offer personal support, coaching, and an epic range of transformational online courses that hone in on movement exploration, better physical performance, and personal growth. In this episode, Benny explores many notions of movement and flexibility. He encourages the listener to look beyond mainstream prescribed ideas of physical workouts towards a limitless realm of movement exploration; One that isn't bound by body image, a singular goal, or a season. Mason and Benny also move around the concept of approaching both life and physical practice with more flexibility and connection to the body/self; With less dogma and more diversity, allowing us to change and adapt with ease as we go through the different seasons of life. Benny is a pioneer revolutionising the way we approach movement. Tune in now.     "With regards to movement, the body is always changing. My body now, in my thirties, is different from what it was in my twenties. There's a different context, and it's going to continue to change and evolve. And because of this, I need greater diversity to choose from. So I can adapt to an ever-changing environment, to the different seasons and how I'm feeling. In times where I'm feeling more lethargic. How do I work with that? There might be times when I'm feeling less grounded; How do I work with these things? There might be times when I'm feeling tired or when I'm feeling looser. To be able to continue to look at things and then go, oh, okay, cool. I have a series of choices that I know that I can make continually to keep the process of life going".    - Benny Fergusson   Mason and Benny discuss: Hypermobility. Hypomobility. Embodied flexibility. The quality of flexibility. Flexibility, stability and injury. Benny's process of movement. The explorative mobility method. Sustainability in physical practice. Chronic tension and pain in the body. Not letting our bodies do not define us.    Who is Benny Fergusson? After living with chronic scoliosis & pain for years, getting no lasting relief from mainstream fitness and therapies.. Benny embarked on a journey to heal his body and get to know himself better. Through years of research and the practice of movement & meditation arts, Benny found a way to restore his physical freedom, leading to profound personal growth. Benny now shares his findings with his students at MovementMonk.xyz   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: The Freedom Academy Embodied Flexibility Course The Movement Monk Website The Movement Monk YouTubeThe Movement Monk Facebook The Movement Monk Instagram Use The Code MASON10 For 10% Off     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hey, Benny. Welcome back.   Benny Fergusson: (00:01) Thanks for having me again, Mase. It's good to be back   Mason: (00:03) [crosstalk 00:00:03] Yeah. You've been on long enough. I think you'd say friend of the podcast. Regular.   Benny Fergusson: (00:10) Friend of the podcast.   Mason: (00:11) Yeah. You're a regular. I think it's been a decent amount of time since we've been chatting on here.   Benny Fergusson: (00:19) Yeah.   Mason: (00:19) Even as much for the people that haven't met you before, but for those who haven't heard you for a year and a half or two years since you've been on. Do you just want to give them a little bit of an intro to what you do? But for you, where you're at with your movement practise that could just help frame out what you're doing in the world a little bit?   Benny Fergusson: (00:44) Yeah, well, a little bit like you, a lot can happen... I'm always evolving. I'm always growing. I'm someone that I never rest on my laurels. I love this work. I love the process of having a body and exploring it and how that then intersects with who we are as people and what life is and what it can be. So, I'm always growing. Flexibility practise is something that just continues to be a cornerstone of my life. I think because my body is always reflecting back to me. Flexibility is very symbolic of how I meet my edges in life, how I adapt and stay supple. I continue to run a business, Movement Monk, and we provide online education and I'm always looking at how can we serve our members better?   Benny Fergusson: (01:50) How can we get the message out? There's just so much homogenised physical exercise out there that doesn't open up people to themselves. So, I'm always pushing my edge within myself to see how I can educate better and also see what I'm made of. So, I've been continuing to grow in my personal practise. One thing that has continued to evolve is looking at the same situation, say like a stretch. What are the multiple ways that we can look at that so that we can be adaptive? Like when we're talking about embodied flexibility and that whole notion of what it means to embody something. In this case, the quality of flexibility. It's something that is not just... you're not a one trick pony.   Benny Fergusson: (02:52) It's not just like I stretch in this way and then that just works infinitely. I've tried that and it doesn't actually work like that. You start to stagnate. We see this in so many different schools of thought, Philosophy, movements where you become a product of your own dogma, and then you're no longer living. You're just a series of regurgitated thoughts and actions repeated and nature doesn't work in that way. It's always adapting. It's going through so many different cycles. Having gone through this, maybe the hard way, I don't know, doing it for 20 years, you start to come to these realisations and realise that you need greater biodiversity in the way that you approach things. I'm really interested in that from a physical practise perspective.   Benny Fergusson: (03:53) With regards to movement, the body's always changing. My body now, in my thirties, is different to what it was in my twenties. There's different context and it's going to continue to change and evolve, and I need a greater diversity to be able to choose from, to adapt to an ever changing environment, to the different seasons and how I'm feeling, whether there might be times where I'm feeling more lethargic. How do I work with that? There might be times when I'm feeling less grounded, how do I work with these things? There might be times when I'm feeling tired or when I'm feeling looser. To be able to continue to look at things and then go, oh, okay, cool. Maybe not have all of the right answers, but I have a series of choices that I know that I can make continually to keep the process of life going.   Benny Fergusson: (04:51) So, these are the things that have been evolving. Like when I started this process with Movement Monk, and even this course in body flexibility, it happened around the same time, about nine years ago, in the online space. I was inspired by Shaolin practises, particularly Shaolin Qi Gong and stretching practises and that came through a lot in that process. That's where it was a lot about not just stretching for an end result, but also who you become in that process. Then, you put it out in the world. I was stoked about sharing that and I'm like, "oh, I've got to get this out to people, It's really helped me". Then, you get almost 3000 people come through and you get all this feedback, and it's just wonderful and it's humbling and you get all these different perspectives and then you come back and [inaudible 00:05:50] and you saw it and you go "okay, what can I do with this feedback?"   Benny Fergusson: (05:53) How can I continue to grow and be better and provide something that is able to go to that next level, rather than be overly prescriptive of "do this, do that, do what I do and get what I got". It's now more about, these experiences have helped me, but use this process as a way to get to know yourself, and at the end of that, then you've got these tools to start to go "okay, how would I like to apply it? I can actually keep using these skills for a long time."   Benny Fergusson: (06:27) The idea is that you could use these principles and practises for the next 10, 15, 20 years. A lot of the time we don't think about that in this transformational world of befores and afters in the realm of movement and fitness. I went from this amount of flexibility to that amount of flexibility.   Benny Fergusson: (06:50) And that's cool. I think that's useful. It's an important part of the process, but then where do you go from there? Where do you go to keep your heart alive in your practise? Rather than just "Yeah, I've got the splits now what ?", "has that changed me?" "Does that touch the very fibre of who I am?"   Benny Fergusson: (07:08) Is that just something that gave me some social currency and validation amongst my peers to go "whoa, you're really cool because you can do this thing", but I think this starts to then go deeper and go "okay, cool, Our bodies do not define us".   Benny Fergusson: (07:28) We enter this bit of a paradox, yet here we are in this physical existence, living in this proverbial meat sack. It gives us a wonderful learning opportunity and it grounds us and thrusts us into these kinds of challenges and opportunities for growth, and brings us back to deeper questions about perhaps there's more to me than just my body. So, to come to that point through a physical practise is something that, to me, after 20 years of being interested in this, or more, 20 years of structured cultivation and exploration, it still keeps me yearning. There's a thirst to continue, to learn and grow, and also through that process to realise what I've accumulated and to be inspired to unlearn as well and come back to our essential nature, whatever that is for whoever we are.   Mason: (08:37) Yeah. Uniquely. [crosstalk 00:08:42]I'm looking forward to checking out the new, improved, current reflection of everybody's flexibility, really reflecting on where it's all at and what's developed. What I like about the idea of embodied flexibility, it's an initiation process. Some people might come with the intention solely around what you're talking about. It might not be flexibility in particular that they have any specific goals revolving around, but they might feel the more metaphysical or emotional like, "Hey, if I bring this flexibility to my body, I'm going to be able to use that to bring adaptability and flexibility to the way that I think", or "I'm with my kids or when I'm in my job or running my business" or whatever it is. Likewise, I think if I went in there, I'd probably, at this point in my life, I'd probably be like "You know, I'd have a few mobility goals that I'd really be"...   Mason: (09:45) I think the reason I got pleasantly surprised going through it probably eight years ago that I had those mobility intentions around maybe getting my forehead closer towards my shin, moving closer towards the wide split. I won't even talk about the front split yet. That's... maybe I can bet. That's a horrendous stretching for me. I love it, but you go in and you move towards those goals, but then you also get that pleasant surprise of, hang on... I said it in the live we did earlier, you make yourself and the system just that little bit too slippery that you can't just hook into an ideological outcome or an ideal outcome of what you're going for or attach what you want to you or any of the other instructors.   Mason: (10:38) It just keeps on falling back into the self. And if you keep on going with the practise, so I'm [inaudible 00:10:43] understanding this. I imagine the new courses, especially particularly designed to just show up and keep on having faith in this process and keep on showing up in your practise in the way that we've loosely built it. You can still explore for yourself and through the other side; one, you probably do have some serious improvement in your mobility than when you're in your actual flexibility, but then there's that pleasant happy accident for many people that "wow" and all those things you're talking about, I'm feeling way more adaptive in my everyday life because I've altered the way that I relate with being uncomfortable, seeing that there's ways that I can explore being uncomfortable, move beyond that and see that things do move, even though it was very hard when I first arrived there. Does that sum it up a little bit ?   Benny Fergusson: (11:33) Yeah, totally. It's an ongoing... To put this in an online course format that's digestible... It's a process of art and to give what our intention has been and is with this is to provide structures and frameworks and clarity that then open up someone to exploration. So, first and foremost, we put the focus on really two key things, the methodology rather than it. So, for example, to highlight an evolution, we started off with a simple process of in the first version of embodied flexibility, it was a series of dynamic stretching movements. So, you'd move in and out of the range to acclimatise with what you're doing, and then you'd focus on generating good quality contraction in your end range to stabilise and give your nervous system an opportunity to go "Okay, I'm safe here."   Benny Fergusson: (12:37) And then a natural result is your body is more confident and able to move into deeper ranges. Which was good, really useful. That, at the time of my research was a very widely applicable process. It had to evolve, then, to different questions of "okay, well, what if I have a natural propensity toward hyper mobility?" So my joints are a little bit more lax and they can hyper extend and all that sort of stuff. What do I do? I've done a lot of strength training and my body is hyper mobile. My muscles can contract well, but they have trouble letting go. I've got a lot of armour, so to speak, real stoic warrior vibe, but how do I learn to put down my shield and surrender into deeper layers of the body.   Benny Fergusson: (13:33) So, you can't do that with just one type of stretching, and you see what happens then in my observations and experiences in lots of different realms of movement is... you see... and none of this is a negative on any of them, but you see the necessity of how they've popped up, for example, Yin Yoga is a lot about surrendering into deeper postures and it's a psychological, physiological unravelling process through surrendering to what is. It's kind of a meditative process and unfurling, which is wonderful. Yet, what often happens is people who have that natural propensity toward that quality gravitate toward it. So they just get more of what they're already good at and then other people, it can be really beneficial, but then it can reach a point of your physiology needs more diversity.   Benny Fergusson: (14:30) So, this is where one of my intents is to provide options so we can see the benefits of all of these different approaches, but then we can change and adapt. For example, my body started off and I was into strength training. I was into strong man. I was into CrossFit-like activities before CrossFit existed. So, that came naturally to me and I could put on muscle and all that stuff. But, when it came to flexibility, that was not a natural realm for me. So, I need to find ways to work with my body, but then there's the other side of the coin as well. People who maybe are a little bit lighter in their frame, that their joints don't have as much structural and integrity and all that sort of stuff.   Benny Fergusson: (15:24) So, with all these questions and as working with thousands of people now, over the years, you start to get a greater diversity of the different types of bodies, and that brings up the question, how do we make a method that is adaptive to the individual?   Benny Fergusson: (15:40) So, this is where the method turned from a rhythmic strength stretching as we started, to now the explorative mobility method, which is what it sounds like. We combined four different types of stretching as options. So, you can go into the same stretch, but then realise, "Oh my God, I've got four key different ways which each have different physiological impacts and also different mental approaches to elicit an effect in the same stretch", which is really, really cool. So, it means that in a practise you can either, let's say you like that variability, that's a part of your constitution.   Benny Fergusson: (16:24) I don't want to just be locked in a box with one thing, and that's a part of the individual's makeup that is not just physiological. Then you give that space for that part of the beam to flourish, and then there might be another type of beam that's, "No, I want to focus on one clear thing to get this outcome". We can do that, too. And then once we satisfy these parts of the beam, then it's like, "okay, cool, what else is there? How can I start to actually grow into new space, that is beyond what my natural inclination is?"   Benny Fergusson: (17:03) So, that's a big part that I was actually surprised that it came out. I started coming back and taking all this feedback and then looking at what do we need to do to do better.   Benny Fergusson: (17:18) Then this came along the way and I was actually also really surprised. I continued to bring it into my practise and then just seeing how it gives structure, but then also gives someone a sense of personal agency that they have choice of that overwhelm in a flexibility practise.   Benny Fergusson: (17:35) So, that's one of the cornerstones that's in this new process and it's something that if I had have seen it around in the world, I wouldn't have had to do it. So, this is a driving force of going, "Okay, we deserve more options when we're working with our body. We deserve more ability to personalise and find something that not only suits us where we're at now, but gives us space to grow." So, these sorts of things that are exciting me at the moment.   Mason: (18:13) I had a really new, sapling thought when you were talking about the bulking muscle men and women. Again, don't have this to take anywhere. I just wanted to share it with you quickly. Especially in relation to when I was in the live, I was talking about the spleen. For most people with deficient muscle, you're going to see deficient capacity to create strong bonds and have strong boundaries within your relationships and with yourself, because that's the virtuous nature of the spleen. I was just thinking about that, that being jacked up and high, having that hypermobility, you can see that it's a hyper bond. It's like "bro! You're my bro!"... Same with the women. You just see that the bonds between them is so intense and the boundaries between their tribe and other tribes seem really intense and really defined as well.   Mason: (19:11) You know what, I can really just see those bonds and boundaries becoming excessive. Maybe using a little bit of that medicine of... I guess a little bit of flexibility could be coming in, especially from the liver, for those of you that have the Taoist incline to help bring some balance into that. Especially, some balance to the frustration and anger that can come up in that from that world, which the liver has to deal with. I just wanted to talk about quality of flexibility when we talk about stretching, quality of stretching, quality of flexibility, because I know my colonised mind, my reductionist mind still hears you go "you know, flexibility" and I'm like, "oh yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah. I need more flexibility and doing some stretching in your practise."   Mason: (19:59) Yeah, yeah. I got it. I should stretch and it's all the courses and I read every... Anyone who's focused on doing... It was an athlete and now I got in. Then, of course, I stretch. I stretch at the end of the day. And I'm like, "what do you mean, You know?" I know you've just said that you've got four different types. So, it's not just one myopic concept. I remember you've talked a lot in the past about someone who... and you brought up hyper mobility and how some people might think, "Oh, that person's going to breeze through embodied flexibility."   Mason: (20:37) But, can you talk to a little bit about what that process would be like for someone with hypermobility? And then I'm sure that can take us into whether we're hypo or hyper...   Benny Fergusson: (20:47) Yeah.   Mason: (20:47) What's that quality of flexibility that you're looking for? And does it necessarily just mean going to your furthest range that you have right now?   Benny Fergusson: (20:57) Yeah, yeah. Well, qualities... Probably one of the... So, I don't like to be too hierarchal in the way that I think, but if I have a look at my evolution as I've journeyed into the body further, I started off with techniques, which is what a lot of people do. It's like I do a stretch. Now, what I realised with a technique is you bring yourself to that technique under the illusion that you think that that technique is going to somehow magically change your wiring. So, what often happens is that we then highlight... The practise reflects back to us, ourselves, like a classic case is... like the technique of stretching is just so open and ambiguous. It's like going to what someone has described as a stretch. What does that mean? It's going to mean 10 different things to 10 different people.   Benny Fergusson: (22:08) So, it's not enough for you to then have some sort of personal agency in the experience. So, then you go a little bit deeper into principles. So, what are the things underneath, the cogs that turn to make that technique work? Why that technique came about? So, principles are really useful because that then starts to take a little bit deeper into the conversation you start to look at. Ah, okay. Rather than just doing, focusing on the tip of the iceberg, I then start to look at all of the supporting structures that allow it to float, because it's such an illusion. This tip is everything that you need to create that reality. It doesn't work like that. We need foundations and those foundations are principles which I'll go into some of the ones that I find really useful, in a moment.   Benny Fergusson: (23:10) Then you go a little bit further and you start to talk about qualities. Like when we start to look into different qualities of being, qualities of mind. So, if I go into something and my intention is very strong, very attachment based, very future focused, then that quality will be reflected through the activity that I do. In this case, a stretch. An example... I'll give more examples in terms of how we apply this to someone who's hyper mobile. For me, at the start of my journey, I wanted to get flexible. We're talking about, I wanted the splits, I wanted the backbend. To be honest, I'm still interested in those things as much as I was when I started.   Benny Fergusson: (23:58) However, the level of attachment has significantly loosened off. It's something that is less future-based and now more I'm appreciating where I'm at in the process of where I'm going. So, the quality of patience has emerged. The quality of, for want of a better term, flexibility, to be able to adapt with what is, because I'll wake up and some days I might be tighter, and if I push my body on that day, my body's going to give me some sort of feedback to say whether that's okay, whether that's not okay.   Benny Fergusson: (24:38) It's like anything in nature, you just can't force it to grow. It grows through a product of being supported to grow. So, rather than trying to force... and you can see these other types of qualities, if this is underlying factor driving the being, so that quality of pushing, of striving, of achieving, then you will get a result, but it will reach a ceiling pretty quick, because it's out of the accordance of natural law which has cycles and interrelationships and all of that sort of stuff.   Benny Fergusson: (25:15) So, when you look into qualities, that's when things start to get rich into How does our level of being influence what we do and then interrelate to what we have. It's that very classic notion of be, do, have.   Benny Fergusson: (25:30) So, who I am will then inform what I have, what I experience. So, if we track it back and look at someone who's hyper mobile, someone who has maybe less joint integrity, less structural integrity, more gravitation toward flexibility. This is what a lot of people... you see it in the yoga world... a lot of women demonstrate wonderful flexibility and you get the guys going, "I could never do that", or some women who don't have that quality naturally going "Oh, well, yoga is not for me because I can't do those [inaudible 00:26:11], those postures from day dot". Maybe that person who's demonstrating it has cultivated it over years.   Benny Fergusson: (26:20) Maybe, also, they've just always been that way. So, either way we need to find ways for... because there's also people who are hyper mobile, who don't feel stable, who get injured easily, who are also not very flexible. So, there's all of these wonderful, different variants in someone's body.   Mason: (26:43) Yeah. There was that woman, I don't know her name, not that I want to share it, but I remember Tahnee, Tahnee keeps me up to date with all the scandals in the yoga world.   Benny Fergusson: (26:52) Yeah   Mason: (26:52) She was a pretty famous Ashtanga teacher ? [crosstalk 00:26:56]   Benny Fergusson: (26:56) Yes, yes, yes.   Mason: (26:57) The classic lunge. The really sexy knee over the ankle, one calf right up on the thigh and her back acetabulum popped out ?   Benny Fergusson: (27:08) Yes. [inaudible 00:27:10]   Mason: (27:09) Just popped out. Hip just popped out. Popped right out of the hip, I should say. And I think that's a perfect example that what you're talking about.   Benny Fergusson: (27:20) Yeah.   Mason: (27:20) Right.   Benny Fergusson: (27:21) Totally, totally. So, here we are with unique circumstances of the body. If we focus on an external posture being the primary goal, we push outside of what our internal needs are. So, if we go back to that layer of principles and we just start first, this is a really useful place of starting at something easy.   Benny Fergusson: (27:50) I think a lot of the time we, in my experiences, focus on flexibility and that end goal is really clear. I know where I want to get to. So. you put yourself in a stretch that maybe you've seen on YouTube or someone's shown you, or you learn in high school or something like that. Then you go directly at that path, but it doesn't tend to work like that if you don't yet have the underlying foundations to support that.   Benny Fergusson: (28:21) So, if someone is hyper mobile or even hypo mobile, this will work for both sides of the coin, which is great, you find a space that is reflective of where you'd like to go, but it's easy, and what starts to happen in the mind is you go, "oh, okay, cool, I can do this". What also can happen in the mind is, "is this enough for me to improve?", and that's another little hook that can come up. "Do I need to push myself harder in order to get the gains?" This is where you see it can challenge people's ongoing sustainability in their practise.   Benny Fergusson: (29:04) So, first I feel when we're coming to the conversation of flexibility, we need to understand those two spaces, the space of ease. So, "What can I already do?", "What is the ease or quality that I already possess that's already there?"   Benny Fergusson: (29:22) Then, that space of challenge. "What do I do when I get to that space?", "Is that a positive incentivizing experience for me to go harder?", because it's the whole, no pain, no gain adage, or "Is that something that I've become hypersensitive to, and I tense up in the experience of, and go into fight or flight?", and then I don't give my body an opportunity to open up into its innate potential because we are actually all naturally flexible, and that's the thing, it's an innate state, we've just lost touch with it.   Benny Fergusson: (30:05) So, starting with that space of ease, whatever you need to do, maybe you take that... I remember we were talking about the pancake and that being a more challenging position for you. We let go of the attachment of what it needs to look like and we find that basic pattern and then we go, "Okay, what's my space of ease within that basic shape?"   Benny Fergusson: (30:27) Then we get accustomed with that first. Then the hyper mobile, or even hypo mobile, you'll notice that a lot of these things, what it does is it brings together to then just focus on our experience as we're going into spaces of ease and spaces of challenge. So, then everyone will have different noticing. As that hyper mobile person goes into it, they might notice, "Ah, as I go and I bend forward, my knees start to hyper extend, or my hips start to push into the socket and that sort of thing. So, you can feel when it starts to come on and then adapt and go, "Okay, that doesn't happen when I'm in this space of ease."   Benny Fergusson: (31:20) Then, as I go into that challenge, it starts to come on. So, rather than just put yourself into it, system's all kind of hyper stimulated, and then it's just too much sensory information to be able to make a clear decision. That's a really, really useful principle, so basic, but how many people apply it and value it as a thing? So, that's one thing that I want to bring out is sometimes it's the obvious things, but to really let people know from someone who has not just done this with themself for 20 years, but observed thousands of different bodies and different people for probably the last 15 years of working with people one-to-one and 10 years of doing it in an online space to realise, keep going with this, it's worthwhile. Pull that thread.   Mason: (32:21) I just wanted to speak to you a little bit to your process. You mentioned about some people just want to go real hard and they would just want to give it their all. It's almost like you've got that dominating kind of approach to your practise in life. I think that's a great quality you brought up that you're still just as interested in those and getting into those extreme poses, say, but there's just other elements there. I think I'll just reiterate for everyone, you can still go hard. This is a challenging approach where you can go hard, but there's just other qualities there like that back off patients breathe, explore. It does enable you to go way further and way deeper into this. So, you don't have to relinquish that part of you that's, "Oh, I like to just get after it."   Mason: (33:10) You will be able to get after it in here, [crosstalk 00:33:13] and one of those areas I just wanted to reiterate you've gone into that big view of around, especially like if you're hyper mobile, what happens, but can you just talk a little bit as you go down the road a little bit, that relationship between just having extreme flexibility where there's a floppiness versus where that intersection of strength, flexibility, having stability comes into effect, and how does that... just tack onto the back of that... I think about this often in terms of injury. I think about football players and athletes getting knees and hip injuries constantly and crutch injuries constantly that are debilitating and I often think about your work. Could you just give us a little insight there and to how that all works?   Benny Fergusson: (34:11) Yeah. The way I look at it is I love woodworking, so I relate to it with the quality of wood. So, if you have a certain quality, so let's say strength, you focus on that. If you look at a lot of athletes, they strengthen themselves, or they do specific movements to improve that thing that they're doing. That's one thing that athletes can benefit from to reduce their rates of industry injury, massively, which is actually more diversity in movement, and you've seen it in MMA fighters, like Conor McGregor is a great example of this, how he's challenged the typical ways of MMA people training. He has brought in a broader approach of movements and you can see that in his fighting style.   Benny Fergusson: (35:09) Also, it reflects on him as well as a person and his general outlook. Of course, I don't know him, but I can just observe, but we've got one quality, like strength. That's like a groove. The more you do it, the deeper that groove gets in the wood. Eventually you can dig yourself a trench. The same as flexibility. If you continue to focus on the end posture, you dig yourself a trench into that posture.   Benny Fergusson: (35:40) We often don't have a spectrum between those two qualities. We want to equally focus on both. Not separately, but at the same time. So, then we're starting to get a wider spectrum. If you had the choice... You got a highway and you wanted to spread the load across multiple lanes, that road is going to get worn out a lot less quickly than if you just had one or two lanes where all the traffic goes down.   Benny Fergusson: (36:15) These things are the breeding ground for injury. So, when it comes to bringing that into the context of training flexibility, we need to start to not just look at the end space we get into, but bringing... What's the thing that merges it all ? Movement. Can I move in and out of these postures ?   Benny Fergusson: (36:37) So, then you realise that flexibility's not a static thing. It's not an end goal. It's a continuum of me being where I am and being able to move in and out of where I'd like to go with the quality of ease. So, the end goal I find... It's like a car... if you're always redlining the car, you're always pushing it to its maximum capacity. Shit gets worn out faster.   Benny Fergusson: (37:05) It's like that with injury. If you're a sportsperson, you're always doing that turn or doing that adjustment to the edge of your current ability. Then the circumstances that breed injury are going to be higher. You see it in... If you watch enough 100m races, the tear in the hamstring doesn't just happen gradually. It's a buildup, and then, boom! It's done. It's a lot of pressure built up in the system over time to one glorious culminating moment and, boom, you're injured.   Benny Fergusson: (37:41) So, if you create, this is the beautiful thing of creating more than what you need. This is a very abundant mindset. This is the thing that keeps me struggling. Yeah, it's cool to get these outcomes and it looks cool and people will celebrate it, but for me, I look at... I just started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again. So, if I go into that class, I know my ability and I know where I can go more and I can play in my 80-90 percent zone.   Benny Fergusson: (38:16) If I want to really dial it up; if I get into a challenging situation, I can, but it doesn't have to be a constant where I'm always struggling, I'm always redlining and then I'm setting myself up for the injury.   Benny Fergusson: (38:31) When I work with another person, I can start to feel "Okay, where am I at in my spectrum ? Can I play?" and then also bring context with going "Okay, I'm challenging this situation. This is where I need to focus to give myself a bit more space."   Benny Fergusson: (38:48) Then, I'm not always pushing, pushing, pushing right on that edge and setting myself up for potential injury. Sometimes things happen. I don't actually believe you see a lot. We talk about bulletproofing the body. It's bullshit, to be honest, because shit happens.   Benny Fergusson: (39:08) Through the process of training flexibility, I've torn my adductor twice. I've torn my hamstring twice. It's been big setbacks. They were big ego moments of where my mind, my sense of striving, achievement was pushing further than what my body was ready for. I wasn't listening to the subtle signals.   Benny Fergusson: (39:28) So, my body had to go "Hey, dude, I'm going to give you a really clear message that you can hear, that's going to reflect back to you your way of living, and this is not sustainable. So, get your shit sorted and come back to the foundations, so we can be more robust."   Benny Fergusson: (39:46) In short, look at the picture of movement, how it interrelates rather than just these fixed states and linear ideas of what flexibility is. Strength, flexibility and them merging together into one as you practise is really, really useful, and highly applicable. We do become more resistant to injury. Will it completely stop injury ? Well, that's a personal choice.   Mason: (40:20) This might be a bit of a weird question. You've got quite a large community now and the community is growing. We know, not for everyone and not in definitely every movement, so [inaudible 00:40:38]. Largely, when we begin to talk about movement, the people who are motivating us, or we're learning from, have a real high aspiration for a shiny thing. They may say it's not about achieving this thing, but yet their life revolves around, quite often, achieving a big thing.   Mason: (41:03) Do you find a lot of people... Again, not a bad thing... I've got large goals that I'm uniquely going for as well. I'm also someone who can get quite quickly... If I fall into step with someone motivational, I can quite quickly, maybe in the past, get hijacked and think I've got to go and achieve something amazing, physically, through running or something like that. All of a sudden, it's marathons and ultras are on the mind.   Mason: (41:34) Do you find a lot of people gravitate towards your community with those... Maybe they're athletes and maybe they're really focused, maybe not on the process of being an athlete, but on that shiny thing. Do you find when they come into your community... Do you help them ? I know you don't have an agenda, there... Do they continue to be obsessed with the shiny thing ? Do they stop looking for it, sometimes ? Do they continue to go for it, yet find substance in the middle ?   Mason: (42:07) Or, do you find the people that come to you are those who are no longer thinking that that's the pinnacle, to find the shiny thing and they say they wanting something else ? I'm curious about that world.   Benny Fergusson: (42:24) What comes to mind... What I will say first is that people that tend to come into our space, they've done and tried a lot of things. That might be, "I've done this type of yoga", "I've done this", "I've done Crossfit", "I've done these different modalities and I've seen benefits in them. I'm interested. I feel there's something more. I don't know what it is, but I feel like there's more potential within me to explore. Just putting that label on it, I now know there's a limitation."   Benny Fergusson: (43:07) So, that's one type of person. That can also go on the other side where "I've had pain, discomfort. All that... I've done the Chiro, I've done the Physio, I've done the Osteo, and all of these are beautiful. I've done the Chinese Medicine or like you were talking about, the colonialized versions of it. I've done all these things, but I need to come back to a place of taking personal responsibility, rather than building reliance on any one person or one thing."   Benny Fergusson: (43:41) We do have people who have those goals. We have Martial Artists. We have rock climbers. We have adventurers. People who would like to experience more out of their body. A great example that comes up is one of our senior teachers, Marcus, based in Austria. When we started, he had been a personal trainer for a long time. He didn't come in green. He came in with a good level of physical ability and strong level of aspirations. He wanted to do the splits. He wanted to handstand. He wanted to do all these sorts of things.   Benny Fergusson: (44:20) So, the wonderful thing is, because I've been walking this path for a long time, I can empathise with that because that was me at a certain point, too. I used to, and we've talked about on the podcast, run a facility in Melbourne called Cohesion. We had classes just on handstands. How to get the handstand. Is that sustainable? That's questionable, because a lot of people come into it and they go, "ah, my wrists are hurting" and all that sort of stuff.   Benny Fergusson: (44:49) So, it highlights when we overly focus on one thing and then neglect the foundations that support that thing where it naturally happens. Wonderful thing that I've noticed. I used to train handstands daily for, sometimes, an hour plus, which is not actually extreme compared to the handstand world. You've got people, by their choice, and I'm not taking away from that choice, but they might be spending one, two, three plus hours a day focused on that specific skill. Now, I look at that, and I'm like "Oh God, I may be able to make the time, but why would I choose that particular thing just to get a handstand, if I'm not working for Cirque du Soleil ?"   Benny Fergusson: (45:33) I have a friend who performs in Cirque du Soleil and the training he goes through for that is immense, but it's contextual to his life. That's the one thing that tends to happen in our community. Rather than make something a negative, like "Ah, cool, just because you want to do a handstand or do the splits, you're less of a person". I celebrate that and those goals and those achievements. What tends to happen is the self reflective nature of[inaudible 00:46:09] movement practises that we share, get you to question your deeper "why". "Why would I put in this amount of effort for that outcome?" "Does that really align with me?"   Benny Fergusson: (46:21) What tends to naturally happen is people start where they start, wherever that is. Then, they get reflected back their deeper drive. Then they make choices. So, Marcus started off and when we were working together seven years ago, might be a bit more, I nurtured that. I was like "Cool, you want to do a handstand ? Let's do a handstand. Let's do that. Let's do the things you want to do and we'll do some other things that maybe you haven't considered, that are nurturing for not just your muscles, but also your organs and your general quality of how you experience your body. We'll start to do some reflective practises where you get to know the nature of your mind and listen to the way you're breathing affects your physiology, and all that sort of stuff".   Benny Fergusson: (47:11) So, through that process, you start to ask bigger questions. You start to go, "Ah, okay, I'd like to still do this, but there's something bigger that's calling me."   Benny Fergusson: (47:23) So, if I then fast forward into what that has looked like for Marcus, myself, in this example, we still like to do a handstand and still can do a handstand. Maybe not quite as well as when we were practising x amount of hours a day, but I remember there was a little kid who was like "Can you do a handstand?". I was like "I can't remember, it's been a little while", and up into the handstand and all that body memory was there. Plus all of this deep awareness through the whole system rather than just this specific skill.   Benny Fergusson: (47:56) There I am in a handstand, surprised, going "Oh, this is the easiest handstand I've ever done and I haven't systematically practised it for many years." So, I look at that and the freedom that comes with. It's just incredible to know that I can honestly say I've enjoyed the process, the challenges along the way so much more because it's provided so much more diversity than just at the end. Pouring my heart and soul into one thing and just having a handstand that doesn't really enrich my life at a deeper level. That's one of my observations. I don't always know how our community is going to adapt because I'm always on the edge of my game as well.   Mason: (48:44) Yeah   Benny Fergusson: (48:45) It's a common thing where I do my best to not control, but to give people an opportunity to reflect and make choices. That's a consistent thing that I notice is they do tend to look a little deeper into their underlying intention for why they are practising .   Mason: (49:05) Yeah. It was a very broad question. What just came up at the end there when we were talking about the handstand. If we're not objective, if we don't have an objective, focused, outlook, or community. But, more of a community, a process that focuses on creating possibilities, or potential. Creating that ecosystem. It makes me think of... You heard of [Rostiano's 00:49:34] Tonic herbs ? Like Ashwagandha. One of the ways they describe what they can do is create an environment where you have a great capacity to have spontaneous joy. "So, we're not focusing on a shiny thing, being joy. I'm not doing this so I can have joy all the time. There's just the potential for joy to emerge".   Mason: (49:55) And if there's an ecosystem, an environment created, where "Ah, there's joy", and "Ah, actually I'm feeling patient", "Ah, I can actually climb under a fence, pretty easily", "Ah, I can get up that tree pretty easy", "Ah, I'm [inaudible 00:50:08] and I've got mobility", "You can't just push me over, and I don't have to worry as much about breaking my hip by falling over, because I know I have stability". These things just emerge. Versus, "Hey, here's this course to create stability for seven year olds", and that might be really good as a starting point. Like in here. It's a structured entry point. Like the Embodied Flexibility course and the challenge you've got going on. Like, "Hey, let's get flexible", "Hey, let's get stable and let's do that" and then "Oh, my gosh, look what's on the other side of this".   Mason: (50:45) These secret treasures hidden within that makes it... It's not just about stability. It's not just about flexibility. And that flexibility or stability, let's just pretend there is a geriatrics course that you have, so elders don't fear falling over and breaking their hips. On the other side, there's all these other diverse outcomes that are applied to everyday life, rather than just sticking straightly [inaudible 00:51:11].   Mason: (51:11) I think it's good, man. I think you've created something special, as always, because as you said, you're always on the edge of your own creativity and your own process, yet in this trail, this business you've created, this organisational structure that you've got behind you, are these places where people can safely go in and it's super clear and obvious what they need to do to start stepping into that place where they do have greater mobility and they can adventure around their body and their practise and their physical practise however they want. That's the fun thing.   Mason: (51:53) You go in and you go "Benny's doing it his way" and, again, it's hard to attach. That's the way. It's just not there. The same with Marcus. It's not what's generated. You can't just go "Ah, I have to be like them and aspire to them". It's just within your own practise.   Mason: (52:13) A practise that has integrity will take you and connect you to your own nature and the qualities within yourself. That self informs your path, through your practise, which I think is really cool how you've... It's one thing to talk about it right now. It's a hell of a thing to create a landscape of community and courses and also the academy, I love. It helps breed it.   Benny Fergusson: (52:38) Totally. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that I'm really inspired by is how do we continue to integrate the notion of human design, technology and community, altogether with physical practise, or [inaudible 00:53:03] and physical practises. That's where we're going. To continue to push the boundaries of what can we do with technology, how can we utilise that as a tool to not separate people, but bring them together, open up conversation. For us to just discover what the heck lights us up. At the end, take that last breath and go "Ah, you know what, that was a wonderful story. That was a wonderful movie that I participated in. I'm at peace."   Benny Fergusson: (53:43) It's wonderful. I look at... continually, just asking the question, "What can I do to contribute ?", "How can I share my experiences ?", "How can I create space for someone to make it their own, rather than just to always be held under me ?"   Mason: (54:09) Putting it that way, the glass ceiling being "held under" either an ancient particular philosophy or movement patterns or teacher ?   Benny Fergusson: (54:24) Totally   Mason: (54:25) That's an interesting skill. That's something I know we've talked about the nature of developing that skill to teach and be a leader without actually placing yourself up there, which is a natural... Naturally, you gravitate there, or people try and put you there. All of the time, be the source of my inspiration and where I need to go next. To do that a little bit, infusing what you're talking about as well.   Benny Fergusson: (54:54) Yeah.   Mason: (54:55) That's a skill you learn in your practise, right ?   Benny Fergusson: (54:57) Yeah, I think the thing that I've continued to learn through... Physical practise is something that I talk about. It helps me so much. It's a part of the relationship that I've established with myself. Getting to know myself and being okay with who I am and being okay that that's... I'm still discovering who that is, even though this is part of me that just knows. Moving beyond my conditioned self. What I get to is, "Okay, the best that I can be, the best leader I can be, is being me."   Benny Fergusson: (55:43) If I can then support other people, give space for them to just be themselves, what ends up happening is whatever level of achievement someone gets to, someone might be more flexible or stronger or have different mental capacities or different energetic qualities in another person. It might appear on the outside, "Ah, that person's achieved more than what the other person...", but if we then start to meet in a space of, "You're you, I'm me, here we are having an experience of life". Living to the highest level that we can, then we don't meet in a space of competition. We meet in a space of collaboration.   Benny Fergusson: (56:32) That's the thing that's helped at least myself as I'm a sharer of information, an educator, as my intention. It's taken out the "me holding back" out of fear that someone will take all of my knowledge and be better than me and then, I'll be irrelevant.   Benny Fergusson: (56:54) I know that no one will ever be me. I know that I will never be anyone else. I've tried and it just doesn't work. There's something in me that's like, "This is not you, this is not your nature". Let other people be themselves. That's what inspires me to educate. That's what inspires me around community where we all do come to a point of self agency and we exercise. Some people are more inherent in leadership. That is a quality that I notice that I have that's just a part of me. It's partly cultivated, partly just innate, in me. I've been averse to that for a long time of being "The Guy" who has all the answers, and "Come this way. Off we go. Do what I do. Say what I say. It's the way of virtue".   Benny Fergusson: (57:50) To a point now, where I go, "Okay, I can lead people and inspire them to maybe something greater than what they thought they could get to within their own belief structure, within their own environment". I can inject that new vibrancy into their physical goals, into these sorts of things. I also love to just, once they're running, step away and see what they make, and we meet at this space. That's what I notice is happening and, God, I don't know how it's happened, because I couldn't have done it with just a product of strategy and all of that sort of stuff. These things light me up at the moment.   Mason: (58:35) I can tell. I love it, man. I just encourage everyone to... If you're new to the community, Benny is... been a part of the Super Beast family for a long time. He's come out back in the day, when I used to run retreats, fasting retreats. Just basic lifestyle upgrade retreats. I think you came out to every single one of those and held a workshop. We're going to get you in doing more workshops with the Super Beasts as well when we can. I think we've been friends for, it must be coming up, nearly 10 years.   Benny Fergusson: (59:19) Yeah. [crosstalk 00:59:20] Close to that   Mason: (59:22) About that point, and I couldn't recommend the offerings through movement month, enough. We'll pop links down in the Bio for you to go and find the Embodied Flexibility Course. The website. The Freedom Academy. The Freedom Academy is where you can move around and have endless access to all these various movement patterns and styles of cultivating flexibility and strength and peace within. It's really wonderful. You can also use the code MASON10 through the website movementmonk.xyz   Mason: (01:00:06) Cool, man, thanks so much for coming on.   Benny Fergusson: (01:00:08) Thanks for having me, Mase. It's wonderful to keep the conversation going. I think one last little thing I'd just love to share is off the back of the new course. We're bringing out teacher training soon. Any people in your community. Yoga teachers, personal trainers, movement coaches, and all that sort of stuff, I'm looking forward to sharing the conversation with them and providing ways on which we can facilitate journeys for people to transform. Not just in the short term, but in the longer term in their physical practise. With their flexibility.   Mason: (01:00:46) So, that module of teacher training is revolving around the Embodied Flexibility [crosstalk 01:00:52] ?   Benny Fergusson: (01:00:52) Yeah, we've built it around all the frameworks and with that, we basically have more personal support. It's a 12 week journey and, at the end, basically what happens is someone produces case studies on how they've applied [inaudible 01:01:08] We take them through everything from what happens in situations if someone's results stagnate or if they are hyper immobile, or hypo immobile. How do we adapt these things ? One of my thing is I love to get into any situation, working with different types of people that I've never worked with before. Different challenges. There's some confidence that's being built within me of like, "Okay, cool, I do have value here, and that's something that I'd like to impart"   Benny Fergusson: (01:01:39) It's a really wonderful thing. Just when you're confident working with people, in the realm of flexibility. It's just like, "Okay, cool, I don't have to have all the answers, but I've got some really good frameworks to then support this person to thrive", rather than, "Ooh, God, what am I going to do in this session", scrounging around, reading books, and then you piece it together and underneath the surface, you're like a duck paddling on water and at the end of it, I just would like to support people to just be relaxed and confident in what they're sharing. We're doing that in the realm of flexibility.   Mason: (01:02:13) Magical!   Benny Fergusson: (01:02:14) Yeah!   Mason: (01:02:16) movementmonk.xyz again. For people to get details for that.   Benny Fergusson: (01:02:21) Yeah. We'll be talking more about how we... I think one thing I'd like to continue to focus on is how we bring herbalism and all of that sort of stuff. The physical practise. The things of what we do is the part of it. What's the engine underneath in our physiology that's supporting the robustness of the physical regeneration? That's why I just love what you guys are doing.   Mason: (01:02:51) When you go into the core... Let's go to the core of the foundation. When the Taoists have... They've gotten to that point. They've dedicated to their practise and they're disciplined. Not just the Taoists. Those who are... They've gone next level and they're cultivating something special. It's herbalism and physical practise. [inaudible 01:03:14]become the foundations of what's going to then lead to that greater capacity to have potential. As we said before, not looking for a shiny thing. Just creating this landscape within us, where the potential and the possibilities can blossom.   Mason: (01:03:30) So, as you said, the physical regeneration, bringing physical herbs in there to do that regenerative work and then getting to that point where... when you're self sustainable and you're flowing and you just looking to bring this opening up through your fascial system, through your capacity to stand erect and strong, become flexible.   Mason: (01:03:51) We start looking at mushrooms coming in and the Chi herbs nourishing the fascial system. The Yin liver herbs. The ones in beauty blend. Goji. Schizandra. Bringing that capacity to yield and become flexible. Those Yang liver herbs, like Eucommia Bark bringing that upright bamboo erectness. They fall all into the same tribe. Once you've got lifestyle dialled, then your potentiation, when you're going towards potentiation, that practise, that physical practise breath, movement meditation and herbal practise, they come in and they just light it up. I'm with you, man. I'm glad that we hopefully dial in and work together more and more in that space, and I think a lot of people have already got it in this community.   Mason: (01:04:40) I'd love to see them dip into the movement, Monk World, and take it to another level. Especially because a lot of people are like, "Should I do QiGong or Tai Chi, or Kung Fu ?" or these kinds of things.   Mason: (01:04:52) Yeah, you can, and they're amazing. What's at the heart of them ? You should go and explore those worlds, but when you go into Movement Monk World, Benny's been through lots of Tai Chi, and Qi Gong, Shaolin practise, Kung Fu practise, lots of Martial Arts, both the Yin and Yang nature.   Mason: (01:05:15) A lot of those principles that are there and those attentions you will find there, as long as you can stay consistent, as long as you can show up to your practise. I'll put it out there. Even though this is a place, you can see Benny's a very gentle, grounded, person. Once you get in there, you can get gritty with yourself. In terms of, "Come on, I know you don't feel like it. Show up. Show up".   Mason: (01:05:44) There will be a reflection practise and I think you'll be generally gentle and soft, "Okay, let's approach why that is." But, at the same time, I'll come in and, because this is generally what I need... Come on, I can't find anything super legitimate right now around why you don't want to get in there and have a sustainable, exploratory, stretch.   Mason: (01:06:04) I think you're just avoiding what is going to become opened up and therefore the potential and the peace that you're going to be able to find in yourself, because you're going to have to dredge through a little bit of shit. Then you forget, "I can go slow and I can go sustainable and gentle", but nonetheless, that shit's going to get dragged up and I am going to find out that I can really start accessing some beautiful things within my body. Openness, flexibility, adaptability.   Mason: (01:06:33) You don't get that reward without the discipline. Through that structure. It's something I'm feeling more than ever. I'm feeling it in the business, and I know a lot of you love structure and you go, "Yeah, whatever Mase". That's fine. Then I challenge you to go into the Magic and exploring the vision of what's possible to keep on going into the nether lands of your body.   Mason: (01:06:55) Once you start opening that up. But, a lot of you are such free flowing. You're already Peter Pans and Wendys. Never wanting to grow up. Flying off in Neverland. Grow up for a little bit. Come and get structured. Allow that structure and discipline into your life. Allow those qualities to be cultivated and the freedom and the capacity to dream and step back into the Magic.   Mason: (01:07:23) When you've created that next platform, it's beautiful and it's your life, breathing through different processes. You're coming in. Maybe you need that structure right now. Don't fight it, because if you're fighting it, it will always come again, but you can miss that opportunity of your life for a little bit. That stage of your life.   Mason: (01:07:45) Don't fight it. Grit your teeth. Get in there. Then release the tension from your jaw, because you're doing Benny's work. [inaudible 01:07:54] Grit your teeth and get in there and accept that things are evolving and changing and trust that process. That's one thing I've really experienced in your work. I just wanted to share. I think a lot of people listening to this would need to hear that. Create a new relationship with that showing up and experience the freedom that's going to come from that discipline. For others, experience the Magic. The further discipline that will come for you and the further structure that will come for you. If you step into exploring the unknown.   Benny Fergusson: (01:08:31) Hmm, powerful, man.   Mason: (01:08:34) Yeah   Benny Fergusson: (01:08:34) Yeah, truth.   Mason: (01:08:37) As a friend, more than anything, but as a teacher, you've helped me get to that place a lot. So, I just wanted to make sure that that was sharing my little piece and testimonial on the backend here and as I said, everyone, I really encourage you to either do The Embodied Flexibility Course. Maybe you've got a shitload of tension in your body and you start there with the tension release. Is that right ?   Benny Fergusson: (01:09:02) Yeah, literally.   Mason: (01:09:02) Maybe some people are here with chronic pain ? Do you want to just quickly share that with the entry point for people with chronic pain ?   Benny Fergusson: (01:09:08) Yeah. The best way is in the physical freedom academy. At the moment. Inside that, we've got all sorts of different processes. We run a call every week for people with chronic tension and pain. First, just know, from someone who has been through chronic pain. You're okay. It's okay. You're not broken. And there are other ways that we can move forward. It doesn't have to be something that just lives at a dull level in the background. That's where me sharing this process called Break Through Your Pain is based around key questions we can ask ourselves to then start to really have moments of truth and go, "Oh, okay, I see that I have power in this. I see that I'm not a victim to my circumstances. I can stand up and go, you know what, yeah I'm in pain and I can work with it, rather than through it. To just be something that I manage and wrap myself in cotton wool and then just become limited in what I feel like I can do in my life."   Benny Fergusson: (01:10:17) I know how that feels. I've been there and it's time to stand up to it. You can, irrespective of what you're told. That's one of the reasons why I think I love working with all different types of people in different situations is to realise that there is a space where we can connect that is maybe a different conversation than what's in your family or your friendship circle. That's why we exist. To create high level conversations to start to really call people to truth. We do it through physical practice.   Mason: (01:10:59) That's powerful, man! Alright, thank you so much. Big love to you. Hope I can see you soon. All the way up there in Queensland.   Benny Fergusson: (01:11:08) Yeah, we're so close, but yet so far, at the moment.   Mason: (01:11:10) Forbidden Land.   Benny Fergusson: (01:11:12) Yeah.   Mason: (01:11:14) Alright, man. Have a great weekend. Thanks for coming on.   Benny Fergusson: (01:11:17) Thanks Mase. Thanks for having me.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Holistic nutritionist and author Tahlia Mynott understands the importance of nourishing the mother through every phase of the birthing journey; So much so, that she has dedicated her career to it, along with women's health. In this very special Women's Series episode, Tahnee and Tahlia (both mothers) take us on a journey through the beautiful expanse that is motherhood. From the highs of postpartum oxytocin joy to the depths of menstrual healing and processing miscarriage (a topic that isn't talked about enough). In 2021 Tahlia self-published her first book, Nourishing Those Who Nurture, co-authored with doula and trauma-informed kinesiologist Caitlin Priday; The book is both a bible and an accessible guide for all women, regardless of their circumstances. The beautiful intention behind Nourishing Those Who Nurture is to take the overwhelm out of the postpartum rollercoaster through easy, nourishing, warming recipes (tailored to the needs of the postpartum mother) and preparation guidance for managing the massive shifts mother's traverse in their postpartum period. Tahlia and Tahnee dive deep into prenatal preparation, PCOS and menstrual cycle healing, the power of food as medicine, restoring the integrity of the pelvis after birth, postnatal care, and the emotional/physical complexities that come with experiencing a miscarriage. Tune in!   “I think it's important to be real that it does happen and that there's a spiritual aspect to miscarriage as well. You can be totally supported in what you've done, in terms of detoxing, nourishing, and it could still happen”.    - Tahlia Mynott     Host and Guest discuss: Healing PCOS. Dysmenorrhea. Preconception. Miscarriage and healing. The Postpartum phase. Restoring the pelvic floor. Seed Cycling for hormones. Healing the menstrual cycle. Phases of the menstrual cycle. The transition from maiden to mother. Supporting hormonal health through food.   Who is Tahlia Mynott? Tahlia is a Mother of two beautiful boys, Luca Mayar and Oka Sol. She birthed both of these beautiful beings into the world at her rainforest home at the base of Wollumbin. Tahlia is a clinical nutritionist specifically interested in women's health; however, she brings much more than nutrition information to her clinic. She conducts her work through her online clinic and workshops, online booklets, and podcasts with both her businesses Luna Holistic Nutrition and Living Hormoniously. In 2021, Tahlia released her first book, "Nourishing Those Who Nurture" - More than A Food Bible for New Mums.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: @livinghormoniously @lunaholisticnutrition @nourishingthosewhonurture www.lunaholisticnutrition.com Reishi for helping heal PCOS Schisandra for preconception Seed Cycling for hormone balance Nourishing Those Who Nurture Book Mothering From Your Center Book Brighton Baby book by Roy Dittmann Spirit Babies book by Walter Makichen Pregnancy Preparation with Tahnee (EP#14)     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, everybody. Welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm here today with Tahlia Mynott, and she's the mama of her two gorgeous boys, Luca and Oka, who were birthed up near our magical local mountain, Wollumbin. Tahlia's a clinical nutritionist and she has a special interest in women's health. She's bringing all of this work that she's done in clinic but also her work that she does workshops and offers a lot of support and coaching through her partnerships. You do some yoga stuff. You do a whole bunch of awesome things.   Tahnee: (00:32) Now she's an incredible author of this book, Nourishing Those Who Nurture, which I'm really happy to have beside me and I've just finished reading this week. We're going to talk a little bit about the book today and about Tahlia's journey toward health and wellbeing, so thanks for having us here. I'm saying that backwards. Thanks for being here.   Tahlia Mynott: (00:50) Thanks for having me. I know, that was a lot. I mean, my bio, there's a lot going on in my life at the moment. So when I hear it, I'm like, "Whoa, there's little bits and pieces everywhere."   Tahnee: (01:01) I always feel like that too. I'm like, "I've done a thousand things." But I really love you guys. You had your really beautiful business made with your love and you brought that sort of clinical nutrition aspect to crafting product. And now you're more supporting women, so I think there's this really beautiful journey you guys have been on and now being a mummer of two.   Tahnee: (01:22) Yeah. Tell us a little bit about how did you come to be a clinical nutritionist and how did you end up being where you are right now talking to me? How did we get here?   Tahlia Mynott: (01:30) Yeah. Cool. Love this. I actually, well, I say I was gifted or blessed. Because well, I chose, I guess, and they chose somewhat to be in a family that was quite health conscious. So growing up, particularly my mom, and that's because of a story that she's had with the medical system in her life. She had something happen there that was quite intense, so then she went down a more natural course herself.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:59) When she had me and my two sisters, she brought us up really natural. We had a lot of homoeopaths and naturopaths and all those awesome things that I'm so grateful that I was introduced to so early. I actually did my first liver cleanse, which is hilarious, in year 10.   Tahnee: (02:19) Oh, no.   Tahlia Mynott: (02:21) Which is so funny. At the time it didn't seem that big, but when I look back on it, I was like, "Wow, so I did my first liver cleanse in year 10." Probs didn't need it, but it was a thing we did as a family. That's, I guess, a little bit of background of my growing up. When I went to uni, it just made sense. I actually first started studying psychology and, oh gosh, I can't even remember the name of it. I think it was neuropsych, so a lot of brain stuff.   Tahlia Mynott: (02:50) But I just still had so much interest in health and nutrition, so I actually switched degrees and actually did a double degree in psychology and nutrition thinking that I was going to finish and work with eating disorders, which I did do a little bit of work with, but it definitely wasn't where I saw myself. It didn't fit. I went there, did a little bit of work there and it didn't quite fit. Actually, in relation to women's health, it wasn't until about six years ago. So I actually graduated in 2018, which seems like aeons ago now. No, 2008. Sorry, not 2018, 2008.   Tahlia Mynott: (03:33) It wasn't until roughly five or six years ago that I actually found the niche with women's health. The reason I found it is because I had suffered through my menstruating years a lot with dysmenorrhea, which is a really painful periods. And I also had amenorrhea for years, so that was absence of a cycle for... probably actually was more than a year. It was probably closer to 18 months. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early 20s. And then around about the time that I really stepped into this work, I was going on my fertility journey. So I had started my preconception journey around that time, and I was just... I guess I wanted to heal parts of my menstrual cycle and then the things I was learning, I was just like, "Oh my gosh, how is this not taught to us? How as women do we not know these?"   Tahlia Mynott: (04:22) I remember being with my mum one day walking, and I was like, "Mum, did you know there was four phases to women's menstrual cycle?" She was like, "No, I had no idea." I'm like, "How? How are you a 50-year-old woman and you have no idea about this?" I was like, "Okay, this is it." I was just so passionate about it that I was like, "This is where I'm meant to be.   Tahlia Mynott: (04:46) Once I get passionate about something, I'm in. I'm all in. It was like podcasts, books, scientific literature, everything I could possibly read and get stuck into. It was my life. Yeah, I guess that's where I'm at today in many little facets, like you said. I do workshops with living harmoniously and also I do postpartum workshops with Esther, a friend of mind, but then I also have my clinic, which is Luna Holistic Nutrition. Now I have a postpartum book that I've co-authored, Nourishing Those Who Nurture. I mean, I guess there's a main section there, but there's all these little divots, which if I look back in my life, it's how my life has always been.   Tahnee: (05:33) Yeah. I think it's so funny, though, every time I talk to people, I see this tapestry of... You can see the dots that connect when you look back, but when you're in it, I mean, I know for me it's like, "I don't know where I'm going." Then you turn around and you're like, "Ah, that led to that, which led to that." You know?   Tahlia Mynott: (05:51) Totally.   Tahnee: (05:51) I think I just see that in your journey. You've had that background in health, but then you still had some things to work through. And so you've used that kind of catalyst to develop your own offerings. Yeah, it's really beautiful. Because coming full circle like you've had to, really healthy boys, and you've got this gorgeous book and you're working with all these women. It's just yeah, it's a really exciting time for you, I think.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:14) Yeah. Lots of birthings.   Tahnee: (06:17) Yeah. I feel like you spoke a little bit about preconception there and it's a question we get asked a lot at SuperFeast. I had my own journey with that, but I'm curious, for you, how long was that period of time and what did you really focus on in terms of your preconception? Was there sort of a practise or protocol you followed, or was it just a bit more intuitive? How did you navigate that?   Tahlia Mynott: (06:39) Yeah. I've actually listened to your... Was that one of your first podcasts that you did?   Tahnee: (06:43) I think it was my first ever podcast.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:45) Yeah. I loved that.   Tahnee: (06:46) The weak and worst into it.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:48) I actually think I've listened to that podcast twice. For those of you who haven't listened, if it's still up, it's amazing.   Tahnee: (06:55) We will link in the show notes.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:57) Yeah. I actually think I had quite a similar preconception journey to you and even the same book was gifted to me, so the Brighton Baby Method. I hope I've said that correctly. It's been a while since I've looked at it. I guess a little background. I was in my late 20s, early 30s, when I really decided that I wanted to have kids.   Tahlia Mynott: (07:22) Pre-that, I actually wasn't sure that I wanted to have children. I didn't know if it was going to be part of my journey. But my partner who I'm with now, we actually thought we were pregnant very early on in our relationship, and the pregnancy test came back saying negative. The feeling I had was like a disappointment was the initial first feeling that was like, "Okay, I actually want to have kids."   Tahlia Mynott: (07:50) I'd grown up really healthy, but I definitely had gone through my 20s with some partying, which was really fun at the time. But I knew there was a bit of detoxing to do. For me, the Brighton Baby Method was a beautiful book but a little bit overwhelming. It's quite in depth. So I guess I did gentle forms of that, I would say. It was around about 18 months, the whole preconception journey for me, 18 months to two years, roughly. I did a bit of gentle detoxing of the liver, a little bit of the kidneys, and then I did some focus on my colon as well and my gut health because they were places that were quite sensitive for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (08:38) Oh, and something that's really important, I definitely did some heavy metal detoxing. But I guess the biggest thing for me was actually learning how to chart my cycle and learning much more in depth about the phases of my cycle and how to support those phases in terms of nutrition and movement and emotionally and just knowing exactly when I ovulated each month and knowing how long my phases were and supporting my hormones through those phases was probably... Well, I mean, I guess every element was big, but that was probably the biggest element for me and really healing those parts of my menstrual cycle that I'd had issues with previously.   Tahlia Mynott: (09:21) I'd say I first got my first bleed when I was around about 15. I would say pretty much every bleed I had, so I never went on contraception because, thankfully, looking back, I actually turned into an absolute psycho when I was on it. I did try it, but mentally, it just didn't work for me so I actually didn't do it. I think every bleed I had up until I started healing was probably extremely painful. I had dysmenorrhea the whole way through. It would be really foreign to have a monthly bleed that didn't cause me pain.   Tahlia Mynott: (10:01) In terms of the pain, it was like I'd have to take a day off work, for sure. There would be sometimes I vomited, but that wasn't often. But definitely enough pain to just keep me bedridden. So I knew that there was something not quite aligned, but I hadn't really had the support from doctors and I guess the people that I was seeing. I actually worked really closely with an acupuncturist and that was definitely just working out my hormones and my gut health and all of those things that were, I guess, the root cause of that was really pivotal for me.   Tahnee: (10:38) I mean, in terms of did that resolve before you conceived or was it something...   Tahlia Mynott: (10:44) Yes, yeah. I think, gosh, it's a while now ago before my first conception. Because my first conception too, I actually did miscarry, so that was around about five years ago, I think. I think I roughly had pain-free cycles for one to two years, which was incredible for me because I had gone around 14, 15 years of quite debilitating pain.   Tahnee: (11:11) Yeah. It's one of these things I'm super passionate about communicating to women is you don't have to be in pain. But I also really appreciate the effort and the energy involved in transforming that, and it's this touchy subject, I think, because you don't want to be like, "You don't have to bleed and suffer. I don't bleed and suffer." I'm not trying to be a patronising pain in the ass, but it's an option to dig really deep and work out what's going on.   Tahlia Mynott: (11:39) It's such and important thing you've said there too, because for many of those years too I thought it was normal. Because it's almost considered to be a normal aspect of your menstrual cycle, and it simply is not. It's okay to be having probably 30 to 60 minutes of very light cramping at the start where the uterus is starting to contract and the lining is shedding, but that really significant pain which quite a few women experience is simply not normal. We shouldn't be putting that in that category at all.   Tahnee: (12:15) Yeah. You're absolutely right in terms of how we culturally... It's such an interesting thing because you see... I remember tampon ads growing up and these girls like, "Woo," with their tampon or whatever. But then also, the flip side of that is all of my friends, my mum, everyone bitching about their period, how much pain they're in, their emotional state. It's like you grow up in this context of suffering and even the monthly curse and all of this is a narrative, certainly for me in the '90s.   Tahnee: (12:47) Then I get to university to study biology and the lecturers are telling us, "You don't need to have periods. Just use the pill to stop them." It's this really kind of interesting cultural thing around periods being so negative. And then full circle, here I am in my mid-30s going like... When my period came back after, I was like, "Oh. Hello, old friend." It's this really welcome visit.   Tahnee: (13:14) For me, it's become so much of a, Lara Briden uses the term report card, but it's this sense of if I get my period and I'm angry or I'm feeling stressed or I get a headache or something, I know I've pushed myself too hard the month before. And I know that I've overdone it, and it's just a reminder for me that this is coming up for me and I need to address this with my next cycle. I've found that to be such a useful kind of personal development tool, I suppose, in just being really conscious of those warning signs. I've never had worse than a headache, and I think it's such a helpful thing to know how to come back.   Tahnee: (13:55) So you did acupuncture. Were there other things? Like, you said you addressed your gut health, those kinds of things. What else was there that helped, do you think?   Tahlia Mynott: (14:05) Yeah. I think that in terms of are you speaking just in relation to my menstrual cycle or the preconception more so?   Tahnee: (14:11) Yeah. More the menstrual cycle healing. I guess I'm just really interested in if you have any tips or-   Tahlia Mynott: (14:18) Definitely, I mean coming from a background of nutrition as well, definitely the food aspect was really important for me. I had been vegetarian for about 20 years, maybe slightly less, and also vegan and raw vegan for around five or six years, so raw vegan for about 12 months of that. I started introducing animal foods back into my diet, which was definitely really important and quite gradual for me. First fish, then eggs, then liver capsules.   Tahlia Mynott: (14:52) Then actually not until I was pregnant with my second child did I actually start actually consuming meat, but that was definitely really supportive of my hormonal system just for me as an individual. I know that's really important to state probably while we're chatting is that everyone's very different. So for me as an individual, that was really supportive for me. Also, just specific foods that are in relation to hormones. It's just amazing. I'm always so amazed with myself and with clients and friends and all of that how powerful food as medicine is.   Tahlia Mynott: (15:32) There were specific herbs that I was taking. Specifically, Schisandra I found to be really incredible, and I got quite into all the medicinal mushrooms, which is actually how you and I first met many, many years ago. They definitely, particularly reishi, there's been a lot of studies around reishi and PCOS. Which just quickly on that topic, I didn't have any PCOS symptoms for around about two years prior to conceiving as well, so I believe I completely healed all of that as well.   Tahlia Mynott: (16:11) Some of the really amazing foods that I recommend for a lot of my clients are cruciferous vegetables in relation to hormonal health and always having them warmed or heated, cruciferous vegetables, trying never to have them raw. So things like broccoli, kale, cabbage, mustard greens. I know I'm missing some.   Tahnee: (16:32) Cauli.   Tahlia Mynott: (16:34) Yeah. There's such a big list of them. You can simply Google cruciferous vegetables. So ensuring that I had at least half a cup of cooked cruciferous vegetables daily and then also using specific seeds, which you would probably know about seed cycling. I actually have found that in my journey to be a really supportive tool too. So using specific seeds in the first two stages of the cycle and then others in the second two stages of the cycle to support both oestrogen and progesterone.   Tahlia Mynott: (17:07) For me, I had, which is quite common, I had more of an oestrogen dominance so I focus more on supporting progesterone and ensuring that I had really good luteal phases, which is that phase just before the bleed. Because if that phase isn't supported, then conception is really challenging. Also, you want it to all be in flow as well, but specifically for the preconception journey, it was important for me to have that phase really supported.   Tahnee: (17:38) Yeah. Seed cycling is sunflower seeds and pepitas. Actually, I've never personally done it, but I've read about it. But yeah, does it vary depending on the hormonal profile or is it pretty standard for the two phases? Or how do you approach that?   Tahlia Mynott: (17:53) No. It's standard for the two phases, and I hope I get this right.   Tahnee: (17:56) I won't hold you to it.   Tahlia Mynott: (18:00) I'm pretty sure and you could Google seed cycling. It's flax seeds and pepitas for the first phase, which is more about oestrogen support. And then it's sunflower and sesame seeds for the second phase, which is more about progesterone support. It's such a simple... I recommend usually a tablespoon of ground seeds per day and a mix of both of those.   Tahlia Mynott: (18:25) I say to my clients, "Just get a jar, roughly a 50/50 mix of your flaxseeds and your pepitas. Ground them up and then every day for those first two phases, so the follicular and the ovulation phase, be having a tablespoon of those seeds in whatever you can." Then similar with the sesame and sunflower in the progesterone supporting phase. So in your luteal and your menstruation phase, have a tablespoon of those ground every day.   Tahnee: (18:53) Typically, if people have longer luteal phases or whatever, it doesn't matter? They're just still carrying on with that process through the whole time?   Tahlia Mynott: (18:59) Yes. I still usually get them doing those things just because they're supportive overall anyway of colon health and zinc levels, which are really important for the menstruation cycle as well. Yeah, generally speaking, I would have them doing that whichever way their hormonal profile is going.   Tahnee: (19:20) Yeah. I think seeds are such an underrated superfood. We're all into these bougie and expensive things, but it's like you've got this incredibly nutritious, easy to obtain, quite cheap products there. Yeah, really excited to talk about those. One thing, I mean, I really got out of your book is the simplicity of, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but I mean it in a, thank God, I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen kind of a way.   Tahnee: (19:50) But I think being a mum yourself and actually, yes, you're a clinical nutritionist, but you know what it's like to be busy and you know what it's like to have a business and kids. It's like there was a real sense of reality in the book. Everything I could make and I could see myself making. I'm a good cook, but I'm like, "I don't have time." I get home at 5:00 and I have to have dinner on the table really fast. Yeah, is that something you've picked up from clinic is that you have to be realistic about what people can achieve?   Tahlia Mynott: (20:20) 100%. Honestly, it starts with yourself, right? So even myself, I'm very similar to you in that it's like I don't have the time to be creating extravagant meals. And if I'm frank, I actually don't enjoy it. I would prefer to be reading a book, doing some yoga, going for a swim in the beach, all those types of things rather than just spending hours in the kitchen. I mean sure, every now and then I love spending it, but on a daily basis that's not where I want to be focusing most of my time.   Tahlia Mynott: (20:50) I'm so glad that you found that with the book. Because that was something that was really important to both Caitlin and I, who wrote the book, was that the meals, although we ensured that the nutrition profile was there and that the meals, they have the ingredients to support the postpartum phase, we wanted to ensure that they were simple and the ingredients were easy to obtain. And also, that they wouldn't take long in the kitchen and yeah, so that they weren't overwhelming because I think that's really important during this time.   Tahlia Mynott: (21:24) You don't want to be opening a book, and any time in a mother's life, you don't want to be opening a recipe book or any type of book and looking at the recipe and just feeling totally overwhelmed by 20 ingredients and a method that goes over three pages. And you're just like, "Oh my God."   Tahnee: (21:42) I mean you've had the raw phase, I've had the raw phase, the sprouting. God bless us and I mean, I still value that kind of food. We eat sprouts and things, but we do tend to buy them more these days. But I think there's just this reality around how much time food prep can take. The thing I liked is everything's really nutritionally dense. It's not like it's toast and toast for dinner. But yeah, it's really nutritionally dense.   Tahnee: (22:10) I loved the key that you guys had with anti-inflammatory and all the different things. I thought that was really helpful. And I really liked how you classified the three sections of healing as well postpartum, to get a little bit into the book, but that was something I thought was really smart. Because yeah, there are really quite different phases, and I can even think about them even now. I have had these times where I've been like, "Oh, I'm back in this quite depleted state and I almost need to address myself like I'm postpartum again." Then it's like, no, I'm really abundant and vital and I can be a bit more loose with eating cold foods or whatever.   Tahnee: (22:48) I think it's something people can take into their lives and be like, if you're convalescing or you've just been through some kind of big emotional process, lost somebody, whatever, you can go through using that same structure. Yeah, I thought that was a really cool way and a bit different for me. I've not seen that in other postpartum books.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:05) Yeah. That was... Sorry.   Tahnee: (23:08) How did you get to that? No, no.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:09) I was just going to add to your question without you asking.   Tahnee: (23:11) Well, you're reading my mind, so just go for it.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:17) That's actually Caitlin had thought of that. That was an element that she brought to the book which I really loved as well. Yeah, we talk about four stages of the healing stages of the postpartum over the period over five weeks. Yeah, we've segmented different recipes into each phase as to what's going on during that phase. Obviously, it's amazing that you've actually...   Tahlia Mynott: (23:47) What we were envisioning too is that, of course, this book is for postpartum, but this book can be used at any time that you are feeling slightly overwhelmed or depleted or your immune function is low. Whatever is going on, these types of foods are really supportive of that phase. The reason, I guess, why we segmented it as well was because for me personally, and I don't know if you can attest to this, but in the phase of postpartum, making decisions for self, because we've got so much going on, is sometimes tricky.   Tahlia Mynott: (24:23) Even segmenting it is like, okay, there's not as many recipes so you're not going to open up the recipe part section of the book and be like, "Oh my gosh, there's 50 recipes. Which one do I do?" Each section has, I think it's around 10 recipes in each section, so it also takes a little bit of the overwhelm out of it as well and the decision making. But you can switch to any of those sections and we do say at the start to use your intuition about what you're feeling as well. I don't like being rigid at all, so we're not saying, "Hey, you have to be doing those recipes in that week and then when you switch, you need to be doing the recipes the next week." But if it's supportive of you to actually just be sticking to those weeks and those recipes, then absolutely.   Tahlia Mynott: (25:07) As it gets further on, so in week five we do talk a little bit more about recipes that are a little bit more cooling on the system, like smoothies and salads, which we always say to try and have room temperature. But those types of recipes you probably, majority of people, again not all but majority of people really don't want to be doing those types of recipes in relation to healing and all of that in those first two weeks or three weeks which are really vital for the healing of the body.   Tahnee: (25:36) Yeah. I mean, I picked that up from your book and it's great. There's such an emphasis on it because we both know from all the traditions, staying warm is so important postpartum. Can you speak a little bit to that just from your experience and what you've seen in clients and your own research? What's the meaning of that?   Tahlia Mynott: (25:57) Yeah. It comes from a couple of traditions, mainly the TCM background and the Ayurvedic, which I can't speak to too much because that's definitely not where I've come from in terms of my learnings. But obviously, I've had a browse over them over the years. But all of the traditions just speak of the importance of staying warm during this time, and the reason is to keep the warmth inside the body in relation to healing.   Tahlia Mynott: (26:24) That cool energy can cause, is it vata in the system? I think it's more vata in the terms of Ayurveda. That can be that feeling of feeling quite ungrounded or a little bit sketchy, and that can already be there in that postpartum phase, so you also want to calm that as well. Yeah, it's important for healing not just of the organs and everything that's going on in relation to the uterus and all of that, but it's also really healing in terms of the mental state as well and for production of milk if you are breastfeeding. There's many elements to keeping warmth in.   Tahlia Mynott: (27:05) Obviously, we talk of it in terms of food and in the front section we do talk a little bit in terms of some traditions where they use scarves and beanies and all of that. Obviously, it's relative to your climate. So where we are, it's a little bit more tropical. When I birthed both my boys, it was beautiful spring and summer days. I definitely didn't want to be getting a beanie and scarf on, but I'm sure that I kept warm in terms of...   Tahlia Mynott: (27:32) Actually, even one thing I'd love to chat about is the postpartum pads. Even with the postpartum pads, I see a lot of people talking about them now, which is incredible in terms of using witch hazel and aloe vera, all of these things, which are amazing. But there's quite an emphasis about putting them in the freezer I've seen going around. Even something like that, I think it's really important that women are actually not putting them in the freezer and actually having them warm so that the warmth isn't getting inside the uterus, which then can affect the healing somewhat.   Tahlia Mynott: (28:09) Yeah, you don't necessarily have to be covering yourself up completely but just little elements of your postpartum phase, thinking about trying not to allow coolness into the system.   Tahnee: (28:22) Yeah. I mean, that's a real issue. Even icing of injury is not okay in Chinese medicine, which obviously is really common practise here. They say that it causes chi and blood stagnation, which leads to slow healing. I've had the experience of twisting my ankle, so I didn't ice it. I actually heated it and I had heaps of acupuncture, and it healed really, really fast. We took lots of herbs and all those things. I'm like, really had that experience of the warmth is super important. And like you, I had Aiya in the bloody peak summer. It was impossible to wear clothes, but I did make an effort to still wear socks and stay pretty warm and obviously try to keep the food as warm as possible as well.   Tahnee: (29:04) Yeah, I think it's just I've noticed a huge difference in my digestion from my 20s when I'd drink smoothies at least a couple of times a week, maybe daily, and cold, icy, thick, those delicious smoothies. But yeah, they just ruined my digestion and I'd be bloated. I'd have cold poos. It was just not a good situation. Yeah, I've really noticed a difference with myself. You mentioned that in the book that postpartum is a time of weakened digestive fire, so it's a time of convalescence and recovery. It's not a time to be using your resources digesting or using your resources doing even too much thinking or anything else. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to be mindful of that kind of stuff.   Tahlia Mynott: (29:48) Yeah. It's really like gentle, gentle, gentle with everything is how I think of it. Gentle with the food that you're consuming. Gentle with the visitors that you're allowing. Gentle with the warmth that's around you. Yeah, just keeping yourself in that beautiful cocoon for as long as possible.   Tahnee: (30:07) Yeah. That's actually, non-visitor boundaries were really great and I think a really important one to read to everybody.   Tahlia Mynott: (30:15) That was actually a big learning for me and why I really wanted to add that in there. So yeah, there is a page about visitor boundaries and we make some suggestions and questions in there. Because that was a big learning for me in my journey of postpartum with my firstborn, Luca, where I allowed people. And it was only family, but I did allow family. He was born at 2:00 AM after 30 hours of labour, so I was obviously exhausted but also running on a lot of adrenaline.   Tahlia Mynott: (30:42) I had family come for the next couple of days, and I significantly noticed my depletion more so after having visitors there. I'm a very hostess of the house too, so it was me going up and getting cups of tea and all those types of things. So the second time round we didn't even have really family or visitors for I think around three to four weeks. We had beautiful people dropping food to us, but they rarely came in or we might just say hi through the door. Just looking at both those postpartum journeys and the second one I also had a toddler running around too, but I actually felt so much more supported in that second postpartum journey than the first.   Tahlia Mynott: (31:29) It's a big learning. I went into that first one with... I had read a lot and I had studied a lot around it, so I had some ideas about it. But it's not until you go through it that you actually really understand how significant and dynamic that phase is.   Tahnee: (31:48) I was chatting to Caitlin about that when she came round the other day to drop the books off, your co-author. And I thought, it's beautiful that you have both perspectives. You have someone who's a doula and who cares for women but who hasn't really had the experience, and then you've been through it and you have that lived visceral experience of what's happened. Yeah, I actually think it's a really beautiful combination of energies because you've got that maiden energy in there and then the mother energy. I think it's really special.   Tahnee: (32:18) I think that transition, and you speak to that in the book as well, Caitlin and I were talking about it. It's like you know it's going to be big, but until you actually live it, you don't know how it's going to be big and what's going to show up for you. Yeah, I was surprised. I felt a little grief actually before Aiya was born, not so much when she was born. But I do remember looking at her and being like, "Oh my God, I've signed up for a lifetime of care and maybe I'm not ready for that."   Tahnee: (32:43) I was like, "Ah!" And I didn't have all these blissful... I mean, I had a little blissful feelings, but I wasn't feeling them toward to her at the time. I was like, "Oh my God, this is a big commitment." That shifted over a few days, but I'll never forget that. And I was like, "Well, that's not what I expected when I looked at my new baby." Yeah, I think it's a really interesting-   Tahlia Mynott: (33:09) But it's real and I'm sure that a lot of women experience that too. I actually remember my partner very significantly experiencing that. So like I said, Luca was born at 2:00 AM, and we birthed at home. It was all beautiful and amazing. We blissfully feel asleep. We woke up in the morning and I remember him looking at Luca. I still remember this and Luca's now nearly four, so this was nearly four years ago. He looked at Luca and looked at me and he's like, "Whoa, this is a lot, isn't it?" I'm like, "Um, just processing this now? Great."   Tahnee: (33:49) Well, it's funny because I think too, and I've had a really different journey in each pregnancy and I'd love to hear a little bit about the differences, other things you learned from postpartum that was different for you from Luca to Oka and also your pregnancies. I had such, honestly, blissful pregnancy with Aiya. I was floating around like a fairy the whole time just being like, "Life is so magical." I just was in awe of my body and it was a very psychic experience for me. It was really different.   Tahnee: (34:24) Whereas this one, I've been angry. Physically, I feel fine but I've been an emotional kind of machine of rage. Yeah, it's such a different pregnancy for me so I'm curious for you, how did those pregnancies alter your perspective and clinical practise and what you're sharing with us today? How did that change for you?   Tahlia Mynott: (34:44) I'm always so grateful for every experience I have, particularly in this women's health region, because it allows me to have so much more empathy for other women, although I did hit a point a couple years ago where I was like, "Okay, I'm done with the lessons. Let's just stop for a little bit, universe. I think I've got enough empathy right now." But I actually, so I've been pregnant three times.   Tahlia Mynott: (35:09) I miscarried the first pregnancy and that was such a pivotal moment and experience for me, which actually had a really positive outcome. Obviously, at the time there was a lot of grief, but I now can see why that was part of my story and why I needed to have that as part of my story.   Tahnee: (35:29) Do you mind speaking to that a little? I really feel passionately that we don't talk about miscarriage enough, and you don't have to share anything that you're not comfortable with. But it's this one in four women, you say it in your book, experience miscarriage. That's a quarter of us walking around with this story. We don't speak of spirit babies as real babies even though they are. I know in certain circles we do, but it's something I've really observed.   Tahnee: (35:56) I did a women's circle with 60 women last year in November two days before my wedding. I reckon at least 45 of those women had had a miscarriage or some kind of traumatic stillbirth or something that just was huge and so much to carry. I was humbled, really humbled by how common it was and how many women in that room had shared that. I'd be really interested if you could go deeper on that topic. I know it's a bit of a segue.   Tahlia Mynott: (36:30) Yeah, absolutely. I'm very open with my life.   Tahnee: (36:30) Fortunately.   Tahlia Mynott: (36:37) Yeah. You're right, it's not something that's really commonly talked about and happens to so many women and I think something that we need to be more open about and real about. It was actually such a healing component for me was I just remember getting onto the computer and Googling miscarriage stories and trying to find as many miscarriage stories as I could to read. I was ringing friends that I knew who had had it and I also had friends reach out to me who I didn't know who had had it say, "Oh, I had a miscarriage too. I would ring them and just listen to their stories. And actually, having those women and their journeys actually really helped me as well.   Tahlia Mynott: (37:20) I guess it was an interesting time because there it was definitely I had done the preconception journey, so in my head I was like, "Yeah, I've got this. I'm all good. Everything's sweet." Then I actually even got through the first trimester, so I miscarried the baby at 14 weeks so I was just into that second trimester. I guess also I'd hit that point of thinking, "Everything's totally... " The first trimester can be a little bit like, "Oh, I hope it's okay. Yeah, everything's fine." But once you get into that second trimester there's definitely a relief, I guess, or for me a little bit of relief like, "Okay, yeah. Everything should be sweet from here on in."   Tahlia Mynott: (38:02) So miscarrying at 14 weeks was definitely a surprise, but I actually intuitively knew that something wasn't right at about nine weeks. When I miscarried at 14 weeks, they did an ultrasound. And when they did the ultrasound, they actually, the guy said, "Oh, the sac's only actually nine weeks old." It was such an interesting... At the time, obviously I couldn't really focus and think about all that. But looking back on it, I was like, "Wow, I intuitively knew that something wasn't right from that nine weeks."   Tahlia Mynott: (38:35) I started bleeding a couple of days before I miscarried, and I had a bit of cramping throughout that first trimester, which can be completely normal. I actually had quite a bit of cramping with my recent pregnancy, Oka. It can be completely normal, so for anyone listening that's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm cramping," that's okay. I just want to say that so no one's freaking out. But yeah, I had quite a bit of cramping leading up.   Tahlia Mynott: (38:59) Then I remember we were at a friend's house and I'd had a bit of brown spotting. I knew deep down but I was also being optimistic and hoping that it wasn't just my mind playing tricks. I was like, "Oh, maybe that's just a bit of stagnation from my last bleed and that's okay just because there's obviously a bit of weight with my uterus and baby and all of that kind of stuff." Then I remember yeah, being at a friend's house and wiping and seeing the red blood, and I knew. I did have quite a bit of cramping as well, and I knew red blood, cramping, those two together probably not a good sign.   Tahlia Mynott: (39:34) Over the course of the next 24 hours, it did take a while, the bleeding started to intensify. We went to hospital just to confirm that I was having a miscarriage and then went back home. It was actually a full moon the day that I miscarried, which being in this field as well and very connected to the moons and the menstrual cycle, and the full moon is often, as you would know, in spiritual talk the letting go.   Tahlia Mynott: (40:06) It was a full moon and I'd found out that the baby, there was no heartbeat. But my body was still holding on to the baby, so we went to the beach that day and obviously cried and kept setting intentions of... I really wanted to miscarry naturally. I didn't want to have to go to hospital, although I had booked in for a day in say two days later. The doctor really wanted me to book it in the next day because it was actually a Sunday that we went in, so they couldn't do it on a Sunday. I was like, "No, no. I just want to give it a little bit of time and see if this can happen naturally."   Tahlia Mynott: (40:42) So yes, we went to the beach that day, got home that night. Then I really started to bleed quite heavily. There's two really significant parts to it. I still remember bleeding. For some reason, Scott and I had not got pads. Even though we knew I was going to miscarry, we hadn't got pads. So he went out to get pads, and I was sitting on the bed just on some towels. I actually just remember I had beautiful music on and so it was like we'd set up this space for a home birth almost but obviously thinking of it as a miscarriage.   Tahlia Mynott: (41:21) Mentally, we were somewhat prepared. I remember sitting on the bed and when the bleed really came actually feeling a sense of relief and just a real letting go. It happened on that full moon, so letting go and actually felt really at peace with it. I can still significantly tune back into that moment. Most of my miscarriage did happen at home and I passed the sac at home, which was really beautiful that that happened there.   Tahlia Mynott: (41:51) But it did get quite intense and that can be quite normal for... I've forgotten the phrase exactly. Oh, a missed miscarriage is what they usually call it where the sac is actually or the baby has actually passed a lot earlier than what you've miscarried. So there can be a lot of tissue and stagnation and a lot of things happening in the uterus. The bleed was very substantial for me. I was losing clots the size of my hand nearly every 15 to 20 minutes, so we did have to go to hospital. I spent 16 hours in emergency, but that also was a very significant time for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (42:35) I had had quite an aversion to hospitals in general growing up with what my mom had been through. Yeah, I actually felt, anxiety is not something that I really attune to too much, but I actually would have anxiety going near hospitals. When I fell pregnant that first time, I had a planned home birth, but I definitely had this fear around hospitals. And even when I was miscarrying, I really was trying to stay at home, but I did call my home birth midwife and she was like, "Look, you're bleeding a lot, losing these clots. It's definitely important for you to get to emergency now."   Tahlia Mynott: (43:12) My partner was like, "Look, we really need to go." And I was feeling quite light-headed obviously and not amazing. Just even actually going to emergency was a big component for me, but the women that I had, the nurses that I somehow manifested on that night were just the most beautiful women and they were like my mothers. My mum wasn't near. Just my partner was with me at the time. They really, their support was just so pivotal in my journey.   Tahlia Mynott: (43:43) Also, I had quite a significant amount of pain, which can be similar if you've had a missed miscarriage and even for other miscarriages because the uterus is really contracting to get out that stagnation and tissue and all the blood. But I was really rejecting the pain medication. I was like, "No, no, no." And they actually had to transfer me to a hospital because they thought I might have to have a blood transfusion, so they transferred me to the hospital. And during the transfer I had this really beautiful ambulance nurse, doctor, whatever he was, next to me, probably nurse or paramedic. I was breathing through them and I was like, "It's okay." Because I was having almost contractions, and I was just breathing through them.   Tahlia Mynott: (44:28) He could obviously tell I was in some kind of discomfort, and he's like, "Would you like some pain relief?" I was like, "No, no." I still remember this. He said to me, "Look, I understand where you're coming from, but there is a time and a place, and I have a feeling that for where you are now, this would be really supportive of you." I just remember being like, "Okay, yep. I think that the pain relief would be really helpful." I'm so grateful for that because it was really helpful for that, and I went on for another 16 hours of that so it was quite intense. Yeah, it was really supportive of me.   Tahlia Mynott: (45:08) I left that experience with just seeing the way that in crisis the medical system can be really amazing and supportive. I let go of a lot of fear, so I believe that my next two home births were so magical and amazing because I really had dispersed that fear of the hospital system during that miscarriage. So it was such a pivotal component of my entirety of birthing, I believe.   Tahnee: (45:39) Yeah. It's really powerful, I think, and something I pick up a lot on in this community that we're in where there's this right and wrong way to birth or to miscarry or whatever. Really, to actually have the freedom to do the thing, the home birth or whatever, you do need to have, I think, an acceptance of the potential outcomes which might mean transfer and might mean being in a hospital.   Tahnee: (46:08) I know for me, that was a big part of my home birth journey was really sitting in, am I going to be okay in myself if I end up birthing in a hospital? It took me a few days of really sitting with that to get to a place of like, yes, that's a yes for me. Because there was resistance and, I guess, an ego attachment to birthing in a certain way and all that kind of stuff and also not even wanting to let it in because I didn't want to pollute my mind with that kind of thought or whatever.   Tahnee: (46:40) I've spoken to a lot of women that have miscarried, especially in the last 10 years, and a lot of them say that it's more painful than childbirth, which I find really interesting. But I imagine the hormonal cascade is different. There's not that sort of trigger from the baby and all of those other things that happen with birth and how long the process can be and how tricky it can be. It's not always straightforward miscarriage, so I really appreciate you sharing all of that because I know it's a lot. But, yeah.   Tahnee: (47:13) So you had the miscarriage. How much longer after that was Luca conceived? Is it another year? I'm trying to remember your timeline.   Tahlia Mynott: (47:24) I conceived Luca about eight months after that miscarriage. I did another six months of rebuilding myself, so abstained from intercourse for six months and I really didn't want to conceive straight away. But I definitely have many clients and friends, and I have a lot of compassion around this, which again, I'm really grateful for, I can understand why women want to conceive the next month because this bizarre timeframe lapse where you're like, "Oh, I should be 14 weeks pregnant and I'm not pregnant. Oh, I should be 15 now and I'm not pregnant at all." So I have compassion around that, but for me it was really important to wait for...   Tahlia Mynott: (48:11) The egg that is released from the ovary, the largest stage of maturation, is around 90 days, so it was really important for me to wait at least one of those cycles of 90 days. But I actually decided to wait two of those cycles of 90 days. Because I had such an extensive bleed, I actually was anaemic as well, so there was a lot of blood building that I was doing during that time as well. So lots and lots of building in those six months and then yeah, it took about two to three months to conceive Luca.   Tahnee: (48:42) That's interesting. So you've done the preconception and a lot of that is detoxifying and cleansing. And then you've had the miscarriage and then you're rebuilding, so you've had this kind of... Because that's something Mason and I talk about a lot with people, it's like, "Yes, it's great to cleanse, but if you don't have that phase of making sure your tissue's really strong, making sure your nutrition is really high, to go from cleansing into conception can be, I think, not a great thing."   Tahnee: (49:11) Yeah, have you had that experience with... Because I've seen it with a lot of people we know who live a really high alkaline, clean diet, and then have a lot of trouble coming to conception time. I'm like, "Good time to build up some fat tissue and some muscle and reserves."   Tahlia Mynott: (49:28) Yes. That was definitely a component of my preconception was building as well, but I have to admit that definitely I was more focused on the building between those two pregnancies and the importance of that 100% and ensuring fat tissue and iron and blood building and zinc. Yeah, there's so many components of that building that are really, really important, definitely.   Tahnee: (49:58) And do you work with someone or do you do your own care? Because I mean, I'll usually order blood tests and stuff but typically do the interpretations and things myself. What's your approach to that? Do you tend to... Other people love support, so I don't want to say there's a right or wrong. Yeah.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:14) Yeah. I do, absolutely, that. I actually work with an incredible doctor up here. Well, in terms of working with her, I'm not working in clinic with her, but she knows who I am and I send a lot of clients to her. Yeah, we're looking at people's blood profiles and then suggesting from there, so she'll do all the blood profile panels for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:34) I think it's important in these phases too, so whether you've had a miscarriage or you're in your preconception phase is actually finding a team of support. I don't think you can support all elements that need to be supported with just one person. I think it's important to have a team of either an acupuncturist or a naturopath or a nutritionist.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:57) Yeah, there's so many elements to this. A lot of women come to me and they want to fall pregnant in the next month. That's not my ideal. My ideal would be probably six to 12 months to work on some things, but you've got to also be supportive of where that person is at as well. Yeah, if they have the time and the space, then having a support team I think is really crucial.   Tahnee: (51:23) Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm big on having those. Especially body work practitioners and energetic practitioners, I think to me are amazing. I see an acupuncturist fortnightly for this pregnancy and I did similar with Aiya. I guess I'm curious about that with Oka, did you guys do a similar preconception? We were a lot gentler, I noticed, with this baby in our preconception approach that we just really took it a lot easier. I wonder if you guys were the same or if you still had quite an intensive preconception phase?   Tahlia Mynott: (51:54) No. We were exactly the same. I actually was still breastfeeding Luca when I fell pregnant with Oka as well, so there was definitely no detoxifying happening there. But pregnancy and birth is one of the biggest detoxifications of a woman anyway, which is why I really like to support women in trying to do some gentle detoxifying before that. But because I'd had the miscarry as well, I actually felt like, and this might for some people be quite triggering, but for me it was almost a bit of a cleanse as well. Obviously, at the time not so much but in hindsight.   Tahlia Mynott: (52:39) Because I'd had those processes as well, yeah, I was super gentle with Oka. It was more about building because I was still breastfeeding and obviously giving a lot to Luca at that time, which in hindsight, I'm not sure that I would fall pregnant again while breastfeeding because I definitely noticed the difference in my pregnancies. And potentially, I was still slightly depleted from the breastfeeding, so going into Oka's pregnancy, yeah, it was different to Luca's.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:15) Luca's was more like your Aiya's one that you mentioned, so really blissful, felt amazing. Was doing hill walks all the time around our property. Was just in love with life and just actually wanted to be pregnant forever. I was like, "This is incredible. I feel amazing."   Tahnee: (53:29) Right. I know.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:30) Yeah. I actually was worried at the end because he was 41 plus five. I was a little bit concerned that I was holding onto him because I was loving it so much. I was definitely not like those women that are like, "Okay, I'm so ready to birth." I was actually like, "No, I love this. I'm not sure I want to get rid of this."   Tahnee: (53:48) Yeah. Aiya was 42 and I wanted the same. I'm like, yeah, it was such a nice experience.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:55) Yeah. I mean, Luca... Sorry, Oka. Oka still had its beauty, but I definitely felt more tired. And I definitely felt that real hormonal surge at the start, and emotionally that was quite challenging for me, particularly for that first trimester. I didn't have anything severe, but there was definitely a lot more niggles with Oka.   Tahlia Mynott: (54:25) I did prenatal yoga with both my babies, and I remember the first one. Our teacher, Esther, who's incredible, she would go around and just say, "Is anyone experiencing reflux or hip joint pain," or whatever it was. With Luca, I was like, "No, no. I feel great." Then with Oka, I was like, "Yep, yep. Oh, yeah. That's me. Yep, that's me again."   Tahnee: (54:50) All of the above.   Tahlia Mynott: (54:52) Yeah. Very minor but still, there was just a lot more niggles with him. Obviously, the body had done it all before, and I obviously didn't have the strength that I'd had going into Luca's in terms of my movement. Yeah, I'm sure there were many elements to that, and I was a little bit older as well.   Tahnee: (55:12) Did you approach Luca's postpartum with all that in mind? I'm sorry, Oka's postpartum, a little bit more, I guess gently? Because that's something I remember with Aiya, being very aware of all of the should-dos and then still, "But it's such a nice day. I'm just going to go to the beach." Or, "Oh, I'm going to go to the markets and catch up with people." Just letting it slip a little bit because I felt so good and it felt easy.   Tahnee: (55:41) But I think in hindsight, I'm like, we travelled when I was three months for a month and things like that, which they were really exhausting times. I think I'm definitely gearing up to be a lot more low energy this time around, so I wonder if that was the same sort of thing with you?   Tahlia Mynott: (55:57) I absolutely did that and was very similar. We've got very similar journeys. I felt so great with Luca that even when I was having the visitors, I continued to have the visitors because I felt really good. But in hindsight, yeah, it was definitely taking a lot from me. So with Oka, I was much more gentler. We didn't have the visitors. The foods I was consuming were definitely slightly different to what they had been with Luca.   Tahlia Mynott: (56:27) I was asking, so that was a big thing for me, so I really struggled to ask for support from people. But with Oka, I was definitely asking for more support. We actually even got a cleaner, which our house is tiny, so I was a little bit embarrassed by this one. But just the support of that cleaner once a week was really important for us. I just didn't have to do those things and could solely focus on the children.   Tahlia Mynott: (56:52) One thing that was really important for us was just really encapsulating that family unit. And for Luca as well, he'd just become a big brother and I didn't want too many people coming into that energy and space. I really wanted him to feel included and that he was also really important and also for him and Oka to form their bond. So we encapsulated our little space or house for that month. Yeah, that was very different to how I was with Luca.   Tahlia Mynott: (57:22) Even with my movement, I think with Luca, because I felt so amazing, I started not vigorous movement, but I started walking probably a week postpartum, doing walks. It's quite hilly where we are, but with Oka, I was just so much more gentle. I did a lot of five minutes of stretching and yoga, but really hardly moving. Yeah, I noticed such a significant difference in just that, in my movement practises and how that supported me in that second postpartum.   Tahnee: (57:51) It's such a shift and I think I relate to all of that. I've had to let go of how, I guess, pre-children and being a yoga teacher, because I was full time moving seven days a week a lot of the day. It's been full circle for me back to an office job, back to having a kid to run around after but not as much time to practise. It's like I might get an hour in a day if I'm lucky these days. I think it's a really humbling experience and also, yeah, recognising how much the body changes after birth.   Tahnee: (58:24) I loved that you guys address that in the book where you speak about closing the bones and how important that is. Because that was one of the things for me, I think my pelvis changed dramatically after having Aiya, and I just think those things, they're not addressed enough in our culture around... You guys emphasise this a lot. It's like birth and the child and the baby is really emphasised, but there's culture in France where they give women pelvic floor rehab for, I think it's six sessions for free as a part of their government healthcare. It's like I've had to pay for that. It's fine, but it's like, that's not cheap.   Tahnee: (59:02) It's made a huge difference to my overall wellbeing, but it's like if I didn't have that education and know to seek out that care... I have friends that have whispered to me like, "Oh, yeah. I'm 45 and I still wet my pants most of the time." It's like, why aren't we talking about this? You can't go back and jump up and down at the gym without a pelvic floor. You need to restore that tissue. Yeah, I think it's a really big and challenging conversation.   Tahnee: (59:29) But yeah, a lot of the stuff you speak about, the rebozo, which I hadn't actually heard of, that sounds cool. These things are all designed to restore the integrity of the pelvis and the SI joint and to help to start to bring that pelvic floor tissue back into place.   Tahlia Mynott: (59:44) There are so many amazing supportive tools from many traditions and even what's available here. But yeah, many women aren't really aware of all these supportive tools, so we definitely have tried to encapsulate them in the front section of the book. I'm sure we've missed something. I'm sure there's other amazing supportive tools, but they're the ones that we know of. Yeah, it's so important.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:00:08) It's that whole concept too of a nourished mum nourishes her family and children. Yeah, I just want to scream that every day. I just think that's so important to ensure that the mother is nourished. It's not just about what food she's eating. It's about the people that are around her and it's about her body, which you would know more about than me with your line of expertise. But yeah, all those elements are just so significant and so important.   Tahnee: (01:00:36) I think that's what I really enjoyed about your book was yeah, I guess I had read a lot of postpartum books and they're either a lot of theory, which is really great, or they're sort of... But it's almost yeah, it's written by women who know it, who've been through it. And I think the things you've chosen and highlighted are really, like belly binding, those kinds of things, they're really accessible. Abhyanga postpartum, really accessible. These are all things that you don't need to spend a lot of money on. You can tend to yourself or have someone tend to you easily at home. Yeah. I'm really happy for you guys.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:01:13) Thanks, darling. Hopefully, all those things are really simple too. That was a really important... along with the recipes. All of it, you can go into so much detail in all these areas and aspects of everything we talked about today, but I don't actually like to do that. I don't like going into such detail because I sometimes believe you're speaking to the minority when you go into all that and it can be a little bit overwhelming.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:01:37) So I like to take it back to what's really, really simple, and that's a lot of the basis of the book too. I hope that all these things are accessible and simple because the last thing we want to do is overwhelm any woman with these tools and practises and food.   Tahnee: (01:01:53) Yeah. No, I definitely feel that. It's in depth, but it's an easy read. It's digestible. It's not, like you were saying before we got on this call, often you get a postpartum book and it's like, "Wow, that all looks amazing, but I'm not going to do any of it." I'm sitting here with a baby and I can't move for the next two hours.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:16) Totally.   Tahnee: (01:02:17) Yeah. Gotta keep it realistic, I think. Yeah. So, where can people get a copy of this? Because you guys self-publish, which is awesome and the way of the future for someone who's from publishing.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:28) Which is quite a journey in itself, which you obviously know, but an incredible one. We learn a lot of lessons on the way. We're still learning all the time. But you can purchase it via our website, which is www.nourishingthosewhonurture.com. We've had such an overwhelming amount of support, which has been absolutely beautiful, so we've actually had a few wholesalers take us on. Yeah, which is incredible.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:58) We actually haven't reached out to anyone because we've just been overwhelmed by all the support we're getting. There's a few fertility practitioners and actually TCM practitioners and a few other places you might see us, but mainly via our website at this point.   Tahnee: (01:03:15) Yeah. That's so great. And you guys are on social media. I'll link to all of your different platforms, but, so your work, if people want to talk to you about your nutrition work, that's through Luna Holistic, yeah?   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:27) Yeah. That's @lunaholisticnutrition. I've actually in my bio got all my other little avenues in there as well, so you can link to me through all those spots. Yeah.   Tahnee: (01:03:38) Okay, awesome. Yeah. Well, I think we're going to have Caitlin on the podcast as well because-   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:42) Amazing.   Tahnee: (01:03:42) ... she's got her own crazy journey to share.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:45) And she is so incredible, Caitlin, who I co-authored it with. She's just, you know those women who

