Low Tox Life

This week my show guest is farmer, Charlie Arnott who took his family farm reigns in 1997 in Boorowa, where they'd been farming for 50 years. After a series of epiphanies through education, steered them towards regenerative agriculture using biodynamic principles. In today's show we talk about Charlie's farming journey, his decision to move away from trying to get nature to do what HE wanted, and instead working to learn how best to collaborate with nature - something he believes is key to not only a prosperous farming business but also to a farmer's mental health and the land's health. It's an inspiring deep dive into biodynamics and regenerative agriculture, as well as looking at some of the biggest challenges of our time ethically with factory farming and live export, as well as climate change and drought. Enjoy the show, and of course don't forget to make the most of the show sponsor offer and additional resources to do with today's show over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The gut continues to be a hot topic, thus one I welcome putting on a show about when I find the kind of guest that can take things to the next level of our understanding of our inner garden. So, this week my guest is Dr Jason Hawrelak. We go deep into the microbiota, the latest gut research, gut brain connection, IBS, fodmap restriction and how to bring back the fibre minus the symptoms, constipation, Keto and certain strains that are winning in the research when it comes to depression, anxiety and more!  Dr Hawrelak is Head of Research at ProbioticAdvisor.com. His passion for gastrointestinal health, the GIT microbiota, and probiotics was ignited during the final year of his undergraduate training. Subsequently, Dr Hawrelak did his Honours (First Class) and PhD degrees in the areas of the gastrointestinal microbiota, irritable bowel syndrome, and the clinical applications of pre- and probiotics. He has written extensively in the medical literature on these topics – including 16 textbook chapters – and his research has been cited over 900 times. I hope you enjoy this week's show and as always, you can find this week's podcast sponsor offer and show notes over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast Enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 I'm delighted to bring you a story today of possibility. Kim Pearce and Kath Davis are the wonderful women behind The Possibility Project and clothing line Slumwear 108. These two women met by chance on the school drop off on the dawn of the new school year. They connected immediately and the next thing you knew, they were off to India together. It's often easy to think “What change could I possibly effect!?” and thr truth is, if you want to, you find a cause and you fight for it, figuring it all out along the way. In today's show we talk about their slow clothing line, their social justice projects, the circular economy and how we can all effect change big and small. It's an inspiring collaboration between two women that I know you will leave feeling very hopeful about the world from. The show supporter offer and all details on Kath and Kim's wonderful work are available over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast Enjoy the show!Where there's a will there's a way - what does that phrase mean to you?You met on the school run and we'll talk about what happened from there in a bit, but first: What were you doing in your careers before that fateful school run - born and bred hippy chicks who care, or were there a series of ahas or a defining moment that made you start to see beyond the 'great deal at the fave fashion store'?So changing the world isn't a sweet little suggestion you can make over a coffee - or is it? How did you two decide to join forces and create something together?How did you decide what sort of business you would start?How was the experience of building your supply chain?Something that I love is the for people/ for planet connection in what you've created - people being trained in a vocation and paid a living wage and the upcycling/ recycling of materials... Is it easy to run things over here, and ensure people are getting paid well over there?Business is hard - and the massive list of 'to do's can often sap creativity - how do you nurture creative thinking in your days and lives to ensure you're able to continue to move forward and keep solving complex problems through your work?Who is a person who's felt like a guiding light for you on this journey?Some of your favourite examples of people helping us be our best most-awake selves in this new era...What's next for The Possibility Project?and if you had to share one thing each that you believe is a super powerful way for people to make a little change in life for the betterment of people/planet - what is your favourite to share?STAND OUT QUOTE: The Planet doesn't need saving it needs servingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once a curious mind always a curious mind. Today's show is with retired Professor Alfred Poulos has far from ‘retired' continuing to research and write book after book. While Professor Poulos' medical and scientific research has been wide and varied, it has chiefly focused on the role fats play in health and disease. He specialised in genetics and fat metabolism, Professor Poulos published over 150 peer-reviewed papers.His recent interests are in nutrition, and in the chemical pollutants present in our food, water and the environment. He doesn't fear monger or call absolutes where they're unfounded but he does call things into question, shed light on what we DO know, and suggests a heck of a lot more caution than we're currently taking when it comes to what we're surrounding ourselves with. I hope you enjoy my chat with Alfred - He