We have one of our favourite returning guests on the podcast today, entrepreneur and practicing MD Molly Maloof, who is back this time going straight to the heart of health and happiness; Love, sex, relationships, and the harmonious intersection of medicine and love. One of the many reasons we love the work of Dr. Molly is she's all about maximising potential and better function within the human body. Evolving in her practice and true to form with her ever-innovative mind, Dr. Molly's work has recently taken a more focused move into the space of relationships and how the quality of our close relationships significantly determines our long-term health. Healthy relationships help us cope better and defuse the external stresses of life; So why not focus on improving relationships? Inspired by years of experience and research in psychedelics, the neurobiology of love, and drug-assisted therapy, Dr. Molly is developing a company that aims to improve relationships and strengthen bonds through drug-assisted therapy. A complete paradigm shift in the way we view modern medicine and an upgrade to the human condition and relationships. As always with Mason and Dr. Molly, this episode is energised and thought-provoking. They explore the topics of psychedelic-assisted therapies, sexual dysfunction and the root causes of relationship problems, the history of MDMA and couples therapy, where modern medicine is falling short, and so much more. Tune in for good convo and sovereign health.   "I think technology is where we see these bonds decay. We're seeing people give up their marriages, we're seeing people walk away from long-term relationships, and we're seeing families and children affected. One of the most adverse childhood experiences a kid will have is a divorce. Why are we not looking at these fundamental facets of society and saying, gosh, why can't we do better?" And maybe there's a way we can do better that's ethical, honourable, that's scientifically sound, and will leave people better than we found them".   - Dr. Molly Maloof     Mason and Molly discuss:   Natural Aphrodisiacs. Entactogens (empathogens) The psychedelic movement. Psychedelic assisted therapy. Combatting stress through love. Relationships, community, and happiness. How relationships affect long-term health. Exploring root trauma and healing sexuality. Technology and the decay of relationships. Sexual dysfunction and relationship problems. Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Oxytocin, and Serotonin.   Who is Molly Maloof? Dr. Molly Maloof's goal is to maximise human potential by dramatically extending the human healthspan through medical technology, scientific wellness, and educational media. Her fascination with innovation has transformed her private medical practice, focused on providing health optimisation and personalised medicine to San Francisco & Silicon Valley investors, executives, and entrepreneurs. Molly's iterative programs take the quantified self to the extreme through comprehensive testing of clinical chemistry, metabolomics, microbiome, biometrics, and genomic markers.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Cordyceps Deer Antler Molly's Twitter   Molly's Linkedin  Molly's Website Molly's Facebook Molly's Instagram  Psychedelic News Hour with Dr Molly Maloof Maximising Your Human Potential with Dr. Molly Maloof (EP#47) Spiritual Awakening and Biohacking with Dr. Molly Maloof (EP#108)   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: (00:03) Molly, how are you?   Molly Maloof: (00:05) I'm alive and well in the middle of a chaotic world. And somehow I feel like one of the more sane people in the room these days.   Mason: (00:14) You're the sane person. It's great because I like the fact that the sane person and one of the sane people on Instagram. I love your Instagram endlessly.   Molly Maloof: (00:23) Thanks.   Mason: (00:23) And I love you're the doctor whose drugs I want to take.   Molly Maloof: (00:28) Yeah, right. Like I kept on asking myself, "What if we made drugs that people wanted to take? What if we made drugs that actually improve the human condition?" What if we made drugs that actually improved resilience and improved our relationships? How come that's not medicine?   Mason: (00:46) Now, let me start with this little light question.   Molly Maloof: (00:48) Yeah.   Mason: (00:49) Where does the intersection of medicine and love begin and integrate?   Molly Maloof: (00:56) Yeah, right? Okay. Here's what occurred to me. And I haven't really even announced my company because I've been stalled, but I can talk about the big picture because I think it's really important. I spent my entire life trying to figure out how and ever since I was a child, and I was like, wanting to become a doctor at a young age, and then hit puberty in all sorts of hormonal disarray. And I was just like, "What is this happening to my body?" I remember thinking, someday I'm going to figure out my whole body, and I'm just going to understand all this weird shit that's happening to me. And so I spent a lot of my life trying and testing out things to see what would they would do. I would take supplements when I was in ninth grade. I was just constantly doing weird stuff to see what I could do to make my body function better.   Molly Maloof: (01:41) And then, left my residency, started my own medical practise, and really was like, "Fuck, I want to make a practise around optimising health, instead of just fixing sickness." So I want to understand health from first principles. So I spent all this time studying and practising . And fortunately, I had patients who would pay me a lot of money to like, be my lab rats. And they were willing, they were coming to me with experiments that they're like, "I want to do this, will you be help me?" And I'm like, "Sure." So I was one of those doctors that was just like, helping executives find greater performance. And then I had a bit of a come to Jesus moment.   Molly Maloof: (02:18) And I was just like, I did not go into medicine to be doctor just to rich people. That's not cool. And this is like been an interesting experiment. But I should probably be doing more with my life than just helping rich people stay healthy. So it really was that. That was really going through my head. I was at Esalen Institute, and I was just like, "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that there should be more to life than this."   Mason: (02:39) It's an elephant a lot of the time in the health sector.   Molly Maloof: (02:42) Yeah. But at the same time, I'm super grateful that I actually was able to do what I did because A, I could show I actually was part of like a massive trend movement, which was like, precision medicine for individuals was like, not a thing until, a few years after I started practising . So I've always been a bit ahead of the curve. But I've always also been one of those people who's just like, I can't settle for like surface level anything. So I have to get under the surface. So I got asked to teach at Stanford, a course. And she was like, "You seem to be this healthspan expert. So why don't you teach about it?" And I was like, well, of course, I got really insecure. And I was like, "Well, I know a lot. But I can't know enough to teach a second best school in the country." So I went and I started researching even deeper and started studying even more and started like coming up with this framework of what health was about.   Molly Maloof: (03:28) And in my process of studying everything, I was creating electron relationships. And I started figuring, I saw a couple TED Talks, and I started looking into the research of these two psychologists and this researcher from Stanford. And basically, the conclusion was that long term health and happiness is literally dependent on your relationships, like the number one factor in whether you're going to live long and healthy or not is your relationships. And why do you think that is? Well, usually they're the biggest source of stress or stress relief. And we know that stress is a huge source of disease, and yet everybody talks about stress, but nobody talks about what to do about it. Even like some of the best most famous doctors in America.   Molly Maloof: (04:11) Well, even doctors are on stress, like sit around talking about how they don't know what to do with stress. So I was like, "I wonder if we could actually create medicine, that improved relationships." And so I started figuring out through the psychedelic movement, that a lot of what entactogens do is they fundamentally reproduce the neurobiology of love. And so I started digging into the neurobiology of love and I was like, oh, so dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and serotonin are essentially like some of the bigger molecules involved with love and connection as well as hormones. So to me, it was like kind of a lightbulb moment happened when I was like, "Whoa, what if we actually were to create medicine that can reproduce the love that you had early in your relationship when you first got married, when you first started dating?" What would happen if you could actually reintroduce that feeling again, in your relationship, when you've been together for 10 years, and you're already annoyed by each other constantly. And there's all this resentment built up?   Molly Maloof: (05:17) And what if you could work on that resentment, work on your attachment issues, work on your relationship and your bond and strengthen that bond, through drug assisted therapy? And so that's kind of what I came up with as an idea. And so I'm in this process of investigating the possible ways to do this. But really, it's like a complete paradigm shift in modern medicine because A, it's not about individuals taking drugs, it's about two people taking a drug together. And B, it's not about doctors just handing people drugs, but it's drugs plus therapy. Drugs plus a therapeutic journey that you take, in order to achieve a certain outcome. So not only does medicine have to change in a few different ways, like A, we have to like see if the FDA will even let us give two people drugs. But B like, the payment system of medicine is about you go to a therapist, you go to a doctor, you get a drug, and the doctor is paid for that visit. And that psychologist is just paid for that visit.   Molly Maloof: (06:14) So I have friends that are in payments systems, and they're developing like bundled payment programmes because essentially you need to like create an entire outcome based experience that is paid for in a lump sum. And so there's a lot of things that need to change about in medicine. But I think that fundamentally the human bonds that we create, like are the hugest source of survival that we have. And a lot of people have overlooked this in this pandemic. We know now from isolation, that there's nothing healthy about people being by themselves in their homes, especially the elderly. Come on, and young people and children with families in one house, like we're meant to be in community, we're meant to be touching other people, we're meant to be around other people. And I think it's really a shame that we have ignored this factor for so long, and we're continuing to ignore it while people are killing themselves with alcohol and drugs and other substances.   Molly Maloof: (07:07) And it's just like, and even food, right? Like kids are gaining weight at record rates, people are gaining weight at record rates. And it's all because we're not supposed to be alone. We're not supposed to be indoors by ourselves isolated, like it's not productive, and it's the antithesis of health. So that's my shtick in my soapbox description. And I'm just going to say this, this is a really ambitious endeavour, there is a very good chance that it will not work because the government will stop me. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't be doing stuff like this because we actually need to change the way that people think about medicine. We actually need to change how medicine is delivered.   Mason: (07:42) You know what, like what brings up, I've been reading a lot of like management books because I'm at that stage by my business where I was like Peter Pan and I'm back in the real world a little bit where am I growing up and becoming a little bit adulty.   Molly Maloof: (07:56) We're both becoming adults, dude.   Mason: (07:57) We're both adulting the shit out of life right now.   Molly Maloof: (08:01) We're adulting the shit out of life.   Mason: (08:04) The one Tani got like the whole management team to raid was like a Patrick Lencioni one. I don't think that's how you pronounce his name, but he's got business fables, and it's the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and one of the dysfunctions, I can't remember if it's an exact dysfunction or just something I took out of the fable, but it's like you get an executive team and you go through all the different departments like what's our goalposts? Like what are we all agreeing on that we're looking at as like what we're all trying to get? Is it like customer acquisition? Is it customer happiness ratings? Is it revenue? It doesn't matter what the hell it is, we just focus on that and we go for it and then that unifies you. I think most people and including people that get into health and are entrepreneurs in the health same doctors what the thing that happens is they still they can't get over the hangover of getting dumped.   Mason: (08:53) The goalposts been put on you by a pretty old medical system that just like, just keep people alive. Just improve the condition somewhat. And I think why when you speak and when people listening, I know people like loving my team like listening to your last podcast in the community really excited is because the boldness that you have and it's screaming me, you're like, "No, I'm creating my own goalpost, not taking on that one, and I can see the bridge, and I'm going..." Like you actually can bridge it. It's not just, I'm defying you. It's like, "No," I'm just like, I can work with in that and I can see what you're focused on. And I'm very clear about what I'm focusing on. It's like relationship and then measure the markers to see that your relationships have improved and we know it because we have these markers. And that focus is really inspiring. It's really intimidating for people that have just allowed themselves to be handed what the goalpost is. So cheers you, I raise my hot chocolate to you.   Molly Maloof: (10:00) It's like I ask myself, "Okay, I've got this personal brand. If I like go and be Dr. Molly brand, Dr. Molly, how is that going to like..." Okay. So let's say there's Andrew Weil, there's Dr. Oz, there's all these, like leaders in the space. I could do that. And I can always fall back on that if this thing doesn't work, like I'll only be 40 by the time I fail at this, right? So I think I'm going to give myself like solid three years before I give up. Look, it's really hard to do this thing, but I'm going to give myself some significant time and commitment, like five to 10 years, then we'll see what happens. If I can get through past three years, I'll be fucking stoked. So point is, is like I can always fall back on like the Dr. Molly brand because it's like, that's cool. But that's just an evolution, right? That's just like, me becoming branded doctor 2.0. But the thing about this other thing is like, if we actually were to accomplish this, this just fundamentally changes medicine, and also could transform human relationships, which are falling apart.   Molly Maloof: (11:02) People are getting divorced after eight years, and kids are getting damaged by these relationships. Kids are missing their relationships with their parents, parents are not bonding, kids are feeling neglected. We've got to save the family unit and I think it starts with the primary relationship. And to me, this is something that is interesting to me that, I just don't think a lot of people work on their relationships, like I don't think it's something that a lot of people consider to be a thing that they should be doing every day. But it's actually so fundamental to survival, right? And yet, it's like when things are getting really bad, that's when they get to work. So we are looking at different indications. But fundamentally, the big picture, what I'm trying to do, it's kind of like bring what people have been doing underground above ground.   Molly Maloof: (11:49) The history of MDMA was like couples therapy, right? And Shulgin was giving it to psychologists to improve couples relationships. And it turns out, like underneath a lot of dysfunction, a lot of sexual dysfunction in men and women is relationship problems. So if you just keep on getting to the root cause of anything, it's like, "Oh, why don't we just like deal with the root cause? And go with that?" So it's pretty-   Mason: (12:15) I've definitely experienced with underground MDMA.   Molly Maloof: (12:17) Yeah.   Mason: (12:19) Therapy?   Molly Maloof: (12:19) Sure. Exactly.   Mason: (12:22) Yeah. With my wife. Can you just enlighten people about how you'd use it in like a clinical setting and why in particular it has been used there?   Molly Maloof: (12:37) So MDMA, we're not technically using MDMA, unless we can't use the substance we're going to work on toward developing which there's a lot of reasons why, like drug developments hard, right? But MDMA would be a good backup solution because of its history. MDMA is essentially an entactogen. So what it does is it means to touch with that it means to generate, it's also known as enpathogen. So it creates a deep sense of empathy and human connection. And that empathy reminds you of like, "Oh, there's this person next to me." And I can actually feel how they feel right now.I can actually, more noticeably understand their emotional experience. And I can be a part of that experience, rather than feeling so separate from someone else. And fundamentally, it also works on the neurobiology of love. So it's a love drug. So it creates a similar experience to what I call post coital bliss, which is kind of like right after you had sex, and you're feeling like really comfortable and really blissed out, it's like, that's kind of the MDMA experience.   Molly Maloof: (13:42) And the interesting thing is that through different types of combinations of different chemicals, we're going to be able to modulate consciousness in ways that we never thought we could do and it's fascinating, just this whole field of psychedelic medicine because it's just beginning like this whole revolution is just beginning. And it's like happening from a place of like deep interested in science and understanding the brain, but also from like a deep reference to the past. So like MDMA, for example, in the past was used in couples therapy. So two couples would come in and take the medicine with the therapist. And the therapist will help them work through their issues whether it be like attachment trauma, or deep seated resentment that's been carried or anger or betrayal or just trust issues. And therapist would use this medicine to help people come together again.   Molly Maloof: (14:32) And one of the rules interestingly, for couples therapy with when Ann Shulgin was doing it and was giving it to other therapists was no sex. So it's funny because I actually think that psychedelics go great with sex. And I think that like, you have to know what you're doing, you have to know the dose, but I do think that there will be a role in the future for psychedelic assisted therapy, and there should also be a role for psychedelic aphrodisiacs.   Mason: (15:00) Speak more about that.   Molly Maloof: (15:02) Well, okay, so I'm giving a talk at delic on this is actually quite kind of interesting. I'll give you a little preview of my talk. So it turns out that psychedelic aphrodisiacs have probably been used since like the beginning of human history.   Mason: (15:17) Cool thing. The two best things.   Molly Maloof: (15:21) Right? So people are fascinating, right? So turns out that there's like a whole bunch of categories of psychedelic aphrodisiacs. And they're so interesting. So there's the Acacia DMT, harmelin combo, there's an Alaska DMT harmelin combo, there's also the combination, that combo the drug. There's also MDMA, and MDA, which is the entactogen class of synthetic love drugs. There's LSD and psilocybin, which are the tryptamines. There's actually like a salamander that in Romania, they put into a vodka, and they use it as aphrodisiacs. There's also toads that people use as aphrodisiacs. There's Morning Glory, which is an LSD derivative, there's Hawaiian woodrose, there's all sorts of cool plants and animals that have been used since primitive times that are psychedelic, and that can turn you on.   Molly Maloof: (16:25) And there's also dangerous ones things like scopolamine, which is not technically a psychedelic, but it's a deliriant. And you don't really want to take like the tour up. But people in Brazil apparently, occasionally accidentally get dosed by like prostitutes, who are trying to take advantage of them. So there's actually a pretty good Vice episode on that. But turns out that it's not exactly a psychedelic, but you can't have psychosis and hallucinations. So I was like, "Wow, these are really interesting. There's all sorts of different mushrooms and fungi that people use, there's also like, what is it called? There's a type of fungus. Actually, let me look it up. I've got my computer right here. So why don't I come out and give you a little bit more detail on this because it's kind of getting good.   Molly Maloof: (17:14) So there's like this substance, there's actually a fruit in Southeast Asia called my Marula bean. And it has all sorts of weird ingredients in it, that can make you trippy. And then interestingly, alcohol has the effect of creating beta-carboline in the body, which I didn't know. So it's actually technically slightly psychedelic, which I never knew this. And then absinthe has wormwood which has thujone in it, which is mildly psychedelic as well. So it's essentially there's different doses of different ingredients that are kind of used for different reasons, right? And so there's basically like the medicinal dose, they said, which is the lowest dose, like the sort of the micro dose of medicine. And that's kind of like people taking things just for overall improvement of their health, mental health. And then there's the sort of aphrodisiac dose, which is a little bit higher than that. So it's enough to get you to start noticing a shift in your perception, but not so much to make the trip really hard.   Molly Maloof: (18:12) And then there's the shamanic dose, which is like what's being used in a lot of clinical studies, which is like people try to get to the root of really deep trauma. And oftentimes, getting to the root of trauma is actually what a woman or man needs to do in order to actually heal their sexuality. So I got particularly interested in this space because MDMA kind of accidentally helped heal my sexual dysfunction that I had in my 20s because of some trauma that I had in college, that I didn't even realise was causing sexual dysfunction because I didn't know I had sexual dysfunction. I just knew that I wasn't aroused. I was in pain every time I had sex, and it wasn't orgasming. And then I met a guy, we were using MDMA together and all these problems went away. And I was like, "What just happened"? And I had my first orgasm with a guy. I had orgasmed on my own, but never with a man before because of unfortunately, my history of sex was not positive.   Molly Maloof: (19:07) So I basically been trying to figure this out, "Wow, it seems like there's an opportunity for healing sexual dysfunction." Because a lot of the root causes of sexual dysfunction are relationship problems and trauma. And so then I started uncovering the whole trauma, Pandora's box, and I started discovering natural numbers on sexual trauma. And it became this whole holy shit moment, like fuck the world is so fucked up when it comes to sex. Talk about like, this Me Too movements, just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath all of it is like, clearly dysfunctional sexual upbringing that most people have because of our completely outdated religious culture, right? Basically really religiosity in a lot of ways really ruins sexuality for people because it makes it into this forbidden fruit and then in that you start wanting all sorts of things that are wrong because you're like, "Oh, I can't have it. So I want all these things that I can't have."   Mason: (20:05) Forbidden fruit. And the guys our snake tells us you want the fruit.   Molly Maloof: (20:09) Oh yeah, and women want it too, by the way. I was like, when I discovered masturbation was a sin in like fifth grade. I was like, "Oh, dear god, I've been masturbating my entire life." So funny, right? And there was just this moment I had growing up being like, really feeling like I went from like a really good Christian girl to like, a very bad child because I masturbated. And that's just not okay. So then I get into the history of psychedelics. And this talk and essentially, before Christianity, psychedelics were being used by medicine women and priestesses, and medicine men, and they were given to people as a tool for enhancing their virility and their fertility and their sexual function. And it was like, part of nature, sex was something beautiful, it was something acceptable, it is something that was part of life, right? It was celebrated. And then Christianity basically turned polytheism into this monotheistic culture, and basically started burning witches, and saying that these love potions are evil, and that anything related to sex was wrong.   Molly Maloof: (21:09) And now sex is the thing that you have to have in the bounds of marriage, which the church of course has to govern. And if you do anything outside of that, or let alone, you're homosexual, you're now a deeply evil person, and you deserve to be harmed. And you really think about this history. It's kind of epically fucked how much, no offence to men, but like patriarchy, took over religion, and basically made it all about men being in charge of the religious experience. Even though women were actually very much part of like polytheistic religious culture, and sexuality was part of that culture. And so it's like all this stuff is really went downhill from there.   Molly Maloof: (21:50) And now we live in this modern time where like, the Catholic Church has unending problems with brutalising children sexually. And we have not woken up to this reality that sex is not evil. It's part of life. It's a beautiful part of life. It's a part of life that is one of those magical mystical, if not psychedelic experiences. And it shouldn't be demonised, but I do think we need to return it back into a place of wholesomeness and respect and love and really treating people the way we would want to be treated and I don't think any woman or man wants to be raped.   Molly Maloof: (22:29) I don't think any woman or man wants to be assaulted, and I don't think if any child grows up thinking that, that's normal. And I don't know what changes in culture that makes it okay for kids and adults to like mistreat each other, but I really think that like part of my mission in life is actually to create a better culture around sex and love and really this company that I started called the Adamo Bioscience is basically a company that's dedicated to studying the science of love because I think that if we understood it better, we might be able to create more of it, and through multiple pathways and products and services. And yes, I have a commercial interest, but mostly because like it seems totally a better thing to be spending my life making money off of than anything else right now, which is like why not try to create more love in the world? I think there should be like 15 to 20 companies trying to do this.   Mason: (23:22) I think there will be once you show them the way. That's the that's the beautiful thing about being someone who's charging and leading the way. Something as a couple, I was just like thank you, epic download by the way and I saw... And I think it's nice openly talking about religion this way, we can see that it's gone far away from the natural and the original intentions. And I saw you like, I can just see you reshare the meme the other day. It tickled me the most of it was just like white Jesus cuddling someone going, "I'm sorry I made you a drug addict. Let me a book before I send you to hell." It just popped me in school I was like doing things that potentially was going down the way of being like condemned and told by teachers, "Well, your stepfather is going to go to hell because he believes in evolution."   Molly Maloof: (24:16) Oh my god, I remember being in sixth grade being like, "I think evolution is real and my school thinks I'm..." But they don't believe in it. Like, holy shit, that was our lives.   Mason: (24:28) Oh man, I got a few pop moments. I was like, "Hang on. So I'm going down this route. Where I'm sinning because I'm trying to think critically here and so now I'm going to go to hell, but you created me in your image and I'm doing? You set me off. You know all, you know I'm going to end up here. And then you're going to send me to hell?" I'm like, "You asshole. You sadist." Anyway, that was my pop.   Molly Maloof: (24:54) What got me to like what really challenged my beliefs when I was 18 was talking to a guy who went to Harvard and messenger, you're in messageboard you're talking to people smarter and older than you. And I remember talking to this guy and he asked me this question. He's like, "How can God be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and how can there be a hell? If he's everywhere all the time all at once? How can it be ever a separation from God because hell is a separation from God?" And I was like, brain explode like oh that's impossible logical, total it felt like this doesn't work, right? Like does that work does not compute. And my brain just exploded I went into the bathroom and cried and cried in front of the mirror. I was like, "Oh my god, it means I'm all alone." I actually still believe in God now, but like my belief in God is much different than the patriarchal God that I grew up.   Molly Maloof: (25:50) I still pray to Jesus because I'm used to it's like a pattern, but I don't think Jesus is the only God. I think there's plenty of Gods you can pray to. But realistically I think that God is like infinite intelligence and beauty underneath everything that whether, and it's totally no gender or God can't have a gender.   Mason: (26:09) I'm going to send you my podcast with George Kavassilas. It's another mind blowing one. It's talking about the God matrix and the universe, the natural, the synthetic it's like really, really clear.   Molly Maloof: (26:25) Oh, cool.   Mason: (26:25) I'll send you because it's a very good one. And you know what, you were saying things that don't work and you know what I like that does work is aphrodisiac. So this is like telling before we move on from that point it's something that really jumped out at me that I really love and I might go a little bit of a tangent because I just wrote about it this kind of topic, this nuance. Yesterday we sent out a newsletter around lion's mane and I'm like I really love Lion's Mane because it's a bridge herb and for so often people are looking at, "I want a nootropic and so they go into a narrow," which is nice sometimes. It's nice to go reductionist. And you go, "I want something that's going to increase output and give me something now and I'm going to use this nootropic in order to get something. And then they eventually fall to Lion's Mane as like a nootropic and the word sits there very medical and very [inaudible 00:27:20], which is nice as well I use it.   Mason: (27:24) But then Lion's Mane is one if you get like a complete non grown on grain, you get one grown on wood, it's got elements of wild to it, all of a sudden you look past the textbook written black and white, in the tropic and you got the same intention here and then you look up at nature and you see, "Wow, my brain is so much more than what I thought it was and the output of my brain and the way the way that it operates in conjunction with my organs in my blood and my outlook in my life, it's connected to where I'm going to be. What I do now is connected to how I'm going to be when I'm 90 years old."   Molly Maloof: (27:59) Totally.   Mason: (28:00) it's not just take something get some output, it's like this pattern you can see the brain function connecting to the constant pattern of like, like the waves in never ending. Internally there are things that are like constantly happening that I can cultivate and work with and look at and ease into that are going to have my brain on the sea of marrow is the Daoists.   Molly Maloof: (28:21) I love that. The sea of marrow.   Mason: (28:26) And the aphrodisiacs are the same like that. And it's a fun one because people go, "Oh, aphrodisiacs great, it'll get your horny." And what you're talking about it's like a carrot that leads like you go and that's what I see. Like how I see Daoist aphrodisiacs as well, like deer antler in your pants.   Molly Maloof: (28:46) Yeah.   Mason: (28:48) Horny goat weed, like epimedium. These herbs cordycep, Eucommia, schisandra. People say the word aphrodisiac, and you go, "Great, okay, cool. I'm going to engage because I want to be horny." And you think there's more substance too, behind it. And then you get onto these aphrodisiacs and you start engaging with your sexuality, and all of a sudden it's an opportunity to connect to yourself and the word aphrodisiac falls away, and you start connecting to the sexuality. And I just heard it, then you're saying we're using aphrodisiacs to go and connect to the sexual trauma so we can connect to ourselves and our partner. And I think it's beautiful. I love it.   Molly Maloof: (29:32) Well, it's actually that the sexual trauma can damage your relationship to sex. So because it actually programmes your brain. There's this thing called the Garcia effect, and it's like when you eat something that makes you sick, you don't want it anymore because your brain associates that with feeling sick. Now not all women or men who have trauma end up with having sexual dysfunction, but a large percentage of women do that. In fact, like somewhere between 60 to 80% of women who had sexual trauma have some form of sexual dysfunction. And like in America, the numbers, which I think are underreported, are like one in five women are raped, one in four women are abused as children, one and three are assaulted in her lifetime. And so there's quite a lot of women who have sexual dysfunction because of the fact that their sexual experience was not pleasant. And it was, in fact, potentially scary and dangerous.   Molly Maloof: (30:26) So now their brain says, "Oh, that experience that's not good. I don't like that. And that's scary." And so it's kind of programmed as a traumatic memory. Now, only 30% of women with sexual trauma end up with PTSD, which is interesting. So there's actually more women with sexual dysfunction, than PTSD from sexual trauma, which is fascinating. So the theory is, is that with MDMA assisted therapy, that the medicine can actually help you revisit the trauma from a place of feeling safe and feeling okay and loved with a partner, preferably with a partner, if you're with someone that you feel safe with. And you can revisit that trauma, and then it gets reprogrammed in your brain, reconsolidated as, "Oh, this is not the worst thing in the world anymore." This is not something I need to like, fear or be afraid of anymore. That was just an event that happened. And in fact I think the real magic will come from when women can experience pleasure, again, through psychedelic medicine. As I did.   Mason: (31:32) How ironic that there's an aphrodisiac involved in that process.   Molly Maloof: (31:36) Well, you think, right? You think that like, that would make sense. It's just funny. I think we're just beginning to understand space. But I don't know if people even though this, but there's actually like three phases of neurobiology of love. The first is like the intense sex drive, which is like, our body is designed to get us to fuck a lot of people when you're young. Actually, the sex drive is like oestrogen and testosterone. And then like, you're horny, and you're young, and you want to have sex, and not everybody does. A lot of young people aren't these days, but the point is, is that it's designed to get you to be turned on and attracted to a lot of people. And then when you meet someone and you have sex with them, what happens is, is that you start activating other hormones. So dopamine starts getting released, oxytocin gets released after orgasm, and that can actually increase the attachment to this person.   Molly Maloof: (32:29) So especially in women particular. So then we start moving on to romantic love, which is actually an attachment device that's designed like we really evolved it in order to basically bond ourselves to someone, become obsessed and addicted to someone, so that we're more likely to have a baby with that person. And then keep that baby alive long enough that they will not die, right? And so the romantic love starts to switch over to pair bonding. And pair bonding is actually designed to keep that baby alive and family unit strong. Because pair bonding hormones are very similar to familial bonds. Like they think it's all mostly oxytocin vasopressin. So like, you actually look at the neurobiology of all this. It's highly adaptive, and it's a huge survival advantage to have love in your life, huge survival advantage to find someone to care about them. You're more likely to reproduce, you're more likely to make a child and a family and you're more likely to have a healthy family if there's healthy bonds.   Molly Maloof: (33:26) And so I think that we should be really looking at these things from the lens of science because a lot of what's happening in society today because I think technology is seeing these bonds decay, we're seeing people give up their marriages. We're seeing people walk away from long term relationships, and we're seeing families affected and children affected. And one of the main adverse childhood experiences a kid will have is divorce. So I'm just like, "Fuck, why are we not looking at these fundamental facets of society and saying, gosh, why can't we do better?" And maybe there's a way we can do better that's ethical, and that's honourable and that's scientifically sound and that will actually leave people better off and we found them. But again, this is like very much new territory. I don't think anybody has tried to do this or thought about doing this. And I'm actually giving you a lot of information that I like is going to keep kind of quiet but whatever you like might as well announce it to like your community first.   Mason: (34:20) Yeah. I think we're worth the drop. It's interesting, it's such a return to the natural. And I've been using that a lot because I feel like I'm saying for the matrix. I'm like nailing all over the bloody place at the moment like people.   Molly Maloof: (34:36) All the time.   Mason: (34:39) And it's so confronting for people which and I agree, as a system we haven't... What you're doing is going like, "Screw it, go to the core and think, multiple generations around leading to the core. Like, let's look at the divorce rates, let's look at the unhappiness and the lack of love in relationships and how that impacts ourselves and children." And I think about it a lot. And it gives me that raw, even talking about it now, there is tingling and there's a rawness and a raw excitement, when you know you're actually in the right place. But it's very confronting, looking at just how much healing there is to be done.   Molly Maloof: (35:18) Yeah. Well, someone told me when I was like, everyone was like, "No one's going to invest in this, and no one's going to do this. And this is crazy." I know, actually, I have a lead investor. So if investors are listening, I'm about to fundraise. So you should probably email me because it's going to be really good. It's going to be a really exciting time in the next few months because I'm actually going to be-   Mason: (35:37) I think I have like, probably $400 liquid at the moment.   Molly Maloof: (35:45) I'm not going to take your last $400. But maybe we could do something with-   Mason: (35:47) But that's not the last 400. We're being responsible in other areas.   Molly Maloof: (35:50) ... Lion's Mane. Yeah. No, but it's interesting. So like, I have a lot of people from biotech say, "This is absolutely never going to happen. It's impossible. Don't even try." And then I had a lot of people who are starting biotech companies say, "Fuck, if this problem is as big as you describe it is, then I'm pretty sure we should be throwing like a billion dollars at this." And I was like, "Fuck. Yeah, dude. Totally."   Mason: (36:16) Absolutely. Is there a market for this? If the people who would poohing it are probably the ones that just can't look in the mirror and be like, "I am the market." It's like, it's in your backyard. It's everywhere. Every time you go to a family reunion, every time you go to bed.   Molly Maloof: (36:40) I shouldn't say this out loud, but family members of mine-   Mason: (36:43) Just say it in a monologue.   Molly Maloof: (36:44) Yeah. I know my family story pretty well. I like deconstructed all of our problems at this point. I've plugged my computer in. And having deconstructed a lot of these problems, and really examined the people in my family who struggle with different problems. In my extended family, in particular, like my aunt and my grandmother, and just people I know. There's a lot to be said about early relationships, and about how important families are to the long term health of children. And when things go wrong in families, it can really, really hurt people long term. And I just looked at like, my great, great grandparents and their relationship with my grandmother. And I looked at my grandmother's relationship with her daughters, and I just looked at all this, and I was like, "Wow there's so many things that we don't realise that if we just fix that one thing, right, then it would have transformed the entire rest of a person's life."   Molly Maloof: (37:59) But there's a lot of things, we don't have solutions for. A lot of things we don't have pathways for, and a big one of those is healing trauma. And I recently did about 21 hours of deep, deep neuro somatic trauma healing from a friend of mine who's like a super gifted healer. And I can't explain in scientific terms what he did with me, but I do know one thing, and that's that we do not do a good job in our society, helping people who have trauma, heal, and express it immediately right over this happened. In fact, the medical system typically, when a girl has raped, she'll basically get a rape kit, and maybe sent to a psychologist. And if she's lucky, she'll get in, in a few months. And it's like, we don't actually have pathways for healing and caring for kids who've had major... I saw this, by the way, in health care system. I saw kids who were abused by their parents. And they go to social workers, and they kind of handed around the foster care system.   Molly Maloof: (39:00) And it's really crazy how much people experienced trauma in society. And there's really not a lot of good solutions besides talk therapy. And if talk therapy worked so well, we probably not be seeing so many problems. Like if talk therapy was like a really effective solution for all of our problems, we'd probably be seeing a lot of problems solved. Now I'm not saying talk therapy doesn't work.   Mason: (39:23) It doesn't pop the champagne. I think that's where I'm with you on that. I'm at the point in my journey where I'm like talk therapy with someone who's got a Jungian background is like perfect for me because I went so hard on psychedelics. And so I'm loving just the groundedness of it. But to get it going-   Molly Maloof: (39:36) Totally. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I think talk therapy is very much like working on your consciousness, right? Your conscious brain. Everyone actually need to talk therapy in order to fundamentally create sense, sense making around their life experience. Like that's the best thing it does. Is it creates a framework of understanding of like, "This happened to me, this happened to me, this happened to me and I understand why, and I understand how I dealt with it." And I'm trying to do a better job at it, right? But I think what's really more interesting about like, what's happening in psychedelic medicine is what's on a subconscious and the unconscious level, right? Like hypnotherapy does a pretty decent job at getting into the subconscious level.   Molly Maloof: (40:27) But what's fascinating is like all this stuff that's buried in the unconscious, right? That comes out in your dreams, that comes out in your... A lot of people have nightterors. That is most definitely a bunch of unconscious process trauma, like unprocessed trauma that needs to be like addressed. And I don't think people see it that way. They're just like, "Oh, it's a nightmare disorder." It's like, "No, you probably have like a major unresolved trauma from your childhood that you really should look at." And oftentimes, I know, multiple people who've taken psychedelics, and it just comes up to them. They're like, "Oh, my God, I was raped in high school by a few guys." And it just like comes up. Or they're like, "Oh, my God, I was sexually assaulted as a child." And this stuff comes up underneath because it's lifted out of the subconscious and unconscious.   Molly Maloof: (41:21) And that's what we don't talk enough about in like modern medicine. And even like psychology, I think, is this like, "Oh, wow," like everybody has deep trauma. But if you do have deep trauma, and it's like running in the background, it's like malware, it's just draining your energy. It's draining CPUs, it's actually playing a huge role in your behaviours and your triggers and how you interact with people. And if it's not looked at or addressed, and especially if they're things like internal family systems, like there's a lot of good forms of talk therapy that can really do a good job of bringing you back to your childhood or bringing you back these moments. And I don't even think drugs are completely necessary to get to these places. Meditation is also a phenomenal tool that a lot of people don't take advantage of. And there's a bunch of different types of meditation that are fairly obscure that can do a great job at helping people get underneath the surface of their pain.   Molly Maloof: (42:11) But a lot of this stuff is isn't mainstream. And it's a shame because a lot of people are still just like, "Where do I go to deal with all this stuff?" Most of the stuff that's worked really well for me has been very obscure stuff that I have had to find through word of mouth. And it's like not highly advertised experiences and therapies and meditation schools and it's like a lot more on the realm of like woo, but it works these things have worked. And it's like strange to me that they're not more well studied and in the mainstream.   Mason: (42:46) Yeah. We've got such a wide array of people with such a wide array of histories at different stages in their processes. And there's naturally going to be different therapies and different angles that are going to pierce the veil to whatever is sitting there behind the curtain in the subconscious and I definitely, like for me it was like personal development back in the day going like you know landmark forum was like one of the things to kind of like a bang. And I could see behind it and then okay that lost its relevance at some point. And then psychedelics became very relevant, got me probably went a little bit too hard into identifying with that community and the mannerisms around taking medicine and like that feeling like I finally belonged rather than doing the work. And then getting beautiful lessons and now it's like getting to the point where talk therapy for me 10 years ago just would have been like I think just sort of lapping up against a great wall.   Mason: (43:48) Whereas now I know how to scale that concrete wall, and I know what it looks like when I do connect to the subconscious. And I understand my processing bringing it out and what my process is, thanks to the work I did with psychedelics. I know how I'm going to bring that into awareness in my everyday and that's when personal practise comes in. That's where I know to the extent of like, with my exercise regime, I know keeping me strong enough and healthy enough to be able to handle staying in that space, where I can constantly acknowledge that part of me that wants to hide behind that veil and run everything. And I know someone like Tani she's like, there was a point where psychedelics were like, incredible. She goes, "I know I need that." And then she's like, "I don't need that anymore." And my meditation practise is exactly where I need to be and that's where I'm going to get the biggest bang.   Mason: (44:39) Not that it's about a bang, but she's going to get the rubber hitting the road. So I think that's like that integration because you see a lot of people in the psychedelic world, kind of pooh poohing therapy going like modern therapies like this domesticated little dog and psychedelics are this big dog in terms of what it can do. And it's like, true in one context, and in another context, if it's just integrated, you have an array of ways of approaching as you're talking about them. Then all of a sudden, the approach becomes multicoloured and multifaceted. And hopefully, it becomes more effective.   Molly Maloof: (45:16) I really think that we just maybe just need to marry them more. Even like MDMA assisted therapy today, is largely like, hands off. It's largely don't talk to the patient, let them do, they have their own experience, and let them do whatever they need to do to heal, it's not really guided at all. It's mostly kind of like, it's guided, but it's not really like lead. It's like, you're there. You're like going through this process, and you're having these experiences, but they're not actually trying to get you to go anywhere on your trip, they're trying to let you have your experience. Whereas like, I think that, in particular, it may be possible that like, we can give people medicine that gives them have the... I think that the idea is that you have the preparation. And then you have the creating the right set and setting. And then you take the medicine, and then you have this like deep integration experience. And that's typically what the experiences for psychedelic assisted therapy today. The question is, will the FDA let us give people drugs that turn them on unsupervised?   Molly Maloof: (46:26) Because you kind of need to be a little bit... You don't really want anyone watching you while you are with your partner. So I got a lot of questions, I need to figure out to make this thing, an actual proper model. But I think that it'll be really interesting to see how this thing evolves because I'm at the very beginning of this journey. I have an idea of what I think that this business model could look like. I have no idea what I think this therapy could be. But a lot of it is I'm like figuring it out, right? I'm like in this total creative mode of what will the future of medicine look like, if you could create it from scratch? And I've already done this once, and it turned out really great for me. And I could easily have just gone and scaled personalised medicine clinics for wealthy people. But now I'm like, "Let's see if we can create a democratised version of this medicine that actually is like it's going to start out expensive, but let's figure out how we can make this something that's eventually affordable for people." That's the goal.   Mason: (47:28) I think the other thing, that's why it feels like a safe bets. And interesting way to put it, but it makes sense, and has substance is because I think a lot of people approach this, and what we've always been taught how to do, lecture people on how they should be, and I'm going to create a product based on how I think you should act. Whereas what you're talking about, is going there's, let's say we're looking at, like morality around let's stay in our marriage, so that we don't destroy this family unit. There's a way that, that's been happened, we've been told what to do by the media. And therefore the part of us goes, if someone goes you have to stay on your marriage because it's the morally right thing to do. You're bad if you do that, there's no attraction there because it's an external like judgement , and we want to revolt against being told what to do, especially by society.   Mason: (48:31) It's why we get your rage against the machine, etc. And then, if you just understand the patterns that emerge when people do connect back to themselves, and do deal with their trauma within a relationship, what's natural for people and seems to be the pattern is people do naturally resonate with maintaining the relationship that they've chosen or maybe in some instance. Like a very conscientious uncoupling in a way that you're very connected and aware to the way that children are going to be affected by it and minimising that impact. Either way, there's an emergence of morality an emergence of ethics, rather than being told what to do.   Molly Maloof: (49:19) Yeah. There's emergence of just like, knowing what's right and wrong. Like, "Oh, yeah. We're not meant to be together. But we're also not meant to destroy each other's lives as we get divorced." I think if we were to be able to help people stay together, that would be ideal. But if we're also able to help people consciously uncouple in a way that doesn't destroy their lives. And I've heard this from multiple people, like one of my friends did MDMA with his ex wife when they were getting divorced and it completely transformed the divorce process because they were actually able to love each other through the process, and they're now really good friends. They're like super good friends. They just didn't want to be married. And it's like, that's appropriate, right? Like, it's also appropriate not to hate people for years. Just the number of people I know that have deep seated resentment for their exes. And it's like, that's not healthy for your nervous system, that's not healthy for your long term health. That's not going to keep you well.   Mason: (50:20) So we've both dived into exploring what health is, especially in the context of, and in this what we're talking about in this context of like synthetic morality, versus what emerges as right. I've just started in the last few months really feeling icky about the way I've used the word health and the way it's been used because it's natural, if you talk about healthy, then naturally, there's an opposition of unhealthy there. And so much of what's implied is basing yourself on, "I'm healthy because I'm not that." And so there's this intrinsic opposition, that... An opposition and kicking back against something in order to form identity around health. And we need the word because healthy, it's just a fun word that everyone knows. But kind of similar and synonymous with what we're talking about, and the emergence of morality and the emergence of ethics coming just through whether it's psychedelic therapy or whatever, how are you relating to health now?   Mason: (51:28) Because I definitely am finding, the more I move away from being wrapped in and around that world of being healthy versus unhealthy, and the more I kind of sit in that middle and see. What's emerging through the patterns of myself doing, I don't know, finding harmony for myself, delving into my shit, coming out the other side. Doing things that are maybe I've seen is unhealthy in one way, in one ideological circle. So I want to talk about dropping that coming back to what emerges within me. It makes the space, I don't know, I feel very roared and identified in terms of, even though we're leaders in the health space, I feel very, unidentified with anything that revolves around that word healthy. I'm curious as to where you're at, in your relationship to what is healthy.   Molly Maloof: (52:25) I used to think it was what the WHO said, which was like the complete absence of disease or infirmary. And then I was like, "No, it's not realistic." Health is actually a dynamic function of life. And to me, I have a very unique perspective on how I think, and it all stemmed from this other definition, that was the ability to adapt and self managed in the face of adversity. But I started digging under the surface, and I really started understanding things like biology, and fundamental human anatomy, and microbiology and physiology and molecular and cellular biology. And I was really thinking about it from like a mechanistic perspective as well. And I think that if you actually just look at any system, you can ask how healthy a system is based on its capacity. And whether it's able to perform its functions properly, basically, whether it's able to maintain its integrity of its structure. And that's usually a function of how much energy and how much work capacity is available.   Molly Maloof: (53:31) So, for example, the healthcare system, deeply unhealthy in America. Demands outspent capacity and it just completely started crumbling, right? Like just did not work, was not resilient, was not flexible, it was actually really struggling and breaking a lot and a lot of people have been broken through the experience of going to the healthcare system. So capacity and demands, if there's more capacity than demands, you're usually in a really good healthy state because you have enough energy to maintain the structure to do work. Now, when your demands are really high, and your capacity is really low, shit starts to break down. And so this is like the mitochondrial theory of ageing, which is fundamentally that when we lose about 50% of our functional capacity of organs, they start to malfunction, they actually start producing the ability to do the work functions that they had. And then we start to break down.   Molly Maloof: (54:27) And largely this is driven by metabolic dysfunction and stress. And like lack of exercise is really a big huge driver of disease because it's the number one signal for making more energy. So basically, I look at how we... If you actually think about like the biology of like metabolism, when we breathe air, we drink water, we eat food, it goes into our cells, it gets turned into substrates, those get put into the mitochondria, which are like little engines that could of our cells, and they have this called the electron transport chain which pulls off electrons kind of like power line. Like electrons are running through this electron transport chain. And they're powering this hydrogen turbine that creates an electrochemical gradient. And that gradient creates a battery and a capacitor. So a battery is like a differential charge between two, it's like a charge polarity. And then the capacitor is like a differential charge between two late membranes.   Molly Maloof: (55:22) And then so capacitors can deploy energy quickly. Batteries store energy as potential energy. So when you really look at it, like most people have broken their metabolisms in modern society, there's so many people with diabetes, so many people with heart disease, somebody with cancer, so many people with dementia. And those are really symptoms of broken metabolism, broken mitochondrial function. And it's funny because like, we look at all these things as separate diseases, but actually, they have the same root causes and like half of cancers are made up of metabolic in nature. So everyone's been kind of obsessed with this like, DNA and genetics theory of ageing. I'm just so unconvinced because it's kind of like, okay, that's like the architectural plans of the body. But in order to actually express those plans, you need energy. You actually need to make energy to take the plants and turn into a structure, which is proteins, right?   Molly Maloof: (56:15) So my perspective is that, like life is this interplay between energy matter and information. And essentially, like life itself, is negative entropy. So we're just constantly trying to fight against entropy, and the best way we know how to do that is like, maintain our functional capacity and be able to repair ourselves. And so this lack of being able to repair ourselves is often a function of the fact that a lot of people are just like, the biggest complaint in medicine is, "I'm tired," right? Being tired all the time is actually a reflection of energetic inefficient, insufficient energy production.   Mason: (56:56) Is that in particular with like the battery storage as you work-   Molly Maloof: (56:59) Yeah, exactly.   Mason: (57:00) Which is funnily used when you talk about, like his Yin and Yang.   Molly Maloof: (57:05) Yes. There you go. Right? We need time off to store energy. The most interesting thing about the Yin and Yang, is that there's this clear relationship between this toggling of switching between different states in biology to flourish. So you actually have to go from intense work to relaxation or rest. You have to go for ideally if you actually just look at all the best [inaudible 00:57:30] stressors, it's like, hyperoxia hypoxia breathwork. What is that? It's breathwork. Right? If you look at cold and heat, that's sauna and coal plant right? What are these things work so damn well, for making us feel healthy and feel good? Well, they're literally boosting mitochondrial biogenesis. And in some cases, like eating fasting is my toffee G, right? It's throwing-   Mason: (57:53) Being awake, being asleep.   Molly Maloof: (57:56) Being outside being indoors, like we actually need to spend way more time outdoors than we're doing. And like being in buildings and having your feet grounded into the earth, like being alone being with people, like life is this constant interplay, right? Yeah, there you go.   Mason: (58:14) That was earthing that I just mumbled.   Molly Maloof: (58:16) Yeah. So like today I've been experimenting with like different ways of movement throughout my day because I'm kind of sick of being in front of the computer constantly. And it makes me feel really unhappy. And there's this great meme you posted, feel dead inside, go outside. Fucking love that meme. And it's like, everybody loved that meme. I got it posted so many times. And it was like, actually, I spent two hours today on phone calls outside. And like, people get annoyed when you're not on a Zoom call. But I'm like, "Look, if I can walk, I will walk." And I got two separate workouts and that were like about 10 minutes each in the gym that were like broken up throughout the day. And it's like, holy shit, did I feel better today than I did for like many other previous days where I was just in front of a computer the whole time? Like, we're not meant to be in front of screens all day long. It's not healthy.   Molly Maloof: (59:06) It's not a healthy period. So the more that we can try to align our lives as much as possible with something with how we're actually like primitively programmed because our genes have not evolved since primitive times. We're the same genetically, there's been a few changes, but fundamentally, we're basically the same people as we were in hunting and gathering times. So it's no question that we've lost a lot of our health in the process of becoming more modern because we basically hijacked all of these different pathways that are actually ancient pathways of survival that are now being used to take advantage of people. Like the salt, sugar and fat in foods, the convenience of cars, right? Like humans are designed to conserve energy and to find food.   Molly Maloof: (59:53) So the society is now designed to like make everything ultra convenient, and eat too much. And it's like, okay. We don't move our bodies enough, we drive everywhere, we know what that's done to society. And so it's kind of like the real process of becoming a truly modern human is to actually try to like life according to your genetics, while also existing in a modern culture. It's a huge challenge.   Mason: (01:00:19) Can be a great thing. This is like the Daoist and the Yogi's would need to go outside of society to go and live in a cave so their life could revolve a

Jake Steiner claims he is just another guy from the internet, but for the past 20 years, he's been successfully pioneering natural myopia (nearsightedness) control and built a global community of people seeking to do the same through his website endmyopia.org where he offers a plethora of resources, articles, and courses for free. Prior to his journey of scientific exploration Jake Steiner was very nearsighted with minus 5.00 diopter's of high myopia, on a path of his vision getting progressively worse, with no end of wearing lenses insight. Today Jake no longer wears glasses, has 20/20 eyesight, has corrected his myopia without the use of eye vitamins, eye exercises, or surgery, and is passionate about providing guidance and resources for other myopes to do the same. One thing Jake touches on a lot in this conversation is screentime. Screen time has become so prevalent and woven into our everyday lives that we consciously need to counterbalance and mitigae its effects to prevent strain on our eyesight and Liver Qi. In TCM the Liver meridian is connected to the eyes and supports blood circulation and the flow of Qi through the eyes. It is the main meridian responsible for healthy vision. Mason and Jake discuss the fundamentals of myopia, lifestyle factors that affect our eyesight, the massive wholesale to retail lense markup, herbs to nourish the Liver, and empowering people to take back control of their health, no matter what the diagnosis. Tune in.    "The muscle spasm I talked about, you can measure it. You can measure your eyesight, and you can find out that it's very variable. You can buy or print out an eye chart, hang it up somewhere, measure out the correct distance you need to be from the chart, and see which line you can read? And then have a four-hour Netflix binge and try that same thing again. You're going to be kind of surprised that you probably can't read that same line anymore".   - Jake Steiner     Jake and Mason discuss: Pseudomyopia. Screen addiction How diopters work. Lens-induced myopia. Natural myopia control. Measuring your eyesight. Acupuncture for eyesight. Eyesight muscle spasms. The Liver-Eye connection. Herbs to nourish Liver Qi. Screen addiction and eyesight. Lifestyle habits that affect eyesight.    Who is Jake Steiner? Jake Steiner began his journey to reverse his -5.00 diopter myopia 20 years ago. Through a great deal of experimentation, and trial and error to apply theoretical concepts found in clinical journals and peer-reviewed studies, eventually, he was successful in getting back his natural 20/20 eyesight. Over the years, Jake has cataloged the many tools, resources, and experiences that made his myopia recovery a reality. Much of it exists now as part of the resource that is endmyopia.org. Jake created endmyopia.org to help share and connect with his fellow myopes so that more people could get their natural eyesight back.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Shisandra Beauty Blend End Myopia Website Shortsighted Podcast Jakes 7 Day Free Course To Fix Eyesight Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Jake, welcome, man.   Jake Steiner: (00:01) Thanks for having me, Mason. I appreciate it.   Mason: (00:03) Yeah, no, absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. Bangkok treating you well?   Jake Steiner: (00:09) Bangkok is treating me amazing, actually. I can't complain.   Mason: (00:14) We had a little bit of a jam, I'm enjoying lockdown way too much in my quiet little South Golden suburb, but I've got... I know I shouldn't say it too, I've got too many friends in Melbourne and Sydney and other places in the world who are not enjoying it. Let's not go into that. I don't mind if you want to go into how awesome Bangkok is, though. That'd be cool to hear a little bit of... we'll get into that. But I want to hear about just eyesight, glasses. I want the whole shebang. Where did you start out? Digging into this, when was your moment when you realised you'd... or did you feel like at some point, was it the feeling of being hoodwinked by an industry or something that got you spurred on? Or what was your motivation to start restoring your eyesight?   Jake Steiner: (00:59) You're getting me in a totally different angle on this now. So I started wearing glasses when I was maybe 12-ish, somewhere around there. I'm super old, so I lived in a time before screens. So I didn't get into glasses till school, till well into school. And so maybe 12-ish, somewhere around there, my parents took me to an optometrist, optometrist said, "You need glasses," I got classes. And from there every year or two or so, I got stronger glasses. And when I started out, I played water polo, which I've really enjoyed. You're in water that's too deep to stand in, so you're treading water, and you're throwing and you're catching a ball that you're only allowed to touch with one hand. It's somewhat intense and it requires decent eyesight, you got water splashing around, stuff's going on.   Jake Steiner: (01:51) And as my eyes got worse, the ball turned into just more of a yellow outline that just kept getting bigger because it's just a blurry thing. And I was trying to kind of aim at the middle of it, because you got to catch it with one hand. Eventually I couldn't play anymore, because you can't really wear contacts and glasses doesn't work. And I turned into more of a introvert nerd type in retrospective. Because kids wouldn't pick me for sports because once I started getting into glasses... once you wear glasses, you get afraid of balls flying because you don't have peripheral vision. You can't see stuff that comes flying at you from the side nearly as well. And if a ball hits your face and your glasses go flying, you just can't see anything. So it makes you kind of vulnerable and you act more afraid of your moving environment. And that sort of reflect in how you just behave.   Jake Steiner: (02:47) So I went from just being a kid to being more of an outsider because glasses. On hindsight. At the time, I didn't realise. I started reading a tonne, got into a lot more of the "nerdy stuff," computer stuff, that started merging. And then I worked glasses till I got to minus five and I was stock trading and doing just screen stuff a lot. And then one day I found myself in... somewhere in Asia and looking for taxi and I couldn't see, and I went back to the optometrist and they said, "You need stronger glasses," and I said, "Why?" And they said it's genetic. And that was just a moment where I was like, it can't be genetic. Because it's a problem that didn't exist to this extent 50 years ago. My parents don't wear glasses, my grandparents don't wear glasses. The genetic answer doesn't make sense. So I went to library and I started researching and I found out that short-sightedness, nearsightedness, myopia is not at all a genetic condition. It's a 100% environmental and all the glasses thing, all my youth that I spent in glasses was completely pointless and unnecessary.   Mason: (04:00) I mean, a lot of things are jumping out at me, but the one that really annoys me the most is when a professional, a doctor, an optometrist in this setting, that they're so confident in the talking point that they've been given from their professors or their institution and they don't get the severity. And just how irresponsible it is to spout something that they don't actually know for themselves is true. And they just say, "No, it's genetic. Literally, this changes your whole life. You're crazy. You think you can do something about this?" Well, do you know it's genetic? "Yeah, yeah, of course. My institution told me. I paid heaps of money to be there. And they're really smart people. I'm not looking into it myself." That happens so much and so many people's lives goes... it's a curve ball because of it, unnecessarily.   Jake Steiner: (04:52) Yeah. It's amazing. And my parents are both medical doctors, and I'm generally not against modern medicine in a lot of ways. There's amazing stuff that they're figuring out. But when it comes to not acute symptoms, like long-term just stuff, so often there is the profit motive runs away with the story, right? Glasses, the wholesale cost for lenses is like 2 to $5. Hundreds of dollars in a retail store. They make on average about 5000% profit on selling glasses.   Mason: (05:28) Far out.   Jake Steiner: (05:31) It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy.   Mason: (05:33) That's insane.   Jake Steiner: (05:33) It's crazy. People pay 200, 300, $400 for glasses. It costs nothing. It costs the optometrist nothing.   Mason: (05:41) Wow. I mean, not to say there's an inherent corruption there in people, like it's a thing that you trust your institution, you trust the entire medical institution's good-willed, et cetera, and probably morally and ethically you probably get in and you go, "Oh, it's just the way it is. And that's just the benefit. This is how I get my payday after putting in so much energy to become a doctor and become an optometrist and pay the service to society." But if you were able to get rid of the survivalist in nature, like, "I need this to pay for all this stuff I've gone and... I need to pay my kids and my family and all these..." If you take all that away and you just look at it objectively, very unethical doing that.   Jake Steiner: (06:30) Yeah. And okay, here's the weird thing, and before we fall too deep into the rabbit hole, I always recommend people go to Google Scholar. If anybody's not familiar, scholar.google.com is the Google search engine that only shows you clinical research studies. If you don't want to look at normal internet where who knows what you're getting for results, it doesn't mean that a scientific study is correct, it just means you're only looking at those. You're looking at peer-reviewed studies. So whenever I hear a podcast with a crazy dude from the internet claiming that a whole entire trusted institution is wrong, I always go there first. Because I'm like, "Is there any basis to this at all?" Super helpful, because there's so much stuff out there that is maybe a little bit kind of crazy, who knows? So Google Scholar, super handy. Just go over there, type in pseudomyopia, P-S-E-U-D-O myopia. That means not real near-sightedness.   Jake Steiner: (07:33) And that tells you, if you just spend five minutes, see there are 20,000 plus search results of all clinical studies that say your near-sightedness starts out as a muscle spasm. And it's kind of mind-blowing and you don't have to, but you can certainly, dig into studies that tell you there's a round, circular muscle around a lens in the front of your eye that shapes the lens. So the closer you look at something the more that muscle tightens up and the more it bulges the lens out that you get clear, close-up vision, focuses the light in the back of your eye on your retina. And the further you look at something, the more that muscle relaxes and what happens, super short version is, if you're a kid studying in front of a book for many, many hours or now people just living in front of screens, that muscle gets stuck. It's just a muscle spasm. It's not designed to be in this super tight mode that it's in when you're looking at a phone for countless hours every day. And it doesn't completely relax.   Jake Steiner: (08:37) So since it controls that lens, it not relaxing means the lens doesn't go back into full distance vision. It's just like if you turn off the autofocus on a camera and leave it in close-up and then you point the camera at a distance and things are blurry. That's exactly what happens in your eye. If the optometrist at that point said, "Go camping for a weekend and then come back," you'd have a better result after the camping. And it's super important because myopia is not genetic. It starts out as pseudomyopia. Google Scholar, easily 20,000 search results explaining this in fish. I don't know how they figured that out fish, in birds, in monkeys, and in humans, anything that has our kind of eye has that same response. I just wanted to put that out upfront. So when people are listening, they're not dragged into this not knowing what's going on.   Mason: (09:34) Yeah. I mean, and before we go into your... I don't even know whether protocols is the right word, but all the insights and the work that you do, which I'm really... it's been a few months or a couple of months since I really dived down through your website and was like, "Oh, holy shit, this is my..." Because I've had a lot of people who have come and have wanted to be on the podcast. I think we reached out to you. I think Alex found you and reached out to you. Didn't want to make everyone think that you were out there reaching out, when I think we did it. A lot of people though, reaching out to be on the podcast with eyesight healing techniques. And I know it's always, it's always pretty stretching and do the eye movements and all that kind of stuff, but yours was... I'm looking forward to getting the refresher, it's going to kind of be new, but I remember looking into it being super impressed and kind of excited. It was just very... I don't know, it had a connectivity to life rather than just being this isolated treatment that was completely packageable and sellable in a course or something like that.   Mason: (10:40) But just put out there again, I realise, we're talking about the optometry industry, and I know that even though we're going to go into some solutions right now, I know there are people who are just kind of happy to have glasses and just grateful for that opportunity when their eyesight goes. Even if it is something that you know is lifestyle based or environmentally based, it's not just an inevitable deterioration of your genetics. So gratitude there for everything that's possible and the support that that can can give. But man, that realisation, do you think is it scary for most people? Do you think realising that it is inevitably your choices and the way that you've just fallen into living that has determined the deterioration of eyesight and that you have... it's fully within your capacity to get it back on track? What do you think is the biggest thing that stops people there just jumping in straight away and doing it? Is it daunting, don't believe it, you know?   Jake Steiner: (11:41) Okay, somebody explained this to me one time that finally made sense, because I don't talk about this even to my friends, because I know people don't care and it makes me frustrated. But this guy said, make a list of the 10 most ongoing important things in your life, pressing, that you're doing, or you have to do, or you really wish you could get done. He's like, 10 things. And he's like, the first three is how far are you going to make it. And maybe that's extreme and maybe that's not right, but it stuck in my head as eyesight is number 15, right? Like you'd love to run a triathlon and you'd love to pick a painting and you'd love to travel to New Zealand. For you I guess that's not that far. And then, yeah, sure [crosstalk 00:12:33]-   Mason: (12:32) I'm pretty far at the moment, man. [crosstalk 00:12:35].   Jake Steiner: (12:36) [crosstalk 00:12:36]. Oh man. Yeah. But so it's like, it would be interesting to do, but you know what? You get up in the morning and it takes you exactly 40 seconds to pop in your contact lenses. And that problem, number 12 on the list, is solved. It'd be nice not to pop them in, but it's not that big of a deal. The alternative I'm suggesting is you learning about biology a little bit and questioning your day-to-day habits a little bit and coming up with better things to do with part of your free time and becoming aware and sort of biohacking a thing that's just always been neglected. And that's kind of a big undertaking for, "I'm saving those 40 seconds in the morning." You know what I mean? I think that's kind of the, "I already fixed that." [crosstalk 00:13:27]-   Mason: (13:27) I think the gravity of it though... I completely get it. I mean, it's something I'm constantly doing. There's things that are obviously massively important to me and to my health and I berate myself that I don't... I'm not creating space for this one little aspect of my health. But got kids, got a kid and another kid on the way, business is going off. But I think the complete sympathy for people, or empathy, if that is the case, but I just think this is a great reminder to be like, "Don't let go. Just hold onto that number 14 and really create a structured... within your life. Make sure you're not just getting stuck, washed away within your life just grinding." If you can get to that point where you can automate particular things, get down that list, and make sure... and have faith that there's going to be a point where you go like, "Ah, okay, I'm ready. I'm really ready. And I've got the space to kind of nail this now."   Mason: (14:27) I mean, just hearing you talk about the difference as a child and just that that's... I'm sure that's altered the way that you operate in the world, the way that you think the way you relate to your body, due to maybe not engaging in sports and being as active for particular reasons. Not for particular reasons, for that reason. I think the gravity and just the opportunity of doing things like this is, it comes down to everything, is like with our herbs that we have at SuperFeast, it's like if you start to engage with the capacity, you actually have control of how the chi in your organs flow, and you can, with your lifestyle and herbs and movement, you can generate your own energy. You do not have to be reliant on external sources of energy. And just that's like too huge for some people to take on and it takes them a long time to come to terms with that. To come to terms with something like the eyesight, being able to turn your eyesight around, I mean, it's exciting, but yeah, I can completely imagine why people don't sink their teeth in immediately.   Jake Steiner: (15:36) Okay, for example, I've poked around your website and I'm like, that made it on my list of, "That would be interesting, but will I ever get there?" You know what I mean? Realistically, I'm like, "Okay, I'm in Thailand, shipping, understanding how much of it makes sense? How will it affect my life?" Who knows, right? It's in the same spot on the list, where I'm like, I'm sure it could make a difference but how big is my motivation? And when it comes to eyesight, I'll throw this in there, one part is it changes who you are. In just simple examples, if you wear glasses, when you're walking outside, you're looking at the ground because you don't have peripheral vision, you can't look straight ahead.   Jake Steiner: (16:22) A person without glasses, or if you have contacts you can, you can see the ground from your periphery. So you're walking in the world, not necessarily staring at the ground. If you wear glasses, you're walking, you're looking at the crowd. Your experience of the things in front of you is the ground. You don't think of it because that's just your life, but it would not be the same if you're not wearing glasses. If you're talking to people, your eyes look through the centre of the lens, because that's the optical centre, that's where your best vision is. So your eyes are trained just to look just through that one point. Versus people who don't want glasses who have a much more fluid eye movement and neck movement. So when you're talking to people, you appear to be kind of stiff and weird, just slightly, just so slightly that nobody's consciously aware of it, but people treat you differently because you are a little bit weird behind the glasses. Potential tendency to make you a little bit more introverted, potential tendency to view yourself differently because you are different because you kind of have a weird... you're not right in how you're interacting.   Jake Steiner: (17:31) Another thing, for example, I spend three months of the year kite surfing. Not now anymore, apparently, but I used to. Since I don't wear glasses. And I still catch myself going, "Unbelievable that my body can do that." Because I was so believing that I'm clumsy and fearful and I don't have the athletic ability because the lenses, no peripheral vision, my eyes are stuck looking through the centre of the lens, that I don't have the confidence to move. The fine motor control, your brain just goes, "Whoa, careful." None of this works very well. Going from there to not wearing glasses, I spent years paragliding. I lived in Nepal, paragliding. Crap I would have never done, never, ever, ever, ever. Because I don't believe that I can. Now I'm fine. But it took a lot of years and habit changes and just exploring how does it make my life different, that made this journey of going from glasses to no glasses, super worth it. Because it's like, I got a second life. I went from this nerdy dude who lived behind screens, trading stocks, to having all sorts of interesting physical, outside experiences that are super amazing, that I would have probably never had.   Mason: (18:53) After you went to the optometrist and they said, "It's genetic, you're getting worse. You need," whatever, thicker glasses, whatever the terminology is, what was the first thing that you went and did when you were doing research and you started putting a technique to action or something like that, or an insight to action? What was the first thing you did that then actually yielded results and started putting real faith in you that you can do this?   Jake Steiner: (19:20) That was a long time. First, I bought everything that was out there. I bought the books, whatever courses. First I found pseudomyopia. So there's two things I found. One, I found pseudomyopia, it's a muscle spasm. The cause of your near-sightedness is a muscle spasm. It's not a question. This is in optometry journals. It's weird that the retail optometrist doesn't know what the academic optometrist writes about. This is-   Mason: (19:54) Just conveniently doesn't know, just be like, "No, no, just don't even let it in. I just want to be happy over here selling my 5000% increased product."   Jake Steiner: (20:07) Not to knock all optometrists. There are awesome optometrists, for sure. There are helpful optometrists, optometrists that know this, there are optometrists that are willing to support you. Some of them are in a tough spot because the regulatory boards don't let them talk about this. That's a whole big topic. They're not bad people. It's just I hold a grudge because that really put me in a direction. so I found pseudomyopia and then I found another terrible thing, terrible, terrible thing, on Google Scholar. You type in lens-induced myopia. And that will piss you off a little bit because as the name suggests, once you start using the treatment they sell you, your eyesight will get worse because of the treatment. Not because of genetics, not because blah, as soon as you start wearing the glasses... and I can explain if you want, but that's kind of a long biology topic, your eyesight will get worse because of the glasses. Again, [crosstalk 00:21:07]-   Mason: (21:07) Because of the spasming? Are we still on spasm? Or does it deteriorate in any way?   Jake Steiner: (21:12) Worse. Much, much worse. The eye is like a fluid-filled ball, right? And it's not solid, it's not like a bone, so it's never perfectly round. And you've got the lens in the front and the retina where the signal is received in the back, and between there's fluid and a skin basically. And it's not a perfect one, it's just held together. It has a mechanism built-in that adjusts its length, like how much distance is between the lens in the front and the retina in the back. And when you're a baby, you start out hyperopic, like the eyeball is too short, you can't see up close clearly. But then that mechanism, that works throughout your whole life, adjusts the eyeball in length that you have perfect vision. And that Megan doesn't always works. And there's a few different things that run it, pretty well understood in science. When you put on glasses, what happens is, glasses moved the light further back in your eye, because you have a muscle spasm, you're stuck in close-up mode, the light focuses just in front of the retina because it wants to be in close-up. And what the lenses do, is they just move the light back a little bit. So it's basically... it's making it so despite the muscle spasm, the light focuses in the right spot for distance.   Jake Steiner: (22:28) Problem with that is it's not perfect. Glasses are not... they're 16th century technology. So some of the light focuses behind the retina and that is the signal that tells the eye that it's too short. It's called hyperopic defocus. You can look it up on Google Scholar. So a little bit of the light focuses behind the retina and then the eyeball, that mechanism in the eyeball, "Well, crap, I'm too short," and the eyeball physically elongates. And that's why a year later you need new, stronger glasses because the eyeball has compensated for the lens.   Mason: (23:06) So [crosstalk 00:23:08]-   Jake Steiner: (23:07) Literally you're selling new glasses. Because of the glasses, you're selling more glasses.   Mason: (23:17) I mean, that makes sense. I'm sure for a lot of people, that's a bit of a shock, but it makes sense. If you don't use it, you lose it. And it's just, I think it's kind of coming out more in... well, consider the alternative, but even in some circles around healing body and trauma to the body, broken bones, [inaudible 00:23:39] like strains, rather than do complete mobilisation, those people that are getting the best results are using... obviously they're putting... they're not just taking the cast off and letting it go wild. They're putting some care into it, as I'm sure we'll hear about your process here, but it's like, no, don't just mobilise the thing that needs healing that needs to move. And then you get the chi moving in there, you get the blood flow going in there, you can eventually heal it. So it sounds like it's a similar connection that you're making there. All right, so you're discovering all these things and I'm sure you're feeling very good about what you've been told so far on your eyesight journey?   Jake Steiner: (24:18) It was unbelievable because I found all this stuff and I printed stuff out and I went back to the optometrist. I'm like, "What is this?" And the second one I went to just kicked me out. Literally, they were just like, "Out of here." I'm like, "This is your journals. Literally this is..." And they were just like, "Out. Out." And from then I just kind of... a lot of Endmyopia is a bit of a grudge I had.   Mason: (24:46) I can imagine.   Jake Steiner: (24:46) I bought all the books. I bought all the books, I bought all the stuff. I was travelling a lot at the time because I was sort of retired. I tried eye acupuncture, I tried eye exercises, I did the Nepalese healers. Tried all this stuff because I assumed, understanding that my eyes are not broken, that somebody figured this stuff out. I don't even have a cool beard, right? On the website a claim I do, but it's a total lie. You have a cool beard.   Mason: (25:15) Yeah. Sorry, I can't be with you on that one.   Jake Steiner: (25:17) Yeah, I know. I'm screwed. So I tried all this stuff and it wasn't working and because of my background, I analysed stuff. From what I do, is the only way you make money is if you really, really, really understand what is going on. And I'm like, "Okay, cause. How do these ideas, how does this book, address the cause? I figured out the cause already. How does it address the muscle spasm? How does it address the lens, the lens-induced myopia part?" And when I started looking at it that way... because first I wasn't. The first year, I was just like, "Yay. Let's try all this stuff." Is how does the acupuncture address muscle spasm and the lens making my eye longer? It doesn't. And then how does the eye exercise, how does this Bates method thing address it? It doesn't.   Mason: (26:09) Bates, I was going to ask you about.   Jake Steiner: (26:11) Yeah, so the problem there for me, as a weird German, analytical, boring guy, I'm really not good at not being able to connect the cause and the treatment. I want to understand. You have to understand it, because how can you treat it without understanding what's wrong in the first place? And I couldn't find a thing that started with, "Here's the cause." I couldn't. And it's weird, and I feel weird, because I have imposter syndrome to some extent. Because it can't possibly be that my dumb ass... I'm not a doctor, I'm just barely... I wasn't even good at stock trading, I was just... whatever, it was a good market. I don't know anything. How can it be that there is no... I'm never going to figure this out. There was a period where I was just like, "Ugh."   Jake Steiner: (26:59) But the logical idea is that the mechanism in the eye is the name of the game. Like, my eye just got worse because I put on the lenses, eye got longer. There are studies that show that the elongation of the eyeball is not a one way thing, the eye just adjusts. It gets shorter, too. So my thought was, if I wear weaker glasses, slightly, slightly weaker glasses, then instead of the light focusing a little bit behind the retina, it focuses just a little bit in front of the retina, and that same mechanism is going to shrink my eyeball back to the correct size. Giant leap, right? But there was plenty of science showing that the elongation is permanent, it's just an adjustment. It's not growing longer, it's just changing like a football shape. But both ways. And that thing works your whole life.   Jake Steiner: (27:49) So I started wearing weaker glasses and I didn't know what I was doing. This was almost 20 years ago. It's like the first guy discovering that lifting weights makes you stronger. It was like that. I just wore a weaker glasses. And they were two weeks in hindsight, like I went from minus five to minus three, couldn't see shit. I remember I went to Laos with those glasses. I threw away the old ones because I'm just like that. Couldn't see anything. It was terrible. It was a stupid idea. But I kept wearing those because I'd thrown away the stronger ones, and eventually I remember I was sitting in a subway somewhere, Hong Kong, I think, one day, and I'm sitting there and I could read the map on the other side. And it was just a sudden realisation that I could do that. I never was able to do that before. And I was like, "Crap, this is working."   Jake Steiner: (28:39) But there was a big period where I just kind of... I don't know why, I just kept weighing those minus threes, life, it sucked. My vision was just... it was not fun, but somehow I couldn't get myself to go back. And there was just that moment that was like, "Well, this crap is really working," and then from there, some friends got involved. And from there, in the intervening 20 years, so many people tried different variations of this, that by now we have a system that one diopter a year. Every three to four months, you can buy a weaker set of glasses and that's all you need. And your vision just improves. Super short, that's the answer to the whole thing. This is why there's not really anything to sell. There's no money to make off of it because the solution... it's a theory, right? It's an unproven theory. Because testing the eyeball length is not cheap, doing it consistently is not cheap. We've done it in the past, but there's not enough evidence for me to go definitively, right?   Jake Steiner: (29:38) I'm saying, you could try this and play with it, I'm not responsible for your result. But tens of thousands of people have done it. We have a huge Facebook group and forum and all kinds of stuff. And I'm super simplifying, there's tonnes more little details, just like lifting weights makes you stronger, there's more details. But it boils down to just small adjustments to the strength of your lenses.   Mason: (30:02) Okay. Because I still have no idea of the structure of what you're offering, but I do remember now that you had a community and that's always... I think that's a good sign. How many people did you say is in the Facebook group?   Jake Steiner: (30:14) 22,000 or so, thereabouts.   Mason: (30:17) Yeah. I mean, Facebook is savage. To have a group with that many people, you've got to like... I like hearing that because having a group like that revolving around distinctions, it might be somewhat of a system, but I like what you're saying. It's kind of the same way we do herbalism, tonic herbalism. I'm like, I don't want to be a clinical herbalist. This is a herbalism style, like a folk style of herbalism for the people that isn't rigid, so rigid instruction that it doesn't fit into the romance of the lifestyle and the kitchen and so on and so forth. And I feel like, that's what I'm hearing there that it's just... take the edge off. It makes it more accessible. But you've got free guides and stuff that people can go get, right? Just to start getting them into biology and see the studies and all that?   Jake Steiner: (31:10) It's free. We have a few courses that nobody needs to buy. If you want to support the resource, I'm trying not to pay all the bills. It's not that cheap actually to run out of pocket. It doesn't make me happy if I have to. That is more structured where I offer support, but they're not necessary. I've written like 1,200 articles on the site. Nobody needs to spend money to do this. And the basis is simple, the practical approach takes a little bit of... Once you dive into it, you're going to end up having a lot of questions, like, "I have astigmatism. I have presbyopia. I have this, I have that." That's why I've written a tonne of stuff. So all the things I've figured out with the help of lots of other people, the last 20 years is on there, it's free. There's no paywall, there's no nothing.   Jake Steiner: (31:56) And then you dig into that a little bit, and then you pop up in the Facebook group, which is super active. We've never manipulated stuff, it's just the people in there are the people that found it. And we have a big forum that's bigger than the Facebook group where people are having discussions, trying other stuff. [inaudible 00:32:16]. And so it's an evolving, ongoing thing.   Jake Steiner: (32:18) For me, the most interesting thing is once you dig into it, you start going, "A big problem is that I'm addicted to my stupid phone." I have replaced all of the fun things I do with playing on my phone. Eventually, and people don't need to, but the fun part of this whole thing is going, "I need distance vision time to improve my site." I pop on slightly weaker glasses or contact lenses, but now I need to go do something. Birdwatching, tennis playing, bike riding, something that is going to be less fascinating than just picking this up and scrolling through it.   Jake Steiner: (32:52) And to me, I think the funnest part, and who cares because addiction is not my topic, but people slowly going, "Well crap, I do spend six hours on my phone, it says. And I don't have any hobbies anymore. And I could..." And for me personally, that's kind of the super fun bit, if you stop in the forum, sometimes people are talking about how they're rediscovering the boring-ness and fascinating-ness of life that starts with not turning on a screen.   Mason: (33:23) I've got a friend, Jake, he's been on the podcast before. He teaches bushcraft and survival skills and he's an activist as well. But he spends a lot of time in town. And then he was just telling me every now and then he goes bush for however many weeks, three weeks. Whenever I'd talk to him after he was doing that, or if he'd be giving a little update every few days, he's just like, he goes, "The first thing I noticed is all my senses come back online." And he goes, "And my eyesight, all of a sudden, starts becoming sharper, I didn't even realise how fuzzy it was spending all that time." And he's not even a big computer or a phone guy, but even just for him, he gets into the bush and... I mean, that's what walkabout is, you go and you look and you just walk for as long as you need to release the tension from your body. Which of course is going to be connected to the eyes as well.   Mason: (34:25) And so they say, they just watch that breeze move the trees up on the mountain, on the ridge line, or we'll just watch the waves and just watch the sand on the horizon, and eventually that... My indigenous mates who talk about that, they talk about that pulling out the trauma as you go along, because you're looking at things that your brain goes, "I don't have to remember this," but so as you start spitting up... in this walkabout state, you start spitting up all the traumatic memories that create the tension for you, that natural vista that's off in the distance plucks off all that trauma. And that can release the tension from your body. And that just ties exactly into what you're talking about here. And what a gift to give people, remembering just the importance to balance out all that close screen time with getting out there into something where you're looking far away.   Jake Steiner: (35:21) I'd love to do that. I'd love to do that. We should do that. My audience is so diverse and from so many different places, there's... I spent a fair amount of time in Hong Kong, or I used to before Hong Kong became a forever locked island. There's nowhere to go. Real estate is so expensive you live with your parents or you live in this tiny hole. And then every time I go there, people are on the phone, on the subway, on the bus, walking to the subway to the bus. They're on the phone in the bar, in the restaurant with friends, they are just glued to those things. And then when I have people that participate from Hong Kong, they go, "Man, I am feeling like an alien. I put my phone down and I'm the only one with their phone down. And I'm just alone in the city, surrounded by people on the phone." And I'm like, that's kind of traumatising. So being in a place where you can have a walkabout, for one, that's a brilliant start.   Mason: (36:24) It's literally going for a walk and looking into the distance, right?   Jake Steiner: (36:28) Yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (36:31) When you boil it down, I'm sure there's many little techniques and things that pop up in the forum or in... I mean, you've got a bunch, I'm looking at the courses now. Child myopia, prevent and reverse, myopia post-LASIK, there's some pretty chunky ones in there, like 14 week programmes-   Jake Steiner: (36:56) Not available for the most part though.   Mason: (36:58) Is that because of availability of spots?   Jake Steiner: (37:01) Because I do support and I've got... especially this year, I'm super busy. In that whole course thing, there's only one or two that are actually available. Again though, you don't need any of them. There's a seven day free email guide that kind of... because it's such a thick topic, like where do I start? And the website has so much stuff on it that it kind of walks you through start with understanding why. And people get mad at me for this because they just want the steps. But I'm like, the reason you wear glasses is because you just trusted a thing. I'm not looking that trustworthy and I don't try to make it about trust, so I'm like, understand the cause first, take 10 minutes, an hour, a week, however much you need to understand what's up with the biology. And then people get pissed because they're like, "Just give me the steps. I believe you."   Jake Steiner: (37:52) But I'm like, get what it is. And so the seven day guide walks you through the here's what's going on and here's how you can question this whole thing in the first place. And then here's the basic stuff. And then I release you into the wild of website and community and stuff. And that's really all you need. So I'm kind of anti-selling the courses, but I really don't think that's where you need to start. It's more of a slightly weaker pair of glasses. And I have a podcast, but I only do improvement stories. Whenever there's somebody who surfs, for example, on there, I'm like, that's going to be good. Because if you surf, you have motivation to rid of those stupid things, because contacts out there, you lose a contact lens, it's a lot less fun experience coming back. And those people improve really quickly and really consistently, because there's no excuse. If you're in the bush, if you're doing that kind of thing, if that guy wore glasses, I promise... well, I shouldn't promise, but he would take to something like that so easily because he needs the eyesight and he uses it.   Mason: (39:05) And I know what you mean by promise. I mean, you're probably just watching that there's a pattern. If people apply themselves, you see the pattern of improvement. Weaker glasses, time off the myopically looking at a screen or books or video games or whatever it is. Are there any other little cool add-ons that you're like, maybe they're not the Big Kahuna in the protocol, but just little things that help improve? I'm thinking as well, there're a lot of people listening, wanting to... like the prevention. This is just something beautiful, even though you're preventing eyesight from deteriorating or becoming myopic, there's a beautiful... these are all just beautiful things to add into a lifestyle anyway, to keep you sharp and loving life.   Jake Steiner: (39:51) True. You can measure your eyesight. The real starting point... and that's the seven day guide thing, too, the difference between hearing this and being like, "Huh, that's an interesting topic," and then forgetting about it a half hour after you listened to it, and having an experience, is you can measure your eyesight. The muscle spasm I talked about, you can measure it. You can measure your eyesight and you can find out that it's very variable. You can buy or print out an eye chart, hang it up somewhere, measure out the distance that you need to be at the right distance from the chart and see how your eyes... Which line can you read? And then have a four hour Netflix binge and try that same shit again. And you're going to be kind of surprised that you probably can't read that same line anymore.   Jake Steiner: (40:40) That experience of going, "Well crap." Or if you eat a big pizza and drink a Coke and get a giant insulin spike, try to read that chart and see what happens. Or be stressed out and angry and read that chart and see what happens. If you do that and if you get really into it and you just keep a little log, because you're going to forget. What line could you read and what was the connecting... where were you at in that moment? You notice that your eyesight is connected to your diet, is connected to your mood, is connected to your interactions, everything. And if you start doing that... and for example, if somebody wears glasses and their glasses are just giving them perfect vision, you can take them off and the way diopters work, so the strength of the glasses is just a distance measurement.   Jake Steiner: (41:30) And I don't want to get too far into that, but it's just, if you take a book or a screen and you just put it... how close do you have to put it for it to be perfectly sharp? And then how far can you get it from your eyes to where it's still perfectly sharp? And then once you start to see the tiniest bit of blur, measure that distance, however many centimetres, 100 divided by the distance equals diopters. So if you can see 50 centimetres, 100 divided by the 50 is two. You need glasses that are two diopters to have perfect distance vision.   Jake Steiner: (42:06) So if you are a two diopter person, you're going to see the 50 centimetres perfectly. But now eat the pizza or now try to do that in a nice, natural, full spectrum light, you're going to see 60 centimetres. Try to do that in a shitty lit fluorescent room, you're going to see 40 centimetres. The numbers are not exact, but it's going to vary that way. And you're going to be like, "Fluorescent light is shit for my eyes." Because you're going to be able to measure the... And once you get into that rabbit hole, then it's tempting. Because then you're like, "Oh crap. I don't have to go to the optometrist. I don't need to get measurements there. This thing is variable. And it's another way for me to quantify how I'm doing with my body."   Mason: (42:52) And it is all connected. Always. I was curious when you brought up acupuncture, whether you've ever had someone dive in with you about that connection between eyes and sight and muscle tension and the liver much. Because it's like, it's been popping up in my mind a little bit.   Jake Steiner: (43:12) My mom loves acupuncture, which is funny because she's a paediatrician, medical doctor, but she's also into that stuff. With eyesight, everything is connected.   Mason: (43:22) Right, right.   Jake Steiner: (43:26) I've been on podcasts where first the host is like, "Your topic has nothing to do with us." And I'm like, "Body, it's all one thing. It's all connected together." The thing that improves eyesight and makes the eyesight worse is close-up and glasses.   Mason: (43:40) Yeah, right.   Jake Steiner: (43:40) It's the main thing. If you want to fix that stuff and you just want to fix it, that will fix it. But there are lots of other things also. Trauma can absolutely affect your eyesight. I do blood tests two, three, four times a year because all this stuff works together. If you have messed up blood values, if you're lacking stuff, it's going to affect your eyesight also, definitely. Everything plays together. I'm just focusing on what's the way that's just going to fix it for most people in most cases.   Mason: (44:13) Yeah, absolutely. And I like it. I get asked about eyesight a lot and I know there is that connection of the liver Meridian ending at the eyes and sight is that sense connected to the liver. But at the same time, sometimes I get people reporting an improvement in vision when they get onto certain liver herbs, but it's not... it's kind of like, "Yeah, but I can't..." What you were saying at the beginning, where's the actual, down to the wire, causality and do I know there's actually going to be enough of a connection there or there's not going to be all these other things in the way for most people that you're really not going to get that much improvement if you just get onto the herbs, but-   Jake Steiner: (44:52) But try it. But try it. You know what I mean? Address the big elephant first. If you have screen addiction, no amount of herbs are going to fix your eyes. But if you're taking care of every else, I'm all for it. You know what I mean? Because especially because you can measure and you can experience and you can go, "Okay, what does this do?" And I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm a big fan because I'm into this topic. If you've got herbs for eye stuff, I'm like, "Send me herbs, I'll try some."   Mason: (45:18) I'll send you the Beauty Blend because that's the only one with schizandra and goji in there that are known to bring brightness to the eyes. They go through and get the chi of the liver flowing. And a lot of the time what creates the tension is an excess of liver yang. And if there's an excess of liver yang, then what is regulated by that, the whole liver [inaudible 00:45:40] system is the peripheral nervous system as well. And so you're going to get a tightening up through the entire nervous system, lose that smooth flow in the muscle and a smooth flow of chi. And I can see you, there's probably a connection there with tension in the eye, but... Yeah?   Jake Steiner: (45:55) That and floaters, people bring up a lot. People get floaters, don't know if [inaudible 00:46:01]... And especially in the forum, because we have such a wide audience I'm boring, because I'm just like, "Just give me the thing that works and how simple can I make it?" But at the same time I'm interested in these things, A, and B, there's a lot of audience that leans into a different direction from here than I do. You know what I mean? You talk to me about chi, I'm like, "I don't know. I don't know."   Mason: (46:28) I don't know either. I think it's just fun thinking about it. [inaudible 00:46:30] with herbs, I don't offer any of these formulas, but just that the [Plerium 00:46:36] blends, like Free and Easy Wanderer, these are the herbs that smooth out the flow within the liver. That's the one I think for people, but like these plerium blends and formulas, I think would be really nice addition for a lot of people, especially to hopefully smooth out some of the excessive emotions that come out of the liver sometimes or with anything. In any process like this, I'm sure you see people go through all manner of emotional processes going through this.   Jake Steiner: (47:04) For sure. And that's why I'm like, especially in the forum, there's a lot of people who are a lot more into this side of the topic who would love that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? And I'm super open-minded about, "I'm not right, I just figured out one little sliver of one little thing. You have a whole other thing." And I'm learning. There's so much interesting stuff that people figured out that isn't mainstream, isn't easily packaged and sold in every grocery store. You know what I mean? I like to make that connection. So if you have stuff like that, I'm always interested.   Mason: (47:40) Definitely send you some Beauty Blend, man, couple of other things. But I mean, as I said, I like having this, a podcast resource like this, because when we get asked, it makes me feel so much more secure and comfortable going, "Yeah, hit this first." And then you start adding in all the other things and it just becomes this massive bonus. But there's an actual technique here that's somewhat proven, anecdotally even, with tens of thousands of people at this point, which is nice to have anecdotal evidence getting to those numbers. And then can't hurt, can't hurt, add the Beauty Blend in there, get the liver chi flowing. The ancient Taoists said that this is how you keep the eyes sparkling. It sounds fun. Other good shit's going to happen when you're doing it anyway, so just go and enjoy yourself.   Jake Steiner: (48:32) And also speaking of herbs, I have a house in Myanmar, which is currently not in a good situation, but they only do herb stuff. They use this stuff on their skin, right? They draw these circles on their skin with bark, it's bark from some kind of tree. You do not get sunburned. Your skin doesn't even get dark. Everybody uses it. It is some magic stuff. And it would put sunscreen companies out of business, because it's a tree bark, you just rub it up, you put it on your skin. It looks cool. It keeps your skin smooth. No sunburns.   Mason: (49:08) Wow.   Jake Steiner: (49:09) It is amazing. Yeah. And all Burmese, that's how you can recognise Burmese people in Thailand because they draw these things on themselves. But that's that tree bark. And they've got this for all kinds of different things there. And because I live there and I have a fully off-grid house, and when I get... something funky happens, they always bring out some herbs and the herbs always work. So I've learned like there's certainly an art there that's getting lost a little bit in our pharmaceutical world.   Mason: (49:39) Yeah. It's called thanaka, T-H-A-N-A-K-A, apparently.   Jake Steiner: (49:45) Yeah, that's right.   Mason: (49:45) Is that it?   Jake Steiner: (49:45) Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Mason: (49:46) Yeah, cool.   Jake Steiner: (49:46) Yep.   Mason: (49:47) Looks amazing. I mean, I'd love a lot of those... Yeah, look at it. Look at the designs that they pop on their checks, everyone going like... Yeah, if you just write, if you write thanaka, or I've just written Myanmar bark sunscreen and then gone to images. Beautiful. It looks great. That's the goal. Because here, that's what we do with... we had an auntie up north who's from [Moranbah 00:50:13], and she's just like, "Yeah, use ochre. That's what you guys should be using. You just put ochre all over you." And so when got it, just pop that on our daughter. It doesn't like... sunscreen, we weren't going to use like a zinc based anyway, but it's so more badass as well.   Jake Steiner: (50:28) That stuff is cool. And people use it. This is not an old ancient thing that is no longer in use. Right now, you go to some island in Thailand, you want to figure out which are Thai people are Burmese, look for the ones that have things drawn on them. It's cute.   Mason: (50:44) Man, this has been so rad. I hope people jump over to your website. Easiest way for them to find you?   Jake Steiner: (50:52) Endmyopia.org.   Mason: (50:56) Endmyopia.org. You do have a crap load of resources on there.   Jake Steiner: (51:03) It's many years of stuff.   Mason: (51:07) I can tell. A lot of resources. There's apps there. Gosh, I mean, Shortsighted Podcast in there. I mean, yeah, I can see you've got a Discord going as well. Is that still happening?   Jake Steiner: (51:23) Yeah. A lot of that stuff is community stuff. I'm not on Discord much, but somebody said we need Discord, and so yeah, they're talking on there.   Mason: (51:33) It's a movement, you can tell. You've started a movement, which is awesome. It must feel good. I hope you feel good.   Jake Steiner: (51:39) Yeah. I feel like an imposter mostly. It's weird for me to be the... You know what I mean? If I had a cool beard for a start, then you know-   Mason: (51:47) Maybe. Maybe that's the first... because it's the same thing. In all only imposter stuff it's the same as the eyesight, it's just environmental. It's just what you're putting around yourself and what you're saying to yourself, it's a process. I kind of still feel it. I recently just figured my way through it and finding my place in the whole herbal world and the health education world. I had to just embrace a little bit more of my full spectrum of self. Like a full spectrum of eyesight. I had to kind of get a little bit more into my comedy career, put less pressure on myself to kind of be a know-it-all in the health and herbal space. And I feel like I'm slowly have an appropriate... All of a sudden that impostor feeling has an evolution to being a much more appropriate emotion or feeling that actually gets some momentum behind me rather than... I definitely know that feeling of being stuck in that... Excessively.   Jake Steiner: (52:41) If you have suggestions, I always welcome them because that's definitely a weird problem I have. Because it feels like I can't possibly be that dude. You know what I mean? There's a lot of jokes on the site. I constantly joke about my imaginary beard and being the last living eye guru. Because I'm like, how is it possible? It continues to be the thing and I like talking about it and I think it's important. But at the same time it should be somebody more wise or with the right titles or something.   Mason: (53:08) Yeah. For me, I was always in the back of my mind... it wasn't an actual threat. I was just like, I was worried, I knew the things, I could call the things out about myself that were gaps in my knowledge and where I knew that potentially someone could... there was a in my armour and someone could call out my lack of experience in this element of what I do or in this element of what I do. And I've had it in the past when I've been a bit more overt and bravado about my expertise, which weren't there and had that person who was a big gift now, but you know, kind of whack me down on social media and be like, "Here, how about some facts? You want to back it up? You want to be able to do this, then let's go at it." And I'd get really angry and, "How dare you pull me down?" And then my housemate at the time was like, I was telling her, I was venting about it. And she was like, "Oh wow, this guy's really helping you sharpen your pencil. You're really reacting to this and showing your hole." And I was like, "Oh, shit. Yeah, they're definitely... Yes."   Jake Steiner: (54:09) I love those. I love those. Especially in the forum. I don't sensor stuff. So when people come and say... There's a thread in there now of some guy who said he got massive amounts of floaters and I didn't say it and it was because of me, and I welcome those because whatever my imposter feeling is, I'm like, please do point it out. Just bring it. You know what I mean? Because it's such a weird topic. Nobody needs these things in front of their eyes and it makes us less... it makes us timid and it makes us hide behind screens and books and it stops us from expressing and experiencing and I am not the dude to tell that story, in a way. Right? Because I'm just a dude.   Mason: (54:51) Well, but you obviously are. I don't know. I reckon you're probably on the path anyway and something will pop eventually. Because you're calling yourself out. As long as you're calling yourself out in a progressive... in a way that it progresses forward. That was my big thing. I started pulling all the herbalists and the acupuncturists onto the podcast and I just-   Jake Steiner: (55:10) Oh, cool.   Mason: (55:11) ... started owning my position. I started owning my shortcomings, all the things I thought if I kind of admitted to and mentioned that everyone would just go, "You're a fraud." And everyone was like, "Yeah, we know mate. We know you're only this." And I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm just the herbal scallywag and I'm making my own formulations. And I work within tonic herbs, which are super easy." Everyone can do it. I have a certain amount of experience, I understand patterns, I understand how to formulate, I understand how to source because that's just my passion. I used to call myself out in a really self-deprecating way and I used to kind of joke about it, I'd be like, "Yeah, I can't do this and I can't do that."   Mason: (55:49) Now, I feel like I'm more in a position where I'm just like, " I need to put boundaries up, need to have good boundaries around my capacity and make sure that I state what my capacity is and my want. I'm not going to go and study more. So don't expect any more from me than this." And then I just kind of went into cultivation and within those boundaries, I just owned it. This is who I am, having so much fun doing this and I'll go to the experts and I just started... like you do as well I guess, just started, "Well, I don't know that bit. I actually don't know how to answer that bit, but I'm going to start pulling in experts and start getting really curious."   Mason: (56:28) I started getting really curious and started becoming a student again. I really owned my expertise and what I do well, and it's like, "Screw it. I'm going to own it." I'm sure I can feel a lot of relatedness with you there. And then going off and going, "I'm going to continue to learn." And yeah, I'm just going to continue to learn. Be a student.   Jake Steiner: (56:45) I like that. And I like that, especially because I think we spend so much time online with these things is trying to figure out where's the scam, where's the catch? That's always my first thing. I'm like, "Ah, what is this crap about now?" I really like when somebody goes, "Let me just tell you." Like, when you said this is my expertise and this is the limit of it, I'm like, I'm already a fan. Because you're not forcing me to go find a whole... because you're not happy until you go, "What's the real..." Everything has a certain amount of bullshit in it. I do that probably too much, because I'm probably... People who randomly show up at the website are like, "What is with this fool?" But I'm like the librarian of this thing. People bring what works and what doesn't work and I just collect it all and I put it all in one place and that's it, right?   Mason: (57:41) I feel you, man. It's a trippy feeling knowing that there's like... when you start getting like website traffic and you start knowing there's heaps more people having that initial reaction, "What the hell is this?" I tripped out about that a lot and wanted to control that a lot. That's kind of shifted. I just started getting into more comedy stuff on my personal Instagram, and that kind of, for some reason that just alleviated the pressure valve for me. And that was where I got to practise going, "All right, they're going to come and they're going to see this, and this is the one thing they're going to see and they might not get the whole backstory and I haven't had time to explain myself and that..." I'm going, "All, I'm going to just accept it. This is me being vulnerable." And so I just started becoming really prolific, for me anyway, prolific in that rather than perfect. And it-   Jake Steiner: (58:32) I want to see that. I got to go check that out. I like it. Yeah.   Mason: (58:38) masonjtaylor.com. No, masonjtaylor, @masonjtaylor. Masonjtaylor.com, don't go there anyone, that website is very out of date.   Jake Steiner: (58:45) That's cool. I like that. Especially when you're like, "I didn't explain it clearly." I think there's something to just letting go of some of the veil of perfection and just being like, "I'm making a thing and it's an ongoing experiment in evolving it, making it better."   Mason: (59:04) I think it'd be really nice for it to happen more and more. Because I mean, you've provided so much, it'd be nice to see... it would have to go. I'm sure every business or offering or charity or whatever it is, it's always going hit a point where it's like, "All right, things need to change. And it needs to take on a new way of being... new way of being structured or professional," or whatever it is. I can imagine yours is with that many people behind it, you could step it up and take it to another level. It's just going, "All right, cool. Do we just sit, let it be here or do we jump into the unknown once again and take it forward?" Either way, I think the resources and the offering is magic. It'd be awesome to see it continue to evolve and grow into the world so people can have that place and make this more of a norm, make the knowledge more of a norm and the insight that you can actually restore your vision, a norm as well.   Jake Steiner: (01:00:02) Yeah. Just be happy, the people that listen to your podcast and enjoy your approach, to maybe look at their eyes and go, "Maybe I'll take care of these things a little bit."   Mason: (01:00:16) We're doing all HR stuff and at the moment, like that's where our structure is coming in, bringing more and more love to everyone working in the business and this is the one of the resources... we have blue blocker glasses and things that people can wear, but just start putting this... because we're growing, put this into the fabric of the... a bit more into the fabric of the workflow. And for everyone, taking pride and this leads a little distinctions of how to ensure that our eyeball doesn't become elongated and we don't start deteriorating the health of the fluid within it, and just these little things you've mentioned, it's just like, bang, I'm on. I'm on. I'm implementing that right now. Some people are wearing glasses, I'm going to send them this just as an option. But for those that don't... I feel it right now, I've been staring at the screen all day. I'm like, "Jeez, the blurriness."   Jake Steiner: (01:01:09) Buy an eye chart. Buy an eye chart. Hang it up somewhere in your house, and just mark a spot that's the right distance from it. And sometimes when you walk past it, just stop there and look at it. And start noticing how that goes up and down. Because that prompts action, then you're like, "Well, maybe I'm going to not do four hours, maybe three hours." Because there's also a time where the muscle starts to lock up, for me that is three hours. I spend more than three hours in front of a screen, I can't see the small line on the eye chart anymore.   Mason: (01:01:38) Wow.   Jake Steiner: (01:01:39) The muscle just locked up. And then if I take an hour walk, I can see that line again. So I know what my screen limit is before that muscle just gets stuck for the rest of the day. An eye chart is super handy just as a quick reference of, can you read the thing still or can't you.   Mason: (01:01:56) I mean that immediate feedback, as well. Where do we get the eye chart? Is that just something we purchase in our local area?   Jake Steiner: (01:02:04) Yeah, or you can print it out. I have some somewhere, but I don't know where. It should be easy to get, just buy it online somewhere.   Mason: (01:02:11) We'll have a look, see if we can find it on your site and put it in the resources for the podcast, otherwise like you said, I'm sure it's just one of those things that's easy to order online. But that's good. I'm definitely doi