is a passionate foodie and home cook, he bakes his own bread and shops weekly at the Queen Victoria Market and he's totally one of us! Enjoy the show and head to the show notes for today's sponsor offer and further links www.lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's very long show, I've actually stuck two interviews together for a bumper issue on HOME design/renovation. I have two experts in their fields here to discuss designing, building and renovating considerations for a healthier you and planet so if this is you now or in the next couple of years, please have a listen, these talented women are a wealth of knowledge. Architects Amelia Lee (you must check out her podcast “Undercover Architect”)  and Kate Hamblet share their wisdom and with Kate also specialised in interior furnishings, it's a bumper show for all things ‘home'. Being a passionate mold inhibitor, I've got you covered on the mold front, in terms of underlays, wood materials and air filters too. I hope you enjoy the show - can't wait to hear what you think and be sure to connect with their resources on this week's show notes over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast - and of course, this week's show sponsor and their sweet deal. Alexx x See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is there anything the humble mushroom cannot do? From repair damaged nerves, to fighting cancer proliferation, to improving focus or sleep… the resource is promising and building steadily. Add to that the incredible protein source they provide and their ability to grow from salvaged coffee grounds, and you have the makings for an excellent deep dive into the magic of mushrooms on today's show. I have the founder of Life Cykel Julian Mitchell on the show with me today and I know you'll love this conversation. Life Cykel is an evolutionary focused mycelium biotechnology company that engineers positive solutions to real world problems. Trust me, by the end of the chat, you'll know what that means. By harvesting the Circular Economy and using its valuable fuel in partnership with mushrooms, we are able to offer incredible products and services for our health and planetary harmony. Some of their best examples include the National Mushroom Network, Mushroom Honey and Beemunity, their product that supports the immunity of bees and boy do our beautiful bees need that, sadly! Julian and Ryan co-founded the company back in 2015. From there, it's quickly grown to become Australia's leading medicinal mushroom grower and still expanding rapidly, offering cutting-edge mushroom products and decentralised food security enablement packages (ie, hyper local food growing with their mushroom kits.) I hope you enjoy today's show as much as I did, and the show notes, low tox club details and sponsor offer can be found over at lowtoxlife.com/podcast Alexx xHere's what I asked Julian?  There are a few aspects to LifeCykel - circular economy coffee ground recouping for mushroom cultivation… education/school awareness…. bee activism and bee community healing through a mushroom extract… your mushroom extract range: Where the heck do we start, right? Let's start with the type of company you call yourself: mycelium biotechnology company - talk us through what you mean by that? And how did you fund the growth… Lots of people get ideas but get scared they're not going to be able to grow / have enough cash to grow…And you say something rather bold on your website: you believe mushrooms have the power to shape a new future ~ one in which we live in full harmony with our beautiful planet. Mushrooms hold the keys…. how are some of the ways mushrooms can play a role in regenerating the planet?You cultivate mushrooms and grow them from spent coffee grounds but not just the type we're going to stir fry with a little butter and garlic… medicinal mushrooms so we'll get into talking about those in a bit, but first: How did you come to feel called to start a circular economy business centred around spent coffee grounds / mushrooms in the first place?And how did you see this then becoming a fundraising and ag/waste education piece for schools?As you learnt more and more about mushrooms - what drew you to cultivating medicinals?Can you eat mushrooms / take medicinal mushrooms if you're suffering fungal related issues - candida/mold illness etc?Let's talk medicinals… Reishi, Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Turkey Tail, Shitake… a bit about the magic of each one / what best used for. Any juicy studies you want to cite here would be great.Why would we choose a powder and why an extract - difference?And what does ‘double extract' refer to?Can one overdo medicinal mushrooms?Things are all going well with all of these exciting things you guys are doing - what's the BIG picture for you and what you want to achieve?If you had to share a simple way people could have a big impact on their waste and start thinking more circular… what would it be?