Sondrine Kehoe's love affair with scent and botanicals came into being at a very young age. Kindled by childhood curiosity; Mixing flowers, honey, and alcohol to make her first perfume. What started as a creative outlet has now grown into a successful regenerative business. Cygnet Perfumery creates the most divine collection of handcrafted botanical extrait de parfum's and regenerative skincare, made in limited and small batches using sustainable sources and methods. Whether it be a parfum or skincare, Sondrine only uses the most carefully considered natural ingredients ( no synthetic fragrances or endangered plants), the process of creation is slow and intentional, with every extrait de parfum released exclusively in limited batches. Listening to Sondrine talk about the alchemical creation process of her potent products; It becomes clear that Cygnet Perfumery is a business centred around integrity and conscious practices. Sondrine's devotion and attention to every aspect of creating these divine bottles of joy for our most primal sense are admirable and something worth celebrating. This conversation is heart and soul-worthy and will teach you a lot about the art of botanical perfumery. Tune in to hear Tahnee and Sondrine discuss botanical formulation, conscious business, the power of scent, essential oils, motherhood, birth, midwifery, and so much more.     "We want to treat it with respect. That's part of the reason we release a small batch and only once a year. We don't want to produce in mass production, to make as much profit as possible out of these amazing plants that we have the privilege of working with".   - Sondrine Kehoe     Tahnee and Sondrine discuss: Botanical perfumery How we experience smell. The skin microbiome. What is regenerative skincare? skincare ingredients. The golden age of perfumery. Native Australian botanicals. Aromatherapy and oil guidelines. Home birth and midwifery. Why the scent of parfum changes over time.   Who is Sondrine Kehoe? Sondrine Kehoe is the founder and nose behind Cygnet - a mindful small business that offers slow-made botanical extrait de parfum and regenerative skincare. Sondrine is a self-taught perfumer who has been alchemising plants into fragrance since she was a child. After studying midwifery and becoming a mother herself, she launched Cygnet in 2020 - a celebration of nature, creativity, and the fifth sense.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: IFRA Perfume Body cygnetperfumery.com.au Cygnet Perfumery Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everybody and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm here today with Sondrine Kehoe. She's the founder of Cygnet Perfumery, and she's just a bit of a legend. I'm really excited to have her here with us today.   Tahnee: (00:14) I've been diving into her world, I think since the start of the year. I signed up for a subscription for her work, and I've been getting these beautiful little packages on that incredible cotton paper that you use, which I'm obsessed with.   Tahnee: (00:26) And Sondrine's work around using botanicals that are really carefully sourced, and some of them are handmade, and just this really kind of old school process, using... Is it the spiritus vini? All of this stuff. I'm really excited to be here with you. Because I have a big thing for perfume but I don't like all that commercial stuff, so it's super exciting to meet you. Thanks so much for joining us.   Sondrine Kehoe: (00:53) Thanks. It's so nice to be chatting to you.   Tahnee: (00:56) Yeah. And I'm just so fascinated with your story. I tried to do a bit of research on you, and saw that used to be a midwife, and I thought, babies, scent... Really primal careers you've had. So would you mind telling us a little bit about how you got into perfumery, but also your life before perfumery?   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:20) Of course, yeah. Where to begin? I feel like actually, perfumery started right from the beginning. So before midwifery and all those other tangents that I went on, I started, just like most children, making potions in the garden from plants, and I think we can all relate to that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:46) And I just never grew out of it. It's just a passion that was seeded from an early age. And so I'd always make my own perfumes and skincare from the garden, and was very encouraged by all my aunts and family, who would give me books and old perfume bottles.   Sondrine Kehoe: (02:10) And I remember in primary school, I discovered that botanical perfumery was an actual vocation, and that there were people out there making it. And so I made my first alcohol based perfume with vodka and honey, and different flowers from the garden. I've still got it today, actually. But it's something that I've just done my whole life and loved. I guess it's a bit of a creative outlet for me.   Sondrine Kehoe: (02:42) And then I got out of high school, and actually was going to start something when I finished school, a completely different project, but with botanical perfume. But life took me in another direction and I ended up studying midwifery, and completely fell in love with that whole world. Babies, birth. It was a really special time.   Sondrine Kehoe: (03:11) So I studied that for four years. And then me and my partner decided to have a sea change, to move out of the city with my sister and her husband. And sorry if I sound breathless. It's the 32 week [crosstalk 00:03:28] read my daughter a story and I'm... Run a marathon.   Sondrine Kehoe: (03:36) So we had a sea change out of Melbourne and ended up both getting pregnant, within about two weeks apart of each other. And so we both had our babies in the same house, and life just suddenly slowed down a lot. And I took a step back from Midwifery, and just fell back into perfumery.   Sondrine Kehoe: (04:03) While my daughter would nap I would be tinkering away on different formulas. And Cygnet really grew from there, from becoming a mother and re- igniting that creativity and slowing down a bit. So yeah, it's definitely related. Pushed me in that direction.   Tahnee: (04:29) I don't know a lot about the art and craft of it beyond that it's this incredible mix of alchemy and chemistry, and then nuance, your own olfactory perceptions and how you weave things together. But is it a slow process for you, pulling together a scent, or is that something that comes really quickly, or how does it work for you?   Sondrine Kehoe: (04:54) I'd probably say a little bit of both. Definitely mainly slow. There's a couple of perfumes that have taken a couple of months to create, but a lot of them take years really, of just slightly altering 1.1 Mil less of something. I think it's definitely a slow process. And the ageing process in itself is slow with them, and they do change after you allow them to age for six months or so.   Tahnee: (05:31) Yeah, I found that super interesting, just researching perfumes, that like wine, they age and they get better, different. What's your thoughts on that? Is there an appropriate use phase?   Sondrine Kehoe: (05:47) Definitely. I think you can definitely draw that analogy between wine making and perfumery, particularly with botanical perfumery, and you have these really dynamic, alive essential oils you're working with, and absolutes that are in themselves like perfumes, really.   Sondrine Kehoe: (06:08) So each oil is made up of hundreds and hundreds of different volatile chemical compounds, and so when you mix them all together and put them in a base of... So we use spiritus vini, which is grape alcohol... There's these chemical reactions that occur between all the essential oils, and that's what creates that... On the nose, you'll notice it becomes smoother, rounder, less sharp notes sticking out. They kind of do become fuller bodied. And sometimes-   Tahnee: (06:47) Yeah, like wine.   Sondrine Kehoe: (06:48) Yeah, it is. It's really similar to wine.   Tahnee: (06:55) So with the spiritus vini... I guess I'm not super familiar with how a more commercial perfume is made. Years ago I stopped using them because they made me sick. If I sprayed... I can't remember... I bought one when I was in my early 20s and every time I sprayed it I'd sneeze for about half an hour, and then I'd feel really nauseous. So I stopped using them.   Tahnee: (07:20) And I kind of just started moving more toward essential oils and things anyway. And we spoke a little bit off camera about that, but I was really researching essential oils, realising how potent they are, and you know maybe not to be liberally applying, as I was at the time. So what's the role of the spiritus vini? Is it like a preservative or a carrier, or how does it hold the perfume?   Sondrine Kehoe: (07:45) I guess its role is a little bit of everything. So essential oils, and absolutes, and all of their aromatic materials we use can't be applied directly to skin. So you have to follow and know their safe skin concentration limit to, as best as you can, make sure that no one's going to have a reaction to the product.   Sondrine Kehoe: (08:14) And so partly it's a dilutant, but alcohol does also preserve the fragrance. But the main thing I love about it is that it actually projects the fragrance. So as you put it on, the alcohol rises, evaporates off your skin, and it really gives that lift, especially to the top notes of the fragrance. So that's why we chose to work with it rather than do oil based perfumes. I just love how it makes the fragrance smell, and how you experience it.   Tahnee: (08:52) Yeah, and my guess is that quality of when you apply it, your body's warm and there's that mixing of you and the perfume [crosstalk 00:09:01]   Sondrine Kehoe: (09:01) Yeah, that's a whole other thing, isn't it? It's amazing. You smell it on[crosstalk 00:09:09]   Tahnee: (09:10) Yeah, and I'm like, "It doesn't smell the same on you."   Sondrine Kehoe: (09:13) Yeah, it mixes with your own body chemistry. And even the climate as well... So you'll notice, in warm weather, it might be slightly different to, say, winter. It's so alive, isn't it? Living organism of perfume.   Tahnee: (09:33) Yeah, and I guess like if you're... Because I know you're really interested in the microbiome, and I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that, in terms of those more synthetic fragrances, and then how something like Cygnet would work. Is it more microbiome friendly to work with more natural products? Is there a correlation there between keeping our skin happy and...   Sondrine Kehoe: (09:57) Yeah. So I guess my interest in the microbiome happened when I studied midwifery. That was when I first learned about it. Because our microbiome is seeded at birth, obviously. And that sent me into a whole research spiral, and I just fell in love with it, and had always planned on launching skincare.   Sondrine Kehoe: (10:22) So we launched, at the start of this year, the regenerative skincare line which is all microbiome friendly. And with perfume, products that can influence the microbiome in a negative way can be natural or synthetic. So it can be either, because there are definitely essential oils that are really highly anti microbial, like tea tree oil. That's an example.   Tahnee: (10:53) Oregano.   Sondrine Kehoe: (10:54) Yeah, oregano. Exactly. And so in concentrations that are really high, they can also affect the good bacteria that we want to keep on our skin. But then there are also oils that are selectively anti microbial. And so they'll target the pathogens, the bad ones we don't want, but still allow the others to thrive. So with the perfumes, they are alcohol based. And alcohol is obviously...   Tahnee: (11:29) We've learned about that this year.   Sondrine Kehoe: (11:30) Yeah, we learned about that, and I think we can all feel that, with all the sanitizer we're applying as well, that it's not a great thing for our microbiome. But it's needed sometimes. So it's something that I would love to integrate further with our fragrance line, as we grow.   Sondrine Kehoe: (11:49) The key thing with it, that I wanted, was... You'll note that they're all applied the traditional way. Because they're extraits, we dab them. We don't spray them. And so they're applied to a really tiny surface area of your skin. So I definitely wouldn't claim that they are going to benefit your microbiome. But I would have to leave it to the experts to...   Tahnee: (12:22) Yeah, but I guess that makes a lot of sense, that you're not like spraying this mist all over you, that's going to hit multiple parts of the body.   Sondrine Kehoe: (12:32) Yeah, definitely. But it certainly has different benefits too, wearing as, say, a synthetic fragrance.   Tahnee: (12:41) Yeah and I mean, your skincare... I just received some the other day. I just opened it this morning. It's beautiful. [crosstalk 00:12:47] So I'm looking forward to having used it for a little while, but I'm really interested in your work around that, because there's a hydrosol product with the seaweed extract in it, which looks [crosstalk 00:13:03] And then I've got the serum. So I'm interested, how did that come about? What's your process with putting that together?   Sondrine Kehoe: (13:10) So I was working on that for quite some time. We called the line Regenerative Skin Care because we follow a philosophy where each product has three criteria that it has to meet. So we source all our ingredients direct from farmers, producers, distillers, scientists that are using regenerative, organic or bio dynamic practises. And they have to be microbiome friendly for our skin. And then also we plant a tree with each one sold.   Sondrine Kehoe: (13:48) So the whole concept is that it's meant to regenerate the microbes both on our skin and on the earth, through biodiversity. And it's been an amazing journey. I've just met so many incredible producers and distillers. So most of our ingredients are sourced within Australia, and then there's a couple internationally. But it's been so nice to connect with these amazing people, and definitely been one of my favourite experiences so far in the business. So it kind of emerged from that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (14:29) And so at the moment, there's only two products, a serum and an elixir, I guess you could call it. It's a mist. And we're also slowly working on a cleanser. But it will always be really minimal, because if you're into microbiome friendly skincare, you'll know you don't need much for your skin. A minimal routine is best.   Tahnee: (14:57) Yeah. Leave it alone.   Sondrine Kehoe: (14:59) Exactly. And as little ingredients as you can, just of really high quality. But the ingredients that have made these products, I've fallen in love with. You mentioned the seaweed extract. So that's one from a company in Hobart, Tasmania. And it's wakame seaweed that they collect from Patagonia, as well as a little bit on the coast of Tazzy. And they organically extract it in their lab.   Sondrine Kehoe: (15:34) And they work, I think, with a university nearby them. So they've done some really amazing studies on this product they create, and it's just really an incredible extract for the skin, and for the microbiome as well.   Tahnee: (15:49) I'm excited to see that, because I think seaweed's just such an incredible... I know they're kind of weird plant animal things. [crosstalk 00:16:06] But they're such an amazing boon for humans and the planet. It's really exciting to see them getting a bit more time in the public arena.   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:16) Yeah, it is, isn't it?   Tahnee: (16:17) Yeah. And so I was really curious about where Cygnet came from. Because it's a baby goose, but is that your relationship with it? Is it a baby goose [crosstalk 00:16:31]   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:31) Funnily enough, it basically is. So a cygnet's a baby swan.   Tahnee: (16:36) Baby swan.   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:36) It's slightly different from a goose.   Tahnee: (16:37) Yeah, no, gosling. Of course.   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:38) Same, same.   Tahnee: (16:40) [crosstalk 00:16:40] my baby brain.   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:42) We were just in Sydney, feeding baby swans, cygnets...   Tahnee: (16:45) Oh, were you?   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:45) ... And my daughter was like, "What's a baby swan called?" And I was like, "It's called a cygnet." Yeah, anyway.   Tahnee: (16:49) They're so cute.   Sondrine Kehoe: (16:49) Yeah, they're sweet, aren't they? So my loved ones all call me swan. So that's how it came... And then Cygnet obviously evolved after I became a mother. So we were chatting one evening, and the name came about.   Tahnee: (17:11) It's so beautiful. And all of your branding, all of its really... I can just tell how much your attention to detail and that alchemy has sort of carried through the whole range.   Sondrine Kehoe: (17:24) Oh, thank you.   Tahnee: (17:26) It's really beautiful to experience it.   Sondrine Kehoe: (17:26) That's lovely.   Tahnee: (17:29) Like that paper, I swear, every time I get it I'm like-   Sondrine Kehoe: (17:31) Yeah, isn't it amazing? I just keep it but I don't know what I'm doing with it.   Tahnee: (17:35) That paper's called lokta paper, and it's a traditional Nepalese paper that is made from a plant there. But it's beautiful.   Sondrine Kehoe: (17:46) It is. It's really, really special. And so tell me a little bit about... Do you do some of the distillation stuff yourself, or are you... I mean, I'm thinking about time. How long do these take you?   Tahnee: (18:02) I know. I would love to. It's definitely a big hobby of mine. I was lucky enough to go and have a day distilling with one of my producers, who distils the rosemary hydrosol for me. And it was amazing, learning about distilling.   Tahnee: (18:22) I'd love to eventually get a still and have a go myself. But I think it would be a big learning process, and I'm very fussy with my sourcing. And the oils that I'm working with, just of a calibre that would probably take me years to figure out how to distil them as well. So I'll leave it to the experts for now.   Tahnee: (18:46) But I do some things in house, so using an old method called enfleurage, where you use a bit of fat... I use organic shea butter... And it's for flowers that are too fragile to distil as an essential oil. So maybe like violets and-   Sondrine Kehoe: (19:12) Jasmine and rose.   Tahnee: (19:13) Yeah. All of those beautiful ones. So you lay them on the fat, and you have to change them every day, at least 30 times. So it's a really slow process. And then you wash them [crosstalk 00:19:25] Yeah, exactly. So I do do that. I enjoy all those slow processes. And I also make tinctures. So with the spiritus vini, you can extract certain materials as a tincture, and then age them as well, separately to the perfume.   Sondrine Kehoe: (19:47) So you're using those tinctures in the perfume, as a part of [crosstalk 00:19:50]   Tahnee: (19:50) I am. Yeah, as a part of the base. Some of them are really strong, so they don't constitute the whole base. So for example, Vigneron, which I think you just would have got. Is that right? [crosstalk 00:20:06] Oh no. End of the year [crosstalk 00:20:10] December, sorry. That has a-   Sondrine Kehoe: (20:08) Sneak preview.   Tahnee: (20:13) That all started from a tincture I made of heritage roses from a vineyard nearby.   Sondrine Kehoe: (20:18) Oh, wow.   Tahnee: (20:19) Yeah, so that's beautiful. And it also has an oak barrel tincture as well. So it's a lot of fun. I think alchemy's one of the things that I'm just super into, and I feel like perfume [crosstalk 00:20:36] really old art, that if you go back all the way through human history, we've been playing with scents. Because there's that really primitive sense of how much scent brings forth memory, and brings forth really subtle layers of our consciousness. Is there a scent for you that's really meaningful, that holds...   Sondrine Kehoe: (20:59) A lot of memory?   Tahnee: (21:00) Yeah, [crosstalk 00:21:03] You've worked with a lot of really powerful scents in your range.   Sondrine Kehoe: (21:05) Yeah, definitely. I think whenever that happens it always takes me by surprise. So recalling something comes to mind right now, but [crosstalk 00:21:20] you'll get a smell of a perfume. Someone's walking by, and you'll smell what they're wearing, and instantly [crosstalk 00:21:27] taken back to another loved one. But I'm trying to think...   Tahnee: (21:36) It's probably all hand sanitizer right now.   Sondrine Kehoe: (21:39) Yeah. Well actually, the hand sanitizer brings me back to the birth suite. [crosstalk 00:21:43] so I kind of have this nostalgic love for the smell.   Tahnee: (21:48) That's really charming. Delivering babies.   Sondrine Kehoe: (21:52) Exactly, yeah. And it's funny like that. I think it's the strongest sense we have that's connected to emotion and memories. It has a really powerful ability to bring back memories. A lot of the time it might just be things like cooking, I think, will often bring me back to my childhood. A certain dish that my mum would make.   Tahnee: (22:17) Yeah, even stuff you've eaten overseas. Smelling-   Sondrine Kehoe: (22:19) Yeah. Is there something for you?   Tahnee: (22:24) I have a thing for vetiver because... This is a weird story, but I had an eating disorder in my late teens and early 20s. I was very disembodied, and I worked with this woman for a really long time who would rub vetiver all over her hands before she worked on me. And the first time I ever remember feeling my body, all I could smell was vetiver, and it's just this very-   Sondrine Kehoe: (22:49) Wow. What a powerful memory.   Tahnee: (22:51) Yeah, it's a really grounding smell. Every time I smell it now I'm like [crosstalk 00:22:59]   Sondrine Kehoe: (22:59) And it's distilled from roots as well. So that's [crosstalk 00:23:02]   Tahnee: (23:02) Is it?   Sondrine Kehoe: (23:03) Yeah [crosstalk 00:23:04]   Tahnee: (23:03) So that makes sense. Really earthy. But I've always liked spag bol and things like that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (23:12) I know. It's always those simple things. Manila or all those.   Tahnee: (23:18) Or certain incense. I used to own a yoga studio, so there's times when I would light a certain type of incense I'd be like, "That reminds me of that space." [crosstalk 00:23:28] I find perfume [crosstalk 00:23:31]   Sondrine Kehoe: (23:31) Definitely. I love using scent purposefully, to bring you back to a certain way of feeling, or a time. And using new scents that you haven't smelled before to help establish a memory, I think's really beautiful.   Tahnee: (23:51) Yeah, like creating a new pathway.   Sondrine Kehoe: (23:52) Yeah.   Tahnee: (23:54) Is your daughter interested in this process at all?   Sondrine Kehoe: (23:57) Yeah, she is. She's already doing it in the garden.   Tahnee: (24:02) Has she created anything interesting yet?   Sondrine Kehoe: (24:08) Yeah, she's my prodigy. The pressure's on her. No, she definitely loves exploring, and I can't wait till she's... She's only three, but when she gets to the age where she's able to tinker around at my perfume organ and play with all the oils. I can't wait to see what she creates. She's definitely very interested in it.   Tahnee: (24:33) But is she more in the mud and petals stage?   Sondrine Kehoe: (24:37) She's still in the mud and petals stage.   Tahnee: (24:41) My daughter [inaudible 00:24:43] not a nice smell, but I'm very proud of you for trying.   Sondrine Kehoe: (24:49) Yeah, definitely.   Tahnee: (24:49) And are you using a lot of traditional... I mean, my understanding of perfumery is a lot of, I guess, our more modern processes out of the French style, I guess, that I know. [crosstalk 00:25:06]   Sondrine Kehoe: (25:05) Yeah, for sure. It is, yeah. So the processes we use are inspired by, I guess, the golden age of perfumery in France, which was around 16th to 18th Century, I think, before synthetic molecules were discovered. And there were these beautiful perfumes. A lot of them were made up of hundreds of different essential oils. And they would also use... The spiritus vini comes from there too, a particular distillation of grape alcohol.   Sondrine Kehoe: (25:44) And the style, extrait de parfum, is also a French style that's the most concentrated, purest form of scent, and why I really love that intimate physical process of applying it directly to your skin, rather than spraying. [crosstalk 00:26:07]   Tahnee: (26:07) I totally agree with that. It's very sensual, and slow, and [crosstalk 00:26:13] in putting it on. And I mean, I guess, is that tradition... I'm interested in how... Are you looking at Australian botanicals, and going, "Well, how do I weave..."   Sondrine Kehoe: (26:27) Definitely.   Tahnee: (26:28) I don't know how they'd play with your perfume.   Sondrine Kehoe: (26:32) Yeah, so influenced by those old traditions but then weaving in more contemporary insights and methods, and I guess disrupting a little bit what the tradition of perfume is.   Tahnee: (26:46) Go, girl.   Sondrine Kehoe: (26:46) So I've used some beautiful Australian oils, and at the moment I've got a really gorgeous duo of oils from a distiller in New South Wales that I've been slowly working on.   Sondrine Kehoe: (27:05) I find one of my favourite scents is the smell of the bush by the beach, but it's something that [crosstalk 00:27:11] hard to capture.So I've been working on something for years, but I'm still not happy. It's hard to do it justice.   Tahnee: (27:19) Because I guess you've got so many layers of nuance, and that [inaudible 00:27:26] fresh, seaweedy, and then [crosstalk 00:27:28]   Sondrine Kehoe: (27:28) Exactly.   Tahnee: (27:30) And you guys are on the Mornington Peninsula, right?   Sondrine Kehoe: (27:32) We are.   Tahnee: (27:32) So you've got the proper Aussie bush.   Sondrine Kehoe: (27:35) Exactly. We are. We're on a little beach town here. And we're on five acres, so there's mainly tea tree on the property where we are.   Tahnee: (27:45) Lovely.   Sondrine Kehoe: (27:46) And the smell of that sandy soil and the tea tree when the sun warms it up, it's so beautiful. We've got some amazing oils coming from Australia, particularly our Australian sandalwood as well.   Tahnee: (28:01) Is that sort of an emerging industry here? Because I think it seems like these big oil companies, which we don't need to name names, but we know who they are... Then there's all these little people who are just quite small. Is it hard to compete with these kind of big, MLM, global operations?   Sondrine Kehoe: (28:29) Yeah, definitely. So like the artisan distillers... There's definitely a bit of a monopoly on the oil industry. And a lot of politics, and also sustainability issues as well, with sourcing. It's something that we're super careful of.   Sondrine Kehoe: (28:53) I'd love to be able to source everything direct like we do with skincare, for fragrance, but we make our batches in really small quantities that are released once a year, so it's just not viable for the producers of these oils to sell them in such small quantities.   Sondrine Kehoe: (29:13) So we work with three different suppliers. One of them mainly sources from artisan distillers, which is really nice because it's a completely different product. For example, vetiver, you will smell three different oils and they'll smell completely different depending on where they're grown or who's distilled them, what the climate was like that year.   Sondrine Kehoe: (29:39) And so here in Australia, it's definitely starting to grow a bit bigger. I would say the main oils that are coming out of Australia for the perfume industry are Australian sandalwood, particularly because sandalwood's an endangered species.   Sondrine Kehoe: (30:00) So we used to use Sandalwood coming out of India, but basically the sandalwood trees there got just decimated by the perfume industry and essential oil industry, which is really sad, and something to be wary of when you're buying oils. So we don't use any endangered species in our perfumes.   Sondrine Kehoe: (30:22) And the other oil that comes out of here... It's actually an absolute... Is called boronia, and it's a tiny little brown flower. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it.   Tahnee: (30:32) Yeah, is it like the little succulenty kind of-   Sondrine Kehoe: (30:35) It does look a little bit like that, and it looks a bit like a bell, the flower.   Tahnee: (30:39) Yeah, I think I grow some.   Sondrine Kehoe: (30:41) Yeah, I know. One mil of that is about usually $60. [crosstalk 00:30:49] Yeah, exactly.   Tahnee: (30:52) So what's it smell like? What's its notes? How would you describe it?   Sondrine Kehoe: (30:58) It's really beautiful and unique. It's like a perfume in its own right. It's kind of like...   Tahnee: (31:04) Kind of a floral-   Sondrine Kehoe: (31:05) Floral but a little bit fruity. So we don't currently have a perfume with it in there, but it's definitely on the cards.[crosstalk 00:31:16] Yeah, I get too excited. All these different projects running at once.   Tahnee: (31:21) Yeah, I mean, I think we're very similar here. We always have 500 things in the pipeline that never seem to make the light of day. But it's a really interesting thing with sustainability, because again, in researching the essential oil industry a few years ago, I was just pretty devastated with how... And I mean, even the spiritual community, like palo santo and all of the things that we...   Sondrine Kehoe: (31:44) Yeah, I know.   Tahnee: (31:46) ... Everyone burns in their [crosstalk 00:31:47] White sage is getting destroyed. And I was reading a lot about frankincense in Africa and [crosstalk 00:31:59]   Sondrine Kehoe: (31:59) Yeah. The same with that as well. Yeah, I think there's not enough awareness about it, perhaps. And I think maybe people think that when you're buying online, that it's all of the same calibre and produced in the same way. And even the amount of oils that are fake essential oils online as well is really shocking. You definitely want to know who your supplier is.   Tahnee: (32:33) And I noticed that with your perfume, it's so viscous, compared to even good quality organic perfumes and stuff I've bought, there's a real... Viscosity's only word I can think of. It's a really deep texture and substance to it. And really rich smells.   Tahnee: (32:54) And I think there's something... The first time I ever got a vial... I think it was the [inaudible 00:32:59] It was the first one I got, and I was like, "Whoa. This is a very different experience to all the other ones I've ever bought." Which are mostly from health food stores or small makers. They're probably the oil based ones that you were talking about earlier.   Tahnee: (33:12) But I can sort of tell that... And I've noticed that with buying essential oils. You can see how the concentration and how the colour and the smell... And there's a real difference in quality.   Sondrine Kehoe: (33:23) Yeah, for sure there is, isn't there?   Tahnee: (33:27) [inaudible 00:33:27] Are there any sort of companies for the public that you like? Like Australian based?   Sondrine Kehoe: (33:32) Yeah, for sure. Well, Australian based, I have bought from Ahimsa, and I've been pretty happy with them. Really happy. And our biggest essential oil distributors here would maybe, I'd say, be... There's New Directions or Auroma.   Sondrine Kehoe: (33:54) I don't buy too much from them so I'm not quite sure. I can't really make a comment about them. But I find it quite hard to source within Australia, and so my two main suppliers Hermitage in Italy and Eden Botanicals in America, to be completely transparent, if anyone wants to check them out.   Tahnee: (34:23) I've bought from Eden in America when I've been over there. And in my research, a lot of the better companies did seem to be the European based, because they were-   Sondrine Kehoe: (34:35) Yeah. I think it's also to do with... I've been trying to get a few oils direct, and dealing with customs is another world.   Tahnee: (34:47) I know all about that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (34:47) And the taxes you pay on top of it. So I think it is really hard for a business here to offer that kind of array of products within Australia. But I really love the values of both of those companies, and completely trust how they test and source their products. But I'd love to hear if anyone's had some good experiences here as well. I know there's another company called earthYARD which is relatively new.   Tahnee: (35:24) Yeah, I've heard of them.   Sondrine Kehoe: (35:27) They're really transparent with where they source as well. So they've got quite a small range of essential oils, but also carrier oils as well.   Tahnee: (35:37) And so can you explain that concept for people who don't understand? You said before that you don't want to put pure, unadulterated... That's not the right word but you know what I mean... Pure essential oil on your skin. Acupuncture brain fry.   Tahnee: (35:57) My friend... My gosh... He literally burned himself. I can't remember what he put on his skin, but then he went out in the sun, and he had third degree burns.   Sondrine Kehoe: (36:05) Oh, no. Oh, the poor thing.   Tahnee: (36:10) One must be careful.   Sondrine Kehoe: (36:10) So oils that can do that particularly, are bergamot and certain citruses. It's called they're phototoxic, so if you go out into the sun wearing them, then [crosstalk 00:36:25] So yeah, definitely don't play around with oils at home undiluted.   Sondrine Kehoe: (36:34) So there's a perfume body called IFRA, and they set the rules for how much of both synthetic and natural ingredients can go into a perfume at a safe skin level. There's a lot of maybe discussion around whether those rules are right or not. And in Australia we don't actually have to follow what they do, but in countries like in Europe, you do. To sell your fragrances you have to follow those guidelines.   Sondrine Kehoe: (37:12) And I've chosen to follow them, just because it does set out a safe level so that people are less likely to have an allergic reaction. And particularly with those phototoxic essential oils, how much can you put in the perfume without someone going out into the sun after and getting a terrible burn like that. [crosstalk 00:37:35] it's something you definitely don't want your customers to experience.   Sondrine Kehoe: (37:40) So their guidelines are all available to the public, and it's definitely interesting to read if you're going down the route of learning about perfumery as well. And then also, there's lots of great aromatherapy resources that also go into safe skin levels.   Tahnee: (38:04) Yeah, because I grew up reading my mum's aromatherapy books. They were in my house.   Sondrine Kehoe: (38:11) That's so nice.   Tahnee: (38:12) Yeah, but I remember being like... You'd never put anything on straight. Even [crosstalk 00:38:18] you'd put in a carrier oil or something. And then 10 years ago everyone starts getting really into essential oils, and dabbing them on everything. And I was like, "Maybe I'm missing something in my learning about this." And what you're saying about the microbiome as well. They can be very powerful.   Sondrine Kehoe: (38:40) Yeah, they are. I think that's the important thing, that just because it's natural or organic doesn't mean it's formulated in a way that's safe for your skin, or particularly for your microbiome. That's still such a new and emerging field of research. And I think skincare will all head there. I just think that that's the future of skincare. But slowly. There's a lot of work to be done there.   Tahnee: (39:09) Yeah, they don't realise that they're actually part of the plant's hormones. I don't know if you've ever read... Obviously Perfume and Jitterbug Perfume, any of those books around perfume? Have you?   Sondrine Kehoe: (39:25) I've read... What's that classic one? [crosstalk 00:39:30] Yeah, it's great. Patrick Suskind. Is that right?   Tahnee: (39:33) Yeah, I think that's right. There's another book called Jitterbug Perfume, which is by Tom Robbins, which is not as well known, but it's one of my favourites.   Sondrine Kehoe: (39:41) Okay. I've heard of that, actually, I've been meaning to read it. Is it good?   Tahnee: (39:45) It's amazing. It's very absurd he's trying to capture the fragrance of beet at one point.   Sondrine Kehoe: (39:52) Oh wow.   Tahnee: (39:56) It goes all through New Orleans and France and Seattle, and all these different places. But just that idea of the essential oil being like the blood or the essence of the plant.   Sondrine Kehoe: (40:07) Yeah, definitely.   Tahnee: (40:07) Can you speak at all to that? Because I find that such a fascinating idea.   Sondrine Kehoe: (40:16) Yeah, definitely. I do see it like the essence of the plant for sure. Especially when you're in the room, when it's being distilled. Being in that room, and when Bridget from Granite Bar Rosemary was distilling the rosemary, there's just an energy in the room as well when you start smelling it come through this amazing old copper...   Tahnee: (40:43) Still.   Sondrine Kehoe: (40:43) Yeah, still. It does have this really amazing feeling, and the oils do feel so alive as well. And that ties in to the old alchemy as well, doesn't it? Extracting that...   Tahnee: (41:00) Yeah, that very essence of...   Sondrine Kehoe: (41:03) Yeah, the very essence of the plant.   Tahnee: (41:05) And then what, I guess, a privilege that is, to have access to that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (41:09) Oh, it is.   Tahnee: (41:10) And [crosstalk 00:41:10] it just becomes this whole story.   Sondrine Kehoe: (41:15) For sure. We try and treat it with that respect as well. That's part of the whole reason of releasing really small batch, and only once a year, and not just producing in mass production, to make as much profit as you can out of these amazing plants that I feel like we have the privilege to work with.   Tahnee: (41:39) Yeah, I mean, herbalism's the same for us. It's this funny dance between... You want people to experience the magic, and then at the same time it's like we have to respect what's realistic within the capacity of these plants to be spread around the world.   Sondrine Kehoe: (41:59) Yeah, what you can harvest.   Tahnee: (42:01) Yeah. And I think about that a lot with all of these things we consume for pleasure, beauty, health. It's easy to just be like take, take, take, and at some point... I love that idea that you have that regenerative...   Tahnee: (42:18) And I know you guys pay the rent as well, like we do. We support a company that buys land to regenerate, and we pay the rent, and give to some indigenous communities.   Tahnee: (42:29) But it's just this idea that... Mason and I have always talked about it, where it's like the plants give us so much. It's the least we can do to give back in some way.   Sondrine Kehoe: (42:37) Yeah, definitely. The business model needs a lot of shaking up, doesn't it?   Tahnee: (42:42) Yeah. And I think there's people like yourself, and I'm starting to see... I mean, I think the internet is a blessing and a curse, but it provides this forum for us, especially... I mean, we're still a small business... To really get out there and be seen by people, and not have to go through these big distributor channels. And you get to have direct relationships with customers [crosstalk 00:43:06]   Sondrine Kehoe: (43:06) Yeah, it's so nice, isn't it? It makes it all really worth it, especially that direct relation with your customers.   Tahnee: (43:07) And so what does that look like for you guys? I mean, I saw you wrote somewhere that you had a five year plan. What's Cygnet's journey looking like? Is it [crosstalk 00:43:28]   Sondrine Kehoe: (43:30) Well, it's always evolving. And it's definitely heading in the direction of... The immediate goal is broadening our range of skincare offerings, and continuing to establish those relationships with farmers, growers, distillers around here.   Sondrine Kehoe: (43:53) And then the dream would be to have a regenerative farm. I think that's more of a 10 year goal. I'd absolutely love to head in that direction, and have an aromatic garden as well, and be able to produce more ingredients for perfumes.   Sondrine Kehoe: (44:15) But it's all still growing, and the business is growing with my family. And this little bub's on the way, due in October. And I'm sure that everything will change again. It's been a really nice way to do business. Just take the pressure off constantly producing more, and those concepts of success and everything, and just slowly grow it with how the family's [crosstalk 00:44:53]   Tahnee: (44:53) I mean, how do you define that for yourself? Is this just something that lights you up, and you feel successful just seeing it come to life? When you have that farm, will that be the thing that makes you feel like you've really made it, or have you-   Sondrine Kehoe: (45:09) Feel like you've got there?   Tahnee: (45:11) Yeah. Because I think about that a lot with us. I'm still not sure sometimes. I feel like we've achieved so much and I could kick back, and I'm like, "I'm good."   Sondrine Kehoe: (45:19) Yeah, and then do you think, "Where would I like to grow from here"?   Tahnee: (45:24) [crosstalk 00:45:24] we just did a process with our team where we did a five year plan, and the team were dreaming up that we had a wellness centre, where people could come and heal. And listening to them all talk about their dreams for what SuperFeast could become, I was like, "Oh, wow."   Tahnee: (45:42) It's really inspiring... Because Mason and I have carried it, like you're probably doing right now... It's ourselves for so long. And now we've got this group of other people that are contributing as well, and it's actually-   Sondrine Kehoe: (45:53) That's so exciting. Really special.   Tahnee: (45:54) Yeah, it's kind of like you feel that community vision coming through. So anyway, it just got me thinking a lot about, what does it even mean? [crosstalk 00:46:06]   Sondrine Kehoe: (46:06) I know. Well that's beautiful. I think that community vision, getting to that place, is somewhere where I'd feel like that's where I wanted to be, is building a community out of what you're doing is so special. And being able to invite other people in to imagine where your business could grow, so it's not just yours. It's as much your customers. And then inviting people in to work with you is so nice, having that team. So probably, when I had a beautiful team like that I would be feeling like, "Wow."   Tahnee: (46:45) It is. It's definitely a really challenging part of business too. I'm not going to lie. But I find, for me, it's probably the most rewarding part too, is... It sounds trite but it literally feels like family. The people we've worked with for... I've been here for six years, so people I've worked through that whole time. And there's something very special for me about those relationships, and the stuff we've all been through.   Sondrine Kehoe: (47:13) That's nice.   Tahnee: (47:15) Yeah. And just how they dream SuperFeast to life every day as well.   Sondrine Kehoe: (47:19) Yeah, that's amazing. It's so nice. [inaudible 00:47:24]   Tahnee: (47:24) Yeah, well, I think it's similar... We've always talked about preserving land and trying to... Even, we want to bring the Australian indigenous herbs to market. It seems like an impossible dream in some ways, because we've been working with the TGA for a few years now, and it's just such an ordeal.   Sondrine Kehoe: (47:47) Oh, wow. Yeah, I can imagine.   Tahnee: (47:50) But it's possible. It's just you've got to keep [crosstalk 00:47:52] consistent.   Tahnee: (47:54) Keep your vision and keep persevering. Yeah [crosstalk 00:47:58] And I've got this feeling, even in these times when, especially with COVID and all this stuff going on, that the earth is dreaming her dream too, and we're all a part of that. And I think there's a lot of beauty and small pockets emerging of sustainable, positive, really earth focused business. And it feels good. I try to stay in that space, and not go into, "Oh my god, the world's going to end."   Sondrine Kehoe: (48:33) Yeah, it's nice to kind of use that rage, or what you're feeling, despair, or hate, and try and turn that into positive action, isn't it?   Tahnee: (48:49) Yeah, [crosstalk 00:48:52] use your business to make a stand for the things that you believe in and preserve [crosstalk 00:48:57]   Sondrine Kehoe: (48:56) Yeah, definitely. I think there's always room for that in what you're doing. Definitely. I feel like it gives it purpose. [crosstalk 00:49:09] Is there more skincare... Is that just the cleanser at this point, or you're going to do [crosstalk 00:49:17]   Sondrine Kehoe: (49:16) Definitely always kind of dreaming about more little things, but [crosstalk 00:49:23] I think that, realistically, it'll be the cleanser this year, that's coming, and that's coming along really beautifully. And then slowly build it from there.   Sondrine Kehoe: (49:38) Also, I'd love to be doing more one-off perfumes. I've got all these old flacons that I've collected since I was a girl, and I'd love to do one-off perfumes with that. But with pregnancy actually, I haven't been able to work with my oils.   Tahnee: (49:53) That was literally going to be one of my questions, because I have been illegally dabbing.   Sondrine Kehoe: (49:59) Sorry?   Tahnee: (50:00) I've been using a little bit. I just said illegally dabbing.   Sondrine Kehoe: (50:06) You can always, as well, put them on like a hankie or something, or clothing.   Tahnee: (50:10) Yeah, I'm trying to be very mindful. But I was thinking, would you mind speaking a little bit to that? What's the rationale around pregnancy, and avoiding-   Sondrine Kehoe: (50:20) Avoiding essential oils?   Tahnee: (50:21) Yeah.   Sondrine Kehoe: (50:22) So, particularly important in the first trimester, when your baby and your placenta and everything are still forming. There really just isn't enough research to say what a safe concentration level of essential oil is, obviously for ethical reasons. You can't really do a study saying that. So the best thing is just to avoid them.   Sondrine Kehoe: (50:50) I think there's a very small list of safe essential oils. They're still advised not to be used in the first trimester. Some of them have really powerful effects, you'll know, even on your menstrual cycle. They've got the ability to cause contractions and-   Tahnee: (51:09) [inaudible 00:51:09]   Sondrine Kehoe: (51:09) Yeah, exactly. So they are really powerful ingredients. Also, just personally as well, with smell, anything that's strong sets me off.   Tahnee: (51:26) Very unfortunate for a perfumer.   Sondrine Kehoe: (51:28) It is. It's really funny having a ridiculously heightened sense of smell... I can smell things from miles away... And not being able to work at the perfume organ. It's slightly annoying, actually. But that's one thing I'm super excited about, is getting back to creating perfumes again, once this [crosstalk 00:51:49] Yeah, exactly.   Tahnee: (51:56) I would love, if you don't mind, just before we sign off, sharing a little bit about... You said you had your daughter at home. You're a midwife, so I assume you've trained in all aspects of midwifery?   Sondrine Kehoe: (52:08) Yeah. I actually still call myself a student midwife, because I had my daughter a semester out from finishing my degree. And was still really lucky to attend a lot of births. You do a lot of placement during your degree, and work with lots of beautiful midwives and pregnant women, and also learn how to have access to all the research as well.   Sondrine Kehoe: (52:43) And I can solely put it down to doing midwifery that I had confidence to birth and confidence in my body that I could birth my daughter at home as well. So I'm so grateful that I found myself doing midwifery. It was a really beautiful experience. Me and my sister, as I said, both had our babies at home together with the same midwives.   Tahnee: (53:09) That's so beautiful.   Sondrine Kehoe: (53:11) And they were joking we'd go at the same time.   Tahnee: (53:12) Be nice and convenient.   Sondrine Kehoe: (53:13) So it didn't happen. They come when they want. So I did have her at home, and I've got the same beautiful midwife again, another one who's gorgeous, this time. So we'll be having this one at home as well. [crosstalk 00:53:34] Did I read that you had a home birth too? Is that right?   Tahnee: (53:37) Yeah, my daughter was at home. So we live in a different house now, but in South Golden, where we live now. Which is really cute. We walk to the beach and I'm like, "That's where you were born." And she's always like [crosstalk 00:53:50]   Sondrine Kehoe: (53:49) That's so nice.   Tahnee: (53:53) Yeah, it's really cute.   Sondrine Kehoe: (53:55) That's nice, isn't it?   Tahnee: (53:56) Yeah, and the woman who owns the place is still a friend. So it's very nice. And I guess my mum always spoke of birth as... This sounds terrible but she's like, "We're animals. Animals give birth."   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:11) That's not terrible at all.   Tahnee: (54:12) They just do it.   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:13) That's true.   Tahnee: (54:14) Sounds very non romantic. Horses don't lie down on their backs and birth. They walk around and then they squat.   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:22) We watched videos in our uni of animals giving birth.   Tahnee: (54:26) Oh, did you? There you go. So I guess I had a lot of faith in that biologically, physiologically sound birth. And we're really fortunate in this area, to have a midwifery programme through the hospital that...   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:42) Yeah, that's amazing. [crosstalk 00:54:43]   Tahnee: (54:43) ... Allows for home birth. Yeah, so if you're no risk and tick all the boxes, you can do it. So we were really grateful for that.   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:52) That's great.   Tahnee: (54:53) Because that was a time when SuperFeast was not that big and we were very poor.   Sondrine Kehoe: (54:56) No, it's not accessible, which is really sad. In Melbourne, I know there's at least one hospital that offers the home birth programme, in Sunshine Hospital, but you have to live within 30 minutes drive.   Tahnee: (55:12) Yeah, so it's the same here. You have to be within shooting distance of the hospital. And I think they get so many people apply. I think there's a team of 10 midwives. So I think they give priority to women who've worked with them before, and then women that live in the area, and then they will take, occasionally, people outside. But I just think that I'd love to see more of those kinds of systems. There are some. I know there's a handful around the country.   Sondrine Kehoe: (55:44) Yeah, there's a lot of challenges facing midwives, and home birth midwives in particular, that you'd be well aware of. It's a whole other.   Tahnee: (55:58) Yeah, well we had a woman called [Cheryl Siri 00:56:01] on the podcast, who used to be a home birth midwife. And [Jane Hardwick Collings 00:56:06] as well, who I'm studying with. And just their stories... It's a really challenging time to be-   Sondrine Kehoe: (56:14) It is, but at the same time, there's so much research supporting it, and particularly coming out now, in very baby steps in that direction. There's a lot of support for continuity of care. So when you have one midwife that whole pregnancy.   Sondrine Kehoe: (56:31) And a lot of hospitals are implementing [crosstalk 00:56:35] continuity of care programmes, but like you said, tyre still tiny. The capacity to take a lot of women in those programmes just isn't there.   Tahnee: (56:44) Yeah, you read the statistics... I think there was a study done in the States with 16,000 women or something, and there were no adverse outcomes for home birth. It was just such a positive study on how safe and how it's just such a minimal risk, especially these days.   Tahnee: (57:08) I mean, I was talking to someone about this today, where I'm like, "I'm 20 minutes driving slowly to a hospital. They've let the ambulance know I'm having a baby. They've got the [crosstalk 00:57:18] in the fridge if something happens." There's a lot of steps put in place to make sure you're safe as well. It's not just...   Tahnee: (57:29) And that's what I also believe. I've had friends that are free birthed, and I think women deserve the right to be educated to choose to have the support if they want it. And I do think it should be-   Sondrine Kehoe: (57:39) Yeah, information's key.   Tahnee: (57:42) Yeah, and just accessibility, like you're saying, that it's five to seven grand plus for a private midwife is a lot for a lot of people.   Sondrine Kehoe: (57:47) Yeah, definitely. Not really affordable. But hopefully it moves in a good direction. [crosstalk 00:57:57]   Tahnee: (57:57) Yeah, is that something you'd ever thought of getting back into?   Sondrine Kehoe: (58:01) Definitely, yeah. I feel like once you've done it, it's just like...   Tahnee: (58:04) Addictive?   Sondrine Kehoe: (58:04) Yeah, completely. So I think once the kids have grown up, it's something that I'll go back to. It was too hard with having my little one. The only way to finish the course was to enrol her full time in daycare before one, and so it just wasn't really a possibility for me, or an option. And so I'll definitely go back there once I'm older, for sure.   Tahnee: (58:36) Done making your own babies.   Sondrine Kehoe: (58:37) Yeah, exactly.   Tahnee: (58:39) I think there's something about that experience of having your own births too, that would... I had a student midwife with my home birth, and she'd had two boys fairly recently. She was only a couple of years older than me, and there was something about her being so close in my age, and having just had... It was like really nice to share that. And then also having older midwives who were... Been around the block, had seen everything, really relaxed and really calm. It was a really nice mix.   Sondrine Kehoe: (59:07) So nice.   Tahnee: (59:09) Good women's business stuff.   Sondrine Kehoe: (59:10) Yeah, it is. It felt like that When I got to uni. It was I think over 100 women enrolled in this course. Like Hogwarts.   Tahnee: (59:24) Hogwarts for ladies.   Sondrine Kehoe: (59:24) Learning all these amazing things.   Tahnee: (59:27) Well that's wonderful. I want to thank you so much for spending the time. I know that those last two weeks of pregnancy are exhausting, so I hope you've enjoyed being here with us.   Sondrine Kehoe: (59:40) It was so nice.   Tahnee: (59:41) Yeah, I'm really grateful because I just really love what you guys are doing, and what you're doing.   Sondrine Kehoe: (59:50) Thank you so much. That's lovely. Same goes to you as well.   Tahnee: (59:54) Thank you. I love that we get to connect with people through this. I'm like, "This is so good. I get paid to talk to people." [inaudible 00:59:59] So cygnetperfumery.com.au is the best place to find you guys, and online, on Insty?   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:00:11) Yeah, we're on Instagram as well, cygnetperfumery [crosstalk 01:00:16]   Tahnee: (01:00:16) I can put the links to that. And any other places you want to send people or any other things you want to share?   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:00:24) No, I think that was covered beautifully. I think just engaging with your fifth sense. We so often neglect it, and it can bring so much joy.   Tahnee: (01:00:36) Yeah, well especially, I think, in these times, what's been so nice for me receiving your parcels is just taking the time, reading the notes, and just having a very different experience.   Tahnee: (01:00:52) I mean, we work with smell a lot, with herbs too, but it's not the same pleasurable... It's more around the sort of, "That's good, that's potent, that's strong" Whereas this is like this really beautiful and romantic experience. So I really love what you guys are doing.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:09) That's so nice to hear. Thank you.   Tahnee: (01:01:09) Thank you.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:11) Thanks so much for having me on.   Tahnee: (01:01:14) Yeah, well I hope you guys check out Sondrine's work, and we'll stay in touch. I'm so excited to continue to try your skincare.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:22) Beautiful.   Tahnee: (01:01:22) I just [inaudible 01:01:25] be done. Because I feel like I've been trying all these different things and I'm just getting a bit like, "Ugh." Because I really just want like two or three things in my life.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:35) Yeah, you don't need much, which is the opposite of what the skincare industry will have you believe.   Tahnee: (01:01:39) Well I tried absolutely nothing. My husband is this annoying person who's never washed his hair.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:45) Oh, really?   Tahnee: (01:01:47) I'm just like, "I hate you."   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:48) [inaudible 01:01:48]   Tahnee: (01:01:48) No. And I'm like, "Well boys don't have to do it. Why do girls?"   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:01:54) Probably if you gave your body that break, I guess your microbiome would [crosstalk 01:01:59]   Tahnee: (01:01:59) I've tried with my hair and it...   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:02:01) Didn't work.   Tahnee: (01:02:01) Well, I gave it like four months, and I was like, "No. This is gross." But I definitely found with my skin... I learned that when I was in my... I came off the pill in my mid to late 20s, and I got really bad acne, which I later worked out with acupuncture and stuff, but at the time, I was like, topical... And my skin just got worse and worse. And I ended up going to nothing, like jojoba oil, and sometimes a clay to just pull it out. And it calmed down heaps after that. And my mum used to always put avocado and honey on my face.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:02:40) That's great. Your mum sounds wonderful.   Tahnee: (01:02:40) Oh yeah, she's definitely crunchy. We grew up with a lot of weird and wonderful things. But I think it definitely reminded me just to strip it back to the basics. And since then, I don't use a lot of stuff. But I find you start buying oils, and then you have all these oil potions, this potion, cleansing potion, and then you're like...   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:03:03) Yeah. Your vitamin C, your retinol.   Tahnee: (01:03:07) Well I've never got into that. There's this great natural skincare place here, and they one time were like, "Vitamins." And I'm like, "No, that's too complicated." [inaudible 01:03:19] but they're probably good for me.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:03:22) Well, your microbiome does most of the work so [crosstalk 01:03:28] support them and you'll be fine.   Tahnee: (01:03:29) Well thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:03:33) You too.   Tahnee: (01:03:33) And I hope you have a really great day.   Sondrine Kehoe: (01:03:35) Thank you.​​   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, the scents, sounds, and sensations of Spring are upon us again. The Sun is beaming longer, warming up the earth and our bodies as we are transition away from contraction, welcoming the feeling of expansion. Here to help us bridge this shift in season, we have TCM Food Therapist Kimberly Ashton on the podcast, chatting with Mason and taking us on a journey through the energetics, foods, and flavours of Spring; The Wood Element, and Liver Qi.   As a healer, Kimberly Ashton's work centres around the power of functional food, Chinese medicine, the 5 Elements, food energetics, emotional anatomy, and energy medicine. When talking about the energy of Spring, Kimberly describes it as, "A season of transition, ideally, one that we ease our way into patiently and enjoy at its own pace". Observing our master teacher (Nature), we look around and see everything right now is in a moment of birthing; Slowly emerging from hibernation, gently transitioning in movement, reflection, and animation. Is your body craving some Spring regeneration? Can you feel a bit of Liver stagnation? Tune in as Kimberly brings her depth of food wisdom forth with a breakdown of the foods, herbs, flovours (and desserts) that cultivate the distinct energy in the body required to support Liver Wood and its function in this season.       “I like to emphasize the word feeling. How do you feel about food? How do you actually feel when you eat something? Come back into the body and to your centre and make food choices from a place of embodiment”.   - Kimberly Ashton    Host and Guest discuss: The Wood element.  Liver Qi stagnation.  Liver Qi building foods.  Teas and herbs for Liver heat.  Foods and habits to avoid in Spring. Foods to support Liver Wood function. The emotional energy in the Wood element. Liver Wood cooking and preparation methods.  Functional foods to cleanse the Liver and Gallbladder.   Who is Kimberly Ashton?   Kimberly Ashton is a Holistic Wellness coach that focuses on the 5 Elements, Food Therapy and Chinese Medicine. She spent over 18 years in Asia and Shanghai, 8 of which she co-founded China's first health food store & plant-based nutrition cooking studio. Now back in Australia, she launched Qi Food Therapy in 2020, a platform offering e-books, online courses, and coaching for “balancing life energy” through food, food energetics & emotional wellness. In 2019 she published her second book “Chinese Superfoods” in Mandarin, which encourages new generations of food therapy enthusiasts to explore Asian traditional foods, everyday ingredients & get back in the kitchen. It has sold over 7000 copies in China. Her approach is centered on cultivating an intuitive relationship with food and helping people understand their energies through food choices, cooking techniques, the 5 Elements, emotional & energy practices.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Kimberly's Website Kimberly's Instagram Soothing Liver Qi Stagnation 5 Elements & Cycles e-course   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Kim, welcome to the podcast.   Kimberly Ashton: (00:02) Hello, Mason.   Mason: (00:03) You got a lovely IGTV live chat, is that right? Back on-   Kimberly Ashton: (00:09) We did.   Mason: (00:10) Gosh. Was that in-   Kimberly Ashton: (00:11) Months ago.   Mason: (00:12) Yeah. It was months ago.   Kimberly Ashton: (00:14) Yeah. I think it was well before winter.   Mason: (00:17) I think we had the arrangement, the intention, to have a winter diet, food, ingredient, cooking technique podcast, but then things happened. I don't know what these things are, haven't been watching the news. Don't know what's going on in the world, but something happened out there and people aren't moving around for some reason.   Kimberly Ashton: (00:34) That's all right. We hibernated in winter and now it's a chance to change the season.   Mason: (00:41) Springtime, your favourite.   Kimberly Ashton: (00:43) It is my favourite. Yes.   Mason: (00:46) Why do you think that is?   Kimberly Ashton: (00:48) Lots of reasons. A, I love the colour green. Predominantly my five elements, numbers, or predominant elements are wood. I've got two words. The beginning, out of the three numbers, the first and the third number are both wood energy, so I don't just like spring, I love spring.   Mason: (01:10) Are you still facilitating people to run through their... I don't know what to say. Their details in order to hone in on which element is dominant for them in their constellation?   Kimberly Ashton: (01:20) Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's two main ways you can do it. One is go see a TCM doctor and they'll do a diagnosis and tell you what's your constitution, but also condition, what's happening. Which is a great way to just understand more about your body and what's going on, and your health tendencies, as well as food preferences. And then the other way is a system that I use, called Nine Star Ki. It's based on astrology, but I take the food, personality, emotion side of it. So, that's what I mean when I say the three numbers. So, my predominant number is a three, tree, which is the branches of a tree, which goes in 10 directions at the same time.   Mason: (01:59) It's like I, for some reason, there's certain things where my slight dyslexia comes in, and that's a lot of the time in, for lack of a better word, my diagnosis. I definitely get big vibes of where someone's at within their elemental journey, but honing in on the constitution, for some reason it alludes me because I go in so many different tangents. And the acupuncturist I was working with for years spoke to me about the fact that sometimes it's elusive to him, because in fact where what's coming up and emerging is dominant, is just where we're at on the journey and tracking back and finding where the truth is... He used to call it, true deficiency lies, and that's where you are. So, he's about far more pessimistic, and so I take it that basically your constitution and what dominates is your biggest weakness, and what's eventually going to kill you as long as you stay unbalanced-   Kimberly Ashton: (03:01) Absolutely agree. So, I mean, our conversation today is all around spring and wood elements and everything that goes with that. We'll get to lots of food and yummy stuff later. But absolutely. So, when I say, wood element is my predominant element, my liver and my gallbladder, they're the first to go. And we can talk with emotions, we can talk with food, so it's absolutely your best friend, but it could be your worst enemy if you're not aware of how to balance that, or how easily you get out of balance. So, it's really important. It's being factual probably, not so much pessimistic.   Mason: (03:38) factual is very- But then I think I'm more just in the sense of like, I'm such a romantic in the sense of that maybe that where the weakness is, but my goodness, the opportunity and the dance and the lessons, cosmic and both the practical that you're going to be able to learn from that deficiency. Maybe it's not a deficiency after all. Maybe it was your greatest strength. I'm too much of a... Never want to grow up and face the music of the reality of the world. So, I like to balance it out with all the romantic language, but I remember he was like, "Cool. Whatever. It's still the thing that's going to kill you." All right. Good.   Kimberly Ashton: (04:19) And then he sticks the needles in you.   Mason: (04:21) Then he stabs you right in the back.   Kimberly Ashton: (04:23) Love it.   Mason: (04:26) Yeah. Springtime. I'm excited. I'm going to come, and I think I really want to have a session with you as well. And just make sure that everyone listening knows that I've been. It's great to have you on the podcast finally. I can send everyone your way so that they can get that insight, it's a beautiful offering for our community. So, yeah. I hope a few people can send a few people your way and-   Kimberly Ashton: (04:49) I would love that. Thank you.   Mason: (04:49) And springtime. It'd be great to do this seasonally with you, but I'd love for you to take us on that journey and the distinction around why particular foods are going to come into the diet, outside of just seasonality. And what the energy of spring is, and what it is in the liver wood function that we're actually attempting to support through our diet and cooking techniques.   Kimberly Ashton: (05:14) Yeah. There's so much to talk about and to share. And I'll start with the energy of the season, of the external, and then we'll bring it into the body. But the wood element, or the springtime energy, is all about transition and shifting. And a lot of us, whether they're as passionate about spring as me, or even yourself, we rush into it. We're like, oh, it's warm weather, the sun's out, and we take off the clothes and we go for ice cold drinks and ice cream and salads and cold beverages. Nothing against that.   Mason: (05:47) Quiet now.   Kimberly Ashton: (05:50) We do rush and there is also this emotional energy in the wood element of impatience. So, we get quite excited, myself included. It's like, oh, it's beach time. And we start thinking of all these beautiful activities or foods or lifestyles that we want to jump into. It could be summer. A lot of people are more of a fan of summer. So, spring is like a big step towards summer and the expansive openness of that. So, it really is a transition season, and ideally we ease our way into it, patiently, and enjoy it at its own pace, rather than rush to do everything that we want to do. The other thing that can happen is that we over organise, or over control things, and that's the element of the liver and gallbladder expressing themselves as well. And then we just want to do, do, do more and we can get pretty tired very quickly. We don't make it to summer.   Mason: (06:45) Yeah. I mean, that's the nature. It's a transitory season, yet it's its own entire season, like summer and like winter, which obviously are pinnacles, but a transitory season like spring is just as important and has the same amount of impact as those two are going to have as well, because so many people get sick at the change of season. And funnily, it's like it's from jumping from the waters of winter, straight up into the wood of spring. And as you said, we get impatient and we forget that there's earth between the seasons, and you need to step onto the soil and ground yourself in order to not get sick. Have you got a couple of tips at the moment, because maybe people are listening and recognising that, yes, I've done that again this year. And over the next five years, because you get a new opportunity every single year, and it also impacts day to day as well. We get to spring and we get a wood season every single day-   Kimberly Ashton: (07:40) Every morning, yeah.   Mason: (07:41) A couple of easy tips, especially since you're such an expert of jumping into spring and getting so excited as well. Just little things that help you ease in so that you don't burn yourself out too soon.   Kimberly Ashton: (07:52) Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, physically, you can not strip down to, depending where you live of course, where you are it's a lot warmer, but physically easing yourself in, whether it's appropriate dressing, doing too much as well. So, we go from hibernation in winter and sitting on the sofa or doing less. I didn't, that's my biggest problem is actually stopping in winter. I'd have no problem going in spring, but it's actually the season before. So, paying attention, as you just said, into what you're doing in all seasons, so that there is that element of balance. But definitely in spring, not rushing, in terms of your thought process, keeping your mind too busy, packing in your schedule. Sleep is a really important one too. We tend to think, oh, there's more hours of sunshine in the day, so I'll just...   Kimberly Ashton: (08:44) A lot of people cut off from winter to spring. It's just this big change, rather than a gradual transition. But the biggest thing for me is movement and exercise in this season. So, I tend to find I have more energy to want to move and do things, so do that. I work with a lot of people in my coaching practise who don't move enough, and there is a lot of liver stagnation and then it gets to spring. I'm like, "Come on, let's go." So, there is an element of that. So, definitely moving appropriately and then eating. I mean, all seasons are important to eat, but spring's a really lovely opportunity to add new ingredients and flavours and move with the season and energy.   Mason: (09:28) So, what are you... Because I mean, it might seem like an obvious thing... I guess, even for myself, it seems obvious that I'm going to have a look at what is more of an appropriate diet. We live in this incredible world where we've cultivated particular vegetables. Maybe some of them a bit hybridised, others not, but we've got this widespread availability of foods. And across that repertoire, yes, there's wild foods in the environment, which are going to be endemic and obviously going to be seasonal, which is a great anchoring. But going to the farmer's markets, it's just always such a great reminder to remember, yes. There are going to be those staples and things that you always base your diet on, but there's going to be particular foods that you can start to get a little bit more creative and a little bit more intentional in bringing that particular energy in the body, to support the liver wood and its function in this spring. So, I'm like, yeah. I'm looking forward to hearing what we're getting onto, and how we're preparing as well.   Kimberly Ashton: (10:26) Yeah. Absolutely. And of course it depends where you're listening from. If you're in a tropical place like Thailand or Singapore, then your spring energy is not as excitable as it is for us in a four season climate, where the prevalence of green vegetables really will come out now. Tropical places have an abundance of what I'm about to share, all year round. And that is another factor and problem as well. I find that people will say, "But I can eat greens all year round. It's not just springtime." But yes, there's a lot more of them and we can, as you just said, intentionally look for these foods.   Kimberly Ashton: (11:07) So, whenever I talk about vegetables I categorise them, because people just think of vegetables as one big group. But there's many more than three, but I will break it down into leafy greens, and in there we'll put sprouts and leeks and chives, and I'll talk about those. And then round and ground vegetables, which are all the onions and pumpkins and sweet potatoes, cabbages, that are very earth element like. And then the root vegetables, carrots, parsnips, all the radishes, beetroot, burdock, arrowroot. So, this season is all about the upward energy and the leafy greens and that whole category, so I like to talk about food in terms of arrows and energies. So, it's pretty much like asparagus, it's like the best arrow I can think of, which I love.   Mason: (12:01) That's always for me like it's first on... For me, it's always, for some reason, not saying that this is the most important, but for me, when I'm like, okay, cool. Spring. It's upright. It's upright, it's got a firmness to it. I'm thinking asparagus, and I always think of rosemary.   Kimberly Ashton: (12:18) Yeah.   Mason: (12:20) It's just such an over... I've got a tendency towards rosemary over thyme. Even to an extent, or even in a more of a yin... I'm like, oh yeah, there's the yang, really upright rosemary. And then other times it will be a little bit more yin, a bit more creepy.   Kimberly Ashton: (12:34) There we go. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't thought about the herbs in that way, but yeah. Absolutely. So, asparagus is, in terms of purely energy of food, that's the perfect example. And closely followed by leaks and anything in that family. So, chives, spring onions. Again, it's not to say that you can't eat them in other seasons, but this is the season energetically, and when it's ripe and when it's going to taste the best. The other thing is, in terms of green vegetables, really anything that's leafy and green. I always go to the Asian greens because there's just so much more choice. But of course, the more Western green vegetables are great too. And then sprouts, it's really sprout season. I know people eat sprouts all year round. I tend not to, and I really save them for spring and summer on salads and other-   Mason: (13:28) I'm with you there. It's such an eventful food, I find. I mean, there's a celebration in spring and I find if I continue to do sprout something that's so vibrant for me, when I used to have them sporadically, becomes a bit of a bore.   Kimberly Ashton: (13:53) Can't put them on everything. Some people do, but I don't tend to put them on everything.   Mason: (13:57) And going on the greens. I mean, I know not necessarily the ones that are available to everyone, but just if you get the opportunity to get the chicories and the dandelions at this time, how do they go for you?   Kimberly Ashton: (14:11) Absolutely. So, a lot of the vegetables that you just mentioned and a few others that I'll mention, we can have them in their sprout form or in their more salad leaves form. But then save the root for autumn or winter. So, as a dried tea. So, it's nice to use the whole vegetable, especially if it is a root vegetable with the leaves. Another example is beetroot. Fantastic now if you can get beetroot, most people can. Eat the leaves, so a lot of us are throwing the leaves away. I'm sure you aren't, but a lot of people do. Even at farmers markets-   Mason: (14:47) I swear. Again, I get my little dyslexic things that pop up every now and then, and diagnosing where someone's actually on a constitutional level with their elements and whether it's... Is it beetroot or radish leaves that I can't eat? I can't, just for the life of me, I just can never nail it in my memory. I constantly need to go and Google. So, yeah. No. But the beetroot leaves, I know Tarny uses them every time, just when we're doing a little juice.   Kimberly Ashton: (15:16) Yeah. So, it's that energy. So, if the beetroot was under the ground and that's a good root vegetable, then go for the leaves as well. And a lot of people don't eat carrot leaves, radish leaves, daikon leaves, beetroot leaves. Yet it's really a nice addition in the season to start adding in the leaves of vegetables that we're used to eating. So, don't waste that. I'll keep going with the greens and the green theme, but I do want to come back to something called liver qi as well. So, a lot of people will say, "Well, beetroot is purple, it's not green. Why are you talking about beetroot?" But there is an element of nourishing the blood in chi, and there's a separate list in Chinese medicine just for that. They're not necessarily green foods or vegetables, but yeah. It's really an important element of this discussion as well.   Kimberly Ashton: (16:03) So, a few other examples would be pretty much all the mustard greens and collard greens. You mentioned dandelions. I love [inaudible 00:16:11] or rocket, depending where you live. That's a really nice one. It's got a slight bitterness to it, but it's got that beautiful energy. And fennel. I'm a huge fan of fennel. If you just look at the way that fennel is grown, it's just this... Not so much upward, but up and out energy, and the leaves again, the leaves are just huge. People don't have the opportunity, depending where you live, if you're shopping in a supermarket, for example, you'll just see the poor little fennel bulb, and you won't see the full expression of a fennel.   Mason: (16:43) That's beautiful bringing that back from the markets and trying to fit it into a crisper. I'm like-   Kimberly Ashton: (16:47) You've got to eat it fast. Celery is a great example too, of this energy. And then there's a few other things, herb's and tasty things like parsley, any type of basil. You mentioned rosemary as well, which is lovely. And nettle. I've really gotten into drinking nettle tea, like just organic tea leaves lately. Beautiful, really nice and cooling. If you're in Asia and you're listening to this, green tea is lovely. So, I start to switch my warm drinks in the morning to more of a matcha. Whether it's a smoothie or a hot latte or something like that, anything green you can get your hands on. And then there's the raw food community, and they get very excited about wheat grass, spirulina and chlorella at this time of year as well. But more greens in there.   Mason: (17:44) They're always excited about wheat grass and chlorella and spirulina.   Kimberly Ashton: (17:47) That's true. But now's a good time to bring that on if you're really weaving in Western nutrition and Chinese medicine, they do share the same concept of the liver and spring being a detoxing, cleansing, uplifting season. And you can definitely do that really well in the kitchen.   Mason: (18:12) Yeah. I mean, yeah. As an ex raw foodist it was definitely an exciting time, when you're like, ah. I'm energetically aligned right now.   Kimberly Ashton: (18:18) Exactly.   Mason: (18:20) And then in autumn, you're just like, la, la, la. All external stimuli.   Kimberly Ashton: (18:27) Yeah.   Mason: (18:27) Beautiful. All right. Let's crack on.   Kimberly Ashton: (18:29) Yeah. So, I'd like to mention a few liver qi building foods, because that might be a concept that... Actually, even in China or in Asia, a lot of people, they understand green vegetables are good for them, and especially in the spring season, but there is an element of nourishing the liver. We can talk about yin and yang, but the qi, so the yang side of things, and really having enough blood and energy more functional from the liver. And it's really important for men and women, but especially for women with menstruation as well, like a strong liver is needed to start that process. So, sweet potatoes, again, not green, but sweet potatoes have a very blood nourishing liver qi function. And the leaves of sweet potatoes are delicious just sauteed as a green vegetable. Beetroot and beetroot leaves, as I mentioned. Mushrooms, I know you love mushrooms, but all mushrooms are really yin nourishing, blood nourishing, and wood ear fungus is something that I've been adding in more of lately. Wood ear mushrooms or black fungus.   Mason: (19:36) Sauteing those or doing them in a soup?   Kimberly Ashton: (19:39) All of the above. So, I get them fresh, but also I always have dried ones in my kitchen cupboards. So, if you're using dried ones, just rehydrate them for about an hour. So, I would put them whole in a stir fry, or I like to slice them really thin and put them in noodle soups or even fried rice. And then more Western dishes you can... I'm not sure how many people listening are familiar with seaweeds or sea vegetables, but RMA. If you get some RMA and then also the black fungus and slice them up really small, you could put that with some lentils or meat, and make a pie or a pastry filling or Shepherd's pie.   Kimberly Ashton: (20:23) So, you get quite creative with how you use black fungus. You don't need to just make an Asian noodle soup or in a stir fry. You can put them into Western dishes as well. But, yeah. They're ideally rehydrated or used fresh. So, they're really good for nourishing the liver as well. And then good old red dates, or jujube dates. They're good for everything in Chinese medicine. I know you have them in quite a few of your blends as well, but I just eat them as a snack, or I chop them up and steep them in hot water as a tea.   Mason: (20:59) Are you sourcing them... Because I remember, it was... Oh gosh. At the markets I used to be up at Frenchs Forest Market, we got a grower, a local grower, who used to come and-   Kimberly Ashton: (21:08) There is one here, yeah. I get them from them.   Mason: (21:10) Is that who you get it from?   Kimberly Ashton: (21:11) Yeah. They're called Pickle Hill.   Mason: (21:15) That's an appropriate name. Pickles as well-   Kimberly Ashton: (21:18) I think so. I think they have a lot of citrus, and then they have plums. And then I don't know when, but more recently, but I think it's been a few years, they have the jujube dates and a lot of them. And they're delicious and they'll go and... Yeah.   Mason: (21:36) Chinese red date, citrus, and then a stone fruit. That's pure spring qi, liver qi contributor. They're like pickled liver hill.   Kimberly Ashton: (21:45) Yes. No wonder I like them so much, but yeah. It's been really good to get more local produce, as much as possible. So, those are good for building the liver. So, if anyone listening is having liver issues, whether it's liver qi stagnation or menstrual issues, look at the liver for sure. In any season, but now's a good time to really nourish that.   Mason: (22:11) I mean, just quickly just catch everyone up. I think there's a few distinctions around why the recommendation is there if you just get a little reminder of the basic function of... Into the liver wood system and the liver organ. One of them being the storage of blood, and there's a lot of damage that comes to the liver qi, the flow of liver qi, when there's [inaudible 00:22:33] and no blood. Qi is pushing along and there's not actually enough in there, and especially for women being run by blood and men run by qi. Still for men, it happens for us in other ways. But, yeah. So, I guess you're talking to jujube and there's other elements of this diet which are blood building. But it is always nice to remember that the spleen contribution and the kidney contribution is always there and building the blood so that the liver isn't deprived. And then it's the natural cleansing of the blood. And so, that the blood isn't toxic, which I think everyone can just be like, yeah, of course. All these things that you're recommending are beautifully cleansing to the blood. I guess the chief factor is, if your liver qi is stagnating or interrupted, the liver is responsible for distributing and for the smooth flow of qi being distributed to the rest of the body.   Kimberly Ashton: (23:29) To the whole body. Yeah. And if people are wondering, how do they know if their liver is blocked or stuck, apart from the obvious things or even more Western views, like fatty liver or there's lots of Western nutrition and diagnosis. But then there's the Chinese physical, but also energetic. So, I heard you recently talk about bamboo and being adaptable, so it's more like when people think of a tree in this season, it's like a big, old tree trunk, that's stuck and stubborn, which we can be, but ideally we're creating more of a soft supple bamboo wood element, rather than being too fixed. And that goes into diets as well. We don't want to get too stuck in a box of, oh, Mason and Kimberly said, I've got to eat this, this and this. It's not that kind of approach in Chinese medicine. But definitely not in the spring season. We want to listen to the body and see what it wants and what it feels like. If it wants salad or if it wants steamed greens, or if it wants stir fried greens.   Kimberly Ashton: (24:34) There's many ways you can cook your food and I'll get to that as well. But definitely there is a softness to it. And the next thing I want to share is also the liver heat, because that can be a big problem to getting blockage in the system, in this season as well. So, whilst we said not to jump into too many cold things or cool things at the beginning of the session, if we need to, then we need to look at things like peppermint, nettle, as I mentioned, green tea and also rose bud or rose petal tea is very, very nice in this season. And for anybody, men or women with any liver issues or anger issues or frustration issues, could be physical, it could be emotional. It's a very soothing, calming, cooling ingredient. So, there's so much to draw from in terms of food and flowers and herbs in this season. We can really utilise them.   Mason: (25:34) And the only other one flower really jumping out at me right now in that list is the chrysanthemum-   Kimberly Ashton: (25:41) Yeah. That's good too.   Mason: (25:44) ...just draining the heat down. And so that the liver isn't just sending it up.   Kimberly Ashton: (25:48) Yeah. A funny story, a true story about chrysanthemum. When I first started getting into Chinese medicine and food and herbs, back in China, my TCM doctor would say, "You need to eat these foods." And she didn't mean go and eat a bucket of them, but that's what I... Chrysanthemum was one of them.       Kimberly Ashton: (26:07) Okay. Yeah. So, with chrysanthemums, it was in the height of summer in Shanghai and it's very, very hot and humid there. So, whatever she said, I would take in large doses. And she didn't think to tell me how much. With chrysanthemum I've overdosed on chrysanthemum. I would take like a whole handful and drink a cup a day, and it made my spleen and stomach a little bit too cold. So, everything in moderation, including all the food that I mentioned.   Mason: (26:34) One of the symptoms, have a freezing hand, and just too much heat strain from it.   Kimberly Ashton: (26:38) I did. I think the heat did go away. It was great. But yeah, just causes a little bit of sensitivity in the gut, and a little bit of diarrhoea, susceptibility to different things. So, chrysanthemums are great. I save it personally for summer, and enjoy it a lot. But it depends on the person. So, absolutely.   Mason: (26:59) I love hearing... I mean, because chrysanthemum, it does fall into that category of a tonic herb, and I love how classical Chinese medicine, but especially regimented, a westernised traditional Chinese medicine, there's a lot of stagnancy and there's a lot of distrust in people going about and engaging in herbalism on their own accord. The practitioner controls it, but I love... The role of the practitioner is to help to eliminate disease and for the longest term possible, so therefore it's lifestyle based. And a tonic herb there like chrysanthemum, and for you at that time, you're like, cool. Like whiz bang, great.   Mason: (27:45) You said chrysanthemum, I'm going to go hard and charge hard. And sometimes that pays off for you. And then in this instance, you've just gone and done some cooling, got some diarrhoea, so what happened? I knew I put basically in too much and that's what happens, and I know the ramifications. And it's a tonic herb, so it's not relative, it's not toxic. You can't do too much damage, as long as you've been somewhat sensible. And you learned about your body, you learned about respecting a herb, understanding the energetics. And so, I can just sense, for you, you've developed a relationship there and an insight in yourself, and it's something I try and make sure everyone remembers when it's on the journey of tonic herbalism, whatever. Or diet, and you do something wrong. Like damn. It's like, no. Look. Look at what you've got now. You've got more experience. You've gained insight. You understand nuance a little bit more. So, I just always like reminding that, because sometimes people can be like, why isn't this working exactly the way that I want it to straight away? It's like, because it's a dance.   Kimberly Ashton: (28:45) Yep. Absolutely. And to add to that, you need to feel it. I mean, my world is with food, so don't just trust what I say and say sprouts are good or leaks or asparagus are great. When you eat, feel what it's doing for you, and later that day or the next day, and then if it's not working for you, then stop. We've lost a lot of this listening to the body or the stomach or different organs. If I drink peppermint tea, I enjoy it, and I'm like, oh, it's cooling me, I can feel it here. And maybe it's taken a lot of time, and as you've said, different experiences, but it is an opportunity. Every meal is an opportunity to feel into the body and listen to what it needs or how it reacts.   Kimberly Ashton: (29:31) And then I do want to also mention another good ingredient at this time. It is green, it's mung beans, a fantastic ingredient at this time of year. It's very cooling, very high in protein. It's so versatile, you can do so much with it. So, I want to make sure to mention, if you're going to eat mung beans, now's the time, spring and summer. Really good in Western cooking, obviously Indian dahls and curries as well. And in China, it's pretty much green bean soup. That's about the only way they know how to do it, but I mash it. I cook it and make it into a burrito filling. Or you can do it with Indian spices. Just be careful of Indian spices at this time, because a lot of them are quite warming, so not for everyone. But, yeah. Also a really good ingredient to add in. So, get some mung beans. Anything green and mung beans.   Mason: (30:24) Anything green. I mean the other... You know what I get attracted to, I can't remember what book I read it in, but it was just like, look at the greens, look at things that are growing on vines. Look at how, this time of year, the vines explode. And I'm like, oh yeah. That's the wood element right there. And so, yeah. I'm always... Like the peas and beans and snow peas this time of year. I think you might have mentioned some of them already, but just want to reiterate.   Kimberly Ashton: (30:49) Absolutely. So, in the peas and beans section, yeah. Anything that's... Whether it's a green pea... And most people have frozen peas, not that I'm encouraging frozen foods, but definitely anything that's green. Edamame as well is really nice, fava beans. Again, it's energetic so watch what nature is naturally producing. If you're fortunate enough to grow your own food or have a veggie patch, then you would have hopefully planted those and you'll reap the benefits of that coming to fruition now. Yeah. So, those are the main foods. I also wanted to talk about foods, because it's TCM and there's always yin and yang, and two sides to the story, so you can eat as much kale or leek or asparagus or fennel. I forgot artichokes by the way, which is actually my logo, but that is what I love.   Kimberly Ashton: (31:40) That's also a really good one for liver qi, and yeah, it's so high in fibre and flavour and all of it. So, it's a short season that we can get them here anyway, but I highly recommend them. But foods not to eat are really important. I did a post on this, I think it was a few weeks ago, and I had so many people write because the first one I put, or maybe it was the last point, was peanut butter. And so many people wrote to me complaining, going why can't I eat peanut butter? And going [crosstalk 00:32:10] exactly. But going back to your point on feeling, I'm like, I didn't say you can't eat peanut butter. I was just saying, feel into it and see if your liver likes the peanut butter. So, any of these nut butters, anything with lots of oil or fat. So, that includes deep fried foods, heavy cheeses. Not that anybody listening would be eating fried chicken, but you never know.   Mason: (32:31) Every now and then, maybe in the middle of travelling, you go to a really great Korean restaurant.   Kimberly Ashton: (32:39) Absolutely. That's the place to have it. But, yeah. So, just watch out in the spring season as well. So, don't overburden the liver. You can have all that rich, oily, comforting, nourishing food, more in autumn/winter. That leads into different ways of cooking as well. But definitely be careful if your liver is having issues. If your liver is fine, then go for the peanut butter or almond butter, it's up to you.   Mason: (33:04) Yeah. Well, I mean, I was never keto, but I used to enjoy going down the route of more of a high-fat raw food diet. And this would always be the season where it fell down, and I could see my bowel movements weren't as great. I don't think I was willing to admit to myself that the excess coconut oil at the time, and even now, just with... Maybe it's the buttery tonics, a huge amount of avocados, a huge amount of olive oil that I used to eat as well. All those things, I just watched my digestion slip at this time. And I think that was the first time I started opening up to the variants of the way my diet worked, because going into winter, it feels really great for my protein and my fat intake to go up.   Mason: (33:59) And then it's just a matter of being adaptable enough to not drag it into this stage. I think this is where a lot of people... This is the season where a lot of people want a hardcore keto diet, or a carnivore diet, that kind of... Or even just a ketogenic style, raw food or vegetarian or whatever it is, you can see and you can undeniably feel that little bit of queasiness that can emerge and gives you a little bit of a ugh, like your body can't handle that fat. And so, just really good advice. I've just got to say, it's palpable at this time of year.   Kimberly Ashton: (34:36) Yes, absolutely. So, just noticing those small things, and it's just a small adjustment. I don't think I said alcohol as well, just to finish that section up. But I'm just noticing and feeling into the body. Okay. Maybe before summer and party season and more alcohol, or moving out of winter and heavy cheeses, or nut butters or whatever it is, just to make that small adjustment, just to get the body through this transition season of spring.   Mason: (35:06) Liver cops a lot and it's going to cop the excess, so it's recreational-   Kimberly Ashton: (35:14) It's all the excess.   Mason: (35:14) ...drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, coffee. They have lots of fat, lots of protein, sugar, booze, any of those, if you hit them, if you keep on going in excess, it's a good time to reevaluate if you're leaning on any of them and doing them in excess, and try and pull it in. And then balance out with the greens, the fibres, the array of colours on the side of that dominance of green. It's a really good season for that.   Kimberly Ashton: (35:38) Absolutely. Yeah. And so, this idea of detox in Western nutrition is a great time for exactly what you just said with all that excess, but in Chinese medicine, it's never eliminating one. It's also about adding in and rebalancing on our nourishing. So, definitely we can use Western terms like alkalizing or cleansing or that kind of thing.   Mason: (35:59) Nah.   Kimberly Ashton: (36:01) But we can, but we can apply it to food and TCM concepts. I like to bridge them together. And on that note as well, with some functional foods, I'm a big fan of functional foods. I'll just mention two great ones for this season. One is shiitaki mushroom, and one is daikon radish. If you can get dried daikon radish, even better.   Mason: (36:26) What daikon, sorry?   Kimberly Ashton: (36:28) Daikon radish, but dried.   Mason: (36:30) Dried. Right.   Kimberly Ashton: (36:31) Yeah. So, it looks like... It's like an off beige, or off yellow, off white colour. So, those two are really cleansing. I use the words melting fat quite loosely, but it actually can help with the liver and the gallbladder, release or melt.   Mason: (36:53) I mean, because we've talked a lot of bitterness within the greens. Within Chinese medicine, we're looking at... It's like a sour flavour though, being associated with liver. And hearing you talk about the melting of the fat, that's always... I feel that contribution comes in from those bitter greens and that cleansing and getting that roughage in to support that process. But when you bring up... For some reason, when you bring up daikon, the reason I then go and start associating with sour is because I used to pickle. I used to ferment my daikon. And when I think about it and when I think about lemon and lime and citruses during this time and that sourness, I can always feel that contribution of them, just going in and helping that fat to melt away, or just being contributed to... It's taking it along in this process in digestion.   Kimberly Ashton: (37:51) Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And I know daikon is more of a metal element vegetable, but yeah. We could, as you said, have some pickled or all the other beautiful radishes as well. Or if we need more functionally or medicinally in a detox or spring diet, a little bit of the dried radish and the dried shiitake can just add, purely on a functional level, to help the liver and gallbladder along their way of processing all the oils. And then, I definitely want to touch on the flavours of the season. So, sour, and then we can wrap up with cooking styles, my favourite. But definitely the citrus, I'm a huge lime fan. Lemons are okay. Grapefruit is really wonderful in this season. We really like the ruby grapefruits at the moment. But, yeah. If we can start getting in more of that, whether it's just consciously buying them and snacking on them, or putting them into a salad, or getting creative with the juices of them as well.   Kimberly Ashton: (38:57) And I always like to remind people, in every traditional diet, whether it's German or Japanese or Italian or whatever it is, there was always some sort of radish or lemon or parsley or coriander, to help digest a meal. And we've also lost a little bit of that, I feel, in modern food culture. We don't have these herbs and functional ingredients to help us build a meal, digest a meal, cleanse after a meal. And traditionally all food, all dishes, had five flavours, in maybe not one dish, but in a meal. So, it's great to say yes, sour is good for the wood element, but it doesn't mean to say that we have vinegar or lemons on everything. I could, I actually really enjoy it.   Mason: (39:41) Me too. I can put it in and go all over everything.   Kimberly Ashton: (39:44) Me too. The food is just the carrier for the vinegar actually.   Mason: (39:49) It's just the delivery system for the vinegar that I truly crave.   Kimberly Ashton: (39:53) You must have a strong word element as well.   Mason: (39:55) Yes, I do.   Kimberly Ashton: (39:58) Yeah. So, definitely looking at apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, any vinegar really, but starting to get that into... A little bit. Again, everything in moderation.   Mason: (40:09) God, I'm excited. One thing is champagne vinegar, white wine vinegar.   Kimberly Ashton: (40:11) Yeah.   Mason: (40:12) Oh gosh. I'm like, yes, yes. You're speaking my language. And just bringing up that element, that sour element, like the side, whether it's a radish and Tarny... We just get the radishes and just shave them and make quickles with them. It's like no time at all for you to have that at the start of your meal prep, and by the end of it, you've got some really decent pickles and they'll sit there for a couple of weeks and be that side.   Kimberly Ashton: (40:41) Yes.   Mason: (40:42) So, do you feel that way in spring, like the nattos, even in a kimchi, or even getting misos and kefirs and [inaudible 00:40:53] and all those kinds of things, do they fit in at this time of year for that flavour profile?   Kimberly Ashton: (40:58) Absolutely. Yeah. For those short-term pickles, like you said, the quick ones, quickles. I like that quick pickle, medium pickle, or long pickle, absolutely. For a long pickle, that'd be more in winter because we're also adding more salt. So, salt is very yang and more of a winter element. But absolutely, it's a nice time. Something we also do, it's a little bit more on the Japanese side, is called a... Like a pressed salad, similar to what you just said. So, you could just get some cabbage or any veggies, but cabbage works well, a bit of vinegar and you just massage it with your hands, and then you let it sit for while. Very similar to what you just said with the shave. So, trying to get a little bit of raw vegetables, a little bit of sourness, but again, building it slowly, rather than saying here's a bowl full of vegetables with vinegar on it, ease our way into that.   Kimberly Ashton: (41:50) But definitely starting to add a little bit of the kimchi as well. Again, depending on your digestion and whether you want the chilli or not. But definitely starting to have some sourness through... I'm not a big lemon water person, where you drink lemon water all day, everyday, but now would be a good time to maybe a couple of times a week start to have a bit of that. I prefer just to eat grapefruits and all the citrus fruits. But definitely, yeah. Adding them in where you can. If you wanted to take it to desserts as well. I love raw food. I love lime cheesecake. It's my favourite thing. So, starting to even change your desserts, and flavours, and making them a little bit lighter and fresh with those citrus flavours.   Mason: (42:39) Change the rules and just say, cashews are good at all times during the year. They are the base of those raw cakes. That was a time... That was the other thing about being a raw foodie. You're like, it's healthy, it's a healthy key lime cake, or it's a chocolate cake. What's the base? Just a shit load of cashews.   Kimberly Ashton: (42:57) Yeah. So, if you have liver qi stagnation, not too many rich, nut based desserts, because the first thing an acupuncturist will say, if you have liver qi stagnation is how many nuts and seeds? Seeds not so much, but nuts can be quite heavy in those quantities. Yeah. I actually prescribe desserts to people. I'm like, you need to eat more desserts. They're like, "What?" Because there are a lot of people with... I mean, I deal a lot with spleen and liver energies. I actually have an ebook just on liver qi stagnation, by the way. It's the first one we wrote with some recipes in there, no raw desserts in there, unfortunately. Or fortunately.   Mason: (43:36) Fortunately for the liver.   Kimberly Ashton: (43:36) Fortunately for the liver. But we do tend to have a lot of salt in our diets, or a lot of sugar, but we don't tend to have good quality, relaxing, sweet flavours or sweet vegetables even. And that can impact both ways with the liver as well. So, that can contribute to stagnation and tension, frustration and anger.   Mason: (44:02) I mean, sorry to interject again, the use of relaxing desserts and tying in with what you said then around the liver stagnation and that frustration. Then that anger and the liver, I guess another function we haven't talked about is the liver being responsible for helping smooth muscle, remain smooth and the peripheral nervous system not being tight.   Kimberly Ashton: (44:25) Yeah. And fascia and tendons.   Mason: (44:29) Fascia, tendons, yeah. Can you talk to us more about relaxing desserts?   Kimberly Ashton: (44:35) Yeah. So, the opposite of the sour would be sweet, which is why it works really well in many dishes and cuisines. But a lot of us use sugar in terms of a stimulant, and I'm talking white refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup and all those bad things, which are in a lot of commercial desserts, pastries, beverages, ice cream, things like that. But it's really the body craving something to relax, to let out a sigh, or calm down after a busy day at work, or social media or whatever it is, looking after the kids. We get a lot of tension built up and the spleen, stomach really just want to relax. So, we can do that with desserts. We're just eating, for the most part, the wrong desserts, for lack of a better word.   Kimberly Ashton: (45:24) Whereas if we have things that are soft and creamy and things like tofu pudding or creme caramel, or there are a lot of fantastic Asian desserts, like bean soups, bean pastes. Smoothies to an extent as well, just no ice. That can be a better option. Then lots of chocolate, which is heaty and with refined sugar, for example, like commercial chocolate. Or ice cream, which shocks the spleen, or too many dried foods like cakes and muffins. So, it's more about getting healthy sweeteners and healthy ingredients. So, like a carrot juice is actually really relaxing to the body, compared to another beverage or a dessert.   Mason: (46:11) This is always where dessert... I don't know where to sit on it. My body generally doesn't enjoy it, probably because it's cold or it's heavily... Heavy amount of sugar. As well as just in my mind, it's like at the moment we've got good seasonal fruits. It's the time of berries and there's grapes and then all the pit containing fruit, so plums and apricots and peaches and nectarines are a natural choice. And putting them on top of a meal that's got a little bit of... I guess we haven't talked about protein yet, but springtime for me, I like having a little side of protein since that's such a building part of the liver that it's an appropriate amount, not excess meat.   Mason: (46:55) Not excess beans or legumes or anything like that, but a nice little side. And then putting any sugar on top of that... Have you got any little combination techniques? I know there's alcoholic drinks, digestives that have been taken around that time, but maybe that aren't cocktail based that we can just help that, I don't know, that process of... Or maybe just bring some further distinction around putting natural sugars even, like berries, on top of a meal that contains proteins and fibres.   Kimberly Ashton: (47:25) Yeah. I definitely don't suggest eating them together, and I'm actually... As much as I love desserts, and I was just saying to prescribe them or to encourage people, I like to have them in between meals. So, if it was late afternoon, it's actually a really good time to have... Afternoon tea is actually energetically or even the 24 hour Meridian clock system, is a good time to have something, if that works for you in your day. Or if it's after dinner, which I'm assuming more on top of a meal is what you're referring to, I wouldn't actually have it on top of a meal or right after. Leave a bit of time. Let the body digest because definitely having all those... As amazing as nectarines and berries are, a lot of fruit on top of beans or chicken or whatever, is not going to work so well in digestion. So, yeah. I would separate them just purely by the time.   Mason: (48:20) Moving dessert to afternoon tea is such a revelation. I'm like, of course. Of course.   Kimberly Ashton: (48:26) Yeah. At four... I mean, I don't even have a slump, a lot of people do, and that's when they reach for chocolate or cake or things like that. And I don't have it every day, but it's a good idea. Depending on when you exercise, because I also like to work out or do yoga and things at four or five, that's just... So, it really depends. You have to work dessert into your day or week, maybe week. But definitely after dinner is-   Mason: (48:49) You practise.   Kimberly Ashton: (48:50) Into your practise, dessert practise. That would be good. But no, if you're going to have it after dinner, I mean, ideally have an early enough dinner, then you can have a break and then maybe have something sweet. But, yeah. I wouldn't suggest it necessarily [inaudible 00:49:03] purely for food combining. But, yeah. And then let me quickly share also some cooking for spring. I'm big on different styles of cooking as well. So, with the five elements with different seasons, adjusting the way you cook. I don't tend to use the oven so much in spring or in summer. It's not like I never do it, and again, depending where you live. If you live in Tasmania or, I don't know, Sweden or somewhere where it's not super hot in summer, then it doesn't matter.   Kimberly Ashton: (49:35) But for the most part, I'm more of a fan of steaming, blanching, boiling, some broths instead of heavy soups from winter, you can still have beautiful lighter soups. One of my favourite soups is a bunch of different green things, fennels in there, green peas, broccoli, spinach. There's one more. I think I put a potato in there and you boil it and then you blend it. So, it's a green blended soup. Very light, very cleansing. And the fennel is super tasty, so lighter soups. And then a quick saute. So, just something light and fresh. And then maybe, as you said, adding a little bit of pickle or raw, I don't know, a little [inaudible 00:50:18] salad on the side or steamed asparagus. Yeah, some sprouts. So, just thinking in terms of a lighter and fresh approach, rather than boiling and slow cooking and baking, which is more autumn/winter. So, yeah. You can get seasonal with food, and you can get seasonal with cooking styles as well, which will help you adjust to that transition of the spring season.   Mason: (50:46) Yeah. And I guess, even if you are habitual in... I know sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, I am using the oven a lot. And my mind goes I'm not meant to in this season, not meant to. I'm like, okay. I think, right now I've got my meals, I've got my style, just adding the freshness, adding pickle, and then slowly bringing in the other cooking styles. I mean, it's such a good reminder that maybe we get some cobwebs on the oven during-   Kimberly Ashton: (51:18) Yeah. It's okay. During the next few months. And again, as I said, it's not that you can't use it. It's more about learning what your body needs and when you need it. So, for example, say you are going hardcore raw food from now until Christmas. And then suddenly in December you think, ah, I need more energy or I need more, we call it yang things. You can go to different foods or herbs or the oven, or the slow cooker, in the middle of summer if you need that energy and that quality from your food. So, nothing is set in stone. It's more about adjusting for your lifestyle, or that condition of your body and mind on the day or that week. So, you don't have to stop using the oven, but ease up on the oven after winter.   Mason: (52:06) Yeah. Just getting a few salads going. Like I'm really just back in salad season.   Kimberly Ashton: (52:10) Yeah. Salad, it's great... As you said, it can be a meal or it could be a side, half a meal or even less. But just last point on the oven. A lot of people will argue with me and say, "I want to have bread." Well, you can eat bread whenever you want, that's fine. But a lot of traditional cultures actually steamed their bread and not just in Asia. So, the idea of... If you just think of a steamed sourdough versus a pretzel or [inaudible 00:52:39] and dry rye bread, there's a very different quality. They're both good, but there's a very different quality that it'll bring to you as well. So, yeah. Start getting curious about steaming things or different ways to prepare food or warm it or energise it.   Mason: (52:58) I love the approach because ultimately I see everyone developing and allowing the emergence of their own food culture, their own personal culture. Hopefully not in just taking from other cultures, but respecting the entire tradition, and just seeing what the appropriate spillover is, towards you and your life, while you respect the entire lineage of what it took to bring us this wisdom. I think that's always important. But naturally there is a practical emergence of what you and your family on this land do. And there's going to be contributions from many areas. For me, it's always going to be my four or so years I had as a raw foodist that are going to inform something. I really love the French, Italian living kitchen. Italian mama, lots of aromatics there. I've got that beautiful grounding and insight though, from Chinese medicine, reminding me to tune in with the seasons, tune in with the alteration and maybe changing up of what the energy of the meal is, thanks to the cooking and the sourcing.   Mason: (54:07) And the type of food, what that's going to bring to my body. And notice that, wow, that actually, I'm feeling very different. I'm feeling... I don't know. Not as edgy, not as angry. I moved through my anger a little bit more. And it can be that obvious, just through having that slight... You've maybe taken the rules for a little bit, as I did, and then going, well, hang on. I can throw the rulebook a little bit out here because they've just pointed me towards what is possible for me to perceive. And I think it's been important to remember that, for me, I'm also balanced out with that around ancestral style diets, but I don't want to live fully in that indoctrination of any one of those. Those are my influences and they all balance each other out and bring an emergence. But I've got to say, Chinese medicine is that one that keeps me grounded and keeps me in sync with the... Not just off with what my mind thinks I need, but in sync with my actual environment and how my body is relating to the environment.   Kimberly Ashton: (55:06) Yeah. And just to reemphasize the word feeling. It's like, how do you feel about food? Oh, I like this. No. But how do you actually feel when you eat something? And as you mentioned, just to come back into the body and to centre and make food choices from a point of empowerment, if you like, or embodiment. Very trendy words, but really understanding what your body needs, rather than just seeing an ad on TV or at the food court or whatever, and then just eating. But actually understanding what your body needs. It will take a while for sure. And I love, like you said, drawing on different food cultures and flavours and wisdoms. But they all essentially have the same... Whether it's an Italian grandma or a Japanese grandma, they understood food and they knew it intuitively and innately.   Kimberly Ashton: (55:59) Like if you were sick, you'd have this herb. They'd just know these things and we've lost that as well. So, it's exciting though, I feel, that in terms of food and nutrition has really changed globally a lot. And things like [inaudible 00:56:15] Chinese medicine, there's a lot of interest in it. And food as energy is a wonderful... I was going to say new, but it's an old topic that people are getting re-introduced to, and that's where my heart lies. It's like, flavor's good. Cooking is good. But how do you actually feel when you eat the food is something that we need to tap back into.   Mason: (56:36) And then we've only just gone over what you faced... In the beginning, it was just like, what's on the shopping list, what are we looking out for? Basic intentions, basic cooking styles. And then, I know you go in, like you mentioned, the Italian mamas and grandfathers and all that. It was just they were like, we know that the tomato with the basil leaf, with the olive oil and salt, there's wisdom in that combination. That's just not random. And I know you go into that in other ways. Just for people, this is a 3D, 4D and 5D conversation that does go deeper, and we'll keep on bringing Kim on, but you can go and check out... What's your best website, where's the best place? Qi Food Therapy, I love your Instagram.   Kimberly Ashton: (57:22) Yes. Qifoodtherapy.com is where to find me. And there's some eBooks and an e-course and more and more. I've got three or four things that I'm working on, which is really exciting. So, be great to connect with people there, and they can pop their email for the newsletter. Yeah.   Mason: (57:42) Qi is spelled the proper way. Q-I.   Kimberly Ashton: (57:46) Qi.   Mason: (57:47) Qifoodtherapy.com. Yeah. Follow Kim on Instagram as well. You've got lots of IDTVs, which are really great resources. You're really generous with your video content I find.   Kimberly Ashton: (57:59) Thank you.   Mason: (57:59) It's really... That's great. I tune in every now and then, just go and see, just go and get a little... Glean off a little insight around what I'm doing with my diet, when I'm clicking into... I just click into auto mode with life and family and that, and I just go, Jesus, what am I doing here? Where am I? Spring? Okay.   Kimberly Ashton: (58:17) I'll do more kitchen ones. I've been out of the kitchen for a little bit, but I think it's time to come out of retirement. Because my joy and passion is being in the kitchen. Not just talking.   Mason: (58:28) Well, I think everyone's enjoyed this. I'm sure everyone will be getting greens and doing beetroot juice and getting onto... Maybe switching up into matchas and maybe letting some cobwebs form on the oven a little bit, getting into steaming. And, yeah. I think it's been great. It's been a great reminder and touch base and I'm really happy that we'll get to introduce everyone to you on the podcast now. And we'll... Yeah. They'll just appreciate it so much, really inspiring, really concise, which is nice as well. Really practical information, which I know we all... But the ability to go very deep, which is I think something we all appreciate.   Kimberly Ashton: (59:05) It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.   Mason: (59:08) Hopefully we catch you for some summer vibes.   Kimberly Ashton: (59:11) Yeah.   Mason: (59:13) Enjoy your double wood spring.   Kimberly Ashton: (59:15) Thank you.   Mason: (59:16) See you.   Kimberly Ashton: (59:16) Bye.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