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every now and then you come across a book that is a ‘Goosebump book'. Best-Selling author and cutting-edge psychologist Dr Joan Rosenberg delivers one such book with her latest “90 seconds to a life you love: How to master your difficult feelings to cultivate confidence, resilience and authenticity. I wanted to make today's show not so much a step by step through the chapters, because I truly call on each of you to read this for yourselves, but more the kind of show that would also leave you feeling able to put things into practice from today and get started connecting firstly, more to your own feelings, and in turn more deeply to the feelings of others. We move through life often not realising how easy it is to become disconnected from what's truly important - look at how we did it with our food source or with the very basic biological need to ground through contact with nature. What we need to also realise that it's not just about how connected we are to where our T-shirt comes from, or how our strawberries were grown, or where the floorboards we're choosing came from, or what ingredients are in our shampoo, but how connected are we to our SELF and in turn to others. I hope you feel as deeply excited about the opportunity presented to each of us in today's show as I am from having had the gift of this conversation with a truly gifted clinician and thought leader such as Joan. If you've ever felt powerless to speak up, disconnected from your child or not knowing how to build their confidence, or perhaps conscious that you distract yourself from unpleasant feelings with Facebook, Alcohol or criticism of yourself or others, this show's for you. Enjoy and as always, the show notes, sponsor offer and low tox club details are over on lowtoxlife.com/podcast Alexx xQuestions I asked Joan… Neuroscientists suggest a ‘feeling' lasts about 90 seconds, often starting with a bodily sensation: That's so fascinating because we think our hearts/minds are doing the feeling but our body is the first clue - can you talk us through what's happening during those 90 seconds?Of all the feelings to feel there are 8 unpleasant one - why stop at 8? hehe… Can you share some of them with us and their significance?You are on a mission to help people move away from feeling disconnected from others, ashamed of lack of achievement…What are some of the pitfalls to leading an awesome life?What does a 90 second feeling and how we respond to our feeling have to do with us becoming more abundant, more connected?Can you share a recent unpleasant feeling and what it brought up for you?What does it take to develop [or feel] confident? Is it a specific practice we can undertake when faced with uncomfortable feelings, that pops us out the other side with more and more confidence?Having emotional strength is part of confidence too - what goes into developing emotional strength?“Developing confidence” is almost paradoxical or counterintuitive (or backwards to some). What do you mean by that?Lots of people struggle with fear and anxiety - how can someone handle their anxiety better or perhaps even experience less of it? You talk about ‘releasing it' which I find a beautifully freeing visual…Let's talk about “Faulty thinking” - is this simply thinking that doesn't serve us?With how visually ‘perfect' the internet can seem, “her life is amazing” and “I could never look like that or achieve that!” Harsh self-criticism gets in the way of pursuing people's goals or dreams – what's your take on harsh self-criticism and how best can we navigate a world that seems to have us increasingly self criticising?8. On the flip side of harsh self-criticism are compliments – yet so many people push them away or really play them down. You think they are really important. How come?People are always being encouraged to speak up or be assertive.  How does speaking up relate to having confidence?How does speaking up relate to being more authentic or genuine with others?In Chapter 10 as you move towards closing the book you talk about committing to one's true self. LOVE this chapter… how would you like to challenge each of us to do a little somethin' this week, every day, to commit to our true selves?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show I speak with author Kate Kendall, author of “Life in Flow” out now with Murdoch books. Kate shares myths about yoga and what it means to be a yogi (I learnt something new and it makes perfect sense!), how moving meditation can support us, what 90 seconds of feeling the feelings can do for us to bring us greater strength and joy and more. I‘ve known Kate since she was 12 and I was 17. We went to the same school and she was in my sister's year. Many years later it was so great to bump into her at an event and learn she taught yoga local to me. I'd always wanted to love yoga but hadn't found a way to understand why it was so special. I loved tennis and dance… fast, adrenalin fueled sports and yoga was a mystery, even though it looked appealing - all those calm, cool people looking strong and elegant and peaceful… So I went along to a class of Kate's at Flow Athletic and I was hooked. If you're in Sydney or visiting, treat yourself to a class with Kate and for today, we get to dive into the unlikely yogi journey she had to become one of the best-respected Yoga teachers in Australia and how everything she's learnt has been generously transposed now into her beautiful new book “Life In Flow”.How did you get into yoga? What's a yogi? Cause right now instagram says it's ultra-thin, completely stress-free, green smoothie worshipping award-winning photographers… Might make the average person feel like ‘they can't be a yogi', right? What are some of the myths you hear about yoga?  In the simplest of terms, how do you define yoga? (You'll be surprised about the answer!)Was there a turning point that led you to find ‘flow'?What made you want to write a book? What are some of the yogic philosophies you explore in the book that we can all use in our every day? How did you decide what the chapters of “Life in Flow” were going to be? What are the ‘moving meditations' that you've incorporated into every chapter Let's talk about what's on the other side of uncomfortable feelings/sensations? What's the relationship between discipline and joy? What are your all-time favourite poses? Of all the inspiring authors you've soaked up, which you often share in class what you're reading at the moment, and what nuggets of wisdom are in the text… Do you have a favourite? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever thought about where your jewellery came from? Maybe from one of the big name classics, maybe from the local hand made jeweller at the markets. Have you ever thought about whether THEY know where their materials come from? Unfortunately “shiny and sparkly” are words that don't come to mind when I chat to today's guest, Marc Choy, the only ethical, fairtrade gold jeweller in the USA and president of the Fair Jewellery Action Group. He wrote an expose called: Ethical Jewelry Expose: Lies, Damn Lies and Conflict Free Diamonds that we found when we were wanting to do a show on Jewellery and it is seriously confronting to learn that “Conflict free” doesn't, unfortunately, mean all that it conjures. Please don't feel riddled with guilt for what you didn't know yesterday, once you listen to today's show. Feel excited about what you're going to change from now and I've challenged us all to find ethical, fairtrade jewellers in our local area and share them as resources for the community in today's show notes. Enjoy the show and as always, all further resources are in today's show notes over at lowtoxlife.com/podcastAnd here are the questions I asked Marc:Your journey into discovering that jewellery wasn't all that glitters and had a very dark side. Were you already conscious of food system injustice / environmental toxins or was this your gateway into conscious, aware choices.Share how you and your wife made the foray into ethical jewellery?From what I understand there are a few factors at play in jewellery - It's not just the fairtrade aspects of the workforce / small scale miners it's also mining methods and processing that can be very high tox... other factors?Let's start with diamonds (I too want to share a personal story about the effects of the film Blood Diamond) - What do we need to be aware of in terms of where we've come from in the history of diamond mining and trade?And gold - I've heard you talk about how it can be a toxic process - can you talk us through it?*Let's add in anything else about the process of procurement here before continuing. Can discuss before we hit record*So how did you go about becoming certified fairtrade - ONLY fairtrade certified gold jeweller in the USA might I add? What challenges did you run into as you went about establishing the supply chain?How can we be better at sourcing jewellery / good questions we can ask when we're in a jewellery shop so that we start to raise awareness and let jewellers everywhere know that we want to know we're not hurting people/planet with our jewellery choices?Are there any 'greenwash' labels/associations used in Jewellery that are similar to "All natural" and "Sustainable Palm" labels that often are quite far from what they sound like in fairness and toxicity?And if we have time I'd love to chat about your work with Native Americans and what we can all learn from their cultural, spiritual wisdom and bring into our modern lives?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's show, I chat to Joseph Burgo, PhD about Shame - Shame itself and Shame, his new book which challenges us to use Shame as a springboard rather than be taken down by it. Resilience has a lot to do with that and Jo talks a lot about that too - how it's cultivated and what early childhood has to do with it. Jo has been practising psychotherapy for more than 35 years and held licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist so we're lucky to have him with us sharing his experience with patients - and with his own shame over the years and I truly feel this was a fresh conversation on the topic. I was challenged in my thinking and I hope you are too so that we can lead happier, more emotionally resilient lives. As always, you'll find the show notes over on lowtoxlife.com/podcast Enjoy, Alexx xQUESTIONS  What led you to study shame in your work? In the early part of your book you take us through the “Shame spectrum” - can you talk us through that spectrum now? In the start of the book you ask us to do a survey and count our points. I felt somewhat blessed to only score 12… so quite low on the scale of ‘life shame' it seems, but so many people score high - a couple of my family members scored in the 30s and 40s due to schooling traumas…   Are we more scarred by the latter end of the spectrum and the higher score on the shame survey? Ie harder to heal? And it might feel like “we can never shake it” when we learn that Shame is encoded in our DNA but we can, right? Can we have a great self esteem and still feel shame? Does the foundation of a good self esteem make us more resilient in the face of shame? What role can parents play in becoming more aware of our actions, the way we discipline our kids, the way we build their self esteem in those early years? What does the act of burying and denying shame do to us - should we not be socially saying “Oh don't worry, it's ok” when a friend sees us shamed and we brush it off? What's a better way to heal from shame? When does self pity set in? Is it from repeat shame? In clinic can you share a story of how you've taken someone from self pity to self esteem? Something that happens to us often is when we're proud or have good self esteem, we're ‘put down' / tall poppy syndrome… How do we navigate this when it happens without shaming someone else and maintaining our self esteem? How do we navigate narcissists? Something I love about your book is that we get exercises at the end to help us identify shame in our lives and our pasts and heal… Self awareness being the first step, right? Can you share an exercise we could all do this week to address shame in our lives? We're likely to feel shame at some point down the track - maybe even later today: What is the most important thing we can do when we experience it?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.