Travel writer and author Nina Karnikowski is putting a new lens on the way we view travel. In her recent sustainable travel handbook, Go Lightly- How to travel without hurting the planet, Karnikowski urges the reader to forget the bucket list and replace it with an itinerary that's more about connection. Connection to the lands we visit and the cultures native to them. Connection to the impact that our travel is having on local economies; 95% of travel dollars get funneled out of the destinations we visit (a term called 'leakage' in the travel industry). Connection to the languages spoken by the artisans that whittle and weave crafts to feed their families. And more connection to the idea of sustainable travel, which means doing a lot less and making our actions count in every possible.   For many of us, venturing overseas to explore far-off corners of the globe is something of a right of passage into early adulthood, and for some, a way of life. But as Karnikowski states, 'the staggering reality is, that only 6% of the world's population have ever even set foot on a plane'. This statistic really puts the idea of privilege into perspective, and as the adage goes, 'with great privilege comes great responsibility. Working as a travel writer for over a decade, traveling to some of the world's most remote destinations, Karnikowski has seen firsthand the destructive side of global travel. In this chat with Tahnee, Nina offers soulful insights and practical notions of how we can not only leave a lighter footprint but maybe even leave a place better than we found it through regeneration and mindful reciprocity. This conversation will have you yearning for connection, inspire you to do better, and make you incredibly nostalgic for travel. Mostly, it will open your eyes to the many little things we can be doing to make a positive impact on the places we choose to travel and the type of memories we create.   "And of course, during that time, I think a week after one of my editors writes to me and she says, 'Can I tempt you with this three-week private jet trip around Africa and you will be going to see the gorillas in Rwanda, and you'll be seeing the rock churches in Lalibela in Ethiopia'. And just this incredibly enticing trip. And I just had to say no. And of course, all these invitations kept coming. It was the greatest test of all but I thought, 'No, I've got to draw a line in the sand here'. Two years later, and I feel very strongly that the overarching message is unfortunately we have to just do a lot less of it".     Tahnee and Nina discuss: The power of conversations. How to travel more sustainably.   Leakage in the travel industry.  How to support local artisans. The art to a good travel wardrobe. The potency of a daily writing practise. Over tourism; Thinking twice about geo-tagging.  Being more mindful of how we spend our travel dollars. The negative impacts of tourism on local accommodation. Slowing down and spending more time connecting to people and nature.     Who is Nina Karnikowski? Having worked as a travel writer for the past decade, Nina Karnikowski is now on her greatest adventure yet: making her and her readers' travels more conscious, and less harmful for the planet. The author of Go Lightly, How to Travel Without Hurting the Planet and Make a Living Living, Be Successful Doing What You Love, Nina is dedicated to helping people find less impactful ways of travelling and living. She also runs regular writing workshops focused on connecting more deeply to self and the earth.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Nina's website Nina's Instagram Go Lightly Make A Living Living, Be Successful Doing What You Love   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everybody and welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. I'm really excited today to be speaking to Nina Karnikowski, I think I got that. She's a beautiful Polish lady who is also Australian and an incredible travel writer and author who I'm actually lucky to share a neighbourhood with, just around the corner from us. Nina's worked as a travel writer for the past decade, which is a long time. And she's now getting to be a published author and she's written a really excellent book called Go Lightly, which is about making your travel more conscious and less harmful to the planet.   Tahnee: (00:37) It has some really beautiful reflections on how we can continue to enjoy exploring our planet with as much impact as we've been having in the last few decades. So Nina, I'm really stoked to have you here because I'm really passionate about this topic and I kind of didn't realise until I read your book how much of what you were saying is how I've always intuitively travelled. I hate the popular places and I hate the places where there's all the tourists.   Tahnee: (01:06) I've been really sad to return to places and see how tourism has damaged them. But I'm also, like you I think hopeful that tourism can be a force for good in the world as well. So, I feel like this could be a really juicy and fun chat. So, thank you so much for joining us today.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:23) Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to dive in.   Tahnee: (01:26) Yeah. Like at SuperFeast, Mason and I, the first thing we did when we got together was jump on a plane and went to Costa Rica and we spent a month there and then some time in the States. And then, I went off to Thailand and I was thinking about how much we have just always had travel as a part of our life style. And then obviously, Corona has come in and it's just been complete stillness for the last couple of years.   Tahnee: (01:54) And for me, it's been really beautiful. I was wondering about you as a traveller. Like you've been travelling for at least a decade nonstop, possibly longer. So, are you finding this kind of time is actually really restorative for you or are you feeling a little bit restless? How are you going in lockdown?   Nina Karnikowski: (02:12) Wow. It is a very big journey in itself, experiencing this lockdown. I think I have been through many waves, as I'm sure everybody feels. There are periods in which I am completely at peace and feeling very restored, feeling connected to the community, feeling connected to myself, feeling the wonder and beauty of everything that is around us all of the time. And actually probably connecting to that the first time in a really, really long time.   Nina Karnikowski: (02:46) And then, there are other weeks when I just feel ... I mentioned this word to you before we started talking, but I feel the [fernway 00:02:54] very acutely, which is this German word that expresses the opposite of homesickness. So, this desperate desire to just get out and see the world. I ache for the world, I ache for faraway places, I ache for the inspiration of that. And really what I have come to realise is that that cannot be replaced.   Nina Karnikowski: (03:17) I thought that it might be for awhile, but there is actually nothing that replaces that. But it is really something to be ... It's a period in which I've realised that travel is something to really be revered and to treasure. And I have come to really treasure my travel memories during this time. And also like I say, I've fallen in love with Australia again and the places close to us, which is really important when we're talking about the state of travel.   Tahnee: (03:54) Yeah. Something I really got out of your book was those kind of micro adventures, like getting in a car and going not so far and experiencing things close to us. And I want to stay on this idea of wanderlust a little bit because I'm super interested in ... I've been talking to a lot of people during lockdown about this and people are like, "You know, it's this right of passage. Every Australian gets to travel." And thinking about these 18 year olds that are stuck here and a part of me is like, "Well, it's actually a privilege that we get to do that, it's not a right."   Tahnee: (04:26) It's this incredible privilege to be able to jump on a plane and go anywhere in the world. And this idea that we could spend a year living in Europe or a year overseas somewhere, completely agree, invaluable life experience. But it's this sort of real privilege as well to have that. And I guess I think a lot about what is it in us that craves something new, what is it that needs to go and experience these other cultures? There's lots there for me because I think about Australia being in some ways quite cultureless, and we can talk about that.   Tahnee: (05:02) And I also think about how humbling and how beautiful it is to expose yourself to another culture and have to adapt your way of thinking to their way of being. So, they're the two things that have really come up for me is like experiencing something so different and so unreal. And obviously, the nature piece. Have you done any reflections on what are those motivations for you or where did that wanderlust arise from in you?   Nina Karnikowski: (05:31) It's a really important question. I think that we've all had a lot of time to try at least to get to the bottom of. Because I think it's so multifaceted. And just on the privilege thing, I'll share with you a really interesting statistic that I came across while looking to create Go Lightly. It's that 6% of the world's population have set foot on a plane.   Tahnee: (05:56) Wow.   Nina Karnikowski: (05:56) 6%, isn't that just staggering? And when you think about that and you think of how low that is compared to what we think it is, you really start to realise what a huge privilege the idea of travel really is. And that has really reframed things for me. But just about what that desire to travel is and where does that come from, I mean I think you're right in that it is this desire to experience difference and to really frame our own experience within that idea of the other, the other place, the other culture.   Nina Karnikowski: (06:45) Really I think we find a way to understand ourselves better through that. And there's just definitely that hunger in me. I mean, my whole lens as a travel writer was to go to the most far flung corners of the world. I loved places like Mongolia and Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia and Namibia. These places that a lot of other travel writers actually didn't really want to go to that much because they were kind of lesser known and more mysterious I guess.   Nina Karnikowski: (07:22) And often places that weren't really that heavily populated. And what really drew me to them was how do people live in those sorts of places. And often, the people that were living there were ... There were ancient cultures there that were living in ways that had largely been untouched by modernity. Spending time with nomads on the Mongolian Step and seeing how do these people survive in this environment where they're picking up all of their belongings, they're moving seasonally.   Nina Karnikowski: (07:57) And they have this tiny community that is so small but so deeply connected. And similar idea with the [Himba 00:08:05] tribe in Namibia and with the [Omo 00:08:08] Valley tribes in Ethiopia. I'm just fascinated to see these ancient ways of living and ways in which are so much ... When we're talking about going lightly, that is the ultimate going lightly, is just living in those ancient ways and really understanding how overcomplicated we often make our lives back home.   Nina Karnikowski: (08:36) So for me, it was often about that. Just kind of reframing my own experience and telling stories that helped the reader reframe that for themselves and to really ask the questions of is this the best way to be living. Is the way that we're living really bringing us happiness or is it just a conditioned response? That was always the big fascination, at least for me.   Tahnee: (09:01) So, how did you find yourself with these opportunities to travel to these places? You studied journalism? Or you were doing some kind of journalism? What was your background?   Nina Karnikowski: (09:12) Yeah, yeah. Well, I went to university in Sydney, UTS, University of Technology. And I studied journalism with international studies. And so, a year of that I spent studying in France because I spoke French. I still speak French, rusty now. And I really was just so fascinated in the idea of using writing to explore the world and explore other cultures. And then, once I'd finished that degree, I did what most people coming out of university in Australia with a communications degree do and desperately scrounged around for any job that I could get.   Nina Karnikowski: (09:59) Because the amount of degrees that are coming out are very disproportionate to the opportunities that are available. So, I did a lot of free work experience and things like that and basically begged a big publishing company here called [Fairfax 00:10:14] Media. I begged for a job until they decided they could handle me doing that anymore and they created a position for me, which was a junior writer role. So, I basically started out doing all the things that the senior journalists didn't want to do.   Nina Karnikowski: (10:32) And I started on a magazine called Good Weekend that I had studied a lot at university. And a lot of award winning journalists and things. Of course, I was just there transcribing their tapes and writing the parts of the stories that they didn't want to do or didn't have time to do. I learnt so much from them. So, I kind of revolved around the magazines there and wrote things about food and fashion and profiles of people and a bit of travel.   Nina Karnikowski: (11:01) But then, after doing that for about five years, a job came up on the travel team and I lept at that. And was lucky enough to get that job. And so yeah, I became an in house travel writer, which meant that I was sent on assignments every other week to ... At the beginning it was really wherever anyone else didn't want to go because all of the other travel writers had been there for quite some time. And then, I actually ended up moving to India for a year, which is another story. But I continued doing that job for a year there.   Nina Karnikowski: (11:40) And when I came back, they restructured the whole team just a few months after that. And they decided why on Earth are we paying in house travel writers when we could be not paying that person's salary and just using contributors. So, I put my hand up for voluntary redundancy at that point and became freelance travel writer. Which was actually ... It was a great move because it meant that I could write for a whole variety of publications and I had that really great foothold already in the industry. So, that's when I really started moving into the more remote parts of the world. And I did it every since.   Tahnee: (12:22) That's very brave. I mean, I think I remember that restructure. Was that when they were restructuring all the Fairfax and News Limited in Australia?   Nina Karnikowski: (12:31) One of them, yes.   Tahnee: (12:34) One of those, okay. So, that was a really big one. I was graduating, yeah, it was a big change. And I guess from moving into freelance, are you then able to ... You're pitching your story and you're kind of picking the places you want to go and you're interested in exploring and that's providing you with the opportunity to go and do that. That's kind of how your life's been the last 10 years?   Nina Karnikowski: (12:56) Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting how it works. A lot of people are confused as to how somebody could make a living out of doing this thing. So basically, a company will usually approach you as a freelancer if you already are writing travel stories for publication with a big readership. And they will say, "Okay, we've got a new itinerary in Zambia and we would like a writer to come and experience it and write stories about it. So, would you like to come?"   Nina Karnikowski: (13:29) And in exchange for that, for being taken on this trip and having your expenses covered, you write a series of stories about your experiences and you sell them to different publications. And so, I was lucky writing primarily for newspapers in that there was enough volume of work to make that a reality because the magazines, you might only get three stories in a magazine a year. But for a newspaper, I was filing sometimes four stories a week. And you'd go on a trip and you'd come back and you would take one two week experience and you would write eight stories about it. So, that's how that sort of became a reality.   Tahnee: (14:16) Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, cool. And that was quite a long part of your career. So, I noticed your first book was really more around people's passion and soul. So, I'm interested in how that sort of came about because you've been working, travel writing and then you sort of made this segway into being a published author, which is really exciting. And I want to congratulate you on that because I know how hard that is. I worked in publishing for awhile. So, what was your motivation in putting together your first book? Was that just coming from your own passion?   Nina Karnikowski: (14:49) Yeah. Well, I was actually approached by somebody at the publishing house who said, "You've got this really interesting career. Do you think you might create a book around it?" And I didn't really like that idea of having my story at the centre of it, but I loved the idea that they were curious about how that had become my life. Because I always thought that about other people, you know? I would see these fabulous lives on Instagram and I'd be like, "Wow, how did that person become a wood carver? How did that person become a medicinal mushroom [crosstalk 00:15:28]."   Nina Karnikowski: (15:31) And I would look at these people and think, "Wow, I'm so curious about that. I wonder what kind of sacrifices they made to get there. I wonder how much money they started with." All the questions that people had asked me, like how do you actually make money as a travel writer? How do you become one? What are the downsides of that? All these kind of questions that I wanted to ask other people. So, the book ended up being my story just as the intro and then 26 stories from people from around the world who had made a living doing what they love.   Nina Karnikowski: (16:03) So, there's a Japanese tiny home builder and an Armenian visual artists and a Tanzanian photographer and a weaver in the US. All these different kinds of people. But really looking at the realities of what it takes to do those things because I think social media has a lot to answer for in making things sometimes look a whole lot easier than they really are. But also, encouraging the reader to take actions themselves. So, somebody who might be stuck in a nine to five job that they feel incredibly dispassionate about and how do they start implementing more creativity into their life.   Nina Karnikowski: (16:43) I have exercises in there to help them do that, lots of advice from the people that I featured to really empower people to take control. I mean, we spend such a huge part of our lives working. And I just think it's a tragedy if we are not enjoying what we're doing and feeling creatively fulfilled. And also, redefining what success is because let me tell you, as a freelance travel writer, I was not making heaps of money.   Nina Karnikowski: (17:15) But I was having an incredible time, I was telling great stories, I was seeing the world. And I had to really look at my definition of success and go, "Okay, well if my bank account is not heaving, then am I feeling fulfilled? And how do I help people see a different version of success that might empower them to take a few different chances in their life?"   Tahnee: (17:43) I think that piece around like when you aren't really passionate about something and it feeds you, you often make a lot of sacrifices, which often is financial as well as other things. I don't think we discussed that compromise enough as a culture around ... You do see ... I know people have said it about us. They're like, "You guys are so passionate and motivated." I'm like, "Yeah, but those things that we all come from is because of this." And not everyone is willing to make that sacrifice. I haven't had a chance to read that one yet but I'm really excited and I think [Mika 00:18:13] and Jesse are in there too. So, I'll have to-   Nina Karnikowski: (18:15) Yes, exactly. Who are Byron based chocolatiers. They make the most delicious chocolate. And she's an example of somebody who you'd be like, "Wow, a chocolatier?" You think of movies like [Chocolat 00:18:34] and you're just ... It seems so romanticised and I loved that she was so honest and she's like, "There were so many naysayers." And actually, the reality, there's a lot of ... So much hard work. She just works all the time.   Tahnee: (18:48) All the time, yeah.   Nina Karnikowski: (18:49) Yeah. But she loves what she's creating and she's very passionate about it and has a different view on what she wants to be spending her time doing than other people might. So, I think all of that is really important to convey because if you're someone who ... A lot of people really love the nine to five model and that's also really great because if you want to be able to properly switch off before and after work as well, then maybe being an entrepreneur or a creative is not for you. So, I think it's just important to show the realities of it so people don't go into this and then get a shock at how much work might be involved.   Tahnee: (19:34) Because I think about travel writing as one of those industries that people think is very glamorous but I'm sure you would be the first to tell us that it's not. And I mean, I wonder for you, is that something you see yourself doing forever? I mean obviously none of us know the future but what's that sort of looking like for you? Would you continue to take those assignments and then is there more books in your future? Or what are you looking toward?   Nina Karnikowski: (20:00) The great mystery.   Tahnee: (20:01) Yeah. Just throw that one in there.   Nina Karnikowski: (20:04) Well, yeah. First of all, I would say you're so right. It's absolutely not as glamorous as people might think. There's a lot of illness, I'll say first of all. A lot of illnesses I experienced because of that. And it's very fast paced. It's very you hit the ground running. You are working from the first moment you open your eyes until your head slams down on the pillow at the end of the day because the whole time you are just meeting people, gathering notes, taking photographs, making sure you've got everything to tell these stories the right way.   Nina Karnikowski: (20:46) And you've also got to be up all the time because people are hosting you and you want to be enthusiastic and you want to stay curious and you want to keep your eyes open wherever you are. So, that's not for everyone. And I certainly met various travel writers throughout my time who weren't really suited to it. And they would turn up and say, "I don't really want to do what we're doing today." And it's like well, you have to kind of do what is organised because people are expecting you to do that.   Nina Karnikowski: (21:14) So, that was definitely something. And also, you miss out on ... I was away a third of every year. I have a marriage to maintain and a life and family relationships and things. It's really difficult when you miss out on a lot of things. Okay. And then, as for what is ahead, well I mean, I've had such a huge shift in my thinking about what I'm doing and why over the past two years and even a bit before that. Which I'm sure we'll talk a bit about coming up.   Nina Karnikowski: (21:58) But I'm definitely going to change the way that I do what I do. So, it will be much less travel. It will probably be instead of 12 trips overseas a year it would be more like one or two longer trips so that I can tell more stories in one place but then come back and have that time at home. And definitely more books. I love creating books and I love actually almost as much as that the conversations that they start, like this. And being able to talk about these ideas with people and express them in other ways.   Nina Karnikowski: (22:36) I've started running workshops and things, which I find really deeply fulfilling because I think just conversations are so powerful. And I think for a long time I forgot that. I was in my storytelling, writing mode and I didn't even think about other forms of communication for a long time. I didn't have the space to. So, that's been a real gift in this time. And kind of just following my curiosity as well. I'm working on something with my publisher at the moment which is actually a totally different modality that I'm excited about and more in the writing craft realm. And I think as creatives we stagnate if we don't keep evolving. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how that mystery unfolds.   Tahnee: (23:28) Yeah. I want to make a little note on the sustainable travel tips you just gave us around less trips and longer times, I'll come back to that. But the last piece I wanted to talk to you about was a little bit off the book, was it's actually about your craft. Because one thing I noticed in reading, I've looked through your social media and read your book obviously. And you write from this really heartfelt, reflective and very self aware place, which I think is quite for me, anyway in my experience with travel writing, very unusual.   Tahnee: (23:59) And also, even on social media there seems to be this real sense of reflection and a lot of heart in your writing. So, I wondered if that's something that's come with time for you or is there a practise? Or is it your life style? I think I saw that you meditate. Those are things that kind of build your craft? Or is it just something that you think you've honed over time? Do you have any advice for writers in terms of how you've come to find your voice?   Nina Karnikowski: (24:25) Well, that's a beautiful question and thank you for saying that. Outside of my professional writing, I am a big journaler. And I am very self reflective, probably to my detriment at times. But I really love the practise of writing every single morning without fail, emptying the brain onto the page. I have done that since I was a teenager. I experienced quite severe anxiety in my late teens and I started to do it then. And it wasn't probably until a few years after that that I really solidified the practise after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.   Nina Karnikowski: (25:11) Where she advocates 20 minutes every morning. And I just find it such a powerful way of unburdening yourself every day. But also staying connected to your essence, to your purpose, to motivation, all those sorts of things. And also, just venting in a way that doesn't impact other people. So, you don't really have to do it to other people, you can just do it to the page every day. So, I think that's probably where a lot of that comes from. And then, bleeds through.   Nina Karnikowski: (25:41) I love social media for that, as a way of really connecting to a deeper truth that often in travel writing you're not that involved. The writer is not that involved in the story. Places taking centre stage. So, it's nice to share some more personal things on there. And I think for anybody who wants to write or even just evolve as a human, I think a daily writing practise is just so potent. And it's free, and it is just available to use at any time. I always say I've saved so many thousands of dollars on therapy by just self administering this therapy to me.   Nina Karnikowski: (26:22) It's often just what it feels like when you write down that thing that you would think, "Oh my God, I would never say that to anybody." And once you've actually written it down, and if you need to tear it up afterwards, by all means do that. But it's gone for you, it's gone. And you can really alleviate a lot of your own suffering that way. So, that's a big part of it.   Tahnee: (26:46) Yeah, the cathartic process, shedding those layers.   Nina Karnikowski: (26:52) Yeah.   Tahnee: (26:52) I dated a guy who gave me that book, I don't know when it was, it was a long time ago. But it similarly was one of the few things from her book that stuck, the morning pages. And to a less extent since my daughter was born, I'm the same. Still in there. It's more like afternoon or night pages these days.   Nina Karnikowski: (27:13) Yeah, also okay.   Tahnee: (27:15) Any time pages.   Nina Karnikowski: (27:16) Yes.   Tahnee: (27:17) But yeah, I think piece around getting ... I think that's what I see a lot with people is that subconscious, unexpressed I guess shadow aspects of ourselves, which don't necessarily have to be negative. But just those things that we haven't digested or processed, you know? Pulling that out. And I felt that in your book. Like in Go Lightly, that you were ...   Tahnee: (27:39) I hope this isn't a terrible thing to say, but it felt like it was almost a cathartic process for you on reflecting on your own journey as a traveller and as a travel writer and coming to this place of recognising some of the mistakes were yours as well but also the opportunities were yours. And that was kind of what I got out of reading it. Does that sound like a fair review in a way?   Nina Karnikowski: (28:04) It does. You can tell you had a background in publishing, it's a very astute observation. Yeah because that book was ... I wrote that book in a fever and it came from such a place of my eyes being opened to something that I thought I need to remedy this right now. I need to create a resource that I could not find at the time. So, the genesis of it was, I mean it was a cumulative process but really it was this trip that I took to the Arctic in 2019.   Nina Karnikowski: (28:35) It was my last big overseas assignment, which I can't believe I'm saying that. That's been two years now. Me two years ago would have just completely baulked at that idea. But i went to a town called Churchill, which is the polar bear capital of the world. 900 polar bears to 800 people. And I went there and I learnt firsthand about the plight of the polar bears, which of course I already knew. But to see these things firsthand, to learn about the melting of the ice caps and how that is impacting the breeding season of the polar bears. And how there's absolutely nothing that they can do to alleviate that situation themselves.   Nina Karnikowski: (29:15) But there is something we can all do. That really, heavily impacted me. And I came home from that trip and I calculated my carbon emissions and I thought, "Oh my God, I have got to change the way that I do this thing." That is so necessary for me as a human being. I felt it was the air that I breathed at that time I travelled. But it was the single most heavy thing that I was doing for the environment. It counts for something like 8% of the world's carbon emissions. And my carbon emissions personally were out of control because of that.   Nina Karnikowski: (29:57) And so, I really had to find a way to be more accountable and to understand how I could continue doing this thing that I loved. And it also accounts for one in 10 jobs in the world. And it does so much for our personal growth and it connects us as human beings. It does all these wonderful things so how could I continue to do it but in a way that was less impactful. And so, honestly almost immediately after that trip I wrote to my editors. I said, "Okay, I need to just take a little break. I've lost sight of why I'm doing this when I really came face to face with the impact of it. I need some time."   Nina Karnikowski: (30:42) And then, that same day I wrote to my publisher and I said, "I need to write this book. I need to figure out all the things that I've done wrong and figure out how to do it better." And to help other people figure that out too because we want to keep doing it but in a way that is less impactful. And so, I wrote that book then in the following three months. And of course, during that time, I think a week after one of my editors writes to me and she says, "Can I tempt you with this three week private jet trip around Africa and you will be going to see the gorillas in Rwanda and you'll be seeing the rock churches in Lalibela in Ethiopia.   Nina Karnikowski: (31:24) And just this incredibly enticing trip. And I just had to say no. And of course, all these invitations kept coming. It was the greatest test of all but I thought, "No, I've got to draw a line in the sand here." Two years later and I feel very strongly that the overarching message is unfortunately we have to just do a lot less of it. Which we are always hoping for a silver bullet. But aren't they going to make trains electric or run them on seaweed or something like that? But really, we just have to do less travel but make our travels count when we do them.   Nina Karnikowski: (32:05) Like everything in sustainability, do less and make our actions count. And perhaps even move towards regeneration. So, how do we give back to the places that we visit? How do we really make sure that there's reciprocity happening there? And how do we as 6% that have this ability to travel, how do we make our very potent travel dollars count in these places?   Tahnee: (32:36) Well, that statistic just dropped in for me. Like 6% of people are using 8% of the carbon emissions just in travelling. That's a really ... That's sort of mind blowing. It's interesting because I find a lot of problems with how we view these developing places and how we go there and we're rich there so we behave like divas. It's something that I've always really struggled with. And look, I've definitely done it too so I'm not saying I'm immune from this.   Tahnee: (33:10) But the reciprocity piece I thought was a really beautiful part of your book. And I think there was an African ... One of the first actual indigenous Africans to own a lodge, you interviewed him. I think his interview was really big for me because it really impacted me on how we really need to do our research and make sure that these places aren't owned by westerners who are just funnelling the money out of there or putting it toward their Range Rovers or whatever. It's actuallY going back into the villages and into the communities and supporting them in some way.   Tahnee: (33:45) And I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that kind of mindset shift that we might need to make as a population? That we're not going there to live like queens and kings. We're going there to participate in their economy and participate in their culture and in their world. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that.   Nina Karnikowski: (34:03) Yeah. I love that that came clear to you through reading it because that's really I think the most powerful thing that we could do. I mean, keeping the 6% figure in mind and then also keeping this figure in mind, which is that 95% of our travel dollars get funnelled out of the destinations that we visit. So, that's something called leakage in the travel industry. And so, we want to basically stop that from happening as much as we possibly can. So, that's looking for, like you say, companies like [African Bushcamps 00:34:39], which is in love with the first black owner of a bush camp in Africa. I can't even believe that.   Tahnee: (34:48) Yeah, that blew my mind. I was like, "Hang on a second."   Nina Karnikowski: (34:51) Right, right, exactly. So, putting our money into those sort of companies, also into locally owned hotels, into locally owned restaurants, into indigenous crafts and making sure that we understand that. And putting in the time to meet makers and really diving into the culture in a deeper way. And putting in the effort to learn the language. All these sorts of things which are helpful as well. But really, it's thinking about the travel dollar all of the time and always asking the question of who owns this and is there an alternative for me.   Nina Karnikowski: (35:38) Doing things like home stays are amazing and always so powerful as a traveller. We've all experienced going and staying in some sort of high rise Hilton and feeling like you could be anywhere in the world. And then, staying with a local family. Like I did this trip in Nepal where we stayed with families. And I spent four days family and learnt so much more about the culture and developed a really beautiful connection with the couple and their children.   Nina Karnikowski: (36:10) You get such a richer, deeper experience. And then, you develop relationships that then can carry on throughout your life, which I think is one of the most important things that we need to do as well as travellers is to create ongoing relationships with places. So that then if a tragedy occurs in that part of the world, the way we work is we'll be more inclined to act if we've visited that place, understood the people there and understood the culture. And so, that's another benefit of thinking that way as well.   Nina Karnikowski: (36:42) And just going back to [Lex 00:36:45] and what he said in that interview, he said something like the places that we travel to are nourishing for us, how do we give that nourishment back? How do we ensure that we are being nourishing too? So, that comes down to things like cultural exchange and making sure that we are offering something in return all of the time. So, if we're learning something and are we paying a fair price for things, first of all. And are we using our money in the right places?   Nina Karnikowski: (37:18) But also, just having conversations, building deeper relationships in places and making sure that in that way we're giving back as well. There's so many ways to give back as a traveller and it's not just about ... I think we had this outdated mindset of, "Okay, if we want to give back, we've got to sign up to build an orphanage in a destination."   Nina Karnikowski: (37:44) But the truth of that is that there's a lot of problems relating to that, which is often it can take away jobs from locals or build something just to tear it down once the travellers have gone because it's actually just a way of making money. All these sorts of things. So, I think that direct action, putting money in the pockets of locals and also building those more robust relationships. And just putting in the effort to really learn at that deeper level about culture.   Tahnee: (38:18) Yeah. Well the big kind of word that kept coming up for me in reading your book was slowing down. And I think I was reflecting on the most meaningful trips that I've had and they weren't probably very Instagramy in terms of I would walk around the city for four days and just sit at a café and talk to some old man about his experience living there for ... I did that in San Francisco. I spent three hours with this 70 year old gay man who had been through all of the amazing cultural shifts in San Francisco.   Tahnee: (38:47) And I learned more in those three hours than I would have learned in a museum or anywhere else. And same in Japan, I did a cultural exchange when I was 16 and lived with families there. And I still have them as a vivid memory of the grandparents every morning tending the shrine and the breakfast we were served and their gardens. But they're not particularly memorable memories in a way. Like in terms of sharing them with people or anything like that. They're just very special to me.   Tahnee: (39:17) And I think that was kind of the stuff that kept coming into my head reading your book was those experiences helped shape me. Yeah, I won't so much a picture and it was an incredible experience. I actually had a lot of resistance to going there. My husband made me go. He was like, "You will like it." I was like, "I'm not going to that place. It's too many people." He was like, "Just go." And we went at six in the morning to try and avoid the people. And yes, it was an incredibly sacred experience but we went to another temple, it was just him and I and that was for me a more sacred experience.   Tahnee: (39:47) So, I think all those notes that you made around getting off the beaten track, actually listening to locals, asking them where their favourite places to go are. Slowing down and spending more time connecting with people, I think those are the keys to really having that meaningful experience. Rather than being on those itineraries where you just go, go, go, go, go. Which we've all done those too.   Nina Karnikowski: (40:10) Yeah.   Tahnee: (40:10) Would you say that's kind of ... Is it slow? And is it mindful? Are these the kind of key words that are coming up for you in your research?   Nina Karnikowski: (40:19) Yeah, yes, absolutely. And so much of what you said is reflected in this, is thinking as a citizen rather than a consumer, right? We're so destructive in the way we travel a lot of the time. We go somewhere, we want something from it, these experiences. We don't care how we get it. But we I think need to shift and think, "Okay, but if we're acting like locals then we are more curious, we are paying more attention, we're having everyday conversations."   Nina Karnikowski: (40:57) And that way the experience actually becomes so much more delightful for you because like you say, you might not have experienced bucket list things in San Francisco, but you had a conversation with somebody that is yours, you know? And in that way it's like tailored clothes, they fit so much better. If you're tailoring your travel experience to yourself, it means you're not just going and going, "All right, I'm going to tick off that museum that I actually don't even care about that but everybody says to go. I'm going to tick off that big hat restaurant that everybody goes to."   Nina Karnikowski: (41:36) It's actually questioning what do I love, what am I deeply interested in and finding a way for that destination to help you find that. So, in that way you're growing as if you've seen. You're actually seeing things that you will be more engaged with. And it just personalises everything. I had this fantastic trip to Guatemala a couple of years ago, which was all based around weaving. And it was with this really beautiful little company called Thread Caravan.   Nina Karnikowski: (42:13) And they take groups of women to weaving villages where we met with these women. We spent the whole week with these women who had been weaving their entire lives. They're carrying on this very important cultural tradition, which is actually ... It's bringing income into these towns and it is also keeping it alive because that weaving tradition is being threatened by globalisation and by mass production and all those sorts of things.   Nina Karnikowski: (42:42) So, us going there as travellers, we're learning a skill that is just ... It just lit me up, learning how to weave on a back strap loom from these women who have been doing it their whole lives. So, you're learning something but you're also showing that community that actually hey, this cultural tradition is still worth something. And you're playing a part in keeping it alive in that sense as well. And you know, we saw how they were naturally dyeing these threads and they were telling stories about weaving.   Nina Karnikowski: (43:19) It gave me a whole new appreciation for that art as well which I'll now have for the rest of my life. Now had I simply gone and kicked off some big site, I still would have had a good time, sure, but it wouldn't have been tailored to me in that way. And it wouldn't have been something that I cherish so deeply like I do with that experience. So, I would just urge anyone who is perhaps at the moment only in the dreaming phases of their next event, but really thinking about what is it that I love. What is it that I want to learn more about?   Nina Karnikowski: (43:53) And is there a way that I can go to a place and allow that place to teach me that? And for example, I'm, as so many of us, into gardening and permaculture and things at the moment. So, I'm dreaming of going back to India and seeing if I can spend a few months on a permaculture farm and help out there because that way you're helping out but your also learning something in exchange. And developing a whole new relationship with that place via the soil. So, that's the kind of thing that I am envisaging now, the kind of journey that I'm envisioning.   Tahnee: (44:35) Yeah. I really love that idea too. It comes back to that self reflective piece, but yeah, understanding your motivations and your kind of why I guess, which I think was a big emphasis you placed in the book. Was really getting to the core of what lights you up about travel and why do you want to go. I mean you spoke about WOOFing quite a bit in the book as like an option for people. And if people aren't aware, it's a great way to give back to the community and learn some things.   Tahnee: (45:05) I've done that as well. I just think there's some really magical experiences to be had there. We were unable to go because of COVID but we were supposed to go and live on a farm in Argentina and my husband wanted to be a [guapo 00:45:20]. The cowboy. Said he wants to go and be a cowboy and I was going to cook with the women and tend the garden. Those kinds of trips are the ones that we get excited about, which aren't super fancy. But I just think for my daughter to live on a working cattle ranch, I think that's a really cool life experience. Hopefully one day we can do those.   Nina Karnikowski: (45:41) That sounds incredible. And actually, I will add as a parent how much better is that as well when you slow something down to that extent? You're actually living somewhere and you've got more space then because you're not dragging a child around from monument to monument. You're just living life in places.   Tahnee: (45:59) We've travelled with our daughter a lot and my huge learning on that was exactly what you're saying. Like rent a house, stay put, become a local. What are the great hikes in the area? Even in Bali, we just ... The best place I went was [Lovano 00:46:17], which was as far from Bali as you can get. But my daughter could play safely on the streets, she could make little friends and it was just this really ... Yeah. Like just to be very low key I think is amazing with kids. Because they get so much out of just interacting with other people.   Tahnee: (46:33) And there's no prejudice or preconceived ideas. So, they just accept things completely as it is, you know? And I love that about them. And they don't do well schlepping so there's no point trying. It's a nightmare. I did try it once. I was like, "No, never again." I don't know if you're familiar with ... There's this photography agency called Magnum, which was started in the 40s. Do you know about that? Yeah. I'm a big fan of just their story. A bunch of crazy renegades.   Tahnee: (47:06) But I kind of thought about that when I was reading your book as well because they documented a lot of places that were completely unvisited by westerners. Especially coming up through the 40s, 50s, 60s when people didn't travel as much as they do now. And they also in the interviews I've read with some of the photographers, they said 20 years later they really regretted having shared those stories because it dramatically changed the places they visited.   Tahnee: (47:37) And I wondered because you've been travelling for such a long time, have you seen that in the places you've visited? Like over tourism and what have you seen impact these cultures and these communities? And as consumers and travellers, what can we do? Obviously all the things we're talking about but are there any other tips or things that you've noticed that you think people can be more attuned to or aware of?   Nina Karnikowski: (48:01) Yeah, definitely. I think that that is a huge consideration that to be honest I didn't think too much about for a long time. I was very passionate about sharing these places with people and everybody needs to know about this place. And I never thought if I start geo tagging anything or revealing these places because I thought I want to share it with everyone. In quite a naïve way really because that is exactly how over tourism happens. And I have been to some horribly over touristed places.   Nina Karnikowski: (48:36) For example, Barcelona where we were at this [inaudible 00:48:39] and the line was something like three and a half hours long. And everyone is just going in to see the same thing. And you go in there and you can't really feel anything because how can you when you're surrounded by thousands of people and flashbulbs and cameras and things. I felt the same thing at the Taj Mahal actually because in India it's the same level of over tourism and everybody wanting to see the same thing.   Nina Karnikowski: (49:06) And to a lesser extent, there's just places, it doesn't necessarily have to be a volume thing, it's an infrastructure thing. So, there are certain towns and even rural places around the world that have become famous for a particular selfie thing made in a certain spot. And I mention a couple of these stories in the book where locals will just be completely inundated by ... And it might only be a few hundred people coming there but it's too much for their little place to bear.   Nina Karnikowski: (49:40) And there might not be enough places for people to go to the toilet and all those sorts of things. Or on the other end of that, it's like Venice where locals can no longer find accomodation because everything has been turned into tourist accommodation.   Tahnee: (49:59) Or Byron Bay?   Nina Karnikowski: (50:00) Or Byron Bay, exactly, where we are. It's the same problem. And we all know how that feels. And you see it happen in part of Paris. I remember doing an assignment there and my guide was saying that used to be a baker, that used to be a hardware store, that used to be the local cobbler. And now it's just all Airbnbs and there's actually no services for locals here now. So, in order to avoid all of those things, again it comes down to tailoring the experience.   Nina Karnikowski: (50:32) To really not rushing where everybody else is going but questioning like where do I want to go. And is there a place that's close to a place that everybody is going that might be more delightful? And asking locals where they go. And really getting clear on your own personal desires in that way. And also, another great approach is asking where needs your travel dollars. That is just becoming such a more profound question now with the variety of disasters that are happening around the world.   Nina Karnikowski: (51:10) It's a great way to approach it, to say, "Okay, is there a destination that experienced a natural disaster that might need tourist dollars? Is there a town that has experienced ..." For example, I went to Nepal for the third time just after the huge earthquake happened. And they were just desperate for tourists. People were either scared or they thought there was nothing left to see. And that place really needs your tourist dollars. So, looking at it as again, how can I use my dollars in a way that might help the local community.   Nina Karnikowski: (51:48) And also, another big thing is travelling closer to home for a lot of us. And that is something that I think obviously forced to do in some ways over the last couple of years. But have really been enjoying. So, really just thinking about what places near me are not discovered really that much. And I went to an amazing dark sky park, which was just an eight hour drive from [crosstalk 00:52:21]. Yeah, near there, yes. And it was the best star gazing.   Nina Karnikowski: (52:28) So, they call it a dark sky park because there's very little light pollution. And I saw better stars there than I did in the middle of Namibia. And did some incredible hiking and learned about the indigenous history of the area. And that area had been heavily impacted by the devastating bush fires in Australia. So, it felt good to be returning somewhere that people were perhaps a bit hesitant to go to at that time. So yeah, falling in love with the places closest to us.   Nina Karnikowski: (53:02) And I also did a road trip. This is the other thing, put nature at the centre of your journeys is a big thing to do what I'm talking about. More sustainable or regenerative travel. So, I took a road trip earlier this year from our house to the Daintree Rainforest. It was a month and it was just me and the car and I slept in the car some of the time, which is actually really fun. People are always shocked. But I was camping as well and also staying in beautiful mud brick off grid house for a while.   Nina Karnikowski: (53:41) And all a variety of different places but it was all just about hiking. It was about visiting permaculture farms. I visited a mushroom farm. I got to go and see the state of the great barrier reef for myself and understand what's happening there. The same thing in Daintree. So really, also getting curious about what ... I'm very interested in the impact of climate change on natural places at the moment. So, that was a great way for me to see that firsthand and to kind of activate myself in that way. And I think that's something we can all do as well. What issue am I interested in at the moment and is there a place that I could go to learn more about that than wait and worry to figure it out?   Tahnee: (54:29) Yeah. My mom and dad travelled Australia a lot when they were young and I think I've been Australia twice but I don't remember any of it. I've done a lot of it as an adult now as well. But yeah, I watched you travel to North Queensland which is where I grew up. And it was really ... It's something that I've found shocking living down in New South Wales that people don't know. Like I'll say I'm from Mission Beach and people go, "I've never heard of it." And I'm like, "Okay, Cannes." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, okay. Is that near [Townsland 00:55:01]?" And I'm like, "Like the great barrier reef?" And like okay.   Tahnee: (55:04) Wow, people in this country don't know. And I'm not even actually from Mission Beach, I'm from [Bingle 00:55:09] Bay but nobody even has a clue where that is, you know? And it's just like to really try and get people to see their own country. Aren't we proud? When I was a 10 year old in the 90s, we used to get ... I think there was something like, I don't know, four or five international flights a day into that Cannes airport. My parents were in tourism so you could know everyone in Cannes was Japanese. Like every single ...   Tahnee: (55:32) I used to get my photo taken because I was blonde and white haired. It was such a different place then. And people from all around the world were travelling to that place and Australians don't even know where it is on a map, you know? So, I was super excited to see you going there. And you drove your little eco car too which I was like, "Yeah." It's a really great example to set I think for people to see how much amazing nature is right on our doorsteps in this country.   Nina Karnikowski: (56:00) That's right. And also connecting more deeply to the indigenous history of this country and really thinking about what we might learn in that respect about just understanding the history of the place that we stand on. And asking yourself everywhere that you are who's land is this and am I behaving in a way that is respectful to those people. If you're asking yourself those questions when you're travelling at home, then that then translates as well when you go overseas.   Nina Karnikowski: (56:39) And you will be more inclined to think that way than ways that you might behave in the past, which is where we just kind of think, "Oh, well we're overseas, it's not our place, it doesn't matter how we behave." It always matters.   Tahnee: (56:53) It comes up to [inaudible 00:56:55].   Nina Karnikowski: (56:54) Yeah, right. So, kind of almost practising it at home as well. Practising how do we be better travellers and how do we ... Even getting used to things like camping and biking and hiking and all those sorts of things that we do at home and are comfortable doing it overseas.   Tahnee: (57:16) Yeah. I was thinking a bit about ... Well, there's two little things that really landed for me again in reading your book. So one was around ... I actually have also been to Guatemala and hung out with the weavers, not through Thread Caravan but just on my own adventures. But I remember purchasing a weaving from them, a piece of fabric and it's become such a treasure of mine because again, like you're saying, the story. She was telling me about how the different moon cycles affect the colours of the dye.   Tahnee: (57:48) So, to get a vibrant colour it goes on the full moon and the more mute colours, the new moon. All these kinds of things. It's become this possession that I'm attached to in a really ... I think in a beautiful way. Compared to things I've bought on other trips that have maybe ended up in a nut shop or not become ... It sounds terrible but it's true. I've just been like, "Eh." It's a kind of disposable piece, this thing that I've bought. So, I wondered around souvenirs and trinkets, what are your thoughts? Is it connecting with the people that are making it? Is avoiding those mass produced souvenir shops or do you have any kind of thoughts on that part of travel?   Nina Karnikowski: (58:28) It's such a good question. And I'm very passionate about that. I'm passionate about that at home as well. About really thinking about everything that we allow into our lives and thinking about where it's going to end up. And thinking about just the life cycle of every single thing that we own and about how we might treasure our possessions more and really think of them as becoming part of us. And if we really think about how is it made, where was it made, who was involved in the creation of this thing, we would develop such a more respectful relationship with the physical object in our life.   Nina Karnikowski: (59:12) So, with thinking about that, I love to collect things on my travels. And my house is definitely filled with those things. But I always thought about the life cycle of it. Instead of ... Well, not always. There was definitely in my 20s, you would buy things that would make you laugh or whatever. You bring it home and then [crosstalk 00:59:43].   Tahnee: (59:43) We've all got them.   Nina Karnikowski: (59:44) Yeah, yeah. But no, I definitely think now about where is this going to sit in my home and is this something that could be biodegradable at the end of it's lifetime. Woven baskets or wooden items or things like that, does this item really tell the story of the place that I was in? And always also asking do I have to buy five of those things or maybe I just buy one more expensive one. And always also in that respect I think it's always worth paying more for something that is made properly and by an artisan.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:00:28) As opposed to thinking, "Oh, okay, I can just buy three of those knockoff ones next door." Really coming back to who has created it, what energy has gone into creating it and bringing that reference to it. And also, the important things around questioning whether what the thing is made out of, is that ethical. So, there's all the things being made out of tortoise shell or bones or anything like that that might be an endangered species. I think that all comes into it too.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:01:05) But I really do think that that idea of reverence and buying directly from artisans is really important. And I know that the pieces that I have bought are now going to be with us forever because they do hold those memories. And I can remember each person who sold me that thing and the interaction that we've had. And some of the things it was with people who I'd been interacting with for days and then fell into relationship with so that it really has a story to it. So, I think that's also then something that does bleed out into our everyday life. And to change the way that you see them then when you're at home as well.   Tahnee: (01:01:54) Yeah. And that beautiful opportunity to reflect every time you see that piece and it's meaning to you and where it comes from.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:02:01) Right.   Tahnee: (01:02:03) Yeah. I've noticed in researching your work that fashion seems to be a topic you're passionate about as well and not consuming fast fashion. And just it's something I always find interesting with travelling, especially when you meet weavers and you look at how much work goes into producing a piece of cloth. And then, you think about I can buy a singlet for $5 from Target or something. It's such a crazy ... I know a machine's doing it, so it's a bit different. But yeah, I find that's a big schism in my brain that I can't quite reconcile.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:02:41) I have so much to say on that but I'll try to be brief. But no, it's true. And I love that you experienced that in Guatemala and you saw. I think once you see something like that, it's very hard to forget it. When you see oh my gosh, that took three months for somebody to create by hand. That's actually what it would take for a human being to create a woven piece of clothing. And when we put that lens on things, it really just shifts the whole experience.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:03:18) And it's like ... I don't know if you're familiar with [Tika Han's 01:03:23] work where he often talks about an amazing zen Buddhist teacher. And he talks a lot about when you are eating a meal, you look at the food in your bowl and really question every bit of energy that went into creating that meal. So, you give gratitude to the son and the rain and the soil that nourished the plants that then grew and then the work of the farmers who harvested that for you. And then, the people who processed it and brought it to you.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:03:58) All of those things that create a meal. And I think we can think about that with clothing too, you know? Really thinking about ... Okay, if this is a very cheap piece of clothing, what energy was put into it and how has it been possible to create it for that price? And understanding that that is reflective of something that probably isn't ethically made. And also, bringing a sense of reverence to every item that enters your world so that you're not likely to just cast it off when the fashion changes but you're really looking for something that speaks quick deeply to you that you will look after for the rest of your life.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:04:43) Or that you will pass on in a respectful way to somebody else. Because we might just think fashion is this fun folly but wow, it is really responsible for so much pollution and also mistreatment of human beings and our environment. So, it's something to love and to use to express yourself but also to really think quite deeply about the origin of all those things. That's why I'm so passionate about secondhand clothing and things like cloth swaps and things because that way you end up with pieces.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:05:26) Like I went to a clothing swap recently and I ended up with pieces from my friends that I'm like, "I've got a piece of that friend." And every time I wear it I think of them. And I'm likely to look after it more because it is attached to that person. And there's definitely a beauty to that. And also, I always think about there's a lot of companies now that say, "Our lines are sustainable, and it's made with this material," and all that sort of thing. But really, there's nothing more sustainable than buying something that is already in [crosstalk 01:06:02].   Tahnee: (01:06:01) Production, circulation.   Nina Karnikowski: (01:06:03) Has already been in circulation, exactly. So, reusing in that way.   Tahnee: (01:06:13) And so, in terms of your travel wardrobe because I loved that you touched on this a bit in the book. And I think it's always so interesting depending on where you're going and what you're going to need. And I always find when I have to go into multiple climates, it's a bit of a headache. But what's your go-to in terms of travel and packing? Are you pretty ... I'm assuming being a travel writer, you're pretty light weight. But I'm interested to hear how you approach packing and selecting clothing. Do you research the places first and try and be culturally sensitive? What's your thought process around that?   Nina Karnikowski: (01:06:51) So, yeah. I became a bit of a master packer over the years. And I think the key for me was really just packing as little as I possibly could and also packing things that could be multipurpose. I was really big on packing block colours, thing

DJ Ankenbrandt of Cintamani Tonics is back for another awesome episode to discuss all manner of tonic herbs. This episode covers a wide variety of topics including a bit about TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and tonic herb history, polypores, decoctions, some of DJ's favorite tonic herbs, wild-harvesting, and more! To support DJ's work please visit his website https://www.cintamanitonics.com To support this podcast and the work Phoenix Aurelius is doing please visit: www.phoenixaurelius.org/apothecary to save 15% off anything in the apothecary with the coupon code: Listen15 Join our Spagyrics of the Month Club: https://www.phoenixaurelius.org/membership-options Check out Phoenix's online courses: https://www.phoenixaurelius.org/onlinecourses and use coupon code: Teachme15

We had a fun conversation with Rehmannia Dean Thomas from Shaman Shack Herbs today and we really enjoyed what he's up to. Rehmannia is really into Taoist tonic herbalism. I personally think that herbs and in particular mushrooms are the missing food group. I've heard it said that the human body needs medicine or it will perish. It WILL get it one way or another. It'll either get it from the bitter alkaloids or even better from immune modulating mushrooms and herbs or from pharmaceutical medications. But either way, the human body cannot live without medicine of some kind. By now we all understand that drugs and medications are extremely damaging to the body. There is no such thing as "side effects" of drugs. This is a phrase made up by the pharmaceutical industry to make people think that these effects are not that big of a deal. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can't tell you to get off your medications that's something you'll have to work with your doctor on but personally I'm not a fan of what this industry is doing. You should see what they're doing with the chemotherapy drugs these days. It's sickening. This missing food group that you'll never see on the food pyramid is medicinal herbs and medicinal mushrooms. Like David Wolfe says you don't have to take the top 30 herbs or mushrooms, you just need to know what the top 5 are and take those. From the research that I've done the king of all mushrooms is Chaga and the queen is Reishi. They are the top 2 mushrooms on the planet and I believe everybody should be making teas, elixirs, decoctions and even tinctures with them on a daily basis. If you get really fancy you could even create a dual extraction from these mushrooms. In any event Rehmannia talks about how the triple treasures, chi (qi), jing and shen. We discussed how they're different and even how they relate to the 7 chakra systems of the body and how they correlate to the Ayurvedic doshas of the human body. We also talked about how to incorporate herbs and mushrooms into your diet and how to work with substances like reishi mushroom and how that can affect your shen. It's truly a lifetime of study. Perhaps the thing that I was most excited about was the herbal 10 week course he's put together at http://www.gateoflife.org. I think learning more about how to work with these herbs, what they do for the body and how to make them taste amazing with different recipes, is critical. We must have a knowledge and an understanding of why these are so great for our health and longevity. This is like vegetable juicing but on steroids. I highly suggest you learn more about herbs and how to use mushrooms to radically increase your immune system and improve your health. We hope you enjoy this interview with Rehmannia Dean Thomas and please don't forget to share this show with your friends using any of the social media links on this website! :) Show Notes For This Episode: Ron Teeguarden - See his books David Wolfe - See his books George Lamoureux Truth Calkins Carl Jung - See his books Mantak Chia - See his books The Source Spiritual Center Venice - Google Map - Phone: (310) 450-5437 http://www.mountrainroseherbs.com Connect With Others: Discuss This Episode In Our Forum! Stay Notified of New Shows: [hcshort id="16"] Commercials During This Episode: Commercial #1 Commercial #2 Find Extreme Health Radio On: [include file=showpage-itunes-soundcloud-stitcher.html] Please Subscribe: Subscribe To Our Radio Show For Updates! Other Shows: [include file=show-links.html] Listen to other shows with this guest. Show Date: Wednesday 2/19/2014 Show Guest: Rehmannia Dean Thomas Guest Info: Rehmannia is a Taoist Tonic Herbalist in the Gate of Life lineage, a 5000 year old herbal system from China. In 1998, he met Master herbalist Ron Teeguarden in 1998 and became his personal apprentice until 2006,

This podcast all about energy healing, chakras, and training the subconscious with Alison J Kay will itch your spiritual scratch.  We discuss the ins and outs of energy medicine, using ancient techniques to connect to your spiritual consciousness, and how to use all that to manifest success in your life.

Just as we need our daily bread, we need our daily herbs.Herbs provide a subtle nutrition to the brain and the subtle tissues of our body. They invigorate us with prana (life-force) and create a state in our physiology that attracts the healing powers and support from nature.Take advantage of the herbs around you and what is available to you with honour, reverence and gratitude.When you deservingly nourish yourself with these precious medicinal materials, your life will flourish on all levels.  IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

I am incredibly excited to have a very special guest on the podcast today. Not only because he is just one of the biggest experts I know concerning herbalism, health and wellness in general, but because he's a dear friend of mine, Sage Dammers. Sage is the creator and co-founder of Addictive Wellness, which is this amazing company tha tproduces the best adaptogen-enhanced chocolates on the whole planet and the most amazing tasting elixirs. Sage has massively raised the bar on what it means to bring high integrity, cutting edge health and wellness products to the world. In my conversation with Sage, you'll hear:02:55 How Sage got into Tonic Herbalism and extending health span 08:58 The first herb Sage studied and applied Mucuna Pruriens, the „happy herb“ with the highest natural source of L-Dopa, precursor of dopamine 09:44 Sage‘s Happy Hot Chocolate Smoothie recipe for parties 11:09 Astragalus, the ultimate Chi tonic, enhancing energy, vitality, lung health, skin, cognitive and immune function 13:56 The Taoist Herbal World, structure and theory: The Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, Shen and how to support them 19:19 Reishi mushroom, Varieties of reishi, What to watch out for when buying it The ultimate reishi, alpha glucans beta glucans 25:26 Adaptogenic compounds: what they are and what they do 26:54 Why China is a great place for sourcing herbs from pristine eco-systems 30:51 Starting the tonic herb journey: top herbs to start with and what to look out for 35:22 Tonic Herbs for children and how to get them good sleep routine 37:40 Why 80% of Americans are chronically magnesium deficient, magnesium varieties 40:43 Tonic Herbs and sexual health and high performance Ejaculatory control for men based on herbal protocols How men can have multiple orgasms Herbs that boost sex drive and performance 47:55 Why testosterone is very important for women as well 49:02 Why it is important to take Vitamin D3 with Vitamin K2 49:35 How to enhance your resilience to stress 51:43 Spiritual effects of Tonic Herbs and how they can support self actualization individually and for humanity 59:22 Thyroid health and the connection to hair growth 01:01:09 Ariane‘s recipe for Goji - Schizandra Berry Tea, the ultimate beauty tonic 01:02:56 The benefits of raw cacao and the different strains of cacao 01:09:00 The health benefits of Xylitol and which one to choose 01:10:20 What is a Stevia Supertaster? 01:13:58 Why Arriba Nacional Cacao is the best variety for human health and also for the health on the planet 01:14:47 The DI TAO PRINCIPLE of herbalism 01:18:17 Sage‘s practices Resources mentioned:http://www.sagedammers.com/ (Sage Dammers) http://www.addictivewellness.com/ (Addictive Wellness) http://www.instagram.com/addictivewellness (Instagram) http://www.facebook.com/AddictiveWellness (Facebook ) https://amzn.to/2YvFWKN (The Tao of Health Sex and Longevity)

An exploration of the most sophisticated system of herbology, Sage explains the 3 treasures of Taoism and the accumulative benefits that happen when consuming tonic herbs as they are intended.  Taking a deeper look into the 3 treasures of Taoism (Jing, Qi, Shen), Sage explains the core concepts in an easy to understand manner, providing the listener with a foundation to the importance of herbalism. 

We had a fun conversation with Rehmannia Dean Thomas from Shaman Shack Herbs today and we really enjoyed what he’s up to. Rehmannia is really into Taoist tonic herbalism. I personally think that herbs and in particular mushrooms are the missing food group. I’ve heard it said that the human body needs medicine or it […] The post Rehmannia Dean Thomas – The Power of Taoist Tonic Herbalism, Mushrooms & How Modulating The 3 Treasures Can Improve Your Health! appeared first on Extreme Health Radio.

** 10% DISCOUNT FOR YOU ON SUPERFEAST PRODUCTS ** USE: "FEELALIVE" at Checkout  ~~ http://www.superfeast.com.au?aff=248 ~~  Mason Taylor, founder of Superfeast, a medicinal mushroom and tonic herb company in Australia joins me on the show to discuss the trap of dogmatic health in our society. Dogmatic health is something I have personally been trapped in as a vegan, which left me judging others who did not fit my ideal. But that is not the only case, there are so many different labels that people attach to and ultimately create separation in society. Mason & I discuss the cause of dogmatic health and how you can assess your own beliefs to see if this applies to you too. The biggest take-away from this is what you can do to make an embodied health decision instead of a dogmatic decision. Oh yes, I'm still vegan or plant-based (whatever you want to call it) I've just decided that my beliefs don't have to be for everyone. ----more----TONIC HERBALISM 101 FREE COURSE ~~ https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/superblog/tonic-herb-course ~~  Mason Taylor Instagram https://www.instagram.com/masonjtaylor/ ~~ MORE FROM LUKA ~~  1:1 Mentoring With Luka http://bit.ly/momentummentoring  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lukareedy/  Youtube http://bit.ly/Youtube-Luka-Reedy  

We're switching up the roles on today's pod folks! Our SuperFeast mamma and papa, Tahnee and Mason, take the guest seat as Oni Blecher from the Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond podcast takes the mic to explore reproductive health, the family culture and pregnancy preparation with our fearless leaders. Mason and Tahnee absolutely loved offering their insights in this beautiful conversation, we just had to share it with ya'll. Mason and Tahnee explore: Reproductive health from the Taoist perspective. Reproductive health as an equal responsibility between BOTH the male and female. Preconception planning. Health sovereignty and personal culture. Tips on how to cleanse and prepare the body for conception. The tonic herbs, medicinal mushroom and minerals suitable for preconception. Developing personal and family culture, inviting in sustainable practices that can be carried forward long-term over the lifespan. Children's immune health.   Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin Yoga teacher and Chi Ne Tsang practitioner, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is the General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).   Resources: Nourishing Her Yin Event Video The Brighton Baby book Pregnancy Preparation SuperFeast Podcast Episode Pregnancy Health SuperFeast Podcast Episode   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Oni:   (00:00) I'm going to be interviewing Mason and Tahnee of SuperFeast, an ever-growing health initiative based around a variation of adaptogens, medicinal mushrooms, and blends that allow support for the body to return to harmony and thrive. The SuperFeast vision looks at the individual in regards to understanding best practice for educating and spreading the wisdoms of ancient traditions and medicines. Mason and Tahnee have also recently started their own journey in parenthood.   Oni:  (00:25) Look forward to chatting to this synergistic couple for their individual and collective knowledge on attitudes towards health, but particularly preconception health, reproductive health, and looking at the individual, and how social and cultural pressures influence our health-related decision-making processes. We are also excited to hear about their experiences in parenthood and how this new role for them has influenced their own attitudes toward everything in their life. Welcome.   Tahnee:  (00:52) Thanks for having us.   Mason:   (00:53) Thank you.   Oni:  (00:53) Yay. It's so nice to have both of you here. I know that you are not strangers to vocally sharing your wisdoms. You host talks and also have your podcast, and blog-related information. But there's thousands of things I could ask you. I'll have to narrow it down today.   Oni:  (01:11) Well, I want to start with reproductive health and it's such a huge topic, particularly with rising dysfunction around reproductive health. It sounds basic, but what is reproductive health to both of you, or either of you?   Mason:  (01:25) Pretty huge topic. Tahns and I, we've been working together about four years now. I tapped out of being a yoga teacher early on, but Tahnee, being a yoga teacher, her work went into Taoism and my work primarily being in Taoist Tonic herbalism. There's where we connected in our philosophy when it came to reproductive health. In the context of Taoist Tonic Herbs and Taoism in general, there's Three Treasures within the body that we're wanting to tonify through our everyday life, through our lifestyle and through our herbs, Jing, Qi, Shen.   Mason:  (01:56) And we can go a little bit more into those, but that baseline... Think about the analogy of a candle. Jing is like the wax of your candle, and that's associated with your physicality, your skeletal system, but also your reproductive health. And in that reproductive health association, you're associating with the ability to reproduce cells, and heal tissue and heal from trauma, so on and so forth.   Mason:  (02:17) And so, when we're talking about reproductive health, it's not something isolated. It's part of something that's going to be... Yes, it can be sexual reproductive health, but it's also going to spill over into your ability to actually stay physically robust within your foundations up until 80, 90, 100 years old. So, you don't get into that, burn through your telomeres, and your cells lack the ability to reproduce cells, and enter into that death cycle, really nice and early.   Mason:  (02:41) That's where we talk about when you're in your 20s and 30s, and have low reproductive health, yes, you can just be like, okay, well I can deal with that later. I don't want to get pregnant right now. But when you're associating with it, being one of your reproductive health, being associated with one of your treasures, and one of the ideas, in life in general, but we connected from that Taoist philosophy is guarding your Treasures and tonifying, building your treasures.   Mason:  (03:03) You can see that you can't, like in the West, compartmentalise reproductive health and be like, that's fine, don't really need that now anyway, or it's not really that important. Whereas we're like, it's one of the most important things because if the wax of your candle starts... If you're leaking your Jing, and so, therefore, you're not building any wax. You're burning through it faster than you... Than is responsible, or sustainable for your lifestyle. And then, we know, you see that Western flow where people go in lifestyle, you're heading down a route you're getting more reliant on external institutions, drugs, surgeries, that kind of thing.   Mason:  (03:36) Where the path that we like, is one of health sovereignty. It's a longterm conversation. Whereas you take a little bit more responsibility for that, including your reproductive health. That's associated with your Jing, your genetic potential, your lower back strength, your bone strength, your capacity maintain bone marrow, so on and so forth. And so, reproductive health is just a part of who you are.   Tahnee:  (03:58) And building on that. If you think about every cell in the body needing to reproduce multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times a minute or a second. That's what the Taoists identified as one of the roles of Jing, was the reproductive health of the entire body.   Tahnee:  (04:11) So, we really look at this ability to produce healthy cells. This ability to produce a healthy reproductive cell in your body, so an egg or a sperm. These are things that are essential markers of health. So we look at it as like a report card. It's like, if you don't have a great sperm count, if you aren't having a healthy menstrual cycle with no pain and if you're not ovulating and these things, then you're actually... There's something going on that you need to have a look at. And we look at that as in a really holistic way.   Tahnee:  (04:38) It's not that necessarily there's something wrong with you in inverted comma's but it's like that would be a sign or call. From the body that that is something that needs to be addressed and we have such a high stress lifestyle, such a high stress culture. Women are given hormonal birth control very young, men are exercising a lot these days. We've got this culture of activity and athleticism, which we didn't really have historically. If you look back until around the sort of 70s and 80s that we first started to get this physical culture come through and the impact that has on people's bodies when they're working out all the time. It's interesting stuff to have a look at. So a lot of the time we see people that are on really strict diets, they end up with reproductive issues or people that are overworking their bodies and their physiology and they tend to be the ones that maybe in their 20's like Mase said, they'll get away with it because they still have quite a lot of energy.   Tahnee:  (05:30) They can drink the coffee and take the supplements and do the things, but as they slide into the 30's and 40's it starts to catch up and a lot of the time people choose to have children a lot later as well. So you can end up in your 30's and 40's with out anything left in the bank to actually carry a healthy pregnancy through. I study a lot with my acupuncturist who work on how to help people with their fertility journeys and it's not just women, it's the men as well. And I think really tend to focus on women when we talk about reproductive health. But that's something I'm quite passionate about. The men have to take responsibility too. And the amount of times I've spoken to women who are doing the cleanses and taking the herbs and eating all the right foods and their partners are like, I don't want a bar of it.   Tahnee:  (06:13) I think as, as a culture, if we could start to expand the conversation to say, look, reproductive health is everyone's responsibility and if we want a healthy species, if we want to really be the most amazing potentiated humans as we grow and develop, which is what our culture really needs, especially with all the stuff going on politically and socially at the moment. It's on us to create healthy children and that's where this passion for preconception really comes through with us as well. Because we're not just talking about reproductive health as having healthy periods and stuff, it's also this responsibility that if you do choose to have children that you are giving them the best possible start.   Mason:  (06:48) There's a lot to that in terms of men being able to just go bypass going, I'll support you by getting healthy as well. And I'm not one for extremism, so if you're like a lot of the people are like right "I'm going to start preparing for pregnancy" and all of a sudden it becomes this obsession where anything you deem subconsciously as unhealthy, you need to cut out and rararara. But it's just about the direction that you want to go and you want to go into a direction of genetic potential. One that's not leaking Jing, and so men, when we say pregnancy preparation, we don't need to be obsessive, we need to realize that it isn't just like, oh this is just going to be for support. You can get your sperm health rocking and the unification of the parent's Jing is what's going to have a huge contribution basically to the primordial gene of that kid. And so the foundation of that kid.   Tahnee:  (07:32) It's their inheritance. One of the great analogies of Chinese Medicine with this is you might inherit a great car from your parents or you might inherit a bomb. And so we want to try and give them...   Mason:  (07:45) I think the woman has a great responsibility in terms of like housing,an environment where the liver is rocking and so you can handle hormonal fluctuations and you're going to be processing toxicity. You've got a microbiota that's actually going to be... That's another inheritance of the child, making sure that the microbiome is absolutely rocking so your passing that onto the child. Yes, a lot's on the woman but theres lots on the man as well. And you want to be healthy if you're going to be surviving and thriving through those initial years as well.   Oni:  (08:08) What a great a conversation to have with both of you. I wish that you conceived me, in a way. Because I'm sure you probably really looked after yourself.   Tahnee:  (08:19) We're focusing on reproductive and preconception health, but also the wider ideologies around health and how we need to really focus on our individual physiologies and biologies before we start applying these grand perspectives of what people should do or what we should do, what we shouldn't do, and looking at reproductive health as reproducing yourself as the best selves with your cells as time goes on throughout your whole life.   Oni:  (08:46) What do you advise when people are thinking about preconception health regardless if they're soon to conceive?   Tahnee:  (08:54) We typically do hear from a lot of people who are in the early stages of starting to think about a family for the first time. And I think a lot of the time people don't give themselves enough time, so they sort of think, oh, I've met someone and I want to have a baby. And obviously life happens and sometimes we just get pregnant. These kinds of things. And I don't think we should ever be ashamed of ourselves, I've heard from people, they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't do any cleansing before I conceived. And it's like, well that's not always necessary. We definitely, for ourselves, talked a lot about this idea of conscious conception and trying to at least prepare our bodies in a way that they were... Be like having guests over. You want to like get the house looking good and tidy it up and all that thing.   Tahnee:  (09:35) And I think it's the same with... That's how I thought about it with getting pregnant, having my daughter living inside of my body, I wanted to be in a quite a good state of health for that process. And obviously Mason was aware of his roles in that as well. So we worked with a book called the Brighton Baby, which is written by a naturopathic doctor in the States and he outlines this like two year plan, which is really great. So for anyone who's a little bit older and probably closer to having children, that would be something I'd recommend getting a hold of because it really does outline quite comprehensively all these different ways in which you can prepare your body and different tests you can have to ensure you don't have really high heavy metals and these kinds of things because children do take that stuff from our bodies.   Tahnee:  (10:16) So the things that you know you can do just to as a precaution, and that's something we've seen, when you look at the prevalence of things like ADHD and autism and these kinds of things, it's like, well, is this coming from this accumulation of these kind of toxins in the diet? Which is possible because we're eating more of these foods and exposing ourselves to more of these things. So we just think, hedge your bets, you're better off starting, in the best place possible. And then also we think if you're a bit younger you can start to really... Because a woman start to get really in tune with your cycle and start to be more conscious of your period isn't this curse. It's this actual really epic thing that happens in your body every month that has an emotional and spiritual component as well as a physical component. And as men to learn to be more respectful of that flow in women's lives and to really take the time to understand what's going on.   Tahnee:  (11:07) We have such a stigma around menstration in our culture and it's shifting slowly. I think a lot of the younger girls I talk to are a lot more aware of that, but people are so... This idea of sovereignty is really important because you have to take some responsibility. You can't expect a healthcare system to catch you. You can't expect that if you can't get pregnant, you're just going to go and do IVF. I know those are options, but they should be an absolute last case resort in our opinion. We believe in public health care and we believe that that should be available to everyone. But we also believe the individual needs to take responsibility. And so that really looks like... For sure have fun and do things and explore your life and don't be a martyr. That's not what we're trying to say.   Tahnee:  (11:45) But health really is about moderation. It's about getting into the rhythms of nature. So summertime here it's like everyone's feeling a little bit more energetic, a bit more party vibe. Everyone wants to be outside and that's fine. Like in Chinese Medicine, this is the time to do it because it's summer time, we're meant to be expressing ourselves. We're meant to be engaging and enjoying life. Then in winter time we should be sleeping more and resting more and taking more time to be internal and inward focused. And these transitions occur in all of us all the time as well. So we have a circadian rhythm and we're like the birds. We want to be up with the sun and down with the sun and we really push the limits of that in our culture. And we could talk about that all day long, the lights that we choose to use in our homes and all of this stuff.   Tahnee:  (12:27) But whatever curiosity has grabbed you, whether it's diet or whether it's culture or whether it's creating a home that's a sanctuary. Start to look at these things. And this idea of a personal culture is something that we're really passionate about at SuperFeast.   Mason:  (12:39) Brighton Baby was the book that Tahns just referenced. And I think in saying that we worked with a... I feel like it was more like we were looking at it and going, oh yeah, that makes sense. That's good. And what Tahns wasn't mentioning is that she'd had 10 years of healing, like in pretty serious gut stuff. 10 years of liver...   Tahnee:  (12:54) And emotional stuff.   Mason:  (12:55) Yeah. And emotional. And liver cleansing, parasite cleansing for myself. I can go into some of the cleansers, but that had been a big run up. And so basically it wasn't just a... Two years, it's almost a little bit of a rush to be like... Especially to know you're going to be... And there's a little bit unrealistic because you're going to have to go into a huge phase where you're going to have to completely and somewhat unrealistically, like a bandaid, you're going to have to change the direction of your life and your personal culture is going to look completely different.   Mason:  (13:21) And that might be necessary and it's worth it if you're going to be having a baby. However, is that really the context of... You're going to be going and creating a family, we're creating this family culture, we're creating this personal culture and that, in that that talks to the ideological aspects that come in, especially if you are... This area we get to explore cleansing our body and cleansing our spirit or ignighting our spirit, I don't know if our spirit needs a cleanse. But, definitely our emotional selves. In that we become susceptible to ideologies, especially if we go from the point where we've been eating really crappy food and we've been in really crappy relationships and then there's room for extremism to kind of like sneak in, in the preparation stage or if you do get pregnant and all of a sudden you have to kick back and oppose the the unhealthy culture or who you were before in your obsession with getting healthy and protecting your child.   Mason:  (14:10) And it's not the good thing to cleanse, but it's a better thing for you to start thinking about the creation of your personal culture and your family culture. Now hopefully a bit more void of ideology and then the necessity for obsession, exclusion in because you've decided to go and get healthy. So I think that's a real huge one because a lot of people who get into and say, we will look at Brighton Baby preparations. It's just a little bit of, you go on a series of anti-parasitic cleanse, get the viruses out of your body. That's going to have a lot to do with clearing your body of bad calcium and sediment build ups. Which has a lot to do with taking these kinds of things you get into the Msm's, methylsulfonylmethane's, zeolites and possibly taking hydrogen, maybe fulvic acids and these kinds of things which are going to be able to get in and hopefully dissolve these pockets of calcium which are gunking up within organs, within arteries, within joint tissue, within...That's what you think of when you think of arthritis. That's like what I mean by a bad calcium. That's going to be a huge part of the initial part of the cleanse.   Mason:  (15:06) Underneath that you're going to see a housing of viral loads and nano bacteria. It's also going to be that calcium can be mixed in with fungal loads and this is really fun. I guess because I was someone that dove really, really deep in. And you could see I probably did have that orthorexia session of I've gotta be constantly on one of these protocols because there's parasites in me. I'm gonna like... Myself all the time just going into an unhealthy ideological reliance on that as what I do. But at the same time, when you're clearing out those bad calciums, you're going to be maybe hitting some antifungals at the same time, really going to be getting onto like the, the Pau D'arco tea's, Amazonian Lapacho tree, that's the back of that tree, getting into the antivirals like Cat's Claw [inaudible 00:00:15:48].   Mason:  (15:49) And there's many other Western herbs Astragalus's and medicinal mushrooms. Well you're going to start actually doing some deep clearing and at the same time, maybe that's a time to work with a naturopath or someone to see if you actually have parasites or fungal loads or things going on with your microbiome. Then from there you want to start getting in and doing a little bit of all the time you want to be reseeding the gut health and maybe getting in and doing those liver cleanse and getting onto those liver herbs. That's like the next somewhat step. Doing a little bit of a Kidney upgrade. That's going to have a lot to do with your Jing and make sure that you're sleeping. Make sure you're thoroughly hydrated, getting off municipal water, getting a really good filter. Ideally getting onto good spring water. I'd much prefer people getting onto a spring water and that's a huge part of it. Making sure that you're getting into the sun, getting sun onto your reproductive organs thouroughly.   Mason:  (16:32) And these are all things you can start inviting, not with obsession. You can integrate them into who you are and what you're doing already. Rather than just taking that external cleansing identity that's obsessed with health and making that who you are. Because a lot of people here are deficient in Jing, deficient in personal identity. Therefore they start identifying externally with that, with that ideology.   Oni:  (16:51) What I'm hearing from both of you is that to look at what is coming back to nature for you, not just for whatever is trendy at the time. Instead of going, oh what in that ideology suits me? Who am I and then what suits me and then finding things that resonate potentially different traditions. Individual health, and looking in insight instead of looking outside from the shame perspective of something's wrong with me. I need to fix through obsessive health ideologies and getting to learn, what your health identity, but what your identity and spiritual identity is. So Mason, you've got some things to say.   Mason:  (17:29) Basically I like banging on about this topic I can get very excited about the potential you have for cleansing your body. I'm someone that quite often I'll follow the shiny thing, the shiny thing being these idealistic, perfect bodies to bring through these magical little spirits, but a lot of that, they're not truly great, but at the same time does lend itself, one to become a boring person if you get obsessed and a boring couple. But at the same time, what I'm basically driving home here is to not let these... When you're going into cleansing as with Tonic Herbalism, I try and pull these things off pedestals as soon as I can and I'm someone that can talk... people telling me I'm a really good salesman and say I can sell ice to the eskimo's but I can't if I'm not really invested in something, but I also have the vested interest to make sure that these... Integrating something like medicinal mushrooms or tonic herbs or whatever it is, and to someone's local cleansing practices, we want to make sure that it isn't just being sold with this beautiful shiny language, but we're actually able to take it off a pedestal, talk about, get very realistic about what our expectations are when we're integrating these things and make sure that it gets merged with our own intention for our own lives and our own family.   Mason:  (18:39) So it doesn't just come a thing on a list and ambiguous external thing that we should do in order to be right or in order to be valid. In terms of being good parents in our preparation. So I like to add these caveats that when you like, whether it's just yourself or your partner, whoever it is, when you are going down the route of cleansing your body and making sure that you are, you're creating a lifestyle that's going to lead towards real healthy and vibrant self. Make sure that you're not just doing something external and not just following some ideology or diet. Make sure that you are considering the fact that you are creating a family culture, that you have a personal culture and what you do needs to be part of a pattern of what you're going to be doing for many decades.   Mason:  (19:21) For now, not just something extreme that you're going to do now in order to make everything okay. It needs to be very sustainable, right? So think about the diet, oh I'm never drinking again or I'm only going to eat this from now on. Can you do this realistically for the next 50 years? And can you do it within the context of the priority being creating a super beautiful, loving environment, family culture, making sure that you're taking you away from connecting with your partner because that's going to be like one of the most important things. So just make sure that that doesn't create a wedge. Make sure you get your priorities right and just make sure that it merges into your own family culture and not a family culture that's going to be like Instagramable. You know, you can feel this bubble of intention when you're adding things into that family culture.   Mason:  (20:04) Remember that you need to be able to do this for the next 50 years, 40 years, 20 years, whatever it's going to be. So is what you're bringing in and inviting in to your culture, which isn't... This is possibly what you're going to be handing down the way you do things, your intention, the way you cleanse your body, the way you think about food, the way you think about other particular foods. Are they good? Are they bad? Do you really want that to be a part of your culture or do you want maybe greater nuance in how you talk about diet? Do you want extreme rights and wrongs? No. You want just to be able to have beautiful ongoing conversations without extremism and thinking you need to be doing that because that's what you're maybe going to be passing onto your children.   Mason:  (20:39) That's what you maybe pass onto your nieces and nephews if you're not having children. So you may be very precious about that and make sure that you can maintain being excited or doing this thing for the next few decades. Otherwise it's very short term and when you get involved in little short term, things like that, short term diet, short term cleansers, you're burning through your gas, you're burning through your Jing and you're ultimately going to lead. It's not a sustainable way to begin to lead more towards a path of degeneration anyway, which takes away from that land like that potential longevity intention and healthy intention you had to begin with.   Tahnee:  (21:07) And that's what reproductive health is. It's not degeneration, it's regeneration. So it's about ability to regrow the body. Does that, like what I think people forget all the time is like the doctor doesn't heal you. A herb doesn't heal you. No one can heal you. Your body heals itself and you really just have to get out of the way. The block to that healing, which can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be spiritual. Like I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin and he talks a lot about how from a very young age, our children are taught to be obedient. They're taught to look for what other people want them to say as the right answer instead of coming up with their own right answer. Like we can't trust you to know. So you have to find what other people want you to notice that you can be right.   Tahnee:  (21:47) You know, and then you'll be validated and then you'll be approved. And so we do this, people like us and do things like this, right? So we join a club and we become a whatever kind of club you want to join. But you say that a lot in this area where if someone doesn't agree 100% with you, then they get ostracized from the group. And so the complexity and the times when you know we aren't perfect and cause that's human life, right? But we also have to accept that if we want to be sovereign, if we want to be healthy, if we want to like be balanced, we need to actually do the work inside. And that's work for me. A lot of the meditation and yoga practices have been super powerful because I started to realise that yeah, a lot of the ideas of who I was and what I could and couldn't do weren't mine.   Tahnee:  (22:29) They were created by culture they created by family or by even just my own rebellion or response to my life. And so when I started to really examine that stuff, we had a beautiful birth at home. I felt very strong, very powerful through my pregnancy. If I was me 10 years before that, I wouldn't have had the same experience because I'd had so much personal growth in those 10 years that the 30 year old me was able to have that experience that the 20 year old may wouldn't have had, and I remember saying like, I'll take drugs. I don't want to feel anything. I'm afraid of pain. And then I started doing Yin Yoga and I learned to feel pain and then I realized that pain wasn't even pain. It was sensation and sensation was interesting and there was this tapestry of feeling going on in there and oh.   Tahnee:  (23:10) It's actually connected to my feelings and my emotions and dotted auditors when we can really start to grow internally, then a lot of the external stuff just falls away.   Oni:  (23:19) So reframing through experiential learning, I guess.   Tahnee:  (23:22) Yes, which is exactly what you know. If you go and listen to Seth Godin's work on education, it's all around. Don't teach people to look for the answer, teach them to ask interesting questions.   Oni:  (23:32) Okay, perfect. We've covered a range of topics, reproductive health, integrated into overall health attitudes and how to approach preconception, not just in the idea that we'll creating children, but also how to give birth to ourselves over and over again through cell health and regeneration. And I want to ask you too about your own journey in Parenthood and how potentially some of your attitudes have been challenged in that journey or enhanced or expanded. And what was that like for you two?   Tahnee:  (24:05) It definitely had a bit of an idea of what I thought I was going to be like when I was pregnant, which was like vegetarian and all of these things because I was vegetarian for 14 years and then for a few years I to [inaudible 00:24:21] struggled to really integrate it into my life even though I think my body really thrives, eating it, but mentally I had a lot of trouble. My acupuncturist would say that I was addicted to that ideology and I think to a degree that was true. Like this idea for me of what it meant. And even I think the fear of death and participating in death and comfort around death. When I was probably 28 or 29 I did this meditation retreat in Thailand a Tantric one, and we spent quite a bit of time doing death meditations and that was a huge realisation for me of how much I was afraid of that and avoiding experiences with death.   Tahnee:  (25:00) And so I actually found eating meat a lot easier after doing that because I was like, oh, you know, I feel like I'm really part of this natural cycle and I'm studying Taoism, you know, it's so integrated with the earth and humans are this bridge between heaven and earth were supposed to be able to anchor us spirit into this physical body on this plane. It's not about ascension and about leaving this body, it's about actually being here in a spiritual form, but through the physicality of the body. And so I think those kinds of ideas in my late 20's really helped me to transition into Parenthood. And I think my intuition was so strong, like so strong that my daughter came through to us, to me in meditation, she, I knew her name, I knew she was a girl. I was getting all these amazing insight.   Tahnee:  (25:45) But then I was also getting eat meat. I'm going to compartmentalise and put that over there and I'm going to let go. Oh, this stuff's interesting. And I could really feel how my rational mind was interfering with my intuitive knowing self. And I could feel that in birth, I could feel like these waves where if my mind kicked in and was starting to think about the physiology a lot about the body from studying yoga. And I would think, oh my gosh, like there's a bend in my pelvis. Like, why has there been to my pelvis? I have to get a baby through this bend. And then I would get out of that. I need to like my intuitive knowing, which is like, of course this is fine course. Like I felt connected to every woman ever through this incredible portal of birth.   Tahnee:  (26:22) And so I think for me it's really been a lot to do with trusting my intuition and her body's wisdom. Like she'll get a fever and we just let it burn. We let it break and then she changes. You look at Steiner's work and he talks a lot about how illness is like an upgrade for children. It reboots their immune systems and teaches their bodies how to respond and, and she goes through this huge developmental leaps off to these things. So I had to really let go of this idea of like, oh my God, she has a favor. I'm a bad mom. She's sick. And being like, this is really important for her and my job is to support her. So I take time off, I stay home with her, I coddle her until she breaks and then she's fine again. So things like that I think I've really leaned into more and the trust in the body's wisdom and that we don't have to know all the answers mentally that it's just like a lot of the time it's holding space.   Mason:  (27:12) I think you've just knocked it on the head. The main thing that's that's come up. I mean I probably respect the change that occurs in life now more than ever. I don't think I was like a know it als necessarily. I knew everything about parenting until I become a parent. I thought I was going to get that. Those, I think it's definitely been humbling so I'm definitely going with the flow a little bit more made in order to show up the great dad for me anyway, the amount of time more than beforehand. I need to make sure that I've compartmentalised in my life start like a little bit of time for myself so that then I can create more space within the family unit as well so that things can flow a little bit more. Because before that like we were hustling big time.   Mason:  (27:52) I mean we were on before we had Aiya and so to change gears was a bit of a big deal sometimes. Yeah, that's like that's been a harsh lesson here and there in order to find that nice balance between a business that's growing nicely and requiring a lot of energy and then yourself and your own personal practice, your a meditative practice or whatever it is. It's pretty huge. I'm very dynamic in nature. I feel like respecting the fact that I can't just be like okay, in this hour I will meditate in this way and in this area. Like I need space in order to tune into where I am at within for that week or for that phase of my life or for that day. And so the biggest thing I've realised is that I really need to know myself, when you've got the intensity of like, especially now like a toddler, I haven't got a you've got a three year old and right now she's going through something and she needs a lot of space.   Mason:  (28:45) And if I'm not creating a little bit of space for myself, if Tahnee and I are communicating and creating space like space in our relationship, which can be difficult when you've got like 20 business babies and they need time and we've sort of stopped showing up with our family. And so on a practical note and in terms of our family culture, i've started to try and get a little bit more savage with like our time and this is the most important thing and it's, it's my space, our space, space for the baby.   Tahnee:  (29:12) And that goes back to looking after the culture that you mentioned that you're creating. And speaking of which, and thank you so much for joining us. Both of you are so generous with what not only right now today, but through all of your resources. So what are some of your best resources that you can clue us into now?   Mason:  (29:28) Well, in regards to pregnancy preparation, Tahnee and I have a podcast that goes for two hours. We were pregnant when we filmed it. So that's on superfeast.com.au. You can just, if you type in pregnancy, it'll pop up that pregnancy prep and we have... It's called healthy pregnancy is another two hour podcast episode that we did just after we've given birth to Aiya we go through everything that we did, supplementation, Tahnee's exercise routines and all those which just looked like a lot of walking and spaciousness.   Mason:  (29:54) Anyway, a lot of stuff on our pregnancy and then postpartum and birth.   Oni:  (29:59) And that's through your website, SuperFeast?   Mason:  (30:01) All the other super phase podcasts. You can just try and get that on the super face podcast on iTunes type in pregnancy and they should pop up.   Oni:  (30:08) We're so grateful for you, Tahnee, Mason for coming on today and sharing your growing wisdom.   Mason:  (30:13) Thanks for having us.   Oni:  (30:14) And we hope you've enjoyed this episode today on pregnancy, birth and beyond. Tune in next week for more information inspiration, bringing us full circle. You can find our show on iTunes, Spreaker and the usual social media under pregnancy, birth and beyond, and our website at ppmedia.org

Benny Fergusson joins us on the pod today. Benny is the founder of the The Movement Monk Project and long time friend of SuperFeast. The Movement Monk Project is a method of functional movement, developed with the intention to restore the body to its natural powerful state. Benny guides his students along the path to physical mastery, empowering them to discover how to become injury resistant, highly flexible, strong and fluid in the way they move. Benny has been working as a physical therapist and movement teacher for over 16 years and is also a master practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Patterning (NLP). If you're interested in living a long, vibrant and pain free life today's pod is for you!   Mason and Benny discuss: Embodying your own unique expression of movement, putting the 'you' into any exercise or practice you participate in. Making it your own. The importance of self inquiry in your movement practice, getting clear on what personally inspires or motivates you to move in the way you do. The value of looking within, non comparison and jealousy. Approaching life from a parasympathetic state. Experiencing love and gratitude for the gift of having a physical body and moving from that space. Perceiving the frequency of existence. Moving from your centre. Tension in the mind reflecting tension in the body - "tension is just often a symptom of conflict between the body and the mind." Reaction vs response in life and in movement. Proficiency in practice. The quality of one dictates the quality of all; in movement and in breath. Strength and flexibility; are they the same thing? "strengthening the body is about moving the body under better control."   Who is Benny Fergusson?After living with chronic scoliosis & pain for years, and getting no lasting relief from mainstream fitness and therapies.. Benny embarked on a journey to heal his body and get to know himself better. Through years of research and the practice of movement & meditation arts, Benny found a way to restore his physical freedom, leading to profound personal growth. Benny now shares his findings with his students at MovementMonk.xyz.   Resources: The Movement Monk Website The Movement Monk YouTube The Movement Monk Facebook The Movement Monk Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason:   (00:00) All right. Hey, Benny, you've gone for... You've dropped-   Benny:   (00:04) I just jumped the gun, didn't I?   Mason:  (00:05) Yeah, you've jumped... No, that's good. You've dropped your hydrogen, your molecular hydrogen, into your water and that signifies we are officially on as our water gets effervescent with the reaction with our hydrogen with the water ready to be the ultimate antioxidant entering in through out, into the deep nuance of our cells and our brain. On top of, you're on the tonic herbs, people don't realise how much the antioxidant potency there. Also, through the movement that you've got taking stress off, tonic herbalism, training systems in order to take stress off and not create excessive inflammatory cytokines. And then, grounding, getting earthed and then hydrogen. A very good combination of not being overly oxidized, and that's an intense antioxidant right there, the molecular hydrogen we've just dropped in our water. Cheers.   Benny:  (00:55) Cheers.   Mason:  (00:56) Let's get that while it's really fresh.   Benny:  (00:58) It's like it's steaming.   Mason:  (01:02) Welcome, man.   Benny:  (01:04) Thanks for having us.   Mason:  (01:05) That's our first SuperFeast pod.   Benny:  (01:09) Yeah.   Mason:  (01:09) I think for those in the SuperFeast community, Benny is a really, really good friend of mine. My movement mentor and we've known each other... It must be seven or eight years now.   Benny:  (01:20) Yeah. I recon It's pushing eight. Yeah.   Mason:  (01:22) Yeah Pushing eight. And so we're going to be talking about, well let's dive into it cause I don't know really completely know where we're going to go today, but what's really...   Benny:  (01:32) Lots of topics we could cover.   Mason:  (01:33) Well what's tickling you at the moment in the, in maybe just if... Just share with people. Because when we talk about movement, are we talking about primal movement? Are we talking about ancestral movement? Are we talking about the fitness industry? Are we talking about lifting weights, CrossFit, Parkour are we in a functional movement? Is that what we're talking about here? Or as your brand name Movement Monk says, are we talking about like more Shaolin style movement, TaiChi, Qigong. There's so many things that there's so many like blanket statements, terms that we can use for movement. So maybe just give, we'll get some people some like bread and butter context of what you, what we mean by movement.   Benny:  (02:16) Yeah. Well our, first of all, I will say that we're talking about your movement. So...   Mason:  (02:22) you're talking about Mason's movement today.   Benny:  (02:24) Mason's movement. Whoever is listening, like your individual movement expression and all these systems are great as long as we bring yourself to it first and there's a, that takes you on a whole labyrinth that like I've done lots of functional fitness and I started a long time ago as a personal trainer and not making that any less than where I am. But like back in those days I was doing kettlebell lifting and I suppose functional type training, maybe CrossFit type training before CrossFit was even a thing. And that was my way of expressing my body. Definitely led me down a path of some deeper questions.   Mason:  (03:09) What was your Gym called in Melbourne again?   Benny:  (03:11) Cohesion.   Mason:  (03:12) Cohesion that's right. yeah, that was a pretty, that was a rad space.   Benny:  (03:15) It was a cool space.   Mason:  (03:16) In that and you had the big ass tires and the ropes sitting everywhere, people doing like handstands and monkeying about you walk in you go wow, yeah this is a place where functional movement in accordance with the way that the human body was designed to move like that this is a space where I can go and like segment my life and do that movement and therefore move properly and healthfully. Like why would you move away from that?   Benny:  (03:43) Yeah, that's a really good question. So the, I reached a point of somewhat of a conflict of what I perceived people needed and what they were asking for. And this was quite a challenge because at the end of the day, even though we did.. Pardon me, what I saw as an upgrade to the traditional gym setting of machines and treadmills and like I suppose the going in with your headphones on and not connecting with other people. And we created a place that was all about like movement and philosophy, kind of like the Greco Roman gymnasium. And so, but the challenges with that was the environment that it was in. We were still a gym. People would still come in and get their one hour, 30 minutes or 45 minute kind of workout and then they'd go out into their world. And what I noticed is that we're bringing in their habits, their stresses, their, like all of the things that were challenging them and then putting exercise on top of it.   Benny:  (04:47) So that was then like if you imagine that you've got something that's bound up and then you do something that is like muscular activity and causes contraction and all that sort of stuff. Intensity based. Everyone wanted an intense workout to get a sweat on to get those endorphins. But then you notice that things accumulate in the system. So this is when I started to ask deeper questions of, okay, I don't want to be part of accumulating stress in people that are already stressed. We need to start to be able to balance that equation. It's not to say we need to go the whole other way. But there needed to be education on the way that we relate with the activities that we're doing with the body. So it's not necessarily a change of do a different exercise style or this exercise style's bad or that exercise is superior to the other thing.   Benny:  (05:40) It's more so how do I relate with the thing. And I noticed there's a really, really interesting thing that comes up when just the relationship that we have with our body and then the way we apply it to, that the way we use it, particularly through physical exercise, structured physical practice. And this can come out in CrossFit, it can come out in yoga, it can come out in Qigong, it can come out in all sorts of different practices. Like the fundamental thing that I intend to connect people with is what's my unique way of expressing myself through that thing. So then the mind and the body can start to be in a more harmonious relationship.   Mason:  (06:19) Do you find it's a difficult, and I kind of, I don't know, I'm fishing cause I do find this, but if you go into say something like CrossFit, which we've had James Newberry on the, on the podcast is a great CrossFitter like I mean he's fifth strongest man in the world, and talks about like skeletal variation and things like that in his CrossFit gym and so things are like moving like that. However, like that's a fortunate gym to be walking into in the CrossFit world. But what I'm thinking, what you're talking about is like presenting yourself first, your own personalised, unique intention based. You can't help but go really cosmic with your own intention and who you are when you get into the essence of what we're talking about.   Mason:  (07:06) Very relevant, very relevant to your life and where more importantly you don't walk into a CrossFit class and all 30 people in there have the same personal physical expression goals for when they're 70 or 80 years old, therefore it's not personalized enough I'd say in my opinion a lot of the time. But going in first to like a judo dojo, Brazilian Jujitsu dojo, a CrossFit gym even a yoga class and trying to make hoping that that space gives you what you need in order to tune into what is personally required in your tailored approach and explanation of your own body. I find difficult, I find it's not many places that are going to completely offer that, like the amount of time and space because it is often just a half an hour, an hour and they want, you need to, you're given something to do during those times.   Mason:  (08:02) And I think this is what's tripped me up over the years and where it's just led me that constantly like just can't avoid for me personally that going into my own unique space. That is a personal practice exploration in place of exploration. So I can really get to know why do I want to be strong and what is strength and how does strength relate to flexibility and what is flexibility to me and start weeding out my own, I like superficial goals, but I like them when they're relevant to me. Now I don't like old ones and I especially don't want ones that I've adopted through the culture that I've, I live in.   Mason:  (08:39) So I think it's, what we're talking about is having a work of what I like. What you do is you allow for the creation of that sacred place where you get in touch with your own body, or practical place even if sacred isn't the word for you where you can get in touch with what's real and what's not real and what's relevant and and you can explore who am I in that in that space and then go on, apply that real knowing of who you are to the dojo, to the gym, to the yoga class.   Mason:  (09:11) Very, very key concept because I think I've found myself in this conversation quite often. I didn't make that a nuance and if I didn't have that progression. And I found myself getting a little bit like scoffy towards the, what the dojo is we're offing and what the gyms were offering. When it's not, that's not the problem. you have a personal responsibility when you step into some crazy fucking asana practice to be able to navigate your body through it so you don't like jam up your shoulders going through your going through your sun's and whatever, whatever it is. So this is what we're talking about in this in this instance on a very practical level, which is what I like and I really want to hit it for everyone because it seems like, yeah, I do that in my gym. I do that in my yoga class, but it's like I'm just like, I guess suggestion that there is, there is another place that you can personally explore and procure and it exists even when the gyms and the dojos and the yoga teacher goes away.   Benny:  (10:17) Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And a question like, because it's... The thing with, because effectively what we're talking about here is perception. My perception of my relationship to physical exercise, physical activity to my body and all this sort of thing. And the thing with the perception is that you go into these different communities and we'll all kind of, this is not about right or wrong, but we'll often go what I'm doing is, is good for me.   Mason:  (10:48) So this perception kind of like in there, you can kind of look at it from another angle in terms of your perception of it. Therefore what's motivating you to go and do these things in the first place?   Benny:  (10:57) Yeah, totally. Totally. And I would then question the difference between motive. Like motivation and inspiration. So like if these things, these cultures that we exist in therefore got their own motives, then it's clearly externally visible. So if you go into it and you try to take that into your body it's like trying to kind of force something in like a, what's the term, like a round peg in a square hole and that sort of thing. But if you develop the inspiration inside, this is my intent toward this thing, then there's an opening, there's an allowance for you to use that as a tool rather than a tool using you.   Mason:  (11:39) I mean, and having I think in that instance we were, we were talking with Jenny a little bit about it. whether you're looking at a system that's rather new and maybe not so complete like CrossFit and complete in my instance compared to something a very traditional Taoist or yogic system that has many, many nuances and layers and thousands of years of like making it kind of complete.   Benny:  (12:09) Yes.   Mason:  (12:09) No matter what you need to have respect for any world or system or technique you go into, whether it's CrossFit, whether it's Taoism, there's, you've got to have a respect for the knowledge and expertise within it. But as you were saying then where, what's the, what's the key like when do you become susceptible to the identity? it's like the real, and it's pervasive and it's, and to an extent it's really nice to identify in the beginning with like I'm exploring whatever CrossFit or Jiujitsu, I'm exploring Taoism.   Mason:  (12:45) At what point does it become enough and this, because whether it's a skill or whether it's because you have that connection to your own inner like intent, you can actually go in and navigate that system and then emerge from that system without having the tattoo across your forehead of like, I'm a Yogi and I go, I'm this or that. Not that I don't find it's bad to use these terms. I talk about Taoist tonic herbs and my systems, but more and more it's that slipperiness of knowing that I don't identify that word can completely go away. And I think the people who were the original Taoists and yogis, the reason they were, people needed some way to like encapsulate them and label them. Wow.   Mason:  (13:25) These people let their following the way of like this, okay the Tao, the Taoists these people are yogis. And I think that's what then paves the way for the students of the future to get lost and not achieve what the original masters were able to achieve because they identify with a system or a label or a thing which makes you, it makes you rigid and therefore rigidity is going to like, yeah, it's going to inhibit your way forward. Right?   Benny:  (13:53) Yeah. Well one thing to consider is like the rigidity is all a reflection of consciousness, is all a reflection of our relationship to the things. If you look at any system, like whether it's CrossFit, whether it's Taoism or some kind of ancient mystical form of some sort of energetic practice or whatever it is.   Mason:  (14:14) TaiChi falls into that.   Benny:  (14:16) Totally like we're in this age of where information is abundant, it's addictive, it's everywhere. Like, and we can start to at least think that we know what things mean. Like we look at CrossFit seeing 10,000 examples through social media and the internet and all of that sort of thing of what CrossFit is. So then you get this person and then they go, "oh yes, I resonate with that". But then they're only seeing what they want to see. when, if we were to look at how CrossFit emerged, it was sort of from, at least my understanding, it just happened, it was a system that they were using that they've found was working and then it caught on. Other people got more and more into it and it got more and more popular. And then they picked up some athletes and special forces people and all that sort of thing. And then they're like, yeah, I do this and I do that and then we get all these people. Then that aspire to be that image but if you could just look at it like really it was like this essence of people wanting to get the most out of their fitness. Like how to kind of make fitness more measurable, more challenging, more quantifiable because we came from this era of like bodybuilding and aerobics and all this sort of stuff. So when CrossFit came in as an idea, it was a revolutionary concept to go from like a long steady set cardio or like heavy weight training to bring it all into one thing.   Benny:  (15:46) So like at one level it's a wonderful thing if we know how to use the dosage of these things. And so like what I would say is for someone to go into any of these systems, you need to go with all eyes and ears open and listen to how that's not just relating with your interpretation, like your perception of the thing, your relationship. And I like how you identify with it but, what's your body saying as a result, not just from workout to workout or practice to practice, but in a macro perspective over the course of a month. Listen, "what are you feeling body? "Over the course of if you do something for a year, over the course of a year.   Mason:  (16:28) That's kind of what I'm talking about in the catch up in the place that I'm working on, my body is the place where I go and do these things. Too many people are absolutely annihilating their body in yoga practice because particularly yoga sequences are often designed for people with particular skeletal structures. And so people go to the yoga in order to feel their body and do to an extent because they're actually in their breath and feeling their body and activating the body. So this then noticing and moving primary Qi. However you're talking about after the practice or in and around a month of that practice, going and feeling how your body is relating to the way that it's moving in that dedicated time, which is people like, well, no, I don't need to do that because I go and do that at CrossFit or at yoga.   Benny:  (17:14) That's why I do it.   Mason:  (17:15) That's why I do it. It's like, yeah, but you're outsourcing, you're outsourcing the time, which I agree with. When you're a busy mum or dad and you've got kids and a job and you need to be able to go...   Benny:  (17:28) You don't want to think about it.   Mason:  (17:29) And you want to go and segment, and I'm like going, I'm like throwing stones. What it says like he who judges say well, whatever, whatever it is.   Benny:  (17:35) Will throw stones.   Mason:  (17:37) Yeah, exactly. I'm like, so I definitely haven't mastered this by an extent, but it's cause it was why I can talk to it with, with such passion. But sometimes it's like, oh gosh, I've got enough going on. I can't think about that. I want to be, I want to run through like a martial arts system that's going to help lead me to a little bit of like Nirvana in my daily life.   Mason:  (17:56) Whereas I know enough times that it doesn't work like that. If the goals are super superficial in terms of just getting shredded, maybe you're going to be able to get so far. But if you start actually growing a little bit beyond that superficial, and that just might be because you are aware of your muscles at one time and then when you start getting aware of sinew and emotions relating to your physicality and then you also start getting aware of tension, you're going to want to go deeper. And at that point you realise, shit, I can't outsource that time. I really can't. It can be somewhat facilitated, but you need to, that needs to be facilitated by someone who has a lot of patience and knows to really let you go and do that on your own accord. Maybe just suggesting tools.   Mason:  (18:40) Right? for you to go and do that you and you need to feel how you actually feel. That's really difficult to do because how it's... Then how do you interpret it? It's like, well sorry, develop your own system at this time of interpretation. Take things from yoga and Taoism and your fitness instructor, whatever it is, as insights but they're really, they are here. I mean their level of like, they, how they are human and how there's no possible way they could get an insight as to what's really going on within your human body. You need to develop the non-English based perceptive system of yourself and knowing how you feel, how you react to particular situations and what you need or to what, what do you need? Why do you need to be optimal?   Benny:  (19:32) Yes.   Mason:  (19:33) Why do you need to be strong? What the fuck does that mean? Total human optimisation is like a weird statement.   Benny:  (19:40) Body hacking.   Mason:  (19:41) because if your optimal, shouldn't I as a human, if I look at people who are, if I look at like not that I don't love like the optimisation culture and biohacking to an extent, it's really fun. But I technically, if I look at the like super optimised crowd, pew, pew, pew, ultimate biohacker, ultimately like I should, if they're optimised as a human, shouldn't I genetically look at those people and get this urging and yearning to be just like that person because they're optimised and I'm not like, it just doesn't work like that. I just they're exploring some stuff and using very shiny language.   Mason:  (20:21) There's, I feel like we all, we all do, but why, what do you, what do we actually exploring here? Why do you want to live to 150? Why do you want to live to 200? These questions are very real. And I think what we're getting to as well as they're, they're going to emerge, say more so than be extracted these answers and they're going to emerge in, are they going to in real like a flurry of movement, sometimes, but they're also going to like emerge when the Lake is still. Yes. Right. And so that's like, I guess to an extent make it really simple. We're talking about stillness practice in personally designed by you. For you.   Benny:  (21:06) Yes.   Mason:  (21:06) Right?   Benny:  (21:07) Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like, and you've touched on so many facets and maybe I'll pull some threads out.   Mason:  (21:12) Yeah. Well, I'm going to just chill out for a minute.   Benny:  (21:15) First of all, if we look at how do we utilise this wonderful vessel, because the body is a serious piece of tech, that most people don't have the user manual to even interpret, yet it's giving us signals all the time. And so like one thing when I first started working with people is we, we don't do a lot of movement. like we just, we observe the body just being able to look at the body and, and just listen, to not try. And I think with the thing with, if you go into any system, the system, it'll give you what you asked for.   Mason:  (21:57) and I should probably talk about you, the people you work with I think are a combination of maybe people like maybe, I don't know if I was in this position, but people who have a hangover from being extensively in the fitness industry. I think that's a core...   Benny:  (22:14) People who have done this, done that, done the other thing.   Mason:  (22:16) interesting thing I was looking like, just like recapping in like, where my inspiration around tonic herbalism came from and a lot of it was from Ron Teeguarden and his teacher Master Park. And when you look at Master Park's story, he was a Korean who was just this hectic martial artist, it's like four black belts at like these actual serious Doritos, but hit this glass ceiling of like I'm not actually developing as a human. So he went into the mountains to find a hermit and eventually learned the way, how to unify with Yin Yang and learned Tonic Herbalism in order to procure his own dislike.   Mason:  (22:54) I feel I know myself a little bit more now and I feel like it's that kind of I wouldn't like put you into like it, I'm not trying to say you're a Taoist hermit living in the mountains of Korea, but maybe to, to an extent we're all trying to find our similar way, in finding our solitude so we can explore but. There's that vibe there where you find people going, Oh gosh, I've gone like, I'm like this hectic, like muscle up one arm pull up, kind of like.   Benny:  (23:24) I was totally that guy.   Mason:  (23:25) Yeah you were. And like I can, I can do crazy lizarding along the ground and I can squat for this amount of time and I squat through this much every day.   Mason:  (23:36) and then it's just like, now what? Not that it's bad. It's a progression. I think that was that, that was kind of like, I was kind of a little exasperated by the world, but then it took me a while to still bridge and I'm still a bit of a ratbag in terms of, I'm trying to like, like how do I still not look outside first for something that's going to motivate me to get in and explore my body. But I'm working in that working on that with you as you know. But then there's the people who are just in chronic pain, which is really, I mean that's your last program, right? And you haven't really, Oh, maybe it will be released now I can go for...   Benny:  (24:12) Break Through Your Pain.   Mason:  (24:12) Breakthrough your pain. We'll put that in the show notes because it just talking to you about that.   Mason:  (24:16) That's, I mean I think that's interesting because when I met you, you were about to put out a handstand course and.   Benny:  (24:25) Which I developed.   Mason:  (24:26) Which you developed and then didn't release it. And then you've ended up working with people who aren't in the movement scene they're probably, maybe they've got a few specialists who are helping them out on their in their specialties. So then people who are living long term with chronic, pain you've had your crazy scoliosis, that you've worked through and without it being like just use this particular system. It's just five minutes of this a day, it's five minutes of that a day. And you can work through your pain. But actually teaching principles that will impart sovereignty for that person to then go and practically work through, feel what's going on in their body and over time overcome that pain. They're the kinds of people that you're working with and the people who are still into like hectically optimizing their movement and exploring it. Just creating that kind of, that center. I just wanted to bring that context before you go on.   Benny:  (25:18) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a really useful context cause I've been in both sides of the coin. I've been in a high performance sporting, strength training or like strongman type kind of...   Mason:  (25:33) And table tennis.   Benny:  (25:34) I love table tennis. I still do actually.   Mason:  (25:37) Didn't you Go into the states or something, the state final. Like who is that?   Benny:  (25:40) Yeah, I was playing at a state level. For a time as a kid, that works against me cause none of my friends will play me.   Mason:  (25:48) Oh, let's go play downstairs after this.   Benny:  (25:49) That's sweet.   Mason:  (25:50) Yeah, be gentle on me.   Benny:  (25:53) I'm a bit rusty. So yeah, it's all like very finite timing and rhythm with that..   Benny:  (25:58) But um... So you're going to like, I love all that. I love that raw physicality and then I couldn't do it. So I had to look at a totally different way of relating to the body.   Mason:  (26:09) Is this when you injured yourself.   Benny:  (26:10) Yeah, yeah. Like that's when, and that was, it was an acumen... I hadn't noticed the whispers of my body so until I wasn't able to listen or maybe I was, but I wasn't choosing to and then it just turned into an all out scream. I'm just like, no fucking hell you can't do that.   Mason:  (26:29) Is this the scoliosis?   Benny:  (26:30) Yeah, totally. Like that was a manifestation of the pain and that sort of thing because I couldn't sit up straight, couldn't stand up straight, I couldn't breathe deeply.   Mason:  (26:40) And this was, even though you were like climbing ropes like really quick and you were doing muscle ups and so you were seemingly ideal, you would have been able to like get like 100,000 on Instagram, like bang.   Benny:  (26:53) Maybe.   Mason:  (26:53) We've talked about this. You don't have the Instagram skills.   Benny:  (26:57) That's true. That's true.   Mason:  (26:58) Anyway. But yeah, I like that. That's the realm of it because that's one thing I've kind of, because I have, sometimes a bit of a no, maybe not these days, but for like two years up til two years ago, like a wandering eye when my watch someone like he knows anything. Rock climbing, ocean swimming, dislike, Parkour just been like far out, like I feel like I compare, I got, I've really, that's the level, that's what I've got to get back to.   Mason:  (27:23) Like I can't just go and like, with my body surfing, I'm an avid of body surfer and my whole thing is.   Benny:  (27:29) You're like a dolphin in the water.   Mason:  (27:30) Thank you. And I like look, sometimes I look at like the, I'm literally looking at like the top 10 body surfers in the world. And I'm like, right, that's the level I've gotta, I've gotta get to. And so it's like, I've got this, it's about me and the pressure I put on myself and give an inch, take a mile. In terms of my what I, what I have to do, but it's also a bit of the projection for optimal health in the realm of physicality and just from, do not ever get jealous ever. You do not know what that ripped guy is dealing with in terms of tension, in terms of whether he can really lift his arms up and hold something above his head.   Mason:  (28:11) Like there's like even the CrossFit kind of like arena, even in that like in the primal arena, I'm, you just claim little bits because like as you were saying, you had your scoliosis going on yet I'm sure people would come into the gym and be like, yeah, I really want to be like Benny. Benny's hectic in the gym. Look at the way he cartwheels and everything like that. Yeah. There's this silent scream underneath it and quite often it's an emotional silent scream. So I was like, don't project too much onto these like people that you see, like especially yogic ones that you see on Instagram.   Benny:  (28:44) Totally. Yeah. Like I the thing that we're bringing out is that if you look at this concept of like be, do, have and like I just, I observed that, we're human first before we do anything, like we've got to look at ourselves at our level of being like, who am I being right now in this thing? And if I want to be someone else and that's my motive to do it, well then that's, you never know what it's like to live in someone's skin. And if you're so focused on what someone else has achieved, you neglect the purpose of even existing because you're not aware of your own inner inspiration for why you do things.   Benny:  (29:27) And for a long time I wasn't, like I was doing physical practice because I was afraid of being judged of being like this young kid when I, it's like quite small and perceived to be weak and like I'm a sensitive guy, that's my nature. But I covered it up with muscle for a long time. So a lot of my journeys are being about reconnecting back with that. And now seeing that, well muscle for me that's moving house, that's picking up kids, that's like playing around, that's not getting injured or being more resilient to injury.   Mason:  (30:05) That's other people's kids ladies, don't worry he's not taken.   Benny:  (30:08) Yeah. So it's a fundamental difference so now the love that I have just for using my body is there, I just, if I'm crawling on the ground, if I'm standing, if I'm walking, if I'm breathing, like there's a love there that I experienced that's unquantifiable that I bring to whatever I'm doing. So it might look like, and I do a lot of physical practice, but for some people it might look like, Oh, he's training for all these hours a day. And he, this kind of, there's a discipline and an intensity and all that. I've got to do that to be that, but for me it comes from a totally different place. And it's something that I've noticed with, with all people who really thrive.Like you were saying like the higher level parkour people or body surfers or musicians or business people or anything like that.   Benny:  (31:01) They've discovered their own way to it and like my thing is I've just realised that we've all got something in common. We've all got a body, and even if you are the top body surfer in the world, the top business person in the world, the top whatever in the world, we've gotta remember the basic nature of this body. Like we've got to have freedom of breath. We've got to be able to like relax our body at deep levels, while we're doing stuff not just on the couch?   Mason:  (31:29) Well its something very interesting there. You said about like that inherent love of moving your body because that was important for me to remember to not just Poopoo what I was doing with my exploration of pure physicality because I was getting off my ass and moving and exercising and these are amazing things because I had momentum and there were obviously shreds of just pure spontaneous joy that I had because I was just, oh my gosh, I'm alive and I'm exploring and that and that's amazing. And like remembering that that's like, that's the inlet, that's the way the water goes. The path of least resistance for me to continue to cultivate and procure like my own practice because an inherent love, that's something I sometimes, especially when I'm busy, I really, it's the first thing to go and I fall into that.   Mason:  (32:13) Like the movement is thing at a thing on the checklist. And so I either will become just like apathetic towards my practice or I'll just become complacent completely towards it or charge on and do it because it's on my list. And I've kind of like internally agreed that I'd do it. That's what's right. Rather than the practice Then just being to stop and pause and find that inlet. And why was like, it was a beautiful... a Joy to be in my body in the first place and a joy to move. And it's just almost too simple. And sometimes I feel like, oh gosh, that's feels like such a wonky way to fucking spend my morning. And I, that's like what's what comes out and it's, and I honestly have to just like, just hold on a little bit longer with my intent.   Mason:  (33:00) Just hold on a little bit longer and find some spark like what where is that like that loving nature for myself. I mean, it's just works in the same, in every single way. Don't take mushrooms because they're going to give you immunity completely. That doesn't last for 30 years as an intention. It's because I love myself and you'd love the the herb and you'd love it. You love your expression of health and rah rah. I don't know whatever, like anything. Don't stay in that relationship because you got married and you, and you should, like, you find that love for yourself and that love for why it's beautiful to be in a relationship with the first place.   Mason:  (33:42) And then if it works out then that pause over for the other person. So that's, I mean this is what we're talking about. And often that these are all really nice concepts. But then how do you actually cultivate that? We've done I've worked on a few of your camps and immersions and we've done like lots of handstands and we've done bits of like lizarding around. So I know my body is capable of like some things and my body's capable of like some pretty extensive standing meditations and all these things which are like, Ooh, awesome Taoist.   Mason:  (34:17) Kind of like standing meditations and I like doing that because it's our last three month block that we did. It was like for the first month, this is where just going and getting it in a yoga class as a download here and there, it's great, but there's a dedicated practice or like almost daily for that first month it was, what is it for you to approach life from a place of a parasympathetic state and then explore that state...   Benny:  (34:48) Yes.   Mason:  (34:48) and allow the color of your approach and your extreme physical practice, your day at your work, being with Aiya, whatever it was in a state of being parasympathetic.   Benny:  (34:59) Yes. That was, I... And this is what it takes. And then...   Mason:  (35:03) That was like, and this is what it takes in order to like procure and cultivate. What's going to cultivate something? Consistency and practice.   Benny:  (35:11) Yes, yes.   Mason:  (35:11) So just again, you started going into like, "Where do we start?"   Benny:  (35:16) Yeah.   Mason:  (35:16) Can you start talking about in where we start, why you don't give things and practices, but rather you like to teach principles and then layer on practices to those principles?   Benny:  (35:28) Yes, yeah. Yeah. So, what I have noticed the power of first, just touch on as we were talking about simplicity, and often it's discounted as "Oh that's too easy" or whatever. But if we really look into simple things, we start to discover that there's ultimate complexity. It's like if you take anything in nature and you put it under a microscope, you're just dumbfounded with how freaking amazing a leaf is. A particle of air, the structure of water. It's the same within all of us. So, if we start off when we have too many things to focus on, well then we get distracted from our essential nature, you know? So, just to link with also what we're talking about with like, to experience a greater sense of love for who we are, for what we're doing, for our bodies, for life.   Mason:  (36:29) If what we're able to do with others, I know that's something we taught. It's like the ultimate cliche but you know, you've said it recently and I was just like, "Oh, like Benny's just owning that." You're like, "I just love being of service."   Benny:  (36:40) Yeah, yeah.   Mason:  (36:40) When you said that, I was like oh, fucking, that's really nice, Benny.   Benny:  (36:42) Yeah.   Mason:  (36:43) I really liked it.   Benny:  (36:45) And that has happened because I've continued to discover ways of filling myself up, for discovering who am I? What do I like? And also holding that lightly of going, I can also grow to like this thing that I don't like, and why don't I like that thing? And like throughout this, what I've noticed is like love is not a word. You know, like we can, it is this era of you've got to be loving to yourself. And that becomes an identity in and of itself as well. But love is a vibe. It's a frequency. You know? And I know that that's a really cliche thing because people identified around that in the new age spiritual world as well.   Mason:  (37:27) Yeah. I mean, I think even just the fact when you look at, we've got one word for it in English, there's four ways of saying it in Spanish, like 64 in sanskrit, you know, like there's like obviously we're talking about a frequency or something which has got nuance and you know, of course, different sides and shapes.   Benny:  (37:45) Yeah, so the question then comes up, you know, when I look at it, and this is the same as when I work with people, is how do we tap into and actually perceive that frequency of existence? How do we perceive these fine things that make us who we are, that are not our language? How do we perceive this highly intricate, complex but very simple language of our bodies. And once we do, like we see, if you look at like, there's such examples that I think we can all relate to with unconditional love, like a dog, you know, like just dogs just, they just give love, you know? And yes, they're different organisms and maybe they have a different consciousness and all of that sort of thing. I don't know what it's like. But you know, the experience of love when that dog that's full of love, like you know, a dog that I grew up with in a relationship for some time, she would just come up and reach up and heart to heart, where you have this moment of connection and it's as my perception of my body's grown, I've started to experience the energetic transference between me and that living organism, you know? And I've realised that there is, we were just a complete vessel of energy and that's moving around us. It's moving through us all of the time.   Benny:  (39:14) So if we start off and we try and do exercises just to fix this injury or do that thing and-   Mason:  (39:23) Get stronger, get more flexible.   Benny:  (39:24) Yeah, whatever it is, whatever the goal is. Not that it's bad because I love, I love physical exercise, you know, don't get me wrong, but I find it's really useful to start to just be simple and just see what's there. You know, like we would, let's say as an example of a practice we might lay on the ground, we might observe our breathing and just observe what comes up for us. So for someone, they might notice I've got certain physical restrictions like muscular aches and pains or I've got, and there's like a stuck-ness as I breathe, or when I come up, when I breathe, I get really, there's emotions that come up at surface. This came to me after I started Qigong practice, different Shaolin forms of Qigong a long time ago, and I noticed I got really angry while I was doing it and I was perplexed by this. I was like, why am I getting angry at this thing that's supposed to make me really relaxed and peaceful and cultivate Qi and all these sorts of things. I have these intellectual ideas of it, but I had no idea of what that actually meant.   Mason:  (40:37) That's interesting. I mean that's the same as sometimes when people take Qi tonic, like Astragalus or even its more extreme like Ginseng and they're like, right, this is going to give me energy and they get tired. It's like yeah, you're actually starting to tap into something which won't, you know it's got its patterns but it's going to, your body is going to do what your body needs and you right now you need to be down-regulated for example, or right now, because that's an interesting thing with the Qigong. I don't know where you're going with it, but it's like, rather than go, oh, there's something wrong, it's going, that's interesting. Now, what's next? If I'm not going to be handed these results on a platter, I'm given, oh now there's something else to explore. Now there's another opportunity. It might be the 5% of the time where it's like that practice or herb is just not for you, but that's very rare. Quite often it's like, here's some material to work with. Now where do you need to go?   Benny:  (41:44) Exactly. Exactly. So the thing if I link back to the Qigong thing is I might've thought that this is not for me.   Mason:  (41:52) Yes.   Benny:  (41:52) You know, and until I started to open my mind and I dropped a lot of the rigidity around, you know, this is the way to prove. This is the way to position my body. I just started to do what I could do. There was a real humbling in that. I banged my head up against the wall of trying to be something else for long enough until I realised that that just goes to more of that. And then I start to look at this art and go, hmmm.. There are fundamental ways of relating with this thing. There are principles underneath that I wasn't noticing.   Benny:  (42:28) Just like the principle of moving from your center, as a simple example of instead of me trying to put more of my limbs in different places and try and force them to be there and be there and all that sort of thing, I just started to focus for a while on moving the center point of my body so we could say the hips or we could say like around kind of the lower abdomen area, you know, just to make it simple. And then I just watched how the rest of the body started to respond as I moved my center. And naturally I noticed that, oh, okay, everything's starting to move more together. So then there's less effort as I'm doing this thing. And then I noticed that, oh, when there's less effort, I'm noticing that there's more energy flowing. I'm at least perceiving these things. So, that's an example of a principle.   Benny:  (43:19) So basically what I initially get people to do is simple things with their body and to notice how they respond or react to those things. So then we can gather more information because if anyone says to you listening, or anyone that I know what you need to fix you, call bullshit. You know, because they don't, no one knows what it's like to live in anyone's skin. And that's one of the challenges, is we're all, not all, but there are a lot of people, and this is what I experience when people come to see me, is they've experienced the result of delegation of their own self care for a long time. You know, they've delegated it to the chiropractor, they've delegated it to the doctor, they've delegated to the osteo, to the physio, to the CrossFit trainer-   Mason:  (44:12) To the yoga studio-   Benny:  (44:13) To the yoga studio and the instructor at the yoga studio, to all of these things, and none of it's wrong.   Mason:  (44:18) No.   Benny:  (44:18) But-   Mason:  (44:21) It's like the best time to be exploring your health right now.   Benny:  (44:24) Oh my God. Like it's just-   Mason:  (44:25) Far out.   Benny:  (44:25) It's just weird. It have such opportunity. And also there's a slippery slope on both sides of that thing.   Mason:  (44:31) Of course, yeah.   Benny:  (44:32) And so, here you've got all this wonderful information, these ancient teachings that are coming out and there's some people who are really genuine in the way they present it. But then here it is, is the average person has been highly hypnotised. We live in a hypnotised reality. You look at even like a traffic light, you know, like all that it takes to induce hypnosis is eye fixation and muscle relaxation and you can induce a hypnotic state. There's a principle by the way. So, if you look at that, the traffic light goes green. I look at the traffic light and kind of in my own little world and then all of a sudden I'm at my destination. How did I even get there? You don't remember because you were just in another world, you were in a hypnotic state.   Benny:  (45:15) So on and on we can go through life, alarm goes off, get up, brush your teeth, do something with your kids or your family or whatever it is. Or if you don't have a family, you get up and you go to work or do that thing that you do. And then on repeat, we're kind of this in this pattern. And so even, you know, I've been self employed for most of my adult life, but still I noticed there's parts of me like get up, do you work, do your thing. I have to continue to check in and go, okay, what do I need today? And often we don't ask that. So what I look to do when people are getting started is to take them to a place where they can reconnect with what is happening in the present moment and get better and better at that. So then we can apply that.   Benny:  (46:02) It's a reverse to a lot of the fitness and health culture of, here go do this class and get this thing and then your life gets better. But what I like to focus on is build a bridge from within your practice, but then apply it in your life and then it's a circular nature of like, life informs me. I come back into my practice, my awareness goes naturally higher when I'm just focusing on that thing. And then I apply it to this more complex situation. So in this example, when we did this work, when you were talking about that month of just focusing on your breathing and just focusing on increasing your perception of what it is to be in a parasympathetic or rest and digest state. Because a lot of the time people don't know that, you know, I didn't know that. I was in fight or flight all the time and that's why my body wasn't healing. And that's why tension was building up because my mind was like running hot, you know? And so when I went to do that Qigong, I experienced all that heat. It all started to come out because I started to, my intention was to relax and all that sort of thing. So it started to happen, but it's not always an easy process.   Benny:  (47:22) You know, when the body starts to, like in this classic examples of this in say like Chinese Medicine, you get like cupping, you know, you're going, I've got this stuff going on. Maybe it's localised with your back or maybe it's with some of the organs or something. And you, the way cupping works or just an example of it, is you get a cup, it's a glass cup and they put it on the skin and then they heat the cup up and that cup causes like a vacuum and it draws up all like stagnant blood and energy and all sorts of different things out of the skin. So then at the end of it, it looks like you've had this epic battle with this giant squid. The cup marks are on your back and all that sort of thing. So-   Mason:  (48:03) You see them more and more these days and lots of people are cupping and I think it's after Michael Phelps did it.   Benny:  (48:09) Totally, like all these things become popular. So then, you look at it and if the untrained eye was to look at this, and the thing is, we're training our perception to be able to see things no longer as good or bad. So then we can naturally allow the body to be, to heal, to do what it needs to do to thrive. That's its basic nature, I noticed. We only impose the things upon the body. It doesn't do it to us. The body is so innocent. It's like a little child. Like if the child, if it spills milk or whatever, you know, it doesn't know that's a good or a bad thing. Only the adult comes in and their reaction teaches the child and then that embeds in the physical body and so we go through our lives and we accumulate these things.   Benny:  (49:00) All these congestions, all these past experiences, physical in like not just imbalances but habits and emotional habits and thought habits.   Mason:  (49:09) Tension.   Benny:  (49:10) Tension habits-   Mason:  (49:11) Tension patterns-   Benny:  (49:12) All these things, like tension is just often a symptom of conflict between the body and the mind.   Mason:  (49:16) And again, just consistency, right? It can be just so simple, but a little bit of muscular tension that correlates to a particular emotion that happens four times a day. It happens around a particular organ. Of course that's going to create a blockage of Qi and then a blockage of Fluids and a blockage of Blood. And of course that's going to be a little bit uncomfortable and give rise to further emotion and then all it would have taken is a little bit of more, you know, very simplistic conversation. But in theory the idea is, if we were just slowing slowing down on a regular, you know, two or three times, four times, five times, you know, six times a week just stopping, slowly feeling, you know, work. I can't really feel in that place. What is that emotion to keep, I'm going to get a sense of it, explore it.   Mason:  (50:01) It's a very simple shit. It's very, I don't say like, you know, I know it's simple, of course, you know, it's like pulling teeth with myself sometimes. But nonetheless, I do what I can so that they don't continue to end up like a grouchy asshole of a 60 year old. I might still have my little angry outbursts, but I ensure that I know the pattern of tension where that's going. And I can, you know, you slowly but surely you start to be able to kind of, you know, doesn't at least not accumulate it, so you don't, so it doesn't, it doesn't explode especially on to other people or anything like that. That's just very simple. It's what the practice is about. And I like it because the way you approach it, I like, especially because I'm not practicing Qigong, not practicing a yogic technique. We can talk about the inspiration, where the inspiration that these things come from, but we don't need to be practicing Tai Chi. I don't need to be practicing Taoist Standing sequences. I don't need to be practicing Kung Fu forms.   Mason:  (51:06) Although those things might occur and although there is respect from where inspiration came from. We talk about that a lot.   Benny:  (51:13) Absolutely.   Mason:  (51:13) You talk about where you fucking studied and of course, but what we're gleaming is, is the principles that are ensconced within those systems. Because quite often people think like, no, no, no, no. If you, if you're practicing Taoism, you need to do Qigong in this way and you need to take these herbs and then you need to do these kinds of dark retreats. And that's the system. Don't go outside the system. And to an extent that's true, especially when you're in practitioner clinical healing spaces. It's sometimes dangerous to go outside of the system.   Mason:  (51:52) But when we're talking about procuring our own life and exploring ourselves, I feel like it gets detrimental very quickly when you can't go beyond the label and old system. Whereas at the same time, where's the respect for them? The respect is understanding the principles of what was being handed over by those systems and then staying dedicated to your own.... Cultivation of those principles being present in your own life, where relevant. I feel like that's very, I've been meditating on this for many years. I'm someone that gets very attracted, like a moth to the flame. I can get attracted to the shiny things and then get very dejected when I can't achieve them. But I sabotage myself from achieving them beforehand because I know that I knock. I know myself, I know that I'm not going to be happy at the end of that road. I know when I finally hold it, I'm not that happy. I'm not that happy with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.   Mason:  (52:54) I know that, like extensively, and so then balancing out, although I like a little bit of it though, you know, balancing that out with this exploring the principality of you know, of movement and the way you know, the way tension works in the body and the way physical expression works and you know, that's what I feel is different here just in case people are like, what are you guys banging on about? Why do you care if I do very specific Qigong and I'm like well, I don't really care. But you know, I love practicing like Yin Yoga or a particular Yin Yoga sequences. But I mean you can take that practice away and that name away any day of the week and that's not going to touch me. I think that's like, in and around that, you know, can we start exploring what seeds, you know, are you exploring, especially with the chronic pain, you know, what principles are you exploring within the physical practice, you know, and stillness practice, aspect of that.   Benny:  (53:53) Yes. So with chronic pain, you know, and this is a reflection of my own journey and then as I made my way out of this chronic situation, you know, and for those who don't even know what chronic means, it's something that hangs around for really generally a period of like three months or more.   Mason:  (54:11) Hmm. Yeah. You were hurting.   Benny:  (54:13) For a long time. We're talking years, you know, where waking up in the morning was not a pleasant experience.   Mason:  (54:21) What about psychologically being a movement person?   Benny:  (54:24) Yeah, the interesting thing that I noticed was, I was very good at suppressing my feelings. So this is the paradoxical nature of things is sometimes the mind just like, get on with it. This is where I didn't notice all the whispers. I didn't notice all of the emotions where I felt I needed to say something. But then I didn't want to be judged. So then I just put it down, I squashed it into some dark cavern in my body, which was really like around my hips. So all of these things, these chronic things that are happening, they tend to be a result of something that's happening in the mind.   Benny:  (55:09) So if this is where a lot of modalities that don't address that fall short, and none of them, once again I'm putting down, but like if you look at say, I've got a tight muscle. So logic would say, and a common approach would say, well I've got to stretch that muscle or I've got pain in a certain area so I've got to stretch out in other areas, so then I don't get the pain.   Mason:  (55:36) I mean it's still like, even you, you're the most, and you've been doing this for a long time, you're really advanced, you get a tight neck, you're like oh stretch out there and it might be relevant for like, you know, the 20% kind of...   Benny:  (55:47) Exactly. Stretching is not the problem. But then within stretching, so like if we look at like within a movement, you know, and not just stretching, but then there's the way the human is being as they're doing the thing. And that will determine the outcome of the thing. You know? So for me, growing up I wasn't, I suppose the most flexible kid, but that was reflective of my inner essence. I can be really stubborn, but also that's a real strength, I can be tenacious as well. I needed to learn how to get to know that, you know, actually through my body taught me because it showed me when I was stubborn, because I would get tense, I would get pain, I would get all of these things. So then through my physical practice I started to look at, okay, how can I work with this essence of who I am and then allow that to start to move out more, I suppose expressively, creatively, adaptively through my body rather than this rigid manifestation of a habit.   Benny:  (56:51) So like when I work with people with chronic pain or any, actually any stuck-ness, it doesn't have to be pain because like 9 out of 10 people that I've ever spoken to, something's stuck. Something's stuck within their own mind or their body and I like to see the two as the same thing. So I realised that we can't go into trying to address these things. These stuck things by trying to answer things that we do not yet understand. So yeah, we're often going into it. It's like, how do I fix this? How do I release my tight hip flexors?   Mason:  (57:29) I was just going to say, we got that question to answer later on Instagram and it's almost like, I can refer you to this conversation.   Benny:  (57:35) Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, how do I do all these things? Well, first you've got to know why the hell it's happening in the first place. You know?   Mason:  (57:44) Well yeah, let's talk about that. Why, why?   Benny:  (57:47) Yeah, why?   Mason:  (57:48) How do you explore that?   Benny:  (57:48) Yeah, and that is the question. So, like if we look at it, you could, you know, and I went down the path of I was diagnosed. Why did I have back pain? Well, because I had scoliosis.   Mason:  (58:03) Ah, problem solved.   Benny:  (58:04) Yeah. Sweet. There's like-   Mason:  (58:04) Go see your osteo-   Benny:  (58:06) Yeah, there's a real sense of security in that diagnosis. And that's often what I notice that people, and I don't like peopling people but it's a common thing that happens when people come and see me, is they, they're really clever. They're like, oh, I've got this, I've got chronic fatigue.   Mason:  (58:30) Well, how about like, I've got tight hips.   Benny:  (58:31) Yeah.   Mason:  (58:32) There's a story. I've got tight hammies and tight hips. So I'm confident in that.   Benny:  (58:36) Yeah, totally. Right? So like, why do I have that? You know, why do I have tight hips? Why do I have this scoliosis? Why do I have all these things?   Mason:  (58:48) Chronic fatigue.   Benny:  (58:49) Chronic fatigue. Any one, like anything that's chronic, yeah? Is, my experience, and I'm open to being disapproved on this as well, is just, chronic things are things that you do to yourself. You know, so why am I doing this to myself? Yeah. And that's the question. So we've got to first start to, we need a vehicle to be able to uncover these things. So like the process around chronic pain and just reconnecting with the body, is built around questions, you know, questions like that are really clear. Like am I responding or reacting to the sensations of my body right now?   Mason:  (59:31) All right, well let's talk about that. How would one, how like because this is something, yeah, yeah, yeah, I respond not react. Taking that from a concept-   Benny:  (59:41) Yes.   Mason:  (59:42) For you to go through, say like an eight hour work day where you are responding and not reacting and then going into like a half an hour like class, yoga class, you know or go into an hou and 15 minute yoga class and respond and not react. If you're going to Christmas with your family and there's a value of physical, it is your physical body. And you said, that mind-body connection. I feel like most people, again would, listening would understand that concept that you can't separate the mind and the body. But then in exploring the reality of that, I know sometimes I'm still like, okay, I know it's true. Let's go in and explore that again, to.. So I can actually feel it.   Mason:  (01:00:29) I mean, that process, you know, do we need to walk around like a drugged up monk? You know like, drugged up on meditation, you know, like where's, I know there is, I know the answer. I'm being somewhat facetious, however, still that's like we, sometimes we rely on our rajibaji nature and our willpower, our will. Not our Treasure, like Zhi in Taoism, not that will, that essence of you know, and the five wills that emerge correlated to our Jing and correlated to the five wills that emerged through our Shen and our spirit. Talking about like, you know, it's like, right-   Benny:  (01:01:10) Real achiever.   Mason:  (01:01:11) Will, I'm going to will my life through this and I'm going to use that coffee and I'm going to do, you know, that's pure reaction. And what's the patterns through our reaction become very functional sometimes. Of course they're not functional longterm and they fucking, you know, they take our relationships and the way we were like, you know, and our of service and all that and drudges it through the mud eventually, when our patterns are using us because you know, and I bring this up from conversations we've had, but you know, how do we get to that place consistently. I know you don't have a formula or an answer but even just without, you know, without being ourselves, without thinking that we need to be a certain way, you know, I remember even part of me going, because you're a very calm person. You've noted, in our talks, you remind me, remember you're much more of a hectic person Mason, you know like-   Benny:  (01:02:06) We're different, you know.   Mason:  (01:02:06) We're different. But at times I've gone like, right, holy shit. I mean Benny's a very calm guy and I'm like, and I at times I've used that as like my stake in the ground for like how I'm going to go out. Like bringing a very calm, you know, kind of mediated way of speaking, you know, pausing, you know, that's how I perceived you a lot of the time until I was like, all right, that's been useful for a particular amount of time and now I need to, and go and then, and find my own way. So I mean that concept of, responding and not reacting to talk about the principal. And let's talk about the practices.   Benny:  (01:02:45) So first let's clarify, just at least some terminology. So like a response is nothing more or less than a conscious choice.   Mason:  (01:02:53) Okay.   Benny:  (01:02:53) So just, I am choosing.   Mason:  (01:02:56) Not necessarily the right choice.   Benny:  (01:02:58) Exactly.   Mason:  (01:02:59) Right.   Benny:  (01:02:59) This is not about right or wrong.   Mason:  (01:03:00) That's very good.   Benny:  (01:03:02) So it's just, just a choice tha

Ronnie Landis shares a deep dive education into the vast world of traditional tonic herbal medicine systems from all over the world and especially in Chinese Medicine. Ronnie shares unique insights and information on a wide spectrum of health concepts and how tonic herbs help us thrive. Ronnie's Inner Circle Membership www.ronnieinnercircle.comRonnie's Official Website www.hhphealth.com

Ronnie Landis shares a deep dive education into the vast world of traditional tonic herbal medicine systems from all over the world and especially in Chinese Medicine. Ronnie shares unique insights and information on a wide spectrum of health concepts and how tonic herbs help us thrive. Ronnie's Inner Circle Membership www.ronnieinnercircle.comRonnie's Official Website www.hhphealth.com

Thomas Dale is a Quantum Nutritionist, tonic herbalist, qigong practitioner, as well as an educator. In this episode, we talk about tonic herbs, adaptogens, qigong and how incorporating these practices improve your life.

What do you know about tonic herbalism, medicinal mushrooms and the role herbs and naturopathy can play in your life? If the answer is not much, Mason Taylor is here to correct that and introduce you to the benefits of tonic herbs. The owner and founder of SuperFeast, an Australian based tonic herbalism company, Mason is passionate about using herbs to increase your flow of Chi and connect you with your immune system. Elevate Your Mind, Body, & Spirit SuperFeast works to be more than just the standard health company selling you on something by backing up their philosophy with connection, support, and the ancient science that has helped sustain life for centuries. Learn about the energy of your symptoms, the difference between inferior, regular and superior herbs, and how to gain an understanding of how your constitution exists in your body.  Mason wants to walk alongside you and help you during your discovery process. When used and understood correctly tonic herbalism can help you age gracefully, bring lightness back into your body and help you shine your spirit through your physical cracks. By opening the door to tonic herbalism you can go deeper into the herbal world, learn to forage for yourself and find new understanding and enlightenment of your Chi. Are you ready to procure an understanding of how your constitution works and get to work on your temple? Share what you found the most intriguing about Mason’s journey in the comments on the episode page.   On Today's Episode Explore the chemical metabolic processing happening within your immune system How to identify superior herbs that can be used to enliven and enrich your life  Ways to maintain your flow of Chi and have smooth communication in your body Tips to living a sustainable lifestyle for your organ function and emotional soul Understanding the role tonic herbs and medicinal mushrooms can play in daily life   Quotes “What I’m trying to do here is convey the philosophy behind these herbs so that people can really start inviting that into the culture of their health and into their habitual flow.” (15:44) “You want to use herbs and practices to understand your constitution thoroughly, not to fix you.” (37:28) “What they really want to begin with is these Jing herbs to restore those foundations so that it is possible to generate your own Chi energy to move you through the day.” (42:31) “There's more validity in that slow approach of taking sovereign responsibility for your health and your immune system and your energy levels. So that in 40 or 50 years' time you are not walking on eggshells and all of a sudden needing surgery. And that is where tonic herbalism is just my excuse to talk about that.” (54:41)   Resources Mentioned In This Show SuperFeast Website SuperFeast Podcast Follow SuperFeast on Instagram | Facebook Mason Taylor Website The Mason Taylor Show Get The Core 4 Book Here Nutritional Therapy Association Website   Check out the full show notes here! Follow Steph on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Pinterest I'd really love it if you would take 1 min and leave us a rating and review on iTunes!

Mason Taylor is a health educator, tonic herb expert, and the founder of Superfeast.com.au, which is one of the world's most prominent purveyors of potent, wild-crafted medicinal mushrooms & adaptogen herbs, designed to upgrade your body naturally in almost evcery way possible. An Australian like myself, Mason's extreme love of natural healing products and foraging for his own mushrooms, lead him to create Superfeast in order to share this ancient plant knowledge, and help others living in today's modern world support their immune system, kidney function, sex hormones, and many other aspects of their life using these compounds -- many that have been used traditionally for thousands of years, but now have advanced scientific backing showing their power on the human body. In this episode we discuss some of the potent ranges of herbal medicine, how tonic herbs can detoxify the body, the healing and immune-supporting properties of several kinds of medicinal mushrooms, details on several unique herbs including He Shou Wu, eucommia bark, and pearl powder, how herbal medicine may aid in extending the lifespan of humans, some natural biohacks for skin health, and right at the end of the episode, what the most potent antioxidant rich plant compound on earth is, and how it can help with wound healing, and to bring out more radiant skin. We also talk about deer antler, which is a compound taken from the antler of a deer, why it's so powerful, and what it's used for. And as there have been some ethical concerns for the sourcing of deer antler, Mason has asked that I share a video of his visit to the farm where Superfeast source this part of their product link, which I have linked to below.   SUPERFEAST: https://superfeast.com.au/ DEER ANTLER FARM VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAkyU26dflA    CONNECT Connect with Leon The Alchemist online for more intensive biohacking, longevity, and performance advice daily, with exclusive content you won't find anywhere else: INSTAGRAM: @LeonTheAlchemist | https://www.instagram.com/leonthealchemist  TWITTER: @AlchemistLeon | https://twitter.com/alchemistleon LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/leonthealchemist WEBSITE: http://bioalchemy.co COURSE: http://bio.ax/    LEARN Want to take your biohacking skills to the next level? Wake up feeling better each and every day? Or as Dr Aubrey De Grey has suggested, see if you can implement some of the longevity biohacks that may see you living to 1,000 years or more with advancements in technology? Then my intensive biohacking course The Alchemist's Guide to Biohacking (http://bio.ax/) is something you should consider becoming a student of. Use the code "HALF" during the first month of this podcast being launched to get 50% off lifetime access, with all future updates. Check out this biohacking course at: http://bio.ax/    SUPPORT I spend a ton of time putting together this podcast, and would love your support. Whether as simple as reviewing this podcast, to checking out the products I recommend, or even becoming a student of my intensive biohacking course "The Alchemist's Guide To Biohacking", I appreciate every human who supports me, however large or small the action. ITUNES: https://apple.co/2GQnXH2  SUB ON GOOGLE: https://bit.ly/2SbvJ05  BIOHACKING COURSE: http://bio.ax/

Astragalusis my go to herb for the immnity system. the roots of this plants have been used to boost immunity, tonify the spleen and digestion and also as an adaptogen, if you are not familier with the term adaptogen, we convered this in the last episode.For me it gives a really quick almost instant energy boost because of this rising energy. And for that reason I dont take it too close to the bed time. I really notice it when I take it.It is in my regular mix with reishi, and other mushrooms and maybe he shou wu. Because of its sweet flavour it actullay helps the tea tastes so much better. I love the ritual in the morning.We have 7 alchemy blendsand astragalus is in the immunity mix. Also in flying highmix becuase of its this upright chi/ energy effect that gives you. You will also find it in Digestive supportbecause it is known to strenthens metabolism and digestion, stimulating spleen qi.In this episode we coverthe characteristic of this herbMain components in Astragalus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22981502Cycloastragenol in Astragalus and how it can affect telomeres https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972662/meditation and effects on telomeres / telomerase activity https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645301000243Xhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4859856/how to take our astragalus extract powderGet your Astragalus here ENJOY x+++++++++subscribe so you won't miss out on the next episodewebsite www.shokuikuaustralia.com www.shokuikuacademy www.rawrecipebookI would love it if you have a listen and share your feedback with me and others. The best place to reach would be on instagram @inoue.yoko or @shokuiku. if you don’t have an instagram you can also reach out to me via yoko@shokuikuaustralia.com. let me know if there is any subjects you want me to go over.Please do subscribe if you are a podcast lover like me and rate and review which will help me keep going sharing what I know in this way.Where do you listen to a podcast? screenshot to share it!like to find more about what we can help you with? get more inspiration?find some amazing products for optimal health? or join our holistic wellness communityVISIT www.shokuikuaustralia.comLEARN RAW FOOD CUISINE WITH USwww.shokuikuacademy.com17 day intensive raw food courseRECIPE BOOKwww.rawrecipebook.com

Ron Teeguarden is widely considered to be the the foremost promoter of Tonic Herbalism in the USA. He is the man behind Dragon Herbs, who produce an extraordinary range of high quality Chinese herbs, tinctures, teas and formulations. In this fascinating interview, Ron shares how he got started back in the 80s, some of his favourite herbs including reishi, he shou wu and ginseng, how to get off coffee, and how best to take the herbs. He introduces us to some of the signature products in the Dragon Herbs range such as Spring Dragon Tea, Heaven Mountain Goji Berries, Tonic Alchemy, Tao in a Bottle, and Dragon Drops.

Ron Teeguarden is widely considered to be the the foremost promoter of Tonic Herbalism in the USA. He is the man behind Dragon Herbs, who produce an extraordinary range of high quality Chinese herbs, tinctures, teas and formulations. In this fascinating interview, Ron shares how he got started back in the 80s, some of his favourite herbs including reishi, he shou wu and ginseng, how to get off coffee, and how best to take the herbs.

Mason Taylor is a health educator, speaker and podcast host with a special interest in sharing how to navigate the evolving world of health and its many paradigms to create a unique and potent health philosophy and personal practice; an approach that helps people to feel safe, balanced and vital in their body. He is the founder of SuperFeast, purveyors of the world's finest tonic herbs and blends.My family and I use these incredible herbs from Super Feast and we deeply value the #BeyondOrganic quality. Check out the range at:https://www.superfeast.com.auCheck out the videos of Mason on the land from where he gets the Super Feast herbs from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qohn4VfZTg0&list=PL-7czygRimYmgUdYt89FZnLLvSxeY0UUbFollow Super Feast at:https://www.instagram.com/superfeast/Have a listen to the Super Feast podcast here:https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/superfeast-podcast/id1437097644?mt=2Notes:- The principles of tonic herbalism and Di Tao.- We do not need to enter into a degenerative decline state like what's considered 'normal' in our culture. These types of herbs can assist us is staying in a regenerative state.- Different types of medicinal mushrooms, uses for deer antler, oyster (micro ground pearl), and other incredible herbs that can assist us in living the most balanced and vital life.- How to keep your immune system strong and resilient.If you'd like to support this podcast please visit:https://stuartwatkins.org/podcasts/Support the show (https://stuartwatkins.org/podcast/)

In this episode, I am talking about another medicinal mushroom, Chaga. If Reishi is the queen of the mushroom, chaga is known to be the King of the mushroom.Chaga grows naturally on birch trees in cold climates, in Russia, Korea, Japan, Europe, Canada, and Northen regions of the United States. It produces a fruiting body on the trunk of the tree that looks like a burnt charcoal. It was actually also used as a coal extender in some communities but traditionally used to make a medicinal tea.In this episode I go throughThe benefits of chaga mushroomWhat is SOD and how it can help you to age gracefullyAnti-cancer compound in chagaHow chaga grows and how it should be harvestedHow much to take chagastudies that I mentionedhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5333935/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4946216/Are you ready to take Siberian Chaga? You can get yours herefollow, message me through @inoue.yokoor @shokuikuon instagramsubscribe so you won't miss out on the next episodewebsite www.shokuikuaustralia.comwww.shokuikuacademy.comwww.rawrecipebook.comI would love it if you have a listen and share your feedback with me and others. The best place to reach would be on instagram @inoue.yokoor @shokuiku. if you don’t have an instagram you can also reach out to me via yoko@shokuikuaustralia.com. let me know if there is any subjects you want me to go over.Please do subscribe if you are a podcast lover like me and rate and review which will help me keep going sharing what I know in this way.Where do you listen to a podcast? screenshot to share it!